Not many gray hairs graced the Acts 29 Network conference I attended this week in Orlando.

The brothers above (left), however, Ray Ortlund Jr. and Sam Storms, were among the exceptions. Scott Thomas (right), president of the movement, engaged them in Q & A at the close of the conference.

Among the questions submitted by conferees came a request for ways to avoid ministerial burnout. Since burnout, fatigue, and discouragement afflict lots of folks along with pastors, I thought I would pass on Dr. Ortlund’s excellent prescription.

Choose a promise of God for the particular season of struggle in your life and wave it daily as a banner over your life.

For example, if you find yourself facing financial hardship you might choose Phil. 4:19.

Caught in the clutches of anxiety? Commit Phil. 4:6-7 to memory.

Feeling abandoned or lonely? Claim Heb. 13:5b.

Suffering persecution? First Peter 5:10 fits the bill.

Fighting disease or illness? Second Corinthians 12:9 carried me through cancer.

Growing weary in waiting? Isaiah 40:31 will lift you on eagle wings.

You get the idea.

There is a reason that 2 Peter 1:4 refers to the gift of God’s promises as precious and very great. Among others it is because they will sustain us over the long haul and help keep us in the race, if we raid the armory of Scripture, load them in our hearts, and wield them like spiritual weapons in our everyday warfare.

Why not go to the Word and ask God to give you a promise right now for your circumstances whatever they may be?

I shared this quote from Dave Harvey’s terrific book When Sinners Say “I Do” a couple of weeks ago in one of my messages.

It packs such a punch that I decided to feature it today in my blog post.

The gospel is the heart of the Bible. Everything in Scripture is either preparation for the gospel, presentation of the gospel, or participation in the gospel. In the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the gospel provides an ultimate solution for our sin—for today, for tomorrow, for the day we stand before God, and forever.

There really is no end to the glories of the gospel, which is why we will spend eternity marveling that the Holy God would choose to crush his only Son for the sake of sinful man. The gospel explains our most obvious and basic problem—sin has separated us from God and from each other. Thus we are objects of God’s wrath. A Christian understands the necessity of the cross; our sin was so bad that it required blood, the blood of God, to take it away! Without the cross we are at war with God, and he is at war with us.

The gospel is therefore central to all theological truth, and is the overarching reality that makes sense of all reality. Never make the mistake of thinking that the gospel is only good for evangelism and conversion. By the gospel we understand that, although saved, we remain sinners. Through the gospel we receive power to resist sin. Accurately understanding and continually applying the gospel is the Christian life.

This also means that the gospel is an endless fountain of God’s grace in your marriage. To become a good theologian and to be able to look forward to a lifelong, thriving marriage, you must have a clear understanding of the gospel. Without it, you cannot see God, yourself, or your marriage for what they truly are.

The gospel is the fountain of a thriving marriage (pp. 24-25).

If you plan to get married or already are married, I wholeheartedly recommend this resource.

No, that’s not a typo.

I meant the play on words with “souper.”

As you know this Sunday brings us to Super Bowl XLVI between the Patriots and Giants. Many plan to watch and enjoy with family and friends. The whole deal has turned into something of a national holiday.

For the last several years at OGC we have cooperated with the Christian Service Center of Orlando in conducting a canned food, non-perishable item food drive to help stock their pantry for feeding the hungry in Orange County.

We want to continue that tradition this year but with a twist.

Given the fact that our friends at the SDA have started this year operating a soup kitchen for feeding the hungry every Sunday afternoon, we have decided to donate this year’s offerings from our church to them. We want to say thank you for their hospitality in renting to us over the years. Furthermore we feel this represents a legitimate way for us to partner with them in mercy ministry in our very own neighborhood.

All that to say, as I announced yesterday, please bring to church with you this Sunday, February 5, your gift of such items for the cause. But here’s the thing! Please don’t bring any meat products. The Adventists, in line with their convictions, will only accept vegetarian, non-meat items. The list they gave us includes things like beans, rice, pastas, cereal, oil, pancake mix, etc. You get the idea.

