The heroes of our faith and Saints of Old are watching!
“I went round the city and I looked at everything. I said to the leaders, the officers and the people, ‘Do not be afraid of our enemies. Remember that our Lord God is great and powerful. Fight on behalf of your brothers, your sons, your daughters and your wives. Fight to keep your homes safe.’” —Nehemiah 4:14
I know that you have been absorbing a great deal of information and news, good or bad. I know, like Nehemiah, you too have looked at the condition of our cities, towns, neighborhoods, and schools. Do not be dismayed to the point of indifference. You are desperately needed!
Do not allow what you are seeing and hearing to take you off your mission as husbands, fathers, and godly men. Do not allow yourselves to drift away from the Lord. To the contrary; fight to recapture your heart. Then fight to win again the heart of your wife. Fight for the hearts of your children. Fight for your country.
If things are broken or at odds between you and your wife, fix it now, but not with your “toolbox,” but by listening to her heart. Have compassion for her, and make her safe in your presence and absence. Please, men, let your wives into your heart and speak to them with kindness and wisdom. She’s your partner, and I can promise you this that there’s no one else better suited to be in your foxhole and camp than your wives.
Be gentle and patient with your children. Your actions, attitudes, and words should show them how much you love them and that they, along with your wives, are more important than your man-toys, sports, politics, or even your ministries.
You set the climate of fear or peace in your homes. Choose peace and fight to hold onto a climate of peace in your house. After all, “a man’s home is his castle,” so protect and defend it, but more so, your family which lives in it.
“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” —Saint Francis de Sales
Show your wife and children through your right actions that your trust is in the Lord. This is your job as a man of faith. Your trust in God becomes their trust in God. Your good father-heart points them directly to the Father-Heart of God, which, by the way, is where they find their identities.
Things are going to be rough these next several months. Our nation and it’s people will be tested beyond belief. But hold onto your belief in God, in your marriage, and in your children. They, not your careers, video games, sports, and politics, are your mission. The country will right itself, or perhaps not. This, however, doesn’t change the man you are, nor your mission.
Cling to God and to his Word. Love your wives unconditionally and sacrificialy. Be gentle with your children, and show them great patience. Tell them with words and action that you love them.
Be stouthearted. Be brave. Be courageous. Be men of God. Brothers in Chist. Hold to Truth. Armor up with God’s promises. Hold to the peace that comes from trusting God.
Remember that you are not alone. The God of the Angel Armies lives within you. Your brothers are not far off—we’re in this together!
Lead your families well. It’s up to you, and no other. The term “husband,” means “band around the house.” Be that physical and spiritual band. You can do it because you are on the Lord’s side—you are men!
Again, get right with your wives and children. No excuses. No worries. Be courageous, be men, and make God and heaven’s armies proud!
Demons are shuddering. Angels are gathering. The heroes of our faith and Saints of Old are watching. They are with the Heavenly Hosts, cheering you on to victory!
Many years ago, August 4, 1984, to be exact; God called Toni and I to Youth With A Mission (YWAM). We needed $4,500.00 tuition for the Discipleship Training School and traveling money from California to the city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, some 3,500 mile distance.
We embarked on our cross-country journey with our two small children, Josh and Jordan. Toni and I had only $300.00 cash and a gas and oil guzzling, 1973 Chevy station wagon. Needless to say, we were over $5,000.00 short. Yet, we truly believed that God would provide.
On our way to Canada, and after driving all night, the following morning, an 18-wheeler hit our car clocked by a Nevada State Trooper doing 90 miles per hour! The truck burst into flames on impact, skidding 600 feet before it exploded, catapulting debris 100 feet in the air! The impact to our Chevy station wagon thrusted us while inside our large vehicle, up the steep embankment, some thirty feet!
The truck driver jumped out safely, seconds before his rigg exploded! Later, the State Trooper told us that the truck driver had dosed off, which was why he collided into our car. Miraculously, none of us were seriously hurt, even though our Chevy station wagon was totaled. Our trip to Canada appeared to be cut short.
I put my family up in a Motel 6 in Elko Nevada, using part of the $300.00 we had started out with to cover the hotel expense. Yes, my wife and I were confused and dismayed, but soon experienced God’s peace over the crisis.
Within 24 hours of the accident, we received a knock on our hotel room door. It was an insurance adjuster, representing the trucking company responsible for the accident.
The adjuster wrote Toni and I a check for $25,000.00! At that time, it was more money than I had ever held or seen! Way more than enough for our YWAM tuition and traveling expenses!
Since our car was totaled, we took a bus ride to Salt Lake, Utah, to eventually catch a flight. While staying at another hotel, It was the next morning that God took me to a passage of Scripture:
“Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you have forgotten me and turned your back on me, you must bear the consequences…’ — Ezekiel 23:35
This verse popped up three times within 24 hours! It took me a while, but I began to understand what God was saying. Because we had received such a large sum of money that our faith and trust shifted, ever so slightly, from God to the money. In other words, we put our trust in the gift and not the Giver.
