Nov 28, 2011
Ok, so there’s this proverb that says to go to the ant, consider her ways and be wise. (Proverbs 6:6) I’ve been “blessed” to have much occasion to practice this. I’m overseas right now and often entertain the little critters.
Did you know that there are ants in every continent? In fact, the only way to escape them is to go to certain parts of Antarctica (ironic, right?). 😉 As one brother here pointed out recently, the above-mentioned proverb is addressed to sluggards, and God knew there would be lazy people all over the world. So He used the ant as an illustration that all could see! I’ve actually been learning good stuff from their principles of work and discipline. But this evening I gleaned a different lesson.
I’ve been having a problem with a strange-looking bee in my bathroom lately. He started building a nest behind the hot-water heater. When I would get up to get ready for work, he’d already be up and working. You can laugh at me, but I’d go to brush my teeth and then run out and shut the door fast when I heard him buzzing. I’d finish brushing in my bedroom, pop back in to spit and then hurry out again! (Wondering what in the world this has to do with ants? Just wait.)
Finally I got around to telling someone who could help. They came while I was gone for work today. When I came back to my room this evening, the nest was effectively destroyed, but the place was crawling with hundreds or thousands of tiny ants! Some of them were after the prize of what I think was the remains of the dead bee. I’m not sure what the rest were doing. So I started sweeping, focusing on getting the treasured bug-remains out of the way. (In my dealings with ants, I’ve learned to remove what they’re attracted to. Then they’ll leave on their own.) They scattered and things calmed down. I was pretty happy with myself. And since I was already into it, I decided to clean the bathroom.
All of a sudden I realized that the stubborn little things hadn’t actually left. “Aiyo!” I said, using the local exclamation roughly translated, “Oh man!” The ants had migrated to a corner connecting two walls and were all concentrated there. They looked like they were strategizing about how to react to my original attack. Now what? I didn’t want to sweep them to the floor because it was now wet since I was cleaning. (Besides, I really don’t like them crawling on me with their ticklish feet!) I thought about drowning them (sorry to any insect fans out there), but was a lot of ants to send down the drain. Too many. Again, laugh if you will, but I started blowing in the direction I wanted them to go (out). The airstream scared them and after the ensuing chaos, they eventually all left.
After all that, here’s the lesson. It has to do with something I read yesterday in a chapter of Incredible Christian by A.W. Tozer. He writes, “The devil’s master strategy for us Christians then is not to kill us physically…but to destroy our power to wage spiritual warfare.” In other words, the enemy doesn’t necessarily want us to be dead, just out of his territory. Like I didn’t care so much about killing the ants – I just wanted them OUT! So, I removed their motivation and put pressure on them to leave. The devil uses similar tactics. He makes us think that there’s no reward. We feel dry spiritually so we considering quitting. We don’t want to keep trying. Or pressure comes; circumstances discourage us and make us want to leave.
Unlike those pesky ants though, we do have a reason to stay in the battle. Glory and honor await those who do. Keep going, it’s worth it! I will conclude with Tozer’s closing thought; “the cost of quitting will be a life of peaceful stagnation. We sons of etenity just cannot afford such a thing.”
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Oct 31, 2011
What do a skunk, a bad internet connection, and a missing power cord have in common? I’ll get back to that. In the mean time I’ll let you know about a few things that I’ve been doing lately.
About a month ago God made it clear to me that I was supposed to join staff at Gospel for Asia. Yes! Now I’m support raising at home so that I can get back to Texas and keep serving at the home office.
I knew it was going to be a battle to raise support and stay connected to the ministry but I was sure I’d conquer it all! It turns out some things can be a little harder to get done in the country than in the city. For instance, where I live in Michigan it’s all forest and well, cold. I have a few oddities I’m dealing with. One is that my family doesn’t have high speed internet – it’s not that bad, there are just a few things I can’t do at home. I was very excited to live stream a Gospel For Asia prayer meeting once I got back. (Gospel For Asia streams a prayer meeting every first Friday. Join us!) The first time I went to a prayer meeting I had to drive 6 miles through the wilderness to get to a connection I could watch the meeting on. Everything was wonderful! I really enjoyed praying with the Gospel For Asia family and felt like I was back at home (the TX one).
When I got home I was worn out – ready to hop in bed and sleep. I came through the driveway but discovered that there was a skunk by the front door! There was NO way I was getting out now. I thought about getting grumpy but decided it was the first adventure of support raising in the country. I called a friend and we talked for a while. Then I talked to another friend till I was sure the skunk was gone. 🙂
Well, I was trying to watch another prayer meeting one day. I’d been a little discouraged that day but was really looking forward to hearing the message and uniting in prayer with everyone. My connection didn’t work. I’d get a few words – maybe a sentence – then the video would freeze. I finally gave up.
