Feedback can be helpful. If you run a company you can’t afford to not stay in tune to what people think about your brand and your customer service. People have more options than ever and if you treat them like they aren’t there, soon they won’t be. They will just go to another store, restaurant, website or church.

Having an ear to the ground can alert you to “wow” moments that are happening that you aren’t aware of but you should be encouraging. Things that employees are doing that blow customers away that you can make a more wide spread behavior. Or maybe you will find out that some small thing you have in place is actually doing the exact opposite of what you want it to. Feedback could allow for a small tweak that could make a huge difference.

An openness to feedback will allow you to see your team or organization or church through a new set of eyes. This even applies to individuals. One of the ways to grow is to have people in your life that can speak into your life when they see things that are keeping you from growing. We all have a way of being blind to our own weaknesses. Honest evaluation can be a majorly valuable tool.

The key is to know what feedback to take seriously and what input to ignore altogether. If you listen to the wrong feedback you could find yourself compromising where you shouldn’t. For example, if you have recently given your life to Christ and the negative feedback is pouring in from people you used to party with, you are going to want to ignore their contribution. The same applies to business. Perhaps some people very vocally complain about your sky-high prices and you are tempted to add cheaper items to the menu. But if you are going for a boutique vibe, diluting your higher-end price point could be a mistake and weaken what sets you apart. Pleasing the wrong people could keep you from reaching the right people.

Start by accepting the fact that no one can please everyone. You have got to identify who you are trying to impact, isolate their input and reject all others.

In my world, I am open to hearing feedback from all sorts of different people, but I filter it through the grid of who I am trying to reach. If I hear complaints from someone who comes to freshlife for the first time and thinks that the music was too loud and they didn’t like stuff we did because that’s not how it was in their last church, I’m not phased. The feedback that I key into is the person who writes and tells me they haven’t been to a religious service in 20 years but their life was rocked by their experience and they didn’t even know church could be like this. I want to encourage and foster stories like that. So I care very much about the fact that they were invited by a friend, heard our radio station and were intrigued by the name of the series.

To be blunt, I don’t care if a person who is already saved doesn’t like it. If they are already going to heaven, they are good. They can just go to another church and I am more than fine with that. The person who isn’t going to any church is the one whose head I want to get in to. In order to reach the right people I am willing to not please the wrong people.

If you know who or what you are targeting you can practice selective hearing when you listen to what people say about your organization and not find yourself deviating from your primary objective. Define success and then pursue it wholeheartedly.

I was reading the Bible yesterday and came across a story that I had read many times before but never thought much of. All of a sudden It jumped out to me for the great danger it posed, both to those who witnessed it and to us today. I sensed a warning light flashing in my soul and so I paused for a moment to let the massive risk sink in fully.

Here is the story:

Matthew 15:33–39 The disciples replied, “Where would we get enough food here in the wilderness for such a huge crowd?” Jesus asked, “How much bread do you have?” They replied, “Seven loaves, and a few small fish.” So Jesus told all the people to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, thanked God for them, and broke them into pieces. He gave them to the disciples, who distributed the food to the crowd. They all ate as much as they wanted. Afterward, the disciples picked up seven large baskets of leftover food. There were 4,000 men who were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children.

Crazy huh? I know. You were thinking I was talking about Daniel in the Lions den, Elijah calling fire down on Mt. Carmel, or Samson toppling the Philistine temple with renewed strength from the Lord. Those are the kind of miracles that we would tend to classify as high-risk. Lives were hanging in the balances. What in the world is so dangerous about Jesus handing out bread to a few thousand of his closest friends?

The danger that this miracle poses may not be obvious or life-threatening, but it is still capable of great harm. What is the risk? Being unimpressed. You see right before Jesus feeds the 4,000 in Matthew 15 He fed 5,000 in Matthew 14. Don’t kid yourself; feeding 4,000 people with only 7 loaves is in and of itself amazing, unbelievable, and get-on-your-knees-and-praise-God extraordinary. But compared to the super-sized one in the previous chapter it could come across as a smaller version of something that already blew our minds earlier on.

How little press this miracle gets is telling. The one we always hear about is the feeding of the 5,000. Had Jesus simply reversed the order and fed the 4,000 first it would have made more sense. It’s always nice to ramp up and work towards a climax. But here is what I sensed God speaking to me. His work in our lives and ministries is not necessarily going to be like a fireworks show. His goal isn’t to do flashier things and flashier things as He gears up for an impressive finale that’s plain for all to see. He simply wants us to be faithful with what is right in front of us and remain at a place where we are blown away that He would use us at all. Furthermore, the “greatest” thing God ever does through us might not even be something that at surface value is all that amazing.

That means that if you see 100 people come to Christ one week and 14 the next you celebrate those 14 people with all your heart. In Acts 2 there were 3,000 who came to know Christ in one fell swoop and then in Acts 3 one lame man believed on Jesus. You know what? Angels celebrated both miracles with much rejoicing. If your church grows by leaps and bounds one moment and then just by bunny-hops later on your heart should enthusiastically praise God that Christ is building His church.

The danger in all of this is real. If you become difficult for God to impress you will become difficult for God to use. The desire to grow and to be more effective is good and right. We are to give God our very best effort and seek after a 100 fold harvest every time. Jesus commended the shrewd servants in His parables over and over again. But it is imperative that we are careful to not become desensitized. We must not fail to be impressed by every single work of God–no matter the size.

