Michael Kelley's Blog, page 20

3 Reasons to Pray for “Daily Bread”

It was a simple enough request. Like so many times recorded in the gospels, Jesus was praying and when He came back to His followers, they knew where He had been. So they asked Him: “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). And Jesus did. He taught them to pray.

You read through what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer, and you see themes of God’s character and glory and the advancement of His kingdom. This is first and foremost. And, in fact, a desire for God to be known and honored throughout the earth is also in the background when we come in Jesus’ prayer to the moment for personal requests. In other words, it’s a mistake to think that we pray for God’s kingdom and glory to be known, and having checked that off the list, we turn the corner and pray for ourselves. Rather, it’s that even when we are praying for our personal needs we are still praying that God would meet these needs in such a way that He is glorified.

Jesus told us to ask God to give us this day our daily bread. In our day and time, when we have bread available in every grocery and convenience store, we might be tempted to downplay this part of our prayers. But consider for a moment with me why this would be a mistake – we should still be praying for our “daily bread.” True enough, we might not use those exact words. That’s fine. But the spirit of the phrase ought to be reoccurring as we approach the throne of grace. Here are three reasons why:

1. Praying for our daily bread moves us to humility.

Pride is so insidious. It creeps rather than explodes. We drift into a posture of pride slowly over time. One of the places this drift begins is with self-sufficiency. We work hard, we earn a living, we pay our taxes – we take care of ourselves and our families. We do this, or so we tell ourselves.

But praying for our daily bread? This is not only something we do because Jesus told us to; when we pray for our daily bread, we are owning up to our own weakness. Bread was, when Jesus first gave us this way to pray, the staple of life. The very basic element of every meal. And yet even this, Jesus reminds us, we cannot really provide for ourselves. And though we might have bread in our pantry today, praying for our daily bread is one of the means by which we pursue humility.

2. Praying for our daily bread magnifies our Provider.

We wear our seatbelts. We buy insurance policies. We accumulate 401Ks and retirement funds. Nothing wrong with any of those things. They are responsible things to do. But as we do them, we should also be careful to recognize that one of the unintended side effects of all these efforts at self-protection is that we can begin to trust in our ability to manufacture for ourselves some amount of self-protection and provision. Praying for our daily bread breaks us out of this funk.

Praying for our daily bread is a daily reminder to ourselves that we are not our own providers; all we have finds its source in God. When we pray in this way, we are acknowledging that fact. When we live with the awareness that God is our true Provider, we are, at least in this part, giving Him the glory He is due.

3. Praying for our daily bread refocuses us on Christ.

There were days long ago when the people of God walked in the desert. Having been delivered from the bondage of the Egyptians, they spent the next 40 years wandering, waiting for another opportunity to enter the promised land. And during that time, God provided over and over again. One of the ways He did so was through, literally, daily bread that came down from heaven.

In His teaching, Jesus reminded the crowd that it wasn’t Moses, but God, who truly provided bread from heaven. And just as God provided literal bread during the days of their ancestors, so was He then, at that time and now, providing the true and greater bread:

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again” (John 6:35).

Jesus is the true bread. He is the basic stuff of life. He is what we need in order for our souls to never be hungry again. And He has come. As we follow the commands of Jesus and pray for our daily bread, we have the chance to be refocused on our true need. Greater than a job, greater than a healing, greater than any other provision, we need Jesus. This is the bread God has provided for us now and forever.

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Rethinking Hospitality

One of my favorite points in this article is the willingness to feel awkward. That’s difficult, but necessary.

2. Living in Light of Jesus’ Return

This article provides not only a bullet point summary of what we know about Jesus’ return, but some practical points about how to live in light of it.

3. When Your Life Feels “Too Small”

We’ve all been there – you look around at the seemingly mundane ways you spend your days and wonder, “Is this all there is?” This is a helpful lesson from the book of Ruth.

4. 10 Worst Calls in MLB History

Though debatable, these are certainly bad. And surprisingly fun to watch.

One Surprising Way to Take Up the Shield of Faith

For the Christian, every day is a battle. It’s a battle, as the book of Ephesians tells us, “not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). Whether we recognize it or not, we are all caught up in the midst of cosmic spiritual warfare. 