Later that morning, I lost my wallet with all the money in it! That Ezekiel verse kept echoing in my mind. Fortunately, I had kept part of the $25,000 settlement in the form of a certified check for $4,500.00, the rest in cash. But the certified check was also in my wallet!
You see, it is so easy and subtle to shift our trust and focus in God to other things. Because God loves us and that he’s a good and faithful Father, he won’t leave us in our sins. He corrects every son and daughter he loves.
Two weeks after we had arrived in Quebec, Canada, the Salt Lake Police Department in Utah sent me a letter, asking me to call or write back and describe the wallet’s contents. I want you to know that I didn’t have time to file a lost wallet report, and nothing in my wallet could’ve led the police to our temporary stop in Quebec. I still have this letter!
It was an absolute miracle that the Salt Lake Police Department found Toni and I while staying on a dairy farm in Quebec, Canada! I still, to this day, do not know how they found us!
Everything was still there in my wallet, except the $20,500.00 cash. Fortunately for us, the Canadian exchange rate in 1984 was 130%. Turning that certified check from $4,500.00 to $5,850.00! Because we had repented and adjusted our hearts, God gave us back just enough. As a matter of fact, because of God’s faithfulness, we were the only students who paid the required tuition in a lump sum!
When God calls us to obedience, he also provides the essentials. For us, his essentials came after each stage of obedience. The miracles were His way of rewarding our faith. Just like a father rewarding his son for doing a good job—God delights in our obedience!
I want you to know that when God calls a man, our response is critical. If we ignore His purpose for our lives, He sees this as rebellion—as stubbornness, which, God can be quick to show His displeasure. Just like He did for me, when I shifted my focus to money and away from Him.
Author and speaker John Eldredge has written that God wants you and me to become His “intimate ally.” He invites you and me to join Him in an adventure—a mission, if you will—a divine purpose that He uniquely planned for us. His mission is so critical for us that He planned it in every detail before He laid the foundations of the earth!
Dudes, did you just hear what I said?
Whether your name is John, Gary, David, or Steve, God thought of you, planned for you, and created a unique purpose for you outside of space, matter, and before time began! Let that sink in for just a moment—you matter so much to God, that you were, and are, in His thoughts, before He created the world and before you were even a twinkle in you parent’s hopes and dreams!
What will you do with this information? Don’t you want to connect with God’s mission for your life and His glory?
I can promise you this; when you do discover God’s divine purpose for your life, it will blow your mind so powerfully that your only response is to weep, tears of deep satisfaction and humility!
That’s what happened to me, I know God wants it to happen for you, too.
When I was twenty-one, my father-in-law, Gary Waltz, took me out to lunch to depart some fatherly wisdom into me, as I was about to become a father. One of the things he spoke to me didn’t make any sense at the time. He said, “Tom, you may never become a good speaker, but you will become a great writer.” By the way, I also became a public speaker!
Honestly, being a speaker or a writer wasn’t even on my radar. I was about to become a father, and that in itself was terrifying enough!
So, in 1981, my father-in-law spoke over my future, and in 2006, over twenty-five years later, it became true! Let’s take a look at a passage in Romans:
“As the Scriptures say, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This is true before God, the one Abraham believed—the God who gives life to the dead and speaks of things that don’t yet exist as if they are real.” Romans 4:17
God used my father-in-law to plant a seed of mission and purpose into my heart and soul. This mission was planned by God, our Creator, before He created our world!
So, back to the year 2006, around Spring time…
… I was about 46 years old when I had met a few people at a ministerial conference. I was there because my brother-in-law, Dwayne DeFount, known by most of you; he and I had started a men’s ministry titled Call To Courage. It was for that reason I was invited.
One of the individuals I had met was an editor of a bi-monthly publication titled America’s Good News, newspaper. We discussed nothing more than brief pleasantries and answered a few questions about our new men’s ministry.
A few days later, I received an unexpected call from a staff person from the newspaper. They invited me to become a columnist and to join the newspaper as a regular writer! I was shocked! I spoke to no one about writing, nor was it on my mind! I acted like I knew what all this meant. The staff-person explained what type and size font to use, how many words to include in each article, and the submission deadlines. Then the call ended.
As I hung up my phone, I placed my face into my hands and burst into tears! Tears, not of fear or sadness, but tears from an unexplored depth within my heart and soul! Those tears were of great humility and of purposeful fulfillment.
God had united His divine purpose and mission, for which He had planned before space, matter, and time existed, to be His writer! Now, do you see why it was so important for my father-in-law to plant God’s seed of mission and purpose into my life, so many years, prior? My father-in-law didn’t have a clue what and why he said that I was to become a writer, but God did.
