The initial tweet: “Jesus calls us to *be* different people, not just to *do* different things.”  The response: “And yet, sometimes the only way to be someone is to do something.”

As a Bible teacher, I have often spoken about the importance of being transformed people, of having hearts and minds that are changed to our very core, and of fully being Christians—not just doing Christian things. And I don’t regret any of that, because it’s all Biblically accurate. But I find, as I look across the landscape of Christian teaching, that sometimes, I and others have taught strongly on the concepts of being, and perhaps too weakly on the ideas of doing. As the Twitter conversation above says, “Sometimes, the only way to be someone is to do something.”

The reality is that God calls his people to do a lot, and the great test of our faith is not always whether we mentally or emotionally approve of them and really “open our hearts to his truth.” The test comes down to whether or not we actually do what he’s told us to do. The lives of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, David, Samuel, and Daniel were characterized by the things they did or did not do when they followed God’s instructions. And our lives ought to be the same.

So, do we simply do what God calls us to do? Do we behave as husbands and wives like God has told us to? Do we control our words and give thanks to him always? Do we give to the poor? Do we pray? Do we refrain from gluttony and drunkenness as he has said we must? Do we turn our eyes from things that tempt us, including envy, lust, and greed? Do we control our anger? Do we forgive others who have repented toward us? Do we attend assemblies with his people to worship him and edify others?

All of those questions are based on verbs—action words. And they just compel us to ask whether we have the faith to do what God has called us to do.

“But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” (Jas. 2:18)

- Dan Lankford, minister

I occasionally get into ruts with my prayer life. At times, I find that I’m repeating myself with little thought, that I’m skipping times of prayer, that I’m only focused on Earthly things instead of Heavenly, or that I’m simply not being honest with God. And there could be other problems.

So how can we get out of problems like these? What guidance from God is there to help us pray better?

Simple answer: the Psalms.

Many believers have emphasized the importance of praying the psalms — adopting their language as our own when we talk to God. This is especially helpful since the Psalms cover essentially the entire emotional and spiritual spectrum of our lives. If there is a situation that we need to pray through, the psalms cover it. Times of joy, grief, anxiety, celebration, victory, despair, repentance, worship… they’re all there. And for all of them, we have divine guidance on how to talk to God.

So my encouragement for you this week is to get your Bible, open to the psalms, and pray (out loud) as your own. When the psalms praise, you praise. When they lament, you lament. When they hope in God, you hope in God. Follow the psalms, and let your heart be completely open to seeking the face and favor of God for each new day of life.

- Dan Lankford, minister

Which do you value more: perfection or honesty?

Which type of person would you rather have a relationship with: the one who never makes a mistake and never needs help from you, or the one who is willing to trust you and ask you to be there for them? Which type of friend would you rather have: One who will tell you the truth even when it’s difficult and messy, or one who will bend the truth to keep up good appearances and niceness? Which type of family would you rather be part of: One in which you can confess that you were wrong and hear someone sincerely say, “I forgive you,” or one in which your imperfections and failures are held in perpetuity as indicators that your character is flawed?

This simple dichotomy is one of the ongoing challenges that Christians face. Obviously, perfection is the goal and the calling (cf. Jas. 1:4), but that perfection depends on the ability to be honest, because all have sinned and fallen so far short of perfection (cf. Rom. 3:23). After all, what is the concept of confession but honestly confronting our sin and calling it what it really is? Perfection is not a pretense of no sin having ever existed in our past; it’s the acceptance of God’s grace that forgives the sins of the past. We can’t make ourselves unstained, but we can accept the stain-removing power of Christ in us. It’s not that we hide our sins and even our temptations; it’s that we confront them, repent of them, and turn to God to accept grace that overcomes them.

Obviously, we want to pursue both attributes in our own lives. We’re supposed to be perfect in our love for God, and we’re supposed to be honest about our failures. We’re supposed to be perfect in faithfulness to God, and we’re supposed to be honest that some temptations pull really hard on our hearts. We’re supposed to be perfect in the way we relate to our family and friends and neighbors, and we’re supposed to be honest when we sin against them so that we can repent of it and be forgiven.

Ultimately, we must learn to value both things, as they work in tandem to make us better. We must be people who value honesty even when it reveals unpleasant truth, and we must be people who strive for perfect faithfulness to God. May God help us achieve both.

- Dan Lankford, minister

Earlier this year, I was riding in the car with a friend who is a native of South Africa, and I got curious if he knew any of the songs from the movie Invictus, so I turned on the soundtrack. He knew and responded to a few of them, but there was one that really got him emotional—he tried to sing along and started to choke up. I figured that it must be a really profound or sad song, so I asked what it was about, and he said, “It’s just about when they brought trains to the African plains.” I chuckled a little at the fact that a simple folk song would touch him so deeply, but later, I realized why that happened: because for him, it was one of the songs of home.

