Monthly Archives: May 2026

Lots of reasons to rejoice, and one really big one

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It’s Friday night and the home team is struggling.  The coach walks up and down the sideline in front of his players.

“Get your heads up! All of you!  Take those stupid towels off your head!  Let’s show some courage around here!  The game is not over yet.  You’re not defeated until you quit fighting.  Lift up your heads!  Look like champions!”

The disciples had returned from a trial run in which they had practiced preaching the gospel of Jesus.  Since the time would come when Jesus would be absent and they would be doing this “for real,” the Lord wanted them to get a taste of what to expect.

They returned sky high.  “Lord! It was wonderful!  We saw miracles.  Lives changed.  People healed. It was great!”

Jesus agreed.  “You’re right.  In fact, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”

“However,” He said, “I need to tell you something.”

Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you. Rejoice because your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10:20)

It wasn’t that He didn’t want them joyful and excited.  He loves overflowing praise and exuberance in His children.

He just wants it based on something more substantial than the latest results.

The Lord knew what the disciples would find out. The days would come when they would return empty-handed from their preaching missions, their evangelistic trips, their revivals and door-to-door visitations, and their overseas outreach.

Yes, there would be times of great successes and glorious testimonies. But at other times, they would return empty-handed, with no glowing stories, no big numbers, no sparkling testimonies of victories.  Sometimes they would do well to get out with their lives, and occasionally they didn’t even manage that.

If their joy was based on impressive victories and big numbers, it would be constantly fluctuating.  Sometimes they would be happy in the Lord and overflowing with praise, and at other times, they would be depressed and discouraged.

He wants none of that.

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Preparing for your moment. It could come at any time.

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Be sure of this, that if the home owner had known what hour of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.  Therefore, you must be ready…. (Matthew 24:43-44)

A few years back, a young woman in a North Georgia town was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. An escaped criminal burst into her apartment and held her and her child captive. When the episode ended, the woman told her story to the world. During that nightmarish ordeal, she had talked to the man about the Lord and read to him from one of Rick Warren’s “purpose-driven” books.

Every media person in the country reacted the same. Here was an attractive single woman frightened out of her wits doing something truly courageous. What kind of person is she?

So, they delved into her background.

The reporters found she had a checkered past. But at some point she had come to know the Lord and would tell anyone who listened how Jesus had changed her life.

The young woman was an incredible witness. And she had done nothing–absolutely nothing–to prepare for her moment on the world’s stage. She was authentically Christian and the Holy Spirit did in her exactly what Jesus had promised. “Do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say.” (Matthew 10:19)

Her testimony quickly catapulted Pastor Rick Warren into the spotlight, a place he had already grown accustomed to. And because he always seemed to stay prepared for whatever the Lord had in store for him that day, Rick was ready and seized the moment.

Hundreds of people will be in Heaven as a direct result of that woman’s ordeal and her amazing testimony.  And, to no one’s surprise, Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life, sold an additional hundred thousand copies.  Heaven alone knows the fruit all of this bore.

On ill-fated September 11, 2001, when Islamic terrorists took down the World Trade Towers and the four ill-fated airliners crashed, within hours the media was interviewing every person related to each aspect of this world-shaking event: the families of the victims, the first-responders, architects, politicians, and anyone who had seen anything. No one had time to prepare for the cameras and microphones and the print reporters.

Okay.  Pause and reflect on that a moment.

No one knew this day was coming.  No one prepared.  It was the ultimate happening.

When we know in advance the world’s attention is about to focus on us, when we know in advance the media is coming–even the Christian media which will be considerate and responsible in its reporting–we are given a gift. We have time to prepare our thoughts on what we want to communicate and time to ask the Father to clear our minds and use our words.

Bottom line: We have no way of knowing when we rise in the morning what the Father has awaiting us later in the day. That’s the joy of the Christian life, of course.

And, let’s be honest–it’s the frightening aspect of the Christian life too!

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Two books that changed my life as a young pastor

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I have a story for you, one I love to tell.

It’s the tale of a message God sent, of nagging doubt and how God is able to use that doubt to do something extraordinary in the life of the believer who will stay in class.

Don’t skip past that:  Stay in class.  Which simply means when the Lord allows a nagging doubt to come your way, don’t run from it.  He’s trying to build up your faith. So, stay with Him here.

Recently, I went back and re-read the 1927 Sinclair Lewis novel Elmer Gantry.

First, a side note about the movie on that book. Far more people have seen the Burt Lancaster movie Elmer Gantry, made in 1960, than have read the book. The problem is, the book is like a 6 hour movie, whereas the movie was necessarily much briefer. The movie covers only about 100 pages of the book.

I recommend the book to every preacher I know. It’s painful reading, I grant you. However, in many ways, Sinclair Lewis knew what he was talking about. The charlatan who was Elmer Gantry–the one in the novel is far worse than the on-screen version played by Burt Lancaster–exposes the scoundrel in each of us who would deign to speak for God and lead His flock.

In order to convey the full impact of the renegade preacher’s words, I’ll need to quote a long passage from the book.

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The pastor’s in trouble, so he prays. (Good idea!)

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Nothing jerks our prayers out of the “blessed generality” stage like a crisis. The best kind of crisis for that is for a close loved one to get in serious trouble–car wreck, cancer, emergency surgery, that sort of thing.

But a close second is a personal crisis, the kind where someone is making life miserable for you and it’s taking all the reserves you can muster to get out of bed in the morning and walk into one more day. You either quit praying altogether, the worst possible choice, or your prayers lose their vain repetitions and meaningless phrases and get down to business.

Yesterday, going through a stack of notes from the 1990s, I found such a prayer of mine, written in the thick of church conflict. It’s undated, so there’s no way of determining what particular struggle was going on then. We went through so many, the first six or seven years of my 14-year pastorate at the last church we served.

The prayer was written in longhand and filled two pages. It’s about as specific as one would want a prayer to be. No more “bless him” and “help her.” But on the other hand, it does not call names and I’m glad to report, it’s not as harsh as some of the Psalms where David or whoever is praying for the children of his enemies to not live to see that day’s sunset.

Here is the prayer, along with a few comments. I send it forth in the hope that some servant of the Lord in the fight of his life may find encouragement to hang tough and be faithful.

“Father, what I’m praying for is that….

1) Everything I preach may come from thee. Lead me please regarding subjects, texts, stories, applications, and especially in the delivery.”

When people are fighting the pastor, invariably they attack his sermons.  The critics are hitting us where we are most vulnerable, because few of us feel that our preaching is all it should be. They will find fault with what you are preaching, the scriptures you use, the stories you tell, the way you say it, everything. If you are doing all things well, they will criticize your tie–or the lack of one.

The remedy is to turn their opposition into motivation to pray harder, study more diligently, and do everything you know in order to preach the sharpest, most powerful sermons you’re capable of doing.

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