Will Davis Jr.'s Blog, page 62

Our Hope

 

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;

From where shall my help come?

My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to slip;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, He who keeps Israel

Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;

The Lord is your shade on your right hand.

The sun will not smite you by day,

Nor the moon by night.

The Lord will protect you from all evil;

He will keep your soul.

The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in

From this time forth and forever.

Psalms 121

Decision Time

Today we have banks, safety deposit boxes and the stock market. We have many choices when it comes to storing and/or investing what we’ve earned. But in Jesus’ day, they had barns. As his culture was made up primarily of farmers and ranchers, the barn would have been a prominent fixture in the landscape. So when Jesus wanted to talk about the implications of living with more than enough, he talked about barns.

“The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry,”‘ (Luke 12:16-19).

On the surface, this sounds like every entrepreneur’s dream. In this case, the guy is a farmer. His land totally goes wild and yields a bigger harvest than he ever imagined. In order to manage his new harvest, he tears down his barns and builds bigger ones. So far, this sounds like a pretty good business plan. Right? He’s got it made. He’s got enough wealth to last him for years.

There’s only one problem. He had less than eight hours to live: “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ (Luke 12:20). Okay, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I’m pretty sure that when God begins a sentence “You fool,” it can’t be good news. This poor guy had missed it big time. Not only had he wasted his money building barns to hold crops that he would never be able to take to market, but he also had presumed upon God by assuming he had years to live. Both, from God’s standpoint, represent serious lapses in judgment.

But perhaps the farmer’s biggest mistake came at the moment that I call Decision Time. It came when the farmer realized that his current barns could no longer hold his crops. Jesus shared his rather short and one-sided thought process with us. Basically, he gave no thought to any other option other than expanding what he had. That’s the critical moment; that’s decision time.

What do you do when your crops yield significant fruit? What do you do when you have a major financial gain? That’s your critical moment; that’s your decision time.

Almost without exception, people build bigger barns. It’s just our natural, default instinct. If we live in a certain size house–a house that is completely adequate for our family’s needs–and then we come into more money, we either consider an add-on or moving to a larger house. The push is always for more, for larger, for nicer, for bigger barns.

The same is true for churches, and the “bigger barn” thinking is partly behind the smog that I saw in my vision in Nicaragua. Churches will rent a facility or buy a piece of land and build a small building. Then they’ll start having services. God blesses their efforts and they grow. So they add a second service and they continue to grow. Pretty soon, they have so much harvest their barn is no longer adequate to hold it all. So what do they do? They build bigger barns. They tear down what they have and start over; or, they sell their barns and land and they buy more land and build a bigger barn.

And both cases—the individual’s and the church’s–the emphasis becomes having more, being larger, expanding assets and increasing wealth. There’s only one little problem with this strategy: nowhere in the Bible is a Christian or a church commanded to pursue more material gain. Not once. We’ve chosen a personal way of life and a church growth strategy that, simply stated, goes against everything the Bible teaches about stewardship, personal gain and how we disciple people. And this errant strategy is yielding smog, and the smog is killing us.

So I have a simple suggestion: don’t build a bigger barn. When your land yields so much produce that you’re having trouble managing it, just give it away. Instead of investing in a larger house or vacation home or a backyard pool, invest it elsewhere. Declare your current barn to be large enough and then determine that whatever you receive that won’t fit in that barn to be something you don’t intend to keep.

From Enough: Finding More by Living with Less. Enough is on sale this week only in both paperback and e-formats. Learn more here:

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ChristianBook.com

Barnes and Noble

 

Find Enough for Only $1.99

Friends, this week only my publisher is offering my book Enough: Finding More by Living with Less in e-version for only $1.99. It’s an unbelievable deal for such a life-changing read.

Order here:

Amazon

Christian Book Distributors

Barnes and Noble

Can You See What Most Do Not?

 

This weekend I had the opportunity to teach about the spiritual realm and the reality of spiritual warfare. It’s a message every person needs to repeatedly hear. Can you see what others don’t?