I love it when I see Christians experience the same thing as we sing about Heaven — our home with the God whom we love. Our hymns about Heaven are not all of equal writing quality or depth of thought, but  even the simple ones often still get to us. And I think that the reason is because they are our songs of home. We, like my South African friend who now lives in Arkansas, are citizens of two places at the same time; people who can feel at home in two places, but only fully at home in one of those places. And the songs of home draw our hearts toward where they belong.

So, “sing to me of heaven,” brothers and sisters, and may those songs draw us closer and closer to our Father’s heart. And if we all get a little emotional when we hear those songs, I’d say we’re all the better for it.

- Dan Lankford, minister

“Now also finish the task, so that just as there was an eager desire, there may also be a completion…” (2 Cor. 8:11)

Zeal. Passion. Enthusiasm. Fire. Excitement. Drive. Eagerness.

Those words communicate the Christian mentality to all that is truly virtuous. They don’t necessarily mean that a person has a vibrant, outgoing personality. They do mean that when we observe behaviors like Bible study, prayer, church participation, generosity, moral purity, and teaching the lost about Christ… a person with “eager desire” will show ample evidence that those things matter to them.

I hope that each of us could say honestly and humbly that our lives demonstrate eagerness and zeal for the things of God. I hope that our preparedness and participation in Bible studies demonstrates that our zeal for those things overshadows our fear of what others will think of us because of our comments. I hope that our eagerness to bless others by hospitality outshines our concerns about messing up or looking silly in some way. I hope that our drive to help others by leading them in true worship eclipses our fears of being thought of in a negative light. I hope that our eagerness to participate in good works of the church compels us to be quick to sign up for all sorts of things when opportunities present themselves.

Holding back our enthusiasm for the things of God may be wise on a few rare occasions, but those occasions are just that: rare and few. Overall, saints are supposed to be people whose lives are defined by a fire that burns more and more brightly as time goes on. And that’s an act of will—a thing that we must decide. So are you deciding to live out genuine zeal for the things of God? If not, then it’s time to make some changes, so that where we have set our minds to becoming great Christians, we may finish what we have started and fully become who Christ calls us to be!

- Dan Lankford, minister

Recently, while visiting a church like ours, I heard a brother speak the following prayer: “Lord, we pray that you would not hold our sins against us. Please ignore our failings of the past.”

While I’m sure that most of you immediately realize the problem with that request, I feel compelled to point it out so that we can all learn from it. The problem is this, and it’s a serious one: God forgiving a sin is not nearly the same thing as his simply ignoring it. Ignoring means just pretending that a thing never happened, while forgiveness is fully conscious of the sin that has been committed and is willing to pay the necessary cost of atoning for it. To think that God simply ignores our sins is to cheapen the high cost that Christ paid for our forgiveness—the cost of his own life.

Brothers and sisters, let’s be impressed with two important takeaways from this: First, that our choices of words in worship to God matter a great deal, and we’d better speak truth when we speak on behalf of God. And second, that we owe an incalculable debt of gratitude to God, our Father—not for simply ignoring our sins, but for paying the price to completely, truly, graciously forgive them.

- Dan Lankford, minister

“Leaders must be aware of who they’re working with. If you have a team of people whose ability level is a 4 or 5 out of 10, you can’t just throw all the policies and doctrines at them and expect them to turn into 9’s and 10’s. But if you’re leading a group of 9’s and 10’s, you can’t treat them like 4’s and 5’s because they’ll easily become discouraged.”

So goes the wisdom from leadership teachers everywhere: that our leadership must be tailored to our followers in order to best help them. The leader must not see his followers as his servants; he must be their servant and lead in a way that is attentive, dignifying, and respectful of whatever level they are at… while still seeing the potential for what level they could be at.

This mindset is eminently Biblical, and it’s easiest to see in the shepherd model. In contrast to cowboys, who drive cattle from the rear of the herd, shepherds lead sheep from the front. But in that we have an even finer lesson: A shepherd cannot take off running at his full speed and expect the sheep to keep up. He does best to go just a touch faster than sheep-speed, so that they will move in the right direction but not be left behind.

It’s no wonder that Solomon’s wisdom was, “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds” (Prv. 27:23). This wisdom will help us whether we are leaders at work, in our homes, or in our families. In order to lead well (which is really to serve and be a blessing to others), we must know who we’re leading and use wisdom to help them in the way that is most helpful for them.

