When you have trouble keeping your mind on your Bible reading, praying, or on a sermon (never happens at Shandon – right?), here are a few tips:

1) Don’t expect too much of yourself.  When you do, in any field of endeavor -including time with God – it leads to short-term trying harder and a long-term sense of failure frequently followed by quitting.  There are parts of Scripture that are fascinating.  There are prayer needs that are riveting.  There are others that are common and everyday but still important.  Set a level of focus that is fairly normal, and if you fall below that normal level of focus, make yourself go back and start again as a discipline. 

 2) Tell yourself you’re going to have to pass a pop quiz on this passage and make yourself pay attention to the details.  While you pay attention to the details, you may be surprised at the inspiration that pops out of the page at you. 

3)  When your mind wanders during prayer, just stop.  Say, “Lord, excuse me for just a moment.”  Pick up a paper and pen or pencil and write out the distraction you have.  Then you won’t forget it and you’ll be able to go back to it and deal with it when you’re through with prayer.  As soon as you’re finished jotting down a note, just start talking with God again when you were interrupted.

4) Ask yourself, “Why am I bored with this passage of Scripture or this prayer need?”  Maybe you need to eliminate that prayer for a time.  That’s ok to do.  With Scripture, maybe you don’t have any idea why it was written in the first place.  (For example: law, genealogies.)  You can also find out from a Bible dictionary why that Scripture was written such as Nelson’s New Bible Dictionary (the best one-volume, Bible dictionary I know of at this point).  That has helped me, at times, to make difficult passages more interesting.  Also, I’ve been really rewarded by puzzling over something that is in Scripture for years (like genealogies) and finally getting it.  As one man said to me, “I wouldn’t spoil your search to understand the genealogies by telling you why they were written for anything.”  Twenty-five years later, I’m glad Dr. Nelson didn’t give me a quick and easy answer, and I’m glad the Lord made me puzzle about it.  I’m not going to tell you why either.

Shandon Baptist is a tremendous treat to attend and participate in.  The way you are singing and worshipping the Lord is really special.  I’m grateful for the way God has grown your ability to worship through the years.  We’ve had wonderful worship leaders at our church, and I’m very grateful Scott Lee is here now and that God is using him to grow us in our ability to worship the Lord. 

             Our church is growing numerically in both the Sunday school and the worship service.  We’re having the highest number of visitors that we have had in a long time right now, both first-time visitors and total visitors.  Our giving is ahead of budget as you’ve been able to see in the newsletter.  All of this is just wonderful.  Let’s be sure to thank the Lord for this and express our gratitude to Him.  I wanted also to express my gratitude to you because the way you are stewards of the life the Lord has given you is making a big difference in the way our church is working right now.  

             It is wonderful to be your pastor.  I love seeing God work in my life and in your lives.  I look forward to seeing God continue to have His way with us in the days ahead.

Sunday’s message (April 11) raised thoughtful questions from a couple of church members. They indicated that the three circles diagram, as it relates to the family, was helpful but wondered how they could go about moving from one circle to the other or how they could encourage a spouse to move from one circle to the other.

             First make sure you are interested in your own level of involvement before you become interested in your spouse’s.  The parable of the mote and the beam (Matt. 7:3) is instructive here.  All of us need to be committed spouses and none of us are as committed as we need to be.  So pay attention to the person you see in the mirror before you pay attention to the person sitting across the table from you.  The beam in our own eyes always needs some work.

             As to how you go about moving yourself in the direction you should go, let’s look at I Corinthians 2:14 – 3:3.  These verses describe three spiritual positions.  The first is the position of the natural man. He is lost, separated from Christ, and does not have the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14).  The second position is the man of flesh or the carnal Christian (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).  This man is born again and will go to heaven when he dies but is centered in himself rather than in the Lord.  The third position is the spiritual man (I Corinthians 2:15-16) who is centered in the Spirit of God and has the mind of Christ.  In order to move from being the natural man to being a Christian, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  In order to move from being a carnal Christian to being a spiritual Christian, you must surrender to the Lordship of Christ.  The natural man does not have Christ.  The carnal man does not have Lordship.  The spiritual man has Jesus Christ as Lord because he is willing to do anything the Lord wants.

