We proclaim the gospel, and then fail to apply it to ourself. We teach grace but fall into legalism. We stand in the pulpit and tell people their identity is in Christβthen base our sense of worth on how many people showed up that Sunday. Leadership Journal senior editor Drew Dyck talked with Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, about how to resist this tendency by applying grace to all of lifeβeven your ministry.
How do you guard against that? I try to cultivate a rich prayer life. It begins first thing in the morning. I pray over my calendar. Yesterday I prayed over each meeting I had that day. I asked God for specific things in those meetings. Each weekly CT Pastors issue equips you with the best wisdom and practical tools for church ministry. Please click here to see all our newsletters. In addition to that practice, I take one Wednesday a month and block it out to be with the Lord.
Regardless of how busy life gets, that day is kind of a sacred. We need to do a better job at defining love.
Love has become this junk drawer word that means any kind of affection. You listen to people talk. But true love involves much more than just feelings. He scourges those he would call son? Real love involves the will. We think love is a fluttering of the heart. Which is why people get divorced because the flutters stop. But real love involves the will. Right now my wife is back home in Dallas. All my hair was gone. I had a gnarly scar on my head, and I was lying on the bathroom floor trying to get the strength to vomit in the toilet again.
If Lauren were to leave me in that moment, when I was sick and dying with cancer, no one, not even the worldliest person, would think that what she had done was right, good, or should be emulated.
