Another birthday in the books. I won’t tell you which one I just celebrated but I will give you three hints. 1 – I clearly remember being sent home from school on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. 2 – I can tell you exactly where I was when Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon. 3 – I took Home Economics, learned to type on a manual typewriter, and mastered shorthand during my high school years. Aging While my actual age may still be a question, anyone can easily deduce by these “hints” that I now fall into the season of life affectionately referred to as “senior.” And as such, I sometimes (especially near birthday season) am guilty of viewing my aging in terms of loss. I mourn the fleeting time; bemoan the gray hair, wrinkles, skin spots, and extra weight; and long to hold on to what was. Allowing myself to get caught up in culture’s view of aging, I lose sight of God’s truth. That is not how I want to live out this gift of another season. Rather than setting my heart on things I do not have – the precious bygone memories, the physical frame of my youth, the things I remember as good – and allowing time to rob me blind. I want to be a “senior” who  embraces God’s design for aging. Set your mind on things above. In God’s Word I read, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” ( Colossians 3:2 ). The truth is, when I allow myself to be ruled by time and its perceived threats, I am guilty of setting my mind on things of the earth. My eyes are not where they are supposed to be – on Christ. Conversely when I set my mind on things above, I am reminded of power-wielding truth. God is greater than time. His promises extend beyond all time’s limits, and through Christ, time’s curse has been overturned. With my mind set on God, I also recall Jesus’ promise that He came so that I may have  abundant life  ( John 10:10 ). It was never His intention that I spend my “senior” years in life-sapping fear, regret, or sadness. Jesus came to bring life, no matter my season! Consider these  eight remarkable benefits of aging . Each one bears witness to Jesus’ promise of abundant life in this season. They are worth celebrating, and they are  ours for the claiming. 1. Abiding Contentment But godliness with contentment is great gain –  1 Timothy 6:6 We spend decades searching for contentment. However, in our busy years of raising a family, earning an income, tending relationships, and figuring how to navigate life, contentment often remains elusive. One precious benefit of aging is an abiding contentment – contentment that comes from resting in and trusting in God’s sovereign plan. After walking with Him through the challenges and successes of everyday life, in this season we can experience a contentment that comes from knowing Him experientially. We can also enjoy contentment in discovering what God has for us in  this  season. We’re more comfortable in our own skins. We can be our selves. There’s less clutter in our lives, and we know what matters most. Perhaps that is why we are so comfortable wearing that faded, threadbare, old sweatshirt or sweater day after day no matter what our kids say! 2. Increased Wisdom Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding –  Proverbs 3:13  ESV With age comes a plethora of life experiences. In fact, “seniors” are the one who have truly “been there; done that!” All this experience helps us develop a broader map of points of view and a deeper reservoir of options for resolution and compromise. Our life-experience also aids in the development of increased social graces, heightened empathy, and better control over our emotions. Our  culture  does not place a high value on the wisdom of age, but God places great value on it. We have a well of wisdom, and it’s worth celebrating. It’s also worth sharing. Don’t hide it. Don’t let it go to waste. God’s design is always best. You have a lifetime of experience and opportunities that didn’t exist when your primary focus was your children or your career. Find an opportunity and go share! 3. Unshakable Faith The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. –  Psalm 138:8 As we age, the joy of unshakable  faith  in God can be ours. This benefit – Unshakable Faith – is one that must be developed. We don’t get to wake up one day and claim it simply because we’ve aged. God uses all our experiences to grow us and shape us. Nothing is ever wasted. Even the hard and the very difficult are for our good and for the work He is preparing for us. So, we watch. We: observe His work in our life. notice His hand in orchestrating our family’s history. mark the keeping of His promises, and lean into His character. And we learn – to relinquish control, to trust in His sovereign hand, to surrender to the God of the universe. Then as we age, we look back. We see and we know. He was with us. He did it! We enjoy Unshakable Faith. 4. Spiritual Strength So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. –  2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Generally, as we age, we experience a loss of physical strength. Changes take place. Our bodies deteriorate. Unable to do the things we used to do, and full of aches and pains, we are prone to grieve this earthly loss of a strong, healthy body. Once again, we need to be reminded to turn our gaze to things above. Instead of focusing on our loss, this is a time for setting our minds on things above and celebrating the spiritual strength that can be ours. God’s Word tells us in  2 Corinthians 4:16-18  that our inner self is being strengthened day by day and that our strength comes through  faith , faith in the Lord. What does Spiritual Strength look like? Spending time with God and becoming intoxicated with Him. Trusting God with our needs and burdens. Knowing that nothing touches us – nothing – that hasn’t come through His hands. Asking God to make us a model for others to imitate. Seeing the hand of God in everything. Giving all the glory to God by taking every opportunity to showcase His power and grace. Now that is something to celebrate! 5. A More Acute Sense of Priority Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. –  Psalm 73:25 Aging generally changes one’s perception of time. Increasingly more aware of our nearness to the “finish line,” our outlook tends to shift. We have a keener sense of what is important and where our focus needs to be. No longer feeling the need to rush through life, we savor. Seniors take fewer things for granted, are less likely to procrastinate, and seek out positive ways to spend their time. We embrace family and tighten up our circle of friends. In this beautiful season of refined priorities, we can enjoy time with the Lord as we’ve never enjoyed it before. We are free to spend more time in His Word, in  prayer , and in serving others. Letting go of the trivial, we hold on to what is most important by living lives that are purposeful and full of intent. 6. Eternal Perspective This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord –  Ephesians 3:11 In the younger seasons of life, we talk about eternity. We even sing about eternity. But if we are honest, we’d have to admit that it’s often difficult to think beyond the next feeding, load of laundry, or day of work. One precious benefit of aging is that God “gifts” to us an eternal perspective. It is in this season that we are better able to think beyond this life. Our eyes are more open to God’s plan, His purpose, and His vision. Surrounded by a culture that’s shouting at the top of its voice that it’s “me-time,” God tells us something different. He says that it’s time to get to know Him better ( John 17:3 ) and to invest in future generations ( Psalm 145:4 ). Seniors enjoy getting to know God better through more time spent in  Bible  reading and prayer, by more freely exhibiting gratitude, and worshipping more deeply. With a teachable spirit and sensitivity towards God’s purpose, they deny themselves a life of self-indulgence and ask, “Lord, what do you have for me in this season of life?” Then looking around and making themselves available, they grab their assignment. Discipling, mentoring, ministering, teaching – they serve, model, and invest in future generations. The beneficiaries of eternal perspective, seniors live for God’s glory and the advancement of His kingdom. 7. New Roles One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. –  Psalm 145:4 For many of us, this season of aging also brings with it the dreaded empty nest. With heads hung low and hearts aching, we wonder what in the world we will do when our children are gone. We seriously doubt being able to survive the loss. But that’s simply not the way it is at all. One of the beautiful benefits to aging is that we get to experience life from different vantage points. Rather than spending our years in grief and sorrow, we get to enjoy new roles as consultant, mentor, and grandparent. We don’t lose our children, but our relationship with them does change. No longer the caregiver, commander, and coach, we take on the role of consultant. Free from the responsibility of calling the plays, we now parent from a place of wisdom that was gained through a lifetime of experience. And in this season, our reach can even go beyond our own children. Embracing the role of mentor, our involvement in the form of conversation, discipleship, and teaching can help to point members of the next generation to Christ. Our investment gives them the chance to have their own encounters with God and learn to lean into Him. But let’s not stop there. It’s getting good! Absolutely one of the best benefits of aging, by far, is the new role of grandparent. Having grandchildren in our lives allows us to experience the joys of young children again without having to carry the heavy weight of daily responsibility. Grandparenting offers us an opportunity to build deep, new relationships, share our knowledge and expertise, pass along family traditions, and help point our grandchildren to Jesus. It’s one of the best gigs around! 8. Additional Time So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. –  Psalm 90:12 No, seniors are not granted a supply of extra hours to add onto each day, but retirement does help to free up some of the hours we already have. And one of the benefits of aging is that we have a deeper appreciation for that time and seek to use it well. We have more time to spend with our loved ones, and we embrace that time with family and friends tightly. If we’re married, this season affords us more time to do things together and to draw even closer in our relationship. In addition to enjoying more time with others, our senior years offer us time to get involved in things that were once no more than fantasy. We have greater opportunity to seek adventures, chase dreams, and pursue passions. It’s a time to be creative and to appreciate the creativity of others. And if we’re not sure about our dreams or passions or creative bent, it’s a time for rediscovery. The additional time also enables us to better participate in organizations we deem worthwhile and to give back through the act of volunteering. And most importantly, this benefit means we have more time to spend with God. More time in prayer,  Bible  study, praise, thanksgiving, and worship. More time in His presence, beholding His glory, and becoming more like Christ. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.–  2 Corinthians 3:18 The choice is ours. We can choose to spend this season of aging mourning the fleeting time, bemoaning the changes to our physical frame, and trying to hold on to what used to be, or we can choose to celebrate the remarkable benefits of aging. “Don’t regret growing older. It’s a privilege denied to many.” (author unknown) “This article first appeared on  Crosswalk.com , March 11, 2019.”