We will designate a spot at the SDA this Sunday for you to put your items as you bring them with you. Just look for the sign.

And thanks for being a church that puts Titus 3:14 into practice!

Today’s message from 1 Corinthians 15:50-58 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

I summarized the theme of the text this way: the victorious reality of our future resurrection anchors us in an unshakeable constancy in ministry. Work for God fueled by the fire of a gospel-resurrection hope will be an amiable, abounding, arduous, assured, and awarded kind of work.

Here are Charles Spurgeon’s words with which I closed:

Take this henceforth for your motto—All for Jesus, always for Jesus, everywhere for Jesus. He deserves it. I should not so speak to you if you had to live in this world only. Alas, for the love of Jesus, if thou wert all and nought beside, O earth! But there is another life—live for it. There is another world—live for it. There is a resurrection, there is eternal blessedness, there is glory, there are crowns of pure reward—live for them, by God’s grace live for them. The Lord bless you, and save you. Amen.

Sunday’s message is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

We have now completed the New Year’s emphasis on Godward priorities in prayer and the Word.

Part three focused on the word of His grace and the importance of regularly putting ourselves under the reading and hearing of the gospel.

Oh that the cry of John Wesley might be our cry as well:

I am a creature of a day. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God. I want to know one thing: the way to heaven. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price give me the book of God. Let me be a man of one book.

May the Lord make of us a people committed to ultimate priorities now and always!

I’m not much of a writer, so Jill has agreed to help me with this article. The Lord has spoken so many priceless things to me recently so this is my attempt at jotting them down.  As I ran the Disney marathon a few weeks ago and then reflected on it, I started seeing the symbolism between the journey of a marathon and the season of life I’m in these days. [It’s not like I was hurting for time to reflect as I ran 26.2 miles over a period of 6 hours!]  The message wasn’t complex but simply fitting for where I am right now.

In 2005, as a freshman at Flagler College we took a class trip to Disney’s Magic Kingdom as part of the Orientation week. It was my first week at college and my drug and alcohol addiction was already gaining speed. I woke up around 5:30 a.m. to begin drinking liquor so that when I got on the bus at 6:30 a.m. to make the journey from St. Augustine to Orlando I would already be drunk. I brought along a bag of cocaine and a couple of marijuana joints that I had rolled the night before. We arrived and I felt that I was the life of the party trying to fill a void inside with alcohol, drugs, the acceptance of my peers, and girls. A few hours went by and as my buzz from alcohol wore off, I went into a bathroom and used a little over $100 worth of cocaine with a so called “buddy” of mine. Later as we came down from the coke we returned to the bathroom to smoke the joints to relieve any feelings of withdrawal that came after the coke high.

On January 8, 2012 I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to take a shower and get ready for the Disney Marathon. I had been running for a little more than 5 months, and after completing a half marathon with my fiancé Jillian about a month earlier, we were off to run our first full marathon. There might not be a better place then Disney to do it! We took off with 21,000 other people on this daunting task to finish what, as legends hold, killed a man named Pheidippides in the first century in Athens, Greece. Jillian and I saw my parents at the castle as we ran through Magic Kingdom at mile 10. [Mom & Dad faithfully drove us to the race, cheered us on, and brought us home as we whined!]  Shortly after seeing their faces, we ran through the rest of Magic Kingdom. I hadn’t thought about that day in 2005 in a long while, but before reaching mile 11, we came around a corner and directly in front of us was that same bathroom I got high in over 7 years ago.

It all flashed through my head! The death and destruction of my addiction, how far the Lord has brought me as I celebrate the sixth year of my sobriety the day before our wedding (April 14!), the fact I was running next to my wife-to-be, and how God has blessed me with a purpose to reach other addicts. It’s amazing to be reminded that God is in the redemption business even if it’s through an experience in a bathroom at a theme park.

