New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

We’ve been talk­ing about plan­ning for the past ten days now. If you missed any of the other posts (or just want to review them), you can find all the posts in this series by sim­ply click­ing “Plan­ning” under “Cat­e­gories” on the right side of the screen. So far, we have talked about deter­min­ing our pri­or­i­ties from Scrip­ture and prayer and plan­ning our year by plan­ning out a typ­i­cal week. This helps us to ful­fill the Great Com­mis­sion to make dis­ci­ples who can make dis­ci­ples by redeem­ing the time. Then we gave some sug­ges­tions for plan­ning daily times of wor­ship and sug­gested some good books to read on your own or with oth­ers this year.

Today we want to help you plan how you will serve God and oth­ers in 2012. Paul tells us, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due sea­son we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have oppor­tu­nity, let us do good to every­one, and espe­cially to those who are of the house­hold of faith” (Gal. 6:9–10). We should not serve to earn God’s favor; we already have His favor through faith in Christ. We should not serve to impress oth­ers; that is sin­ful self-service. Rather, our ser­vice should be done out of grat­i­tude for what God has done for us in the per­son and work of Jesus, and done with the moti­va­tion of express­ing love to God and others.

With that foun­da­tion, here are some ideas (sorted by cat­e­gory) to help you think through how God might be call­ing you to serve this year:

1. Doing Good to Every­one — Espe­cially Believ­ers. We have the respon­si­bil­ity to serve all kinds of peo­ple, as Scrip­ture makes abun­dantly clear. But God also teaches that we have a par­tic­u­lar respon­si­bil­ity to care for other believ­ers — help­ing them to grow spir­i­tu­ally and tak­ing care of real needs. The Book of Acts shows that when we take care of one another as we are called to do, it is a very pow­er­ful wit­ness to the world. Our care for other Chris­tians should start in the local church. Are you a mem­ber of a healthy local church? If not, con­sider join­ing New Life this spring. There are lots of ways to serve believ­ers through our local church, includ­ing on Sun­day evenings (Truth and Grace, preschool, hos­pi­tal­ity, wor­ship team) and through­out the week (bib­li­cal coun­sel­ing, lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, dis­ci­pling of new believ­ers, and more).

2. Doing Good to Every­one — the Poor, the Orphan, and the Widow. Our first respon­si­bil­ity as Chris­tians is to serve other Chris­tians, and the peo­ple who should be thought of first but are often thought of last (if at all) are the poor, the orphan, and the widow. We have both mem­bers and reg­u­lar guests at New Life who fit these cat­e­gories in a lit­eral sense, and oth­ers who fit them in a fig­u­ra­tive sense. I had the priv­i­lege of meet­ing a lit­tle girl just a few weeks ago who lives with her mother but is not cared for phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally, or spir­i­tu­ally like she should be. We have both mar­ried moms and sin­gle moms who aren’t lit­eral wid­ows, but their husband’s work sched­ule or divorce has left them as func­tional wid­ows. In our com­mu­nity, we have mul­ti­ple avenues to part­ner with local and inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions to help the poor, the orphan, and the widow. You can see a list of these orga­ni­za­tions on our Serve the City page and our Mis­sions and Church Plant­ing page.

3. Doing Good to Every­one — non-Christians.  The Great Com­mis­sion informs us that we need to be giv­ing our lives to make dis­ci­ples who can make more dis­ci­ples for God’s glory. In some way, every one of us should be involved in the lives of non-believers, serv­ing them and shar­ing the Good News of Jesus with them. This can include serv­ing our lost chil­dren at home, serv­ing the lost who attend events like cor­po­rate wor­ship, Life Group meet­ings, or Ele­ments Classes, and serv­ing the lost in our com­mu­nity. Many of our mem­bers got involved in the lives of non-Christians by see­ing a need and seek­ing to meet it. We have mem­bers who are min­is­ter­ing in local schools, to the home­less, to teenage moms and their kids, to wid­ows, and in many other ways. Non-Christians with real phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual needs are all around us — we sim­ply have to choose a per­son or peo­ple to serve and get started.