People are really struggling during this global pandemic. Many are not even aware how much the stress of what is going on in the world is impacting them. I’m feeling it, and so I certainly believe others must, as well. We live in a very chaotic world. As believers we pray for peace on the streets of America, wisdom for our leaders and for godly men and women to rise in leadership. The times we live in call for these things to weigh on our minds, and so we pray, as we should. We pray for justice in our country, for peace between people. A future exists post-COVID. God has plans and intentions for us. The Circle of Control In making decisions about how we choose to live, I want to represent decision making in two circles. Within the first circle – the  circle of control  – encompasses the things in our lives that we have no control over. Things you have control over include: Your attitude. Your thinking. In fact, the scripture tells us to take captive every thought out of obedience to Christ. Philippians 4:8 : Whatever is right and pure and admirable, praiseworthy think on such things. So clearly God has given us control over what we choose to think. What comes out of your mouth – what you choose to say. How you interact with others. How you choose to handle your finances. How you choose to handle your health. We have this opportunity to make decisions about how we are going to choose to live as we go into this post-COVID world. “Figure out what pleases Christ and then do it” ( Ephesians 5:10 MSG). We are to do those things that bring Him glory, and benefit our family, our community and ourselves. We can decide and choose how we are going to do these five essential areas of our lives, building our faith, interacting with our family, handling our finances, taking care of our health and how we approach our work. These are five areas, and there are others that we do have control over. Circle of Concern The second circle, the  circle of concern,  are things that worry us. What’s going to happen with COVID? When is it going to end? Is there going to be a vaccine? What’s going to happen in the economy? Who is going to be elected the next President and the next Senate and House? What about my kids? We have many concerns that we have no control over. Our circle of concern has grown in our world. It seems almost chaotic with all the things going. When we watch the news, go online or interact with people, the circle of concern weighs on us. We have to give everything within the circle of concern to God. In my article about 3 Things you Need in a COVID world, I also recommend you consider this: Decide how you intend to live. Making a decision gives you direction. The times we live in right now are filled with a great deal of fear and uncertainty. Some of you probably are experiencing it pretty significantly and maybe haven’t shared with others what you are feeling. Whenever there’s fear and uncertainty, it drives us to make decisions in our lives. We will witness people coming through this pandemic making decisions for their marriage, for their finances, for their work and it’s going to be reactionary, done out of fear and uncertainty. It is important for those of us who are followers of Christ to decide how we intend to live in a post-COVID world. Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from the Lord.” In ancient times, they cast lots. At the crucifixion they cast lots for the robe of Jesus. People took a small stone with their name or mark on it, and then they would throw the stones. Today we would throw dice or draw a card. Your lot was cast. You got what you got by chance. But the wisdom of Solomon in the rest of our verse says: “but every decision is from the Lord.” We don’t live in a world of chance, even though it feels like it at times. Some of you have faced difficult things in your life, and you feel like it came out of left field. But God is not a God of chance. Ultimately, while we make decisions, the outcome is in God’s hands. Declare how you intend to live. Setting a goal, declaring your intentions increases your commitment. Declaring whatever we’ve decided really reinforces it. There is nothing magical that happens when we say it, but something seems to happen inside of us when we declare it. In our culture, we require people taking an oath of office to declare it out loud. When people get married, they declare their vows out loud. We stand together sometimes and give a pledge of allegiance to our country. Paul said “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” ( Romans 10:9-10 NIV ). When we make a declaration of our intention for Christ, it’s not for his benefit; it’s for our benefit. It’s with the heart that we believe, but with the mouth that our confession is made. We say, “I love you,” to those we care about. Something occurs in our spirits when we make a declaration like that. Do the next right one thing! Doing one thing daily to manage how you intend to live will result in progress, peace and purpose in your life. In the Book of James, he reminds us to be  doers  of the Word. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do” ( James 1:22-25 NIV ). So, those are the three things needed for our post-COVID world: decide, declare and do! Making a decision will give us direction. Declaring increases our commitment. Doing one thing daily to manage how you intend to live will result in progress, peace, and purpose in your life. We live in a very chaotic world. As believers we pray for peace on the streets of America, wisdom for our leaders and for godly men and women to rise in leadership. The times we live in call for these things to weigh on our minds, and so we pray, as we should. We pray for justice in our country, for peace between people. A future exists post-COVID. God has plans and intentions for us. There are some decisions you have to make. Consider this: We have a feature online called  The Intentionals ,  where I take a top ten list on a certain topic and list those tens things out. A few years ago, I created one that included the top ten questions that we need to ask ourselves when we are considering making an important decision, but I’ll note a couple of them in the list that are important as we make decisions about what our lives will be like in the future. ( Get the complete list here .) VISION: Will the decisions I’m making for my life move me closer to a life goal or towards solving a problem in my life? Philippians 3:14 says, “I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (NLT). The decisions you make can move you in the right direction, the big picture of how you want to end. INTEGRITY: Will this decision affect any commitments or vows that I have made in life? GOD’s WORD: Does the Bible speak to decisions? As I’m trying to make decisions about my life and relationships and culture and what have you, what does God’s Word have to say about it? TIMING: Is this the best time to make a decision? I suspect there’s going to be a lot of people making decisions in the midst of this COVID-19 that they will later regret. We see some of the things going on in the streets of America that probably wouldn’t have happened six months ago. Most of us are in the process of making decisions, so I hope you find it helpful to consider the circles of control, the circles of concern and then the process you go through to make a decision, because decision-making is important. www.theintentionallife.com . Used by permission of the author.

One of our favorite games as a family is called Oh Heck. You might know it as Up and Down the River. The reason this simple card game is so great is that while the rules of the game remain the same, every hand there is a different trump and a different number of cards. Throw in the fact that you can play the game with anywhere from two to seven players, and every game is different. That feels a lot like parenting a child in 2019. The only thing that is the same is that everything is always changing. In April our fifteen year old daughter asked if she could create an Instagram account. We said yes. When is the right time to let your child engage in social media? More broadly, how do you parent children relating to technology? A friend of ours, Diana Henderson, recently created a very helpful video tutorial called Tech in the Home: A Survival Guide for Parents. In it she expresses the struggle of so many parents. Like Diana we were parents who envisioned ourselves as creating a technology free home. We wouldn’t let screens have an undue influence in our children’s lives. We didn’t want them to be our babysitters, we didn’t want our children addicted to video games and social media. What we discovered was that the rules kept changing underneath our feet, both because of the constantly changing landscape of technology as well as the maturity of our kids. We are far from the exemplars of parenting well in the midst of the ever changing technological culture, but I want to share some of the best things we’ve learned along the way and point you to Diana’s videos as a great resource to help sharpen your parenting in this area. 1) Create some hard and fast rules. Get unity as parents as what the basic rules of the home will be. Our rules changed at different ages, but whether it is only one show on weekdays, or technology only comes after reading and chores, or no cell phones before age X, or only pre-approved TV shows and video games, you need to be united as parents. I guarantee you whatever rules you create your kids will immediately begin testing them. They will discover the weaknesses of your systems. So be thoughtful and reasonable about the rules you set up. I believe that monitoring/blocking is a must in any home today. It’s better to set up a set of rules that is more lax that you will actually enforce than to set up an idealized list of rules that will never be followed. 2) Focus on the heart, not the rules. Rules are helpful, but don’t make them the master. What you care about are your children’s hearts. You are helping shape citizens. You are training their affections. One day your children will have autonomy. What will happen then? If you’ve created children who perfectly obey an idealized set of rules only to leave for college and throw themselves into endless hours of gaming, then you haven’t succeeded. How can you help your children internalize the heartbeat of the rules you have created? How can you help create healthy ruts in their habits and desires? I would rather have my children fail at home and walk through that failure with them than have them show outward compliance while inwardly they are chafing. One of our children is particularly drawn to technology. We are constantly working to figure out how to tweak the rules and reframe the message so that, by God’s grace, it hits the heart. Parents also have a responsibility to appropriately care and protect the hearts of their children. The research on the impact of social media on the hearts of teens, particularly girls, is sobering. With that in mind, we allowed our children to have access to texting only for family members and friends approved by us long before we allowed social media to enter into the picture. The negative impact of teen girls in particular of feeling judged by others and feeling the pressure of conforming to societal expectations regarding body image is sobering. The reality, however, is that we are not going to roll back the reality of social media in the lives of our children. It will be part of what it means to be a human being for the rest of the 21st Century. Just as I don’t believe I can appropriately pastor a congregation while being disengaged from social media today, I know that my kids will need to learn how to utilize this technology that has great capacity for good and evil. And, in the midst of the world we live in, we must help our children become wise, strong, and righteous digital citizens. They must eventually learn how live faithfully in both the real and the digital world. 3) Producing vs. consuming. I learned a lot from Diana on this framework. In her Survival Guide, Diana has us consider that technology itself can be used creatively for producing or passively for consuming. We need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. How can we encourage productive use of technology? Our son (13 years old) recently has been working on a play with a friend from school on a shared Google document. That is a creative and wonderfully productive use of technology. Likewise, we want to encourage our children to foster their gifts in creative ways by things like learning how to create and edit videos, design graphics, etc. I’m not doing my job as a parent if I don’t help prepare them for a 21st Century workforce where these productive tools may well be important aspects of their vocation. Our son recently joined the tech team at church. It has been so fun to watch him dive into learning about media presentation and lighting. He is using his love of technology to serve Christ’s body and learning great skills along the way. We continue to have all of these conversations with our kids and have found that the conversations themselves are invaluable. When our daughter came to us and asked about being on Instagram, she encouraged us to monitor how it was impacting her. She said that she had two reasons for wanting to join: first, maintaining her friendships in New Jersey; second, sharing what she produces as an artist (she’s a great artist). So, this time, we said yes. We recognize that the rules are different for each of our kids and for you and your kids. We recognize we’ve failed as much as we’ve succeeded. And we recognize that this is the messy world of parenting today. But in that, we also don’t fear. God is still in control and he is going to be praised in our successes and failures as parents. What have you learned as you have raised your kids in a technologically saturated world? www.thebeehive.live . Used by permission

