Spiritual formation

The House Has a New Owner

/ pastorlynnmalone / 1 Comment

Since my mom died, my brothers and I have faced a task that eventually comes to almost every family: cleaning out her house.

There is nothing particularly unusual about cleaning out a house. You open drawers. You empty closets. You decide what to keep, what to give away, what someone else in the family might want, and what simply needs to be thrown away. Except when it is your mother’s house, nothing is quite that simple.

A drawer isn’t just a drawer. You open it and find something you remember from childhood. A closet contains clothes you still picture her wearing. A cabinet holds something you haven’t seen in thirty years, and suddenly you aren’t standing in an empty house anymore. You’re ten years old again.

Cleaning out Mom’s house brought floods of memories. But it also brought another realization. Life can become incredibly cluttered without us ever noticing it.

Very few of us wake up one morning and decide, “I think I’ll fill every drawer, closet and cabinet in my house with things I may never use again.” It just happens.

We put something in a drawer because we might need it someday. We move something to a closet because we don’t know what else to do with it. We keep something because it belonged to somebody we loved. We hang on to something because throwing it away feels wasteful. One thing becomes ten things. Ten things become a closet full of things. Eventually we stop noticing.

It isn’t necessarily bad stuff. Some of it is valuable. Some of it is sentimental. Some of it once served an important purpose. But somewhere along the way, the house became cluttered.

As we worked through Mom’s house, another thought slowly began forming in my mind. This is what Jesus wants to do with my house. Not the house where Vanessa and I live. Me. My spiritual house.

The House Gets a New Owner

When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, something far more significant happens than inviting Jesus into our lives. The house—my house—gets a new Owner. We deed the property to him.

Paul puts it rather bluntly:

“You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price.”
—1 Corinthians 6:19–20 NLT

The deed has changed hands.

But here’s where things get interesting. We still live in the house. And living in a house you used to own after someone else has taken ownership can get uncomfortable. Because the new Owner begins opening drawers.

“What’s this?”

Oh, I’ve had that for years.

“Do you need it?”

Well, no. But I’ve always had it.

Then he opens a closet.

Jesus, we really don’t need to go in there.

But he does.

Opening the Drawers

There are resentments we’ve stored away. Old wounds we’ve carefully boxed up. Ambitions we haven’t quite surrendered. Habits we’ve learned to live with. Attitudes we’ve stopped questioning. Fears we’ve carried so long that we think they’re part of the house.

Some things aren’t necessarily sinful at all. They simply no longer belong in the life Jesus is creating. And some things carry memories. That’s when cleaning gets difficult. Because Jesus isn’t sorting through somebody else’s house. He’s sorting through mine. He starts rearranging furniture.

Wait a minute. That chair has always been there.

“I know.”

I like it there.

“I know.”

Then why are you moving it?

“Because this is my house now.”

And there, I think, is much of the uncomfortable work of sanctification. By grace, we gladly gave Jesus the house. We meant it when we did. But we didn’t necessarily understand everything that new ownership would mean.

We knew about the things lying around in plain sight. Those were often among the first things we expected Jesus to change. But then he starts opening drawers. Then closets. Then boxes we haven’t opened ourselves in years. And sometimes he points toward a door and we realize we’ve been living in this house so long that we had almost forgotten there was a room behind it.

“I’d like to go in there.”

There?

“Yes.”

Why?

“Because it’s mine.”

The Whole House is His

That may be one way of understanding what we Wesleyans have traditionally called entire sanctification. It does not mean Jesus has finished cleaning the house. It means there are no rooms we knowingly refuse to let him enter.

There comes a point when we stop following him from room to room negotiating over every drawer and simply say, “The whole house is yours.”

And that is more than another step in the cleaning process. It is a moment of surrender—a decisive work of grace in which I quit deciding which parts of the house Jesus may have. By grace, I hand him every key I know I possess. I may not yet know everything stored in every room, but there is no room I knowingly reserve for myself. The question is no longer, “How much of this house will I let Jesus change?” The answer has become, “All of it. Whatever you want. Wherever you want to go. The whole house is yours.”

Not just the living room where everybody can see. Not just the rooms I’ve already cleaned up. The closets. The drawers. The attic. The boxes. The room at the end of the hall. All of it. Yours.

Ownership and Renovation

That surrender can be real and decisive. But it doesn’t mean the work is finished. In fact, it may mean the real work has only begun. Because complete ownership is not the same thing as completed renovation.

Tomorrow Jesus may open another drawer. Next year he may move another piece of furniture. Ten years from now he may show me something that has been sitting in a corner my entire life, something I have walked past ten thousand times without ever realizing it didn’t belong there. That’s not evidence that I never gave him the house. It may be evidence that he loves me enough to keep working on it.

John Wesley understood sanctification as both something God does decisively and something in which we continue to grow. There is a genuine surrender of ourselves completely to God, but there is also a lifetime of discovering what that surrender means.

Maybe that’s because we don’t know our own houses nearly as well as we think we do. We know the rooms we use every day. Jesus knows what’s behind the walls. And grace keeps working. Opening. Sorting. Cleaning. Repairing. Rearranging. Sometimes throwing away. Sometimes uncovering something beautiful that had been buried beneath years of clutter. And all the while, we are still living in the house.

Trusting the New Owner

Maybe that’s one reason sanctification can be uncomfortable. The old owner still has opinions about where the furniture ought to go. I certainly do. But I’m learning that the question isn’t whether I like every change Jesus makes. The question is whether I trust the Owner.

After all, he didn’t purchase this house in order to destroy it. He bought it because he loves it. And he intends to make it into what it was always meant to be.

So perhaps the prayer of sanctification isn’t nearly as complicated as we sometimes make it: Jesus, this house belongs to you. Whatever you find, whatever needs to change, whatever room I have yet to discover—remind me whose house this is.

As my brothers and I worked our way through Mom’s house, every drawer we emptied and every closet we opened made the house a little less like the house we had always known. That was tough.

Those things were part of her life. Our life with her. Some brought laughter. Some brought tears. Some made us wonder why in the world she had kept them. And some were almost impossible to let go. But eventually, everything had to be examined.

Maybe that’s what I didn’t understand about sanctification for a long time. When I gave my life to Christ, I gave him the house. But I brought a lifetime of stuff with me.

Jesus keeps cleaning, sorting and rearranging, not because he despises the house, but because he loves the person who still lives there. And perhaps that’s the grace I’ve begun to see differently. Jesus didn’t buy the house so he could throw me out. He bought the house so that, room by room, it might become a place shaped by his presence.

So, when he opens the next drawer, perhaps I don’t need to become defensive. When he points toward the next closet, perhaps I don’t need to hide the key. And when he decides the furniture needs rearranging, perhaps I can trust that he sees something I don’t.

After all, the house isn’t mine anymore. I still live here, but thanks be to God, I don’t live here alone.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Have I Truly Surrendered to Christ?

/ pastorlynnmalone / 2 Comments

Not long ago, I was listening to a preacher give an invitation at the end of a gospel concert. I don’t remember everything he said, but one question caught my attention: “Have you truly surrendered your life to Christ?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question. I’ve probably asked some version of it myself more times than I can count. But this time it confused me. What exactly does that mean?

