Tag: Winter

Making Resolutions

It’s that time of year again, that time of year when we examine what we don’t like about our life and make a resolution to change it in the New Year.

Can be I honest with you? I think your New Year’s resolution isn’t going to be as effective as you hope it will, if it works at all.

Is change important? Absolutely. Is commitment essential? Of course. Is improving your lifestyle a wise decision? Without a doubt. So I don’t want to discourage you from writing or keeping a New Year’s resolution. I do want to challenge the way you think about biblical change.

You see, Christianity simply doesn’t rest its hope in big, dramatic moments of change. The fact of the matter is this: the transforming work of grace operates in 10,000 little moments. More than it does in a series of two or three life-altering events.

In other words, the character and quality of your life won’t be defined by two or three life-changing moments. No, the character and quality of your life will be defined by the 10,000 little decisions, desires, words, and actions you make every day.

How you can you be a better you in 2015? Confess in 10,000 little moments of conviction. Be courageous in 10,000 little moments of faith. Obey in 10,000 little moments of decisions. Choose the kingdom over God over the kingdom of self in 10,000 little moments of desire.

You don’t need a big resolution to change your life, because your life isn’t established in big moments.

Your life is established in 10,000 little moments, and Jesus Christ is present and active in all those moments. In these small, seemingly insignificant moments, he’s delivering every redemptive promise he has made to you. In these 10,000 little moments, the Lord is working to rescue you from you and transform you into his likeness.

By sovereign grace, God places you in 10,000 little moments that are designed to take you beyond your character, wisdom, and grace so that you’ll seek the help and hope that can only be found in him. In a lifelong process of change, he is undoing you and rebuilding you again – exactly what each one of us needs!

Yes, you and I need to be committed to change in 2015, but not in a way that hopes for a big event of transformation. Your hope for change is a humble heart that finds joy in, and is faithful to, a day-by-day, step-by-step process of insight, confession, repentance and faith.

As 2014 gives way to 2015, wake up each day committed to live in the 10,000 little moments of your life with open eyes and humble hearts.

God bless

Reflection Questions

  1. What do you want to change about your life?
  2. Why is a New Year’s resolution so attractive?
  3. Why do New Year’s resolutions typically fail?
  4. How can you make changes in your 10,000 little moments of life?
  5. How can you encourage others in their 10,000 little moments of life?

Article taken from Christianity.com. Written Paul Tripp. Paul is the president of Paul Tripp Ministries, a nonprofit organization whose mission statement is “Connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.

20 really weird criticisms pastors receive (Merry Christmas!)

Back by popular demand, here are the latest really weird criticisms pastors have received, with special thanks to the responses at Church Answers and on social media.

  1. “You didn’t send me a thank you note for my thank you note.” Thank you.
  2. “You’re too happy!” I’ll make a point of being a total grump around you.
  3. “I will leave the church if you don’t put tissue seat covers in the bathrooms!” Please flush on the way out.
  4. “I’d be happy to take your wife to the store to help her select some appropriate clothes.” Please do, but don’t return.
  5. “I guess I have to die to get you to wear a suit and tie to church again.” The pastor did so the next Sunday. He’s waiting on the member to hold up his end of the deal.
  6. “Every sermon you preach is better than the next one.” Thank you . . . no, wait.
  7. “Why do we have to follow something an apostle wrote 2,000 years ago?” Yep, that Bible is overrated.
  8. “The VBS hot dogs are too cheap.” What? We got them at LifeWay!
  9. “You don’t tell enough jokes when you preach.” Yes, I do. I mentioned your name in my last sermon.
  10. “Stop talking about making disciples.” Yes, that criticism came from an elder.
  11. “When you changed the name from Sunday school to small groups, you took Jesus and the Bible out of the church!” I agree. Read Hezekiah 4:11.
  12. “You didn’t give good advice about the family vacuum.” Now, that’s important.
  13. “Heard you are going to cancel Christmas.” Yes, I consulted with the Grinch.
  14. “I don’t like the color of your beard hair.” Thank you. I plan to dye it pink.
  15. “Your hair color is too dark for someone in your profession.” Don’t worry. The more I hear from you, the grayer it gets.
  16. “Just because it’s in the Bible, you don’t have to talk about it.” I try to be selective.
  17. “Your wife used the wrong spoon in the coleslaw at the church social.” Thank you. She has agreed to be in timeout from church for one year.
  18. “We need to throw out the guitar to the streets. The piano is the only instrument that belongs in the church.” Yep, that’s what the Apostle Paul said.
  19. “You ended a sentence with a preposition in your sermon.” What is this criticism good for?
  20. “Your pregnant wife is faking morning sickness.” I would be happy for you to watch her throw up.
Some funny…sad and some angry.

All of them are reminders of the challenges of pastoral ministry.

Please tell your pastors how much you love them and appreciate them.

And to all you readers, thank you and Merry Christmas. You bring joy to my life!

Article taken from ThomRainer.com. Written Thom Rainer. Thom is the founder and CEO of Church Answers, an online community and resource for church leaders

How to Survive a Spiritual Winter – Sara Hagerty

A tree doesn’t survive the winter without healthy roots. Neither do we.

