Will Davis Jr.'s Blog, page 80

The Sharpest Tool in the Shed

As part of helping people move toward enough, I’ve asked some pastors from around the country to write sermons based on various chapters of the book Enough. Over the next several weeks, I’ll publish the sermons. Please feel free to share them with your pastor!

Today’s message is based on Chapter Ten, World Class Christianity, and addresses the subject of suffering. It was written by my friend Jeremy Self. Jeremy is the Teaching Pastor at The Church at Lake Travis. To learn more about Jeremy, click here. To contact Jeremy email jself@churchlt.com.

Suffering: The Sharpest Tool in the Shed

1 Peter 4 and Philippians 3

Jeremy Self

Opening Question:

Will you suffer? Yes. You will suffer.

Introduction:

(Use a story from your life when you have suffered. Or, use a story from a close friend or family member that has suffered. I used the following story):

My wife and I are in the process of adopting a little girl from Haiti. We got to meet her last week. We spent the week bonding with her and then we had to put her in the arms of the orphanage director and get on a plane and come home. Suffer is what we have done since arriving home. And, suffer is what we will do until she comes home.

Develop Need and Identify with Audience:

We all will suffer. At some point in our lives we will suffer.

We will lose a job.
We will get passed over for a promotion.
We will be accused of something we are not guilty of.
We will lose a close friend or family member to something tragic.

Something will happen and we will look around and say something like, “Why am I going through this–Why am I suffering?”

Here’s a not-too-popular truth: You are suffering to become more like Christ.

That’s not a popular statement in an age of “Help me, Bless me, Protect me, Make me rich, skinny, and famous” prayers that most followers of Christ are quick to pray.

Transition Question:

Does God have anything to say about suffering in the Bible? What does God have to say to Christ followers today about suffering?

Let’s take a look together…

Intro Text:

Peter writes in 1 Peter to people who are being beat up on in life for their faith.

1. Don’t be surprised by suffering.

A. ILLUSTRATE: Tell a story about a Surprise Birthday Party.

B. Life isn’t a birthday party; Don’t be surprised.

(1 Peter 4:12)- Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

2. Suffering will draw you closer to Christ.

Paul was a guy who had suffered and succeeded. He recounts his successes in Philippians 3. But, when he gets to the end of his successes, he closes with a prayer. It’s a prayer that is powerful.

A. Paul’s Prayer: Phil. 3:10-11–“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

B. Power is popular.

C. Suffering is not.

3. Embrace suffering as a tool that is molding you to become more like Christ.  

A. A confession of love for comfort: I have to say, I absolutely hate this idea, only because I love comfort so much. It sucks to suffer. And yet, if I will embrace it as a tool, I believe it will help me identify with Christ. Some of my own push back lies in the fact that I really do believe Jesus suffered and died so I didn’t have to. Yes, that is part of it. And, the Spirit of God was on to something when he prompted Paul to write these words.

B. You’re suffering can either make you bitter or it can make you better!

C. Paul recognized that suffering could actually serve him as a tool to make him more like Christ. Instead of rejecting the suffering, he prayed for it…and, ran to it.

Conclusion:

Jani Erickson Tada may have one of the best perspectives on suffering. If you’ve never heard of her, Jani Erickson Tada was an aspiring athlete and at a young age, she dove into a pool, broke her neck, and became a quadriplegic.

Several years later, she put her faith and trust in Jesus Christ. She has become a prolific speaker and writer through dictation. Here’s what she has said: “Heartache [Suffering] forces us to embrace God out of desperate, urgent need. God is never closer than when your heart is aching.”

Will you suffer? Yes. You will suffer. That’s not really the question that needs to be answered.

Here’s the question that needs to be answered by you:

Will you embrace suffering as a tool that is molding you to become more like Christ?

Yes or No.

Let’s pray.

Gracious God, Help me trust you in the midst of my pain. Help me run to you for comfort, joy, and peace. Help me know you better through the power of your resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in your sufferings. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

The Power of Pinpoint Praying

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Want to read more about Pinpoint Praying? CLICK HERE

Is God in Your Platform?

