Category — Family
Satan’s Favorite Place
Do you have a place in your home that you just don’t want to think about because it’s so full of junk that even opening the door makes you tired? Maybe it’s that garage, closet or spare room you’ve been promising yourself you’d clean up someday, but you just keep throwing the stuff you don’t know what to do with in there.
When you throw something else in there, you pause for a minute, feel a little guilt and a lot of shame, but turn off the lights and close the door.
“I’ll take care of that later,” you promise yourself.
Most of us would have to admit that there are places in our lives that are the equivalent of those dark rooms full of junk. Junk we don’t know what to do with, so we just turn out the lights and close the door.
“I’ll take care of that later!”
You may hate that room, but there is a being in the universe that absolutely loves that room.
The devil.
It’s his favorite place in your life because it’s the place he can hang out as he screams his lies into your heart:
“You’re just a piece of garbage, no wonder God doesn’t let you do something important for Him.”
“See, I told you you’d never measure up. Do you imagine Jesus really loves you anymore? If I were you, I’d just give up. Come on in here with me, we can party and it’s going to feel really good.”
“Whatever you do, don’t turn on the lights! If your Christian friends ever knew what you were really doing in here, they’d abandon you like a stray dog in a war zone.”
For a lot of men and the wives and children who love them, the dark place in their lives is sexual addiction—more specifically, pornography.
Recently God moved powerfully in our church through my friend, Kevin Butcher, at our men’s retreat. His messages exposed the source of shame and documented how grace in community can turn on the lights of mercy and hope. Some of our men, their hearts encouraged enough to trust Jesus and us with their “dark room,” disclosed their secret life.
One of our pastors, Colin McDougall, accurately captured what God has done with their courage in a recent letter, begging people to pray for us and them:
Dear prayer partners, America’s critics are in the hundreds of millions, but those who are willing to pay the price in prayer are numbered by handfuls. Thank you for your commitment to pray with me for the revival of our nation. And please continue to pray that some portion of this revival would begin here with us.
This month I need to be more specific and beg you to join me in prayer for our men, many of whom have been caught in the undertow of the pornographic addiction sweeping our nation. Lust has always been a favorite trap employed by the devil, but our generation’s inventions for digitizing and transmitting images have turned an unfair fight into a rout in homes across our country. While we keep Satan’s secret for him, we are vulnerable and exposed, in the dark and on his terms; but when we walk in the light, Jesus promises to restore our fellowship with God and with one another, to forgive our sins and to cleanse us by His blood from all unrighteousness. The message of First John reminds us that we can’t successfully compartmentalize: there is no way to serve Christ in public while we compromise with a hidden life in private. Hypocrisy in us does not somehow save face for Him.
At our retreat in May several courageous men from this congregation came into the light with various hidden sins, and we got to experience firsthand that Jesus keeps His promise. We discovered that pornography, especially pornography on the internet was part of the darkness restraining our fellowship with one another and with Him. Though the sins were secret, the effect was a cascade of destruction. But now this band of brothers is experiencing fellowship and serving Christ like never before (even if this has cost some of our men the lost respect of a handful of people who would rather glory in appearances than in the new life). Their testimony of grace has encouraged others to join them in the light.
Well, now you know: pornography is a problem among the men in our church. I hope that doesn’t cause you to lose respect for us. I hope that instead you will pray that the first steps of confession and restoration of fellowship will spread across the congregation and will blossom into that authentic holiness without which no one will see the Lord. You can be even more specific, because we have asked a friend of our church, Dr. Mark Laaser, to meet with us on August 14 while he is on the west coast. Dr. Laaser wrote “Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction” the book that we have found most beneficial for men who are serious about getting free from this sin, and his wife Debra wrote the book we are using to encourage their wives. Pray for freedom and deliverance but also that we will be a community that doesn’t just talk about God’s grace; we want to regularly bathe in it!
