Disciples Who Hear God's Voice

  We are gearing up for another season of scripture reading and memorization. This year, we will be going through a few selected Psalms. I pulled together a list of the Staff and Elders' favorite Psalms, which we will go through two at a time each week. We selected them a bit randomly (by favorite), but we will go through them in the order they appear in the scripture.  Before we get started in the series, you should watch/listen to this insightful overview of The Book of Psalms from the Bible Project . When I first listened to this overview, I was shocked at how much I DIDN'T know about the Psalms. Don't be surprised if you hear some of the details from this video in a future sermon or two. Another great resource to download a head of time is an app called Through the Word . I am pretty new to this app, but they take the time to give a 10 to 15 minute run-down of every Psalm. This will come in handy as we spend time each week reading, studying, memorizing, and praying thro...

This week, I talked with a friend about the family devotionals that we do with our kids, or at least that we try to do. I pulled back the curtain and let him peak inside the family devotional time at the Aguilar house, which is not very impressive. On Saturday mornings, we read a short passage, and I try to ask some basic comprehension questions. Then we share what we are grateful for and what we are struggling with (prayer requests). Then we pray for each other, and Tina and I usually end up leading each kid in the prayers that they are trying to pray. We try to walk the fine line of forcing them to do something they don’t want to do without making Bible time something they hate. It doesn’t feel magical or even meaningful most times. I realize, however, that the majority of our discipleship happens in other real-world scenarios that I try to take advantage of. For example, our kids will often say they are afraid of one thing or another at bed time. That’s when I teach them how to deal...

My kids are at the age where they understand just enough to NOT understand why we call it Good Friday. I've been swimming in Christian lingo and mindset for so long that the utter strangeness of the cross starts to "make sense" in ways that it really doesn't from a merely human perspective. I say it "makes sense" because we talk about it so much that it starts to feel normal: that our God would die on a cross. We sing songs about the cross. We wear them around our necks, and we talk effortlessly about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. It has begun to feel almost obvious--as though the one through whom all things were created would obviously  die on a cross for us.  In my seminary class, we're looking at the works of Paul as he helped the early church deal with the newness of faith in Jesus. One of the big hangups was the idea that anyone of any importance could possibly have been crucified. It was, likewise, strange to think of a multinational grou...

  In Kenya, a young man asked me if I thought God gave special grace to major church leaders so that they could say and do the kinds of unbiblical things he is seeing from the American church without losing their anointing. He asked this because of a preacher he listened to out of Tulsa OK, who uses profanity in sermons, wears women's clothes to preach in, and among other antics, squirted syrup all over an open Bible during a sermon to illustrate, well, no one really knows. Does God give a guy like that special grace to teach nonsense? I told the young man in Kenya that I thought it was the exact opposite. I told him what the Bible says about teachers, that we will be held to a higher standard for what we teach, not given special passes. ____ If you're wondering what that story has to do with the video above, it's this: Recently, a number of prominent leaders, ministries, movements, and "prophets" have been coming under considerable scrutiny for being lovers of mo...

Last week, I brought up the topic of spiritual attack coming against the church. In my previous post, I said that I get strangely rejuvenated in situations like these. It may be as simple as the fact that the reality of the darkness always makes me more aware of the light, but it may be something more spiritual. I think God manifests himself more in and through us when we are more aware of our need for Him. Obviously, we need Him all the time, but in the midst of attack, we REALIZE we need Him. One thing I'm noticing across our church body is that we seem to be hearing God speak more clearly than usual. In a normal month, I'll usually come across 2 or 3 stories where people hear God speak and receive some kind of confirmation. However, in the 30 minutes following the sermon last week, I heard 5 or 6! I've continued to hear more and more throughout the week. Most of these testimonies would be a bit difficult to try to explain here, but one excellent example gives us the titl...

We have begun our season of prayer and fasting--incase you were wondering why you were so hungry! We kicked things off on Wednesday with a worship night that felt quite powerful to me. I was on stage banging away on a hand drum called a cajón, but I could hear the congregation singing and shouting pretty passionately the entire time.  That worship night marked the first of several special prayer nights that we will hold throughout the season of prayer and fasting. We're hoping that people make a special effort to join in to corporate prayer if possible.  On Sunday, we are also planning on changing up the liturgy a little by moving the sermon earlier in the service to leave more time for worship and ministry time at the end. Even though it wasn't originally a part of the plan, this first Sunday of Lent will have a couple of baptisms to kick it all off.  ______ As this season of prayer and fasting kicks off, I find myself rejuvenated in prayer , not necessarily because of t...