As soon as I confirmed that God was sending me to Thailand, I started trying to read as much as I could about the Buddhist faith. (It is unfortunately my nature to believe that gathering as much information as possible is the way to solve any problem.) I started trying to envision what conversations I might have with a Buddhist about Jesus and the Christian faith. I wondered how I might engage them where they are and what aspects of Christianity might resonate best with some of their beliefs. As I did this, God laid three truths on my heart that I wanted to share with you as we continue to pray about his upcoming trip:
Category: <span>Devotional Thoughts</span>
In church life, you hear the word “worship” used to describe many different aspects of Christianity. Many times it is used as a description of how the entirety of our lives should be lived to please God. Paul was using it this way when he said, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1) Evangelist D.L. Moody famously said that that problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar!
Last week, God closed the door on a prayer request my family had been praying toward for several months. We were extremely disappointed even as we fell back on our faith that God always knows what He is doing. We got our answer Friday evening and one of the many thoughts that ran through my mind was that it might be difficult to lead worship on Sunday singing an uptempo song about the great things that God has done. I certainly didn’t feel like it in that moment.
There is something in us that desires the attention of others. As our children demonstrate when they cry out, “Daddy! Watch this!”, this craving starts at a very young age. As we get older, we might tell ourselves that we would rather fit in and not be noticed, but we never stop searching for the approval of others. This doesn’t go away when we serve in a ministry position and perhaps becomes more difficult to deal with the more visible your area of ministry becomes.
I’ve recently come back to blogging after having to step away from posting during a season where I served as the chair of a Pastor Search Committee. If you have spent any time at all serving in a local church, there are few things that cause more anxiety than the mention of, need for, and prospect of serving on a PSC. But back in August of 2017, I received a call from our senior pastor asking me to pray about whether I would be willing to serve on the committee that would be looking for the next one since he was retiring in 2018 after serving our church for 30+ years.