If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny. The Democratic Convention had a scramble-fest yesterday as the President required–among other things–that a reference to God be put back in the party’s platform. It’s actually a pretty weak reference, as it uses the colloquial phrase “God-given talents.” And there was actually a brouhaha over it. Seriously?

But there is a great lesson for us all in the Dems’ efforts to stay somewhat connected to Main Street by including the reference to God. Here’s the lesson: It doesn’t help to have God in your platform, no matter how frequent or how sweetly you mention his name. God isn’t supposed to be IN any platform. He is the platform.

Making God part of your platform or as part of your strategy for a successful and happy life is about as smart as saying that he is your copilot. It simply isn’t in his nature to be part of something or co-anything.

Many of us–and by us I mean followers of Jesus–have become compartmentalized in our thinking about discipleship and the role God and his Holy Spirit play in our daily lives. We tend to let God into the areas of our lives where we think we need him most, but we want him and his pesky Spirit to not meddle in areas where we want to call our own shots. We want God to guarantee our happiness and to give us good health and to give us good weather for our golf outing next weekend, but we don’t want his input on how we treat the poor or on our view of sexuality or on how we spend our money.

We need him in the platform, but that’s all. Like I said, if it wasn’t so sad it would be funny.

Friends, if your strategy for a happy life is to call on God when you think you need him or to have him as part of your plan, then get ready for a life of futility and frustration. Not only will you fail because of your disobedience to God, but you will constantly be bumping into walls–God-given walls. He will not sit quietly by while you try to relegate him to part of your life. God doesn’t do second place; he won’t be relegated to anything.

So for all of us–political parties, business people, leaders, and individual good-ole religious folk–if we’re having trouble figuring out how to fit God in the platform, then we desperately need some sober thinking and to hurry back to the drawing board.

Would You Like a Free Copy of Enough?

Have you read Enough yet? Thousands of others have. Enough has only been out 8 weeks and it’s already on its second printing. And based on the emails I’m getting, it’s having great impact.

Would you like to be part of the growing Enough Revolution? Here’s how to get your free copy:

Be one of the first 50 people to Email Joni and request a copy
Make sure that we haven’t already sent you a free copy in our last give-away
Agree to post a review on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Crossings, your own internet community or blog, or just about any other place that you think will get attention.

That’s it! Are you ready to start moving toward enough?

From a reader:

After reading your FB posts, blogs, etc. on what is ENOUGH – I wanted to share with you my revelation as well as our decision on a new automobile.

For years, (since the early 1990’s) I have always wanted a LEXUS….back then, it was just a beautiful Toyota Camry upgrade to me – now it’s pretty much a beautiful luxury car and status symbol to many.

As an adult, the first car I purchased new was a Pontiac T-1000 (7 years) Honda Accord (8 years) Volvo (6 years) and now my Nissan Murano (7 years).  My husband and I have had recent discussions and were ready for me to get a new set of wheels.  He encouraged me to look at my dream car, the Lexus as well as Mercedes which I thought would be fun.  Why a new car?  No reason other than my current car was getting old and that’s what I’ve done in past, every 6-8 years and now at  76,000 miles what if what if what if something went wrong?  Many families run theirs well over 100-150K miles.

The Holy Spirit residing in me continues to speak, and a few weeks ago I was ready to start car shopping – looking online for used certified, or new Lexus’ or Mercedes – Honestly, it just did not feel right.  Why did I feel this way?  Could it be the hardships our sponsored girls in Nicaragua are suffering?  Could it be the couple we met at church who are in dire straits?  I am feeling this way because I’m convicted – that’s the job of the Holy Spirit and it was working.

I could not deny this nudge and spoke to my husband about my thoughts on getting a car telling him that maybe I should scale down and get another Honda or Nissan – when really, my car is perfectly good – just a few blemishes and rips in the seat and 7 years old.  It gets me to where I need to go, and has always done so.  This week he said to me, “why don’t we just hold on to your car as long as we can and just not have any car payments for a few more years” – I totally agreed.

Relieved that we came to this decision, a decision that put an end to something I thought I wanted but really am OK without having.  I feel so blessed to have what we have, and adding a luxury vehicle to my family just does not make sense.  It’s very much a personal decision – but I’m convinced that it’s the right one.

