A couple of weeks ago I had the joy of speaking at our “Men VS Wild” student event. Let me say how blessed we are as a body of Christ, to have someone like Bro. Brad Walker: a man who will lead a weekend that takes young men and, while having fun he uses the opportunity to teach Biblical manhood. While speaking to them that afternoon, I concluded with some insights from Ray Van Neste’s article “Pursuing Manhood.” It was so amazing to teach these young men and then listen to them, as we discussed the matter of Biblical manhood. I just want to list the final pieces to our discussion based on Mr. Van Neste’s piece.
• Take responsibility and reject passivity: We live in a “blame culture” rather than a “responsibility culture”. We see people blame their present situations on their parents, and too often we see men blame their dad for their failures. We see people shift responsibility for their sin on another person, or at least try to alleviate the conviction/guilt of their sin by convincing themselves and others, that it is someone else’s fault. May God give us men who will take responsibility for their family and lead them spiritually.
• Do Your Work: I explained to our students that this is for them. If their parents continually have to stay on them for not taking out trash or cleaning their room, they can hardly be called a man. However, we have males in our culture that may work well at a job, but who refuse to take the leadership role and work spiritually as God has called us to do. We have men who will not aggressively look for a job, but send their wife to work every day, or who will walk away from a job for convenience sake because they know their wife is bring in income. There are grown men who, the highlight of their day is the score they got on their X-Box for Medal of Honor.
• Own Your Failures: I never recall a marriage counseling session I have had where the couple has walked in on the first meeting and the husband has said, “We are in here today because I have failed to be the man God has called me to be.” The marriage is always failing because of the mistakes of someone else. We come up with reasons why we run late - be it traffic, kids or anything else for that matter, rather than admitting our mistakes.
• Reject Laziness: Does this really need to be expounded upon? We were created to work. We were created to do things for the glory of God! There are certainly times we don’t “feel” like doing something - but if all we ever do is what we “feel like,” we would get very little, if anything, accomplished. There is more to laziness than not going to your job - we can grow lazy spiritually, in our time with God, or in our leadership among our family.
• Reject Whining: God has not called us to whine, he has called us to do! He has given us the unique ability to be problem solvers. When we whine at our situation we are in fact, whining at God’s providence. There are always going to be things we do not necessarily “like,” but we do not pout and whine about our circumstances – we find a way to adapt, prevail and bring God glory in them!
• Embrace Commitment: In our day the thought is that we should shun commitment. We are to pass the buck, so to speak. Instead of coming up with reasons why my family is not worshipping at home, I should see it as my obligation to remedy this. I don’t have to whine, I must embrace the fact that God has given me this responsibility, and that I get to do this!
• Sacrifice: In our flesh there is nothing good. We don’t want to sacrifice, we don’t want our “to do list” to be messed up. The entire Christian life is to be one of sacrifice: we have as our model, Jesus, who demonstrated this sacrifice all the way to the cross.
My prayer is that God will continue to rise up men to lead, love, and sacrifice in a way that only God can cause us to do!
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Change at Trinity...
On October 8-9th, Grace Bible Church hosted a Family Driven Faith Conference here at Trinity with Voddie Baucham. I shared with someone that it was one of the most enjoyable conferences I have attended. I am very familiar with Bro. Voddie, and most of what he said I had read before or heard before... but it was such a joy to watch 600-700 people come with their families, desiring to learn how to better lead them in worship. The one statistic that he gave that really alarmed me was: 1% of Christian parents regularly teach their children about the things of God at home. Less than 5% have EVER DONE IT. About two years ago, when I asked this question of some of our leadership here, there were few if any that acknowledged they were having family worship at home on the regular basis. Today, there are few Sundays that go by that I am not discussing something about Family Worship with one of our men! As your Pastor, that is not a statistic that is turned in nor is it one that has traditionally been charted, but it is strong, biblically based families that will cause us to have a strong, biblically based church.
