THE MODEL OF HOLINESS AND REVERENCE

THIS IS NO SECRET I FOLLOW THE MINISTRY OF JOHN MACARTHUR.

Paul said, "Be a follow of me." So I would say that to see flesh out the principles of the Word of God, is not a bad idea.

Preachers are personalities. Because of the media, John has being a personality in the Christian field.

He is as well known in the Christian field and Kobe Bryan is known in the Sports field. John has not chosen to promote himself, the media has done that.

If I have heard negative remarks about any preacher, its about John. If there has been false remarks made about a preacher, its being about John MacArthur.

Those who have had a problem with John's teaching, please click here to read to get a clear understanding about what he teaches. If you are interested.

In the past generations, they created an image of pastors that focused on distance, separation, and holiness, and it sometimes overdid the nobility of that image. Today this generation has undone that image and, in the process, has become enamored with "authenticity" and "I'm just like you in every way." But I don't believe the apostles Paul had that notion in mind when he sent off his instructions for elders in the Pastoral letters. Leaders lead because they've got something to say and show to others. So many pastors take off their tie and suits and just like like anyone else. That is cool they say.

What seems to be the need today is a model who models before God holiness and reverence. Today its seems the personality of the pastor is in the forefront and God is in the back ground.

I see in John MacArthur a person who is an example of one who as put to death self and the flesh. As pastors stand before their congregation its the whole package: pastor, father, husband, menor, spiritual director, sibling, friend, and fellow Christian. As a "fellow" Christian the pastor is a model before everyone of the "death of self, death of the flesh' life and lifestyle. Its true you don't want to put pastors on the pedestal, yet at the same time you need to have a pastor who is going to be a good example of what it means to live properly before God. And in my opinion that man for me is John.

Half the time I think I should quit, when I think where I am in my lifestyle and roll as a husband, father, pastor, menor, and friend and fellow Christian. While I have truly strived to be the right kind of person, pastor and husband, etc. I note that I have a long way to go.

CHILDEN AS CAREGIVERS OF THEIR PARENTS

Kids taking care of their parents? Maybe the title should be: The confession of a son.

I googled adult children taken care of their parents. That was interesting for sure. I had never done any research on children taking care of their aged parents. (Of course as a pastor/teacher/son I realize there are biblical principles, but it is principles and needs to be fleshed out in reality). So do not get biblical on me.

Becoming 'parent of your parent' an emotionally wrenching process.

I just haven't taken the time to review all this about parents. In my mind, Mom was able to take care of herself, and I just didn't give it much thought really. I believed she was in good hands and just let it go at that. I was acting as I had all my life with Mom. Why all of a sudden would I start doing things differently? I have never been involved in any decisions Mom has made nor in any decisions made for her. I am not saying it was okay, but it is what is is.

There is no way to really know, unless you go through it. I am not sure I really understood this whole matter. And even in the process of Charity and I and Debbie and Rob with Lenora That last year of Lenora life was an experience. We were at their house everyday for a year. Now
I admit Charity and Debbie did all the work. I just was there most of the time. I was never really connected with Lenora, but I did get a little attached in the end.

The difference was that the three kids were working together because they were here where she lived. And I admit they worked well together, for the first time.

Also, Bob had all the means to take care of all the financial needs of Lenora. Therefore, we didn't have any expense, except the gasoline, and a few other things. So again, in my mind was they were well taken care of.

Even now Bob is well taken care of.

Charity and Debbie and Rob really never got along really well until Lenora was dying. Even now it's not great, good but not great. Kids sometime don't get along very well, until one of their parents is dying and they come together as a team and work well together. That is the hope you have. Nevertheless, it would have been different, I believe, if we three were not within living distance. Well maybe.

As I was reading some of the articles on this subject of taking care of our parents, I found it interesting to say the least.

How you flesh out biblically "honor your parents" and how you live up to what some people say you should, is interesting as well. The problem is, it's a lifestyle that you have with your parents from the time you are born. You honor your parents as a youth and as a teen, and then as an adult.

Our culture today, is not like the days in the past. Children and parents lived together, we are in a whole other world as to the lifestyle of living. We lived close together in the other world. Today families live all over the country. It's good that some families live together. Often one family member will live near the parents, and it seems it falls on that member to take care of their parents.

I certainly didn't think about changing my behavior toward Mom after dad died. I certainly didn't think about Mom any differently when I went to college, or was married, or as we moved on in our life. And it's been that way as long as I remember. I really didn't do a study on the subject of children's responsibility toward their parents in their older years.

While I worked in the Nursing Home for 16 years, you do get a perspective on the subject. But for some reason, it never occurred to me about MOM. I just believed Mom was well able to take care of herself, and I did what I have always acted. Believing it was okay I just kept doing what I was doing.

I can't remember ever writing a letter to Mom, I would send a birthday card, a Mother's Day card, a Christmas card. I would call on occasion. I always felt she was okay in living her life. For
a while Mom and I lived in the same area. For a while she played the piano for us at the church I pastored for three years. Then she played the piano at the church where I was the Asso. Pastor. She played the organ at Victory for a number of years. Even when Charity and I moved to Kansas she was still working full time. And I was rather satisfied she was doing very well.

