The Phil Files

Masterpiece! No, not the bbq sauce, but you!

I’m sorry, but I’m tired of all the “worthless worm” talk and songs that tell us we are depraved and worthless. Yes, without Jesus, we can’t come to God and have no righteousness of our own. But even unsaved, we are still made in the image of God (James 3:9) and were created with purpose and known by God in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13-16). How can we call that junk? How can we call be for “the sanctity of life” and not recognize the inestimable value we have in the eyes of our Creator?

Yes, we battle the fleshly side of our natures, but by the Spirit of the living God, we are being transformed to be more like Jesus every day (2 Corinthians 3:18) as we keep our gaze, our hearts, on Jesus. That Holy Spirit empowers and transforms us and helps us be who we were conceived by God to be, in Christ! We are God’s holy temple, the place where He dwells and we were made to glorify Him in that temple (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

And as God’s children, we are far more than forgiven: we are forgiven and cleansed (Colossians 1:21-23; 1 John 1:5-2:2). We are recreated in Christ as God’s workmanship, God’s artistry, our Father’s unique creation made to do great things. You see, grace doesn’t just save us from something awful, but it also saves as someone special and it saves us for God’s holy purpose in our broken world (Ephesians 2:1-10). Yeah, we may not be there yet, it may take some more transforming, it may take some chiseling, but God has plans for us because we are His … and we are His workmanship, His artistry. So don’t believe you’re junk. You’re His Masterpiece … so please, let Him finish His work before you give up on who you are in His eyes!

I do not know about you, but I get fed up by all the trash on TV and the web. Even worse, is the trashing of other people that goes on via the web. But rather than become part of the trash talking and trash serving side of the web, I want to remind you of the good side to the web and challenge you to do good via the net!

Heartlight.org started on April 3 in 1996. By God’s grace, we reach hundreds of thousands of different folks every month, ten of thousands a day. These folks come from over 175 countries. They use our Heartlight.org resources — articles, devotionals, graphics, and blogs — to help bless their own lives and the lives of others. Only God knows how many people are blessed downstream from these first time users. But Heartlight.org is much bigger than just our main web site. In addition we provide or are partnered with the following free resources:

• searchgodsword.org — A Bible search, commentary, and original language tool
• iluminalma.com.br — The Portuguese version of Heartlight with it’s own content
• hermeneutica.com.br — A Portuguese resource for pastors, church leaders, and teachers
• radiokd.ru — A Russian Christian Music Radio station with daily study resources
• yssa.nl — A Dutch site using Heartlight resources for daily devotionals and resources
• laluzdelalma.com — A Spanish version of Today’s Verse
• homegathering.net – A mobile version website with Heartlight.org resources and resources for home gatherings (house church worship and Bible studies)
• heartlight.mobi — The mobile device version of Heartlight.org (works best for iPhones, PalmPre, Blackberry browsers)
• Hogar Sagrada la Familia — Trip Coming in July: Heartlight.org partnership with Olive Branch Ministries

This is just our little corner of the world, but let’s talk about doing good, working for social justice, and making a difference in the lives of others in real ways. Several interests I have and am invested in personally seek to do good in the world by releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name, providing clean water, providing mosquito nets, giving business opportunities through mico-loans, and other tools for people who do not have access to those.

Compassion International is a favorite ministry for doing good for children. Donna and I currently sponsor three children and I have been to see one of them on a Compassion trip to Uganda, Africa in February of 2008. This life changing trip was a great opportunity for several of us who were on the web to create a buz and get a lot of folks more involved in sponsoring children through Compassion. Here’s the YouTube video of my home visit to our little girl:

You can read more about this visit in my Heartlight article.

In addition to Compassion, several other related “do something good” efforts made possible by the web that I like are:

• BiteBack — providing mosquito nets to prevent Malaria, a leading killer of children in many under-developed parts of the world. Along with unclean water, Malaria kills more children than war or other diseases and this disease is largely preventable with mosquito nets and the planting of certain trees and plants that drive away mosquitoes.
• charity: water — providing clean drinking water for the billion folks in our world without it. Along with Malaria, unclean water kills more children than war or other diseases and these water-borne diseases are largely preventable with clean water.
• Village of Hope — rescuing children from all sorts of poverty, war, and being orphaned, this ministry in Ghana is a powerful tool of giving children a new hope for this life and connecting them with the life of Jesus.
• Eternal Threads — providing a business opportunity to help folks out of poverty and offering purses and bags for use and for gifts for Westerners and helps monetize poor families through a sustainable system of lifting folks out of poverty and giving them the dignity of doing it through work.
• Pockets of Dreams — little girl dresses made by those in need funds and jobs in under-developed countries: great for gifts and helps monetize poor families through a sustainable system of lifting folks out of poverty and giving them the dignity of doing it through work.
• Kiva — micro-loans that help folks in undeveloped countries start businesses and then pay back their loans: proceeds from loan pay back then provide for more loans, which becomes a self-sustaining system of lifting folks out of poverty and giving them the dignity of doing it through work.
• Christian Homes and Family Services — a great organization that helps women who have unexpected pregnancies work their way through the decisions of parenting and adoption and helps families looking to adopt find a child for them. A growing emphasis also involves foster care and foster-to-adopt programs. We love to give donations in honor of those we love as gifts for Christmas, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, and other special events.

Don’t know what you are doing for Christmas, but how about using the upcoming holidays to center your family on giving to those in need and purchasing gifts that help lift people out of poverty. Fed up with what’s bad? Then join me and others who are using the web to do good, work for social justice, and give folks a chance to do something better in their lives!

He has shown all you people what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8 TNIV).