Eight years ago when I first asked you to pray with me for revival that would start here, this was not what I had in mind. But today I am praying that this deep conviction of sin would take root in our corner of LA County and spread wide. Would you please join me?
July 27, 2010 No Comments
Watching Zach
Since our son-in-law David went down with a terrible and debilitating disease a month ago, a lot of Judy and mine’s life has been dedicated to “Zach duty.”
Zachary is our grandson—David and Celia’s fat-cheeked bundle of smiles whose energy stretches my almost 60-year-old body to its limits. He’s a robust, squirmy adventurer who chafes at every limitation.
But the one attribute that’s on my mind during this season we Christians commemorate the birth of Jesus is Zach’s dependence.
Without someone to love him and care for him, he’s totally helpless. He can’t feed himself, clean himself or protect himself. He doesn’t even know how to go to sleep on his own.
Watching Zach during this season helps me appreciate the humility of our Lord Jesus.
It was love for me—love for you—that moved the Creator of heaven and earth to be born on this little marble of a planet. It was mercy that moved Him to show up in a baby’s soft skin, totally helpless, totally dependent.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory o the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
December 8, 2009 4 Comments
My Deepest Christmas Insight
Brace Yourself!
As a follower of Christ, I’m preparing myself for the Christmas Season, but not in the way you might think.
I’m bracing myself against the cascade of guilt and shame flowing from the so-called evangelical community every December.
There will be the usual degrading offering of “you’re spending too much money on this or that,” with a self-righteous sprinkling of “we buy a cheap tree,” one-upped by “we don’t buy a tree at all,” but trumped by the “we only talk and think about Jesus on Christmas” crowd.
Modern-day Pharisees throughout the church will boast of their “just right” limit on individual gifts, as they look for a verse to spew at anyone spending even a dollar more than their “sanctified” amount.
So, I’m supposed to feel guilty about decorating our home to celebrate the Lord’s birth and buying presents for the people I love?
You Gotta Do Better Than That!
Hey, you feel guilty over that if you want to. I’ve got a lot better, more biblical reasons to feel guilty during Christmas:
• I believe in the Incarnation, but sometimes I have doubts. If it isn’t true I’ve wasted most of my life.
• I hope in Christ as my Good Shepherd, but sometimes I get discouraged, even depressed…especially during December.
• I love my Judy with all my heart, but sometimes during our insane holiday schedule she drives me nuts and I say mean and hurtful things…even on Christmas morning.
• I say I want to live openly and honestly, but sometimes I still manipulate people to get what I want and try to hide my shortcomings…even from my closest friends.
• I’ve made a lot of progress in the whole avoid sin thing, but sometimes I still surprise myself and sin as if I had never met Christ…even as I approach sixty!
So if you’re trying to make me feel guilty for enjoying a season that brings families together and everyone gets an extra dose of joy and grace, you’re wasting your time. If you’re trying to shame me for the small extravagances that come from my thankful and loving heart, it’s not going to work.
Here’s What I Know!
And it’s not because I’m a particularly strong or spiritual Christian. I’d have to say I’m just about average, maybe even a little below average. But I live with one Christmas truth lodged deep in my soul: The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14).
My deepest Christmas insight is that I am seriously, profoundly and thoroughly loved by Jesus Christ; and I don’t deserve it because I have done nothing to earn His love. He just showed up in a manger in Bethlehem, lived among us, died for us, and rose again because He knew I needed something that dramatic to have any hope.
December 1, 2009 4 Comments
Do You Have a Life Verse?
I’ve been teaching Psalm 138:8 for over three decades and telling the story of how that wonderful sentence, “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me,” became our life verse. It was a dramatic moment in 1978 when a young Lieutenant Ed Underwood thought he was saying goodbye to his bride and his little family. We thought I was marching to war from Ansbach, Germany and leaving them behind to take care of themselves as the fury of the Soviet Empire rained down on them.
We didn’t go to war, but that was the night Psalm 138:8 became our life verse.