The larger symbolic message the Lord spoke to me through the marathon concerns the season of life I am in. I have been a great sprinter my whole life and we’re not talking about athletics. I believe John Maxwell said, “My gifts and abilities can take me farther than my character can hold me.” This has proven true repeatedly throughout my life as I have battled addiction, pain, severe loss, sin, and numerous decisions that have caused me to form Ishmael’s in my life. But now I’m in a new season – a season of sustained and focused strength as I look to the Lord, or try to look to Him, more than Jared. It’s a season where I don’t sprint only to fall short of the race God has called me to. Instead it’s a race like a marathon that goes the distance because I’m not running alone anymore – Christ is hand-in-hand with me! He has surrounded me with godly brothers to help me with this, but even more significantly He has provided a wife! This will be unlike any other relationship I have ever had. It won’t be short; I won’t quit before obtaining the goal; injury won’t occur like in the past; and I’m not running alone. Jillian and I have trained together for a race of 26.2 miles, but that is only one of the marathons we will run together. We are embarking on marriage and the rest of our lives. Placing all confidence in Christ, we will finish strong and together!

Tomorrow is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. I have given over the pulpit to David Wooten, my friend, new member at OGC, and staff member at Embrace By Grace, a Christian adoption ministry in Casselberry. I look forward to what my brother will bring from the word in Genesis tomorrow on the subject of being made in the image of God.

I find it a bit ironic that Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, always the third Sunday of January from year to year, coincides with my neighborhood book club on Monday where we will discuss Peter Hessler’s intriguing work River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. The book documents Hessler’s two year stint with the Peace Corps in the city of Fuling, China, teaching English in the local university. The book started slow for me but gradually picked up with the author’s descriptive abilities in writing and the various subjects upon which he touched.

Among them in China, of course, was the matter of the government policy prohibiting the citizens from having more than one child. To exceed that limit, according to Hessler, invites stiff consequences of various kinds. He writes:

The going rate for a second child was More than ten thousand yuan, at least in the countryside close to the college. In the city it was rare that anybody got to the point where she paid this fine–if a woman was pregnant with her second child, she would be threatened with the loss of her job. . . . and having a second child could result in a woman’s being forced to undergo sterilization surgery (p. 261).

Knowing the bent of some of my neighbors, I anticipate that this subject will come up in our discussion. In the interest of preparing for the conversation, I did a bit of research on the question of population control and came across this excellent article entitled, Population Growth as Blessing or Blight. In it E. Calvin Beisner dismisses some of the emotional rhetoric surrounding the controversy with statistical evaluation, biblical exegesis, and sound ethical argumentation. For example, he contends:

People are not machines; they cannot be programmed and expected to behave as ordered. They have imagination, hopes and fears, emotions, volitions, and goals. These and many other determinants of human action change relative to a constantly changing environment. Begetting and bearing babies are human actions, and like all other human actions they are determined by humans’ constantly changing hopes, fears, goals, and choices. In a world in which so many things change so rapidly, it is intellectual suicide for anyone to pretend to predict with accuracy and reliability what large numbers of people will do over long periods of time.

To read the entire article click here.

Tomorrow as we gather for worship on the Lord’s Day may we celebrate the God who made us in Him image AND told us to be fruitful and multiply WITHOUT entertaining fears that somehow obeying God will jeopardize the planet. It never has been the case and never will be.

I admit it.

Working through this quarter’s edition of Free Grace Broadcaster on the topic of self-denial has left its share of bruises and wounds on my experience.

For example, consider this paragraph from one of the articles by Charles Spurgeon entitled Family or Christ?:

What, then, is the expense [of following Christ]?…The answer is given by our Savior, not by me. I should not have dared to invent such tests as He has ordained. It is for me to be the echo of His voice and no more. What does He say? Why, first, that if you would be His and have His salvation, you must love Him beyond every other person in this world. Is not that the meaning of this expression, “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother”? Dear names! Dear names! “Father and mother!” Lives there a man with soul so dead that he can pronounce either of these words without emotion, and especially the last— “mother”? Men and brethren, this is a dear and tender name to us, it touches a chord that thrills our being. Yet far more powerful is the name of Savior, the name of Jesus. Less loved must father and mother be than Jesus Christ. The Lord demands precedence also of the best beloved “wife.” Here He touches another set of heartstrings. Dear is that word wife—partner of our being, comfort of our sorrow, delight of our eyes—“wife!” Yet, Wife, thou must not take the chief place, thou must sit at Jesus’ feet, or else thou art an idol; and Jesus will not brook thy rivalry. And “children,” the dear babes that nestle in the bosom, clamber to the knee, and pronounce the parent’s name in accents of music—they must not be our chief love. They must not come in between the Savior and us. Nor for their sakes—to give them pleasure or to promote their worldly advantage—must we grieve our Lord…If they tempt us to evil, they must be treated as if we hated them! Yea, the evil in them must be hated for Christ’s sake. If ye be Christ’s disciples, your Lord must be first, then father, mother, wife, children, brethren, and sisters will follow in due rank and order.