Most of the people at a gospel concert are probably already Christians. Certainly, there could have been someone there who enjoyed the music but had never made a profession of faith. Perhaps someone needed to hear the gospel that night and respond to Christ for the first time. But I wondered whether there might be another possibility.

What if the person hearing that invitation had already surrendered his life to Christ? What if he had believed? What if she had been following Jesus for twenty years? What if the work Christ wanted to do in someone’s life that evening wasn’t the beginning of faith, but the continuation of it?

The question stayed with me because I realized I’m not always sure what we mean when we ask someone to “surrender your life to Christ.” There certainly is an initial surrender. There comes a moment when we recognize our need for Christ, repent of our sin, place our faith in him, and confess Jesus as Lord. As Wesleyans, we describe that as the moment of justifying grace. God forgives. God reconciles. God makes us his own.

But grace didn’t suddenly appear at that moment. God’s grace had already been at work. Wesleyans have traditionally called that prevenient grace—the grace that goes before. Long before we understood what God was doing, God was drawing us. Before we knew we needed grace, grace was already awakening us to our need.

In my old age, I have come to believe that we are never absent from God’s grace. We may not always be aware of God’s grace, but we are never absent from it. That doesn’t mean everyone is automatically saved. Grace can be resisted. We can turn away. We can refuse what God desires to do in us. But even our ability to recognize our need for God begins with God’s gracious activity toward us.

Then comes that moment when we say yes. We believe. We surrender. We trust Jesus. But what happens the next morning?

I Surrender All—Again

Since I was listening to a gospel concert, one of the old hymns of the church came to mind: I Surrender All.

I’ve sung it hundreds of times. And I mean it. I surrender all. Today. But tomorrow morning I’ve got to surrender it all again. That’s the part of surrender I don’t think we talk about enough.

Surrender isn’t simply something I did once. Surrender is a daily activity. I can sincerely surrender my life to Christ today and wake up tomorrow determined to have my own way about something. I can place my future in God’s hands and then spend the next three days worrying about it. I can surrender my anger and discover tomorrow that I’ve picked it back up. I can tell Christ that everything I have belongs to him and then become remarkably possessive when he puts his finger on something I don’t want to release.

Perhaps that’s part of sanctification. Yesterday I surrendered “all.” Today the Holy Spirit shows me something else that “all” includes. My ambition. My resentment. My money. My need to be right. My fear. My plans. My relationships. My pain. My reputation. My future. My sin. Apparently “all” is bigger than I realized.

That doesn’t necessarily mean yesterday’s surrender wasn’t genuine. It means God isn’t finished with me. That’s the difference between justification and sanctification. The grace that forgives me is also the grace that transforms me.

“Have You Truly Surrendered?”

That’s why I’ve become uncomfortable with that question—not because it is wrong, but because it can mean several different things.

“Have you truly surrendered your life to Christ?” Are you asking whether I’ve ever trusted Christ? Yes. Are you asking whether I’ve confessed Jesus Christ as Lord? Yes. Are you asking whether there was a moment when I believed and entrusted myself to him? Yes. But are you asking whether every part of my life is completely surrendered to Christ at this particular moment? Well…

Maybe I surrendered once. Maybe I didn’t this morning. I don’t think today’s failure necessarily invalidates yesterday’s faith.

Sometimes we Christian preachers collapse justification and sanctification into one event. We see someone struggling with sin, obedience, doubt, addiction, anger, pride, or surrender, and conclude that perhaps that person was never really saved. “You need to truly surrender your life to Christ.”

Maybe. Or, perhaps the person has trusted Christ and now needs to surrender to what the Holy Spirit is trying to do next. Perhaps this isn’t a question of whether justifying grace was real. Perhaps it is a question of whether I am presently yielding myself to sanctifying grace. That’s a very different question.

Can We Fall From Grace?

And this raises another difficult question. Can I fall from grace?

As a Wesleyan, I don’t believe in “once saved, always saved” in the way that phrase is commonly understood. I believe human beings remain capable of resisting God’s grace. Scripture takes seriously the possibility of turning away from faith.

But I wonder whether “falling from grace” is always the best way to picture what happens. A fall sounds accidental. I wasn’t paying attention. I stumbled. Suddenly I’m outside the grace of God.

I’m not convinced that’s a good description of our relationship with God.

Perhaps it is better to speak of turning from grace. I can resist the Spirit. I can ignore conviction. I can refuse obedience. I can repeatedly say no to what God is asking of me. And I suppose it is possible for repeated resistance eventually to become rejection. A person can turn away from faith. I don’t know that it requires someone to stand up one morning and formally announce, “I hereby renounce Jesus Christ.” Scripture’s warnings about drifting and hardened hearts suggest that turning away may sometimes happen gradually.

But neither do I believe that every act of disobedience means I’ve fallen out of salvation.

If it did, none of us could have assurance for very long. There is a difference between struggling within a relationship with Christ and abandoning the relationship altogether.

I can be disobedient and still be a disciple, though not necessarily a good one. I can resist the Spirit and still be someone the Spirit is pursuing. I can refuse to surrender something today without concluding that everything God has done in my life until today was imaginary. In fact, the conviction I feel over my resistance may itself be evidence that grace is still at work.

Grace Doesn’t Eliminate the Will

There is another distinction I think matters. Sometimes we talk about surrender as though everything depends upon human determination. Try harder. Do better. Make yourself surrender. Sanctification isn’t self-improvement with religious vocabulary.

At the same time, surrender isn’t passive. God doesn’t surrender my life for me. The Holy Spirit convicts. The Holy Spirit draws. The Holy Spirit enables. Grace makes obedience possible. But I still have to say yes.

Maybe surrender is best understood as the grace-enabled yielding of the human will to God. That’s different from willpower. Willpower says, “I am going to make myself a better person.” Grace says, “God is at work in me, and I am yielding myself to what God desires to do.”

Paul captures that tension beautifully in Philippians: “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

We work because God is working. We respond because grace has already acted. We surrender because the Spirit has enabled us to surrender. And tomorrow, we do it again.

Maybe That’s the Invitation

So, I’ve been thinking about that preacher’s question. “Have you truly surrendered your life to Christ?” Maybe the problem isn’t the question. Maybe we just need to understand how large the question really is. 

There is an invitation for the person who has never trusted Christ: Will you surrender your life to Jesus? Believe. Repent. Trust him. Receive the grace God has already been extending toward you.

But there is also an invitation for the person who has followed Jesus for fifty years: Will you surrender your life to Jesus? Not because your previous surrender was necessarily false. Not because every failure means you need to get saved again. But because Jesus is still Lord.

And there are still places within us where we would rather be lord.

Maybe the Christian life is learning, by grace, to surrender those places as the Spirit reveals them. Today it may be my pride. Tomorrow it may be my fear. Next year it may be something I cannot even see in myself today. That doesn’t mean grace has failed. It means grace is still working. Sanctifying grace keeps reaching into the places I haven’t surrendered yet and saying, “This too.” And I get to answer again, “Yes, Lord.”

The Goal Isn’t Becoming Better

Perhaps this is where I’ve finally landed. Christianity is often presented as though Jesus came to make us better people. I don’t think that’s quite right. Certainly, following Jesus ought to change the way we live. We should become more loving, more patient, more generous, more forgiving, more truthful, more compassionate. If decades of following Jesus leave us just as angry, selfish and cruel as we were when we began, something is wrong.