Another prayer meeting arrived… I was sick but determined that though I was tired I was not going to stay home. I wanted to have dedication and not just decide to sit on the couch at home. I drove myself back out to the internet and set up my computer. Suddenly I realized that I did’n’t have my power cord with me. I had 43 minutes of battery life left. True to its word my computer turned off from a low battery 43 minutes through the prayer meeting. Well at least I got to go to bed a little early…
So, the question at the beginning of this was, “What do a skunk, a bad internet connection, and a missing power cord have in common?” The answer is prayer meetings of course!
There’s always going to be something that will draw your attention away from what is best. I’ve noticed that wacky things happen when I try to get to a prayer meeting. For you it’s most likely something else that the enemy doesn’t want you to be doing. Maybe it’s reading the Bible. There are 101 things that will come up and seem like they need your attention. When those things happen just purpose in your heart that God will come first. I laugh when I think that God used a skunk and a power cord to teach me a lesson. Maybe it just takes more to get my attention than other people…
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Oct 20, 2011
The Mariana Trench is 1,580 miles long and at one point called the Challenger Deep reaches down 35,768 ft.
That is the deepest known point of the ocean. It was on Sunday that my thoughts took a turn towards the vast H2O that takes up most of our Earth’s surface.
In church we sang Matt Redman’s ” You Alone Can Rescue” One part of the songs says
“Who, oh Lord, could save themselves,
Their own soul could heal?
Our shame was deeper than the sea
Your grace is deeper still”
It was the perfect picture of God’s love. It goes further than our minds can even fathom.
What’s more it is not a pathetic ‘hugs and kisses’ love purely sentimental. It is passionate and all consuming.
It is because of His love that He sent His Son to the cross. I too often forget all of this .
Thank You Lord for your Love!
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Oct 6, 2011
Words are powerful. We have the power to use our words to be used to speak boldy about the Truth of God. We can yell, sing, whisper, scream and worship the Lord through our voices. For others they have no voice, they cannot speak, or scream but they can communicate just the same as people who can speak. They are Deaf.
I’ve been signing for many years now. It started with my hunger to know different languages in my Sophomore year in high school. I took a class and didn’t learn how to sign but I learned the alphabet and about the deaf culture. What intrigued me about sign was how expressive you could be. At my school there was a deaf girl who was in the marching band and played the cymbals. This girl amazed me how she pushed herself to not let her being deaf stop her. Little did I know that God was going to use her to be a big and important part of my Life in Him. I had a class with her and was eager to learn her language. Often I would pass notes to her and ask her questions. I found out that she was a believer! I then started to hang out with her and through fellowshipping with her I started to learn sign language very quickly and started to hang out with a lot of the deaf community. I then expanded my education of sign language and took ASL classes and kept going on to the next level. I was a little fustrated because I thought that I was waisiting my time taking so many ASL classes and I didn’t know what I really wanted to do in college.
God lead me to join Gospel for Asia- School of Discipleship for this year and He has shown me that everything that we have learned, skills he uses for HIS Glory! When our class goes evangelizing I have had oppurtunities to share with them Jesus and the Gospel in sign language. One of the times are class went out there were two ladies sitting together and the Spirit urged and tugged my heart to go pass out tracts to these two ladies. I walked up to them and started to speak and they signed to me ” We are deaf.” I smiled at signed to them “Good,because I know how to sign.” The ladies were so happy that I could communicate to them. Then, the Spirit started to move through me and I sharing my testimony on how the Lord changed my life and how He has redeemed from darkness. One of the ladies eye lit up and she was saying how weird it was that I was telling her that because she wanted to change her life but didn’tknow how. I told her how only Jesus Christ could only bring true change because of what He did for us on the cross and gave her a tract. After she was telling me that her bus came suddenly and she waved bye and left on her bus. I was awestruck that the Lord used me as a vessel through my hands and ASL to be able to touch her heart with what He wanted me to communicate to her.
And I thought I was never going to use my sign language here at Gospel for Asia. Please pray for those ladies. They are in my heart as I type this. And you may never know when your skills may be used for the Lord. He let us learn it for a reason.
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Oct 4, 2011
Grace.
As God has been unveiling a tiny piece of the beauty and magnificence surrounding such an intangible concept, I sit awe-struck in the stands. It’s so incomprehensible that all of humanity can’t wrap their minuscule brains around it. It’s so beautiful. So totally unexpected in the story of mankind throughout history. It’s so beyond us, far above anything we could have ever come up with.
I mean, really, would you have come up with the concept of ‘grace?’ Treat un-respectable people with respect. Treat unloving people with love. Treat anti-God people with the gift of God. Our whole flesh nature cries out for justice, for fairness, for consequences and rewards. At least most of us can understand the concept of sin and the separation of unholy beings from a Holy God. That makes logical sense — if we are willing to admit it.
But Grace? It’s a twist in the entire plot. It’s a fourth dimension exploding our three-dimension world.
Stooping down to lift us up out of our sinful humanity, our utter depravity, our desperate rebellion. Releasing us from our sin, by taking our place so we would have the option to never pay the PENALTY. Forever.