But fortunately for us, God has not left us unprepared for this battle. If you read the entire chapter of Ephesians 6, you find that God has armed us in very specific ways. Some scholars have imagined that Paul, writing these words from a jail cell, was able to look through the bars and see a fully outfitted Roman soldier, and then liken that armor to what the Lord has given us:

The belt of truthThe breastplate of righteousnessFeet fitted with the gospel of peaceThe helmet of salvationThe sword of the SpiritThe shield of faith

These are the tools God has placed at our disposal; they are the elements available to any Christian to help them fight in this battle, and when it’s all done, to remain standing. So the armor is there; it’s ready to be used. The question is how do we actually put it on?

Several ways really – first of all, you become aware of the fight you’re in. After all, there’s no use for armor during peacetime. Then you put it on through prayer and readying your mind for the battle that is to come. But perhaps there is one other, more surprising way you put on the armor of God. In particular, a somewhat surprising way to take up the shield of faith.

If you look back at Ephesians 6, you see that the shield of faith is a bit unique in Paul’s list because he not only mentions the shield; he mentions specifically what to do with it:

In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one (Eph. 6:16).

We can expect that day in and day out we will be pummeled the flaming arrows of the great enemy of God and man, the devil. These flaming arrows might take many forms, but surely at least one of them is in the form of accusation.

“You call yourself a Christian? With the thoughts you have?”“Who are you to be standing in this battle?”“You are but a weak sinner who fails in your pursuit of God every day.”

These are some of the accusations we will hear echoing in our minds in the midst of the battle. And, like little darts of fire, they wear us down. This is why we must have the shield of faith up and ready, but again we come to the question: 

How do you take it up?

Martin Luther helps us here:

“So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!”

How do you take up the shield of faith when you are being assailed by the fiery darts of accusation? You take it up by remembering the truth. And that truth has two parts:

1. Yes, we are great sinners. But the second truth is even better:

2. Though we are great sinners, we have a greater Savior.

This is the shield of faith in action – it is fending off the accusatory darts of the evil one, not by disagreeing with him, but by remembering who Jesus is and what He has done on our behalf. 

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Why You Should Guard Your Heart, and 3 Ways to Do It

Proverbs is a book about wisdom. It’s about the importance of wisdom, how to live in a wise manner, and how to view the world through the grid of wisdom. The proverbs are not promises; proverbs don’t work like that. They are instead descriptions of the way life generally works in the way God has set it. They are principles for living wisely. And there are a lot of them.

There are proverbs about work, money, time, parenting, and a host of other subjects. And in Proverbs 4, in the midst of all the other proverbs, we find this:

Above all else, guard your heart,
    for everything you do flows from it (Prov. 4:23).

Above all else…

That is, if you don’t listen to anything else… if you aren’t paying that much attention… if you only hear one thing, hear this – Guard your heart. And why does this action take such precedence? The proverb continues and tells us the reason – it’s because everything flows from the heart. Our actions? Our speech? The way we interact with others? Our relationship with the Lord? These all find their source in the heart. Given that reality, it’s no wonder that we should guard our hearts. We should be careful with them, because when our hearts get jumbled up it will work itself out in a whole host of ways. Conversely, when we find something harmful or destructive in our attitude, speech, finances, or anything else, we might focus on that behavior, but doing so is like putting a band-aid on internal hemorrhaging.

So we guard our hearts. But how do we do that exactly? Here are three suggestions:

1. We guard our hearts by examining our intake.

If we think the things in our environment – the things we are exposed to – have no effect on us, then we are very foolish indeed. If we are constantly taking in cynicism, fear, anger, profanity in all its forms, or other destructive things, it is inevitable that we will be affected. If, then, we are serious about guarding our hearts, then we should take a hard look at what we are voluntarily exposing ourselves to.

2. We guard our hearts by checking our investment. 

Disappointment is inevitable. Countless times and in countless ways we will find ourselves with unmet expectations. But while that is inevitable, it’s also a chance for us to recognize that many times our disappointment runs so deeply because we are too heavily invested in that particular thing. We have put too much weight on that opportunity or that conversation or even that relationship. It’s not wrong to look forward or hope for some kind of change in life; it is wrong, however, to place the full weight of our joy and satisfaction on anything other than Jesus.

3. We guard our hearts by checking our identity.

As human beings, we have the tendency to tie the core of our self-worth, validation, and personhood to things. We tie it to jobs, to reputation, or to position. These become the things by which we define ourselves, and that’s okay, until those things go away. And they inevitably will go away at least in some form. When they do, it is a near crushing sense of listlessness; it’s as if we are floating aimlessly on the sea with no anchor to give us purchase.