Becoming a better person isn’t the goal. We don’t follow Jesus to become better people. We follow Jesus to become like Jesus. Becoming better is the fruit, not the goal.

That’s why surrender matters. I can’t transform myself into the likeness of Christ by determination. I cannot grit my teeth and manufacture holiness. Sanctification isn’t a self-improvement project. It is the continuing work of God’s grace forming Christ in me.

My part is surrender. Not once. Again. And again. And again.

There was a day when I surrendered my life to Christ. I meant it. By God’s grace, I still mean it. But this morning there are things I need to surrender again. And tomorrow morning, if God gives me another day, I suspect there will be more. That’s not evidence that my surrender failed. Maybe that’s simply what a life of surrender looks like.

So, what about you? Have you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ?

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Accept One Another: Baptism, Denominations and the Grace of Jesus

/ pastorlynnmalone / 3 Comments

I saw a sign on Facebook this week that made me laugh. It depicted a public creek with a cross, and in large letters it said, “FREE BAPTISMS.”

My first thought was, “I didn’t know we had started charging for baptisms.” I thought all baptisms were free. The water is free—and so is the grace.

But after I laughed, I started thinking about it. That is usually where I get into trouble. What began as a funny photograph sent me down a theological rabbit hole.

The baptism was being offered by a parachurch ministry. By “parachurch,” I mean a Christian organization that works alongside the Church but is not itself a congregation or denomination. And I started asking questions.

Who prepares the person for baptism? Who hears the promises? Who receives that person into the Church? Who teaches and disciples the person afterward? Who will be there next month when the emotion of that Sunday afternoon has passed?

Those are not insignificant questions. Baptism is personal, but it is never merely private. We are baptized into Christ, and therefore also into his body. The question is not only whether there is water and someone willing to get into it. The question is whether there is a community prepared to be the Church to that person when he or she comes out.

I have seen this before. Through the years, I’ve been involved in two different Christian retreat ministries. They were described as ecumenical, though “cross-denominational” may be the better word. Christians came together from different traditions for a weekend of worship, teaching, prayer and renewal.

Here’s one irony: one of the ministries began as an offshoot of the other. Why? Because someone attended the first and thought, “I can do it better.”

Eventually, both ministries began conducting baptisms during their retreat weekends. Sometimes clergy performed them. Sometimes laity performed them. Sometimes people who had already been baptized were baptized again. That troubled me then, and it still troubles me now.

I believe baptism belongs to the Church. I believe it is more than my public declaration that I have decided to follow Jesus. Baptism is a means of grace. It is an act of God in and through the Church. I believe there is one baptism because the faithfulness being declared in baptism is ultimately God’s faithfulness, not mine.

So, I had several theological objections ready. Then I remembered Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.

When Scripture Interrupts a Good Argument

In Acts 8, Philip meets a man traveling home from Jerusalem. The man is reading from Isaiah. Philip explains the Scripture and tells him the good news about Jesus. As they travel along, the man sees some water and asks, “Why can’t I be baptized?” They stop the carriage, go down into the water, and Philip baptizes him.

There is no church building. No congregation is visibly present. There is no six-week membership class. Philip does not tell the man to wait until he gets home and finds a local church.

Now, the situations are not identical. The Holy Spirit clearly directs Philip. The eunuch is already seeking God and reading Scripture. Philip proclaims Jesus to him before baptizing him. Philip is a recognized evangelist carrying the Church’s mission into a place where no established congregation appears to be available.

The story does not answer all my questions. But it does keep me from acting as though the people on the creek bank have no biblical argument at all. They may sincerely believe they are doing exactly what Philip did: proclaiming Jesus and refusing to place unnecessary barriers in front of someone who asks to be baptized.

And while I was thinking about all this, I happened to be preparing a sermon called “Accept One Another.” Isn’t God’s timing wonderful? I first thought the sign might give me something to say to them. Then I read Romans 14 and discovered that Paul might have something to say to me.

The church in Rome was divided over food and the observance of particular days. Some Christians believed they could eat anything. Others ate only vegetables because of concerns about foods that were religiously unclean or associated with pagan worship. Some regarded certain days as holy. Others regarded every day alike.

Paul calls one group “strong” and the other “weak.” He includes himself among the strong. But he doesn’t tell the strong to flaunt their freedom until the weak finally get over it. And he doesn’t allow the weak to condemn the strong for their lack of restraint.

Instead, he identifies a temptation on both sides. The weak are tempted to judge the strong: “If they were serious about following Jesus, they would never do that.” The strong are tempted to look down upon the weak: “If they understood the gospel as well as we do, this would not bother them.”

Judgment on one side. Contempt on the other.

Then Paul asks, “Who are you to condemn someone else’s servants?”

That question caught me. I had assumed I was the mature Christian in the baptism conversation. I had the developed sacramental theology. I had the denominational doctrine. I had the experience and the ecclesiological vocabulary.

They had a creek.

But perhaps, in this particular conversation, I am the one whose conscience is troubled. Perhaps I am the “weaker” brother. Paul doesn’t tell me to abandon my convictions. He doesn’t tell me that baptism does not matter. He does tell me to stop judging the servant of another Master.

Sometimes accepting one another begins when we stop assuming that we are the mature Christian in the conversation.

Good Theology and Poor Discipleship

That doesn’t mean theology is unimportant. Theology matters because what we believe about God shapes how we understand the Church, salvation, grace and the Christian life.

But here’s an uncomfortable truth: A person can have good theology and still be a poor disciple.

I don’t mean that good theology causes bad character. I mean that knowing the right words and reaching the right conclusions don’t automatically make me like Jesus. Good theology held without humility can make me proud. Good theology without love can make me harsh. Good theology used as a measuring stick for everyone else can make me judgmental.

The purpose of theology isn’t merely to help us win arguments. Its purpose is to help form the life of Christ within us. It’s possible to be right about the issue and wrong in the way we treat the person.

Paul’s instruction is not that differences are imaginary or convictions are unimportant. He tells Christians how to treat one another while they disagree.

Acceptance is not approval. Christian acceptance doesn’t mean that every belief is true or every practice is faithful. There are beliefs and practices the Church must challenge. There are times when love requires truth, correction, boundaries and even discipline. Christian acceptance doesn’t ask us to surrender discernment. It asks us to surrender the pride with which we so often exercise it.

I can receive the person seeking baptism with joy and trust that God may genuinely be drawing that person. I can receive the Christians conducting the baptism as brothers and sisters whose desire to reach people may be sincere. And I can still ask whether their practice reflects a sufficiently rich understanding of baptism and the Church.

I can accept the people without endorsing everything they do. That is harder than either approval or rejection. Approval asks us to ignore the difference. Rejection allows us to dismiss the person. Acceptance requires us to hold conviction and love at the same time.

Guests Who Have Already Been Received

Paul takes us directly to Jesus: “For even Christ didn’t live to please himself.”

Christ didn’t accept us because our theology was correct. He didn’t wait until our motives were pure, our behavior was consistent and our understanding was complete. He received us by grace.

That does not mean he approved everything in us. Christ accepts us in order to transform us. Grace does not leave us as it finds us. But transformation begins with his gracious welcome, not with our successful completion of an entrance exam.

