Category Archives: Challenge

A Heart To Give

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by in Challenge, Christian Habits, Church Planting, Decisions For Christ, mission, purpose driven, seven church, Worship

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Oftentimes, pastors are reluctant to talk about giving because of the way culture has taught us to think about money. Culture talks about giving in manipulative, coercive, and guilt-laying ways. But as many of you know, at Skyline we don’t shy away from hard topics. We’re dedicated to teaching the relevance of Scripture in truth and love.

What does the Bible have to say about giving?

So then, what does the Bible have to say about giving? Let’s throw out the sales pitches and talk simply about what the Bible says about giving and how we view your gifts at Skyline Church. 

Perhaps one of the most popular verses known in the Christian faith is John 3:16. “God so love the world that He gave…” God GAVE His one and only Son for YOU and for me. There has been no greater act of giving than when Jesus went to the cross for all of mankind. And did you know the words “give, gave, and giving” are used over 1,500 times in the Bible? Giving is mentioned more than faith! If we leave out talking about giving we have left out a HUGE portion of the Bible.

Do you know why it is mentioned so often in the Bible? Because you can say you have faith all you want, but if you don’t give, you’re not growing in faith. It’s that simple. Skyline wants to produce followers of Christ that are growing in faith seven days a week. Growing people change. That includes how you view your finances. 2 Corinthians 8:7 is just one verse that teaches us that eventually our faith will be stretched in the area of giving, “But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.”

A Heart To Give

Giving is always an opportunity. God wants us to grow in giving because that means we’re growing in faith. I remember meeting a visitor at Seven Church (now Skyline Lakeside) years ago that approached me after one of our services. He shared how he went to church three times throughout the year at three different churches, and every time the church was talking about giving. He was fuming and he accused churches of always talking about money. And now he was at our church and guess what we were talking about? Giving. I looked him right in the eye and said, “I think God is trying to tell you something.”

If you get frustrated when a church talks about giving, that’s a tell-tale sign that God is trying to work on that area of your life. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told that man … don’t give. Maybe that’s the first time you heard a pastor tell you not to give but I mean it. God is more interested in your heart than your money. Giving with a reluctant or resentful heart is someone who is giving in vain (2 Corinthians 9:7). God doesn’t want your money if He doesn’t have your life. 
Maybe you’ve been excelling in the knowledge of Scripture, serving, and doing all the “Christian things” you think you ought to like 2 Corinthians 8:7 talks about. But there’s going to come a time where God is going to stretch you in the grace of giving because giving reveals where your heart is. Giving allows us to express appreciation for what He has done in the past. It also allows us to check our heart and our priorities in the present, but most of all, giving allows us to grow in faith in the future. 

Why I Give

Giving allows me to evaluate my priorities and motivations. By nature, we have a tendency to make things all about ourselves. Think of the self-centered man in Luke 12. The wealthy man wondered what he should do with all his excess wealth. He decided that he should figure out how to hold on to more of it. So, he tore down his barns to build bigger ones. He kept all his wealth to himself, only to pass away and never spend the earnings he stored up on Earth. 
I remember the first time this idea of “giving” hit me. I heard a message from David Jeremiah at Shadow Mountain Community Church, and he challenged me. He said if you want to know where your heart is look at your checkbook. Sure enough, he was right. God owns everything. We’re called to be good stewards of all that He has put in our lives… And my spending was all about my interests, not God, not the church, not any kind of generosity. I had to decide if I was willing to live with a heart that only thought of myself.

My wife and I are giving to the 101010 Campaign and making a commitment like we’ve never done before because we want to grow in our faith!  And I know, he who gives little, gets little (2 Corinthians 9:6). This is no small aspiration for us as a church and it requires no small act of giving on our part. But we WANT to GROW in faith as a church!

10/10/10 Campaign

Skyline’s goal of the 101010 Campaign is to see more and more people give their lives to Christ. Truly, we want to light up the scoreboard in Heaven. We want more and more souls to one day call Heaven home. We have an incredible opportunity in front of us.

My goal is to influence as many people as I can to experience Jesus. You have 8-15 people in your Oikos (relational network) right now who don’t know Christ, but they will within the next 10 years! That’s what it’s all about. A church of our size is committed to being a model church in our community. That means stewarding your giving well, devoting ourselves to growth, and teaching the relevance of Scripture. I have no business telling you how much you should give, but I do believe in teaching you about sacrificial giving. Whether you give $5, $500, or 5 Million,  I want to encourage you to ask God what you should do. If you’re wrestling through how to steward your finances, I want to invite you to watch your 10/10/10 series on the idea of giving on the Skyline YouTube page. 

With all of us ALL IN, we will absolutely be able to light up the scoreboard in Heaven!!

Are You Willing To Forgive?