Through­out the years, peo­ple have asked, “Why doesn’t New Life have a pro­gram for _____________?” Our under­stand­ing from Scrip­ture is that the lead­ers of the church and the church as an insti­tu­tion exist to equip the saints for the work of the min­istry (Eph. 4:11–16). We want to give you the tools you need to get the job done. The tools can be bib­li­cal train­ing, money, vol­un­teers, or many other things, but our hope is that our peo­ple would be about the work of the min­istry in their every­day lives. If you have a pas­sion to serve either inside or out­side the church but aren’t sure how to get started, we’d love to help you. Con­tact us and let us know what we can do to bet­ter equip you to serve in 2012.

For the past week now, we’ve been talk­ing about plan­ning and actu­ally doing the hard work of plan­ning how we will spend 2012. Today, I’d like to help you think through what you might read this year. Not every­one is reader, and that’s ok. You don’t have to read a book a week  (or a month, or a quar­ter) in order to be a godly Chris­t­ian. Books can be used by God to help us under­stand what the Bible says and to help us apply it to our lives. Keep in mind that Jesus never applauded any­one for know­ing what the Bible says, but for doing what the Bible says.

Con­sider Matthew 23:1–7: “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,“The scribes and the Phar­isees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe what­ever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not prac­tice. They tie up heavy bur­dens, hard to bear,and lay them on people’s shoul­ders, but they them­selves are not will­ing to move them with their fin­ger. They do all their deeds to be seen by oth­ers. For they make their phy­lac­ter­ies broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the syn­a­gogues and greet­ings in the mar­ket­places and being called rabbi by others.”

In other words, Jesus is not upset that the Phar­isees have good the­ol­ogy. In fact, He is happy about that — He tells the peo­ple to do and observe what they say. But He crit­i­cizes them because they preach truth but don’t prac­tice truth. They are hypocrites.

Our goal should not be merely to increase our knowl­edge of God, but to increase our knowl­edge of God so that we might increase our wor­ship and obe­di­ence to God. With that said, here a few books I believe you should plan to read this year:

1. The Bible. If you have time for one book, this is it. Again, here is Justin Taylor’s list of great Bible read­ing plans for 2012.

2. Total Church by Steve Tim­mis and Tim Chester. Steve and Tim do as good a job as any­one artic­u­lat­ing the impor­tance of the Gospel and com­mu­nity in the con­text of the local church, and they do it in a very acces­si­ble man­ner. I love how they call the church to really be the church rather than Chris­tians sim­ply lean­ing on paid pro­fes­sion­als to do the work of the ministry.

3. Gen­er­ous Jus­tice by Tim Keller. Far from another book attempt­ing to guilt you into serv­ing the poor and mar­gin­al­ized, Keller shows from Scrip­ture that God’s grace should lead us to give up our lives to serve those whose lives are neg­a­tively affected by injus­tice in our world.

4. You Can Change by Tim Chester. Obvi­ously, I like guys named “Tim.” My friend Jacob Van­Horn said that this book should really be called “You Can’t Change” because Chester does such a great job of show­ing how God alone can change our hearts and lives through the power of His Holy Spirit. If you are strug­gling to under­stand what the Gospel has to do with your daily life and daily strug­gles, this is the book for you.

If you are look­ing for some sug­ges­tions to read with oth­ers, let me sug­gest a title or two for each type of per­son you might be read­ing with:

1. Devel­op­ing Lead­ers — I’ve read plenty of lead­er­ship devel­op­ment books, and I’ve appre­ci­ated many of them. But I think Dave Kraft’s short paper­back, Lead­ers Who Last, is just the best book for Chris­t­ian lead­ers of any kind. And if you own a Kin­dle, you can down­load it for $1.99. Crazy.

2. Matur­ing Chris­tians — many matur­ing Chris­tians want to learn to dis­ci­ple oth­ers, but they aren’t sure where to begin. If you are plan­ning to meet with some­one in this cat­e­gory, I don’t think you can beat Colin Mar­shall and Tony Payne’s The Trel­lis and the Vine. It’s finally avail­able in paper­back this year!

