When The Pursuit Of Justice Isn't: Justice in the Bible is not some nebulous fairness or sense of altruistic equality. It is the spreading dominion of the righteousness of God. (Note how often justice is paired with righteousness in the Bible.) When God calls us to “do justice,” he is calling us to reflect the life-giving, culture-flourishing, gracious abundance that is in keeping with his glory.

Pornolesence: So many young Christians have stunted their spiritual growth through what I call pornolesence. Pornolescence is that period when a person is old enough and mature enough to know that pornography is wrong and that it exacts a heavy price, but too immature or too apathetic to do anything about it.

The Trip Is The True Adventure: Car trips are fascinating microcosms for conversations that affect and reinforce our shared story as a family. Perhaps this summer’s travel time holds for you a conversation that will change or clarify your own life’s adventure. But you won’t have it if you don’t turn down the volume or disconnect the digital movie playing in the back seat. Use the sacred space of a road trip to explore and deepen your own shared story with the people who matter most.

Keep Up The Prayer Meetings All You Can: If you want your people as well as yourself to be soul-winners, try and keep up the prayer meetings all you can.

Could the Persecuted Church Rescue American Christianity?: Moreover, this nominal Christianity has emphasized the “values” and “meaning” aspects of Christianity while often downplaying the “strangeness” of Christianity, namely the conviction that a previously dead man is alive and returning to judge the living and the dead.

Men Hear With Their Eyes: Of course, this is just one aspect of learning to communicate with the man you have given yourself to. But it is a good place to start! "When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent" (Pro. 10:32).

Dads, Date Your Daughter's Boyfriends: One of the most terrifying moments of a not-yet-married man’s life is meeting his girlfriend’s father. The much-anticipated introduction is an unending fountain of humor for friends and family, but it’s more often an occasion for horror for the young man. What will dad say? What will he ask? Will he be armed? The moment is a mountain to overcome in almost any relationship, but I believe it’s a mountain we, as Christians, can capture for the good of the daughter, the suitor, and the father.

Stories Of My Dad: God gave me a great dad.  He was the finest man I’ve ever known — and the best pastor, and the best preacher, by far.  I drew strength from his love for me.  I miss him today.  I miss him every day. Here are some reasons why I honor him.  And these are just for starters.

Happy Failure's Day: If you’re a dad, you know what it means to fail. On Father’s Day, don’t dwell on your failures; remember how Jesus has overcome them.

Knowing God or Knowing About God?: If we reduce knowing God (in a deep relational sense) to knowing things about God, then we’re going to find ourselves producing disciples that look like demons – who have perfect knowledge of God but refuse to treasure Him.

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During the busy summer season, we’re taking some time to look at some ways we can strive to use our summers intentionally, for the glory of God and the good of others.

Here’s what we’ve covered thus far:

• Don’t Waste Your Summer
• Plan Your Seasons
• 4 Ways To Vacation Well
• Snapshot
• Rest Rightly, Rest Well
• Reliving And Living

___________________

Does your summer ever feel like it flies by and you didn't get a chance to accomplish any of the projects that are on your list of things to do? Or, do you ever feel like your summer flies by but you didn't get a chance to rest and rejuvenate before the upcoming year starts up again because you had to much on your schedule?

Sadly, these two instances are exactly how our culture handles summer. 

My hope from this blog post is that you would get a clear picture to how you can plan the different seasons of your life, specifically summer. But first, we’re going to look at some common objections to planning in general. There may be more, but these are two of the most common.

Objection #1: I Don't Want To Be Tied Down To Any Plans

When you hear someone say to you, "I don't like to be tied down to plans." What they are saying is they don't like to think about their next move. Unfortunately in this day and age, you can not throw care to the wind and wing everything. Everything in this world requires a plan. For example, children's school year is planned, college students are working for a degree that is planned out, parents who stay at home with their kids need plans to keep sane and lastly people who work in the business world know that if you don't have a plan you don't go anywhere.

Everyone plans, and I mean everyone. No one ever can just wing life. But plans you make show off your priorities. 

Objection #2: I Am So Busy

Some people really love having a busy schedule, and when they're not busy, they don't know what to do with themselves. 

We all want to be fruitful in our lives. Fruitful literally means producing good or helpful results. But before we can be fruitful in anything, we first need to be faithful. Faithful literally means loyal, constant, and steadfast. 