On trips back from Kansas to Ohio over the next sixteen years, at least once a year, we would visit her along with Charity's family for about a week. So for a week a year we usually had time with our parents.

In my mind I was happy that we could see our parents once a year. Charity's parents would come to see us in Kansas. Mom was working full time and couldn't come as often as she would have liked I am sure. She also had to visit Don and Ellen.

I read in an article this week, that kids should sit down together and work out a plan for our parents when they come to the point they can't take care of themselves. This should happen before our parents get in that condition.

Becoming 'parent of your parent' an emotionally wrenching process

This article http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/eldercare/2007-06-24-elder-care-cover_N.htm tells what AARP has found out about caregivers. AARP estimates that unpaid caregivers who contribute financially spend an average of $2,400 a year on care.

Adult Children, Aging Parents and the Law

This article http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/unenforced-filial-responsibility-laws/ is good too about the law and taking care of your parents.

"Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before. Adults over age 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population, and most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs. That burden falls to their baby boomer children, 77 million strong, who are flummoxed by the technicalities of eldercare, turned upside down by the changed architecture of their families, struggling to balance work and caregiving, and depleting their own retirement savings in the process."

Like I said, I had never done any research on the subject, even though I had worked in a nursing home for almost 16 years.

Maybe if I had this article fifteen years ago http://planit.cuna.org/013178/article.php?doc_id=852 I would have had a different perspective on the subject. But really I was clueless on the subject. I saw Charity's parents as well and able to take care of themselves. I saw Mom doing well, and able to take care of her independent self. She is still rather independent in wanting to take care of her self at 85 years old. So is Charity's dad, very independent and doing well at 77 years old. They had all worked very hard and had a good retirement plan.

Is it the responsibility of children to care for their elderly parents?

http://www.helium.com/debates/137346-is-it-the-responsibility-of-children-to-care-for-their-elderly-parents

And this I will close but certainly a lot more could be said. Maybe later.

WHAT DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE UH!

PERSPECTIVE WHAT IS IT? PARTICULAR EVALUATION OF A SITUATION OR FACTS, ESPECIALLY FROM ONE PERSON ‘S POINT OF VIEW. A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THE MATTER.

WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THIS PHOTO?

KIRK WARNER AND XL111 SUPER BOWL

MINISTERING GOD'S TRUTH IN A BROKEN WORLD

THE STORMS OF LIFE AND PUTTING BROKEN LIVES BACK TOGETHER AND PASTORAL HELP

I have to realize that we as pastors/ teachers/ leaders/ counselors have to deal with a world of broken lives.

To be critical of people who you don't believe to be faithful to the Lord's work, one has to stop and realize that maybe it's because they are faced dealing with broken lives. I have to stop to realize people who do love the Lord and love the church, are sometimes faced with broken lives in their family.

I am glad that because of our love for our family we don't kick those who have broken lives out of the house. While it's hard for me personally, (maybe it because of my gender) to be emotionally involved with people, I do realize the emotional burden that parents, especially moms have toward their family.

HELP FOR PASTORS:

We live in a broken world. "It’s a Jungle Out There" Each year, the administrative, legal, and regulatory challenges of ministry seem to grow more time-consuming and complex.

Because of the chaos of many lives, their lives affect others as well. As Christians we usually are affected by the chaos of our family and church family, and often they feel drained by the stress and frustration. As a result the energy to spiritual service is forced to the back burner.''

"Tide was high, I don't wanna knock my head on rocks."

THE CHALLENGE OF MINISTRY

• Getting the work of ministry done is always a challenge. The ability to motivate and engage others in the work to be done is a critical aspect of achieving your ministry goals. And, without able and energized volunteers, any church will grind to a halt. How to cultivate and nurture effective ministry in lives of those who are spiritually challenged is a task.

• The world in which we live has become increasingly complex and filled with laws affecting our ministries that we did not need to deal with in the past. Regardless of the state in which you minister, you are subject to “abuse reporting” rules of some type. The failure to comply can affect your ministry and subject you to personal fines or even incarceration.

THE STORMS OF LIFE

Ministry is just a succession of storms of life. There is always a storm coming through our ministry. Mark 4:1-2 You believe you are ready for any storm that comes into your life and the life of the church; but as you come into the storm, you begin to realize maybe you are not ready.

Storms in life, broken lives coming into our care, will bring out your belief in God. The challenge is to put our faith in a God who is in the boat with us. "Lord, do you care for us, or not." Mark 4:35-41. "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?" You are sleeping during our storm.

What do we really believe about God, what is your theology? It comes to light in a storm.

The challenge in the pastor's life is to know God is in this ministry with us. The challenge with the people is to know God is in the boat with us as we deal with storms and broken lives that come into our life. The challenge with pastors, elders, is to let the people know, you too are in the boat with them.

I fail to realize I need to say, "How can I help you?" But maybe the Lord is still teaching us. The Lord is giving me wisdom and understanding as I have taught in Proverbs 4:1-10 this past Sunday.

