All posts tagged: Conviction

A Leader’s Conviction

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Almost every Sunday morning before I open the doors of our congregation, I say to myself, “These doors will always be opened, even for a thousand generation, until our Lord returns.” Every time we receive an offering, sign a check to pay our church bills, I say to myself – “God will always meet our needs as a church.” Sometimes I audibly say these words in front of the entire church, “our church has been around for more than 15o years. God has been faithful and He is not about ready to abandon us. I am completely persuaded that He who began a good work in us, will be faithful till the end. Souls will be saved New believers will be baptized They will be discipled They will grow and develop into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ And they will go out and multiply I am completely persuaded! I refuse to allow doubt, fear, uncertainty, and anxiety to intimidate me.” You know what? I am not backing down from those convictions. Doors are going to get closed …

Patience is more about long-term endurance than it is about short- term

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I finished reading Mohler’s “Conviction to lead” yesterday. It is a great read jam packed with lots of substance. I immensely enjoyed the chapter on the “passion to lead”, and “the leader understands worldview.” But I was more impressed with chapter 23 – Leadership that Endures. The following paragraphs are from chapter 23. The title above each paragraph is not in the book. Here are three things I want you to consider over this weekend: Consider Patience Patience is a virtue that is highly honored by Christians.The Bible reveals patience to be one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul prayed that the church would be “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). Evidently, patience and endurance and joy belong together. Paul also told Timothy to preach “with complete patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). Consider long-term not short-term. We often think of patience as a short-term issue. We are impatient in a checkout line, impatient in traffic, and horribly impatient …

Break my heart for what breaks Yours

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Heal my heart and make it clean Open up my eyes to the things unseen Show me how to love like You have loved me Break my heart for what breaks Yours We are living in a day and time where everything we see or hear, potentially, has a deadening effect on us spiritually. The movies, the tv shows, the music and even our culture has this deadening effect on our sensitivity to what is holy and of God. Some of us have already become desensitized to these horrors and filth all around. To become desensitized is to become numb, stupefied or less likely to feel shocked or distressed at scenes of horror, sexual perversion, cruelty, violence and suffering by overexposure to such images. That is why a prayer like “break my heart Lord, for what breaks yours” is so powerful and timely. Would you join me today and for the rest of the week in praying this prayer – “break my heart Lord for what breaks yours?”. Would you join in sounding the alarm …

Cowards Do Nothing!

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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke When it comes to evil invading a man’s life and marriage, his children’s lives, his work, and his community, the easiest thing for him to do is nothing. We are losing the battle with evil today because far too many “good” men have done just that-nothing. Doing nothing is like gravity; it just happens. Nothing is the fruit of possivity. Nothing is the consequence of a lack of conviction. It’s the by-product of lazy leadership at home. Doing nothing express no risk, exerts no initiative, and experiences no reward or truimph. Doing nothing is the natural bent of most men. Excerpts: Dennis Rainey, Stepping Up: A call to Courageous Manhood (Little Rock: FamilyLife Publishing, 2011), 113