Flawed (Part 7)

Flawed (Part 7)

Jude 1:21 "Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."

Three things to remember:

-Telling yourself what a failure you are won't make you any more successful. 

-Telling yourself you're not living up to your full potential won't help you reach a higher potential. 

-Telling yourself you're worthless and unlovable won't make you feel any more worthy or lovable.

Loving yourself is based on receiving the unending love that God has for us. You cannot love God until you have first received from Him and allowed His love to permeate the way you see yourself. The love God empowers you to see yourself through that love. Therefore, you can know you have plugged into God's love when you are able to love yourself properly.

Loving yourself allows you to see yourself the way God sees you in thoughts, words and actions. You are able to relate to yourself from a motivation of love. You get a sense of how God sees you; therefore, you live your life based on that perception and not the perception of others. 

Loving yourself involves unconditional acceptance. There is no way to move forward from your without first accepting yourself in love, right where you are, with no strings attached. God is not performance based, but bases His presence in your life with love.

Loving yourself establishes your worth and value in a dynamic way. It sets the tone for the way you establish your worth in life. When you love yourself properly, you gain a healthy sense of value based on the simplicity of being loved.

Loving yourself is built on kindness and patience. 1 Corinthians 13 tells you that patience and kindness are the main pillars of love. They make way for the rest of love's power to manifest. Kindness is what love gives out. Patience is what love can handle.

Loving yourself is not based on your circumstances. In fact, the more challenging circumstances become, the more you need to love yourself. Otherwise anger, contempt, self-accusation and self-hate will scream in your thoughts all day long. Your flaws will be magnified. Love silences the power of those voices and gives you authority over them in Jesus' name.

Loving yourself cultivates an acceptance of your flaws. Self-love puts all your struggles and weaknesses into the right perspective. It even puts sin in the right perspective. Love doesn't ignore sin. It covers it and creates an atmosphere whereby sin can be healed and powerfully eradicated. There is no need to obsess over areas of weakness many people try to hide every day. Instead, you can affirm who you are and be authentic. Love frees you to be yourself without shame, eliminating the fear of exposure and condemnation. God's love allows you to live accepted, safe and at peace in your own skin.

Loving yourself has a lot to do with self-compassion. When you learn to love yourself, you give to yourself what you would often extend to someone you love dearly. Loving yourself satisfies the deep longing of your heart while establishing a powerful reservoir of compassion to pour out to others.

Loving yourself allows you to look in the mirror and like what you see. This is by far the most challenging for so many. For most of my life, looking at a picture of myself or catching a glance in the mirror were frustrating experiences. I always tried to be what I thought everybody wanted me to be at the expense of just being myself. No one taught me that seeing myself with kind eyes was incredibly important to my health and sanity.

When you don't love yourself, you become trained to see yourself with an altered perception that is negative. Your flaws become so magnified, you see things even those around you do not notice. When you do not love yourself, you become trained to see yourself with an altered perception that is negative. You are enough just as you are and self-love will be a little bit easier every time you remind yourself of that. God loves you just like you are!

Flawed (Part 6)

Flawed (Part 6)

James 1:2, 3 "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience."

Try harder. Achieve more. Make no mistakes. Produce perfection. These are the messages the world screams at us in the 21st century. It’s not just a secular message either. The attempt to be perfect has always affected our churches. Worship bands spend hours tweaking musical concepts that will most likely go unnoticed by most. Creative teams spend weeks on video promos, handouts and lighting to compliment a service. Pastors labor for hours over the perfect words for their congregations to tweet. There is nothing wrong with working hard to achieve good results and give our best to what we do. God loves when we use the gifts He has given us for His glory, whether that’s by preaching, teaching, learning or building a business.

One of the biggest causes of self-loathing is the need to “get it right.” We strive for perfection and success, and when we fall short, we feel less than and worthless. What we don't seem to realize is that working toward our goals and being willing to put ourselves out there are accomplishments within themselves, regardless of how many times we fail.

In the Old Testament, the word "avodah" is often used to mean both work and worship. Working hard is no bad thing, and many good things have come out of situations where people have worked furiously hard to achieve brilliant results.But things have escalated. Society today places expectations upon us that are not only unhealthy, but ungodly. Mistakes are no longer lessons to learn from, but public humiliations, which serve only to knock our confidence and thwart our passions. Achieving anything less than perfection is considered a failure. Employees in some of our biggest firms work well into the early hours only to get up at the crack of dawn, all in an attempt to avoid failure. It’s perfection or nothing.

