Category Archives: Pastoring

My friend is depressed: what should I do? :-(

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What do we do when a friend or family member is depressed? I’ve heard too much advice that is “just get over yourself and be happy!” There has to be better advice, right?

As someone who is given to periodic, short bouts of depression — “a normal abnormality” — and a pastor who hopes to effectively and lovingly help others find their joy in Christ, I found this short vodcast helpful. It’s a first-responders guide for those who desire to minister effectively to depressed friends and family members.

David Murray, author of Christians Get Depressed Too gives solid advice on helping others who are depressed:

He gives a more detailed explanation of eight guidelines for dealing with depressed Christians:

  1. Be prepared: anyone can get depressed
  2. Don’t assume depression has been called by personal sin
  3. Check the depth, the width, and the length of the symptoms
  4. Don’t rush to medication, nor rule out medication
  5. Be holistic
  6. Give hope; we can glorify God as we cling to Him in the darkness
  7. Involve family and friends. (Give them 5 R’s: Routine, Relaxation, Recreation, Rest, and Re-prioritizing in their lives.)
  8. Help the depressed person re-prioritize spiritual disciplines. Keep them short and simple; think training more than trying. Point them to the objective truths of Scripture, because honesty is best (character of God, work of Jesus, justification, our security in Christ), and the subjective feelings will follow. Point your friend to Jesus, our sympathetic High Priest who alone can conquer all our fears. He is able and willing to walk with us through every season of life, and He is able to bring us out of our depressed state.

I have not read the two books he recommended, but I have read Murray’s book Christians Get Depressed Too and highly recommend it.

The Apostle Paul has some summary thoughts on dealing with all kinds of people:

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle [unruly], encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.
—1 Thessalonians 5:14

Notice three categories of people needing care: 1) the unruly, 2) the fainthearted, 3) the weak. They each need a different approach (admonishing, encouraging, helping). We can easily crush a fainthearted person if we unceremoniously admonish them, or can enable an unruly person if we are soft and use kids gloves. This takes grace, wisdom and patience to know how to treat people we are responsible to lead.

Sometimes we can become impatient with others though we wish they would be patient with us. We must not treat every person the same, but we can be patient with all.

 

Identity: everything grows and flows from there.

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Do you focus on your main priorities, or your primary identity?

Kari writes:

How many times have we been asked to do the exercise?

List out your priorities as you want them to be … Of course we’re supposed to put God first, then family second, or wait, maybe we’re supposed to put ourselves first, but then what about our spouse, and then work is a must so where does that fit in? I’ll tell you what:

 

No matter how many times I’ve listed out my priorities it’s never revolutionized my life. 

Here’s what’s revolutionized my life:

 

Understanding that it’s not knowing my primary priority that matters but knowing my primary identity. 

 

We do what we do because we are who we are.

What gave rise to this thought? Galatians 5:25:

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

 

A conclusion:

What if I look at my to-do list with that in mind? Keeping in mind that everything that I do I do as a disciple of Jesus Christ, called to fulfill His great commission and be His ambassador here on earth?

 

No where in Scripture are we called to find balance. Our notion of “finding balance” is cultural. Christ calls us to take our whole life — work, play, service, both sacred and secular — and drench it in the water of His Spirit so that as we move about this world we’re soaking wet, dripping all over the world, spreading the gospel not because we’re handing out tracts but because we’re handing out hope.

 

We’re kind, patient, loving, gentle … our life displays the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24).

 

What is our identity? Are we citizens of earth or citizens of heaven? Our identity determines how we live. We can walk in step with the world, running to keep up with the passing pleasures of each new year, or we can walk in step with the spirit, knowing that in His presence is fullness of joy.

{Grateful for my wise, gracious wife. Thanks, Kari!}

Photo by See Margaret

 

15 years in the making.

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Next week I turn 15. Christ rescued me as a freshman in college, turning me from a selfish boy going my own way into a man who began to hunger and thirst for righteousness. I am not yet what I shall be, but I am not what I once was, and for that I am eternally thankful.

There’s a great verse that Paul writes to Timothy about how through the patience and perseverance of Timothy’s mother and grandmother he grew up and became “wise unto salvation” (2 Timothy 3:14-15). It was a direct result of their trusting in God and in His words that He multiplied their efforts in bringing new life to that young man. We don’t read of an “improved” Timothy; we read of an alive man, who used to be dead.

