WHY DO YOU PREACH THAT STUFF?!

Glenn on Leadership

The longer I live the more I'm convinced that I'm an "o.k." preacher.

Not particularly great, just good at best. And I'm o.k. with that.

The issue isn't that I settle for poor preparation, speak too long, don't include stories, am not focused enough on the Word of God at the core of what I speak. It isn't that I don't know what to do to mprove, can't discipline myself or don't pray as well as think hard before I speak, nor even that I don't rehearse many of my messages before delivering them. In fact I rather often time a typed message with a stopwatch on my laptop, actually trying to read it with feeling and good delivery. All that and more.

Yep- I ramble, repeat myself and at times get lost in stories that I don't finish. All true. Arggh!

Can I get better at the craft, the art of preaching? Yes, I surely can. I'll continue working at it because God and my hearers deserve the best I can offer.

But what I'm saying is that while many either dislike or won't begin to sync with me as a person or preacher (which I totally understand... for a lot of reasons), why some actually listen, read and "get moved" by what I say is also clear to me. At least I believe the negatives and positives are clear by my way of thinking!

After 37 years of this, I think those who track with what I say do so more due to -what- I say, that is, the content, than the style. What -do- I typically say?

Mostly variations about why people truly need to be saved and actually follow Jesus Christ as Lord. Of course I speak about His love, His Word which is utter Truth, about the compassion the Father has for us, the power and grace the Holy Spirit brings, the essential need for accountability, etc., but the core message I think God has given me to share isn't a "feel-good", "get what you want", "God is cool, enjoy Him" and nothing more message. Why? And how is a message of personal cross-bearing, self-denial and laying one's life down for others accepted... by ANYONE, especially delivered by the bumbling, flawed Kaiser?

I suspect for about 3 key reasons:

A great many who have grown up in churches where personal, biblical, applied holiness and loving obedience (that is, discipleship) isn't truly accented in all that many messages. The "why" of this isn't what I care to comment on here, but in short, there are a lot of people who recognize that loving obedience to Jesus and His Word isn't legalism, rejection of God's grace, hard law or any other thing you may like to refer to it as but merely the biblical, obvious response of the truly loved to The Beloved One.

There is something about endurance, sustained discipleship that isn't just done in human, white-knuckled frustration or despair. There is a walk and I mean a genuine, agape-love based walk with Jesus in daily, continual relationship that is both the most fulfilling thing one can experience this side of heaven- and it's also inclusive of a sometimes painful, suffering, the denying of self, picking up one's cross daily and not a conceptual relationship but an actual relational experience of FOLLOWING Jesus.

Leaders who are ignorant or afraid or otherwise unwilling to include at least some accent on this reality, and yes- MODEL it are not in my view, doing responsible service to those who they serve. Put another way, contiual ice cream sells but it does not disciple. Continual spinach doesn't sell. We need both sweetness -and- light, the crown and the cross. So do those we influence.

I will never neglect nor ignore nor soft-peddle such a message because it was and remains core to Jesus' own teaching about what it means to -become-, to grow, to actually have one's foot not in the boat but out on the water of close intentional relationship with Him. I don't entirely separate one's salvation from one's discipleship. While some think of discipleship as a sort of "work", or confuse what I say to the extent of thinking I'm saying it's our works that save us, they are simply wrong, wrong and wrong about this.

When a person truly repents, they are not only a son or daughter of a loving, accepting Savior (and yes, they are truly that) but they are equally in close proximity to a Lord, the Lord Christ. If He is Lord, then He is Master. If He is Master, then decisions come under His lordship, that is, we seek His input in all things, certainly via His Word, via godly leadership who will tell us biblical truths, via personal and shared prayer. We wait for instructions, we don't simply live out our days rejecting anything that doesn't fit our personal idea of bliss.

Is this not a reasonable, scriptural discipleship message? Is the Christian Church (all true gatherings of Christ-followers world-wide) overdosed on such disciples? Do too many take God, His Word, His Church and His commands too seriously?

I'm not saying that true followers of Jesus must now slave away our days in misery and focus on the negatives of sin or law and do some sort of hard time breaking up rocks in ninety-degree heat... I'm saying that God is now God and not us. I'm accenting that Jesus calls the shots and we seek Him to propel us to those targets in life that HE wants us to touch.