Thank you for listening Will and challenging us to do more with less…..it’s the less that’s allowing us to do more.

How Will You Vote?

When it comes to eternal things, you only get one vote. Your life is your vote, and you’ll spend eternity living with the consequences of your vote.

How will you vote?

And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come, Matthew 12:31-32

This is a verse about voting. It tells us that your vote matters. But the moment your heart stops beating and you step into eternity, your vote is cast. Your fate is sealed.

How will you vote?

Some of you have already voted. You’ve embraced Jesus and sealed your eternity with him. Others of you aren’t so sure. You have religious baggage or dad baggage or genuine questions about God that make you hesitant to vote for Jesus–to believe in him. Still others have real anger towards or disdain for or even arrogance about matters of faith. You think religion is foolish and religious people are fools. Your vote isn’t sealed yet. God’s grace and mercy are still available to you. But you are in a precarious place. If your heart stopped beating today you would face a horrific eternity–not because God is mean but because he is just.

How will you vote?

I know that many people who do not embrace Christianity read this blog. I beg each of you, humbly reconsider your vote on Jesus. The Holy Spirit is quietly whispering to you about his validity. Please do not reject the Spirit’s voice. He is telling you the truth about Jesus.

I briefly taught on this concept this past weekend at ACF. Click here to watch or listen to the message.

Fat-Free Praying

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Want to know more about Fat-Free Praying? Click Here.

My Personal Journey Toward Enough

I grew up rich; I just didn’t know it at the time.

My father grew up in a single parent household. He and his mother were poor. For my father, provision was a great way to show love. He figured that if he could give his family what he never had, he’d be a pretty successful dad. So he worked long and hard to make sure we had every opportunity a family could have. For that, I’m very grateful.

I’ve never known what is to want or lack for anything, not even close. In reality, I lived a very cushy life growing up: ski trips at Christmas and Spring Break, my own bedroom and bathroom in a nice house in an affluent part of town, long family trips in the summer, new clothes, new cars and a summer house on the lake, complete with ski boat, and world-class educational opportunities. I don’t think these things spoiled me, but I do believe they numbed me to the reality of how people live who aren’t so financially favored. I graduated from college, graduate school and then became a pastor without ever having really come face-to-face with poverty or suffering. But God would soon change that.

In the summer of 2002, I took a much-needed sabbatical from my job as a pastor. In the next-to-last week of my break, I agreed to accompany my daughter and several other kids in our student ministry to Reynosa, Mexico, with a ministry called Mission Discovery. Mission Discovery is a Nashville-based ministry that builds homes for the impoverished and builds and supports orphanages in Mexico, Africa, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the US. Our job was to build a small one-room home (it’s about the size of a small storage shed that you might have in your backyard, without electricity or running water) for a family. Some families or groups of families live in those pitiful dwellings for years. It’s hard to imagine, but the little cubicles we build for these people improve their living conditions exponentially.

Presenting a new “home” to a family in Reynosa.

 

This is embarrassing to admit, but that trip was my first real missions experience. I was a church leader and had been a Christian for over thirty years, but I had never personally been involved in any form of missions. As a result, I really didn’t know what to expect and I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the trip. I was going to support my daughter and our student ministry, not because I had any sense of responsibility to serve the people in Reynosa.

In short, I got ambushed. It was without question the best week of my sabbatical. Don’t get me wrong; this was no easy or restful week. The temperatures were well over a hundred degrees each day on the work site, and we had to drive over an hour each way, including crossing through the US/Mexico border just to get there. But what I saw, heard, smelled and felt changed me. It broke me and marked me for the rest of my life.

I had never before looked directly into the face of poverty. I had never stared into the eyes of a widow who was uncertain if she could feed her kids the next day. I had never seen children running about and playing in the dirt roads of the colonia in their underwear, simply because they had no other clothing. I had never seen a special needs child roaming the streets alone like an abandoned pet, because her parents could no longer care for her. And I had never seen men, stripped of all sense of dignity and self-worth because of the generational ravages of poverty, using drinking and sex (actually rape would be a better word) as a means of passing the time. I had never seen any of that before.

