Category: Level: Intermediate

baby

Is Evangelism Hurting Your Discipleship?

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About a year ago I was at a conference that was promoted as a growth conference for Christians. One of the speakers pastored a church that was very successful at evangelism. At one point he said that occasionally someone asks him if his church produces mature believers. He responds by saying he doesn’t know if they are producing mature believers, but that‘s not his focus. I sat stunned for a few moments. It’s not often a pastor of a big church all but admits that he isn’t trying to produce disciples of Christ, but rather focus on evangelism. Doesn’t this lead to many Christians being stuck as spiritual “babies”? Of course this approach flies in the face of the many passages in the New Testament about becoming mature, growing in Christlikeness, or at least growing to the point of the maturity of an elder. God doesn’t want us to remain Continue Reading →

pitfall mud fall soldier

The Four Biggest Pitfalls In Leadership?

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Many years ago I was attending a really good church where the Holy Spirit was present and the people were genuinely seeking God. I was especially thankful because my previous church had just collapsed due to some unresolved issues between the pastor and the elders. Everything was going well at this new church then one day I received a stunning message. The senior pastor had just left his wife and run off with the attractive worship leader, who left her husband to run off with the pastor.  The two of them had been spending a lot of time together in ministry and people on staff expressed concern but the pastor did not respond. Over the years I have observed first-hand pastors and other leaders who fall into moral failure or severely restrict their effectiveness because of four different issues. Maybe there are others that belong on this list but these Continue Reading →

searching God distant sky night telescope

Does God Seem More Distant? It’s An Opportunity!

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God is very big on faith. It is the way we connect with Him and it is even the way we are saved. In  human relationships faith, or trust, is a precious commodity as well. We might love someone with all our heart but still not trust them because we deem them untrustworthy. A mother may be willing to die for her wayward adult son, but not trust him enough to let him live with her because of his destructiveness. But God is not destructive, just mysterious and challenging, and trusting Him takes time. This is why He goes to great lengths to develop faith in us. After we have been following Jesus for several years God will typically take away our sense of His presence in order that we might learn deeper faith. He does this because He loves us and wants to be more united with us. And Continue Reading →

heaven, on earth, sun

Do We Have Our Heavenly Blessings Now? Ephesians 1:3-14

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Does it seem mysterious to you to say that we have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”? (Eph. 1:3) ESV. This idea has seemed very abstract and fuzzy to me, especially the part about the blessings being in heavenly places. Why does it say the blessings are in heavenly places instead of in our hearts? And if the blessings are in heavenly places and we are living on earth does that mean we are separated from our blessings somehow? Do we have to wait until the next life until we have them? As we look at Ephesians 1:3-14 we can see that Paul lists the heavenly  blessings he refers to in verse 3. If we look at these blessings perhaps we can answer some of our questions.  Verse 4: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world He chose us to be holy and blameless before Continue Reading →

spiritual life questionnaire clipboard writing

How To Discover Someone’s Spiritual Condition

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Would you like to know the spiritual condition of the people you help? Or examine your own spiritual condition? We have created a simple form for that which you can download here! (It will remain available on our website.) We call it the Spiritual Life Questionnaire. We find that this simple assessment tool is very helpful in quickly discovering where someone is spiritually. It also makes it easy to cover many different topics quickly. The Spiritual Life Questionnaire doesn’t rate someone’s spiritual life but asks the important questions for examining one’s own spiritual condition. It is up to the individual to decide how to proceed based on how they answered the questions. People will often be more open when answering written questions than when talking face to face. Sometimes there is something they have been wanting to say and they are willing to say it on paper. More importantly, an Continue Reading →