Same became true in my life. I did not out-and-out reject the faith of my parents, but was slow to embrace it. I was dead to God, though I like religion a bit, because it made me feel good about God. When Jesus embraced me, I could not help but respond. For this reason I believe in irresistible grace. God is as irresistible as He wants to be.

The Gospel message was first presented to me as an invitation to invite Jesus into my life. Yet I soon realized my life was an abject mess (though not in comparison to others, which was a great source of my pride), and rather than entering my life Jesus invited me into His life. I got to become a minor character in the story He was writing, no longer trying to be the hero.

This week I get to teach a course on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and the various ways we respond to Him in grace-driven effort. We’re calling it I GROW HERE, and I’m now realizing I’ve been training for 15 years towards teaching this course.

 

No doubt about it: what should we pursue in life?

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Today Kari offered the following lists where we discover how God relates to two kinds of people, the proud and the humble. She writes:

At a recent women’s conference we looked at this, and I was floored. Talk about two contrasting lists!  Check out how God relates to the proud, and to the humble:

First, the sobering list:

  • God’s wrath is on the proud (2 Chron. 32:25)
  • He pays back revenge on the proud (Ps 31:23)
  • He will not tolerate the proud (Ps 101:5)
  • He mocks the proud (Prov 3:34)
  • He tears down the house of the proud (Prov 15:25)
  • He detests the proud (Prov 16:5)
  • He punishes the proud (Prov 16:5)
  • He humbles the proud (Is. 2:12)
  • He throws the proud to the earth (Ez. 28:17)
  • He scatters the proud (Luke 1:51)
  • He opposes the proud (James 4:6)
But then, check this out. There’s a better list:
  • God saves the humble (2 Sam. 22:28 & Ps. 18:27)
  • He keeps back disaster from the humble (2 Kings 22:19)
  • He forgives and heals the humble (2 Chron. 7:14)
  • He holds back destruction and delivers the humble (2 Chron. 12:7)
  • He turns His anger away from the humble (2 Chron. 12:12)
  • He hears the humble (2 Chron. 34:27)
  • He guides the humble in what is right (Ps. 25:9)
  • He teaches  the humble His way (Ps. 25:9)
  • He sustains the humble (Ps. 147:6)
  • He crowns the humble with victory (Ps. 149:4)
  • He shows favor to the humble (Prov. 3:34)
  • He allows the humble to rejoice (Is. 29:19)
  • He looks on the humble with favor (Is. 66:2)
  • He gives rest to the humble (Matt 11:29)
  • He exalts and lifts up the humble (Matt 23:12, etc.)
  • He gives grace to the humble (James 4:6)
  • He shows favor to the humble (1 Peter 5:5)
If there were ever any doubt about what we should be pursuing in life, that doubt is now gone.

5 In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

   “God opposes the proud 
   but shows favor to the humble.”

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

—1 Peter 5:5-7 (NIV 2011)

  • Reflection: Today, how will you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God? 
Photo credit: “Humility” by ToniVC
 

Influence: beyond impact.

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My generation grow up being told we can make an IMPACT. I’m realizing its far better to grow and wield INFLUENCE.

Impact is more apparent, easily measured, and makes us feel better about ourselves. Business people, coaches, and churches all talk about “making an impact.” Few talk about how impactful things cause collateral damage (like meteorites and car collisions). Or how people wanting to make an name for themselves and leave their mark on history do things to compensate for their insecurity like have their face engraved on money — as the Roman Caesars did.

We built up to impact, but then what?

Influential things cannot be as easily measured, but their effect reaches far beyond the moment of interaction. Influential people listen more than talk, give more than they receive. The people who have influenced me the most in life are those who weren’t aiming to make an impact; they were just being faithful and had the courage to persevere in dire circumstances. It sounds so exciting to make an impact, but my money is now on the people who are so compelling by their serving and sacrifice, that their words carry great weight.

Influential people grow towards impact and then disappear, pointing people past themselves. Impact was never the goal, but a byproduct, a result of their steadiness, consistency, courage and generosity. Influential people may feel they haven’t done much or “not enough,’ though those who get caught up in their wake all agree the influence of their life was immeasurable.

Truly influential people have come to realize it’s not great talents that God blesses, as much as great likeness to Jesus.

  • Who has influenced you?
  • Have you recently expressed gratitude to that person?
  • How are you influencing the people around you? 

 

Photo credits:

“The scars of impacts on Mars” by europeanspaceagency

“12 Caesars” by Joe Geranio

“Wake” by Beardy Git

 

Survival.