I want to talk today about you. There are a lot of questions about what kind of unique witness should the church have at a time like this—how do you pastorally care for people who are experiencing anxiety on a unique level? But I don’t want to talk about those. I want to talk about you. If you have ever flown on an airplane, you know that the flight attendants are required to give a safety briefing at the beginning of every flight. At one point they always say, “If the cabin pressure falls, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling.” Then they show you an orange cup-shaped mask attached to a hose and demonstrate how to put it on, while saying these words: “Don’t try to help anybody else unless you put your own oxygen mask on first.” That’s because if you pass out from lack of oxygen, you’re not going to be able to help anybody else. That’s what I want to talk to you about. Two days after the attacks on 9/11, I got a phone call from a pastor in Oklahoma City. There was a bombing in Oklahoma City, as many of you know, in 1995—a domestic terrorist bombing that not only killed 168 people, but maimed hundreds more. Oklahoma City is not a massively big city, and it had a huge impact on all the families and caused a great deal of suffering. What the pastor told me was that, “You have to be very, very careful. At first, you’re going to go into 200% overdrive, and you’re going to be helping everybody and talking to everybody and dealing with everything.” He said, “Right away you’ll just think you’re sort of tired and you just need one good break and it’ll be okay, but no. Two or three years later, suddenly everybody on your church staff will go into depression. They will have burned out. They will have been eating into their emotional and spiritual capital, as it were, and not realizing it. Don’t let it happen to you.” Now, I wish I could tell you that we avoided that. We didn’t, actually. Over the next five years, the same thing happened to us. The typical type of ministry burnout usually has to do with the minister’s own heart, identifying too much with the ministry, making their own ego basically the same as the ministry. If the ministry does well, you do well. The ministry doesn’t, you’re a bad person. That kind of burnout is more our own fault. But in times of crisis like this, the burnout is different. You have to get your oxygen mask on or the burnout will be deeper and more widespread. And you cannot help anybody else if you don’t have your own mask on, spiritually speaking. There are four texts I’d like you to reflect on as the days go on. They give us four principles for avoiding burnout: extraordinary prayer, resilience without stoicism, radical refocusing, and gospel resolve. MARK 1:35-39 : EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also. For that is why I have come.”  This was not a perfunctory prayer; this was a lot of prayer. The more popular Jesus became and the more people he ministered, the more time he had to get away to spend in solitary prayer. The exterior ministry of strength was contingent upon an internal dependence on his father. The stronger he was out there, in a sense, the more dependent he was on his father. We’re talking about immersing oneself in the Bible and prayer. Having time daily, weekly, monthly in spite of the crisis—getting your oxygen mask on first. We’ve got to do what Jesus did. He was at the beginning of the most important ministry in the history of the human race. People are after him for healing and all their needs, but he took the time to pray. We’ve got to take the time to rest. We need to get to bed on time. We’ve got to take our time in meditation and prayer. We cannot let those things go. If anything, we have to enhance them. Extraordinary stress takes extraordinary prayer. 2 CORINTHIANS 4:18 : RESILIENCE WITHOUT STOICISM “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we’re being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” This passage has fascinated me for years. Resilience without stoicism. Paul is not saying, “Keep a stiff upper lip. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t let anybody see you sweat. Don’t express emotion.” He actually tells us we’re pressed, we’re perplexed, and we’re struck down. He says he has been knocked flat but not destroyed. There are different translations of Proverbs 3 , but it basically says that when troubles come, don’t make light of them or faint under them. Some translations say don’t make light of them or lose heart. There is permission to lament. There is permission to cry. There’s permission to break down, to literally get on the floor, and yet not stay there. In a sense, extraordinary prayer is necessary for this principle. The end of the passage says, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. Because what is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal.” This refocusing of perspective is what gets us off the ground. But there is a real need for grieving. In this world, many people respond to tragedy with sheer stoicism or total brokenness. This is neither of those. It is lamentation. The psalms are particularly helpful with lamenting. You need not only be in the psalms, but when you’re doing your solitary time of study and prayer, make sure whatever else you’re reading, whatever else you’re thinking about, you include the psalms. They bring study and prayer together. 1 CHRONICLES 12:32 : RADICAL REFOCUSING “The men of Issachar who understood the times and knew what Israel should do…” The verse is about the people who went out into the wilderness to throw their lot in with David when he was a fugitive. These men were taking a radical step. They left their families and certainly left the safety they had in the rest of the country where Saul was king, but they recognized that David was God’s anointed. The verse states the reason they sided with him was because they “understood the times,” or as we might put it today, the cultural moment. Just as a good farmer realizes it’s time to plant or it’s time to harvest, they understood the seasons. During times like we are in now, we have to—at least for the sake of brainstorming—break free from all our older goals, traditions, and priorities, and question everything about our ministry, except the things the Bible absolutely prescribes. We need to be willing to think outside familiar categories and pathways. This means to question everything but the things that the Bible mandates. Things have changed, so we should be careful to know what in our approach to people and ministry needs to change as well. There may be many, many things that we’ve done in the past that we should continue. There should be some goals that we should stick with, but we need to re-examine everything to understand the moment we live in. ESTHER 4:12 : GOSPEL RESOLVE Last, there is gospel resolve. This principle does not work without the first three. If we aren’t getting enough rest and spending enough time with God despite the huge amount of pressure to basically work 24 hours a day, if we aren’t expressing our emotions to God and yet doing it with resilience, and if we aren’t rethinking our ministry and what we should be doing, gospel resolve can lead to burnout. Gospel resolve means that at some point, we just do it. At some point, we just summon up the willpower and do the next thing. Elisabeth Elliot used to tell me and my wife that sometimes you just put one foot in front of another. You do the next thing, even if that is just combing your hair. You don’t know where you got the strength to do it, but you just do it. It’s gospel resolve. The Bible gives us a great example of gospel resolve and finish with this. “When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, he sent back this answer: “Do you think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape? For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place, and you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you were brought to your royal position for such a time as this? Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it’s against the law. And if I perish, I perish.” That’s resolve. Okay, I’m going to do it. I want you to consider—whoever you are, wherever you are, if you’re a ministry leader, if you’re a church leader—you have been brought to the position you’re in for such a time as this. You need to have Esther’s resolve. You need to say, “Okay. I’m going to do it.” It’s going to be very difficult. Do you see how this would lead to burnout if you don’t do the other three things? With the other three principles, there could be many days in which you just say, “I’m going to do it and if I perish, I perish. I’m going to be obedient. I’m going to be faithful to the people. I’m going to be faithful to my Lord.” Actually, like Esther, you won’t perish—and you know why, of course. You have your eye on the one who perished for us and rose from the dead. Jesus made atonement for his people and now, like Esther, stands before the throne of the universe, and the favor he procured is ours. That’s the reason why just looking at what he did for us can strengthen our gospel resolve through him. Here’s my prayer for you: Our Father, we ask that over the next two or three years, in which there will be death and fear, that you will be with your people. There will be economic devastation. Many of our ministries may experience economic contraction, but don’t let there be any contraction of our ministries at the spiritual level. I pray that all of the leaders reading this right now will go to these passages and say, “This is how I will get through. This is how we will get through. This is how we’ll be able to lift up the name of Jesus over the next few years.” We expect and pray that many, many people who are spiritually careless right now will listen to your word and turn to you. We pray you work through the people who are reading these words. I pray the words of these passages from scripture would live in us and prevent us from sinking in the mire of depression and burnout. We pray that you would bear us up. Help us to walk on the waves as we fix our eyes on you. Don’t let us be like Peter who looked at the waves and not on you and sank, but rather let us look at you and walk on the water. We pray that you would help us in all these waves. www.redeemercitytocity.com . Used by permission.

Building Up One Another As a child of God, you have a very special relationship with other Christians. Paul's letter to the Ephesians pictures this relationship in two different ways. First, every believer is a member of the Body of Christ. Christ is the Head of His Body. His Body has many members, each of which is very essential. Paul says that every member of the Body must grow up and work together. "We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:15, 16). Second, the people of God are growing into a temple for the habitation of God. "[You are] built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:20-22). If the Body of Christ is to become mature and the temple is to be built as a dwelling place for God, every individual Christian must be committed to building up each other. Edification is the biblical term for this process (Eph. 4:12). Evangelism leads to spiritual birth. Edification results in spiritual growth. The goal of edification is spiritual maturity and Christ-likeness. As each individual member does his part to build up the others in the Body, the entire Body grows up and becomes mature and healthy. There are different ways to edify the Body of Christ. Many New Testament phrases with the words "one another" or "edify" suggest specific ways to build up one another. Let's look at some examples. 1. "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (Eph. 4:29). We so easily speak to one another words that hurt, criticize, or tear down or words that are just plain useless. Rather, we ought to build each other up with words of grace. Words of grace are the right choice of words spoken at the right time with the right spirit. Words of grace minister to others and meet their needs. These words express love, encouragement, acceptance and affirmation. Which of us is not built up in our spirit when we hear genuine words like, "I appreciate you." "I love you." "God has used you to minister to me." "Thank you for your selfless ministry." "I have noticed the way God is changing this area of your life and I am rejoicing with you about it." 2. "Be kinds to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Eph. 4:32). Genuine love is not easily offended; it does not hold a grudge; it does not place expectation or demands on others; it is not conditional. As those who have received His infinite mercy and kindness, God expects us to extend the same kind of love toward each other. This kind of love puts others first and is clothed in a spirit of humility. "Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor." "Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Rom. 12:10, Phil. 2:4). This kind of love demonstrates the spirit of Christ by seeking for ways to serve others and is willing to be inconvenienced in order to meet the needs of others. "Through love serve one another" (Gal. 5:13). 3. "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works . . . encouraging one another" (Heb. 10:24-25). The Christian life is a battle; it is a race. It is not always easy. Sometimes soldiers get discouraged. Sometimes runners get tired. They need to be encouraged. They need to be cheered on. Paul told the Hebrew Christians, who were suffering persecution and were discouraged, "Let us consider how we can spur one another on to love and serve Christ more faithfully. Let's cheer each other on!" I remember watching a junior high basketball game one day. The home team was trailing badly. The boys were exhausted and discouraged. But instead of encouraging one another, they began to pick on each other. They began to compete against each other instead of against the other team! We are a team owned, selected, and coached by God Himself. Rather than constantly taking pride in our own achievements, we need to discover ways to stimulate and encourage others to be effective for Christ. 4. "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16). Every believer needs a personal relationship with the Word of God - not only for his own growth but that he might minister to others as well. Each of us needs the teaching and admonishing ministry of Spirit-filled believers. And each of us must be actively engaged in building the lives of others with the biblical truths that have been "put to work" and validated in our own lives. Sometimes this means we must be willing to confront a brother or sister with an area of his life that is not in conformity to scripture (Rom. 15:14; Gal. 6:1; Matt. 18:15). Such admonition must always be gentle, loving and humble, recognizing that only the grace of God has given us victory in that particular area. It is not easy to build up one another in this way, for admonition is often painful. But it is also one of the greatest evidences of genuine love. I thank God for those believers who love me enough to point out areas of my life that are not pleasing to Him. Such individuals are essential in helping me to become more like Christ. 5. "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (Gal. 6:2; Rom. 12:15; 1 Cor. 12:26). One of the privileges of membership in the Body of Christ is that we need never carry a burden alone. When one of us is hurting, we all suffer together. When my Dad went to heaven, many of God's people shared that burden with me. God used their prayers, tears and words of encouragement to sustain me and remind me of His personal love for me. We must learn how to be sensitive to those who are carrying burdens. We need to practice expressing care and concern through listening, praying, encouraging and whenever possible, shouldering the burden ourselves. There are many more "one another's" in Scripture. "Do not speak evil against one another" (James 4:11). "Do not grumble against one another" (James 5:9). "Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). None of us can become spiritually mature if we are not committed to let others build our lives and to build the lives of those around us. God gave Jonathan a special ministry of edification in David's life. Jonathan loved David as his own life. They exchanged a lifetime commitment to meet the needs of each other's families. The Scripture gives us a beautiful insight into this relationship. One day when King Saul was searching for David in order to take his life. Jonathan came to David and helped him find strength in God (1 Sam. 23:16). Years later, in the absence of Jonathan, David once again faced a very difficult situation. This time, "David strengthened himself in the Lord his God" (1 Sam. 30:6). You see, Jonathan was a life-builder. God used him to develop David to spiritual maturity. Whose life are you committed to build up with the "one another's" of Scripture? Commit yourselves to meet together at least once a week (more often if possible) to "build up" each other. In your times together be sure to include time for questions such as, "What specific areas of your life has God been building this week?" "What is the greatest need or burden in your life?" "What can I do to minister to you?" "Do you know of any area of my life that needs to be corrected or dealt with?" Use this time to encourage each other with Scripture, to hold each other accountable in vital areas of spiritual growth, and to pray for each other. What a joy it is to belong to the Body of Christ, to know that I don't have to live the Christian life by myself. Every day I am encouraged, exhorted, rebuked, loved and built up by individual members of the Body of Christ. They are committed to help me become more like Jesus. I love those people God has put in my life, and I want to fulfill my responsibility to build them up, "until we all attain to the unit of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of god, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).