Remember Romans 4:17?
“… Abraham believed—the God who gives life to the dead and speaks of things that don’t yet exist as if they are real.”
That is exactly what God did to me. He spoke those “things that were not yet, as if they are real!”
And this is why I’m here, speaking with you young men and even the older men here today. God has planned a mission or missions for you, too. I know this as I know the sun will rise in the East and settle in the West.
No man here today, in this place, at this moment and time is missionless or without divine purpose. As a matter of theological fact, you being here tonight was so ordered by God! This message was crafted, especially for you! You were and are in the mind and heart of God before He spoke the world into existence. In His timing, the seed He planted into the depths of your heart and soul is either being watered or harvested in you this night.
God longs for you to join Him in His adventurous mission for your life and for you to become His trusted and intimate ally. God trains the stouthearted during the journey. He looks for men, like you, who’ll not ask the faithless question about how? but will be brave enough to ask, when?
When God? I am willing. I know you are able. Prepare me as you have done with the men of Scripture. So that one day you will say to me, “… we’ll done my good and faithful servant.”
Oh, and remember to never trust the gift more than the Giver! Amen
It’s what’s in your heart that will change your family and not what’s in your wallet.
“Keep your heart with all diligence, for out from it flows the wellspring of life.” – Proverbs 4:23
Notice it doesn’t say wallet!
It also doesn’t say Capital One either! … It says your heart.
In the original book by L. Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz, it is revealed that the Tin Woodman used to be a man of flesh and blood, but a Wicked Witch cursed his axe to cut off all his body parts, which ultimately caused him to lose his heart. Thus, loosing his love for a Munchkin maid named Nimmie Amee.
The tinsmith replaced the woodsman’s torso, but was unable to replace the heart. Now completely made of tin, but without a heart, the Tin Man became cold and indifferent to the girl and the marriage never occurred. He wants a heart so he can rekindle his love for the girl and marry her.
You see, sin cursed our hearts, deadening our souls and separating us from God. Without a good heart, we remain lost and loveless, with no way to God. We too become cold and indifferent, losing our desire for God. Religion is like the tinsmith that can give us a tin torso, but can’t replace the heart.
Rather than an all powerful Oz, we need an all powerful Savior.
For those who believe in God and are faithful Christ followers, we’ve received a new heart!
Ezekiel 36:26 puts it this way:
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of you, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”
Notice that God also says He will put a new Spirit within us. This is because our new heart becomes His dwelling place, and from our restored and cleansed heart flows new life for God and others. We become living temples for God.
Now we can obey God from the inside out. Something that the Old Covenant could not do.
“… I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” – Ezekiel 36:27
So God places his Spirit inside our new hearts so that we have the ability to do his will, keep his laws, and create a new relationship within us.
Romans 2:29 tells us that the Holy Spirit changes our hearts. This is not an act of our will or effort but an internal operation done by God’s Spirit to those that believe the Gospel.
So, do what you’ve been born again to do, live a changed life because of your changed heart, and so, become that wellspring of life for your family and friends and to the stranger you meet; to your neighbors and coworkers.
Be the best life-giver because the Giver of Life dwells in your new heart!
Being a leader is becoming a servant and refusing all temptation to be otherwise.
A true leader is the first to repent, the first to seek forgiveness, and the first to rise after a fall. He is the first to extend grace to others because he’s the first to extend grace to himself. He sets a standard that others can achieve without the need for a diploma or a pinstriped suit.
A true leader has learned the art of diminishment. He understands that if others are to increase that he must decrease, so he looks for others to promote rather than himself. He restrains himself from being the source of revelation but instead helps others find the Source.
He is more interested in raising leaders and not followers.
He does not set his own life as a standard to follow. He knows his life is plagued with imperfection and that leaders don’t always do what is right; that’s impossible. Instead, his humility points to the sufficiency found only in Christ and not in himself. He is clothed in Christ’s humility rather than theological pedigrees.
A true leader refuses to sit on pedestals. He denies the acclaim and the applause of men. He understands fleshly accent will lead not only to his demise but to all those who foolishly elevate him.
So, he leads with humility, quiet strength, and fear reserved for the Lord. The voice and message that matters most to him are; “well done, my good and faithful servant,” and not the flattery of men.
Being a leader is becoming a servant and refusing all temptation to be otherwise.
Men and women of these qualities appear rare because humanity always looks in the wrong places for such leaders. The world looks for a King Saul, but God, he looks for a Shepherd boy.
Be careful following the “impeccable,” they may be a fake and a phony. A real man of God doesn’t hide his imperfections; he leads through them and because of them. Don’t become captivated by their charisma, but rather by their character.
The authenticity of a real man of God and a true leader is who they are after the crowds leave and what their wife and children see of them when no one’s looking.
A good man’s greatest compliments come from his wife and children.
