Husbands, Be The Man of the House

So I've been contemplating something lately as I think about my role as a husband to the best wife on the planet: being the head of the home doesn't mean I'm always right. Nor does it mean that I should call all the shots or determine how we live our lives 100% of the time. I know that sounds really basic and all but I bet that as I dive deeper, you men will agree with me on this.

Ephesians 5 is the foundation for this thought by the way. Paul says things in here like "submit to one another" (Ephesians 5:21) and "let each one of you love his wife as himself" (Ephesians 5:33). I just don't buy the idea that in order to be a leader, you should call all the shots. But I struggle with this. Jenna will ask me to do something a certain way and I feel it is my right as the 'leader' of the home to tell her how it really should be done.

There is this subtle, yet powerful thought process in me (and most men) that in order to be a man, you must not back down from your beliefs and to listen to your wife's requests all the time means that she wears the pants in the family. Why is it that a man who chooses to favor his wife's desires over his own is labeled as 'whipped?' Why do we not celebrate men who are strong enough to put their wife's interests before their own?

Men also struggle with an innate desire to be right; all the time! We feel defeated when proven wrong; especially by our wives. But why? If marriage is a partnership (granted we each play unique roles), then why can't we admit that we are wrong and rejoice that we have a wife who is right? Sounds almost counterintuitive doesn't it?

I mean, I'm the man of the house. I am supposed to play the role of Jesus loving His bride (the church), which means I should call all the shots like Jesus right? Since Jesus is always right and I am supposed to display Him through my marriage, then I'm never wrong right? Wrong. You and I are still humans in need of a Savior. Besides, we are called to display Christ's LOVE in this relationship (Ephesians 5:25).

Let me be clear here: wives are called to submit to their husbands as head of the household and should never be in authority over him concerning serious decisions that affect the entire family. As long as the husband is acting in accordance with the Word of God and is humbly playing his role, the wife has no need to jump in anyway. Women should also celebrate when they have a godly husband who is mature enough in his faith to call the shots and call them well. So do not think I am saying that a woman can play the husband's role when she feels the desire to do so.

I'm talking about the simple, everyday stuff like taking out the trash. When your wife thinks it's time to do it guys, then you don't have any reason to backfire. When your wife thinks tonight is a good night for a date, you would not be loving her as Christ loves His church if you give her every reason why you shouldn't.

Being the head of the household never means that you get the final say on every detail of your lives. It means you are able to lead well with the input from your wife. It means you are on a journey together to become more like Jesus. Never slack on your role as head, but never lord it over your wife either.

Put her needs AND wants before your own, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Unconditional love includes serving your wife when you least feel like doing so. It's human to disagree with the way she wants you to do things sometimes; but do it anyway. It's normal to get frustrated when you want to relax and she wants help with the housework; serve her like Jesus serves His bride. Cherish her in everything and never think of yourself as too much of a man to wash her feet in every way possible. Besides, you aren't being a man by lording your role as the head over her; you're being a jerk and you are acting nothing like Jesus in those times.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and GAVE HIMSELF UP for her.

Mission: Make Disciples, Not Heterosexuals

What I am about to talk about will probably go against the way you think right now. I may not win a popularity vote with this blog post, but I believe God has been moving in my heart to preach this truth to myself. Since I have been drilling this into my own heart and mind the past few months, I thought I would share it with you.

I think here in America, we have become like the Jews during the time Jesus walked the earth. They were oppressed by the Romans and they wanted a Savior from that. Some of them thought Jesus was it; they thought that Jesus was there as the Messiah to overthrow the Romans and establish His Kingdom. They believed that God cared about them enough to remove them from that oppression they were experiencing. The lie they believed was that the real problem was their oppression, not their sin.

The Jews were looking for a Savior from the Romans, not a Savior from their sin. I believe that American Christians want a Savior from the oppression of the world, not a Savior of the world. Let me get to the heart of what I'm talking about: we would rather Jesus prove that we are right about the sanctity of marriage than for Him to save the homosexuals. Read that last line again. Our message has become a very moralistic one; we proclaim the commandments of Scripture well, but we never point people to the One who has fulfilled them all and offers us that righteousness of His.

I have to be honest; I'm tired of the rants on homosexuality. I'm tired of Christians whining about the propaganda that homosexuals push. I expect the LBGT community to rant and spread propaganda. That's not going to stop until Jesus captures their hearts. But there are way too many Christians who have made it their life's goal to turn homosexuals straight. They would say that they want them to trust Christ, but their words and actions say something entirely different.

We believe that we should tell people 'come as you are' unless you're gay, then you have some work to do before you can become a Christian.

Do we really not believe that it's possible for a homosexual to receive God's grace and have Him work on their hearts over time just like He does with my lying, anger, gossip, etc? Why do we require of them anything more than we require of the rest of the world?

Our mission is to make disciples, not heterosexuals.