Abba, Father,’ he said, ’everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Mark 14:36 (NIV) Do you ever feel like pain and sorrow are chasing you down? Like you just can’t outrun all of the hurt? Oh, friend. I know how difficult those seasons can be. That’s why I want us to look at someone in Scripture who understands this kind of pain — King David. Not only did David spend a significant amount of time before he became king running for his life from King Saul, but he also eventually ended up running from his very own son, Absalom. But whereas Saul openly sought David’s life, we find Absalom sneaking around behind his father’s back in an effort to rip the kingdom from David’s hands. With slick promises and conspiratorial kisses, Absalom easily steals  “the hearts of the people of Israel”  ( 2 Samuel 15:6b, NIV ). And it isn’t long before David receives word his kingdom is crumbling right in front of him. ( 2 Samuel 15:13 ) In light of these events, David sees that his situation is desperately dangerous. He must escape. The route we find him taking to escape the city, weeping as he goes, is across the Kidron Valley, through the Garden of Gethsemane, over the Mount of Olives and into the Judean desert. This was the known escape route for those needing to quickly flee from danger in Jerusalem. Within this story we are reminded of a larger story — the people of God are continually wayward in their love and affections toward their king. They allow their hearts to be captivated by others. They are prone to stray. This was true for King David, and it would be true of another King who would come from David’s bloodline generations later — King Jesus. Years later, Jesus would sit in the Garden of Gethsemane, the very gateway of this known escape route, facing extreme danger. We read about Jesus in these difficult moments in Mark 14:34-36 , where He laments:  “‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’” His people were turning against Him. Jesus wasn’t meeting their expectations as king. They wanted Him dead. As I sat in the Garden of Gethsemane during a recent visit to the Holy Land, my heart was overcome with the reality of what Jesus was facing while in that very place. He knew He could escape. He knew He could flee like David had done. He knew the way to take to save Himself. But Jesus stayed so He could save us. Though my heart strays from Him, Jesus’ heart is compelled to stay for me. Jesus ends His prayer to God with nine earthshaking, demon-quaking, hell-shattering words,  “Yet not what I will, but what you will”  ( Mark 14:36b ). In other words, He completely submitted to God’s plan because He knew in the end, it was best. Jesus was the only King who perfectly fulfilled God’s will. As we read the story of King David, we must always remember that he simply points to the better David — Jesus, who is the King of kings. The contrast between David’s experience and Jesus’ is important: Both David and Jesus weep on the Mount of Olives. David weeps over the betrayal and potential loss that he faces — all things that affect him personally. Jesus weeps over the city and people of Jerusalem. As David escapes over the Mount of Olives, he faces the potential loss of his kingdom. As Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane at the base of the Mount of Olives, He begins His journey to the cross where He will conquer sin and death and establish the Kingdom of heaven. David’s kingdom will eventually be war torn and broken. The Kingdom of heaven will reign forever. What does this mean for us today? I would imagine we can all relate to David’s weeping. Our lives are riddled with evidence we live in a broken world — loss, hurt, death, betrayal, heartbreak and relationship breakdowns. But might we also remember Jesus’ weeping as well. He hurts when we hurt. And that’s the exact reason He made a way for us to one day enter His eternal Kingdom where there will be no more sorrow and no more weeping. Praise God! Lord, I can’t thank You enough for the fact that You stayed and suffered the pain of the cross for me. May the truth of Your sacrifice stir this sometimes-wandering heart of mine to stay faithful, stay hopeful, stay devoted to You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen. Revelation 21:4 , He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. (NIV)

I’ve developed the following material and presented it to many young people and their parents over many years. When my now married daughters were teenagers, I honed it further for sharing and discussion with them and the young men who asked to date them. 1. Sex is good. God created it, God called it “good,” and it existed before there was any sin in the world. Sex was not created by Satan,  Playboy , the Internet, or some pervert lurking in the shadows of a porn shop. However, God requires us to address sex within his intentions and requirements, not the world’s ( Ephesians 5:3-4 ). God designed sex for the sacred union of marriage between a man and a woman, and reserves it for that union. 2. Like all good gifts from God, sex can be misused and perverted. Water is a gift of God, without which we couldn’t survive. But floods and tidal waves are water  out of control , and the effects are devastating. Likewise, God designed sex to exist within certain boundaries. When exercised in line with God’s intended purpose, it is beautiful and constructive. When out of control, violating God’s intended purpose, it becomes ugly and destructive. 3. The boundaries of sex are the boundaries of marriage. Sexual union is intended as an expression of a lifelong commitment , a symbol of the spiritual union that exists only within the unconditional commitment of marriage. Apart from marriage, the lasting commitment is absent and the sex act becomes a false expression, a lie. Sex does not become permissible through subjective feelings, but through the objective lifelong commitment of marriage. 4. Your sexual purity is essential to your walk with God. Sexual purity is not an option for an obedient Christian; it’s a requirement. God’s will is centered on our character and moral purity much more than on our circumstances, such as job and schooling: “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality” ( 1 Thessalonians 4:3 ). 5. You are vulnerable to sexual immorality. Don’t kid yourself that it can never happen to you—it can. “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” ( 1 Corinthians 10:12 ). If you think you’ll never fall sexually, you’ll fail to take precautions to keep it from happening. 6. You are targeted for sexual immorality. The more involved you are in serving Christ, the greater vested interests Satan has in destroying you and God’s work in and through you. The evil one wants to take you down  and  to use your life as a bad example to other Christians. God requires that we be holy and pure instruments to be used by Him ( 2 Timothy 2:20-21 ). But as powerful as the evil one is to tempt us,  God is infinitely more powerful to deliver us  and has given us in Christ all the resources we need to live godly lives ( 2 Peter 1:3-4 ). 7. Your body belongs to God, not you. “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” ( I Corinthians 6:20 ). When you came to Christ, when you affirmed Him as Lord of your life, you surrendered your entire self, including your body, to God. He paid the ultimate price for it: the shed blood of God Almighty! 8. Sexual purity begins in the mind, not the body. “Above all else, guard your heart [mind, inner being], for it is the wellspring of life” ( Proverbs 4:23 ). Be careful what you expose your mind to. If you’re on a diet, don’t go to Baskin & Robin’s. If you do, your resistance will break down. If you want to abstain from lust, you don’t go places and watch movies and programs and read things that stimulate lust. Don’t give your mind junk food. Be sure you’re getting spiritual nutrition. 9. Since God doesn’t want you to have premarital sex, neither does He want you to do that which prepares your body for premarital sex. There is a continuum of physical contact that begins with things like sitting close and hand-holding on the near side and moves to sexual intercourse on the far side. Scripture does not spell out exactly what “intermediate” behavior is permissible, but one thing is certain—the line must be drawn before either of you becomes sexually stimulated. 10. Once you let your body cross the line, it will neither know nor care about your Christian convictions. Some Christians pray God will protect their purity, then willfully put themselves into temptation and wonder why God didn’t answer their prayer. No matter how fervently you pray that you will not fall into immorality, you will fall if you continue to make choices that feed your temptation toward immorality. Don’t allow your choices to undermine and invalidate your prayers. 11. If you have sexual intimacy with someone outside marriage, you are stealing from God and the other person. Since he or she belongs to God, not you, that means you are borrowing this person for the evening. Be careful what you do with what doesn’t belong to you. You’ll be held accountable to his or her Owner. 12. God has your best interests in mind when He tells you not to have premarital sex. Sex is not just something you do—sex is someone you are. It is linked to the welfare of your whole person. Having sex outside of marriage is self-destructive in every sense. Sexual purity is always for the best—not only for God and others, but for you. 13. God would not tell you to abstain from impurity if it was impossible to obey him. Sex is something everyone can abstain from—it is a strong desire, yes, but never an emergency, never a necessity. “The grace of God teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” ( Titus 2:12 ). You can and should draw upon your resources in Christ, and say “no” to temptations to sin. 14. Satan will lie to you about sex, but Jesus tells you the truth. Jesus said of Satan, “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” ( John 8:44 ). Satan is a liar, but Jesus is the truth and the truth-teller ( John 14:6 ). He said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” ( John 8:32 ). Those who believe Satan’s lies about sex end up in bondage. Those who believe Christ’s truth about sex end up free. 15. You must learn to think long term, not short term. Good or bad, you will always reap what you sow—you will always harvest the consequences of your choices. “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows” ( Galatians 6:7 ). The lifelong consequences of sexual impurity are worse than we can imagine. The lifelong rewards of sexual purity are greater than we can imagine. 16. If you’ve violated some of these guidelines, confess, repent and implement a plan to prevent future violations. When you confess and repent of your sins, God will cleanse you: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” ( Psalm 103:12 ).“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” ( 1 John 1:9 ). Even if you are no longer a virgin you can and should commit yourself to secondary virginity—to remain sexually pure from this day forward, preserving yourself only for your marriage partner, should God choose to give you one. You need more than good intentions to maintain your purity—you need a plan. If you are committed to a relationship with a growing Christian discuss it honestly and formulate a plan to prevent falling back into premarital intimacy. Live in such a way as to hear your Lord say to you one day, “Well done.” Get on the right side of the universe’s moral system. Honor God by living in sexual purity. If you do, you’ll experience His blessing and rewards not only today, tomorrow, and ten years from now, but throughout eternity.

So you’re leading in a tougher environment than you’ve ever led through in your life. How do you find momentum and growth in a season when everything you spend your life working toward changed overnight? A lot of churches and organizations are struggling deeply with momentum right now, and in many cases it feels like there are no good options. The Coronavirus is not abating nearly as quickly as anyone hoped it would. Short term blips (like remote work, closed schools, and closed or restricted large gatherings) are morphing into longer-term realities. Life is not going back to what we once thought of as normal any time soon. And as you know, when things change and you don’t, you’re on the fast path to irrelevance. Obviously, there’s no silver bullet answer to finding growth and momentum in a season of chaos. But there are clues. And as you already know, this is not a season of decline for everyone. Some churches are growing. So are some businesses. The question becomes, how can  you  find momentum and growth in the midst of a bunch of non-ideal options? To find momentum, here are 7 things to look for. 1. Pour Fuel On The One Or Two Things That Are Growing It’s easy to look at the overall view and conclude, “We’re not growing.” But a closer look usually reveals a more complex reality. Chances are something you’re doing is growing. Maybe you’re picking up a few new social media followers, or your email list is growing, or you have a variety of new people (or a different mix of people) showing up to your events. The best thing you can do when you find any momentum is to pour more fuel on it. The temptation in leadership is to be “fair.” To put equal amounts of time, energy and resources into everything you’re doing, but that rarely works. Instead, focus most of your efforts on what’s producing the majority of your results. If you can apply the Pareto Principle to all areas of your organization, you’ll go further. For example, let’s say your kids’ ministry is seeing some momentum right now, but your adult ministry is flat. Do you try to prop up adult ministry with more resources, or do you give more money and resources to kids’ ministry to further their growth? I would vote for giving more money and resources to kids’ ministry, knowing full well if you can get momentum with kids, you’ll get momentum with parents, who happen to also be adults. 2. Cut Or Discontinue Things You’re Manufacturing Energy For There’s a term I picked up years ago from the leaders at North Point that I love:  manufacturing energy . Maybe a program that was once effective has stopped being effective. It takes so much energy to keep going that even the staff are only there because they’re paid to do it. No matter how much you promote it, you know you’re manufacturing energy and hype to keep it alive. If you’re consistently having to manufacture energy, it can be a sign it’s time to stop doing what you’re doing. You know what most leaders do instead? They market harder.  We just need to announce this more often, email everyone and plaster social media with it.  As the famed marketing genius David Ogilvy once said, “Great marketing just makes a bad product fail faster.” As hard as it is to admit, maybe you’ve plateaued because what you’re offering isn’t that great. So either make it great or kill it. You need to prune and cut your organization as much as possible to fuel momentum. In the same way that a pruned apple tree grows more apples, a pruned ministry bears more fruit. 3. Start Something New One of the great things about ministry is that while the message is eternal, the methods aren’t, and leaders who try new things often see great results in their generation. From the Reformation, the emergence of Methodism, to the (at the time) radical ministry of Billy Graham who used TV and travel to spread the Gospel, new methods give new life to an eternal mission. Years ago, Andy Stanley gave a powerful talk on momentum where he pointed out the pattern for creating momentum is founded on  new, improved, improving. If you look at the label of any product in your kitchen pantry or bathroom, it’s surprising how often even a legacy brand like Colgate or Arm and Hammer has the words “new” or “improved” on their packaging. From new scent to new flavor, new formula to new packaging, long ago, marketers figured out that the key to sustained momentum was new, improved, or improving. So the question becomes, what’s new or improved? Often the answer in the church is ‘nothing.’ You’re trying to get more people to come to the things you’ve always done. What new approach might you try? How can you improve the way you’re doing what you’re doing? In the first month of COVID, so many leaders tried new things. Now, mostly what you see on your social media feed is “watch our stream.” We can get more creative than that. 4. Avoid The Trap Of Doing Nothing Well There’s an emerging trap for church leaders that’s worth avoiding at all costs: the trap of doing nothing well. Almost every church is now trying to do in-person attendance and online church right now. The challenge is both require time, money and resources. If the longer-term trend is that in-person attendance numbers will be lower even after COVID is completely a non-issue (which could be months or years from now), then that creates a challenge. Namely, that many churches have the highest level of staff and budgets invested where they’re seeing the lowest returns. Meanwhile, online is understaffed. You probably won’t have a big impact online if you spend 1% of your staffing resources on it. The trap is that you end up doing nothing well. 5. Study The Micro And Macro Shifts In Culture Happening Right Now Wayne Gretzky, arguably the greatest hockey player of all time, famously said his strategy was to skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been. Some of the shifts happening right now are deep and permanent. Cultural patterns are changing before our eyes. In this interview, Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, talks about how Airbnb saw an 80% drop in revenue in 8 weeks, but how they reversed that within months. What Airbnb did, by reading the market, is create a new home cleanliness and sanitization benchmark for wary travelers scared of catching COVID. In addition, they realized most people wanted to vacation, but now it was a place in the country or a small town within driving distance of where they lived. So, Airbnb immediately pivoted to local, more rural rentals rather than basing their whole strategy on people flying to exotic cities, a pattern which of course, collapsed in minutes when the world shut down. So where’s the puck going? Obviously, things are still changing quickly, but there are two cultural shifts I’m watching. The first is the emergence of the home as the new epicenter of life (work, school, shopping, entertainment and eating). As church leaders keep trying to regather people in a building, perhaps a longer vision is to figure out how to come alongside people in their homes. A second, related trend is smaller, localized gatherings. For the immediate future anyway, it appears people are most comfortable with home gatherings and smaller clusters. The church can very easily function in those settings (gathering is important), and it scales much more easily than a central facility-based strategy. Just a note: as of August 2020, Airbnb is now even with last year’s revenue simply by shifting how it did travel. If they left calcified their business model as dependent on people getting on planes to fly thousands of miles, it might be the end. What cultural trends can you cooperate with? A strategy based on past behavior won’t reach people in the present, let alone in the future. 6. Focus On Your Sweet Spot  You have a sweet spot as a leader, and my guess is your church has a sweet spot, as well. Crisis throws everyone and everything off balance, and it’s easy to forget what you’re truly gifted at and excel at as a result. Jim Collins asked the question this way: What can you be best in the world at? I know that’s an audacious question, but the more you can align your gifting and passion with how you spend your time, the more effective you will be. Sure, in start-up mode, you need to do a little of everything. But over time, the more you spend doing what you’re best at, the more you will love what you do and the greater value you’ll bring to your team and cause. Often churches and leaders who plateau get stuck because they’re not operating in their area of peak giftedness or effectiveness. For me, I realized I’m essentially a communicator. Everything I do (this, podcasting, speaking, writing books) is geared around communication. So, the best gift I can bring to any organization is clear and compelling communication. What’s your gift? For some of you it’s relationship. For others, strategy. And what’s your church best at? For some churches, it’s caring for the poor and marginalized. Others host great services. Others, it’s content creation. For still others, it’s facilitating relationships and connection. You may be good at many things, but you’re only great a few things. Spend your time there. 7. Ask What Your Successor Would Do This is a fun mental exercise. Ask yourself what your  successor  would do. If you left your role today and a new person started tomorrow, what’s the first thing he or she would do? Strangely, you almost immediately sense an answer to that question.  Oh, they’d shut down X and move Sean to this role.  Once you figure that out, just go do it. Often reframing the question gives you clarity about the answer.