What I saw made me angry. That’s a common emotion for many people who experience poverty for the first time. I got mad and was even a little ashamed of how I’d lived with such wealth and such waste. I probably throw away more food in a year than some of those people will consume in a lifetime. I was mad at the disparity that existed between them and me. Here they were, just a few hours drive from my back door, and yet our worlds couldn’t have been further apart.

What do we do with that? How do I justify the inequity? Should I feel guilty because I was blessed enough to be born in the U.S. where life and opportunities are so much different from theirs? And, where was God in all this? How could he sit quietly by while so many people suffered just a few hours away from so close to so many who had so much? I didn’t have the answers to these troubling questions, and I ended up just being angry and frustrated.

But if I’m honest, my anger isn’t what marked me the most. It was the joy of the people whom we served. Rarely in my life had I seen such high levels of passion for Christ and sheer, unadulterated joy. Many of these people had deep, profound relationships with Jesus. They didn’t feel overlooked or abandoned by him. That’s what got me the most. In the face of such terrible living conditions and such chronic suffering, they had levels of faith that humbled me.

There I was, the rich gringo who was there to help them, and yet I was the one who felt poor. I was the one who didn’t seem to get it. From an earthly, material standpoint, I had everything and they had nothing. But from the standpoint of God’s Kingdom, they had something I envied and desperately needed. They were the ones who were rich.

I couldn’t explain away this unlikely juxtaposition: These poor people, who had nothing, seemed to have everything. And I, who had everything, when compared to them, seemed to have nothing. That’s when I began my journey toward enough.

Want to read more? Click Here.

Immediate Hurricane Relief Opportunites

Friends, as you read this our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast are once again enduring a direct hit from a hurricane. It’s too early to know the full extent of the damage, but the needs are going to be great. Beyond that, our brothers and sisters in Haiti are burying their dead and trying to recover from massive flooding due to the same storm. Their needs are immediate.

Can you please help? Pastors, can you rally your churches to send teams and give money? Every one of us with more than enough has an opportunity to rise to this occasion and care for the hurting. Please don’t look the other way. Do something.

For Haiti relief, you can send gifts to or contact Mission Discovery (I serve on their board).

For Gulf Coast relief, send gifts to or contact Somebody Cares International. (I am very familiar with them).

Thank you. Will Davis Jr.

A Recipe for a Full Life

If you have trouble viewing this video, CLICK HERE.

To see more about Enough, CLICK HERE.

Monday Devotional: Are You Praying for Someone? Don’t Give Up.

Are you a praying person? Have you felt moved by God to pray for specific people—for friends, for enemies, for relatives, for co-workers, for leaders, for missionaries, for the lost? When God places a name on your heart, there comes with it a divine assignment to pray. The assignment is never just about the well-being of the person for whom you are praying. Certainly much is at stake for them or the Father would not have placed them on your heart. But that assignment to pray is also about you. You need to pray for them. There is something that the Father wants to accomplish in you through your prayers for them. We often undervalue the significance of God’s call to pray for others.

As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you. 1 Samuel 12:23

In this text, the people of Israel had rejected the prophet Samuel and the God for whom he spoke. They had opted for a kingdom led by man rather than one led by God. Samuel, by all human standards, would have been justified if he had blown-off the entire rebellious bunch, took his marbles and played elsewhere. That would certainly include not praying any longer for them.  But Samuel felt no such freedom. His call to pray for the nation was not based on how he felt about them or on how they did or didn’t respond. His call to pray was an order from God. Not only did the people need his prayers, Samuel needed to pray for them. There was growth, humility and tenacity that God could produce in Samuel only through his persistent prayers for a rebellious nation. So he kept praying for them. To cease praying would have been sin.

And you know what? It’s the same for us. Far be it from us that we should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for those for whom God has called us to intercede.

How frustrated have you become in your prayers for others? Have you taken someone off of your prayer list because of how they act, because you feel like it’s not working, because they have hurt you, because you feel that it’s futile, or because you don’t want God to really bless them? The assignment to pray is never just for the benefit of others. It is always about you and your obedience. God wants to grow you through your faithful praying. He wants to grow your faith in the waiting process. If you stop praying, everyone loses.

Set your face to prayer and let God deal with the outcome. Just obey. To stop praying short of the divine release from the assignment is sin.