Pastor's Window

The individual above is not a real man.  He may look like one and you could be forgiven for thinking he is one since he is 23 years old.  He certainly should be a man by now.  But he is not a real man by my definition.  A police affidavit says he told police he got frustrated at his two and a half month old son's crying Saturday morning, held him suspended by his head and threw him into a living room chair. The baby was hospitalized with severe bleeding around his brain and has died.  This is not the act of a real man.

Now I am not condemning this man, although many will feel he deserves it.  He deserves the punishment the courts will meet out and I pray for him.  I hope that he finds forgiveness in Jesus and can come to grow up past this terrible act he has committed.

Real men do not hit children, nor women.  Real men shouldn't even need to be hitting other men.  When it comes to family a real man serves.    I talked about this recently in my post, Serve Harder.  Real men take responsibility and serve.  They lead, they don't push.  This is tough.  I have NEVER used violence on my family (or others) but I can be verbally aggressive.  I don't yell, but I can be impatient and sound very displeased, speaking in a way that is not full of grace.  Of course, I could tell you I have good reason.  But do I ever have good reason for not thinking of others, especially my family first?  Sure, the case of this young man is extreme.  We would never do such a thing.  But how often do I do this sort of thing in my own gentle way?  We have been fighting the clutter war at my house.  I am not the only one who contributes.  In fact, I am 1/5 or the problem.  Some days, less.  So I can get a little impatient with the other members of this household and I can push them.  Yes, I have a pregnant wife, and yes she takes a lot more of the load of taking care of the kids, but really, she should be doing more!  I can get frustrated.  Not justifiable homicide, only justifiable frustration/indignation.  Ok, so its not baby killing, but it is also not serving.  Not being a real man.

So here's a radical thought, especially for those who have been raised to think in Puritan terms.  I do not believe that as a husband, I have the right to tell my wife what to do, or to force her to do things, either through guilt, or emotional pressure, fear, etc.  I can lovingly invite her to join me in things, but the minute she feels forced, I have moved outside of the servanthood that characterizes real manhood.  I looked in the Bible.  There is not one verse I could find that says that wives/women are supposed to serve their husbands.  It does say they are to submit which you can interpret as obey, but where are the verses telling the husband to order or command?  Not one.  Instead, the husband is commanded to be gentle, to serve, to be understanding. "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25).     Every verse I found that told a wife to submit or even obey was immediately followed by comparing the husband to Christ. Christ died for His bride. "just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28).     So I do not have the right to tell my wife what to do.  I have the right to serve her, give myself up for her, to lead by example and welcome her into life with me.  When I do that, God has commanded her to respect me, to follow me, and to submit to my humble service to her.

The boy in the picture didn't serve his son, he hurt him, fatally.  I have sometimes been guilty of hurting my wife and kids.  I have never left a physical mark, but through selfishness and lack of service, I have left emotional marks.  Real men don't hurt their families, they serve them.  Join me, men.  Put away your harsh words or attitudes.  Stop being pushy and bossy.  I don't care what you think needs to be done, do it yourself and invite them to follow you gently, don't try to force obedience from your family.  Real men don't do that.

Intensive study this morning getting ready for next weeks sermon.  It has been a gut shaking, exciting morning in God's Word.  I get energized and want to go out and preach this today.  It is also intense conviction of my very sorry state.

Jesus, the creator and sustainer of the universe, is God.  I am about as far from that as I can get.  Yet my daily concerns are almost always centered on me.  Even when I think I have gone beyond myself, I still find myself so focused on this world and not the larger reality of God.  I pray for my wife and kids every day, but my prayer is incredibly earth bound.  I pray that they will sleep well, that they will be well, that they will be safe, that nothing bad will happen to them but that their life will be full of earthly goodness.  Now if a life full of earthly goodness also glorifies God, then that's great, but my primary concern is their well-being, not their ability to glorify God.  Nor mine.  Don't get me wrong, I want to glorify God.  I have given my life to His service.  But that service is proscribe, sometimes very tightly, by my earthly viewpoint.

What if God's glory requires something different?  Throughout the Bible, God has often found glory through the suffering of His servants, and yet they often times were able to look at that suffering as a joy simply because they saw that suffering gave them what they needed; to glorify God.  The Christians of the first century were often excited when they found out they could be martyred, not because they were gluttons for punishment but because they were more focused on God's kingdom than this little world we live in here.

We, like Mary and Martha, cry over the death of a loved one.  It is not wrong to miss them, but we often act like this is the world that matters and we lose so easily the perspective of the "real" world of God.  Jesus tries to wake Mary and Martha up a little.  "I am the resurrection and the life."  Why are they so upset when Lazarus isn't dead, he's in heaven.  So caught up in their little world and Jesus so focused in the real world, His Kingdom.  I'm the same way as those ladies.  My daily concerns are primarily of this little world.  I pray for my day, my car, cold viruses, rain, and food.  How sad is it that so much of my life, my day, my prayers are taken up with the items of this little world.  The things of this world are passing away.  May I learn to get my focus more completely and more consistenly on His world, His kingdom.  Those are the prayers God longs to answer!!!

