Dulles Family Life Church

     Yesterday, I began to share with you the 5 reasons we lack power, victory, and an overcoming lifestyle, and gave the first 3, which were Sin, Ignorance, and Unbelief.  I bring before us all the remaining 2, the first of which is….

Fear…..II Timothy 1:7-8 tells us we’ve “not been given a spirit of fear,” yet it seems to be a spirit that has been embraced by so many.  We are living in a day of courage robbing, strength sapping fear.  So many seem to be living, no, more like existing, in the realm of “what if?”  What if…the worst happens?  What if those things we most dread actually come about?  I heard it said once that more than 90% of what we fear might happen, never does, yet this reality does not stop us from living in a state that for all intensive purposes paralyzes us and makes us powerless.  We appear to be afraid of almost everything, very much like small children in the dark.  Yet in the midst of all our fears, is this sad truth, we don’t seem to fear Him at all, and our lives reflect it.  Ignoring Him, disobeying Him, these things seem to not bother us at all.  We seem to insist on living most, if not all of our lives, outside of He who tells us that in Him, we have no fear, and so, end up with lives full of it.
     Erwin McManus writes in The Barbarian Way, “When we fear God and God only, we’re no longer bound by all the other fears that would hold us captive.  The fear of death, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of insignificance — all the fears that know us by name and haunt us in the dark of the night, become powerless when we know the fear of the Lord….When we fear Him, we in essence begin to live a life where we are fearless.”  Fearless living is what we’re called to.  Is it what you’re living?  Jesus, in Luke 12:32 says, “Do not fear little flock–It’s your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”  Those who live in fear of all that is outside Him, will never know that Kingdom life.  Do you know it?  Will you?

     This brings us to the last reason we have so little power and victory.   It is because we are guilty of……

Prayerlessness…..Where is the lack in your life?  Individually, in your home, in your fellowship?  Is prayer central to your life, or an add on?  Does it consist of lists and demands, or is a place of intimacy?  Does it focus on relationship, or agenda?  Do you view it as something you should do, or something you cannot do without?  Last, when you do pray, to what degree is it in brokenness before Him?  Do you pray with a surrendered spirit?
     I mentioned that I have preached this sermon in 3 different congregations.  When I come to this point, I ask to what degree are husbands praying with wives, parents with children?  I always see heads drop, because so many are guilty of not doing so.  I have always thought of myself as a man of prayer, yet I neglected this in my own marriage and family, and paid a heavy price.  I took for granted His protection.  Are you doing the same?  McManus asks the question, “How many stories do we need of children growing up in church being forced to act like Christians rather than being won to the heart of God?”  Could it be that they will be won to His heart when they see us pursuing His heart in prayer, with them?
     In our busyness, prayer always seems the first thing to go, so we end up facing our challenges in our own strength, and as a result, mostly giving up.  Yet Luke 18:1 says, “Jesus told them a story to illustrate their need for constant prayer, and to never give up.”  What are you on the verge of giving up on?  Could that be because of a prayerless life?