By the way, I believe with all my heart that homosexuality is a sin and I am not a supporter of marriage equality. I just don't understand why we would rather argue with them about who is right than to tell them about Jesus and live out His love toward them. I don't understand how we think that God will save them and turn them straight in the same moment. Sanctification is a process and there are gay Christians just the same as their are lying Christians and angry Christians. That does not make it right, but it should change our perspective.

I am not asking that we do not stand up for what is right or condone sin. That's the problem actually; we believe that we should show justice sometimes and love at others. Perfect love and perfect justice were in perfect harmony on the cross and should also be that way in our lives. It's not either/or, it's both/and.

Besides all of that, we are fighting a losing battle trying to change the world; only Jesus can do that. So if our focus is to "know nothing except Jesus and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2) then we will see change, because He makes all things new! Which means even if I do convince someone that marriage is one man and one woman, I've done so much less than Jesus can do. Jesus changes EVERYTHING; why are we only striving to change sexual orientations?

Again, I am not asking that we stop addressing the issue, and we should most definitely call out our Christian brothers and sisters who twist God's Word on this issue. I'm asking that we keep the gospel at the center of everything. I beg of you to place gay propaganda aside and proclaim Christ in everything. Let Him first save their souls because He loves them. Then watch, rejoice and be amazed as He changes everything about their lives; including their sexual orientation.

Calling people to a biblical view of marriage alone will not change the world, but the gospel will and that's our message. So build relationships with homosexuals. Seek to show them the same love that Jesus showed you when you were His enemy. Answer their questions and be sure to have your answers grounded in the truth of God's Word. But make your campaign Christ and nothing else.

We seem to more concerned with Jesus overthrowing Obama and the gays than the salvation that He has extended to them.

As I stated in the beginning, I am sure that some will read this and over react. I will probably be mocked by brothers and sisters in Christ who still don't really understand the harmony of holiness and love. They will probably say that I am wrong. And no matter how many times, I affirm that homosexuality is a sin and we should call it that, they will not hear it because they are infuriated by the fact that I don't think our mission is to straighten out the world on their marriage views.

But when I look at Jesus, I see a man who did not come to satisfy the injustice that the Jews were experiencing from the Romans. He came to solve the real problem: the oppression of sin on this world. He came to deliver the captives. He celebrates the freedom of those captives, not their realization that they are captives.

I have a feeling that we are angry with Jesus in the same way that the Jews were: we want deliverance from the oppression that we are experiencing, but all He keeps doing is teaching us to love like He does. I also have a feeling that we get more satisfaction from winning an argument with a gay person than we do extending grace to them when it's hard.

Ask yourself this question: if a gay person walked in my door right now and asked me to lead them to Jesus, would I talk about Jesus or homosexuality? Would I be okay with leading them to Jesus without trying to convince them that being gay is a sin first. Do I trust Jesus enough to reveal their sin to them?

No matter how loud my fellow Christians shout against homosexuals, I know that Jesus died for them too and wants to offer them freedom from sin. No matter how hard they shake their heads in disgust at the LBGT community, Jesus still desires that none should perish. And most importantly, Jesus wins souls, not arguments.

I don't know about you, but I want to be like Jesus.

When You Don't Understand the Scriptures

I was just reading 2 Peter during my devotional time this morning and I came across chapter 3 verses 15-16: "just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" (emphasis mine).

I don't know about you but I took comfort in those 11 words in verse 16. To know that even the people in Paul's day thought some of the things the Spirit led him to write were hard to understand. Even the apostle Peter, who physically walked with Jesus, claims they are hard to understand. I suppose that it would not be a stretch to say that Paul may have found some of the things he wrote difficult as well; since he was "carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21).

We give up far too easily when it comes to understanding God's Word. We settle for surface level interpretations of some of the deepest, most valuable truths in the Scriptures. And maybe this is, at least in part, due to the fact that we don't understand Godly wisdom. Proverbs 9:10 tells us that "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." That means that if we want heavenly wisdom, we must seek the Lord, not facts.

If your goal in understanding the Bible is to gain knowledge or to outsmart an atheist, you're going to come up with many facts but no real wisdom. Look at John 5:39-40 - "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." God's Word has life and is alive because it points us to Jesus. When we view God's Word as something we must intellectually solve, we will gain nothing more than facts (which by the way, do not save). But when we view God's Word as God's way of pointing us to Himself that we may know Him (Philippians 3:10), then we find life in the Savior.

But what do you do when you honestly are perplexed by a passage of Scripture? I think the first response is to pray. I'm not talking about those short tweet-like prayers that we have become all too accustomed to. I'm talking about real, fervent prayer (James 5:16). Ask God for wisdom and He will give it to you (James 1:5). Why would we trust our own wisdom when it comes to the infinite wisdom of God? Even the foolishness of God is wiser than man (1 Corinthians 1:25).