The same point was made at the conference as is made regularly at Trinity; the problem isn’t that we don’t know how to disciple our kids - most parents are phenomenal at it. Want proof? There are kids in our church and in our society, who are amazing instrumentalists, great athletes, and very scholarly… but the problem is that on THAT DAY - none of those things will matter. God will not hold me accountable for teaching my boys how to get in a proper 3 points stance or how to throw a curve ball. I will not be asked why I did or didn’t explain to them the intricacies of the 3-4 defense VS the 4-3 defense. God will not drill them on their multiplication facts or check to see that they knew the difference between an adjective and an adverb…I will be held accountable for what they have been taught about the Word of God. Bro. Voddie brought up the question as to why Christian parents don’t disciple their children in the things of God. Let me give you four reasons and a response to them:
1. No Training: Many parents just don’t know how to disciple their children. In our church and, in truth in our day, this excuse frankly doesn’t hold water. We have a book table with great books that can equip you in doing this. We have several catechism books and can supply great websites - we are even doing a class on things like this on Sunday evenings. I do believe this is the reason for the incredible increase in the number of parents at Trinity committing to disciple their children.
2. No Plan: Refer to the above statement. This is not rocket science - it is a very simple plan… I just have to make a decision that the one true God is going to be primary in our home.
3. No Goals: Everyone has goals for their children. Most of them consist of things like: getting married, getting a good job, graduating college and so on. Why is it that one seldom hears of spiritual goals for children? If you are a godly parent you may say “I want to see them come to Christ” but that is as far as you go. What doctrine, what truths do they need to know by the time they leave your house?
4. No Accountability: Our goal is to create an environment at Trinity where it is just an expectation of men to lead their home in worship. If the man is not a believer or is not present, then the mother makes a decision to lead their family in worship. If this is not being done - then there is some concern by our people - as if a child was sick and parent refused to get him/her medical care. There should be people trying to help, encouraging them, and equipping them to step up and take responsibility.
I am thrilled at the progress we have made as families in Trinity! We will continue to grow together, strive for unity and growth in foundational truths so that our children may be raised in a culture of accountability and an expectation of holiness! May God continue to raise up parents who take their responsibility seriously.
The same point was made at the conference as is made regularly at Trinity; the problem isn’t that we don’t know how to disciple our kids - most parents are phenomenal at it. Want proof? There are kids in our church and in our society, who are amazing instrumentalists, great athletes, and very scholarly… but the problem is that on THAT DAY - none of those things will matter. God will not hold me accountable for teaching my boys how to get in a proper 3 points stance or how to throw a curve ball. I will not be asked why I did or didn’t explain to them the intricacies of the 3-4 defense VS the 4-3 defense. God will not drill them on their multiplication facts or check to see that they knew the difference between an adjective and an adverb…I will be held accountable for what they have been taught about the Word of God. Bro. Voddie brought up the question as to why Christian parents don’t disciple their children in the things of God. Let me give you four reasons and a response to them:
1. No Training: Many parents just don’t know how to disciple their children. In our church and, in truth in our day, this excuse frankly doesn’t hold water. We have a book table with great books that can equip you in doing this. We have several catechism books and can supply great websites - we are even doing a class on things like this on Sunday evenings. I do believe this is the reason for the incredible increase in the number of parents at Trinity committing to disciple their children.
2. No Plan: Refer to the above statement. This is not rocket science - it is a very simple plan… I just have to make a decision that the one true God is going to be primary in our home.
3. No Goals: Everyone has goals for their children. Most of them consist of things like: getting married, getting a good job, graduating college and so on. Why is it that one seldom hears of spiritual goals for children? If you are a godly parent you may say “I want to see them come to Christ” but that is as far as you go. What doctrine, what truths do they need to know by the time they leave your house?
4. No Accountability: Our goal is to create an environment at Trinity where it is just an expectation of men to lead their home in worship. If the man is not a believer or is not present, then the mother makes a decision to lead their family in worship. If this is not being done - then there is some concern by our people - as if a child was sick and parent refused to get him/her medical care. There should be people trying to help, encouraging them, and equipping them to step up and take responsibility.
I am thrilled at the progress we have made as families in Trinity! We will continue to grow together, strive for unity and growth in foundational truths so that our children may be raised in a culture of accountability and an expectation of holiness! May God continue to raise up parents who take their responsibility seriously.
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