Do you know what spheres God has given you to be faithful in?

If you don't know what spheres God has called you to, then it will be hard for you to determine what areas you are suppose to be faithful in. So make sure to write them down. Tell them to someone, so that they can keep you accountable. 

Gospel Oriented Faithfulness Then Fruitfulness

Exert taken from a book "The Gospel At Work" by Sebastian Traeger & Greg Gilbert pg. 91 -92

"Every sphere that you have in your life, you can find in the Bible both a minimum standard for faithfulness and operating principles for pursing fruitfulness. By a minimum standard for faithfulness, we mean the basic requirements Scripture gives to our different spheres of our lives. If you are not accomplishing the basic requirements of your different spheres, then you are not being faithful in this area. Most of the time, this means you need to double-down on your attention there before looking anywhere else.

By principles for pursuing further fruitfulness, we mean those ways in which you can grow beyond this minimum expectation of faithfulness. Once you think you're meeting the Bible's standard of faithfulness in all your assignments, you are free to dream and consider how you can best invest your extra time and energy.

On either side of faithfulness and fruitfulness we will find the two pitfalls that tend to define the sinful patterns associated with our work (or spheres) - idolatry and idleness. Fail to meet the minimum requirements of faithfulness, and you fall into idleness. Push beyond fruitfulness, and you fall into idolatry. 

So here's the guiding principle: pursue faithfulness, then fruitfulness, but not idolatry." 

So, here are some things to think about when planning out your season:

1. Pray and ask God to help you list your spheres He has called you to.

2. List Your Top 5 Spheres (Example: God, Family, Church, Work...etc.)

3. Make a list from the different spheres in your life that God is calling you to be faithful in and write down what the baseline expectations are for you to meet these different spheres. 

4. Determine if you're being faithful in the priorities within the spheres

5. Consider where you might be able to invest for greater fruitfulness

6. Avoid the trap of idolatry, where you are measured by your work instead of serving the Lord.

Accomplish And Rest

Yes this blog post is geared towards the summer time but you can take these principles into any season of your life and be able to plan well so that you can stay faithful to the calling God has for you. 

As Christians, we are not called to be idle, but we are also called not to make things we do our idols. Applying these principles will help you to plan well and also rest well. And as always  remember that the priorities that you accomplish will never make you right with God, it is through Jesus perfect righteousness and obedience that anyone will be right with God. The priorities that you try and accomplish are simply principles that God has called you to be obedient to do but rest well in the finish work of Jesus on your behalf.

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To: Dad, Love: Your Adoptive Daughter: Thank you for attending all of my ballet recitals as a little girl. Thank you for discipling me and teaching me the godly way to live. Thank you for making sure that I heard the gospel regularly taught and saw it lived out. Thank you for allowing me to pour my heart out over a cup of coffee. Thank you for working hard to provide for the family. Thank you for being selfless.

Honesty, Truth and Homosexuality: The world is talking about homosexuality. The conversation is impossible to ignore if you are paying any attention to cultural currents. News outlets, Twitter, blogs, television shows and even federal courts are conversing. What they are saying is fascinating. It is also frustrating.

How Our Thoughts Feed (or starve) Our Passion For Jesus: When Edwards speaks of "religion" he is speaking of a living, vital relationship with Jesus, clearly different than how we use this term today.

Pastors Aren't Born But Formed: As a young pastor myself, one theme that caught my attention was the formative influence of mentors and friends. In what follows I'd like to highlight three lessons on mentorship for both younger and older pastors drawn from Calvin's early years.

Pornography And Gospel Community: One of my elders at church taught a class Sunday on pornography. He was vulnerable and honest about his own serious struggle with pornography after being exposed to it at a very young age through sexual deviancy among the adults in his home. I found his lesson relevant to men who've struggled with pornography, women who've struggled with pornography, men who haven't struggled with pornography, and women who haven't struggled with pornography. Since that probably covers all the readers here, I thought I would share the progression of his thoughts.

Worship - A Biblical Definition: Notice that I also use the word “response” in my definition. Before the fall, we were primarily responders. God is the actor, displaying His love for us, and we responded in worship. This is the natural order of things. Today, we attempt to be the actors, and we hope that others will respond to us.

