What do We do with the World?

Servolution – How to get involved.

This is a question that I sent to Pastor Dino Rizzo of Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pastor Dino just released his book “Servolution.” It is a great resource for all Christians and local churches. Enjoy.

Dino, the book has really inspired me to get involved more on a local basis. What can you say to people like me that travel a great deal? How can we do more?

Billy – thanks for being a part of this tour and for your part in ARC – leading as you do to help us plant churches all over the nation.  You’ve done so much for the Kingdom on a large scale.  That makes me see this question here as such a great question.

It is important for each of us to remember that servolution – serving others – isn’t an event – it is a culture of the heart.  So whether you’re on an airplane and someone’s struggling to lift a bag to the overhead storage, or someone is short on their tab at the coffee shop, or the hotel desk attendant is having a bad day, we have an opportunity to serve just by showing kindness.  All we have to do is place someone else’s needs above our own comfort.  Servolution happens everywhere – in the airport, in the restaurant, in the store, at the office, on the road…. Needy people are around us all the time.

Starting locally actually starts even closer in than some think.  It starts in our hearts, and it reaches first to our spouse and household.  We need to serve them most.  It reaches to our neighbors and our community – those we encounter every day.  We simply need to make the choice to engage them every day and be willing to do whatever it takes to help someone in need.

It is a heart-culture that makes us willing to set aside our own comfort and desires in order to help someone else wherever I am, wherever they are. 

Dino Rizzo – Author “Servolution”

Weighted Down by My Mistakes

How do I deal with the emotional trauma of my mistakes?

How long to I have to be sorry for things that I have done wrong?

How many times do I have to repent?

When will the shame go away?

It seems that sin takes a huge toll on Christians when after they have found forgiveness and a new life, they make a mistake. The feeling of freedom and joy that come from forgiveness gets clouded and blotted out when we make a mistake…commit a sin. We wonder what happened. “I thought God had dealt with this in my life when I accepted Christ?” “Here I am again, falling for the same temptations…when will it end?”

It is frustrating to know that we have let God down and maybe even other believers. But it happens to all of us. So what is the key? How do we get over #1 the habit of sin, #2 the pain of sin? How do we, once and for all, get over our carnal cravings and stop obeying our flesh? Well, it is not simple, but let’s take a quick look at scripture.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1 – 2

Sin carries with it “weight!” Weight that “clings to us,” and drags our spiritual life down, weight that bears down on our minds and spirit, weight that zaps the soul of emotional and spiritual energy and sucks it right out of us. The writer of Hebrews implores us to “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely.” The word for “weight” in Greek literally means a mass that causes us to bend or bulge by the load. Think of it as a cancer that drains your energy and leaves you exhausted….that is what sin does to us.

So, what to do? “LAY IT DOWN!” “Sure, but how?” Three simple steps that I have learned in my life.

1.    The most obvious is to “look unto Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Ask Him to forgive you.

2.    Forgive yourself. “Lay it down.” You made a mistake, you admit it, you are sorry, you’ve ask God to forgive you, so forgive yourself.

3.    Don’t let your sin or mistake define who you are. As a follower of Jesus you are a new creation…yes you failed a test, but that is not who you are, you are a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Now, run the race set before you with your eyes on Jesus, not on your mistakes. Let grace do its work in your life. Lift up your head and thank God that He bore your sin and the shame that goes with it so you can walk in His righteousness.

Conclusion: People may not forgive you…but God has. When you carry your guilt and shame around, and bear the weight of you mistakes on your shoulders, others will see it there. But when you lay it down and live free in Christ, forgiven and restored, renewed and “weightless,” others will eventually forget your faults as well.

Try it!

Where did God put it?

There are so many things that people are looking for when they come to church but are not finding. Hope, freedom, peace, friends, encourage and the list goes on. Does God hide these things from people, are do we, as leaders, never really show people where they can find the promises of God? This blog entry will look at a few of these missing incredients.

Looking for the Church…where did it go?

There are millions of Christians that are staying home these days. The reasons are many.  There is, however, a greater number that is present but not fulfilled. They are the faithful to attend every week, tithe or at least give some, sing the songs, pray and hope for better things. Their hopes are to find the things that brought them to church to begin with. The things you should expect from church the sermons and fellowship. But are they finding them? Here is a list of things that came up in interviews with some Christians that are faithful attendees.

This is what people are looking for in the local church but are not finding:

1.    Spirituality – relationship with God-”God just doesn’t seem to attend.”

2.    Connection with people. “No one greeted or welcomed us…we are new to town.”

3.    Recreational involvement – “We wanted to get involved in things outside of church with other Christians but it just didn’t happen.”

4.    Children’s development. “The kids learned a few songs but were mostly unchanged by their attendance.”

5.    Special interest like choir, youth, to serve. “No one seemed to be interested in what we had to offer.”

6.    For the teaching – in life issues. “I don’t know anymore now, after being in church for years, on how to do life than I did before I started attending.”

7.    For leadership. “We wanted someone to guide us in biblical principles for life…we were looking for strong leadership…we found that the leaders only served the corporation and not the people.”

8.    Counseling – life and marriage and teens. “We needed help with our marriage and teenagers. They had no answers….much less compassion.”