The problem is that by striving to be perfect, we are relying on our own strength and not God’s. That is why people who spend their lives trying desperately to achieve perfection often burn out. The human desire to be perfect means we push God to the side, opting to tap into our own limited power resources rather than drawing from the well of life. In many ways, the shift in society to achieve perfection is a shift that says, “God, we don’t need you anymore, we’ve got this one covered.”

God never calls us to be perfect, but He does call us to be holy. In his first letter, Peter echoes the book of Leviticus when he writes, “Be holy, because I am holy” in 1 Peter 1:16. Holiness is messy. Holiness calls us into situations where what matters is our obedience, not our success rate. God doesn’t judge us with a performance chart or a strategic review. He looks at our hearts, looks for our obedience and takes delight in that. Recognizing this frees us to find our worth and acceptance in God alone. We seek not to please those around us, only God.

We seek to please Him by offering Him a willing and contrite heart, ready to learn from our mistakes and delve into the messiness that is the realm of holiness. As a consequence of this, there is every chance we will see our work results improve, as the pressure is lifted and we begin to do what we do for the glory of God.

True perfection is only and will always be found in God. While we are called to be like Jesus, we must acknowledge that we can never be perfect as He was perfect. Attempting to be perfect is a vain human striving to play God, to bring things under our control, to maintain a vestige of power that we should otherwise surrender.

Instead of berating yourself for messing up and stumbling backward, give yourself a pat on the back for trying, making progress, and coming as far as you have. Focus on progress rather than perfection and on how far you've come rather than how far you have left to go. Your flaws can be overcome. 

Flawed (Part 4)

Flawed (Part 4)

Romans 5: 8 "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

You need love the most when you feel you deserve it the least. It is most difficult to accept love and understanding from others when you're in a state of anger, shame, anxiety, or depression. Your flaws will put you in mind of your past spiritual condition and failures. Yet, understanding the truth of God's love for you shifts your perspective and makes you realize that His love is actually the greatest gift you will ever receive during your lifetime.  

Jesus’ work on the cross was a clear, unmistakable declaration of love for you with your flaws. This love is unconditional because when you were in your worst state Christ died for you: 

Ephesian 2:1-5 “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)"

Your salvation has made eternal life possible. He loved you in spite of your flaws. Hear the words of Jesus:

John 10:10 “The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, Jesus said. “I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” 

God is not stingy and wants to lavish His love on us. Remember, Paul was formerly an enemy of Christ. He constantly persecuted Christians seeking their destruction. He lived by the letter of the law rather than through an understanding of God’s love. If he even thought of God’s love, he probably felt that God could not love him apart from rule-following. Yet, in Jesus, he found God’s grace and accepted God’s love. One of his greatest interpretations of God’s love is this: 

Romans 8:31, 32 “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?  He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"

Verses 35-39 "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

So the simple answer is, “yes.” Yes, God loves you! As hard as it may be to believe even with your flaws, it is the truth.

Flawed (Part 3)

Flawed (Part 3)

Romans 8:1-4 "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."
There is more right with you than wrong with you.

Most people tend to focus more on their perceived flaws, but it helps to remember that there are lots of things they like about themselves as well. From the moment you are conceived, right up until the moment you take your last breath, you have to fight to remind yourself there is something good in you because of the mercy of God.

It’s very easy to lose sight of how much God loves you. When something good happens to you, you don’t celebrate much and so don’t take it in. When you do celebrate it’s often almost momentary, yet you obsess about your flaws more than your positives.

Imagine someone has said a lie about you. You’ll recall that event to your mind over and over. Sometimes you’ll elaborate the thought by imagining retaliations on your part. By sheer repetition, and by vividly imagining the scene over and over again, you carve pathways of anger and resentment into your mind. Then the devil reminds you of your flawed nature. Yet, if a friend says something complimentary about you, you experience a lift in your mood for a few minutes. Unless you’re a very unusual person you probably don’t find yourself, months later, thinking about the compliment you were paid in the same way you would with an insult. That's where the flaws come in and grab you.

You obsess over things that you think are wrong with you. You think over and over about the habits you want to change, and mentally beat yourselves up over them, whether it’s that you think you’re lazy, or cowardly, or too unkind. You ignore all your good habits and instead, let your mind drift. And what does it drift to? Half the time you’re probably giving ourselves a hard time about your faults!