Every time I preach that sermon, people ask me to help them find their life verse. My answer is always the same, “You don’t find your life verse; your life verse finds you.”
Our life verse found us through Judy’s unshakeable faith on that night when we thought our worst fears were coming true. Like David, she had lived a life of dependence on her God:
David’s lifelong experience with answered prayer gave him confidence in his God (Psalm 138:1-3). My Judy had trusted her Jesus through the trials of a little girl losing her daddy and watching her mommy lose herself to alcohol. Nobody had to tell Judy on that night that her God answered prayer; He had proved Himself to her many times. Her lifestyle of dependent prayer “made her bold with strength in her soul” (v 3).
David’s lifelong expectation that his God would be praised for regarding the lowly gave him confidence in His God (Psalm 138:4-6). My Judy had personal experience with a God who kept His eye on a little almost-orphaned little girl who cried out to Him on the night her mother abandoned their family. A Presbyterian pastor’s kindness invited these three homeless children into his home while her mother recovered from the crisis. Her lifestyle of trusting Him in spite of her circumstances had convinced her that “though her Lord is exalted, yet He regards the lowly” (v 6).
So, on the night when our family was “walking in the midst of trouble,” my Judy knew “that He would revive us…that His right hand would save us…and that He would accomplish what concerns us” (vv7-8).
You want a life verse? Then live a life of dependence on your God, and when your worst fears come true, I believe your life verse will find you!”
“The Lord will accomplish what concerns me” (Psalm 138:8, NASB).
November 24, 2009 2 Comments
Prayer for David
Before I almost died ten years ago, Christians who actually asked God for something in faith and expected Him to answer made me feel uncomfortable. Like most Christians, my role had always been to pray for others who may have lost perspective in a tragedy.
But on that day I realized the enormous difference between standing at someone’s deathbed and lying in your own.
Stop telling God what He already knows! I wanted to shout. Look at my wife, my children. I’m dying and you’re preaching on the sovereignty of God? Somebody ask Him for something. There’s not enough faith in this room to heal a bunny rabbit!
Time was running out.
Today our family returns to this desperate place of prayer. My son-in-law, David Newkirk lies in a hospital bed in Pasadena, and he is very, very sick with Gillian Barre Syndrome. An excerpt from my book, When God Breaks Your Heart, summarizes our feelings, our request, and the man who taught us how to pray dangerous prayers of faith:
Just then our elders walked into the room. Even they were shaken by the tortured figure in the bed that eerily resembled their pastor.
Charlie White, mentor to most of us in the room and friend to all, taught us all a lesson in prayer at that moment. Leaning across my bed like a prophet of old, this dear brother cried out to His God:
Father, we are frail and foolish. There is little here we comprehend. But we remember Your love for us and hear the words of Your Son who taught us to pray. He promised us You would listen to our prayers and that He would remind You that we are weak. He told us to pray with the faith of a mustard seed, to believe that You are able to answer our prayers. He told us that with You all things are possible. And so, our Father, we come now to Your throne of grace with this one request: Please heal our pastor. O Lord, we love him and do not want him to die. There is so much to do. Our church needs him; his family needs Him. Please let him live. We beg You, in Jesus’ name.
And then, his own private appeal: “Lord, I love Ed. Please let this boy live and serve. Amen.”
The fear and doubt drained from my heart as this old saint and retired pastor spoke his mighty prayer. His bold words gave us hope. His faith kindled a fire of courageous faith that spread around the world. By the next day, over ten thousand Christians were repeating Charlie’s simple request: Please let Ed live and serve.
There’s a young man I love more than life, my Celia’s David. Yesterday he asked her to tell people to just pray for healing, and “not all that other stuff.”
I know how he feels.
Please kneel with Celia, Judy, and me at the throne of grace and beg our Father in heaven: “Please heal David Newkirk.”
If you believe, you will see the glory of God (John 11:40).
November 17, 2009 3 Comments