Who are we? This is the question behind it all. And as Christians, the question has been answered once and for all. Regardless of what else changes in our circumstances, the answer remains that we are, at the core, children of God. This is our true source of security; this is our true source of validation. When we remind ourselves of who we really are we are insulating our hearts against these secondary, but seductive, sources of self-identity.

It is from our hearts that everything else flows. So let us not treat them casually. Let us protect them. Actively.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself to Answer, “How Can I Know That I’m Saved?”

The word “saved” has become part of the regular vernacular of Christian churches. We have used it so often that we don’t even think about it any more. We say that “we got saved” at this particular moment or that particular event. We ask others if they’ve been saved. We issue the invitation of whether someone wants to be saved.

It’s a good word. It’s the right word. And it’s a meaningful word if you think a little more deeply about the implications behind it. If we have been “saved,” then it implies there is some kind of danger, and there is. It also implies that we are now safe from that danger, and we are. And it implies that there was some hero that brought us from danger to safety. And there is one of those, too.

But being saved in this sense is obviously different than being saved from a burning building or a circling shark. In those situations, you can observe, with your senses, the danger, the hero, and the state of relative safety you enter into. But with your soul? That’s different, as these are matters of faith. So how can you know that you have been saved? Perhaps through answering a few other questions.

1. Where is my trust?

Salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. There is no other way. We aren’t saved because we deserve it, because God owes us something, or because someone in our family took us to church. We are saved through faith:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8-9).

If that’s the mechanism by which we are saved, and we want to know if we are saved, then the first basic question we should ask ourselves is, “Where is my trust?” In other words, are we currently trusting that we can be good enough for God? That we can earn his favor? That we can somehow put God in our debt? Or are we trusting in something even more ambiguous, like that we have been pretty good people and everything will be alright in the end? 

If the answer to this first question is anything other than “Jesus Christ, and him alone,” then the clear truth is no. You aren’t saved. But you can be.

2. Am I still believing?

This second question is about what’s happening in your life now. One of the marks of those who have been saved is that they will not only make some kind of commitment or decision of faith; it’s that they will persevere in their faith:

We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end (Heb. 3:14).

It’s common for everyone to walk through seasons of questions, but in the end, those who are truly saved will cling to their faith; they will not depart from it. So regardless of what once was true about your beliefs, the question shifts to being about now. Right now. What are you believing now?

3. Am I growing?

One final question to ask yourself looks at your lifestyle. It’s a question about growth. Is your life any different now than it was when you first had an encounter with Jesus? It’s an important question to ask because those that have come into Christ are changed at the very core of who they are. It’s impossible for such a change to happen and for that person to not show evidence of it. 

True enough, some seasons of growth are faster than others, and every season of life is marked by failure. But in terms of your trajectory – are you moving toward godliness? Toward love? Toward patience and all the other fruit of the Spirit of God? This, too, is one of the ways we know we are saved:

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:5-8).

Friends, God does not want His children to live in perpetual angst about the future. So examine yourself. Find the faith there, or if there is none, then believe on Him today. And then be free.

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Hospitality is About More Than Food

It can certainly be that, but better to think of hospitality as a posture than a specific series of actions.

2. Teens, Let’s Value Church History

This is a good lesson – we need to know where we came from. And not just teens, either.

3. Christian Friendship is the Sweetest of All Connections

Indeed it is. There is a kinship we have with other believers that is irreplaceable.

4. Best TV Finales of All Time

I admittedly haven’t seen some (or even most) of these shows, but it was still fun remembering some of these.

Two Ways Parents Struggle to Provide for their Kids

Being a parent is about providing. It’s about providing safety, security, wisdom, direction, food, clothes, and pretty much everything else. You provide for your kids. Now when the kids are small, that provision is a bit less complicated I think. 

But with every passing year, that good intention of provision gets more difficult. Here are a couple of ways, as the kids get older, that parents struggle in the area of provision:

1. We struggle to provide enough.

As kids get older, things get more expensive. You have to buy more groceries, more pairs of shoes, and bigger clothes. And, usually, as kids start to grow, they also start to become more specific. 

It’s not that they need shoes; it’s that they need those shoes. And it’s not that they need transportation, they need that transportation. This is a hard and sacrificial thing for parents because sometimes – many times – our earning doesn’t exactly keep pace with what the kids need. Or at least what they think they need. 

We want our children to trust us. To feel secure with us. And to be comfortable enough with us to let us know what they think we need, even if those expressions of need are sometimes difficult to fulfill. It’s our job, as parents, to interpret the difference between what they think they need, and what they actually need. Which leads to the second struggle with provision:

2. We struggle to provide too much.

The first question is basic; it’s about having enough to provide what our kids need. But this second struggle? It’s deeper because this is an issue of the heart – both ours as parents, and the hearts of our children.