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The challenge we face, as people and churches, in our fight to survive:

“The ‘ultimate concern’ of most church members is not the worship and service of Christ in evangelistic mission and social compassion, but rather survival and success in their secular vocation. The church is a spoke on the wheel of life connected to the secular hub. It is a departmental sub-concern, not the organizing center of all other concerns. Church members who have been conditioned all their lives to devote themselves to building their own kingdom and whose flesh naturally gravitates in that direction anyway find it hard to invest much energy in the kingdom of God.

They go to church once or twice a week and punch the clock, so to speak, fulfilling their ‘church obligation’ by sitting passively and listening critically or approvingly to the pastor’s teaching. Sometimes with great effort they can be maneuvered into some active role in the church’s program, like a trained seal in a circus act, but their hearts are not fully in it. They may repeat the catchwords of the theology of grace, but many have little deep awareness they and other Christians are ‘accepted in the beloved.’ Since their understanding of justification is marginal or unreal – anchored not to Christ but to some conversion experience in the past or to an imagined present state of goodness in their lives – they know little of the dynamic of justification.

Their understanding of sin focuses upon behavioral externals which they can eliminate from their lives by a little will power and ignores the great submerged continents of pride, covetousness and hostility beneath the surface. Thus their pharisaism defends them both against full involvement in the church’s mission and against full subjection of their inner lives to the authority of Christ.”
—Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal, page 204-05.

Questions » How do you see this in your own heart? In your community?

 

Weight Words: Just do it! This changes everything.

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Every command (imperative) in Scripture is rooted in God’s prior work (indicative) and especially in His identity and ours. Such as Ephesians 5:1-2:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

It’s doing what we are becoming and being.

We’re God’s children, so we can behave like it.

Consider the implications of the verses that follow:

3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
—Ephesians 5:3-6

That former life does not describe us any longer, for “at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (v. 8). We can leave behind lives of greed and pride, and no longer live as idolaters. Idolaters try to please themselves, and worship themselves or others. How freeing to instead energies towards trying to “discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” (v. 10)

Sometimes I hear skeptical people say “The Bible is just full of do’s and don’ts, a bunch a rules I don’t need.” That simply is not true, and let’s remember that every time God commands something He does it with our best in mind (for our good) and because it is in His nature and shall be in ours.

 

Everything good.

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20 Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
—Hebrews 13:20-21

If Jesus had not given up His soul to die for our sins, and rose again from the dead, He would have zero claim over our lives. But since He has done all of that and more — by the blood of the eternal covenant — He has ultimate authority over us, His flock. As the “great shepherd of the sheep” He protects, cultivates, and leads His sheep.

Notice how what Jesus did for us, now becomes what He does in us. He works “in us that which is pleasing in His sight.” And through us: equipping us to do everything good, so we may do His will. God’s fame is the goal.

Everything good happens this way. [for » in » through]

Everything good is enacted and enabled by grace.

 

Unreached.

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Lost from AsiaLink HistoryMaker on Vimeo.

“The missionary question is not ‘Where are their unbelievers?’ And then send a missionary there. There are unbelievers everywhere!

The missionary question is, ‘Where are there peoples who do not have any Christians in them?’ Or don’t have a church strong enough to do the neighbor evangelism that we can do if we just want to do it. That’s the missionary question. That’s the question of peoples and nations. How many are there? How many are unreached?”

Over one billion people worldwide have no opportunity to hear the gospel.

—
Unapproachable, inaccessible in location or situation, untouched, untouchable, disconnected, unable to be met or out of touch. These are all words and descriptions given for yet another word: Unreached.

[HT: Brick in the Valley]

 

-ISMS: Consumerism.

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Today we begin a new weekly series I’ll simply call “-ISMS,” a look at the dominant philosophies of our day. Some will be overtly religious; some will seem non-religious (at first); all are the lenses through which we tend to think and feel about ourselves, God and the world around us. First up, consumerism.
—

The more we consume, the less we live.

Alan Hirsch gets to the heart of how everyone is a disciple of something and why someone cannot stay a consumer and become a growing disciple of Jesus.

(Let this 3 minute video provoke your thoughts.)

“Everyone is a disciple and no one stops being a disciple.”

“If we don’t disciple, then the culture sure will. (And it’s doing a good job of it.)”

Consumerism is being defined by what we consume. One’s meaning, identity, purpose and belonging becomes tied to the consumption of products. Consumerism is the most prevalent religion of our day.

Jesus’ call to all consumers:

DIE.

Only then will we truly live.

radish seed sprout

 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” —Jesus (John 12:24)