Alistair Begg tells an imaginary story about the thief on the cross arriving at heaven. The angels begin asking him questions. Does he understand justification by faith? What does he believe about the authority of Scripture? The man cannot answer any of them. Finally, they ask why he should be admitted. His answer is wonderfully simple: the man on the middle cross said he could come.

That’s the only answer any of us has. We aren’t here because we passed the theological exam. We are here because Jesus said we could come. And if my place in his kingdom rests upon his gracious welcome, I must be very careful about requiring someone else to pass my exam before I receive them.

We sometimes act as though we are the hosts of the Church and have been assigned the responsibility of deciding who deserves admission. But we’re not the hosts. We’re guests who have already been received.

Acceptance After Separation

This conversation carries particular weight for Methodists right now. Over the past several years, thousands of congregations have left The United Methodist Church. Many have become part of the Global Methodist Church. (Disclosure: I am an Evangelical Methodist elder serving a Global Methodist congregation). The disagreements that produced that separation weren’t superficial. They involved biblical authority, human sexuality, ordination, discipline, accountability, church property and institutional trust. People on both sides believed they were acting faithfully.

We should not take Romans 14 and declare that all those questions were merely matters of personal preference. They were not the equivalent of choosing whether to eat meat or observe a particular day. Convictions mattered. Decisions had consequences. Separation brought grief. Congregations divided. Friendships were strained. Clergy who had served together for years found themselves in different denominations.

But Romans 15 puts a question before us now that the separation has happened: Can United Methodists and Global Methodists still accept one another as brothers and sisters in Christ?

Can we remain convinced that we made the faithful decision without declaring that everyone who made the other decision was faithless? Can we name the differences honestly without making those differences the whole truth about one another? Can we recognize that the person across the denominational divide has also been received by Christ?

This is where baptism returns to the conversation. Both United Methodists and Global Methodists confess one baptism. Both baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Both understand baptism as our entrance into Christ’s Church.

Disaffiliation changed our denominational affiliation. It did not erase our baptismal identity. We may no longer belong to the same denomination, but we still belong to the same Christ. The name on some of our church signs changed. The name placed upon us in baptism did not.

That doesn’t require reunion. It doesn’t mean we must cooperate in every ministry or remain silent about the convictions that divided us. It doesn’t mean the separation didn’t matter. It means Christ matters more.

Acceptance after separation means we refuse to excommunicate one another in our hearts. We refuse to speak as though the Church of Jesus Christ begins and ends with our denomination. We refuse to presume that our faithfulness gives us the authority to judge another Master’s servant.

Perhaps Global Methodists need to hear that about United Methodists. Perhaps United Methodists need to hear it about Global Methodists. Perhaps Baptists need to hear it about Methodists, and Methodists need to hear it about Baptists. Perhaps every denomination needs to remember that Jesus never agreed to fit entirely inside the boundaries we draw.

The Church is bigger than our part of it.

The Water and the Grace

Paul gathers his argument into one sentence: “Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.”

Not “Accept one another when you agree.” Not “Accept one another after the weaker Christian matures.” Not “Accept one another after the stronger Christian becomes more sensitive.” Accept one another as Christ has accepted you.

So, I go back to that creek bank. There stands the parachurch evangelist, ready to baptize anyone who sincerely asks. Somewhere nearby stands the Methodist preacher with several ecclesiological objections. Christ has received them both.

Neither one is received because he has baptism completely figured out. Neither one is received because his motives are completely pure or his practices completely consistent. Both are received because the grace of Christ is greater than the incompleteness of their understanding.

That does not settle every baptismal question. It does not erase denominational differences. It does not make discernment unnecessary. But it does tell me how I must regard the person standing on the other side of the disagreement.

He isn’t mine to condemn. She isn’t mine to dismiss. They belong to Christ.

And if Christ had waited until I understood baptism, the Church and grace perfectly before accepting me, I would still be standing on the creek bank.

The water is free. The grace is free. And because Christ has received us by that grace, he commands us to receive one another. So that God—not our denomination, not our position, not our correct theology—may be given glory.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

The Difficult Work of Christian Restoration

/ pastorlynnmalone / 2 Comments

Every person carries burdens. Some arrive through no fault of our own—a diagnosis, a death, a job loss, a broken relationship, a season of grief. The church is often at its best when those burdens appear. We show up with meals, prayers, financial assistance, and a steady presence. We do what we can to make sure no one carries the weight alone.

But there is another kind of burden we discuss less easily: the weight created by our own sin.

That burden may include guilt, shame, damaged trust, consequences we cannot escape, and the hard work of repentance. What does a Spirit-formed community do when someone has made a terrible decision? Do we stand back and explain why they fell? Make an example of them? Discuss their failure with everyone except them? Decide that their worst decision is the truest thing about them and leave them beneath its weight?

Or do we help them stand again?

Restoration Requires Truth and Gentleness

Paul answers that question in Galatians 6, immediately after describing the fruit of the Spirit. After naming love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, he writes:

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

Then Paul turns directly to the person caught in sin:

“Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.”

Conceited people provoke, compare, condemn, and keep their distance. Spirit-formed people move toward the fallen with gentleness. One way to measure whether the Spirit is forming us is by examining how we respond to someone else’s failure.

Paul does not tell us to excuse the sin, pretend it never happened, call evil good, or remove every consequence. He tells us to restore the person—and to do it gently. The word translated restore was used for mending a torn net or setting a broken bone. Restoration is careful work because the person is already wounded. Even a self-inflicted wound can be made worse by careless hands. Gentleness is not weakness, and it does not require us to avoid the truth. Setting a broken bone requires us to tell the truth about what is broken. But that truth must be handled by hands committed to healing rather than humiliation.

Get Beneath the Burden

Paul continues:

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

We often separate this instruction from the verse before it and apply it only to illness, grief, or financial hardship. Those applications are right, but Paul’s immediate context is the person caught in sin. The guilt, shame, damaged relationships, and difficult road back to faithfulness are also burdens the church is called to help carry. Burden-bearing means walking with another person even through their worst decisions. It means saying:

“You have made a terrible decision. I will not pretend otherwise. But I will not abandon you beneath the weight of it. We will walk through this together.”

That kind of presence is messy and costly. It is much easier to offer advice from a distance than to get beneath the load. But when we bear another person’s burden, we embody grace. We remind the fallen that repentance is possible, forgiveness is real, consequences do not mean abandonment, and their worst decision does not have to have the final word.

Peter made a terrible decision. After promising that he would never abandon Jesus, he denied Him three times. The risen Christ did not pretend the denial never happened. On the seashore, Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” He brought Peter back to face his failure—not to humiliate him, but to restore him.

“Feed My sheep. Follow Me.”

Truth. Grace. Restoration. Discipleship. Jesus refused to let Peter’s worst decision have the final word.

Restore the Person, Not Necessarily the Position

Paul says, “Carry each other’s burdens,” and then, only a few sentences later, “Each one should carry their own load.” The first word can describe a crushing weight; the second points to personal responsibility. There are burdens we must help one another carry, but there are also responsibilities each person must bear before God.

Burden-bearing does not mean taking responsibility for someone else’s choices. We cannot repent for them, force them to tell the truth, manufacture humility, or perform the work of obedience on their behalf. We can walk beside them, pray, listen, speak truth, establish boundaries, and help them identify the next faithful step—but they must take it.