     Those are the 5 reasons why we’re not overcoming and living with power and victory.  To what measure might any and all be present in your life today?  As I said yesterday, I have been bringing each of these to Him in my prayer life, asking Him to search me for their presence.  I would love to say He found nothing, but of course, He has found much, but I am seeing that as He does, bit by bit, I am learning more and more of what the life of an overcomer really is.  As He invites me, He invites you.  Not just to power and victory, but to His life.  A life that is, as McManus says, Fearless.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     What I write today is not what I intended.  I even began something different, but could sense in the middle of the first paragraph I was to share this instead.  It comes from a sermon I have preached to 3 different congregations over the course of the last 2 months, as well as a piece I read by California pastor Che’ Ahn.  It is something I have integrated into my own prayer life, and has to do with the 5 reasons we lack power and victory in our individual lives, and in the life of the church.  They are ”reasons” that I believe to some degree may be present in all of us, but must be faced if we are to truly ”be the church.”  I realize that will make for a longer than usual Heart Thoughts.  For that reason, I’ll do this in two parts, dealing with the first three reasons today, and the last two tomorrow.  Reason one is…..
SIN….We lack power and victory when unconfessed sin is present to any degree in our lives….I am not speaking of isolated failures so much as patterns of failure.  Attitudes, behaviors, habits, addictions.  Things that have ensnared us and keep us captive.  Things we have made peace with, and consider ”just a part of being human.”  Things we look at, read, watch.  Things we have allowed into our lives, homes, and relationships.  About such things Nancy Leigh DeMoss said, “None of us would tolerate the backing up of raw sewage in our homes or church, so why do we tolerate the presence of such hidden, yet toxic “sewage” in our lives, homes and fellowships?  Behaviors, practices, and lifestyles we know are wrong and sinful, yet tolerated, that we close our eyes to, or as the Bible puts it, “wink at.”  We will not see the power of God in our midst until we, as South American pastor Carlos Anacondia says, “become ruthless about the presence of sin in our lives and families.”  Doing this will take us into some very uncomfortable, even painful places.  It will also take us into the place of victory, the place of the overcomer.  Are we willing to go there?  Are we willing to be ruthless?
IGNORANCE….Hosea 4:6 says, “My people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge….”  His people continue to be destroyed for the same reason 2500 years later.  We are ignorant as to Who He is and who we are in Him.  We’re ignorant as to the nature of our true conflict.  People and circumstances are not the problem.  Satan is, but most of us are oblivious to this.  We lack understanding, discernment and wisdom because we don’t know the One we say we believe in.  Therefore, in our life battles, we constantly, as Ahn says, compare ourselves with our “Goliath’s,” and shrink back, rather than, as David, compare our Goliath’s to our God, and know they can’t stand before Him.
     I remember upon my ordination more than 20 years ago, the late Dr. Charles Strickland, a truly mighty man of God, said, as he placed his hands upon me to pray, “Strange winds are blowing through the church.  Preach His Word….Stay true to His Word….Uphold His Word.”  Those strange winds continue to blow, and they will sweep away all who are not standing upon rock of the knowledge of not only what His Word says, but the rock and knowledge of Who He is.  What is being destroyed for lack of knowledge in your life, home and church?  Those who truly know their God will find that He is the Destroyer of the destroyer.
UNBELIEF…..Unbelief will always turn us away from Him.  Hebrews 3:12 tells us as much.  To what degree is it present in your life, my life, today?  What is keeping us from believing in, trusting in, our God and Father…in the work and life of our Lord Christ ?  There are a multitude of reasons to not believe and they are seen in the the form of the aforementioned “Goliath’s,” as well as all other seemingly impossible mountains, situations, circumstances.  We cannot be argued or reasoned into faith.  It comes down to a simple but soul shaking question posed by Ahn.  “Do we really believe that at Calvary, at the tomb, Jesus Christ totally defeated the enemy?”  Do we?  Until we can answer that with a definative “Yes,” unbelief will be or daily companion.  As the old hymn asks,  “Have we settled the question forever?”  Have you?
     My heart yearns to not only be a man of victory and power, but to be a part of a church that is truly that as well.  Do you?  If so, can you allow His Spirit to search you as to the degree these three things, and the two I share tomorrow, might be present in your life, home and fellowship?  As a song from the Jesus movement of the 70’s went, “It’s a bitter persuasion…..but the end is so sweet.”  Walking in power and victory, being an overcomer, is our inheritance and destiny.  Are we doing so, and if not, are we willing to have any reason we are not, dealt with, and removed by His all encompassing love and mercy?  How do we answer that?

Blessings,
Pastor O 

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     In the last 20 years or so, the word dysfunctional has become a well used, perhaps overused term.  I looked up its definition and it is, “an impaired or abnormal function….in an individual or within a group.”  Now, before I say anything else, know that I am in no way minimizing the very real types of unhealthy situations and settings so many have lived in or may still live in.  God is never for the unhealthy, for He’s the Healer, but as I look at this word’s meaning, particularly the aspect of something being “abnormal,” I have to ask, just what is normal, especially as concerns a believer?
     Now, I have to own up to the fact that I didn’t come upon this question by myself, but by way of Pastor and writer Erwin McManus in his book, “The Barbarian Way–Unleash The Untamed Faith Within.”  He says, pointedly, “You were not created to be normal.”  Yet, I think normalcy is what most of us are looking for, but, is that what’s modeled by most of the great men and women of His Word, particularly the heroes of faith found in Hebrews 11, both those who were named, and even moreso, those who are not?  Did any of them live what we would consider normal lives?  The writer speaks of the OT there you say?  With the coming of the Holy Spirit, The Comforter (and comfort Provider perhaps), things have changed.  The life of a believer is different now, or as McManus would call it, civilized.
     If this is the case, what do we do with John the Baptist?  Would a guy like him be welcome in your church, let alone your home?  He wore clothes made of camel hair.  He ate locusts and wild honey.  Seeing as he lived out in the wilderness, he may not have been too well acquainted with bathing.  Yet this is who the Father chose to proclaim the coming of, and prepare the way for, His Son, Jesus Christ.  With this truth in mind, McManus asks a question which stopped me cold.  Maybe it will you as well.  “If this is what the person looked like who prepared the way for Jesus, then what should a disciple of Jesus Christ look like who comes after Jesus?  How is it that, for many of us, being a good Christian is nothing more than being a good person?….You can’t escape that John acted like a madman….The path to which God called him put him out of step with the cultural rhythm.”
     In short, John wasn’t normal, at least in the eyes of the culture he lived in.  Are you and I?  When was the last time you and I acted like a “madman” for the Lord?  What degree of risk is involved in our day to day lives, and in the day to life of our fellowships?  How out of step with the cultural rhythm are we?  John was at home in the wilderness.  For us, the wilderness is being without cable and internet for more than a few hours.  We love reading about the “John’s” of the Bible, but we don’t really want them too near us.  We certainly have little, if any desire to be like them.  We’re willing to be people of faith, but it has to be a “realistic” faith.  A normal faith.  Anything else would be dysfunctional…..wouldn’t it?
     The believers of the New Testament church turned the world upside down.  We believers seem determined to make sure such never happens in our own world.  As McManus says, “The civilized build shelters and invite God to stay with them; barbarians move with God wherever He chooses to go.”  That’s what Abraham did….and Jacob…..and David….and John…..and Paul….and….you?  Me?