‘Til Death Do Us Part: What You Need to Know to Make Marriage Last Skip Heitzig f you brought a Bible with you, I'm going to have you turn in Genesis chapter two. First book in the Bible, second chapter-- Genesis 2. Find your way there. And then, also, if you don't mind, make your way over to Mark in the New Testament chapter 10. So Genesis 2 and Mark chapter 10 is where we're going to be at today, in a message I'm calling Till Death Do Us Part-- What You Need To Know To Make Marriage Last. Someone once said that marriage is like flies on a screen door. Those that are in want to be out. Those that are out want to be in. Now, I don't know if you're in or out. But if you're in a marriage, I'm praying that you'll stay in a marriage. And why is it that so many people who began a marriage relationship with such good intentions end up so miserable? Now, they don't plan that. I've never met anybody who said, you know, my goal in life is to get into a miserable marriage relationship. I just sort of want to die that way, just in misery. And yet, so many people end up that way. At my wedding day, I was a nervous groom. I was nervous on a number of levels, but especially when the pastor shared those vows-- for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, love and to cherish. And then here's the phrase-- till death do us part. When he said that, it was like, whoa, man, that phrase weighs a lot. Till death do us part. That could be, like, any moment now. Wow. And he had just asked me the question, prior to that, will I take Lenya to be my God-given life as long as you both shall live. And again, it's like, wow. I mean, it hit me, the permanence of this thing. I had been thinking about the permanence of marriage a lot up to that day. In fact, to be quite frank with you, there were a couple of times where I had the fleeting thought that maybe I should just move to another country to get out of this permanent commitment that I was making. And the reason I felt that way is because I had seen so much failure in relationships. It was all around me. The rate of divorce was skyrocketing. And since 1981, it has not gotten any better. It has deteriorated since then. I was on one website, a legal website, a website of a legal firm. They were putting out the statistics of this, because they deal with this. They reported there's one divorce every 36 seconds in this country. One divorce every 36 seconds. That's nearly 2,400 divorces per day. That's 16,800 divorces every week. The average marriage that ends in divorce lasts eight years. That's the lifespan, average, eight years. Now, because we all know these statistics, we've heard them over the years, this is nothing new to us. We've sort of figured it's not getting better but worse. We know that. But because of that, it is now causing some, especially social scientists and others who examine these trends, to wonder if the idea of marriage itself, over a long period of time, is even reasonable. That's the word they're using. Is it even reasonable to ask a young couple to make such a lifelong commitment when they have no idea what they're getting into? Is that reasonable? Many say it's not a Washington Post editorial article said, quote, "A reasonable level of divorce may be a symptom of a healthy and mobile society." So now it's so normal that it's healthy. It's good. The writer of this article contends, "Long marriages are simply not natural." And he asks, "Is it not possible that the ideal companion for our younger, child rearing years will not be the ideal companion for our middle and latter years?" So this author, along with many others, are saying, it's just not reasonable. You can't expect people to make a lifelong commitment. This is why a lot of people are opting out of the marriage altogether, not even doing it. Just having a partnership of some kind. In one report put out by Pew Research, 40% of the people that were studied overall said they believed that marriage is obsolete, including 31% of married people. Enough of the bad news. Let's get on to some good news. By the way, marriage research is typically all about bad news. If you want to get depressed really quick, just do what I've done the last few weeks and just start studying marriage and divorce trends. That'll put you on a downer really quick. And I've just sort of noticed that most marriage research is about failures. It's all the reasons it doesn't work. The good news is that though marriage is on the endangered species list, it is not doomed. I see, every week, plenty of good examples of solid, vibrant, flourishing, long-lasting relationships. But you need to know it doesn't just happen. It's not automatic. It's the deliberate result of determined people willing to make it work with God's grace and strength. Genesis chapter 2. I've asked you to turn there. There's only a few verses I want you to notice today. Genesis 2 is called a passage of primary reference. A passage a primary reference simply means it's the first time it is stated or mentioned or a concept or idea is articulated, first time God says something about it. Genesis 2 is one of those. And we know that because four times in the New Testament, the author or the speaker will refer back to this passage of primary reference. So we're going to look at that in just a few moments, this and Mark chapter 10. Now, marriage is the only game where both players can win. But how do they win? Well, they have to understand a few things. They need to understand what marriage is. They need to understand what marriage does. And they need to understand what marriage needs. And those are the things we're going to look at today-- what marriage is, what it does, and what it needs. We need to understand that. So let's understand what it is. In Genesis chapter 2, in verse 22, God brings the woman that he fashioned to the man. And Adam said, it doesn't sound all that romantic, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." That's his opening statement, first date. "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed." Now, in verse 23, Adam gets all poetic. Can you look at your Bible and tell me if it's the same as mine? It is put out in a poetic fashion. It is sort of a-- the phrases are stacked up. It's different from the rest of the narrative. That's because verse 23 is the first poem in the Bible, the first poetic couplet. And then, after that, it goes back to a narrative form. Now, interestingly, scholars have noted that there is a rhythm to it. That is, the first line has a two-beat rhythm. This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. And the second line has a three-beat rhythm to it. I'm not going to do it for you. Come on, man. She shall be called-- I can't do it. I'm not going to do it. So that's just interesting. I don't know, it's sort of like this is like post creation rap. He sees this woman brought to him, and he starts breaking out in hip-hop and like sings a song for her. I like that. Now, I mentioned that the verse is not too romantic. You say, really? This is the first thing he says to her? "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Does not sound like a great opener. That's because it's hard to translate, we are told, from the Hebrew into English to capture the emotion of this. There's an emotional component that is missing from the translation that the Hebrew seems to capture. So a very loose translation would be as soon as God brought the woman to the man, Adam said, wow. Now, this is it. This is the one that will complete me. He gets emotional. He sings to his wife. His song is, basically, it's not just Adam anymore. It's Adam and Mrs. Adam. We're the Addams family. That's his song. John Calvin translates that verse this way. "Now, at length, I have obtained a suitable companion, who is part of the substance of my flesh, and in whom I behold, as it were, another self." I love that. I'm looking at another self, the counterpart to my personality, the one that will complete me. Now, look at the next verse, and you'll understand marriage comes in three parts. First of all, leaving; second, cleaving; third, weaving. That's a marriage-- leaving, cleaving, weaving. Let's begin with leaving. Therefore, a man will leave his father and his mother. That's how marriage begins. Marriage begins by severing one relationship to solidify another relationship. What does it mean, leaving father and mother? Does not mean abandon father and mother. It does not mean say, you're out of here, Mom and Dad. Never want to text you. Never want to write you. Never want to email you. Don't come over. You can't see the grandkids. That's not leaving and cleaving. It means to cut the cord of dependence on Mom and Dad. It means to establish a new first loyalty. Have you ever heard that term, first loyalty? So young man and young woman, you're getting married today. That means, from now on, your new first loyalty is not to your mom and dad. Your new first loyalty is to each other. So it means to establish an adult relationship with your parents. It means your parents are going to give you space to solidify that relationship. I always ask young couples, same question, what do your parents think? Usually, it's, oh, they love him, or they think she's great. Every now and then, when I ask the question, I'll get that, eh, Dad kind of thinks he's a creep. OK, what are you going to do about that? Well, I'm still going to marry him. That's fair. That's your choice. Just understand that your parents' view is going to complicate your relationship. How so? Well, when you get into a fight, things get really rough, you're going to think back to the ideal image your parents had of the perfect guy you should marry. And you may want to change or try to change-- good luck trying to actually change-- him into that image. It's just going to add stress to the relationship. I've discovered that some kids never leave their parents emotionally. They're still attached to their parents emotionally, sometimes dependent upon them monetarily. And sometimes, a marriage is even held hostage by parents. So just a note to parents who have kids that are about to be married-- release them. Please release me. Let me go. So in the marriage ceremony, there's going to be a ceremonial component that illustrates this. As the bride and groom come up, the preacher's are going to say, who brings this woman to be married to this man? At which point, you will say, I do, or we do, or her mother and I do. Really do that. Really release them, for their benefit. Give them space to leave. Then, the second one is to cleave. It is leaving, but it is also cleaving. Now, notice the verse, "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife." So marriage requires a deep, determined commitment of permanence. That's what joined means. Now, I'm reading to you from the translation that I have chosen, the New King James version. And it's probably the most common word used in most versions, to be joined together. Let me give you my opinion. It's a weak translation in this verse. To leave father and mother, and then to be joined is just a little too weak. It does not capture the Hebrew meaning. [SPEAKING HEBREW] is the Hebrew word. And if you have-- anybody here have an old King James version of the Bible? OK, so shout it out. What is the word? Cleave. Cleave, thank you. That's a better-- that's a strong translation, to cleave. Leave and cleave. Leave and be joined, weak. Leave and cleave is stronger. Because the word [SPEAKING HEBREW] literally means to cling to or to impinge upon. That's strong. Or to follow hard after or to stick on. The idea is permanence, an indissoluble union. You are glued. You are welded. You are stuck. That's how people feel. I'm stuck. Uh-huh. Glued, welded. Now, that always brings up the question, does that mean there can be no separation under any circumstance? No, there is one circumstance where that union can be dissolved. But never without damage. Never without damage. Show me one divorce where somebody is not damaged. I have never heard of one. I've never seen one. Think of it this way. It's been helpful to me. If you took two pieces of paper and literally did what it says here, glued them together, and let the glue dry, you now have one flesh. You have one unit. If, the next day, you looked at that thing you made, gluing two pieces of paper together, and you said, you know? I've changed my mind. I want to separate them. You could do it. You could get a razor blade and very deftly and slowly cut between the paper and remove it. But let me ask you a question. By the end of the day, once you have taken them back apart, are they the same as they were? Have they been changed dramatically? Yet, they don't resemble the first entity. You can't do it without damage. They're not the same. The idea of leaving and cleaving is that they become one now. There's a permanence there. Today, the idea of permanence is all but gone. God has given us His blueprint. It's here. We have come along and redrawn the blueprint and added a back door, a divorce door. So yeah, a couple still say their vows every week. They still say they promise to be faithful until death. But with some, it's like I can hear under their breath, almost, unless there's a glitch. But cleaving means that that husband is saying to his wife, I am faithful to you, even when you lose the first blush of your early beauty, even if you are untidy around the home. And she says, I'm going to be faithful to you even when you bulge around the center and get bald on top and we get poorer instead of richer. I'm in it for the long haul. That's the idea of cleaving. So that's what a marriage is. It is leaving. It is cleaving. Third is weaving. Leaving, cleaving, and weaving. And that comes at the end of verse 24. It continues, "and they shall become one flesh." Please notice the word become. It does not say they will instantaneously be, on their wedding day, after their vows, one flesh. No, you become that. That takes time. It takes a lifetime. Lenya and I are, in many ways, similar. In other ways, polar opposites. We have similarities. We both have relatively strong personalities. We're both leaders. We both have kind of that A-type communication skill thing going on. We're teachers. We lead organizations, both of us. But we're opposites. I'm very spontaneous. She is not. She's very planned. I'm messier. I would just say I'm messy, but I've been married now a number of years. So that's diminished maybe a notch. So I'm messier. She is much tidier. I am mostly right. She is always right. Missed it by that much. Now, when it says they'll become one flesh, at the basic level of interpretation, it's speaking of the physical sexual union-- coming together, producing a child. That child is the one flesh amalgamation of those two. But one flesh carries a greater meaning. It means that you share everything. You share your bodies. 