Digging for Diamonds

Mike Leake 1 Comment

An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. –Proverbs 31:10

My son has an insatiable love for Minecraft. So, in an effort to hang out with my son, I’ve started playing it with him. It’s actually a fun game. You are dropped into a world with nothing but the clothes on your back and you have to survive. You begin by chopping down wood (yes, with your hand). Eventually you build a pickaxe and start mining for valuable jewels. The most rare jewel in the game is a diamond. In order to find diamonds you have to go into deep, dark caverns, avoiding zombies, skeletons, and the infamous Creepers.

The other day, as my son and I were digging for diamonds, I had one of my friends on my mind. He’s a super nice guy that’s had terrible experiences with the ladies. I hurt for him. He wonders if he’ll ever find an excellent wife.

Meanwhile, we’ve been digging around for about 10 minutes and still no diamonds. Plenty of zombies. Plenty of skeletons. A few pieces of coal. Lots of stone and lots of gravel. But no diamonds. They are quite difficult to find.

And that’s when it hits me that my buddy is having the same problem that we are in Minecraft. He’s digging for a jewel that is hard to find. Let’s be honest, godly women are hard to find. (The same can be said about a godly man). Scripture teaches that because of the fall sin has wrecked both men and women. Finding a woman that has been redeemed by Jesus and is growing in her love for him is a rare jewel indeed.

After a lengthy search we finally find diamonds. My son starts jumping on the bed and dancing like only a five year old can dance. We fought hard for these jewels. We had to work to build an iron pickaxe. We had to kill zombies. We had to dig forever. But finally we found the diamonds—and now we celebrate.

Guys, if you’ve found a diamond you need to celebrate. Celebrate the godly wife that you have. She is rare. Don’t ever forget that.

If you are single and still trying to find that godly wife, keep digging. A precious jewel is going to be hard to find. But when you find her—she’ll be worth the wait. Trust me. The Lord has blessed me with a wife that is far more precious than jewels. She was worth the wait, the struggle, and all the digging. Trust the Lord and keep digging.

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So, what if you find yourself married to a woman that is not a precious jewel? She doesn’t love the Lord. She isn’t growing in love for Jesus. She’s more like the “constant drip” than the precious jewel. First of all, let’s just forget this silly metaphor. Secondly, you need to pray for your wife. Pray that the Lord will work and move in her heart. It is only through the Lord Jesus captivating her heart that she’ll truly be more precious than jewels. Also, make sure that you are godly and growing in your relationship with the Lord.

If you want to pray for your wife I’d encourage you to sign up for our free eBook. (It will be releasing very soon).

How to Shepherd Your Child When He/She is Exposed to Bad Teaching

Mike Leake 4 Comments

Little Jimmy comes home with a smile on his face. (It’s always little Jimmy, isn’t it?) He has spent the weekend at dad’s, as he has since the divorce, and he is pretty jazzed up about the church service that he went to. As a faithful mommy you are excited that he is excited about church. Trying to contain your grin you ask him what was so cool about church. Little Jimmy explains,

Mom it was so cool! We were singing songs, then the preacher said something about snakes and faith…I can’t really remember what…but then Pastor Jenkins hopped out of that place where people get babatized (cause little kids never pronounce it correctly), and he was holding this huge snake around his neck. It looked like one of those really mean snakes that we see on television. Then he started speaking in this really cool language. It was awesome how God saved these people and gave them His Spirit.

That’s probably an extreme case—but what do you do if your child is exposed to poor teaching? If it’s a television preacher then you can tell him that those guys are nutjobs and invite him to watch a cartoon. But if this poor teaching is coming from someone like his daddy, then that makes things a little more difficult.

One option is to tell little Jimmy that daddy is nuts and part of the reason for the divorce is that daddy lost his mind at that snake handling church. You can teach him what you believe and then you can tell him all the reasons that daddy’s theology is about as sound as that rattlesnake that he tries to handle.

I would not advise that approach. One of your chief goals in shepherding your child is to help him be dependent on the Lord and to be able to handle God’s Word for himself. If you pit your theology vs. daddy’s theology then he’ll determine what is correct based upon whether he believes mommy more than daddy. That won’t help him in the long run.

What little Jimmy really needs is to know what God says. Therefore, whenever your kid is exposed to bad teaching, take him straight to the Bible. Say, “let’s see what God says about this”. Then you can show him from the Scriptures why you believe what you believe. It’s difficult. You might still have questions. You likely won’t do it perfectly. But at least you are teaching him a valuable lesson; namely, that when he has a theological question he goes to God’s Word to find the answer.

You don’t have to spend a ton of time in polemics (showing why daddy and his snake handling is nuts). Just help your kid see the truth of the gospel and hold fast to Jesus. The Spirit will take care of guiding your son/daughter into all truth. And He does that through His Word. Help your kids be hungry for the Word and confident that God accurately and sufficiently reveals Himself in the Word—and I bet daddy’s whack theology will be shown for what it is.