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     In going through some old, stored away books recently, I came across one from my days as a Bible College student.  It’s titled, “The Effective Invitation.”  It’s been years since I even opened it, but the content had to do with how a preacher could most effectively invite his hearers to receive Christ as their Savior.  The book dealt with “how” we can invite people to Christ.  The question I have is, “what” are we inviting people to in Christ?
     Pastor and writer Erwin McManus, in his small but powerful book, “The Barbarian Way,” asks this.  “Is it possible the power of the church has been lost because we keep inviting people into the comfort, safety and security of Christ?”  McManus uses as an illustration the point that so many preacher’s, and I have done so myself, have proclaimed that there is “no safer place to be than in the perfect will of God.”  The biblical evidence would seem to indicate otherwise.  Most of the Old Testament prophets met, at the least, persecution and ridicule, and very often, physical harm and even death.  It is generally believed that all the original disciples except John died a martyr’s death, and even John suffered torture and life imprisonment.  None of them were invited by Christ into a comfort, “bless me” centered lifestyle.  Each and all though, knew, intimately, both the power and heart of the Father, of Christ.  Do we?  Is, as McManus believes, Christ being lost in the religion that bears His name?
     I have written down in my notes a thought in the form of a question that came to me recently.  Can He trust us (you and I) with pain and adversity?  If we think our “best life now” is one of more and more blessing, meaning more and more comfort, safety and security, I think the answer is….well, we know what the answer is.  I think we have to come to grips with just what the best life really is.  Maybe we could go to John the Baptist for an answer?  Not during the time of his ministry, when people flocked to hear and be baptized by him.  Not even when he saw and recognized Christ as the promised Savior and Messiah, but rather, when he sat in a prison cell, awaiting death, guilty of only one thing.  Speaking and living the truth.  It boggles the mind.  It certainly boggled his.  From his cell, he sent a message to Christ, found in Luke 7:19, asking, “Are you the Messiah we’ve been looking for, or should we keep looking for someone else?”  This is the same John who proclaimed not all that long before, when seeing Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”  His life circumstances had just collided with the truth he’d said he believed.  At some point, if we are truly following Him, ours will as well.
     John, who’d given all of himself to his God, was in a place that was anything but comfortable and safe.  Where was his God now?  Jesus sent him this reply to his question.  Go back to John and tell him what you’ve seen and heard–the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life, and the Good News is being preached to the poor.  And tell him, God blesses those who are not offended in Me.”  What He was saying to John was that miracles were being perfomed upon many, but there would be no miracle for John.  Deliverance was happening for countless people, but John was not going to get out of prison.  What He asked was, even if God did not do what John longed for Him to do, would he still trust Him?  Would he still believe, or, would he be angry, offended, and turn away?  We know the answer, though it’s not recorded.  John surrendered.  He was in the perfect will of God, but he was not safe.  Yet he had a power death itself could not shake.  It’s a power we will never know from the safety of our own comfort zones.  We think the best place for us is where we feel most comfortable and secure.  God’s best place is where we’ll be most exposed, but also our most powerful, and…..alive.  In which place do you long to live today?
     McManus said John was living between “prison and the platter.”  Maybe you are too.  What will you do, choose to be offended, or, choose to believe, to trust, to not be safe, secure, or comfortable, but blessed, truly blessed?  Blessed because even in the face of prison and the platter, you know in Who you believe and you know He will really keep you until, and beyond that day.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     Being a preacher, I definitely have an interest in the subject of preaching.  I also try to listen to what other people are saying about the preaching they are hearing.  Not just mine, but others as well, and not to compare myself to them, but to gauge just what is being proclaimed from the pulpit of the church, His Body.  Something I have heard, and heard more than I care to, is how little the cross of Christ seems to be preached these days.  This comes not from the acid tinged lips and tongues of old, dissatisfied Pharisees, but out of the hearts of those whose lives have proven their love and devotion for Him, and their own willingness to, “Take up their cross and follow Him,” knowing full well that their cross is the same one He carried to Calvary.