This distinction becomes especially important when the person once occupied a position of responsibility. In recent years, the serious moral failures of several prominent pastors have become public. Churches have then debated whether those pastors should be “restored to ministry.” But Galatians 6 tells us to restore the person. It does not necessarily tell us to restore the position.

Our task is not to rescue a career, recover a platform, or repair a reputation. It is to help the person bring the burden to Christ and return to faithful fellowship with Him and His church. Sometimes the clearest evidence of restoration is the humility to live faithfully without the former platform.

The goal is not to return people to prominence. It is to return them to faithfulness.

Restoration Is a Field We Cultivate

Paul then turns to the principle of sowing and reaping: “A man reaps what he sows.” In the larger context, he is speaking about the whole life of faithfulness, but his words certainly apply to the slow work of restoration. Restoration is hard, patient cultivation. Like a garden, the ground must be prepared, seed must be planted, weeds must be pulled, and the gardener must keep showing up and then wait.

Long conversations, intentional prayer, uncomfortable truths, patient listening, clear boundaries, practical assistance, and consistent presence are the implements of restoration. We cannot sow a few words of advice and expect an immediate harvest. Restoration is a field we cultivate, not a moment we announce. We cannot force the harvest, and the person being restored remains responsible for how they respond. Progress may be uneven. Setbacks may come. That is why Paul writes:

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

The church should be the place where sin is taken seriously but fallen people are not discarded—where truth confronts us, grace carries us, and love helps us stand again. That does not mean every relationship returns to what it was, every position is restored, or every consequence disappears. It means no person is reduced to the worst thing they have ever done, and we keep believing that the grace of Jesus can still produce a harvest of faithfulness.

Jesus did not stand at a distance and explain the burden of our sin. He came near, got beneath its weight, and carried it to the cross.

The self-righteous stand above the fallen. The followers of Jesus get beneath the burden.

We are not called to return people to prominence. We are called to return people to faithfulness. And we do not abandon people beneath the weight of their worst decisions.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

When Ambition Masquerades as Calling

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Age is a humbling thing. It brings aches in new places, but it also brings old decisions into sharper focus. One uncomfortable truth I have come to see is this: Not every decision made for questionable reasons ends badly.

That may be one reason some of them are so difficult to recognize. Sometimes the opportunity works out. Sometimes the new position goes well. Sometimes everyone involved flourishes. The outcome becomes evidence we use to reassure ourselves that we made the right decision. But good outcomes do not always justify the reasons behind our decisions. Sometimes we succeed for the wrong reason.

You’re wondering about that questionable decision, aren’t you? One in particular has returned to my thoughts recently. It happened in 2011. At the time, I was serving as pastor of Benton United Methodist Church. A few years earlier, in 2008, I had taken a clergy renewal leave. When I returned that December, I stood before the congregation and made a commitment: I would stay as their pastor as long as they would have me.

And I meant it when I said it.

At least, I thought I did.

Then, in February 2011, the bishop called. He invited me to serve on the Cabinet as a district superintendent. It was an honor—a significant opportunity and the kind of invitation a pastor does not receive every day.

Vanessa and I talked about it. I said I would pray about it. Looking back, however, I’m not sure I really did. If I prayed at all, my prayer was probably more “Thank you” than “What do you want me to do?”

The truth is, I had already made up my mind.

The invitation felt like the next rung on the ecclesiastical ladder I had been climbing for a long time. It carried recognition, greater responsibility and the possibility of broader influence. I could easily describe it as an opportunity to serve the Church in a new way—and it was.

But it was also something I wanted.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with accepting a new responsibility or pursuing an opportunity. There is also nothing necessarily wrong with ambition. The danger comes when ambition becomes so entangled with our sense of calling that we can no longer tell them apart.

That is what happened to me.

I accepted the position without fully wrestling with the commitment I had made to the congregation. A promise that had sounded firm in 2008 suddenly became negotiable when a sufficiently attractive opportunity appeared in 2011.

Perhaps it was a promise I should never have made. In the United Methodist system, pastors do not ultimately control how long they remain in an appointment. But I had made it. The people had heard it. They had every reason to believe I meant it.

And then I set it aside. At the time, I had plenty of ways to justify my decision. It was a good opportunity. It was a larger role. It offered the possibility of broader impact. I could tell myself that the bishop had called, the Church needed me, and God had opened the door. All those things may have been true.

But they were not the whole truth. The rest of the truth was that my ambition spoke louder than my commitment.

I wish I could point to a particular moment when that realization struck me, but I can’t. It emerged gradually. As I have grown older and looked back across the years of my ministry, I have begun to see things I could not—or would not—see when I was living them.

Faithfulness has certainly been part of my story. I have loved the Church. I have wanted to serve Christ. I have tried to follow where I believed God was leading. But faithfulness was not the only thing driving me. Ambition was there too.

That is difficult for me to admit because ambition rarely announces itself honestly, especially in the Church. It does not usually say, “I want a more important position,” or “I want people to recognize me.” It learns to speak the language of calling, opportunity, influence and impact.

We tell ourselves we are expanding our ministry. We are accepting a new challenge. We will be able to influence more people. We may even interpret the opportunity itself as proof that God wants us to take it.

I did not have to choose between faithfulness and ambition because I had learned how to call my ambition faithfulness. Only with the passage of time have I become more capable of separating the two.

Leading a small congregation has been part of that process. Small-church ministry has brought a level of humility into my life that I did not know I needed. It has forced me to reconsider some of the assumptions I once carried about success, influence and significance.

There are fewer people in the room. There is little institutional prestige. Most of what happens will never be noticed beyond our congregation. There are no impressive statistics to report and few opportunities to convince myself that the size of my platform is evidence of the importance of my ministry. There are simply people to love, Scripture to teach, burdens to help carry, prayers to pray and a congregation to serve. And perhaps that is closer to faithfulness than much of what I once imagined.

Small-church ministry has not removed every trace of ambition from me. I am not sure anything short of complete sanctification could accomplish that. But it has exposed ambition in ways that success often concealed it. It has reminded me that a larger assignment is not necessarily a more important one, and that faithfulness cannot always be measured by the size of the room, the prominence of the title or the reach of the ministry.

Sometimes faithfulness looks like staying.

That is what makes the promise I made to the Benton congregation difficult to remember. I told them I would remain as long as they would have me. A little more than two years later, when an attractive opportunity appeared, that commitment became negotiable.

I never went back and acknowledged that to the congregation. There was no moment when I stood before them and admitted how much ambition had influenced my decision. I cannot go back and change what I did, but I can look back honestly and name what I now see.

Some things can be corrected. Other things can only be confessed.

I do believe God was at work in ways I could not see at the time. The Benton congregation has flourished, and so have Vanessa and I. God brought good from the years that followed, and I remain grateful for them.

But good outcomes do not make every motive good.

God’s ability to redeem a decision does not relieve me of the responsibility to examine why I made it. Grace does not require me to rewrite the past so that I was right all along. Grace gives me the freedom to admit that I was not fully honest about what was driving me—with the congregation, with God or perhaps even with myself.

That may be one of the most difficult forms of repentance. Failure forces us to examine ourselves. Success often allows us to avoid it.

