I want to suggest that wherever you can as a young man or one involved in any way in training young men, you point them toward manhood, maturity, adulthood, responsibility, ambition, strategy, vision, focus. Yes, it can be fun to be boyish. But you know what’s far more satisfying? Becoming something. Becoming something greater than you are. Becoming a man. Building stuff.
Author: Jojo Agot
Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.
Old Photographs
Jim Capaldi on Nostalgia, playing at 1:21am on a Saturday Night. Reminds me of dusty uncemented roads on summer afternoons.
Old photographs and places I remember just like a dying ember that’s burned into my soul.
Even though we walk the diamond-studded highways, it’s the country lanes and byways that make us long for home.
Lord Over All Our Fears
Mark 4:35-41 and Mark 5.
After a long sermon in Galilee, Jesus crossed to the other side of the sea to the country of the Gerasenes. En route to that destination, a storm almost capsized the boat they were on. Jesus got up from His slumber and rebuked the wind and the sea. The stormed stopped right away. Jesus is Lord over the forces of nature.
As he stepped out of the boat upon arrival at the country of the Gadarenes, a demon possessed man rushed to bow down at Jesus’ feet seeking deliverance. The legion of demons who possessed the man literally begged Jesus not to torment them. They preferred to drown in the sea with a herd of pigs than be driven out of the country. Jesus spoke His command and the demons fled from his presence, causing havoc and destruction in their wake. Jesus is Lord over dark spiritual powers. Continue reading Lord Over All Our Fears
The Deeper You Walk with Christ
The more deeply you walk with Christ, the hungrier you get for Christ . . . the more homesick you get for heaven . . . the more you want “all the fullness of God” . . . the more you want to be done with sin . . . the more you want the Bridegroom to come again . . . the more you want the Church revived and purified with the beauty of Jesus . . . the more you want a great awakening to God’s reality in the cities . . . the more you want to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ penetrate the darkness of all the unreached peoples of the world . . . the more you want to see false worldviews yield to the force of Truth . . . the more you want to see pain relieved and tears wiped away and death destroyed . . . the more you long for every wrong to be made right and the justice and grace of God to fill the earth like the waters cover the sea.
Continue reading The Deeper You Walk with ChristThe Deadliest Enemy of Our Souls
John Piper in A Hunger for God:
The greatest enemy of [our] hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable. Continue reading The Deadliest Enemy of Our Souls
Sexual Sin in the Ministry
Precisely the reason why we need the grace of God:
The real problem is hidden deep within. The least bit of lust is an indication of vast corruption in the human heart. It is an enslavement that cannot be broken through any form of behavior management, recovery program, or counseling. The inside is so ravaged by sin that we can do nothing to change it.
Jojo Agot 