1 Corinthians 7 says the man's body does not belong to him anymore. It belongs to her. The wife's body belongs to him. You share bodies. You share possessions. You, hopefully, share insights with each other. That's one flesh. Wayne Mack, in his excellent book on marriage, said, and I'm quoting, "It is the type of relationship that is shared with no one else other than one's mate. It is a partnership in every area of life, for as long as both partners live. In other words, there is absolutely nothing about which one spouse can say to another, that's none of your business. The wife has complete and unfettered access to every area of her husband's life, and so, also, the husband to every area of his wife's life. There are no locked doors or secret hiding places." Now, again, this is not instantaneous. It is a lifelong process. Take a guy who throws his socks in the sink. Mate him up with a woman who irons paper napkins and get them to be on the same page. Good luck with that. How does that happen? It happens by weaving. By weaving. I want you to put a picture in your mind. Maybe this will be helpful, maybe not. It's helpful for me. Put this picture in your mind. Your marriage is like the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower is pretty cool, right? It's iconic. It's in Paris. Everybody who goes to France wants to see the Eiffel Tower. Hey, did you know that the Eiffel Tower was originally built to last 20 years? 20 years. It's way beyond that. So it made it through year after year beyond that. It made it through World War II, when Adolph Hitler said, tear it down. And his governor in the area refused to do it. It has withstood year-- decade after decade, it stands. Why? Because there are people who work on the Eiffel Tower every day, all the time, adding a weld here, adding a weld there, tightening or replacing a nut and bolt here, tightening and replacing a nut or bolt there. They're constantly adding points of strength. So I learned this years ago when I visited with my wife the Eiffel Tower. I wanted to go up, and I noticed there's a work crew. And so I said, what's up with that? They said, there's always a work crew. All the time. We always add a weld or a nut and bolt. So what that does, it produces longevity. Over time, it becomes immovable. So husband and wife are like two welders. Guys like this illustration. Chicks, not so much. I'm a welder? Yeah, in the sense that you are going to spot weld over here and tighten that bolt over there, and you're going to make your relationship immovable. You're going to hold it together. That's the weaving over time. A marriage is not held together by chains. I've heard guys say those stupid remarks before their buddy gets married. Oh, you're getting married? Getting the old ball and chain. You're a prisoner of war. A marriage is not held together by chains. It is held together by threads. Tiny threads woven every day, every week, every month over years that make that absolutely immovable and strong over a lifetime. So understand what a marriage is-- leaving, cleaving, weaving. Second thing to understand-- understand what marriage does. What all that leaving, cleaving, and weaving produces is this-- intimacy. That's the goal-- intimacy. If done right, all those things will produce intimacy. Verse 25 is intimacy. It says, "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." All the guys liked that versus. Oh, they're naked. Naked means to lay bare. It has a reciprocal idea of being bare, naked, with another person and before another person. But the idea is intimacy. Don't focus on the naked as much as what the naked is symbolic of. They are open and unashamed before each other. That is intimacy-- closeness, openness. Intimacy is way more than sex. I know some guys go, it is? Yeah. What intimacy is is the deep and rewarding connection between a husband and wife physically, spiritually, emotionally, socially, all those levels. And by the way, intimacy is what everyone longs for. Everyone longs for real intimacy. Some guys might say, no, sex is good enough. No, it's not. What you really want in your heart of hearts is intimacy-- an open and unguarded relationship where you have nothing to hide. There's no self consciousness. You're transparently sharing everything. You're sharing discussion, shared silence, shared joys, shared sorrows, a shared history. Marriage is infinitely rewarding at its best, but indescribably oppressive at its worst. And what makes the difference is intimacy. If you have intimacy, it's rewarding. If you don't, it's miserable. So here's Adam and Eve. They're at the pinnacle of shared intimacy. Doesn't get any better than this. Naked and not ashamed. All is good. Leaving, cleaving, weaving. It's not going to last long. Very next chapter, sin enters the relationship. It's marring them. Now, it's all about a cover up program. Give me some fig leaves. Why? What happened? Sin destroyed intimacy. So understand what marriage is. Understand what marriage does. Now, third, and we'll close on this, understand what marriage needs. What do we need to make it last? Mark chapter 10, would you turn there now in your New Testament? Mark chapter 10. You're going to notice that Jesus quotes what we just read, and he makes an application. Mark chapter 10, verse 1-- "Then He arose from there." That is, Jesus arose from there. "Came to the region of Judea." That's down south. "By the other side of the Jordan. And multitudes gathered to Him again, and as He was accustomed, He taught them again." He was always teaching people. "The Pharisees came to him and asked him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? testing Him. And He answered and said to them, what did Moses command you? And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and dismiss her." We looked at Matthew's version of this few weeks ago. And remember we told you that the assumption was to dump his wife, all the guy had to do was get two witnesses, write a certificate of divorce, done. A wife couldn't do it, but a man could do it any time he felt like it. So they ask him about. Jesus answered and said to them, in this world of no-fault divorce, He said to them, "because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason--" Now he's quoting Genesis 2. "For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother," be joined to his wife. "The two shall become one flesh so then they are no longer two, but one flesh." Picture the paper glued together. Now they're one. They're one flesh, not two any longer. Verse 9, "Therefore--" Here's my concluding remarks. "Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate." Now, when I was getting married or in that time all my life, I knew people where I worked, at the hospital I worked at an Orange County, say to me, well, why are you doing this? I mean, marriage is just a ceremony and a piece of paper. Ever heard that? So I remember when that ideology sort of was popular, and it gets kind of popular every new generation. I've heard that for years. It's just a piece of paper. Oh, no, it's not. It is infinitely more than just a piece of paper. Now, what I want you to notice here is that Jesus links a human experience with a divine covenant, and I want you to see it. In verse 7, he is quoting Genesis 2. "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be--" What's the next word in your Bible? Joined. Joined to his wife. Stop there for a moment. That's what people do. Hey, you want to marry me? Sure. OK. Set a date. Do it. When they do it, they join themselves. That's their decision, their volition. It's their experience. But now look at verse 9. "Therefore, what God has--" what? Joined. Joined together. "Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate." So here's the deal. When a couple gets married, they need to understand what just happened. And what just happened is this. Their decision to be joined invites God into the process, who Himself then joins them together. They may start with just this commitment, hey, let's get married. God raises it up to a higher level called a covenant. Higher level. Marriage is to be seen as a sacred union, not a piece of paper. It makes all the difference in the world. It's not just a ceremony or a piece of paper. This is why the English Book of Common Prayer, written in 1622-- still used today. When I say this, you're going to go, I've heard this before. Book of Common Prayers, 1622, the preacher addresses the audience by saying, dearly beloved, we are gathered here, in the sight of God, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. God's in it. It's a holy union. So marriage needs this recognition. It's a covenant. What's a covenant? An agreement between two or more parties to perform certain actions. And a covenant-- you know this from your study of the Bible. You know that covenants are used throughout the Bible-- old covenant, mosaic covenant, Edenic covenant, Abrahamic covenant, new covenant. God always makes covenants. He raises marriage up to a covenant level. In Malachi chapter 2, verse 14, the prophet says to husbands, "The Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth. She is your companion and your wife by covenant." Now, let me give that to you in the NSV, the New Skip Version. I'm going to make it a little easier so I can understand. God is saying, hey, you guys decided to get married. Great. I'll be there. I'm coming to your wedding. I'm going to witness your wedding. I'm going to be there, and I will be joining you together when you join together. It's a covenant. Proverbs 2, verse 17, the author refers to the wife and, his words, "her husband" and the covenant that she has made before God. So you see that when you regard it as a covenant, it raises it to a sacred level. Different level, higher level, higher accountability. So what does marriage need to last? It needs the recognition, the regard, that it's a sacred union. Second, it doesn't need to just be regarded. It needs to be guarded. It needs to be protected. It needs to be shielded. You say, shielded from what? From outside forces, or from outside people who would want to tear it apart. You say, well, who would want to do that? Look at verse 9. "Therefore, what God has joined together--" look at the last phrase. "Let not man separate." Let not man separate. Don't let anything or anyone drive a wedge between you and your spouse. Listen to it in a new translation called the message translation. Been out for a few years. "Because God created this organic union of the two sexes, no one should desecrate His art by cutting them apart." That's God's art. That's God's idea. God brings them together. Don't desecrate His art by cutting them apart. Now, let me drill down. Don't let man separate. Don't let people drive a wedge. Don't let your parents drive a wedge. You're newly married. You have a father-in-law or mother-in-law who's really nosey and kind of poking their way in. It's like, hey, let me tell you a few things. Just politely, lovingly, separate. Build a fence. Build a wall. Hang the privacy sign out, sweetly saying, none of your beeswax. This is us now. First loyalty's here. Fortunately, I have a father-in-law and his wife who have always been great. So we got married, Lenya would ask advice. Call her dad, Dad, what do I do about this? He give advice very, very sweetly, tentatively. But he'd always say, now, sweetheart, I'm your dad, but Skip's your husband. Makes sure that what I am saying matches up with what he is saying, because he's your head, not me. He's always in for service every week. I thank him, to this day. Thank you for being that kind of father-in-law. Thank you. So don't let your parents drive a wedge between you and your spouse. Don't let your children drive a wedge between you and your spouse. If you let them, they will. Now, over the last two decades or so, there's been an approach to parenting that psychologists call child-centered parenting. It's a disaster. It's where, well, we're married, but now we have children. So us, we kind of get put on the shelf, because now, it's all about our children, what they need and what they want. It all revolves around them. That's a disaster. It's a disaster because you're going to produce very narcissistic children with no coping skills in life and no ability to persevere. No, it's not your home, child. It's our home. This is our covenant. It's not a child-centered relationship. It's a God-centered home. This is what we do. We love each other, and you're a part of that, but it's not all about you. Because listen, if you make it all about them, they will let you. Not only that, but it will put a strain on your marriage. You will suffer as husband and wife because of it, because your kids have been placed above your spouse. Do not let that happen. Let not man separate. Don't let parents drive a wedge. Don't let children drive a wedge. Don't let friends