As parents, sometimes the easiest thing is just to say yes. Yes to the ice cream. Yes to the phone. Yes to the shoes or car or college or whatever. Because we know, in the moment, if we say yes, then there is not going to be any conflict. But the easy yes often leads to a pattern of much more difficulty. As parents, we have to have both the wisdom and the backbone to know when to say, “no”, and to stick with it.

We have to remember that even as we are providing for our children, our highest aim as parents is not to raise “happy” kids. It’s to build real people who, by God’s grace, love and serve Jesus. And if that’s the highest goal, then sometimes the best provision is through saying, “no.”

So how do we deal with both of those struggles? For surely we will deal with each one of them in their own time. The short answer is, I think, that we don’t. Instead of finding a silver bullet, this struggle of provision, like all the others, pushes us to our knees and makes us remember that we have a Father who doesn’t struggle at all. He knows how to provide for His children:

“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:11-13).

It’s true, sometimes we don’t know the difference between a fish and a snake. We receive our provision from the Lord and in the moment, and to our eyes, it looks like the latter. It’s only in retrospect do we see the true wisdom and goodness of His provision. Every time, then, we struggle to know just how and what to provide for our children, we should pray and remind ourselves not only that God is our perfect Father, but even in this, when we are asking Him to help us, He is still giving us fish.

4 Overlooked Qualities of a Christian Leader

A simple online search for “leadership” yields 734 million results including definitions, articles, magazine subscriptions, videos, and books. If you add the word “Christian” to “leadership” you trim the results down significantly, but there’s still almost 12 million. But for this article, I’m less interested in the definition and the process of leadership than I am the connotation that comes with the word.

What do we think of when we think of leadership?

Most of us, I believe, think in terms of charisma and inspiration. That leadership is about moving people to your way of thinking of doing through the sheer force of your personality. That because of your passion, rhetoric, and drive you can move people to follow where you are going. And while there is merit to that line of thinking, it assumes that leadership happens in front of a crowd. But I’m finding more and more that some of the strongest leaders I know aren’t necessarily recognized as such. These are those who don’t have a huge audience and don’t overflow with rhetorical skill, but instead are a constant source of steady strength and resolve behind the scenes.

They don’t lead masses, but they lead their families. They don’t lead the movement but they lead meetings. They don’t lead the online community but they lead their co-workers and their friends, though no one has officially knighted them as the leader. And in these quiet leaders in the home, in the marketplace, and in relationships, there are certain qualities of leadership that often go overlooked. These qualities don’t have the same notoriety as qualities like great speaking ability or persuasive words, but they are nonetheless present in spades in those who do their leading in the most quiet of ways.

Here, then, are 4 often overlooked qualities of a Christian leader:

1. A leader tells the truth.

A true leader doesn’t just tickle the ears of the people who have fallen in line behind them. Instead, they are willing to engage in the unpopular business of truth telling. That doesn’t mean they are abrasive, wielding the truth like a jack hammer. But it does mean they are willing to engage in the difficult conversation that makes both them and the person or people they are talking to uncomfortable. They choose not to placate those around them because they know the truth is important and worth fighting for. They are courageous enough to stand on principle in their home, in their job, and in their relationships even though doing so might be costly.

What does this look like? In the family, it looks like the adult who is more committed to being a father or mother than to being the best friend of their teenager. In the marketplace, it looks like someone who is willing to quietly object for the good of the people they serve even at the risk of the bottom line. Relationally, this quality of leadership is borne out when a person isn’t content to let their friends make bad decisions, but instead engages willingly in honest and difficult conversations, for they know that the best thing any friend can do is help another friend walk with Jesus.

2. A leader is willing to get dirty.

Many times leaders are those who are out front, and part of the danger of being out front is that you don’t know what life is like within the pack. But the Christian leader is not content to spout directives without actually following up and through with the people who are hearing them. Instead, the Christian leader is also the burden bearer, one who not only sets the direction but picks up the rope to help pull the load.

What does this look like? It looks like a leader who actually knows the people he or she is leading, and they know them well. A leader like this isn’t afraid to be interrupted with real life concerns, and they do things like make notes to themselves to check back in regularly not for the purpose of achieving an objective but simply to be informed about what’s happening in others lives. Leaders who are willing to get dirty feel deeply the struggles of those they are leading in their home, church, or workplace. Their hands are dirty with real life stuff and not sanitized with cursory and surface knowledge.