3. New Christians/Non-Christians — for new Chris­tians, I think Greg Gilbert’s book, What is the Gospel? is an excel­lent choice. Pas­tor Jason will be teach­ing through this book again in our Spring Ele­ments Classes, which will begin in March. If you are plan­ning to read through a book with a non-Christian, I’d rec­om­mend Mike McKinley’s new book, Am I Really a Chris­t­ian? In our con­text, many non-Christians have grown up with some Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence and may even claim to be Chris­tians. While Gilbert’s  book can be a good choice in this case as well, I think McKinley’s book could be even better.

I hope these sug­ges­tions will help you out this year. Happy read­ing (and applying)!

Last Wednes­day and Fri­day, we talked about plan­ning out our year for the glory of God. We want to redeem the time, using it to honor God in every pos­si­ble way. Today, I’d like to spend a lit­tle time dis­cussing daily time with God. While there are no explicit com­mands for Chris­tians to have a “Quiet Time” of some kind, reg­u­lar per­sonal wor­ship is cer­tainly described in Scrip­ture (Ps. 1:1–2; Rom. 12:1–2; Phil. 1:3–5; 1 Thess. 5:16–18; et.al.) and should be the desire of every per­son who has been rec­on­ciled to God through faith in Jesus.

Many Chris­tians do not spend daily, focused time in per­sonal wor­ship. While we might be tempted to trace this to a lack of dis­ci­pline, Scrip­ture is clear that the heart dri­ves what we do and do not do (Is. 29:13; Matt. 15:15–20). So if you find your­self lack­ing the desire to know God through His Word, prayer, wor­ship, and other spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines, the answer is to ask God to change your heart. A heart filled with grat­i­tude and love for God because of the per­son and work of Christ is one that will eager to com­mune with God.

With that said, the spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines are called “dis­ci­plines” for a rea­son: they require effort day-in and day-out whether you feel like it or not. And some­times you just won’t feel like it. Grow­ing up as an ath­lete, I know I rarely felt like work­ing out. The dis­ci­pline of going to weight room, run­ning sprints, and doing drills isn’t fun — but it pays off in games. And any ath­lete will tell you that not hav­ing a plan for a work­out is a recipe for either not work­ing out at all or wast­ing an hour in the weight room work­ing on “beach mus­cles” (exer­cises that don’t really help you in a game but make you look good).

I don’t want you wast­ing time work­ing on spir­i­tual beach mus­cles this year. You don’t earn any favor with God by going through the motions of a daily quiet time of some sort. Instead, I want us to plan for spir­i­tual growth. Here are some sug­ges­tions that the Holy Spirit might use to help you grow in knowl­edge, wor­ship, and obe­di­ence this year:

1. Have a plan for your Bible read­ing. Just open­ing the Bible to a ran­dom page (Bible Roulette) is not a good strat­egy. There are many good Bible read­ing plans out there, and Justin Tay­lor did a great job cat­a­loging them last week.

2. Have a plan for Bible appli­ca­tion. I’ve devel­oped my own set of ques­tions to help me with this, which include:

a. What will it look like for me to func­tion­ally set my hope in God today?

b. What temp­ta­tions will there be for me to sin today?

c. How is God call­ing me to die to myself today and serve others?

d. Where have I seen evi­dence of God’s grace this week?

e. How have I been respond­ing to trial, dif­fi­culty, dis­cour­age­ment, and setback?

f. How have I been lov­ing and pas­tor­ing my wife this week?

g. How have I been lov­ing and pas­tor­ing each of my kids this week?

3. Have a plan for prayer. We have all said, “I’ll be pray­ing for you” or have had some­one ask for prayer and then we never even thought about their request again. If I do not write down what I am asked to pray for (or even what I need to be pray­ing for myself), I know that it will not hap­pen. I strongly encour­age you to invest a few dol­lars in a jour­nal that you will use and keep with you at all times. I buy thin, cheap paper jour­nals that I can write down any­thing and every­thing I need to remem­ber and then I throw them away when they are used up.

4. Have a plan for account­abil­ity to actu­ally do what the Bible says. If you are mar­ried, you should be reg­u­larly shar­ing with your spouse what God is teach­ing you and how He is call­ing you to repent. If you are sin­gle (or in addi­tion to your spouse if you are mar­ried), this might look like a Fight Club where you meet reg­u­larly with two or three other sin­gles to share what God is teach­ing you, to con­fess and repent together, and to encour­age one another.