9.    Worship and music. “I heard this music 15 years ago. No one seemed to worship the Lord…just sing familiar, worn out choruses.”

10.  Business and political connections. “I wanted to connect with the business community in the church….it was difficult to find business people that were willing to connect with us.”

11. Significance. “I wanted more than just a building and a sermon, I was looking for a place to do something significant for God and for others.”

12.  Alleviate guilt – obligation and duty. “I feel more guilt…more hopeless than before I stated going to church…I thought God wanted to forgive me…not just give me more rules to live by.”

13.  Perpetuate tradition – My family used to go to this church. But it is so outdated that my children, as well as my husband and I have lost interest.”

14.  Goes for the sake of spouse. “I brought my husband, hoping he would get engaged…he didn’t. He says he doesn’t need that and will not be back.”

15.  Status and reputation. “Being part of a church helped my parents have a strong reputation in our town. Now it means little or nothing.”

16. Looking for people who actually live out their faith as examples to follow. “I work with some of the people in the church I visited. I would not want to live like them. There seems to be no one who lives  a godly life away from church that I would want to follow.”

People come to church for different reasons and really want to connect. But they are not finding what they need. Make a checklist of the items above and every week ask yourself if these items can be found in your local church. If not, then week by week work on one of them until you have rediscovered every one and have implemented a plan to make them more visible to people who attend. It will amaze you how quickly things will turn around and how your church will begin to grow.

Next time:7 Reasons why We are yet Unfulfilled.

Relationships that Work

Someone asked one day, “How do you become so successful in all you do?” Well, I’m not sure how successful I am, but the secret to any success that I have ever had is… “I get along with people…for long periods of time.” I look at every person that I meet as a potential life-long friend. This usually ends up being a positive experience and adds to the potential of having success.

That means I had to overlook their faults, forgive their wrongs toward me, and never let hate enter into my heart. Actor Will Smith made this comment; “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.” Love lasts when the relationship comes first! Work on it.

The key to having successful relationships in any area is to have complete obedience to the Word of God. The word “relationship” means to be connected by blood or by marriage. Both of these denote covenants. We are in covenant relationship with the Lord through His blood and we are His bride. We are in covenant relationship with our spouses by marriage. We are in covenant relationship with our families by blood. We are in covenant relationship with the body of Christ through Jesus’ blood.

If we look at friendships as “covenants” we sense the importance of holding up our end of the relationship. That is extremely important in marriage. Having been married for 42 years now I notice how faithfully my wife, Charlene, keeps her covenant with me and how I strive to keep my covenant with her. The same goes with my children and grandchildren, we all have a sense that we are bound to love and serve one another.

Matthew 26:28 – “This is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sin.” (NIV)

God honored His part of the covenant with mankind by sending Christ into the world to “pour out His blood” for us. Wow! So what is my part? To faithfully serve Him, honor Him in all I do, and fulfill the mission He gave me in life to accomplish. I have to work at keeping my part of the covenant with God…it is not always easy.

Note: Relationships take years to cultivate, and if we are not “maintaining” and growing in relationship, they can be destroyed in a few moments. This means we work on them during the good and bad times. You learn to like someone when you can laugh together, but you can never really know deeper love until you have cried together. When you share common joy it’s great, but when you endure common sorrow together it is wonderful…in the end.

There are lots of ways to maintain strong relationships but the two most important things I think are; Faithfulness and consistent honesty.

As I look at friends and loved ones that I have deep relationships with for many years I have learned that their faithfulness and honesty with me means the most. This is the way we walk in relationship with each other. If we lie or are unfaithful to each other, we don’t deserve the relationship. I have noticed that even great men and women carry with them the burden of bad relationships. How much greater could their lives be if those relationships were healed. Most of the broken relationships are a result of unfaithfulness or dishonesty.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LORD: We are to “walk” in relationship with Him.

Our relationship with the Lord was intended to be like that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they fell. They walked and talked with God face to face. They had a personal and physical relationship with the Lord, but when they sinned mankind was separated from God, removed from the presence of the Lord and from direct access to the blessings of God. They broke covenant by being unfaithful and then lying about it and it affected us all. But, the Lord didn’t give up on us! Through His Son Jesus, God put into motion His plan to redeem us back to Him!

This is how we can express true and faithful relationship with Jesus.

Love the Lord: Christian love has God for its primary object and expresses itself first of all in implicit obedience to his commandments. All of the law is fulfilled in one word: LOVE! Matthew 22:37 – “…Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” I Peter 1:8 – “Whom having not seen, ye love…“

Just to give the Lord our hearts is not enough–we need to unite our whole being, heart, mind, and soul, in order to love the Lord the way he wants us to. We should express our love to the Lord by loving His word and His people. Knowing his commandments in our heads is not enough, we must keep them in our hearts also. David, in Psalms said: “your law is within my heart,” “I delight in your Law.” And we should serve one another as we walk in the Love of God.

John 14:23 – “If a man love me, he will keep my words My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” We live our lives in covenant with God according to His word and our relationship with Him will grow and flourish. If we continually violate what we know to be the word and will of God, our relationship with Him will wane and grow increasingly cold. On the other hand, when we walk according to His word, we have joy and closeness with the Almighty.

Bottom line – Be faithful to God, the Church and to your love ones and you will have success everywhere you go in life. At least that’s what I believe.