- Dan Lankford, minister

A friend of mine from Florida made an interesting statement in his sermon this past Sunday as he was discussing 1 Kings 19:19-21 — the passage where Elijah literally gives his mantle (a cloak or jacket) to Elisha as a sign of the one’s ministry passing to the other. This was the quote from my friend that caught my attention: “We need to note that Elisha wasn’t a bad guy being called out a life of sin. He was a good man being called out of a life of comfort.”

My friend’s point in the sermon was that Elisha was doing good and honest work in God’s world, but he was needed for something more meaningful. In order to do what God called him to, he had to accept something beyond his well-worn groove of a comfortable life. Elisha had to leave some of the life he knew to follow a better path outlined for him by God. And you a similar thing in the callings of other prophets: Moses made excuses to God (cf. Ex. 3-4). Gideon did too (cf. Jdg. 6). Isaiah presents us with a positive example, but could have just as easily said to God, “Here I am! Send someone else?” (cf. Isa. 6:8). And then Paul presents yet another example of someone who, at one point in his life, was doing right things, and yet was called by God for something more needed (cf. Acts 16:6-10).

That’s the same call for all of us—not always to leave a life of sin, but often to leave a life of comfort—especially in matters of church family, church life, teaching, and relationships. How many of us are uncomfortable with any number of church involvements, and yet we don’t seek the teaching or guidance or practice to improve our skill and actually accept the responsibility we’re being called to? How many of us could take on more responsibility for everything from basic organizational tasks to visiting orphans and widows to showing hospitality, and yet because we’re uncomfortable with some aspect of it, we continue to hope that ‘someone else’ will do it?

Let’s just commit to picking up the mantle of the things that matter most and giving what God asks of his people in his kingdom. That doesn’t always mean that we need to be doing more, but it does mean that we need to be giving him our best… even when that requires a step out of our comfort zones.

- Dan Lankford, minister

When God called Moses into his service, he made several excuses for why he couldn’t (or didn’t think that he should have to) serve as he’d been called. Each time that Moses made an excuse, God answered it with a clear and simple statement that showed just how flimsy it actually was. Ultimately, God persisted in calling Moses and Moses did answer the call to be the chosen deliverer of God’s people.

We often make excuses (sometimes ongoing ones) for why we can’t (or don’t think that we should have to) serve God as we’ve been called. We sometimes believe that the qualities of true disciples won’t work in the modern world, that we don’t have enough ability to do what God’s asked of us, or that we shouldn’t have to do as we’re called to do because people will reject our efforts. But again and again, the Bible answers our excuses with clear and simple statements that show us just how flimsy they actually are.

Let’s just stop ourselves from making excuses for lackluster service to God. Let’s just decide that in whatever ways he calls us into his service, we will humbly and joyfully serve him. Always.

- Dan Lankford, minister

Relevance. A handful of years ago, that was all that evangelicals seemed to talk about when it came to what they were looking for in a church. One side of the aisle were focused on “making church relevant,” by which they meant making it feel like something fun and exhilarating and definitively not church-y. On the other side were those who rebelled against that idea by refusing to preach and teach in ways that had emotional impact or met daily-life needs, because they saw the other side’s efforts toward “relevance” as frivolous and phony and therefore unspiritual.

While one of those impulses leans in a slightly more biblical direction, the reality is that neither is wholly correct. Both are reactionary—a rebellion against someone else’s problems by going in the extreme opposite direction, only to create a new problem. When we react to people like that, the pendulum just swings back and forth between opposing problems. So what’s the solution? It’s that we stop reacting to people’s problems and instead respond to God’s wisdom.

And this is where we find a solution to the challenges with “relevance” in church. God said that his word “is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hb. 4:12). It doesn’t need to be made relevant. It already is. If we preach and teach it rightly, then we will easily see its impact on our lives. And the impact of true, sincere worship will be felt among any group that offers that (cf. 1 Cr. 14:24-25). Put those together, and we’ll find that we automatically have a church where the impact is truly relevant in every generation.

On the other side of the coin, it’s not wise for us to only give discourses on the Bible’s literary design, it’s ancient cultural significance, and its philosophical value while neglecting to teach how it impacts our lives, our thoughts, our speech, and our relationships. There must be a proper balance, guided by the Spirit in the fullness of the spoken word, by which we lead one another into “all the truth” (Jn. 16:13).

So we need not make the things of God relevant since they already are, and we dare not make them irrelevant and stand in the way of God’s life-giving power. In everything we do, we ought to speak “the oracles of God” in their fullness, both for information and transformation. The ways of God are eternally righteous and wise, giving guidance to us in this era as they do in every era.

- Dan Lankford, minister