I hope these sug­ges­tions were help­ful for you and will be a tool God uses to sanc­tify you and increase your obe­di­ence to His Word in 2012. The fruit of dis­ci­pline is sweet — bear that in mind when your dis­ci­plines aren’t as excit­ing a month from now!

Some peo­ple are plan­ners. Some peo­ple are not. If you know me at all, you know that I’m a plan­ner. Like all things, being a plan­ner has advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. Some advan­tages are that plan­ners typ­i­cally think things through ahead of time and know what they’ll be doing, when they’ll be doing it, and why they’ll be doing it. How­ever, some dis­ad­van­tages are that plan­ners typ­i­cally tend to trust in plans rather than God, become upset when things do not go accord­ing to plan, and can be task-oriented rather than people-oriented.

Whether or not you are a plan­ner by nature, I believe that all of us should cul­ti­vate the dis­ci­pline of plan­ning. The Bible is clear that our time on this earth is short, and only God knows when it will end (Job 14:1; Psalm 39:4, 139:16; ). Fur­ther, God com­mands us to redeem the time for His pur­poses in and through our lives (Eph. 5:15–17) rather than waste it with lazi­ness (Prv. 10:5,  12:27), anx­i­ety (Matt. 6:27), or by work­ing hard on the wrong things (Prv. 20:4). But if we are to redeem the time, we need to have a plan in place.

But don’t fall into the temp­ta­tion I would likely fall into right about now. That temp­ta­tion is to go grab the cal­en­dar, sit down, and get right to work. We aren’t there yet. First, we need to set aside some time and sit down with the Bible and a pen and paper (or your lap­top). Before we start writ­ing stuff on a cal­en­dar, we need to deter­mine what our pri­or­i­ties are from Scrip­ture. As you read Scrip­ture and pray, here are some ques­tions to help you rightly pri­or­i­tize in 2012:

Spir­i­tual Health — When and how will I plan to com­mune with God through the spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines of Bible study, prayer, and wor­ship with the church body (to name a few)? What areas do I believe God is call­ing me to grow in this next year? How can I increase my knowl­edge of God, wor­ship of God, and obe­di­ence to God this next year? Of what atti­tudes and actions (or inac­tions) is God call­ing me to repent?

Phys­i­cal Health — What time have I been going to bed and get­ting up in the morn­ing (or after­noon)? Am I get­ting enough sleep (or too much) and sleep­ing at appro­pri­ate times? Am I tak­ing care of my body, both inter­nally and exter­nally? Do I have energy to serve God well each day and each week?

Dis­ci­ple­ship of Chris­tians — Am I mean­ing­fully con­nected to a local church? How can I help to develop both mature and newer Chris­tians in their under­stand­ing and appli­ca­tion of the Bible? If you are mar­ried or are a par­ent, how is God call­ing you to spir­i­tu­ally invest in your spouse and your chil­dren? Out­side the home, which spe­cific peo­ple do I believe God is call­ing me to invest in this year and why?

Dis­ci­ple­ship of Non-Christians (Evan­ge­lism)- Am I mean­ing­fully con­nected with non-Christians? What efforts do I need to make in order to know, love, and serve the lost? Am I con­sis­tently pray­ing that God would give me oppor­tu­ni­ties to share the Gospel with oth­ers? If you are mar­ried to an unbe­liever or the par­ent of unbe­liev­ing chil­dren, how is God call­ing you to invest in them this year? Out­side the home, which spe­cific peo­ple do I believe God is call­ing me to invest in this year and why?

Serv­ing Oth­ers — Am I mean­ing­fully con­nected with the poor, the orphan, or the widow? How is God call­ing me to serve them and oth­ers like them in our com­mu­nity? How can I spend my time, money, and other resources in a way that pro­motes jus­tice rather than injus­tice? Which spe­cific peo­ple do I believe God is call­ing me to invest in this year and why?

Of course, there are many other cat­e­gories that you could con­sider, but hope­fully these will get you started. On Fri­day, we’ll spend some time think­ing through how we can redeem our time for the glory of God.