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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.

I’m not good at fishing but some of my favorite childhood memories involve trying to catch fish. Growing up, my dad would take my brothers and I on excursions where we would camp and fish. These “manly man fishing trips”, as they were called, involved a lot of laughter and running around in the woods but I don’t recall all that many fish actually being caught. Maybe that’s because my dad hardly ever got to drop his line in the water because he was too busy untangling our rods from the tangled mess we had inevitably gotten them into because we hadn’t listened to him.

I had a mickey mouse fishing pole and I vividly recall my dad doing everything for me. He would set it all up: hook, bait, weights, and even cast it out, telling me to sit still (so as to not scare the fish away) and keep my eyes on the bobber. That was it. I just needed to not be hyperactive and when I saw the bobber bounce just slowly reel it in. When ever a fish was caught he would even take care of getting the hook out of it’s throat and do the dirty work of cleaning it. All I had to do was reel it in. He took care of everything else.

The cool thing is that I have discovered when you follow Jesus’ instructions and go fishing for men it works the exact same way. God takes care of everything! He is the one who nailed our sins to the cross making it possible for us to have a relationship with Him. He is the one who works in hearts, drawing people to Christ and giving them the option to respond to Him, He is the one who sets up situations where we can invite people to church and share the gospel with them, and He is the one who knows whether someone is genuinely saved or not. All we have to do is to be faithful to cast out the net and reel it in.

As we preach the gospel and bring people with us to hear the gospel we must not trust in ourselves. For all practical purposes, we are like me as a little boy, sitting there on the dock with my mickey mouse fishing pole. But just like I have a great dad, we have an amazing Heavenly Father who sets everything up for us and, even though we often get things tangled up and make it more complicated than it needs to be, He loves us and allows us to play a part in the ultimate fish story!

Matthew 13:47–50 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that was thrown into the water and caught fish of every kind. When the net was full, they dragged it up onto the shore, sat down, and sorted the good fish into crates, but threw the bad ones away. That is the way it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and separate the wicked people from the righteous, throwing the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

By the way, there is an opportunity for you to go on a fishing trip tomorrow night! Skull Church is the first wednesday of every month and for the month of May that is tomorrow night. After music by the skull church band and our guest artist we are going to be casting the net and dragging it in. Is there someone you could invite to come with you (if you live in this neck of the woods) or to come over to your house to watch the webcast with you? It all starts at 7pm MST and streams in HD at www.skullchurch.com.

This is going to be a blog about how to deal with PMS. Now that I have your attention, let me assure you that this has nothing to do with “that time of the month,” I might only have 7 years of marriage under my belt but I know better than to go there–something about hell hath no fury… This is actually about dealing with “that time of the week.” And though it is not guaranteed to always occur, it is something that every pastor is going to deal with to some extent or another. I’m talking about POST MESSAGE SYNDROME.

Now there is also a lot to be said about PRE MESSAGE SYNDROME, because both the spiritual warfare and the nervous energy ramp up as you prepare to speak. I have found this is especially true as you prepare to preach the gospel in an evangelistic outreach. But in my opinion the period directly after a time of intense ministry can be even harder to deal with than the period leading up to it so that is where I want to throw down some one’s and zero’s in this post.

It’s not that I think there is more warfare afterwards, that’s not necessarily the case, but as you go into it you know you are at war so you are taking appropriate countermeasures. You are on your knees, putting the armor of God on in your mind. You know you need to be sober and vigilant, and you are. Heck, you are ready to pull a Martin Luther and throw an ink bottle at the devil in the night if he even thinks about showing up. Furthermore, during this time you (hopefully) have a team of armor bearer types around you who are holding up your arms and praying for you, keeping you free from distraction so that you can get your game face on.

I’m not trying to make light of this, or to suggest that even when you know it is coming, the spiritual warfare isn’t incredibly difficult to deal with. It is. Yet, when things go wrong before a message you’re reaction is going to be to filter it through the grid of what you are doing for the Lord. You’ll be like, aha! I’m getting attacked, this must mean we are on the right track! Surely God is going to save the entire city now because I got a flat tire. Praise God! I’m being persecuted for righteousness sake. The devil targeted my tire to keep me from preaching the gospel–but it will never work, I will drive on my rims over a road covered in flaming scorpions if I have to!