Sometimes the hardest thing to face is not realizing that we failed.

It is realizing that we succeeded—and still need to repent.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Forgiveness and Healing: Grace Is Greater Than the Wound

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

When someone wounds us, something inside us begins keeping an account.

They owe me an apology. They owe me an explanation. They owe me the years I lost. They owe me the innocence they took. They owe me the trust they destroyed. They owe me for the humiliation, grief, or pain they caused.

Some of those debts are real. Forgiveness does not say otherwise.

But forgiveness does determine what we will do with the debt.

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:32, “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

The word Paul uses for “forgiving” is charizomai. It comes from the same root as charis, the word we translate as grace. It can mean to give freely, to grant graciously, or to forgive.

Forgiveness, in Paul’s language, is grace in relational form.

It is not primarily a feeling. If we wait until we feel like forgiving, we may wait for the rest of our lives. Forgiveness is a grace-shaped decision concerning what we will do with the debt created by another person’s sin against us.

We decide that we will not spend the rest of our lives trying to collect that debt through bitterness, retaliation, humiliation, or revenge. We release our personal claim to make the other person suffer as payment for what they did, and we place justice into the hands of God.

That does not mean all earthly consequences disappear. It does not mean a crime should go unreported, restitution should never be made, or accountability should be abandoned. Grace and accountability are not enemies. Forgiveness simply means that I refuse to make revenge the organizing purpose of my life.

Forgiveness Tells the Truth

We need to speak carefully about forgiveness because, in our hurry to tell hurting people they need to forgive, Christians have sometimes failed to acknowledge how deeply they were wounded.

Forgiveness is not denying that the wound happened. It is not minimizing the seriousness of the offense. It is not calling evil good. It is not excusing the offender by saying, “They couldn’t help it,” or “It really wasn’t that bad.”

Forgiveness is not forgetting. We sometimes say, “Forgive and forget,” as though faithful Christians should be able to erase painful memories. Human minds do not work that way, and Scripture does not command spiritual amnesia. Some experiences leave marks that remain for a lifetime.

Forgiveness does not automatically restore trust. Forgiveness can be given; trust must be rebuilt through truth, repentance, consistency, and time. Reconciliation may not always be possible, and forgiveness never requires someone to remain in an abusive or unsafe relationship.

Forgiveness does not eliminate consequences. A forgiven person may still lose a position, face legal consequences, or live with a permanently changed relationship. Grace does not erase wisdom, boundaries, accountability, or justice.

These distinctions matter because some people carry not only the pain of what was done to them but also the shame of believing their continued pain proves they have failed to forgive.

Healing is not always immediate. Forgiveness may begin with a decisive act, but with a deep wound it may also require repeated surrender. We may have to place the same hurt into God’s hands more than once.

The capacity of grace to forgive never diminishes the depth of the wound.

Grace is able to tell the whole truth. It can say, “What happened was wrong. It hurt me. It changed something. There were consequences. I did not deserve it.” Grace can say all of that without allowing hatred to have the final word.

Look at the cross. God’s grace never treated sin as insignificant. At the cross, God named the horror of sin and revealed the depth of divine love at the same time. Grace tells the truth about sin—and then demonstrates that sin will not have the last word.

Grace Is Greater

When we say grace is greater than the wound, we are not comparing levels of pain. We are not telling someone, “Your wound should not matter because grace matters more.” We are saying that the sin committed against us does not possess greater power than the grace of Jesus Christ at work within us.

Grace does not make the wound smaller. Grace keeps the wound from becoming greater than Jesus Christ.

Paul does not begin with the person who hurt us, the size of the offense, or the strength of our willpower. He begins with what God has already done for us: “just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

We do not forgive to earn grace. We forgive because we have received grace. Forgiveness is not the price we pay to be forgiven by God. It is the fruit produced in people who know how much they have already been forgiven.

Grace received becomes grace extended.

We love grace when it moves in our direction. We sing about the grace that forgives our sins and reconciles us to God. We are less enthusiastic when that same grace moves toward those who have wounded us. We want mercy to explain what we did and justice to define what they did. We want the Lord to remember our weakness but remember their wickedness.

Paul does not allow us to separate the grace we receive from the grace we extend. The grace that comes to us through Jesus Christ takes shape in the way we respond to one another.

That is why forgiveness reveals so much about our spiritual formation. It is possible to know the language of grace without being gracious. It is possible to explain forgiveness while refusing to forgive. It is possible to celebrate what Christ has done for us while resisting what Christ wants to do through us.

My capacity to forgive is directly related to the depth of my spiritual formation.

That statement is not intended to shame anyone struggling to forgive. Some wounds are extraordinarily deep, and the path of healing may be long. The struggle itself may become the place where we learn to depend upon grace more deeply than ever before.

If grace is greater than my sin, then grace is greater than the sin of the person who wounded me. And if grace is greater than the sin that wounded me, then grace is greater than the wound that sin left behind.

If grace is greater than my sin, then grace is greater than my wound.

What Is Discipling Us?

The pain of a wound is not an idol, and feeling that pain is not a spiritual failure. But a wound begins to occupy the place that belongs to Christ when it defines who we are, determines how we see others, dictates our decisions, and claims authority over our future.

Before long, we are no longer simply remembering the wound. We are allowing the wound to disciple us.

The wound may be part of my story, but grace refuses to let it become the author of my story. Forgiveness does not rewrite the past. It places the future back into the hands of Jesus.

Nearly thirty years ago, I pastored a church where two men lived in the same community, worked for the same company, and worshiped in the same congregation. Somewhere along the way, a work-related offense created a division between them. I do not remember all the details, and after all these years the details are not really the point.

What I remember is that they never found their way through it.

They continued attending the same church, but they sat on opposite sides of the sanctuary. Week after week, they worshiped the same Lord, heard the same Scriptures, and received the same grace—but the division remained between them.

Both men have now died. I do not tell their story to judge their hearts. Only God knows everything that passed between them. I tell it because their story has stayed with me.

They had moved on with their lives, but it appeared that something between them had never been surrendered to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ.

That is the danger of an unforgiven wound. Life continues. We go to work. We come to church. We sing the hymns and listen to the sermon. From the outside, it may appear that we have moved on. Yet the wound may still be deciding where we sit, whom we avoid, and how far the grace we have received will be allowed to travel through us.

Is there someone I need to forgive? Is there a wound I need to surrender again? Is there a division I have learned to live with that Jesus is calling me to address?

Forgiveness may not restore every relationship. It may not remove every consequence or erase every painful memory. But it refuses to let what happened to us become more powerful in shaping our lives than what Christ has done for us.

The wound may be part of your story, but don’t let it write the ending.

Give Jesus back the pen.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Christian Encouragement Is More Than Making Us Feel Better

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

We usually hear the word encouragement and think of kind words that lift our spirits. There is nothing wrong with that. We all need people who will speak hope into our lives. A timely word can sometimes make the difference between giving up and taking the next step.

But Christian encouragement is more than helping people feel better.

If encouragement only tells us things that make us feel better but fails to tell us things that actually make us better, then it is not Christian encouragement.

Christian encouragement helps us remain faithful to Jesus. Sometimes it comforts us. Sometimes it reminds us of what is true when our circumstances have caused us to forget. Sometimes it challenges us and calls us back when we begin to wander.