24 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by in Challenge, Christian Habits, Marriage

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Even in the most perfect of relationships, there are going to be conflicts. You’re never going to agree on everything with someone, even if they are your best friend. My wife, Janie, doesn’t like country music. THAT represents a major sin in her life! And … I forgive her for that. There are a thousand things we have to compromise on in our marriages and in our relationships with others. But one thing that we should never compromise is our willingness to forgive one another. 

Last Sunday, in our Relationship Rehab series we talked about the importance of practicing forgiveness. Notice I said “practicing.” It takes practicing forgiveness to be a good forgiver!

For the last few weeks, we’ve discussed Affair-Proofing Our Marriages, 3 Questions For Every Marriage, How To Get Them To Listen, Being a Single Christian, and more.

While marriage is the primary school to learn unselfishness, we know that all relationships require forgiveness. Proverbs 18:1 says it like this, “People who do not get along with others are only interested in themselves.” When a relationship lacks forgiveness, there is an issue of selfishness that needs to be addressed. I want you to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten, one being needs work and ten being you quickly and willingly forgive. 

If you always have to get your way, you’re destroying your relationships with others. Mark 3:25 tells us that these types of relationships are bound to fall apart. We have to learn to give in. It can’t be my way or the highway all the time. If you’re currently struggling in a relationship with a friend or loved one, I want to encourage you to forgive them. I don’t need to know your exact situation to know that withholding forgiveness is hurting you. We forget that forgiving others is FOR us. 

The scenario is similar every time. We get angry about what someone did to us and we let it build up. If not dealt with anger turns to bitterness and bitterness leads to apathy which always leads to a lack of consideration. And you guessed it … lack of consideration reveals an unwillingness to forgive.

How’s Your Forgiving Going? 

There needs to be boatloads of forgiveness in your relationships. You are imperfect. Your spouse, co-worker, friend, neighbor, siblings, fellow drivers, or whomever you are at odds with … is imperfect. I’ve heard some incredibly hurtful situations and I don’t doubt that this may be difficult for you … but … “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Colossians 3:13). Even Jesus said that if you cannot forgive others, God isn’t going to forgive you. 
As we conclude our Relationship Rehab Series, I want to leave you with this verse of encouragement that is my prayer for you, “May God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us … “ Romans 15:5 (MSG). I pray that you ask yourself today if you’re willing to forgive “that someone,” as Christ forgave you. 

Three Questions for Every Marriage

14 Wednesday Jul 2021

Posted by in Challenge, Christian Habits, Marriage

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Since the anticipation of and the day of your wedding gave you some of the highest expectations you’ve ever had in your life … like, “Woo hoo … I’m getting married, my life is going to be perfect … this is the moment I’ve been waiting for …”  

The expectations we put on that day and the days and years after set us up for the greatest potential of disappointment in our lives. We set the highest and most unrealistic expectations for ourselves and our spouses. 

Why do marriages go south? Let’s talk about some habits that tend to lead to divorce. These are unhealthy habits that put you on the road to the big D and I don’t mean Dallas (Mark Chesnutt, 1994). The first key to bringing maximum health to your marriage is to understand what the problem or problems might be.

If you’ve been divorced, this message isn’t meant to guilt you or put you down. I’m not trying to unscramble the egg. Love is grand, divorce is a hundred grand … I get it… I’m talking about where you’re at right now. The marriage you find yourself in today. For those of you who are single, this will help you get some tools that will help you when you do get married. Not only that, these are helpful questions for any relationship.

I want you to answer the following three questions by writing down your response. Then later, I want you to talk to your spouse about it. This can help you diagnose what specific area or areas in your marriage that need attention. 

1. What is an unrealistic expectation you’ve had of your spouse?

When you take two very imperfect people and put them in a marriage, you don’t get a perfect marriage. But that doesn’t mean your marriage can’t be great! I don’t know many other areas in life where we have higher unrealistic expectations than we do in marriage. Even the dating process sets us up for disappointment. We say things we wouldn’t normally say, do things you wouldn’t normally do, and go places we wouldn’t normally go! Let’s take the honeymoon for example. You’re eating food you may never eat again, spending money you don’t typically spend, in a place you’ll probably never go back to. Fast forward 9 months and you’re looking at Mr. or Mrs. Bedhead with morning breath and noxious gasses and you’re wondering “What happened?!” 

2. What’s one difference you and your spouse have, that you’ve had a difficult time accepting?

We’ve all heard the saying, “opposites attract.” And once you’re married, “opposites attack!” We have to learn to accept our differences. Sure, we can work on them. But we shouldn’t resent one another for our differences. One of God’s main tools for spiritual growth is your marriage relationship. It’s a theological word called sanctification. He brings opposites together, man and woman, and we’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got to learn how to submit to one another, because of our reverence for Christ. 