drive a wedge. Every single relationship in life, once you get married, takes a backseat. Or take them out of the car all together, even. Let them hitchhike. Don't let hobbies and interests drive a wedge between you and your spouse. I think you get my drift. Once you get married, marriage re-prioritizes everything, everything and everyone. A wise person once said, "A successful marriage demands a divorce. That is, a divorce from your own self-love." So ask yourself the question, what or whom are you letting separate you. If you're feeling seeds of that separation, are you letting things or people separate you? Could be a computer screen. Could be a phone. You're sitting at the table. You're never looking at each other talking. It's like, I'm mesmerized. Well, I'm going to end on a higher note. We've looked at the text, but let me add a few tips, OK? Think of these as Skip's tips on making your marriage last. I could give you 30 or 40 or 50 of them. I'm only going to give you four, four tips to add to all of this to help it, to make it last. So to make it last, I'm going to give you an acronym on the word last, L-A-S T. So the L stands for the first attribute to add, and that is laughter. Boy, I hate it when I hear couples say, yeah, in our younger years, we had so much fun. And we laughed together. And we played together. Well, bring that back. Bring laughter back into the relationship. One neuroscientist said, "Laughter restores the emotional connection between two people. Couples who laugh are couples who last." Virtually every scientist who studies this will say, laughter is good for you personally and relationally. Laughter. That's the L in LAST-- laughter. The A in LAST will stand for absolve, or forgive. Forgive. You know why? You go, that's what I do, all the time, I forgive. Good. Keep doing it. And here's why. Have you figured out that marriage is the union between two sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God, including yourself? So I was talking to one of our young pastors this week. And I said, so, in your period of being married, what are the things that have really gotten you through to the next level to keep this thing going? He said, well-- and I love this term. He said, we are relentless forgivers. What does that mean? We keep doing it all the time. Let it go. Move on. It's over. Forgive. Really forgive and be forgiven. So because a marriage is a union between two sinners, it ought to be a union between two relentless forgivers. So laugh, absolve. L-A. S in LAST stands for study. You mean like studying my Bible? Yeah, but no. I mean, do that, but that's not what it means. It means study each other. Study each other. Discover each other. This is what you find when you get married. You get married and you think you know the person. You don't. Oh, you'll discover who they are, over the next few months and years. And it might be shocking what you discover, but look at it as an adventure. I like adventure. It's like, wow, I didn't know you thought that. I didn't know you did that, that you liked that, that you listened to that. You make a discovery. And discovery is better than change. If you think, well, we're getting married. I'm going to change him. Ha ha. Got another joke? How about just accept what you got into and discover that. By the way, husbands are commanded to do this. Did you know that? In Peter's writings, he said, "Husbands, dwell with your wives with understanding." Discover them. Study them. So by now, I should be a PhD at Lenya-ology. I should have studied her enough that I kind of got it figured out. S stands for study. So L-A-S. And finally, T in LAST stands for time. Time. Marriage takes time, and marriage takes top priority of time. Not like, well, yeah, here's my-- I'm a chemist, or I'm a dentist, or I'm a doctor, I'm a metal worker, or I work in an office, and I also have a wife. Oh, I'm married, too. Make marriage a top priority-- regular date nights, cultivating common interests. Even though opposites attract, find something that you like and do together. Go on a new adventure. L-A-S-T, that will help your marriage last. For better, for worse, back to those vows. I remember them well. I was asked, between services, do you remember still, I mean really remember, the details of your wedding day? Yeah, because, ugh, the weight of those words. I mean, I remember that day a lot. Now, couples, for better or for worse. More couples will survive if they understand that the better may come after the worse. And so it's like, man, I've been married a few years. This is hard. That's OK. This feels like worse, because we're like figuring each other out and setting parameters and solutions to problems. That's OK. Go through the hard work and let the worse be upfront. Because when you do that, it will get better and better and better. And then the intimacy kicks in, and it's like, this is always good. Father, Your word is what we look to. And in looking at it, as always, our passage of primary reference and interest. We're very interested, since it is Your idea, what is Your blueprint? What are Your ideas about next steps and about making it last? Even though we know we live in a culture that looks at this as not natural and unreasonable. We care far more about what You think and say and what Your words are than the notions that are ever changing in the world around us. But we also understand that life is hard and that when we're in the pinch, it feels different to us. And You know that, as well. That doesn't take You by surprise. It's been that way for thousands upon thousands of years. Lord, help us to understand what You intended in leaving and joining and then weaving those threads, applying those spot welds to different parts to just keep that thing good and strong over time, lasting more than a few years. Lord, help us to see where it's leading, what it can produce-- an intimacy of companionship that is really good. And I pray, Father, that we would apply regarding it as a covenant and guarding it from any force or any person that would seek to drive a wedge in it. Lord, we believe this will honor You. We pray that it would. In Jesus' name, and anyone who agreed said-- Amen. --amen. Is a lifetime commitment to a spouse even  reasonable ? Does permanence have to become a goal if it means a couple just has to grin and bear it? What if a marriage hinders one’s personal growth and self-fulfillment? Today I want to make a case not just for  getting  married but also for  staying  married. Let’s go back to the divine architect’s original prototype to understand what He had in mind when coming up with this idea of marriage. http://skipheitzig.com . Used by permission.

So you’ve been sheltering in place and quarantined with the people you’re supposed to love most for months now. And how exactly is that going? If you’re like most people…well, it’s got its challenges. In this post, I’ll give you four strategies to make your quarantine time together better, not worse. My husband Carey (who writes this blog) and I are no strangers to conflict either, and we’ve had to battle back to make our house a place where we both love being home. Believe it or not, the adversity has the potential to grow you closer. I’ve seen the other side of adversity because, in addition to being married to Carey for three decades, I’ve also worked as a divorce attorney. And in that respect, I know first hand that facing adversity doesn’t always result in a deeper affection and closer bonds. I’ve listened to person after person name the burden they’d faced as the primary reason for their divorce—a failing business, the loss of a loved one, or a child that takes extra care. Put COVID-19 into the mix, a massive disruption of daily life, a global shut down and huge economic loss, and you’ve got a tinderbox for conflict. Preliminary reports of the results of being confined together for more than a month are not good. Once marriage registries re-opened, Chinese officials noted a sharp increase in divorce applications. When you’re in lockdown with your spouse “everything is exposed”. Which motivates me to bring this question to the forefront: how do you fight for your marriage when crisis threatens to take it down? I want to focus on some practical tactics you can start to apply today to get you and your partner through this crisis with your relationship not only intact but perhaps even stronger on the other side. 1. CREATE THE CALM YOU CRAVE Ever heard of “family voice”? It’s the irritated, demanding, rushed and sometimes half-panicked voice you find yourself using at home and pretty much no where else. Because you know that you wouldn’t make your way in the world using that tone. Maybe you don’t even use it at home most of the time. But when you’re under pressure, under-slept and depleted, your family voice comes out of nowhere. Even the best of us risk losing civility under stress. But in your marriage, kindness and peace can take you much further. There’s no better time than now to start creating the calm inside your relationship that everything about this crisis is working against. Start here: when tensions mount in your relationship, make a pact to start simply walking away at the right time. Agree to a signal between the two of you in advance that means this: it’s time to park a conversation where it is and come back to it later, when you’re both in better space. By signal, I mean a simple word like “flag” or “park” or “time out”. Or even a hand signal – any sign you both agree to use so you can maintain your composure. Your immediate goal is to avoid a heated exchange; to ensure your dispute doesn’t escalate into angry words and actions that make things worse. Talking about getting heated, it’s helpful to be able to read the body signs that you or your spouse have been triggered. You might already know that being triggered means that your body’s ‘fight and flight’ reaction has been engaged. When I start to feel anxious or fearful, and my hands and feet may become cold. As my anger rises, I may feel my heart start to race. I may start to perspire. My thinking becomes clouded. If I don’t pay attention to these signs when they first appear, then I more easily stumble into shouting matches or lashing out. I like the way our physician friend explains this to his patients. He tells them to pay attention to whether their emotional status is in the green, the yellow, or the red zone. Green is calm and cool. Red is the emotionally triggered zone I described above, where heightened emotions take over. The yellow zone is somewhere in between. The key is to pay attention. You can probably tell when you’re in the yellow zone. If the green zone is still within your grasp, take a deep breath and proceed with caution. If you’re heading toward the red zone, whatever exchange or argument you’re involved in needs to stop. Once you’re in the red zone, you’re at a much higher risk of saying or doing something you’ll later regret, since it’s no longer possible to think calmly and clearly. Make it your goal to air your differences, at least the ones that provoke your emotions, only when you start in the green zone; calm and clear-headed. Don’t expect others to create the calm you crave. Lead the way. 2. LOVE THEIR WAY, NOT YOURS Carey and I have very different love languages. In case you haven’t heard about love languages, your love language is the primary way love is communicated to or received by you as an individual.  Dr. Gary Chapman has identified five of them:  acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch, gifts, and quality time. Chances are, your love language and your spouse’s are not the same. Here’s how different they can be. Carey, after emptying the dishwasher, might say something like, “look what I did – for you!” And while I would appreciate it, his act of helping with chores doesn’t send my heart into backflips. And I might say, ‘hey, let’s clear an evening so we can talk – really talk’, or ‘let’s go for a long walk on my favorite trail.’ While Carey is usually obliging, these things don’t mean the same to him as they do to me. Since our earlier years, we’ve learned that quality time and physical touch are the love languages that speak to me, while Carey’s primary languages are acts of service and words of affirmation. So, now we know. But do we keep doing those things that we can predict will make each other happy? You probably know, it’s easy to become complacent. What I’ve discovered is that loving Carey in his love language needs to be consistent. I will still tend toward quality time in my attempts to grow closer, and Carey may default toward acts of service. So, I have to ask myself: who am I trying to show love to? Me or Carey? For marriage newbies and veterans alike, becoming more loving is a marathon, not a sprint. Why not make this period of more togetherness a time to experiment with ways to make your bond stronger? Allow these COVID-19 measures to bend your routines. For many years, Carey and I have had outside help with housework, but in the name of being part of the solution and not part of the problem for our community, we’ve minimized the traffic in and out of our home to the absolute minimum. I recently set aside an entire day to clean – deep clean – our house, and sent Carey practically over the moon! He’s checking to see if it’s actually me doing the work. To be fair, I didn’t start off that day feeling particularly happy about a day of cleaning, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. 3. