Joel Young Blog.com

Last Sunday we wrapped up a two month look at the book of Malachi at Horizon. With this conclusion I thought I would share some of my favorite points from the pages of this prophetic book. This series turned out to be one of the most challenging to prepare sermons for, but the truth of this tiny book never failed to rock my world.

• God is STILL worthy of honor no matter what society may tell you.
• We can’t make up our own version of what it means to honor God based on any trend or any person. We have to base what it means to honor God on Scripture. What a novel idea.
• As Christians it is our job to proclaim the Gospel message to the world. But, in many ways we have let that take a back seat to other things in our churches. There is a need for some swift and immediate changes in the American church. Let’s be a part of the solution.
• God doesn’t want us to be robots programmed to be mindlessly obedient, he wants our obedience to be the result of a heart that has been transformed.
• In the end it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have accumulated, we will all stand before the great God of justice on the day of his coming. And guess what…there will be judgment, which will result in punishment and reward. ((Oh, no he didn’t. Oh, yes I did.)) Maybe we should start living like that’s the reality of our world and let it change our interaction with those who are far from God.
• I’m sure Malachi was not a wildly popular guy for communicating this message to the nation of Israel, but most of us need to stop pretending that he should have been. Proclaiming the full truth of God’s word rarely makes you popular, but it will always make you a bearer of truth.

Can’t wait to crack open a new book this Sunday at Horizon.

God isn’t good, he’s awesome! That may seem like an overly dramatic way to communicate God’s might, but for me it fits perfectly. Last night I watched as my wife baptized one of her friends and D-group members, and was again amazed at how quickly people can realize the need for Jesus in their lives through real relationships and the study of scripture. Not through a fantastic music at a worship experience, not through flashing lights and fog, not through an impressive conference, not through a famous speakers, but through reading God’s Word and real people loving them. I’m not saying that those things are bad, but that was my baseline for this kind of life change for many years.

This is the second baptism in 6 months at Horizon, and while that might not seem phenomenal to most here are a few things that God has given me to get excited about.

• One baptism after 50 years of ministry would still make the work worth while because someone who was going to Hell now gets to spend an eternity in Heaven.
• Since the launch of our Discipleship Groups at Horizon we have seem major life change from everyone involved. Both mature believers and people seeking to figure out what Jesus is all about have seen a perspective shift. Real relationships and Biblical accountability change people.
• Over the last six months Horizon has baptized over 10% of her weekly attendance. That’s huge!

I’m thankful for every ounce of effort that God allows me to pour into His Church (not MY church), and today I’m thankful the healthy perspective he has given me.

Ok, I should probably know this by now, but when you talk about something publicly (i.e. expecting to be frustrated by the devil’s efforts to fight the work of God’s kingdom) then you usually become a target. And right on cue something crazy happened to our church once again this week. I showed up a couple hours early to our Sunday Gathering, as I usually do, to find that we had no electricity. There wasn’t a power outage…there wasn’t a down line…our power was straight up shut off. I knew that we hadn’t done anything deserving of our power being shut off, but that didn’t change the fact that we had less than two hours to power this place before people began to arrive.

Needless to say, I was pretty steamed. Thankfully, a few of our guys had also come over extra early to get some things ready and they helped me keep my cool (Yes, we preachers can lose our cool too. We’re not perfect!) as we sorted out the situation. We had a couple of our resourceful men round up some generators, but by the grace of God the power company showed up and sorted the issue out with just minutes to spare and we didn’t have to alter anything. A clerical error on the power company’s part had lead to our loss in power.

While this is yet another chapter in the book of what to expect when you’re a church planter it was also a reminder to me that if you become a visible threat to Satan, he will attack you. We went on to have one of the most powerful gatherings we have ever had. The room was packed, the Word was preached, and God was honored above all. Satan didn’t want that to happen.

It’s awesome to think that Satan sees our work at Horizon as a threat, but it’s still a frustrating thing to endure. I think I’ll be praying for patience and perspective this week.

Over the last month I have been going through one of the most trying seasons of frustration I have ever dealt with. Every day it seems like there is yet another pressing problem or another fire to put out. Not only is it tiring, but it’s taxing on every aspect of my life. This morning as I dealt with yet another frustrating headache I realized something about myself. I expect, and even welcome, frustration during a season of personal or public growth for the Kingdom of God, but somehow I have embedded this understanding in my heart that it will be over quickly. I have been assuming that Satan’s schemes to frustrate me in my life and ministry will be like the removal of a band-aid from my forearm. I expect to lose some hair, but I also don’t expect it to last very long, so I can easily deal with it.

The problem is that Satan doesn’t always play by the rules. Look at Job as an example. After he had lost all of his family and possessions he was probably thinking the season of frustration was over, but it wasn’t. He went on to lose his health and some of his closest friends. Look at the Apostle Paul. Scholars believe that he suffered through debilitating pain most of his adult life. He called it a, “thorn in his side,” and pleaded with God to take it from him. Sounds frustrating to me.

What I’m trying to say is that if we are going to commit to serving the kingdom of God we should expect no end to the frustration. In many ways we should expect it to continue as long as we are faithful in our service. The season could last for weeks, months, years, or decades. But, since we’ll never have that kind of information we just have to push forward through the frustration and continue to work diligently in God’s will knowing that it will do nothing but frustrate Satan and his efforts all the more.

A lot of people ask me, “what has church planting taught you?” Often my response is something like, “Not to do it again,” or “That I really don’t know as much as I thought I did.” But all joking aside there is something that church planting has taught me that is invaluable in both life and ministry. Craig Groeschel captured that lesson in a very short an concise post this morning. Here’s what he said about, “Letting Go of the Fear of Failure.”

The fear of failure paralyzes too many people.

I’ve found one of the best gifts God can give a leader is the gift of failure.

Too many of us are not doing what we feel called to do because we’re afraid to fail.

As I observe the people around me, it seems the most effective have failed far more times than the least effective.

The people making the biggest impact seem to:

1) Try something outlandish.

2) Fail.

3) Learn.

4) Adjust.

5) Try something that works better.

Failure is never final. It is often the first step to success.

If you haven’t failed in awhile, why don’t you try something crazy and see what happens.

This one lesson we all need to learn. Thanks for the reminder Craig.