I remember that bleak February morning when my husband and I loaded up our car and drove through the stripped-bare forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains to move into my parents’ basement. Everything felt cold, including my heart. Weeks earlier, my dad was diagnosed with a fast-growing brain cancer which we were all still dazed by.

I left their house only for brisk runs through Ohio’s suburban sprawl, and I came home to more winter as I watched my dad decline. Couldn’t I just escape this season? I had entered into a spiritual winter.

A Holy Season

 

What I didn’t know then was that this was a holy winter. God was doing something underground that I couldn’t see.

In our early thirties, our friends were taking active steps towards impacting the world for God: sharing the gospel with neighbors over shared meals, moving into impoverished parts of a city with their hammers and prayers, and starting foundations to release women from bondage. This, while I was cooking tomato soup and playing euchre in my parents’ kitchen, watching my once-strong daddy die.

It all seemed so unfair.

When God saved me at fifteen, I responded by pouring myself into evangelism. Then, in my prime, I was unable to alleviate the pain for the man who’d raised his little girl to believe that life had no limits. My offering was now a cup of soup.

Yet it was in the dark basement of my parents’ home, listening to my dad restlessly putter upstairs through the dark night, that I started to see winter as holy.

A Tree in the Cold

 

Psalm 1 talks about the man who meditates day and night on the Lord:

He is like a tree
     planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
     and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:3)

The deciduous tree knows seasons. It shoots out nascent sprigs of life and verdant leaf in spring. They and their accompanying fruit unfurl under the summer heat, lush and alive. In fall, the mossy-green alights into gold, but only for a flash before brown takes over and winter starts her pull. This tree is disrobed in winter, but not dead. Motionless, with roots resting and waiting, it ever so slowly grows.

The tree prospers in winter, fulfilling its God-intended purpose. Though, to the unknowing eye, it sure looks barren.

Without recognizing seasons, we might only see that barrenness. We see a prospering life in God akin to the opulent tree in early spring, with leaves and fruit intertwined. We forget that this blooming comes forth because of the preparation that winter provides.

Blessed Are the Thirsty

 

That holy winter — when I felt hidden, unseen by friends who weren’t familiar with long hours of care-giving, passing my days without visible accomplishments and apparent fruit — I started to see that I could cultivate an unseen, private life in God. My roots were still alive, albeit concealed.

In the basement, underground seasons of my life, his word and his whisper became fresh to me. I wanted it, not so that I could teach it or share it or sermonize it, but because I was thirsty. So thirsty. During my daddy’s restless nights, I needed God to highlight a phrase from his word to sustain my little-girl heart.

I wasn’t changing the world; I was changing my parent’s laundry. But through it, God was changing me. With his word cracked open on the counter, he whispered words of encouragement and promise: “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . my cup overflows” (Psalm 23:4–5).

The blessed man, likened to the tree in Psalm 1, found his delight meditatingon God, day and night (Psalm 1:2–3). Meditating on God’s word — singing it, crying over the pages, taking my angry heart to his word for answers and asking for a surprise rush of his Spirit’s lifting — took on new meaning when I was winterized.

In the winter, I fell in love. He became my delight — because he was all there was. His whisper, my winter song back to him. And this was to his glory.

New Practices for Cultivating Roots

 

For those who are in winter (perhaps even a prolonged winter), there are some reminders that might help sustain our roots:

1. Receive your season.

 

Rather than giving your energies towards wishing for another. The surrender, although painful, positions us to receive all that God intends for that particular season much better than if we fight against it. God is always oriented towards our growth, even in our winter. This is a truth given to us in John 15.

2. Create new spaces.

 

Find areas where you can fall in love with God afresh. Seemingly barren seasons might convince you that your roots are hardened. Not necessarily so.

Thwarted opportunities are a fresh chance to see God through his word in ways you haven’t before. Start a new habit of engaging with his word in the middle of your thwarted day. Write songs from his word. Take walks with your earbuds out, praying a verse back to him. Ask his Spirit to direct your eyes to the ways he is working in the small areas of your life. Winter is a time when the inside can be nourished even when what is outside feels barren.

3. Don’t forfeit your dream for fruit.

 

Our culture is largely oriented toward action. But dormant dreams are not dead dreams; they are often further opportunities for dialogue with God. He created you to desire fruit, and he desires fruit for you (John 15:8). Winter is a time to take those desires to God in prayer. Winter can also be a season where dreams are cultivated.

Thankful for Winter

 

My seemingly barren winter started even before my dad was diagnosed, and it lasted years beyond his death. But during that very long season, I had this single verse on a notecard, propped behind my kitchen sink:

“I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” (Isaiah 45:3, NKJV)

Now, during a kind of spring, I see that it all proved true. He cultivated my roots in winter and gave me treasures that are still producing fruit within me. And it wouldn’t have happened without my winters.

Article taken from DesiringGod.org. Written by Sara Hagerty. Sarah is the wife to Nate and mother of six children. She has written two books: Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet and, more recently, Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves to Be Noticed.