“Here lies a faithful parishioner that never missed a Sunday morning service.”
Matthew 18:19-20
Amplified Bible
“Again I say to you, that if two believers on earth agree [that is, are of one mind, in harmony] about anything that they ask [within the will of God], it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in My name [meeting together as My followers], I am there among them.”
When the Church comes together in perfect unity, we form an abode or a habitation for the presence of God. It is our connecting and unity that creates the Church and not a building. What fills the Church is, therefore, not sinners but saints. Each is filled with the Holy Spirit and the likeness of Christ. We know we have achieved this when we have unconditional love for one another and respect and honor for those who are our servant-leaders.
This is not about the perfection of both the saints and those who lead. It’s about perfect love and devotion to Christ and his teaching. When we are devoted to Christ and his ways, grace, mercy, and love prevails. When we focus on the failings of one another, and especially those who must give an account to the Lord for their servant-leadership, there is no abiding presence of God. Unity is thwarted, the glory of God departs, and we simply become a building of brick and mortar.
Christ will not fill a building, no matter how pretty or architecturally pleasing it may be. He fills his people and, in a special way, when they gather in unity of faith, love, and sound teaching.
When we have unconditional love and forgiveness towards one another, and when we honor those in authority over us who must give an account to God, Christ dwells in our midst. Even when our gatherings are as few as two or three and have no building to gather in—we are the Church.
The concept and identity of the Church, which, by the way, is living and active, is not summed up by Sunday services. The reason why Christ said, “where two or three are gathered in my name there am I in their midst,” is not meant to be concealed by a building or regulated by a 90 minute service, but to become a mobile spiritual habitation of the glorious presence of God. Therefore, we are to be missional, just as Christ was during his earthly ministry. Right? Jesus didn’t set up shop at some local corner with a sign on the window, advertising, “open for business.” No! He went to where people gathered!
Stop “going” to Church and become the Church! Start loving, honoring, and preferring one another. Keep forgiving and loving one another as Christ has forgiven and loved you. Serve one another, as actually serving the Lord Jesus Christ. Do everything out of love and respect for the Lord. Devote yourselves to studying and reading the scriptures and practicing the presence of God within your own hearts and souls so that you may become a whole and a holy people when you gather. When the world sees your love for one another, they will believe your message!
Ministry is not meant for the minister. Rather, ministers are to teach the Church to minister first to one another and then to the world. Our individual and corporate maturity depends on each person operating in the spiritual gift given them by the Holy Spirit. The gifts given by Christ to the Church are offices, such as apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, and teachers. These offices are to train and equip the Church to do the work of ministry.
The officers are not meant to do all the work but to empower the church to carry out the work of ministry so that we all may reach maturity. An immature Church is one who produces spectators, which only increase from transient, church hopping attendees that are only devoted to themselves, and introverted church programs.
To the immature church, tithes, gifts, and offerings are only needed for self-sufficiency and to sustain the ministry strictly for the ministered. The tragic reality is that many churches simply send 10% of their revenue from tithes to missionaries rather than sending out people on a mission. Jesus Christ didn’t die to create token churches. Churches are not meant to become cemeteries of dead saints, scattered in the landscape, or sitting in church pews disengaged from ministry.
Did you know that recent studies have shown that sitting is more deadlier than smoking? Sitting around as Christians and as a church community is deadly to our testimony and our future glory.
An alive church is one that reproduces apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, and teachers. An alive church recognizes the expansion of the Kingdom of Heaven rather than the expansion of their sanctuaries. The alive Church sends people out and evangelizes new converts to take their place.
Time, talent, and treasure are outwardly focused on inwardly spirit-filled saints, gathered with an outward, unified conscience of obedience, and a call to “mission impossible,” rather than a mission for dead saints.
Letters in Red (said by Jesus): “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” – Matthew 18:18-20 (NKJV)
Become alive in Christ. Live life to the fullest in Christ. Aid and pray for your pastors. Pastors, train your congregations, and do not just preach at them.
Could you imagine if all churches became equipping, training, and sending churches?
I think Christ died outside the Temple, so the entire world would see his atonement and would know of his sacrifice.
I think Jesus wants the whole world to see his Church, also outside the Temple, outside of brick and mortar buildings, so all the world would see and know of his love.
We must become more than a location, more than a building on East 3rd and West. 4th Street. We must become a living body.
If not an active and living body, we’ll become nothing more and a pretty building with a tired minister of perpetual ministering to over-ministered people with no mission; landscaped with clusters of graves and headstones. The epitaphs will read:
“Here lies a faithful parishioner that never missed a Sunday morning service.”
That sounds a little, like the servant, who buried his master’s talent into the earth because he was afraid and so risked nothing. Matthew 25:14-30
Be a living body and not a tired old minister preaching to the chior.
Call To Courage 