So how often do you celebrate what's right about you instead of your flaws? Hardly ever, for most of you. 
So I’m going to suggest that you devote more mental space to celebrating and rejoicing in the ordinary things that are going right, and that you’re doing right, in your life.

-You’re a miracle created by God, transformed in His likeness, and save by His grace.

-Rejoice in the fact that your body is forever trying to heal itself, and that most things in your body are in fact functioning. 

-Rejoice that you have access to clean drinking water, clean air, and food. 

-Rejoice you have clothing, possessions, and the means to make ends meet. If you’re poor and live in the developed world, you’re probably still richer than 90% of the world’s population.

-Rejoice over your blessings of family and friends.

-Celebrate the fact that you’re alive and that you’re able to celebrate.

We really need to make an effort to celebrate, because of your mind’s inherent negativity bias. You need to consciously celebrate in order to carve pathways associated with joy and love into the fabric of your brain. There’s more right with you than wrong with you and that in itself is something to be grateful for thru Jesus Christ our Lord.

Flawed (Part 2)

Flawed (Part 2)

Romans 8:6, 7 "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."

Your mind can be a very convincing liar. When a cruel or discouraging thought goes through your mind it can derail you in your quest for the Kingdom. Thoughts are just thoughts, but it's unhealthy and exhausting to give so much power to the negative ones that desire to point out your flaws more than your successes.  

Satan always targets your mind because it's your primary battlefield. He bombards your mind with sexual images, failures from your past, and negative thoughts. He understands that if he can control your mind, he can control your body. So, if you are going to learn to control your body in a way that is pure and honorable you must fight to control your mind.

Satan’s attack on our mind overlaps with his attacks on our eyes and ears. It is through the eyes and ears that input is given to the mind. Therefore, by guarding the first two, we guard the latter. 

Psalm 19:7 “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple."

The Hebrew word for “simple” has the meaning of “open-minded." The Jews described it as "someone whose mind was like an open door-everything went in and everything went out.” This person is gullible and will believe anything. His mind is open even to thoughts and images that should be rejected. However, David says that by filling the mind with God’s Word, one becomes wise to discern what is not of God. Wisdom in Scripture primarily refers to knowledge of God and obedience to him. 

A person who does not know the Word of God will have difficulty testing what is not good and therefore have difficulty protecting himself. His mind will continually be saturated by ungodly thoughts, sexual images, and personal failures meant to control and destroy him. He will lack the power and discernment to close the door on past failures and many times will not only accept them but also cultivate them. In your war for your mind, you must “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

James says this James 4:7: 
“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” 

As we submit to God through his Word, prayer, and the ministry of other saints, we can resist the devil, and he will flee from us. However, at times, resistance may include commanding the enemy to leave in the name of Jesus as demonstrated by Christ and the early church. It is not God’s will for us to live bound to your flaws, and God has given you all the resources to walk in freedom, including his Word and his authority. 

Are you guarding your mind? Are you taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ? Are you filling your mind with God’s Word? Are you resisting the devil’s attacks so that he flees? Don't let your flaws of yesterday ruin your hope of today!



 

The Nobody Syndrome (Part 1)

The Nobody Syndrome (Part 1)

Psalm 139:1-18

81% of our Church of God churches average less than 100 in attendance in America. Automatically many of these pastors never are considered for boards or committees because of the size of their churches. I call this the “Nobody Syndrome.” Some of these men are great pastors, leaders, and teachers, but they just never got the right break in the eyes of men. Outsiders and even their peers often say they don’t have good leadership skills or their churches would be doing better. I totally disagree with that!

A friend of mine said recently, “We make our own breaks!” That may be true to some extent, but must growth situations in our own denomination come because of a break-up or split of one congregation and those congregants moving to a different location. Other churches have grown because they have taken in whole congregations that were independent or affiliated with another denomination and wanted to unite with one of our churches. I will be accused of being cynical for writing this, but true growth comes by revival and a renewal of the Great Commission. Growth includes more than numbers, although that’s what we often judge success by in our denomination.

Some brothers and sisters are greatly qualified in all leadership categories, but they inherit a situation where increase is an afterthought to the people in that particular church. No matter what they do they cannot seem to get the congregation to press forward or to change their ideology. Therefore that spirit that has been there for years doesn’t want to let go no matter who serves as pastor. I’m not saying every pastor is correct in every decision, but those type churches make the man or women of God that pastors them feel like nobodies. Then to top it off, those individuals are looked upon with a different attitude from those serving in churches that have significant more money and talent. That is the “Nobody Syndrome” when those men and women who serve those congregations are treated as less than worthy by their peers. It will happen, whether we want to admit it or not, in every State Minister’s Meeting this fall throughout our denomination and some men won’t even go because they feel they don’t matter.