I took this picture just before they wheeled my dad off to open his chest and perform a grueling four hour surgery on his heart. They came to get him 3 and 1/2 hours behind schedule and the anticipation was brutal. We tried to psyche him up as much as we could by praying, singing worship songs and reading scripture. As they finally came around the corner I looked down and saw the Bible on his chest and it occurred to me that I couldn’t think of a single day of my dad’s life that didn’t include God’s Word. An open Bible on the kitchen counter, coffee table, on his desk or on a table at a cafe was literally an everyday occurrence if my dad was involved. He meditates on God’s Word day and night.

As an expert when it comes to Christian broadcasting, for over 30 years my dad has spent his life putting God’s Word on the internet, radio, and tv. Countless millions have heard the gospel because of him. It will be a joy in eternity to hear the stories of those who have come to know Christ listening to radio stations or watching a tv special he orchestrated. But I can tell you that behind the scenes, as much as he has tried to fill the airwaves with Scripture, he has also made sure his own heart reverberated with it. You literally can’t walk into a room or vehicle he is in without hearing a John Macarthur, Chuck Swindoll, or a Louie Giglio podcast coming from a radio, laptop, or car stereo. As kids, we knew whether we were late or on time for school based on whether Jon Courson’s radio program had started to play yet. The morning of his surgery I walked into his room to see him cranking out a few last minute emails and heard Steven Furtick coming from his macbook pro.

It has been a week and a half since I received the phone call that he suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital in Florida, all by himself, but I am still sorting through the emotions from it all. As soon as I heard the news I bolted for the airport and even though it took me four different flights, I got to him as soon as I could. I spent four days at his bedside with my brothers and sisters, praying and trying to be there for him, and then after a whirlwind weekend of speaking in Arizona, somehow I am back in Montana. I can hardly believe it really happened. As a pastor I am around emergencies and death enough to know that these things take time to sink in.

I know this for sure, my dad is fortunate to be alive. A million americans have heart attacks each year and half of them die. Half of those that die do so within the first hour of symptoms appearing and before they reach the hospital. That could have easily been him. Because he eats so healthy, and exercises so frequently he is the last person that you would think would have a heart attack. He couldn’t believe what was happening either and waited WAY TOO LONG to seek help. He tried to ride it out in his hotel room, thinking it would pass. It didn’t. He finally made his way down to the front desk and asked them to call a doctor. They did what he should have done an hour earlier and called 911. By God’s grace he was only 5 blocks away from a hospital that is ranked nationally for their heart department and his life was saved.

My dad is my hero. He was the best man in my wedding and to this day, apart from Jennie, he is my best friend. There isn’t hardly a day that goes by where we don’t text, talk or email each other. It is a joy to partner with him in ministry on several different fronts. He pushes me on in my walk with God, and as a pastor. But the bar that he has set so high for me, which I will always aspire to reach, is as a father. If I could be half the dad to my daughters that he has been to me I will be thrilled.

It is interesting, because in the days leading up to the surgery they told us he could go into cardiac arrest and drop dead at any moment, so we felt like we sat on the edge of eternity as we waited. Thankfully there weren’t any apologies or grudges we needed to work through as a family, but had there been we were given a great gift in having the opportunity should we have needed it. Let me give you advice in case there is someone in your family that you are at odds with–call them up right now and work through it! Don’t leave anything unsaid. Life is a vapor. As it turns out this weekend is Father’s day, a perfect opportunity to honor your dad by thanking him or by following a godly example and being apart of his legacy.

I was standing in the Liberty theater last night and I was overcome, yet again, by what we are seeing the Lord do at skull church. It occurred to me that this is what an uprising looks like.

At my day job, when I’m not moonlighting as a pirate preacher, we are going through the book of Joshua and looking at what happens when a generation emerges that is willing to take a stand and change the world.

I believe that just such a generation is living on the face of the earth right now. I sense God moving and pouring out His Spirit on all flesh in a unique way. I can’t recall a time, in my life, where there has been so many young, fresh, vibrant movements awakening and surging and growing and taking shape–all over the place.

This is not a time to shrink back. There has never been a day like today. It’s our time to shine. Let’s use these fleeting moments we have on this earth to make Jesus famous. Rise up o men of God!

Here are a few snapshots of the wave of revolution we are riding.

When you read the Bible you should expect God to speak to you. It is not a normal book. It’s alive.

I like to pray before I read and ask the Lord to open my eyes so that I can see wondrous truths in His Word (Psalm 119:18). It’s sort of like the spiritual equivalent of putting on 3D glasses. It reminds me that I’m looking at more than history, or poetry or a letter written to someone who died a long time ago. I am expecting for God’s voice to come through the text, speak into my life and change me in the process. I’m looking for it.

Often what will happen is at some point in the passage, something will jump off the page. It will either hit hard, or convict me of something, or catch me off guard. It might even be a very familiar verse that I see in a new light. When ever this happens I stop. I read it again and ponder and meditate what God is saying to me. If there is an action step I am being lead towards or sin I need to repent of or a new attitude I need to adopt I try and do that on the spot, before moving on.

There are going to be times where the 3D doesn’t seem to be working, where you will read and feel like you “didn’t get anything out of it.” Don’t lose heart. Don’t stop reading. Keep hiding His Word in your heart each day. Besides, you might have gotten more out of it than you know. God might have given you a truth that you will need for a trial you will go through next Tuesday. Jesus probably hadn’t read the verses that He used in the wilderness temptations that morning. Furthermore, God could be trying to teach you something that someone else is going to need.

So slow down, prayerfully approach God’s Word with an expectant heart, and bring a pen.

Psalm 119:28 My soul melts from heaviness; Strengthen me according to Your word.