Now, maybe Lucifer blew out your tire or maybe it was a pot-hole. But I’ll tell you what, you get that same flat tire driving home from church on Sunday after you give the message and you’re gut-level reaction will be different. It will probably be more like, seriously? after I poured myself out all day trying to help these dang people come to know you? what the heck?! Are there no breaks in this world for a man of God? stinking, lousy tire and stupid awful roads. Lord, can I call down fire from heaven and blow up this wretched highway? Why did you call me to a town with so many pot-holes anyway?

All right, I was probably being a little melodramatic there but you get the idea. And if someone is reading this who holds ministers to unrealistic standards and you are appalled at this–please remember, pastors are people too! And this is nothing new either, didn’t the pouting prophet Jonah want to die when the worm ate his shade plant just hours after he gave his sermon to the Ninevites? Didn’t Elijah curl up in the fetal position and get emo after the showdown at Mt. Carmel?

This funk can strike differently at different times. Maybe you will be discouraged because it didn’t go very well, not as many people came as you hoped, or your delivery was off. Or maybe you will be discouraged even though it went really well. Last time I checked Jonah had a pretty good response to his preaching in Nineveh. And Elijah’s ministry on Mt. Carmel couldn’t have gone better. They still got bummed out. I have had times of ministry that exceeded my wildest expectations and yet I found myself full of melancholy for no apparent reason.

I don’t know why this happens. Maybe it’s to keep you humble, perhaps it’s because you’re tendency is to let your guard down when the bell has rung for this round. You are sitting there on the stool with your eyes closed trying to catch your breath, and that’s when the sucker punch comes. Neither your flesh nor the enemy play by the rules. Part of it is biologically understandable, there is no way for there not to be some kind of an emotional crash when the adrenaline, preparation and excitement that has gone into an outreach or a big service like Easter Sunday gives way to reality and the endless stream of Sundays that are coming. And love it or hate it, ministry in the past is like toothpaste–once it’s out of the tube there is no going back.

Some weeks it’s clean and simple and you move right on. Other times you agonize over it for a day and a half. If it was a really bad message you think, I made a mistake, I shouldn’t have quit my day job. If it was killer, you think I peaked, I can never do better than that, and next Sunday they are gonna be back with friends. You inevitably drive home playing the game tape over and over in your mind, sometimes wishing you could get in a time machine because you just thought of something you should have said…it’s quite maddening.

Of course the solution to all of this is to get your eyes off yourself, and give it all to the Lord because it was never about you, it was always about Him. And you have to keep telling yourself that lest you sink into self-adullation or self-flaggelation. Both are mistakes. It’s all about Jesus, not you.

The best advice I have ever got on dealing with this came from reading Greg Laurie’s autobiography Lost Boy. He describes the process of coming down from a crusade and how he learned from Billy Graham to not strut around like an exultant quarterback who has just thrown a game winning touchdown. He said the best thing to do was to normalize as quickly as possible, get some food, respond to some emails, get on with it. He described a time where he hung out with Billy after preaching and Billy was wearing pajama pants with loafers while eating dinner in a hotel room. It’d be difficult to get a big head wearing an outfit like that! With that in mind I try to move on quickly: erasing the glass whiteboard in my office where my message had been brewing in different colored markers, clearing off my desk, playing with my kids, watching a movie, taking a nap, reading a novel, going for a bike ride. That stuff is the preacher equivalent of midol.

Sure there are things that are going to come into your head that didn’t go well at the event. That’s bound to happen. I used to call everyone up whose dept misfired and have it out right then and there. I have learned to take notes in a moleskine and save them for the debrief, unless there are immediate ramifications. And I have also been challenged by the reality that regardless of how you feel you have to celebrate what the Lord did, not just for your sake but for your team’s sake. (read 2 Samuel 19:1-8 to see this in action)

Above all things when you come out of a battle, don’t let your guard down. Expect the attack as you come down from the mountain. And keep praying! I hope this has been helpful for other pastors who will read this, even if it’s just to let you know that you aren’t crazy if you have been experiencing stuff like this. You are not alone! Take heart.