Summer Family Activity Book: Summer is fast approaching! For many of you, the next few months will be filled with travel, adventure and increased opportunities to spend time together as a family. As you begin to think about and plan how you will spend the next few months, we’d like to once again present you with the Summer Family Activity Book. This resource gives you ideas on how to be intentional with your time together as a family.

5 Reasons Established Churches Should Plant Churches: Most people know me I love church planting. I've done extensive research on the topic, written books about it and even planted churches. In addition to my love for church planting, however, I also love established churches. I'm as passionate about church revitalization as I am about church planting. While some may see the two as mutually exclusive, I'm most excited about where the two overlap: churches planting churches. Pastors of established churches should be engaged in church planting. Here are five reasons why.

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During the busy summer season, we’re taking some time to look at some ways we can strive to use our summers intentionally, for the glory of God and the good of others.

Here’s what we’ve covered thus far:

• Don’t Waste Your Summer
• Plan Your Seasons
• 4 Ways To Vacation Well
• Snapshot
• Rest Rightly, Rest Well
• Reliving And Living

___________________

One of the things I love about living in Bellingham is the weather. Yeah. I know. I’ve either been here too long, or I’m crazy. Or both. But, we do have four distinct seasons, with four distinct weather patterns. Having lived in places where it’s either “hot” or “cold” I appreciate the change of pace that the seasons bring.

Fall is a time for reflection, looking back at the year past. In winter, we plan for the year ahead and look forward to the sun’s return. Spring is a time for growth, as the flowers bloom and birds return to singing.

When summer returns, we rejoice: The “Orb” has returned! But even as it spreads its warmth, it keeps moving. It’s difficult to remember that summer is not a pause button on normality. Our lives keep going, just like the sun does.

In the midst of this fantastic season of the year, we face the temptation to pause the “normal” lives we lead, prone to either complete independence or overload. As we discuss these, prayerfully consider where you fall on the spectrum, and to which side you are inclined. It may be a mixture of both, or it could be one or the other. The goal here is not to incite defiance or guilt. Rather, our desire is for you to have a fantastic and fruitful summer, making the most of every day as it is given, whether spent in labor or rest.

Independence

When I was in grade-school, summer vacation was about me. I fought every chore I was given, every errand I ran. Looking back, I see that these things were in place to keep me from wasting my summer, providing much needed structure to our family of five. But I didn’t care. After nine months of school, summer vacation was something I had earned, and no one should be able to tell me how to use it.

Certainly, we have many demands of our effort and on our time. After laboring in what feels like a perpetual freezing mist for the dark months of winter, we can feel like we have a right to spend our sunny days however we desire.

In some respects, we do have a right to spend our days as we want. But, if you belong to Jesus, everything in your life is His. Every day He gives is grace to you. And because we’re His people and His witnesses, to only think of summer days as license to lives free of responsibility is a denial of our mission statement: “Go, therefore, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you”. (Matt 28.19ff)

As tempting as it is to make this time of year all about us, it’s just as easy for us to only ever look for the next thing to do, rather than taking the time to recharge.

Overload

There is always something going on in the summertime. Barbecues, weddings, parties, vacations, day trips, picnics, on and on the list goes. Often, we approach the summer with the mindset that we must seize every opportunity. So we overload our schedules, and we look back at the end of summer having had a lot of fun, but exhausted and unsure of where all the time went.

Whatever the reason for the breakneck speed, when we overload our schedules this way we tell ourselves that we can handle more than we can handle. We forget that we, too, need rest.

Maybe we’re afraid we’re going to miss out on great memories, or that we’ll hurt the feelings of a friend or loved one. And either of those things may be true, perhaps both of them. But we must remember that as our lives belong to Jesus, so does our time. Certainly He wants us to work hard. He also wants us to rest.

Now, everyone’s different, and can handle differing flows of activity. Some, hearing that they must rest will embrace it, even to the point of unintentional laziness. Some will fight it and press on, simply preferring the faster pace of life. Where do you land on this spectrum?

Don’t Waste Your Summer

Due to these proclivities, it can be a challenge to use our summers intentionally. Whatever our response, we need to remember that while summer does offer a new rhythm of life, it does not put the rest of life on hold. 

In the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing some ways to prepare for the summer season and to plan to the best of your ability so that we can learn to use summers our wisely, for the glory of God and the good of others. We don’t just want good memories from our summers, but God-given growth as well.

We pray that as you enter and leave this season, you can reflect and see evidence of God’s work in our lives as we look to the future.