That astounding mercy is great enough. But Grace doesn’t stop.
Letting us out of our dungeon. Forever. To be free from the PROBLEM of sin and live in HIS FREEDOM.
Wow. And Grace keeps going.
Welcoming our filthy existence daily into HIS PRESENCE.
BAM! Even if I could possibly comprehend the cross, I would never imagine in a million years that He would ever want to see us again. Saving from sin, maybe, but saving us to Himself? I mean, really? Daily put up with us?
Not only that, but ADOPTING us as HIS CHILDREN. Identifying HIS holy and precious name with our dragged-in-the-mud title.
It gets better. The privilege and honor of Him COMMISSIONING us to be HIS IMAGE-BEARERS to a lost world. Flat out GIVING His precious name to US. Wow. What responsibility and trust.
And not only that, but promising to GO WITH US, to DWELL INSIDE US and be our STRENGTH, our INNER CORE, our PROTECTION, and our GRACE TO OTHERS.
We can’t even give others grace. We have to borrow His grace to give. Get that.
In class this summer, one of the girls repeated a quote from the book we’re reading through: “Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace.”
I attached to this quote, but something about it rubbed me wrong. And then I realized: it correctly defined what I give others as Not Grace. Hardly affection, at best. Often more bordering worship. I love in order to be loved.
The reason is because I’m not stooping. I’m on the same level as the rest of humanity. Each one of us, made in Christ’s image. Each one of us, blind and desperate without Him. I deserve nothing, so can’t demand any rights to be respected by others. The love I give others is usually barely that. Selfish love. Not grace.
Only God truly gives Grace.
And maybe that’s why it remains so pure, marvelous, and beyond my wildest dreams.
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Sep 22, 2011
On Saturday morning I felt excited–not because anything particularly eventful was going on in my life, but because I knew that my friends from the School of Discipleship January class were leaving for Asia that day! Memories of my own long-anticipated vision tour to Asia eight months ago flooded into my mind as I knew it was the January class’s big day to hop on a plane at DFW International Airport for the first leg of the journey to Asia.
Some of my memories of the vision tour were actually intertwined with memories of the January class. The current January class arrived to Texas to start School of Discipleship just as my class (the August 2010 class) left for Asia! During the frenzy of packing that happened on Friday night, January 21, and Saturday morning, January 22, I got to meet two of my future house-mates, Christina and Jolie. I remember how happy I was that they actually wanted to meet us, even though I was a little stressed–especially Saturday morning when Jolie and her family arrived to move her into the apartments! Thankfully, they were very understanding of me as I frantically tried to stuff things into my suitcase and wore the expression of a deer in the headlights 🙂
Anyone who has been on a Gospel for Asia tour to Asia can tell you that it’s a lot of work! Aside from taking care of travel arrangements like applying for passports and visas, practicing songs to share with the Bridge of Hope children and Bible-college students, and learning about cultural do’s and don’ts, the week before the trip includes the inevitable chores of buying last-minute items, packing, packing and more packing. If you’re like me, you decide to do the vast majority of this the night before your departure, hence the deer-in-the-headlights look on Saturday morning.
When you finally make it to the Gospel for Asia office so that all the staff members and families can pray for you before you leave for the airport, you can finally breathe a sigh of relief (unless you’re me, who realized after I got there that I had forgotten my camera. By the grace of God, a very kind staff member offered to drive me back to the apartment so I could get it.) At about 8:30 last Saturday morning, the January students made it to this point. Back home , I thought of them as they gathered at the office for the prayer-bathed commencement of their Asia tour!
Having read their posts on Facebook counting the days before their trip, I knew that they were excited to see Asia, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit of that same enthusiasm–and wish I was there with them. I know that they are not only going to have the privilege of seeing another country in all its beauty and diversity, but they are also going to draw closer to God and to each other. They will have the joy of actually getting to see what a Bridge of Hope center or a Bible college is like. Their hearts will melt as they watch the Bridge of Hope students perform songs and dances and recite Scripture memory verses. They might get to pump water from a Jesus Well. (Hopefully, they will not have to use the Jesus Well to wash their feet after accidentally stepping into a sewage-filled gulley, as I did.) And one of the best parts of the trip is getting to spend time with some of the national works on the mission field. This gave us a chance to see that they are not only godly servants who inspire our humility and awe by making huge strides in advancing Christ’s kingdom, but they are also PEOPLE. As they share their lives with us for a few days and educate us about their culture and ministry work, we realize that they have families, they laugh and make jokes, they know how to get the best prices on souvenirs, and they have unique stories of God’s faithfulness in their lives. Their examples of love and hospitality make a vision tour unforgettable. So all the preparations for the trip–like packing and attending after-work meetings and overcoming one’s fear of bugs and/or cultural blunders–are worth it.
I thank God that my classmates and I had this experience–and that the January students are currently having it! What a gift: He gave us the chance to partner with our brothers and sisters in Asia, and He has also allowed us to meet them face-to-face.
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