Click Here to Watch or Listen

Friday Fire Starters

 

There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. Revelation 22:5

Why the Supreme Court’s Decision for Gay Marriage May be the Best Thing for the American Church

In two sweeping decisions yesterday the Supreme Court struck down laws that would limit or even prohibit gay marriage in the US and set the stage for a state-by-state fight on the issue. But even with the looming battle over gay marriage looming in key states, the court’s decision sends the very clear message that the moral landscape and spiritual climate of our nation has indeed changed, perhaps irreversibly. As one religious leader put it: This decision demolishes the myth that orthodox Christianity represents some kind of moral majority in this country. See full article here.

Those Christians who hold to the traditional/biblical view that marriage can only be rightfully lived out between a man and a woman will no doubt see yesterday’s rulings as major setbacks and as a major blow to the overall spiritual environment in the US. I would like to respectfully disagree. I propose that the Court’s rulings may indeed be one of the best things that could happen for the overall benefit and vitality of the US Church. In fact, the decisions may well be from the hand of God.

We as Christians in the US have had it way too easy for way too many decades. We’ve hidden behind our perceived Constitutional protections and relied on our government to make sure our cozy Christian way of life was secured. And when things have gone against our way of thinking, we’ve blamed our government leaders–as if it was somehow their responsibility, not ours, to promote the Christian faith in our country.

Such perceived protections don’t exist in many countries around the world. The Church is left to fend for itself and to let its life, love and actions do its lobbying. In some nations, Christianity is severely persecuted; and curiously, in those nations the Church is thriving.

Not so in the US. We’ve gotten to the point where other countries are actually sending missionaries here because they see us as such a spiritually anemic nation. I believe their diagnosis is correct. We’ve gotten lazy, sluggish and downright carnal in our faith, and all the while we’ve blamed our spiritual downfall on the loons in DC and not on our own spiritual mediocrity.

Yesterday’s decisions are a shot across the bow of Christians in this nation. We can no longer rely on the government to have our backs on issues we feel strongly about. We should have never relied on it:

Perhaps the best argument for biblical marriage is biblical marriages
Perhaps the best argument for prayer in schools is changing our schools through prayer
Perhaps the best argument for protecting the unborn is through underscoring the God-given dignity and value of every human as part of God’s creation
Perhaps the best argument for clear gender lines is by modeling biblical masculinity and femininity
And perhaps the best argument for the Christian life is through authentic Christian living, not a powerful Christian lobby

Friends, the game has changed for believers in the US. We must now rely on the Holy Spirit to fill us, humble us and to model Jesus’ love to our skeptical brethren.  Somehow I think that’s what God always intended.

 

 

I’m Okay, You’re Okay

The following is from Ten Things Jesus Never Said: And Why You Should Stop Believing Them.

How can we learn to extend grace to others? How can we grow comfortable with other Christians who may feel differently about some theology, worship styles or even certain moral issues? Here are a few suggestions:

Give other Christians permission to be different from you. You’re not the only Christ-follower in the world, and neither are you the most committed. Your way of loving Jesus is neither the only way nor the best. If you don’t know that, your Christian world is way too small. Get comfortable with the wonderful biblical reality that God has followers all over the world who are different from you.
Keep your mouth shut and pray. Before you spout off to someone about her behavior, or worse, before you spout off to someone else about her behavior, pray for her. If you’ve got a problem with another believer’s actions or beliefs, take it up with God. But don’t talk about it to others.
Remember that God is still working on others, and on you. Philippians 1:6 reminds us that salvation is a process. No one is ever completely saved and sanctified until he gets to heaven. So give him some room to not have fully ironed out all his pre-Christ wrinkles. He’s not perfect, and neither are you.
Practice the discipline of confession. Confession is good for the soul. It’s also really good for a legalist. Being brutally honest about your own sin gets you in the habit of not trying to spot that speck in your brother’s eye while you’re tripping over the telephone pole that’s protruding from yours. Getting real about yourself will keep you from getting on the case of others.
Keep your mouth shut and pray. Did I mention that you should never slander or gossip about another Christian? Don’t talk about him; pray for him.
Know the difference between the Gospel according to the New Testament and the Gospel according to you. It’s good that you have strong convictions about certain things, and you need to live your life accordingly. But not all Bible-believing Christians agree on everything, especially when it comes to what’s right and wrong. Classic “grey matters’ like drinking, dancing, music styles, worship styles, types of dress and makeup for women, what’s permissible entertainment and what isn’t, home-schooling versus private versus public, and even political persuasions may not be as clear-cut as you think they are, or as you may want them to be. Be biblically literate enough to know where the Bible draws clear lines around certain beliefs, practices and behaviors, and where it doesn’t. God may indeed convict you that a certain behavior is wrong for you. But it may not be an open-and-shut biblical case for others. So don’t judge those who believe differently.
Keep your mouth shut and pray! Did I mention that already?