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Discipleship In The Teen Years: Some of them get it. Their little hearts embrace the truth and they ask Jesus to save them. We rejoice, knowing that their future is secure and that the Father holds them close. But our job doesn’t end there. What happens when that little heart grows into a bigger heart and questions the gospel he learned and believed as a kid? What happens when the joyful little girl who knew the love of Jesus begins to look shadowed and burdened, wondering if it all makes sense?

What Is Prayer? And Why Should We Pray?: What exactly is prayer and why should you do it anyways? Is it just for those people who don’t have any friends because they think they are too holy to interact with others, or is it for the rest of us as well? Prayer is simply talking with God. When God created us, he made us with the ability to do something amazing, by actually being able to talk personally with him.

Be Strong And Courageous - Literally: So Scripture may not mandate fitness, but we should regard bodily strength as normal, wise, and good. When professionals sit at desks all day, we can lose contact with our embodied nature. Exercise helps us recover our whole self, so we can heed the call to be strong and courageous.

Full Of Grace And Truth: But he didn’t come simply to give us an example of grace and truth.  He came to save us in grace and truth.  It’s only after we’ve been saved and made right with God, the God says, “Alright, now that I have saved through Jesus, you need to know that I have saved you to look like Jesus.”  The motivation to be full of grace and truth is not because we need to earn God’s favor, but because being a follower of Jesus Christ, means we look like the one we follow.

Ordinary People, Ordinary Mission: There is great appeal in pursuing exotic or “extraordinary” mission. But the Bible calls us to look a little closer as we live out Jesus’ mission: those in need and our neighbors.

Without This Your Missional Movement Will Fail: From all my experience leading my church and working with other churches, I’ve seen in us a tendency to play this either/or game with discipleship of our own and evangelism of the masses. We’ll either spend all our time developing our own, shutting off outsiders, or open our doors wide to the world and keep it shallow with our training. But what do the Scriptures say?

Be The Father You Want To Be: Most guys fail to parent their children well because they don’t know how to parent themselves. Men that don’t know how to handle their own immaturity and failings are at a loss when it comes to their children’s immaturity and failings. Men tend to go in one of two directions. They either fail to appropriately grieve their brokenness or they fail to acknowledge their brokenness.

Does God Care About Productivity: I would argue that the call to be productive (Genesis 1:28) also implies the need to learn how to be productive. Yet, this is a slightly different question from the first, because one could presumably say “Yes, God wants us to be productive, but he doesn’t want us to fiddle with things like workflow systems and productivity tips and tools.”

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Grace Is Not A Thing: The great American theologian Al Pacino once said, “I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” Pacino’s statement taps into a tension that we all sense intuitively but maybe have not expressed explicitly. If God is forgiving, then why strive for a holy life? If the penalty has been paid, then why must progress be made? I believe the tension felt here ultimately comes from a confused view of grace.

Self-Awareness And The Sufficiency Of Christ: Are you fully aware of or in touch with the extent to which your joy and happiness in life are tied to your physical and financial circumstances?

Why Don't We See Miracles Like The Apostles Did?: Even if we don't frequently see extraordinary miraculous events, God is active. He is active in the regular (natural) processes we see every day. He is miraculously calling people to himself as his church grows and expands. He is active in miraculous ways among people we don't know around the world.

If Not Me, Then Who?: Memorial Day is a time for honoring those who have given their lives for their nation, and one of the best ways to honor heroes is to learn from them.

How Human Was Jesus?: Faults, flaws, and mistakes are an unavoidable part of human life. But the Bible tells us that Jesus is fully man, yet without sin. What does it mean for Jesus to be both fully God and fully human?

What I've Learned In Twenty Years of Marriage: "Apart from the gospel, those were, and remain, the most liberating words I ever heard. I bought a ring that wouldn’t impress anyone, then or now, but we were headed for the altar. My only regret is that we aren’t today celebrating our twenty-first anniversary instead of our twentieth..."

Ten Years Later, Why Gay Marriage Is Winning: After four same-sex couples filed suit Wednesday (May 21) challenging Montana’s ban on same-sex marriage, neighboring North Dakota is the only state that isn’t facing a challenge to its gay marriage ban — at least not yet. So what changed? The issue is far from settled — and some conservatives insist that it never will be — but pro-gay groups clearly have the momentum. Here’s why:

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