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR PARTNER’S EMOTIONS BUT MANAGE YOURS Relationship expert and researcher Dr. John Gottman writes about the differences in how people perceive and process emotions, and how those differences impact the bond between two people. He explains that parents and cultural background in general impact the ways children are taught to respond to their emotions. In general, he describes two categories of parenting styles when it comes to emotions: emotion-coaching and emotion-dismissing. Although there are times for each style, and no one style is “bad”, the emotion- coaching style is more likely to create an awareness of emotion and an ability to respond to emotions in others. “Emotional attunement” is the term he uses to describe this ability. Dr. Gottman’s research was based on these elements of emotional attunement: Awareness of the emotionTurning toward the emotionTolerance of the emotional experienceUnderstanding the emotionNon-defensive Listening to the emotionEmpathy toward the emotion. In short, his research shows that your ability to attune to your partner’s emotions, whether sadness or anger or joy, answers the deep-down question in marriage: “will you be there for me?” Being present in the sad moments as well as the enjoyable ones builds trust. If your partner is attuned to your emotions, you’re more likely to believe that your partner has your best interests in mind. And, you are more likely to dwell on the positive and forget the negative aspects of your relationship. What does this teach us? Especially if we’ve been raised by parents who were dismissive of, or who ignored, or who rewarded us for outward displays of emotions that were faked? Gottman says this: “Although attunement is not a complex skill, it is difficult to do unless one decides to do it. For emotion-dismissing people, that requires a shift in emotion philosophy from dismissing or disapproving to attunement. It means giving up responsibility for changing someone else’s emotion and shifting to genuinely trying to understand one’s partner’s emotions. Once a person decides to attune, it is possible to get better and better at this skill.” So, creating an atmosphere between you of being real about your emotions, and accepting of each other’s raw (not faked) emotions, is key to developing a stronger bond. Gottman is careful to point out that although all emotions are acceptable, all behaviours are not. Children and partners alike need to acquire the skills of managing how they respond to strong emotions such as anger so that the individual and everyone around them stays safe and well. Overkill emotional reactions may indicate that something else is going on, in which case medical, psychiatric or other professional care is needed. 4. DON’T JUST PAY LIP SERVICE TO COUNSELING Carey and I learned that sometimes we needed help beyond what friends could provide. We needed professional help to sort out the complexity of the conflict between us. Having an experienced professional to work with meant we were able to move past impasses and to start taking baby steps in a better direction. Our relationship wasn’t transformed quickly. But over the years we’ve left our unhappiness, not each other, behind. Needless to say, we’re thrilled. In my family law office, most of my clients said they tried marriage counseling. When I probed, I found out they went once or twice. Then, someone got offended or frustrated or afraid of the cost, and quit. Going to counseling once or twice to resolve a complex relational problem doesn’t cut it. And paying for marriage counseling will cost less than a divorce. The advice we received in counseling was invaluable to the process of transforming our relationship. Our counselors helped us see how much our hurts from before our marriage drove the conflict we were mired down in. Do your best to find professionals with a proven track record of helping unhappy couples. Invest time reviewing the qualifications, experience, and feedback from other couples before you choose the professional to approach. After we got started with marriage counseling, making progress on one issue encouraged us to tackle other areas. In the end, we didn’t regret a single minute, effort, or dollar we invested in getting professional advice to save our marriage. By the way, many counselors are now doing Zoom counseling. So no excuses. A FEW FINAL WORDS… With the radical uncertainty we’re facing, we need each other, and we need hope more than ever. I’m not assuming you have any particular faith persuasion, but see whether this message Jesus spoke stirs hope in you: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” When you sign up for a long-term relationship like marriage or parenting, like it or not, you signed up for some trouble! But you also signed up for love, more life and more joy. And that’s exactly what I hope for, for you. This is a guest post written by Toni Nieuwhof. Toni is Carey Nieuwhof’s wife. She’s also the host of  The Smart Family Podcas t, and a member of our  speaking team, and is available for podcast and media interviews on family and relationship issues. www.careynieuwhof.com .

Do you feel responsible for your spouse’s and child’s arguments? Have you been labeled “the bad parent”? I will answer both of these questions in this podcast. www.birthorderguy.com

Dear Roger, How can I still believe God is at work and know that He is “working it all for good” when people are out of work, coronavirus is spiking again, everyone seems angry, and I'm worried about everything? – Jennifer Dear Jennifer, It seems to me that you’re asking two questions. Let me deal with both of them. First, I believe you are referring to Romans 8:28 and how it fits or doesn’t fit with what you’re experiencing, correct? It says: All things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to his purpose. Second, you’re asking the question, “If what God does is good, then why is the world filled with so much suffering and pain?” Here are two answers that I hope help: Answer #1: Romans 8:28-29 Can Be Misunderstood If we’re not careful, we will completely misunderstand Romans 8:28-29. Too often, we read this passage and stop after verse 28. But will never understand verse 28 if we ignore verse 29, which says: For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son. God never said that all things are good or that we will only experience good as His children. He said is that all things work together for the good purpose of maturing us to look like Christ. That’s very, very different...maturing us to look like Christ is tough. When I was in high school, my two good friends, Ken and George, had a severe automobile accident driving home from the lake. I was in the surgery waiting room when one of our church members began to encourage the parents. “You don’t need to worry,” she said. God says in Romans 8 that all things work together for good to those who love God, and you all certainly love God. Therefore, you don’t need to worry. Everything is going to work out just fine.” Unfortunately, she misunderstood the passage. George died and Ken survived. All things weren’t “good.” The Bible is filled with examples of how God uses things that aren’t “good” by our usual human definition to mold us into the image of Christ. Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:10-11) In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:6-9) God never said that all things that happen to us are going to be good. He says that they will have a good purpose in God’s overall purpose for you and me. He is molding us to be like Christ, and that’s worth everything. Consider this; people without Christ suffer for nothing, while people with Christ suffer for Someone and something that matters for eternity. Answer #2: We Must See Human Suffering through the Lens of a Biblical Worldview I was just 13 years old when I woke up from open-heart surgery to repair a hole in my heart. Then my surgeon, Dr. Ben Mitchell, said to me, “I wanted to be the first to tell you. We made a mistake. I held your heart in the palm of my hand and cut it open to find the hole. But there was no hole. You have a perfect heart.” Well, my heart wasn’t perfect anymore. It’s cost me untold misery; but that’s another story for another time. I thought that when I became a Christian, all my problems would be over. Now, I know better. Many problems will come to us just because we are Christians! For many years, my understanding of why God allows such terrible pain and suffering was under construction. I kept asking the same question you did; “If God is all-loving and all-powerful, how could He allow such terrible pain and suffering in the world?” I’ve discovered that most Christians, as well as most non-Christians, very much desire an answer to that question. For many, their faith or their decision to follow Christ is on the line. How we reconcile the theological conflict between an all-loving, all-powerful God and the undeniable suffering experienced by God-created humanity is critical. Develop a Biblical Worldview to Discover and Know Truth Adopting a biblical worldview is essential, otherwise, when things don’t go as we think they should, the resulting doubt and mistrust stymies our spiritual growth and keeps us from enjoying deep intimacy with God through Christ. Our worldview is how we see the world. We use it to interpret life events. Our worldview helps us deal with such issues as where God came from and who He is. It explains the reasons for suffering and determines what happens after death. Above all, our worldview is the basis for our value system and the meaning and purpose of life. Research by George Barna identifies several non-biblical worldviews: Deism: The Absent God. God exists and created the universe, but He has abandoned the world, letting it run its own course. Morals and ethics are important, but since they are not anchored in an involved, pure God, relativism rules. Naturalism: What You See Is What You Get. God does not exist. History and humans have no purpose. Human choices are driven by survival. Pantheism: Impersonal Divinity. Everyone is god. God is a grand unity of the universe rather than a spiritual being who is holy, powerful, loving, and creative. Pantheists seek to reach oneness with the universe. New Age: Philosophical Syncretism. There is no transcendent god and no evil power to oppose divine power or humanity. Individuals are exalted as the ultimate authorities and are viewed as divine. People are seen as beings who can transcend time and space and who evolve to higher levels of consciousness through a series of personal and mystical experiences. Post-modernism: Hyper-Individualism. There is no “meta-narrative” or grand story that explains life and reality. Personal experience becomes a relative truth that substitutes for absolute truth—which by definition, cannot exist. Absolute Truths Do Exist Now, let’s consider a biblical worldview. What are the “non-negotiables” we must believe to follow and mature in Jesus Christ? A biblical world view obviously has its basis in the Bible. The Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. These nine absolute truths do exist: 1. The commandments and instructions of Scripture provide the foundation for Christian morality and ethics. 2. God is eternal, transcendent, ever-present, all-powerful, all-knowing, and the embodiment of love. 3. Human beings cannot become gods of any kind. 4. Humankind was created in the image of God. But humans were led into sin by Satan who continues to harass fallen, naturally sinful men and women. All men and women need a Savior. 5. Jesus is one hundred percent God and one hundred percent human. Therefore, because He was human, He was able to die. As God, he was able to die a substitutionary death to provide forgiveness for our sin. 6. All who believe in Him by faith alone have their sins forgiven and enjoy an eternal relationship with God the Father. 7. Judgment is coming for those who chose not to believe in Christ. Non-Christians will also be analyzed regarding their behaviors on earth. How we behave on earth really does make a difference. 8. Our earth is flawed as a result of the fall and too often in the controlling hands of the evil one. And because the world is fallen, natural catastrophes, wars, murders, stealing, accidents, failures, and poor decisions happen every day. 9. Until Christ redeems the world, we will face evil, pain, injustice, trials, and sufferings. We are instructed in the Scriptures to not blame God for the troubles we encounter (James 1:2-12; Proverbs 3:11-12; Hebrews 12:5-6). Our fight is not against Him (Ephesians 6:10-17). We battle the evil one and a world fallen into sin. I know that what I’ve said here has been rather complex, but we can use this biblical worldview or rubric to understand the truth about why God allows bad things to happen to us, even though we are Christ-followers. Right now, the Kingdom of God is not here on earth. That’s why Jesus told us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10). The Book of Revelation declares that Satan now owns the title deed to the earth—only Jesus is worthy to get it back. Revelation is the story of how He regains it. Someday, when the events of the Book of Revelation are fulfilled, we will no longer contend with pain and suffering. Life will then work the way we wish it should—and the way God initially designed it to be—but, not now—not yet. In the meantime, we must accept the reality of the biblical worldview. We live in a fallen world. God allows bad things to happen so that we can mature in Jesus Christ. But an improper worldview will only bring disappointment in God when things do not work out the way we imagine is right. Is Your Worldview Biblical or Some Other Variety? Can you see how much of our suffering is part of the natural course of life and not God’s fault? Consider some of your sufferings. Do they make sense in light of your worldview? Think of a trouble you are now enduring. Go through the biblical worldview again and see if God gives you insight into what you are experiencing. Now, consider an even further surrender into God’s love and grace. Enjoy His presence for a moment. Then pray again for God to make you more like Christ. Love, Roger