It says, “Keep going. Don’t give up. Christ is faithful. You are not alone, and we are going to walk this road together.”

That kind of encouragement can only happen in community.

Holding on Together

The Christians who first received the letter to the Hebrews were growing weary. Life had become harder. Opposition was real. Some were starting to pull back from the community. Some were neglecting the gathering. A few may have been quietly wondering whether it was still worth holding on.

The writer does not scold them for being tired. He points them again to Jesus. Then he tells them how to respond:

“Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.” Hebrews 10:23 (NLT)

Notice the language. He does not say, “Let ‘me’ hold tightly.” He says, “Let us hold tightly.”

Faith is personal, but it is never private. Each of us must trust Christ. No one else can believe or surrender to Christ for us. But we hold tightly to hope together.

There will be times when your faith is strong and the faith of the person beside you is weak. There will also be times when their faith is strong and yours is weak. That is one reason God gives us to one another.

Imagine that you and a friend are hiking on a steep trail. Your friend slips and begins to slide backward. You do not simply shout, “Hang in there!” You plant your feet, reach down, and take hold. For a moment, both of you feel the pull of the drop. But because you refuse to let go, your friend finds solid footing again.

Christian encouragement is like that. Sometimes we are the ones doing the holding. Other times we are the ones who need to be held. Christ holds us, and he has given us to one another so that we can hold on together.

Our hope is not wishful thinking or the belief that everything will work out the way we want. Our hope rests in the character of God. We hold tightly because God can be trusted.

When I cannot see what God is doing, you can remind me that God is faithful. When you wonder whether God has forgotten you, I can remind you of his promises. When one of us grows weary, others can help carry the weight.

That is how we encourage one another with hope.

Encouragement Is Not the Same as Approval

The writer continues:

“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.” Hebrews 10:24 (NLT)

Encouragement is intentional. It requires us to pay attention to one another. We cannot encourage people we never notice. We cannot help carry burdens we know nothing about. We cannot motivate one another toward love and good works if our only concern is our own spiritual life.

We are accountable to Christ, but we are also accountable to one another.

We have a difficult time with accountability. Part of that comes from our individualism. Part of it comes from not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings. We would rather remain silent than risk an uncomfortable conversation. And part of it comes from believing that another person’s life is none of our business.

But if we belong to the Church together, then it is our business to love one another. It is our business to care when someone is hurting. It is our business to notice when someone is wandering. It is our business to confront sin, brokenness, and division, not because we want to control one another, but because we love one another.

John Wesley described this responsibility as “watching over one another in love.”

That does not mean spying, constantly looking for faults, or using religion to control another person. It means caring enough about another person’s faithfulness that we refuse to remain indifferent.

When I begin to wander, I need someone who loves me enough to call me back. When I become discouraged, I need someone to remind me of the faithfulness of God. When I begin making excuses for behavior that damages my relationship with Christ or harms others, I need someone who will tell me the truth in love.

That is encouragement too.

We sometimes confuse encouragement with approval. But Christian encouragement is not concerned merely with making us comfortable. It is concerned with helping us become faithful.

The question is not simply, “What can I say to make this person happy?” The deeper question is, “What does this person need from me to help them remain faithful to Jesus?”

Sometimes the answer will be comfort, prayer, practical help, or a reminder of God’s promises. Sometimes it will be a difficult truth spoken with humility, gentleness, and love.

Your Presence Matters

Finally, the writer says:

“And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.” Hebrews 10:25 (NLT)

We often use this verse to tell people they ought to attend church. That is certainly part of what the writer is saying, but his concern goes deeper than filling seats in a building. He is telling us that we need one another.

We sometimes approach worship as consumers. We ask whether we enjoyed the music, whether the sermon spoke to us, whether the service met our needs, or whether we got anything out of it.

But we do not come to worship only to receive. We come to give.

We give our praise to God. We give our prayers, presence, gifts, strength, service, and encouragement to the community. Everyone has something to offer the Body of Christ.

Even when you arrive tired, discouraged, grieving, or spiritually empty, your presence may encourage someone else. Seeing you continue to trust God during a difficult season may give another person the courage to keep trusting too.

That is why withdrawing from Christian community is so dangerous. We lose more than an hour of worship. We lose the voices that remind us of hope. We lose the accountability that motivates us toward faithfulness. We lose the encouragement that helps us keep going.

And the community loses something too. It loses what we were meant to bring.

Someone needs your presence. Someone needs your prayers. Someone needs your words of hope. Someone needs you to speak the truth in love. Someone needs the example of your quiet, steady faithfulness.

And whether you realize it or not, you need those same things from them.

So here is the question I am asking myself:

Am I helping the people around me remain faithful to Jesus?

Identify one person you can encourage this week. Call them. Text them. Invite them for coffee. Listen to them. Remind them of what is true. If necessary, help them regain their footing.

Christian encouragement gives hope to those who are weary. It motivates us toward love and good works. It reminds us that we do not walk alone.

Let us hold tightly to hope. Let us think about one another. Let us gather faithfully. And let us encourage one another.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Living the Lord’s Prayer

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

I’ve prayed the Lord’s Prayer for most of my life.

Like many Christians, I learned it as a child. Over the years I’ve prayed it in worship services, hospital rooms, funeral homes, around dinner tables, and in quiet moments when I didn’t quite know what else to say.

I’ve also preached it more than once. Whenever I preached it, I usually approached it the way many pastors do—taking each petition and showing how it can guide our own prayers. That’s a good approach. In fact, I still believe it’s a biblical one.

But this past week, while preparing to preach from Matthew 6, I noticed something I had never fully appreciated before. Matthew doesn’t place the Lord’s Prayer in a book about prayer. He places it in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. That matters.

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ description of life in the Kingdom of God. It’s where He teaches what His disciples look like, how they treat others, what they value, where they place their treasure, and how they trust the Father. Right in the middle of that teaching, Jesus says, “This, then, is how you should pray…”

It made me wonder: What if Jesus wasn’t only teaching His disciples what to say when they prayed? What if He was also showing them the kind of life they were to live?

Read through the Lord’s Prayer again with that thought in mind.

It begins in the Father’s presence: “Our Father in heaven…”

Before there are requests, there is relationship.

Then it turns to the Father’s priorities: “Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” Before Jesus teaches us to pray about our needs, He teaches us to care about what matters to the Father.

Only then do our needs enter the conversation: “Give us this day our daily bread… Forgive us… Lead us not into temptation… Deliver us from evil.”

The entire prayer moves from the Father’s presence to the Father’s priorities, then to the Father’s provision and protection. That’s more than a model for prayer. It’s also a pattern for life.

The more I reflected on it, another realization dawned on me. Jesus didn’t simply teach the Lord’s Prayer. He lived it.

He lived continually in His Father’s presence. He sought His Father’s glory above His own. He proclaimed the Father’s Kingdom. He surrendered to the Father’s will—even in Gethsemane. He trusted the Father for daily provision. He resisted every temptation. And through His death and resurrection, He became the forgiveness and deliverance we could never achieve for ourselves.

Suddenly, the Lord’s Prayer looked less like a script to memorize and more like a portrait of Jesus Himself. And that’s good news.