It was Jesus Himself Who said "In the world you shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world!" Indeed so! I don't call us to more misery, I call us to the God Who IS God and who gives us grace to face the trials and pain of life in a fallen world, to live in it yet beyond and above it in a fellowship with the Lord and His people that goes deep, real and free. But it is with a cost, just as it costs to not seek Him, not love Him most of all, not follow and serve Him and those in need. There is incredible joy and fulfillment in serving Him! But that's not the whole story. And every Christian leader who knows both Jesus and the Word of God well knows it! For any number of reasons it sometimes seems few are willing to say so.

A Christ-follower enjoys Him forever... but is also under new Management.

I think it is this message that is truly obnoxious, disturbing, even maddening to many, and again, while I won't elaborate here I think this is true for many reasons.

So how is it that people actually WANT to hear such a message?

Many say they can't recall such stuff preached in their local church or at their denominational gatherings. Some tell me it's been years. Many say (regardless of stream or style of their place of fellowship) such an accent is rarely brought them... that they're saved but not the growing, maturing disciples they wish to become.

Certainly this message comes through in much Christian Education or Adult Bible Study classes, or in small group messages and sharing in many, many places throughout the body of Christ in the world. I've heard it and am sure of it.

Yet many speak or write to me saying their own experience has been quite the opposite.

Perhaps God leads me to share such a message because they've not "heard it" where they are and an occasion to hear it from someone else, maybe even me- will help them "get it".

But let me share just one example of the stuff Jesus says that you rarely hear quoted in polite church society:

Matthew 10

33 But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.

34 Don't think that I came to send peace on the earth. I didn't come to send peace, but a sword.

35 For I came to set a man at odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

36 A man's foes will be those of his own household.

37 He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me isn't worthy of me.

38 He who doesn't take his cross and follow after me, isn't worthy of me.

39 He who seeks his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.

How can such flaming language and calling be shared in our "relax or if not, at least take what you like, live and let live, it's nobody's business but yours" culture? And yes, most cultures have such an attitude.

The Words of Christ must be shared and not only the one's we like to hear! Such truths though difficult to hear must not be left hidden.

Loving God FIRST, BEST and with real abandon and depth IS the call to all who say they would have Jesus. In fact, it's He that must have us.

Jesus always cuts against the grain of selfish, greedy, lustful, me-first concepts because He knows the cost one eventually pays for living like that.

God help us to speak the truth in love, to live what we preach, to offer an example not of sinless perfection (impossible, for me and anyone reading this) but authentic, scriptural discipleship not lived out of theory or self-will and in our own strength, but out of love, the power of the Holy Spirit and true deepening relationship with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit!

Does such a life include a cross and suffering, struggle and pain? Does it include loss? Yes. But those who lose -their- petty concepts of "life" for the sake of Jesus and His Gospel will FIND TRUE LIFE. How do I know this with any certainty? Ha! I will gladly spend and be spent for you because of Him. May God help you spend yourself for Jesus and others... and you'll know full well why I say I've found true life, the life of a disciple.

What passes for "life" outside of genuine discipleship is something else and something less. True discipleship is love lived. It is love experienced, love shared. Love is most costly thing given us- and the most essential thing both a disciple and those who lead them have to share.

God the Holy Spirit continues to school leaders who school others! He calls us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. He calls us to pick up -our- personal cross daily and truly follow Jesus. While He clearly brings true, solid INformation (His Word, the Bible), this is only to school us into an enduring foundation, moving us into spiritual formation and genuine Christ-like transformation. Is this what we are speaking, writing and caring about?

How do the sheep get rightly fed without such focus? Why is it so many pray the "prayer of salvation" and never grow, or fully backslide, or exhibit so little fruit of Jesus' character and values in their lives?

I beg you to never forget nor neglect to share the fact that God's love always involves two crosses- the one Jesus died on and the one He calls each of us to carry. This calling does not change. It is always true, relevant and essential. God help us tell and model the truth that both we and Your people will grow and be fruitful with the sort of fruit that remains!

Posted 05/20/08