40 YEARS OF ENDURING PASTORAL MINISTRY

40 YEARS IN ONE CHURCH AS PASTOR/TEACHER AND WITH ENDURING MINISTRY.

John MacArthur

Grace to You, the radio ministry of John's preaching, put together a book entitled Truth Endures. Each chapter is one of John's most enduring sermons he has preached taken from various periods during his 40 years of ministry. Phil Johnson introduces each chapter with a brief historical sketch of the times we were living when John preached the particular message. The special treat is the 60 plus page biographical essay by Iain Murray of John's life and ministry. I will have more of a review of the book later this week, but here is John holding the book after it was presented to him, FEBRUARY 1, 2009

A Retrospective on 40 Years: John MacArthur with Rick Holland

In the book, Stand: A Call for the Endurance of the Saints, a snippet of a conversation I had with him stands out to me:

• Early in my first year or so at Grace Community Church, I had this little kind of motto that I used: “If you concentrate on the depth of your ministry, God will take care of the breadth of it.” My ministry hasn’t changed since that first year in that small, little church. For me, it’s all about getting into the depth of Scripture and my own personal walk with the Lord. Breadth is something that God does. . . .

FRAMING A SERMON BY JAY ADAMS

Frame It!

Jay E
Adams

Betty (my loving wife) paints. I’m not talking about refurbishing the exterior of the house but about the kind of painting that eventuates in pictures hanging on the wall. She’s good at it, so I like to listen to what she
says about it. Recently, she told me, “A picture isn’t a picture until it’s framed.” Profound! She’s right. Putting a frame around a painting makes all the difference. It defines, delimits, focuses and sets off the thrust of the
painting. Truly, it makes a picture out of a painting.

While there is much more to a painting than the frame—try hanging an empty one on the wall—the frame enhances the painting. It is a shame to see good work diminished by either no frame or a poor one that fails to complement the painting. A picture becomes a picture when it has a frame!

The same is true of a sermon. Many preachers never take the time required to frame their sermons. And even when they do, some choose frames that clash rather than blend with the sermon itself. What is a good sermon frame? It is one that directs the listener’s attention to the focal point of a biblical message. This may be done in any number of ways, but let me list just two.

First, a good sermon frame is one that limits. A painting with a frame is bordered on all sides. That is also true of a good sermon. It does not extend out in every direction covering all sorts of topics and ideas thrown together in some haphazard fashion. Rather, it confines the sermon to those elements that are central to the Scripture portion from which the preacher is speaking. A good frame holds one’s attention upon what is inside of it. Likewise, a good sermon frame restricts a preacher to the topic at hand. In that way a preacher helps his listeners to concentrate on the one thought of the passage rather than distracting them by extraneous ideas.

There are a number of ways in which preachers may fail to limit their messages. The may wander off onto tangents. Usually, these are chunks of thought that interest the preacher, but have little direct bearing on the main point of the passage. They are bits of information that have caught his attention, about which he thinks (usually wrongly) that the congregation will be as interested as he is. Better to jot them down and file them for future use when they do pertain to the truth of another message. Take it as an axiom that whatever doesn’t directly contribute to the message of the hour will detract from it.

Some preachers fail to frame messages when—unlike the writers of Scripture—they think that they must say everything about every subject. It can’t be done. The attempt is futile. Biblical writers don’t do it, so why would you think that you need to? What am I talking about? The idea that unless you treat every aspect of any subject you have failed to preach the truth. It took Paul years to preach “the whole counsel of God” at Ephesus; how do you think that you can do so in less time?

Jesus, for instance, told His disciples that when they would ask anything in His Name the Father would give it to them (John 16: 23). Now, apart from the fact that this promise was made to them in the context their future ministry, even if the passage can be applied to us in a secondary way, it fails to tell us everything about how to pray. Elsewhere, James says that we must pray rightly (not to satisfy our desires), that to be “effectual” it must be uttered by a “righteous” person, and that we must pray without doubting—in faith believing. We would have to refer to numerous passages about prayer in order to gather the entire scriptural doctrine of prayer.

But neither Jesus nor James did any such thing. Nor do you have to do so. What you do need to do, instead,
is to know and hold all aspects of prayer in the back of your mind when preaching about any one of them so that, some day, when you preach about the next aspect, you won’t contradict what you said in a previous message. In each biblical passage the writer (or speaker) has a particular point to make, so he didn’t go into all aspects of his subject. Nor should you!

Secondly, as an appropriate picture frame pulls the eye inward toward the object that the painter wants to emphasize, so too a good sermon frame helps to attract ear to the focal point of a message. A common thread running throughout the message may accomplish this. Like a ribbon tying up a package (to change the simile) a sermon frame packages truth. A word, phrase or example repeatedly referred to throughout the sermon will often accomplish the same thing. Or a matching introduction and conclusion-a match that keeps the main subject before the listener and summarizes it in the conclusion—is another way to appropriately frame truth. A question asked in the introduction, then raised again and again within the message, and answered only at the end also tends to frame things well.

In short, we may say that the scriptural message stands out most vividly in a sermon when it has been properly framed. Good preachers always do it. Go thou
and do likewise!

FOOTNOTE:

Personally I have met Jay Adams several times, and have many of his books.