3. Ask your spouse to name one unresolved issue in your marriage?

It might be finances, how to raise your children, sex … you may already know what they are going to say. But we need to have this conversation! This is the sensitive topic that brings out the claws, that repeatedly goes unresolved. Here’s the reality. Marriage doesn’t create so much problems as it does reveal them. And this is what we have to do … we have to start with ourselves. We need to turn to God and say, “What do I need to change about me?” Whenever a spouse is willing, the other spouse eventually comes around.

You may be reading this and thinking, Jeremy, you don’t know what they’ve done to me. And you’re right, I don’t. But I know what Christ has done for you. And because of what He did on the cross for you and I, despite what we have done, we too can forgive one another. Ephesians 5:21 says it like this … “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This is such an important statement. Out of reverence for Christ, your marriage is worth working on! Culture will tell you the grass is greener on the other side. But Christ wants you to know the grass is greener where you water it! On the 67 freeway in San Diego there’s a giant billboard right now that reads “Easy Divorce.” Let me tell you this, it’s really easy to divorce a spouse, it’s really hard to divorce your best friend. When we face these three questions out of reverence for Christ we will soon find our best friend and get off the road that leads to divorce. 

Marriage Is Cake

18 Tuesday May 2021

Posted by in Challenge, grow, Marriage

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We’re in a brand-new teaching series at Skyline Church that we’re calling Relationship Rehab. Coming out of Covid and lockdowns and all the anger and division that has been going on, we need to look at our relationships from a biblical perspective. What does God say about our relationships? Our relationships can truly use some rehabilitation.  

Marriages and Relationships

For the first several messages we’ll be looking at marriages. While I titled this blog Marriage Is Cake, we know it can be anything but. However, there are some key ingredients that will make a sweet marriage. 

For some people this series will be review. For others it will be marriage saving. The Bible clearly lays out our responsibilities as couples. It tells us how to have thriving relationships. However, we don’t always follow the advice God gives us. 

These principles are not only for couples. Single people will gain a lot from these messages because the biblical principles for great marriages are also biblical principles for any relationship. During this series I will be addressing singlehood as a Christian specifically as well. 

This last Sunday, I used the illustration of making a cake. Just like there are key ingredients to making a great cake, there are key ingredients to making a great marriage. In the next couple of weeks, I will be laying out all the ingredients, but this week I named three primary ingredients.  

Communication

The first ingredient to a sweet marriage is Communication. You’ve got to have good consistent communication if you’re going to have a good marriage. I asked people to rate themselves on how they’re doing with communication in their marriage. How they personally think they are doing, individually, not how they think their spouse is doing. The goal is to have each person take the evaluation and then come together over lunch or dinner and talk about it. What you’ll notice is that each couple likely has a different number on the scale of 1-10. It’s a conversation starter to get couples moving toward more consistent communication.  

Consideration

The second key ingredient is Consideration. If you’re not being considerate in your marriage your marriage is falling apart. Being considerate of one another is not optional. When we first start dating, we’re so considerate of one another. Guys, we open the door for her (we still should) but little things like that get lost and instead of opening the car door for her we think consideration is waiting for her to get both legs in the car before taking off. Things can change over time. But that’s why we must be intentional in our communication and in our consideration.  

Compromise

The third ingredient is Compromise. In every relationship there must be compromise. When you get married, you quickly realize it cannot all be about your wants and desires. Marriage is a school of teaching you unselfishness. 

There are many compromises we must make in marriage. If marriage is going to be about “WE and not ME” you have to compromise on what kind of vacations you take, how you’re going to raise the kids, how much time you spend with the in-laws, what restaurant you’re going to, the list goes on and on. If it’s “my way or the highway” over time, the highway will be calling. 

The Purpose

God’s purpose for your marriage is not happiness. Sure, that can be a benefit to marriage, if you do these things we talk about in this series, you will be happy, that is a benefit of marriage. But it is not the purpose of marriage. God’s purpose for marriage is holiness, not happiness. It’s to make you more and more like Christ. The more sacrificial and serving you are in your marriage, the more Christ-like you are becoming. Truly one of the goals in marriage is to out-serve and out-sacrifice the other. When two people are doing that, you’ll have a very happy and holy marriage. 

This Sunday …

These are just the first three ingredients. This coming Sunday, I’m going to give you the next three. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these first three and how you’re doing with them. Share some of the practices that have made your marriage successful and share some of the things you’ve learned if you’ve had a marriage that didn’t work out.  