You can take it to the bank! Jesus’ promises can be trusted. How do I know? Look at all the tough promises he made — going to Jerusalem to die, that he would be rejected and resurrected, that he would lay down his life for his sheep, that the shepherd would be killed and the sheep be scattered … — and he kept those. So if he was willing to keep the tough ones to show us his love and redeem us, how much more will he not also keep the ones that include us in his grace and bring us to the Father?

That’s what my heartlight.org article, “Promises Kept,” is all about this week: Jesus’ promises can be trusted. Take a read and then I’d love to hear your response to the following questions (or, even if you don’t read the article, what’s your take on the questions?)

What are your favorite promises of Jesus?

* Why can you trust these promises to be true?

* What do they help you look forward to experiencing with God in the future?

* How do they help give you reassurance in difficult times?

Why do you think we tend to forget Jesus’ promises when we are going through times of trouble?

How does Jesus’ proof of his faithfulness to the hard and painful promises give us assurance that he will keep the glorious promises?

What can you do to help some other believer hear and accept the promises of Jesus?

For the past 15 years, one of my favorite music groups — Christian or secular — has been Delirious?! Alas, the time has come to say goodbye to these guys who brought a wave of change to Christian music and who put social consciousness as well as staying true to biblical views of people and their value to God into their music these last 5 or 6 years. They played the end of their last U.S. tour this past weekend and I know I will miss their style, thoughtfulness, passion, and energy. Nothing quite like seeing them live and joining in on the non-stop journey of music, praise, and call to action.

I was blessed with a preview of their new greatest hits album, History Makers, and it’s got about 30 or so of their greatest songs. If you get a chance, take a look and see what you think. While some of their older favorites are best known — “Lord You Have My Heart,” “Shout to the North,” “Majesty,” “Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble,” & “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever” — I love some of their new stuff as well as the old stuff — “Paint the Town Red” & “History Maker.” My all time devotional song to Jesus is one of their older ones, “What a Friend I’ve Found.” And during one of the darkest times in my journey of faith, the song “Every Little Thing” seemed to pop up again and again to minister to the broken and wounded parts of my heart. Here’s the lyrics of that song for you to ponder.

Everything must change
There’s a mirror showing me the ugly truth
These bones they ache with holy fire
But I’ve got nothing to give, just a life to live
If your world is without colour
I will carry you, if you carry me

Every little thing’s gonna be alright
Every little thing’s gonna be alright [x2]

There’s no-one else to blame
I live my life between the fire and the flame
I’ve built my house where the ocean meets the land
It’s time to live again, pull my dreams out of the sand
Let your world be full of colour
I will carry you, if you carry me

When it’s all falling down on you
You’re crying out but you’re breaking in two
When it’s all crashing down on you
When there’s nothing you can do
There is someone who can carry you

Here’s to BlueTree rising to fill the void, both lyrically and also musically, but they’ve got big (white) shoes to fill!

To the Delirious? lads, thank you and good work. Most of all, thanks for the passion you have for Jesus … oh, and here’s a little reminder, every little thing is going to be all right because there is Someone who can carry you!

Why is God so hung up on this one image, this one metaphor, as He seeks to help us understand His relationship with us? I am talking about the image of sheep and shepherds. This image runs throughout the Bible. All sorts of leadership positions are tied to the term shepherd — prophet, priest, king, pastor, elder, teacher.

Clearly, one of the reasons this image was used had to do with the culture and nomadic lifestyle of early Israelites, yet even in a more urban world in which the church was born, this image and style of leadership was used to describe church leaders.

My weekly heartlight.org article, A Really Inconvenient Truth, focuses on this the subject of shepherd-leaders. Great chapters of Scripture focus on this subject as well — Ezekiel 34, Psalm 23 and John 10 are probably the three most notable, but many others exist.

So let’s do some thinking about the shepherd image in Scripture and answer some questions to get us going:

Why do you think the image of a shepherd, as a leader, is so important in the Bible?

Why is it used to describe God so frequently and intimately?

Who has been the shepherding leader in your life — whether the shepherd was an official leader or not?

For whom can you be a shepherding leader?

What trait of God as Shepherd blesses you most?

Looking at the Lord’s Prayer today, one of the phrases that catches my attention is lead us. Of course for me to honestly pray this, I must be willing to be led, and yes, there is the back side bite on the request. But in an era looking for leaders with integrity, the request to be led is an urgent one and important. And the Lord leads in a myriad of ways — through Scripture, through the Holy Spirit, through the preaching and teaching of the church, through the timely advice of a friend and on and on we could go.

On my mind today, however, is the development of shepherding style leaders (this will be the focus of my next four Thursday heartlight.org pieces). How do we develop folks at all levels of leadership — family, small groups, house churches, preaching ministries, para-church organizations, church elders … — that have the heart of  The Good Shepherd (Psalm 23 and John 10)?

Tim Woodruff is a friend and writer I respect and he has a piece on Lynn Anderson’s Mentor Network website today on the Holy Spirit and leadership. His last paragraph is well worth the price of admission and much more:

Oh, I can build better preachers (“You need more illustrations”) or better managers (“Read this book”) or better pastors (“Visit the visitors!”). But I’ll never take a Simon and create a Peter. Someone bigger than I is required to accomplish that great and needed task. As mentors, our first and ultimate goal must be to unleash that “someone bigger” into the lives of those we touch. If I fail to do that, the best I can hope from my mentoring work is the creation of ministers who never grow larger than me.

Today, as we pray the Lord’s Prayer and ask God to “lead us” let’s keep in mind some specific people that we intentionally pray for by name and ask God to release the power of His Holy Spirit into their lives to develop their leading and shepherding skills, attitudes, and passions, remembering that “as mentors, our first and ultimate goal must be to unleash that ’someone bigger’ into the lives of those we touch”:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us  today our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

For yours is the kingdom and the power
and the glory forever. Amen.