Today is #3's Name Day!  At least that's what my oldest has informed us.    In one of the books she recently read, it discussed the tradition of a Name Day that is actually celebrated in many countries.  She decided that we all needed a Name Day and so she picked out a date for each member of the family.  She has now been planning for several days for her younger brother's Name Day celebration.  She decorated his room (partially seen in the picture above), arranged his toy cars and his stuffed animals with additional Name Day banners, made him a Name Day crown out of paper and dandelions and then walked the family through the rituals of a Name Day celebration.  It was a lot of fun!

I am very thankful for my daughter.  I like that she is such a good party planner and so enjoys making events, planning them, and carrying them out.  She is really good at caring for and making her younger siblings feel special.  I like that her creativity gives us some extra, special family moments together.  It allows us to bond even closer as a family and enjoy one another.  I'm also glad that she loves to read and learns things that she then adds to our lives, like Name Day.  I had never heard of it before.  Homeschool teaches me too.  

Well, the Name Day celebration is over and I need to get back to work, but I just wanted to share the joy of our family Name Day celebration.  She now has a list on the wall with all of our dates.  Mine isn't until December, so there is still time to shop for my Name Day gift!

Between Co-op on Monday and traveling today to two different chapels, it has reminded me how much I enjoy youth ministry.  Over the years as I have gotten older and new ministries have come my way, I have had less specialized focus on youth ministry.  To be sure I am still involved with youth group and camp, but these days I am not in the thick of things but more working in the background.  However, building relationships with the teens at co-op and going to these chapels remind me how much I really enjoy working with teens and the special rapport God has always given me with them.    There are some that think youth ministry is the province of the young and that is often the case, but too often I think that is more a function of the fact that as we get older, we move on to other things.  I do not think it is a result of being less effective.  In fact, I think I am probably more effective now as I have more maturity and wisdom than I had back when I was a young youth pastor.  Also, in these days with so many broken and dysfunctional families, father figures are more vital than ever in ministry.  My Dad always had a great rapport with teens and enjoyed ministering to them.  He never lost his touch.  It is good for me to remember this gift that God has given me and to make sure, as I do many other things, that I don't lose sight of that part of my ministry focus.  I love it too much to lose it and I think it is still very useful.  Even when I haven't been doing it for a bit, its like riding a bike.

This morning someone didn't comment on my blog post yesterday.  No news there except that I dreamed they did.  I woke from a very vivid dream this morning where someone had left a comment on Facebook in response to my blog post yesterday concerning "Rotten People".  While I don't remember the comment exactly, it boiled down to saying that sometimes you just have to fake it.  That got me thinking and today's post was born from a dream comment.  

Does loving other people require faking it?  NO!  That is not to say that people don't fake it.  There are plenty of Christians out there, and I think that fully includes pastors, that are faking it.  They feel there is an expectation on their behavior, they may feel the pull of the Biblical mandate on life, and decide that the most important thing is to show it, no matter what.  They may be very sincere in this desire.  Pretend to like someone, pretend to have this Christian life/personal life/family life thing figured out and nailed down, at least in the basics.  After all, we are to be witnesses and examples.  We might hurt people's feelings.  We might hurt the cause of Christ!  So we fake it.  Maybe a little, maybe a lot, but we put out there what it should look like, even if it means concealing or papering over what is really there.

I think it is all too common.  It is also wrong, and more destructive than people realize.

First, faking love is like faking electricity (not that I have any idea how you "fake" electricity).  There's no real power there, but it looks like there is.  It is all human effort and nothing of God.  1 Corinthians 13 makes it very clear that all the minstry in the world without love is worth nothing.  It is just noise.  If I simply pretend to like people in the church, simply pretend to like the individuals or churches that are difficult, I might make it look convincing, but there will be no power behind it and the Holy Spirit will do no work.   I believe part of the reason that we don't experience the Spirit's power in the church today is that we forfeit the powerful love that is the essence of God and is the key to the work of the Holy Spirit.  We are nice to each other and we fake it, but there is no power, no electricity.

Second, faking your walk with God, whether in big or small ways, destroys the chance of real ministry.  The appearance of ministry may still take place.  Church functions and programs can be planned and carried out with efficiency and success.  Attendance may be fine.  Real ministry, where lives are changed and disciples made, will not take place, and that is the true work of God.  That is true ministry.  Church activity is nothing but busy-ness unless disciples are being built and disciplemakers equipped.   In 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul makes it clear that an important part of his ministry to them was the sharing of his life.  He makes it clear to Timothy that watching how Paul lived was part of how Timothy was to learn to be a disciplemaker.  When we give a fake version, a cleaned up, sanitized, dishonest view of our lives, we completly remove that primary and crucial ministry tool.   When it comes to the men that I am discipling and equipping, if I can't display and discuss my failures, my shortfalls, and my struggles, than I have nothing to offer in terms of life-changing ministry.

You can fake it, but you must not.  Faking it produces fake ministry and fake results, which is a fancy way of saying, nothing real will happen.  So, I guess we have to truly learn to love our enemies, to love and forgive those that hurt, disappoint, spitefully use us.  When the spiritual babies, when the christian sheep, poop all over us, we must, through the awesome real power of the Holy Spirit, truly love and delight in them.  The power of ministry will suddenly surge and disciples will begin to appear.