Give Us This Day Our Daily Oakleys

Recently my daughter Sara and I went on a hike in the Rocky Mountains. We started right at dawn and hiked for about eight hours. As the sun grew high in the sky I pulled on my sunglasses. They’re a necessary tool for any hiker as the high altitudes and bright sunshine can be brutal on the eyes. In fact, I usually carry two pairs just to be safe. But on this day I had only brought one pair.

I looked up to make sure that Sara had hers on as well. She didn’t. When I asked about them, she confessed that she had forgotten to bring them. Serious bummer. That meant a long day in the sun for one of us, probably me as I was not going to let her go all day without glasses. I didn’t say anything else about it as we still had some shade to protect us. But I knew that once we got above timberline it would be a different story.

About three minutes later something black on the trail caught my eye. It was a pair of sunglasses and Sara was walking right past them. I simply said, “Hey Sara look, there are your glasses.” Sara couldn’t believe it. She said, “I just prayed two minutes ago for God to give me some glasses.” We both just shook our heads in wonder. God had provided glasses–a brand new pair of Oakleys.

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Sara and her “heaven-sent” Oakleys on the summit of Storm Peak.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking: That wasn’t God. You just happened to stumble upon a pair of lost glasses on the trail. That’s all.” And that may well be true. But here are a few factors that make this little incident seem not-so-random:

I’ve been hiking for over 40 years. I’ve never found a pair of glasses on an open trail. Sometimes I find an occasional lost water bottle or scarf. But never glasses.
The trail Sara and I were on is very remote. So the chances of someone hiking and losing glasses in that spot are pretty slim.
Sara and I just talked about glasses and Sara and just prayed about God “giving” her some. We didn’t find them an hour later or ten minutes later. We found them literally just around the corner. Random? I don’t think so.

God has done much bigger things. So why wouldn’t he drop a pair of sun glasses on a trail in response to the faith-filled prayer of a young, hot-hearted believer?  He loves prayer and he loves faith. It looks to me like he heard Sara’s simple prayer of faith and decided to honor it right then.

Bottom line: Sara’s glasses from heaven have only encouraged me to pray more. God answers prayer, even the prayers of a hiker who forget her glasses.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32

 

Hope. Rise Up.

Here’s a new post from my friend Chelsea Landis who is currently ministering in Haiti:

I head straight for the children whose heads hang a little bit lower than the others, the child whose eyes are sad, the boy who stands outside of the crowd because I know there’s a story there.  I know there are deep, deep wounds but even more so because I know this is the child that Jesus want’s to find, “to restore, to confirm, strengthen, and establish.”

The child I met today in Cite Soleil was one of those children and reignited the fire inside of my soul for the hurting, the lonely, the orphaned, and the children living on the streets in this country.

Read the full post here

Friday Fire Starters–O Worship the King!

Fire-Starters are simply ways to kick-start your time alone with God. Here’s today’s suggestion:

Get alone and in a place where you won’t be interrupted. Raise your hands and start singing  Sing a hymn of praise to God, something you know. Or just make something up on the spot. But sing! Connect with the very depths of your soul and let the worship that is there come flowing out.

As humans, we aren’t designed to be worshiped; we’re meant to be worshippers. It’s in you. Your assignment today is to let it come pouring out in honor of the Lord Jesus.