To read the entire article click here.

To subscribe to the free quarterly publication click here.

I continue to feel like God is using Paul Miller’s book A Praying Life in significant ways in my spiritual journey at the top of this new year.

That’ true for a variety of reasons, one of which has to do with the balance of his approach between a kind of prayer-without-ceasing-lifestyle approach to intercession along side a disciplined-planned-scheduled approach to this all important spiritual discipline.

He uses a helpful analogy on p. 224 to make his point that both matter:

Remember, life is both holding hands and scrubbing floors. It is both being and doing. Prayer journals or prayer cards are on the “scrubbing floors” side of life. Praying like a child is on the “holding hands” side of life. We need both.

Last Sunday in my message I challenged us to apply Acts 20:32 by making some prayer cards for the most important people in our lives. I read one of the guidelines Miller gives for doing this effectively. Here is the entire list:

1. The card functions like a prayer snapshot of a person’s life, so I use short phrases to describe what I want.
2. When praying, I usually don’t linger over a card for more than a few seconds. I just pick out one or two key area and pray for them.
3. I put the Word to work by writing a Scripture verse on the card that expresses my desire for that particular person or situation.
4. The card doesn’t change much. Maybe once a year I will add another line. These are just the ongoing areas in a person’s life that I am praying for.
5. I usually don’t write down answers. They are obvious to me since I see the card almost every day.
6. I will sometimes date a prayer request by putting the month/year as in 08/07.

Before this week is out, how about doing some floor scrubbing of the most important kind by coming up with at least a couple of prayer cards for the most significant people in your life?

May we be doers of the word and not hearers only (Jas. 1:22).

Still, anybody who reads a newspaper or watches the news knows that North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Il slipped into eternity in December. His son, Kim Jong-Un has succeeded him as the new ruler of one of the world’s remaining Communist countries and the most dangerous place on the planet to profess faith in Jesus Christ, according to Open Doors USA.

What can we do to touch this most closed-to-the-gospel nation on planet earth? We can pray. We can intercede with the confidence of Isaiah 64:4 that no one has a God like we do who acts for those who wait for Him.

Open Doors USA suggests that we pray the following:

• The new leader, Kim Jong-Un, will have a heart of mercy and end the cycle of inhumane dictatorial rule.
• Those in government who have been “secret Christians” will gain more power and influence.
• Christians who have been imprisoned because of their faith will have opportunities to lead others in prayers. And while they pray the Holy Spirit will be revealed to those who don’t know Jesus.
• There will be an increase in opportunities to share about Jesus without fear of retaliation.
• The joy and hope of Jesus will be revealed to those who are sorrowful and feel uncertain of the future.
• North Korean Christians will gain a new boldness and wisdom and will seize opportunities to tell others about the Christmas story of Jesus’ birth.
• On Christmas day especially, the light of Christ will penetrate every home and heart in North Korea.
• Refugees who have fled into China and become Christian will courageously return to North Korea and share the hope of Jesus to a hurting nation.
• The horrendous situation with starvation will not escalate even further because of the government’s desire to demonstrate control.
• The thousands of starving children who are homeless will find shelter, comfort and love in a home with a believer.

Operation World says this in its preface: Prayer is indeed potent . . . especially sustained intercession for the unreached peoples of this world who do not know Jesus – is action (p. xxiii).

May we be a people of action through prayerful touching of unreached places like North Korea.