I think the next step is to study that passage with all your might. All throughout the book of Proverbs we are told to seek the wisdom and truth of God as a treasure; Solomon pleads with us that we would search for it diligently. We give up far too easily and would rather find a good commentary that we agree with than discover truth for ourselves. Do you realize that you have the same Holy Spirit in you that the greatest theologian has? He leads all believers to truth and understanding of God's Word. Do not think I am discounting a good commentary or saying that God has not given us great men and women to help us understand doctrine. But God also wants us to learn to understand His Word through the greatest Bible Study tool He ever gave us: The Holy Spirit (not that the Holy Spirit is a tool, He is a person. But you know what I mean).

So "study to show yourself approved" (2 Timothy 2:15). Search the Scriptures diligently and find Jesus in every page, every word, and every phrase. If we could all learn that the goal of Bible Study is not facts, we could change the world. The goal of Scripture is to find and follow Jesus and to be sent out on a mission to help others do the same.

How Shall we then Love?

As I read Paul's third letter to the Corinthians (we know it as 1 Corinthians), I learn more about how leaders are supposed to love people. Of course, we know that Paul wrote the famous chapter 13 in here, but how did Paul express love? If everything is to be done in love or else it is meaningless, how can we know we are expressing that love?

Some will say that we are supposed to accept all people no matter what. But then I read chapter 5 and Paul teaches the church in Corinth that they need to remove the sexually immoral man from their congregation (1 Corinthians 5:2). Granted, he was sleeping with his stepmom, but Paul goes on to teach that a little bit of sin ruins the entire congregation (1 Corinthians 5:6). So in Paul's mind, loving believers correctly sometimes means that we rebuke them in their sin.

There seems to be this subtle movement in the church that is crying that we do not call people out in their sin. But if Jesus loved us enough and hated our sin enough to endure the wrath of God to deliver us from our sin, why would we ever say to a believer caught in sin, "it's okay?" We don't understand love correctly.

Now, let me also say this: we cannot hold unbelievers to the same standard. Loving them means pointing them to Jesus in the midst of their sin. We have to expect unbelievers to act like unbelievers (1 Corinthians 5:9-10). Jesus hung around with the worst of sinners by the world's standards. He loved them and didn't spend His time with them pointing out all of their faults all the time. He talked with them, asked them hard questions, pointed them to Himself and the Father and loved them well. But even with unbelievers, He still was not okay with their actions (see the woman at the well and Zacchaeus).

To understand love, we should look no further than the cross. In that moment (and in every moment) God's was displaying perfect justice along with perfect love. We tend to put justice and discipline on the opposite end of love and grace; we think they are opposed to each other. But in God, they find perfect harmony. Because Jesus is our example, we should also learn to love as He did.

You've probably heard the illustration before of a child walking into a crowded street and the parent loving them enough to not only grab them out of the street but disciplining them to know what they did was wrong. Not one single person would tell that parent they aren't being loving because they are sucking the child's fun away. Then why is it that we cannot love our brothers and sisters in Christ enough to snatch them out of their sin? Why is it that I am thought of as legalistic and unloving when I warn unbelievers that their sin is leading them to destruction?

Church, we have to learn that love "does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:6). Let us not coddle those who are trapped in sin, but let us love them enough to point them to the Savior who paid a high price so they can be free from that sin that enslaves them.

Looking for Fruit in all the Wrong Places

A thought hit me today as I was praying for God to work in the hearts of the teenagers I am shepherding: fruit in ministry is often not what we think it will be. I have a feeling that if you ask 50 youth pastors what fruit in ministry looks like, most of them will either tell you that fruit is bigger numbers or more spiritual growth in their current numbers.

Galatians 6:9 teaches us that we shouldn't grow weary in doing good, because we will reap fruit if we don't give up. Often times that fruit will result in spiritual growth in the people we minister to. Often it will result in more people that God will entrust to you. But sometimes, the fruit we reap is not either of those. Sometimes the fruit (the reward) of our hard work, faithfulness and good stewardship of the ministry God gives us is a deeper relationship with God.

As we continue to press on and trust God to work in our ministry, and as we walk with Him through the good and messy times of ministry, He will draw us closer to Himself. If you don't consider that to be fruit worth reaping, then you need a heart check.

The really cool thing about that is as we draw closer to God, it WILL affect those we are discipling and shepherding. We must not miss the fact that sometimes, we are looking to reap the wrong fruit. Let God reward your labors however He chooses.

Here's the thing: if fruit in ministry was only physical and spiritual growth in those we minister to, then there have been quite a few missionary failures. We hear of missionaries spending 30-50 years on an island or living with a tribe; faithfully preaching the gospel but never seeing one single convert. Was Galatians 6:9 not applicable to them? Of course it was! the fruit they reaped was a greater trust in God and faith that He would reach them, even if they never saw it! They reaped the reward of closeness with God in a seemingly impossible scenario. That's fruit worth reaping.

So pastor: don't give up! You will reap fruit, but it may not be the fruit you are trying to reap. I know that this blog is not well written and is scattered in it's thought process, but I believe the Holy Spirit was teaching me this as I prayed for fruit in ministry this morning. I pray it is an encouragement to you.