             The same principles apply to the family and your level of involvement. The person who is an interested spouse and has been one for a while may be a person who has gotten comfortable in being a carnal Christian (focused primarily on flesh/self) or he may be a person who is lost and separated from Christ.  Only you can know which condition you are in.  If you are lost, in order to move beyond being a merely interested spouse to involved, make sure you are born again.  Can you be specific about the time you repented of your sins and received Christ through faith?  Are you trusting good religious feelings (which EVERYBODY has) or are you trusting the Lord?  If you are born again, sincerely ask the Lord to help you focus on your wife and children more than on yourself.

             The involved spouse is frequently a high level carnal Christian.  He is interested in what he can do for the family in his own power.  His motives are excellent, but his methods and means are lacking.  His methods are not generated by the Holy Spirit.  It isn’t that he doesn’t have a good heart, it is that he doesn’t have the power of God in order to carry out the desires of his heart.  That’s why oftentimes he finds his efforts to be less than joyful.  So the person who is the involved spouse, who I am assuming has been born again, needs to surrender to the Lordship of Christ by telling God you surrender to Him and are willing to do whatever He wants you to do.  Ask God to give you the power of His Spirit and to show you how to live the Christian life in your family in the power of Christ.  The surrendered spouse is the “committed” spouse.  He (she) is the person who has received Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord and is walking in the Lordship and in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. 

             Whatever change needs to occur in your life begins with prayer and proceeds by continuous prayer.  To ask the Lord to do this work in your life is very important, and this goes both for which stage of church life you are in or which stage of family life you are in.  I hope this helps. 

             I’m going to speak to that this coming Sunday and perhaps that will make it even clearer.  I’m grateful for the interest shown by the two people who asked me this question.  I love hearing from you.  I pray God’s blessings on you getting to the committed core in both the church and family, the two most important teams in your life.

When I came to faith in Christ and my life began to change, the Lord gave me a real heart for lost friends.  All of mine but one were lost.  One in particular was my hunting, fishing, and dating friend from high school named Bill.  I couldn’t wait to get home so I could talk with him about Jesus.  The week before I went home I prayed daily and had some church friends do the same.

             When I got to Tallahassee I went to his house and asked him if we could go to his room.  He sat on his bed and I sat on the floor.  I began saying something like, “Something has happened to me, and although it is new it is also really wonderful.  I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, and He is truly changing my life.”

             The look on his face changed from pleasant to not so pleasant.  He looked at me and said, “Why are you telling me this?”  I said, “I don’t know.  I know your family is Baptist, but we have never discussed Christ in any way, so I figured you were Baptist like I was Episcopalian – in name only.”  “Well, I’m not.  I’m ok.”  It was pretty much the end of the conversation, and it put a real chill on our relationship for quite a while.

             Surprisingly enough I didn’t feel like a failure at the time, although the strain hurt me because Bill had been a friend of mine since cub scouts (and we still are friends.)  I did feel like I had done what the Lord would have me do and that I needed to leave the results to God.  With occasional twinges of regret, that’s what I did.

             Can you imagine the joy several years later when I heard from him that as a law student in Birmingham, Alabama, he had prayed to receive Christ? Now we were brothers in Christ.  It was also a real relief because all signs of the strain between us were gone.

             I remember at the time thinking it could be difficult to win a friend to Christ who had done so many non-Christian things with me and who would remember me much more in that light than he would in the new light of Christ and that if it put a strain on our relationship or indeed if I lost a friend but he eventually came to faith in Christ, it would be worth the strain.  I think that was the right calculation. Sometimes I think that I and the rest of us take the other side of the calculation – that I would rather maintain a friendship than alienate someone even for a time by seeking to share my faith with them.

             I hope you are thinking about who you can share your faith with, that you will share prayerfully, and that you will leave the results of your sharing to God.  God bless you as you develop the harvest mind and as you apply it to the people God has put in your life.