3. A leader is decisive.

Leadership is about making decisions. A thousand times a day. And one of the overlooked qualities of leadership is the ability and willingness to make those decisions – hard decisions – in a timely manner. I know for me, as a leader in different environments, the prospect of making so many decisions on a daily basis often feels like a weight. Sometimes, a crushing weight. But the Christian leader doesn’t run form this responsibility. It’s not that they relish it, either, but that they know they have a job to do. They have a job as a father. As a mother. As a manager. As an elder. And they mean to see that job done.

Leadership looks like a person having it all together and boldly charging into the future, but the true guts of that leadership is, I believe, the courage to make actual real-life decisions in real-time with real people. Day after day.

4. A leader knows when to listen.

When I think of great leaders, I think of the person who has the plan. The one who charts the direction. The one who inspires with the rhetoric. But one of the most overlooked qualities of the Christian leader is knowing when to just shut up. The temptation for the leader is to believe he or she always has to be the one with the great idea. But leadership is at least as much about empowering and listening to others with great ideas as it is about generating them on your own.

The Christian leader knows when to listen to their kids. Their spouse. Their co-workers. Their team. And the true leader knows when someone else has a better idea than they do, or at least has brought some information to the table that should make him or her reconsider the direction they’ve planned.

Sure leaders are out front. And most of the time they’ve got some charisma. But don’t overlook the unsung qualities of true leaders. And don’t sell short those who exhibit these qualities even if they aren’t the best ones to give the speech at the end.

3 Reasons Why Grownups Need Kids’ Bible Stories

Our kids have been in Sunday School since before they were born. Because they have, they have grown up hearing about Noah’s ark. And Joshua and the battle of Jericho. And Abraham and Isaac. They’re not unique; there are a lot of kids that are familiar with a lot of Bible stories like these. So much so that we, as adults, tend to classify stories like these as “kids’ Bible stories.”

That’s fine, as long as what we mean is that these are good stories for children to hear and learn. But it’s not fine if we think that means these stories are ONLY for children. In fact, there are some really good reasons why grownups need to read these kids’ stories. Here are three of them:

1. Because there really are no “kids’ Bible stories.”

When we talk about Bible stories for kids, what we mean are the stories that pretty much everyone knows. They’re the ones that are on nursery walls, in picture books, and are summarized in just a few words. Okay, so these are good stories for kids, but to think that these stories are only for children is a huge mistake.

Take Adam and Eve, for example. Though you could walk into a lot of preschool classrooms and find this story in a book, it’s a story that needs to be read and re-read over and over again by people of all ages. This is the story that tells us who we are. And not only that, it’s the story that tells us what’s wrong with us.

2. Because we are all children.

We wear the tent of adulthood, but boil it all away, and we are the children of God for all eternity. Oh, sure – it’s easy to forget that. It’s easy to get swept up into the everyday life of bills and mortgages and elections and all the other super-adult things we have to (and should) be doing. But way down deep we are children. It’s good to be reminded of that, and that’s what these so-called “kids’ Bible stories” do. They remind us that in the midst of all the complexity there is still simplicity, and that every day is made up of a lot of singular choices which, at the core, are really based in whether or not we believe our Father loves and provides for us.

3. Because we need to be more childlike.

When the children were pressing in on Jesus and the disciples made to send them away, Jesus would have none of it:

“Don’t stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you: Whoever does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Matt. 19:14).

Not only should the disciples have welcomed the children; they should have looked to them as an example! That’s because children are simple. Joyful. Trusting. Unselfconscious. Just as we should be as the children of God. When we read these stories that are considered to be for kids, we have the chance to read them with wonder. With joy. With amazement. And in so doing, to move a step closer to being more childlike in our own faith.

It is a glorious thing to be a child. It is an unmistakable miracle to be a child of God.

This post originally appeared at thinke.org.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Success Looks Like Obedience

In a world constantly focused on tangible results, this is a helpful corrective.

2. Hope for the Slowly Sanctified

Surely most of us have thought, “I should be further along than this by now,” when considering our spiritual growth. The hope is not in the speed, but in Jesus who will finish what He starts.

3. Forgiveness and Seeing the Father’s Smile

With a beautiful reflection on the prodigal son, here is a reminder that God delights in forgiveness.

4. The Oakland A’s Reverse Boycott

If you haven’t heard about this situation, it’s pretty interesting. There is some language in this video.