For example, do you and your spouse communicate consistently? Where and when? What is your typical weekly communication routine? Also, comment below if you took the evaluation after each point and how it went when you talked with your spouse. I’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on how it’s going and tips and tricks you’ve used in your marriage. State how long you’ve been married and share your thoughts in the comment section. Who knows, you might just give me a great illustration for Sunday! (you will remain nameless) 🙂 

Repentance

04 Tuesday May 2021

Posted by in Challenge, comfort, grow, Prayer

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Repent! Nothing like that word to turn someone off to what you’re going to say next. But, hang with me … We’ve all got issues and problems that we deal with in life. Sometimes the source of our problems keep us from repenting and moving on.

Where do the problems in our life come from?

Are we causing them?
Is Satan the culprit?
Is God testing us?
Is it the Government?
Is it my upbringing?
Is it other people?

We can wrestle with these questions all.day.long. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where they come from! What does matter is what we do with our problems!

God can use the difficult circumstances in your life if you let Him. It’s not what happens to us, it’s what happens in us that matters. For some people, problems bury them. But, think about it … if God is going to make us more like Jesus, then He’s going to take us through some of the similar struggles that Jesus went through. Our perspective of the “junk” in our lives should be viewed as character-building opportunities because that’s EXACTLY what God is doing with us in the midst of trials and tribulations.

God has not promised that all things are good or will be good on Earth. But, He has promised to work out all things FOR good (Romans 8:28). When Jesus walked the Earth, He experienced temptation, loneliness, accusations, difficult people, being misunderstood, being unappreciated, and so much more. If Jesus wasn’t spared from problems in His life, we won’t be either. In America, we are always striving to up our level of comfort. However, God is always more interested in your character development than your comfort development.

What do we do with our problems?

For some people, the problems in life pile up like junk in a junkyard and it becomes discouraging and can even become a crutch or an excuse in life. “Well, look at what’s happened to me … look at all the problems in my life …” At some point, you and I have to make a decision between Jesus and the junk in our life. For some, it’s a big step of faith to be sold out for Jesus. But the most miserable place to be is on the fence. If you have one foot in the faith, and one foot out of the faith, you don’t really have faith, you have confusion. When is straddling a fence ever comfortable? Am I right? You’re not going to grow spiritually trying to live between two different commitments. To really benefit from what Jesus has to offer, you have to commit to Him. You have to be all in, sold out, and totally committed to Him! The best way to let go of your junk and be all in for Jesus is to repent.

Repent

“Repent” isn’t a word we hear every day. It’s pretty counter-cultural. All it means is to admit we’re wrong and God is right. In a world that is constantly attacking absolute truth, you need a strong foundation of authority in your life to point you in the right direction. While the world wants you to point the finger, Jesus teaches us to look in the mirror. God has always been more interested in the condition of our hearts. “… The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart,” (1 Samuel 16:7).

When a difficult person or situation in your life arises, you can choose to act in love and humility (Colossians 3:14). No matter how much “ground” we believe we have to point our finger in the opposite direction, God is concerned with you. If there’s even a speck of doubt, insecurity, pride, anger, idolatry, deception, envy … you know when you’re wrong … we’re called to repent of this. Even if we do not act on these ugly inward thoughts, God is concerned about your heart, because everything we do flows from the heart.

Next time you’re in a conflict where someone else is 99% in the wrong, ask yourself what your 1% is in the situation. We should always be compelled to take individual ownership and admit that 1% to the person. Many times, they will then admit their part. Now, that doesn’t mean you need to become a martyr, you just admit your part. One of my favorite quotes on humility says it like this, ”Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less,” (C.S. Lewis). We simply need to accept that we ALL have areas of our life that need improvement (without taking it personally). In order to be more like Jesus, we’re going to face conflicts just like He did. And it’s through these conflicts that we have the opportunity to grow spiritually.

Let’s take it one step deeper!

The Bible teaches us in Acts 17:30 that, “In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” God already knows what you’ve done wrong, but He’s waiting for you to admit it. Our wrongdoings (sins) separate us from God (Isaiah 59:2, Romans 6:23). But the Good News is that when you repent and put your faith in Jesus, you get immediate forgiveness! You get the freedom to live your life to the fullest without a bunch of junk in your spiritual trunk weighing you down.

God wants you to be able to wipe the slate clean. It’s when we repent that we can move forward and God can build a faith that empowers you to tackle problems instead of being sacked by them. So let me ask you this … where are you stuck in a rut? What problems have come up in your life this week, this month, or this year that are weighing you down? What do you need to repent of today?

Repentance is simply this in a nutshell: Say it. And stop doing it. Give it to God, and let Him grow your character. Since no one lives a perfect life, the goal is progress, not perfection, the reality is you’ll need to do this often … so just repent and repeat… Amen.

I would love to hear your thoughts on repentance. Is this a regular habit for you? Is this difficult for you? What are your thoughts on our Prayer Pattern (A.C.T.S.) Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication? Has this worked for you? Do you practice the 10 minutes of A.C.T.S.? What has been most challenging and/or rewarding for you in having or trying to establish a regular prayer life?