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I’ve written this from the perspective of a mom trying to shepherd her little boy. But it could be just as likely that a little girl is being led astray by a crazy mama and daddy needs to step in. My advice would be the same. Take them to God’s Word no matter their gender or yours.

Today in Blogworld 09.11.13

Mike Leake

Dear Mr. Prophetic Voice for True Christianity

This needs to be said.

New eBook: Everyday Theology

Aaron is one of my favorite bloggers. I’m certain this book is one that will bless you.

Superman Pastors Are Bound to Fail

“Instruct. Train. Release.” I love it.

Superhero Dad

This is touching.

Oh, I’ve so got to try this. Unfortunately my lawnmower doesn’t have those auto-spinny-wheel things:

The Dangerous Pit of Uniqueness

Mike Leake 10 Comments

“You’re one in a million. Which of course means there are over 6,000 people just like you”.

I haven’t a clue the source of that quote (nor the ones that are similar), but I love how it puts us in our place. Most Americans want to be unique…even more than we want to be awesome. We don’t care what makes us unique or famous, so long as we are so. Twenge and Campbell in their book, The Narcissim Epidemic, highlight this trend:

We are a nation fixated on the idea of being the exception to the rule, standing out, and being better than others—in other words, on being special and narcissistic—and we’re so surrounded by this ethos that we find it shocking that anyone would question it. Fish don’t realize they’re in water.

We’ve been told for years that we are special. The cartoons I watched as a child never failed in reminding me of my uniqueness. I was reassured that I could be anything I wanted to be. I easily recall lessons learned in school (and even church) about snowflakes and fingerprints to help me celebrate my uniqueness. That’s not all bad—it’s good for a person to know that God has knitted them together in their mother’s womb and that He has done so with precision and intention. That’s a good thing. But when this good thing is hi-jacked by our self-worshiping hearts our uniqueness becomes a great tool for our destruction.

Consider a person that has been dealt a pretty rough hand, one that is filled with suffering. And not just your garden variety of suffering, mind you. I’m talking about the really intense kind of suffering—that looks to be absolutely senseless and unnecessary.

Such a circumstance provides a great opportunity for a heart bent towards narcissism to fulfill its twisted desires. In times of intense suffering it is easy to feel that our affliction is unique and that we have been dealt a blow more weighty than other people. And so, somehow, even through our pain we find a way to worship. Sadly, our worship is not that of Job, who said from his ash heap, “Blessed be the name of the Lord”.

No, our worship is self-directed. Our wound the altar. Here we pay homage to our uniqueness. And here, in that moment when the sufferer adopts the label of “special” or “unique”, the downward spiral begins, cutting him/her off from hope and help.

The Spiral

The one that convinces himself that he is special immediately disconnects himself from the rest of society. Nobody has ever walked in your shoes. Therefore, you can easily conclude that no person is fit to speak truth into your life. Until they walk a mile in your shoes they have no way of understanding.

As Twenge and Campbell note, “studies have found that teenagers who have a ‘personal fable’ of uniqueness believe that no one understands them.” Once you become misunderstood then it’s only a short step to shut yourself off from godly counsel. Only those agreeing with you really understand what you are going through. You don’t have to listen to any voice but your own and the ones that agree with you.

Passages of Scripture that were once helpful no longer have bearing on your life. After all, you can reason that those Scriptures don’t apply because the biblical authors aren’t walking in your shoes.

Now every sinful response to your suffering is excused—at least in your mind. It’s not you, it’s the suffering. When the afflictions keep piling on (and usually a great portion of it the consequence of your sinful response to suffering) you conclude that God has forsaken you.

It is here that you will make your bed in ashes. You’ve spiraled into depression and self-pity. Here you will become jaded and your conscience seared. You, and you alone, have been abandoned and forsaken by the God who said that He wouldn’t forsake anyone. You’re stuck in this pit with no rope. You even lack the fingernails to claw your way out. You are hopeless.

There is only one way out…

If you are wallowing in the mud of despair and you feel all alone as if nobody understands you, the only way out of this pit is to turn away from such narcissistic malarkey. And the only way to be convinced that you aren’t unique and that you aren’t special, is to look to the Lord Jesus.

One particular place to find rescue is in Psalm 88. Here we see that no matter how deep in the pit we descend the Lord Jesus has sank further.

The One whose only companion truly was darkness plunged the depths so that this Psalm would never actually be true for me. It only feels like darkness is my sole companion. It’s not. Jesus is there. In the darkness. In the midst of my deadness. Fully present in His love and conquering grace.

He conquered the lonely grave. I can’t. And thankfully I don’t have to. (From Conquering the Lonely Grave)

You aren’t unique. You aren’t special. Jesus is. The sooner we realize this the better. Yes, you have great worth. Yes, you are dearly loved. Yes, you matter. Yes, you have a purpose. But so does everyone else. And they suffer too. Maybe not as much as you have. But you aren’t unique. You aren’t alone. Jesus has plunged further. Throw your despair upon Him.

Only in His uniqueness can you find rescue from the pit of yours.