How about you? Do you ever feel like a “Nobody” when it's quiet and everybody else is in bed? Or when you're driving and you don't have to pay much attention, do you start thinking about where your life is headed, what you've done or haven't done? Do you ever pause and add up what your life amounts to and come up short? Do you just feel like a hamster in a cage, turning the big wheel. Life is just a treadmill of the same-old, same-old. You're working hard, but it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere. You feel under-appreciated, overlooked, under-paid, or even unnecessary when it comes to life or your ministry..

Most pastors who take the time to reflect on their lives struggle with these incomplete feelings and dead end thoughts. Some people wrestle with them every day. If you take stock of your life and say, "What difference did/does my life make? Does anybody really know or care about me?", God has a word for you in Psalm 139. He wants to show you a different picture of your life. He wants to give you a view from the top, to help you see the meaning of your life from His perspective.

God wants to replace your pity party with a purposeful pursuits. He wants you to learn the true value of your investment in others despite the size of your congregation. Men may never recognize what you do for the Kingdom, but God does. In the end that's what really matters the most.

Flawed (Part 1)

Flawed (Part 1)

Matthew 11:16-19 "But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.  For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children."
We who are Christians often compare ourselves to other Christians, and I can assure you that the Christians who seem to have it all together do not. The one's you compare yourself to compare themselves to other believers too. When you look at other Christians through a lens of compassion and understanding rather than judgment and jealousy, you are better able to see them for what they are-individuals changed by grace. They are imperfect human beings going through the same universal challenges that we all go through, facing the same devil we face, and dealing with their flaws on a daily basis.  

Since Christians are human, they are not perfect either.  Christians are just as flawed as the rest of the world.  Unfortunately Christians live in a sort of goldfish bowl as others watch and scrutinize them with a spiritual magnifying glass that requires them to live perfect lives.  As hard as Christians may try, they will frequently fall short of the high expectations non-Christians place on them.  

Christ has high expectations for all those who profess to follow him.  However, He doesn’t love them any less when they slip and fail to do what is right.  Christ died for all our sins  past, present and future.  Some say, “If that’s true, why bother to live the Christian life at all.  Just do what you want and God will forgive you.”   This thinking is a little short sighted. 

-Although Jesus died for our sins, it doesn’t absolve us from the ill effects connected to sin.  God doesn’t have to zap us if we sin because sin carries its own cause and effect.  It’s the “what you sow you shall reap principle” or “what goes around comes around.” 

-True Christians are sincerely trying not to sin because they appreciate the sacrifice Jesus made for them.  They are new creations according to 2 Corinthians 5:17. They strive to live a godly life out of love for the one who makes salvation possible, not out of fear of what will happen to them if they don’t. 

With that said, we must recognizer Christians are humans and therefore flawed.  Believe it or not sometimes they might lie, be deceived, get drunk, commit adultery,  be jealous, not get along, run away, hide, scheme, gossip, deny Christ, doubt, fret, and even murder. Just look at this list: 

• Eve allowed herself to be deceived.
• Abraham lied and said his wife Sarah was his sister.
• Paul couldn’t get along with John Mark.
• Solomon let his wives lead him astray. 
• David committed adultery with Bathsheba.
• Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery.
• Saul was jealous of David. 
• Elijah was afraid of Jezebel and ran away. 
• Ruth was a pagan.
• Moses was a murderer. 
• Rahab was a harlot. 
• Jacob was a schemer.   
• James and John were called the “sons of thunder.” 
• Samson was weak in the ways of women.   
• Peter denied Christ.
• Jonah ran from God.
• Miriam was a gossip.
• Thomas doubted.  
• Noah got drunk.
• Martha fretted.  

Just because some of our biblical ancestors had some flawed actions doesn’t give us license to conduct ourselves in the same manner.  The Bible is full of examples for us to learn from, which are good and some not so good. However, it does reinforce that people, even Christians make mistakes and sometimes they are pretty big mistakes.   

I’m glad the Bible contains stories of these flawed individuals who loved God.  After all, it isn’t the person who should be put under a magnifying glass, but God’s grace.  Thankfully for all of us, God’s grace covers a multitude of sin.