     How has this come about?  I’ve heard lots of reasons put forth, and some of them sound pretty good.  Many congregations no longer display a cross in the sanctuary.  They say it gives a negative connotation to non-Christians.  I can understand the human reasoning behind that, as so many awful things have been done in the name of Christ.  I also know that having a cross displayed means little, as for so many, it’s nothing more than a religious symbol in their lives.  My point has little to do with what we’re “showing” in our buildings, but rather what we’re teaching and living out in our lives.  I’ve heard it said that the cross, to many, seems to place such an emphasis on death, and Jesus is about life.  The cross does symbolize death, but only the death of that which is killing us….the penalty of sin.  To me, it points to the death of Death….and beyond that, to life, His life.  Without the cross, and death, there would be no resurrection, and no possibility of life, His life.  We, the church, cannot offer the chance of that life without first leading people to His cross, where death is conquered, yet, I think, that is what, at least to some degree, we’ve been doing.
     Pastor and writer Jack Hayford said, “We can’t disciple a demon or cast out the flesh….We can’t be discipled till we’re free.”  Yet, I think this is so often what we’ve been trying to do.  We are trying to lead people further into the Kingdom of light, who have yet to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness.  Neither salvation, which is deliverance from the penalty of sin, which is death, or sanctification, which is deliverance from the power of the flesh, can be had apart from the cross…yet, is that what you, we, have too often been trying to do?  Paul, writes in I Corinthians 1:17, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel–not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of it’s power.” 
     This is Easter week, and all of us will say it is not a week about colored eggs and chocolate bunnies, but neither is it about emotion tinged stories about the abundant life of Christ, if that story tries to sidestep the neccessity and power of the cross.  We cannot, as one of Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie’s professors once told him, “Sneak around Golgotha.”  We cannot overcome either a demon or the flesh, and sometimes they look the same, in our own strength and wisdom.  We can only do so by the power of the cross.  The pathway to life still lies through the door of death, but only that which is killing us will die.  What remains is His life.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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     I heard evangelist James Robison share this story recently, and it moved me.  I thought I’d pass it on to you.  Robison was born as a product of rape.  His mother had a number of severe emotional problems, and was an inconsistent part of his life, a life that was one of moving from place to place, never really having roots anywhere.  He said one of the most painful memories of his childhood was being part of play groups where teams were chosen.  Though a good athlete, he was always “the stranger,” and therefore, always the last one picked.  This sense of inferiority stayed with him until the day that He met Christ as his Savior.  He said that the sense he had at the time was that the Father was saying to him, in Christ, “I pick you.”  Rejected throughout his young life, he had been found, received, and loved, by the One who knew him before the foundation of the world.  God had “picked” him.  With the Father, no one is ever the last one picked.
     I don’t think any of us struggle with anything more than we do our own self image.  We are born into a world that seems eager to reject us, shun us, and forget us.  To some degree I think, all of us feel we are always “the last one picked.”  Many who outwardly would seem to have everything going for them, would confess in the deepest part of their being that they feel inadequate, somehow lacking.  Shame seems to have a stranglehold on so many lives.  There are so many things about ourselves we just cannot accept, and we are sure no one else will either.  Our sorrow over this can be so intense that we can’t even speak it, not even to Him, yet He knows, and He comes, and….He chooses us….just as we are.  Others may not like what they see, but they make their observation based on severely limited knowledge.  They don’t really know who we are, but He does.  He made us, and nothing we have done, or that has been done to us, alters His view in any way.
     I remember the first I discovered this early in my walk with Him.  I was in Colorado, at the end of the first year of studying for the ministry.  I had made in that short time, some of the best and deepest friendships I had ever known.  Now, those closest to me, the ones I had formed the greatest bonds with, were leaving, going to places of assignment, places far from where I was.  I felt terribly alone, and yes, forgotten.  I remember I was standing in the parking lot of the Bible College, and in those days, the campus stood on a hill surrounded by barren plains.  I felt empty, and wondered just where He was in all of this.  It began to rain, and I remember thinking, cynically, “What’s next….a tornado?”  What was next was the sudden emergence of the sun….and a rainbow…..and I had the overwhelming sense that He knew who and I was, and the rainbow, as it was for Noah, was a kind of covenant promise that our walk together had miles and years to go.  I have never forgotten that rainbow, for it reminds me that He has chosen me, that He is with me…that He loves me, regardless of what others may say, or do, or think.  He picked me, and He picks you.  In Him there is no condemnation, no shame.  It may be raining in your life today, even 40 days worth.  Look up, for there will be a rainbow.  He’s not forgotten.  He knows who and where you are.  He chooses you.  Now you, choose Him.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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