T H E O P H I L U S

It has been just over month since I have returned from The Gospel Coalition National Conference in Orlando, Florida. Although I am still stumped as to what I should share with regards to my experience going to the gathering for the third time, It is rather a positive but challenging ordeal that I am faced with. Today, I will not write on the outline of the conference, nor nitpick at issues that were either brought up or not at the conference. There are many other highly intelligible and godly bloggers out there that go into details of reviewing the event. I will instead give you a personal writing on my reflections from the messages, seminars specifically, and to much contemplation speak about my personal struggle in which I found myself much more encouraged after the conference.

Today, in my first reflection from the conference I will share some thoughts and heartfelt convictions from Don Carson’s exposition on Ezekiel 40-48 in which he titled the message “The Lord is there” (Watch / Listen Here). This message was possibly one of the most important messages throughout the conference for myself. There have been so many times I have been asking God to meet me where I am. To give me solutions to all the problems that I have been facing in my life as a pastor and all the internal struggles that were often causing me to fall into doubt, hurt, and depression. We often idolize the mega church pastors who seem to have everything together in their faith, their preaching, and especially the logistical aspects of their pastoral duties. But something I realized was, we are all the same. There are so many struggles that even the most successful pastors and leaders face that we just don’t see in the face of the media which portrays things as fine and dandy. We’ve created white knights out of celebrity pastors and Camelots out of their churches.

Don Carson mentions that the passage in which he was to preach was not to be mastered, but that we ought to be mastered by the scripture. We try so deeply as ministers to try to master the “art” of “doing” church well. We are busy trying to build up the earthly temple rather than being built as the human temple. This has become so problematic in our churches and even personally in my spiritual and practical journey that I have often found myself more than confused and rather stressed out and depressed. Why? because I am expecting God to show up and be glorified by what I have accomplished and what I have built. We expend all of our energy, rather bluntly I must say, trying to prove to others that the glory of God is at work in our churches. But this is utterly fake. It is even detestable in the eyes of God. The fact is in the book of Ezekiel God’s glory departs from the temple, and he builds a new one. Why? because we are so sold out on worshipping creation rather than the creator.

What I have often forgotten is that God is my temple. He is my sanctuary. (ref. Ezekiel 11:16) ” I will be a sanctuary for you”, and that where I am always asking God to come to where I am and to fulfill all my needs and wants I have forgotten of what God was doing, and where he was taking me. The throne in Ezekiel was mobile and that God was on the move! (ref. Ezekiel 1:3). How many times do we as ministers and leaders have the expectation of God to build our thrones instead of us worshipping him at his throne? We have feared so little the power of God and have instead placed ourselves at the most destitute place – the throne where God does not sit, and is not present.

This is the first message that has pressed on my heart from the conference, and a reflection that far from other of the conferences I have been to in the past, has spoken to me with so much unction and conviction that it compels me and challenges me in the way I look at ministry.

Tomorrow, I will share on other reflections from the conference.