The goal of the Christian life isn’t merely to pray better prayers. It’s to become more like Christ. By His Spirit, Jesus is forming His own life in us. As He does, the Lord’s Prayer becomes more than words we recite. It becomes a life we live.

The next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, don’t rush through familiar words. Pause. Listen. Receive it as an invitation—not only to speak with your Father, but to live as His child.

Don’t just pray the Lord’s Prayer.

Live it.

Until next time, keep looking up…

The Danger Behind a Long Prayer

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

I grew up believing that long prayers were better prayers.

The person who could pray the longest usually sounded the most spiritual. Sometimes those prayers were sincere. Sometimes they were beautiful. And sometimes, if I’m honest, they became performances. I’ve prayed some of those prayers myself.

As a pastor, I know how easy it is to slip into that trap. Standing in front of a congregation with every eye closed and every ear listening, it’s tempting to begin talking more to the people than to God. Before long, a prayer can become another sermon. Or worse, an opportunity to sound spiritual.

Jesus never condemned long prayers. In fact, He prayed through the night on more than one occasion. The problem isn’t the length of the prayer. The problem is the motive behind it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned His disciples:

“When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites. They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people…” (Matthew 6:5)

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t say public prayer is wrong. Jesus prayed publicly. The early church prayed publicly. Christians have gathered for prayer together for two thousand years. Neither does He say long prayers are wrong. Instead, He exposes something much deeper.

The problem wasn’t where they prayed. The problem was why they prayed.

The word “hypocrite” originally described an actor wearing a mask on a stage. These weren’t people who didn’t pray. They prayed. The problem was that they had confused their audience.

I’ve often said it this way:

The audience determines the prayer.

If my audience is the congregation, I’ll be concerned with how my words sound. If my audience is God, I’ll be concerned with speaking honestly.

That raises an uncomfortable question. Who am I trying to impress? That question doesn’t just apply to public prayer. It reaches into every part of our spiritual lives. Why do I serve? Why do I give? Why do I post Bible verses online? Why do I volunteer? Why do I pray?

Jesus isn’t trying to make us suspicious of public expressions of faith. He’s inviting us into something better. Prayer was never meant to be a performance. It was always meant to be a conversation with our Father. That’s why, just a few verses later, Jesus reminds His disciples:

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:8)

Think about that for a moment. You don’t have to impress a Father who already knows you. You don’t have to convince a Father who already loves you. You don’t have to perform for a Father who already knows your heart.

The most beautiful prayers are rarely the most polished. They’re simply honest. And that’s the kind of prayer your Father has wanted all along.

Until next time, keep looking up…

Stop Trying to be a Better Evangelist…

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Acts 2:42-47

A Problem

A few weeks ago, a Facebook post caught my eye. A church was offering a one-day discipleship class — 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. A full day dedicated to making disciples.

Before I say another word, let me be clear: I’m grateful for any church trying to make disciples. I’m not throwing stones at that particular congregation. If I’m honest, this word is for all of us. That post simply exposed something we’ve quietly come to accept.

We’ve begun to believe discipleship can be primarily taught in a classroom. That with enough curriculum, enough seminars, enough programs, and enough information, we’ll produce mature followers of Jesus.

But following Jesus has never been mastered in a classroom. It’s learned in kitchens and living rooms, hospital rooms and workplaces, neighborhoods and ordinary daily rhythms. It is learned over a lifetime through daily surrender, daily obedience, and the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost happened in a day. Spiritual formation happens over a lifetime.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve made the same mistake with evangelism. We’ve turned it into another skill to master, another class to attend, another program to organize, another technique to learn. We’ve made evangelism a “task” to be performed.

But when I read Acts 2, I don’t find an evangelism committee. I don’t find a strategic planning session or a “Director of Outreach.” I don’t find the apostles creating a twelve-week curriculum called “How to Win Your Neighbor in Five Easy Steps.”

What do I find? People worshiping. People praying. People eating together. People devoted to the apostles’ teaching. People giving generously. People living life together. And somehow — while doing all those ordinary things — “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”Evangelism is not primarily a task to be performed. Evangelism is a life to be lived.

A Pattern

We’ve made evangelism the destination. But what if Acts 2 reveals that evangelism is actually the byproduct? The fruit, not the root?

Luke doesn’t say the early church devoted themselves to evangelism, outreach, church growth, or making converts. Instead, he writes:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42)

The very things we often treat as secondary, Luke places first. Why? Because he understands a simple but profound truth: What fills us eventually flows from us.

The overflow of Acts 2 began on the streets of Jerusalem on Pentecost with 3,000 people believing and being baptized. If Luke were writing a modern church growth manual, he might have ended the chapter there. But he doesn’t. Pentecost wasn’t the finish line — it was the starting line.

The same Spirit who brought them to Christ now began the lifelong work of forming them into the likeness of Christ. Verses 42-47 describe what that looked like in practice: worship, prayer, generous sharing, and devotion to apostolic teaching. Nothing flashy. No celebrity speakers, no marketing campaigns, no social media strategy. Just ordinary people faithfully walking with Jesus in the ordinary rhythms of life.

Whatever is forming you is also filling you. And whatever is filling you will eventually flow from you.

A Promise

Luke gives us a quiet but powerful promise in the final sentence of the passage: “…And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

Notice who the subject is: The Lord. Not the disciples. Not the apostles. Not the church’s clever strategies. The Lord added.

As I’ve been preaching through the Spirit-Formed Life series with my congregation, I’ve stumbled onto a beautiful surprise: The Spirit never asked the first disciples to carry the weight of building His Church. He asked them to devote themselves to Him — worship, prayer, fellowship, generosity, apostolic teaching. Faithfulness was their assignment. Fruitfulness was God’s responsibility.

The Spirit-formed life is one in which Jesus increasingly becomes the subject of every sentence in our story. Jesus is the subject of our worship, our fellowship, our generosity, our witness, our salvation. 

As Jesus becomes the main character, we become perfectly content to be supporting characters in His story. 

That is discipleship. That is maturity. That is holiness.

A Personal Confession

Before I close, I need to confess something. That one-day discipleship class in the Facebook post? Twenty years…no, really more like ten…okay, so seven years ago, that could easily have been me. I would have been the one developing the curriculum, standing in the front of the room, convinced that if I could just teach enough, organize enough, and equip enough, people would become disciples.

Those were the things that formed me as a pastor for a long time. But the Holy Spirit has been teaching me something I wish I had learned much earlier: Jesus doesn’t primarily form disciples in classrooms. He forms them in daily surrender, in worship, in prayer, around tables, in ordinary acts of obedience, and in the daily rhythms of a life yielded to the Holy Spirit.

And when Jesus forms a life, that life begins to overflow.

That’s why I’ve been asking my congregation a Question of the Month that I believe matters so much: What is forming me more than Jesus right now?

Overflow isn’t the goal.

Overflow is the result.

Christlikeness is the goal.

Overflow is the consequence.

So, I’ve decided that I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to become a better evangelist. I’m going to spend my life becoming more like Jesus. I’m going to trust Him with the results. Because what fills us eventually flows from us.

Friends, what is forming you more than Jesus right now?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments. And if this resonates, would you share it with someone who needs encouragement to return to the simple, ordinary, Spirit-formed rhythms of the early church?

Until next time, keep looking up…