My "mountaintop experiences" with God have normally not come about during easy, carefree, happy time in my life. Instead, they have come out of suffering, agony, self-doubt, fear...those are the times when I have seen God most clearly and heard Him whisper the loudest.
The first few months of becoming a new parent, struggling with Post Partum Depression, praying constantly that He would give me the strength just to get out of bed in the morning. It was during those times that I can truly say that God was closer than the air I breathe.
In Korea when I doubted His goodness as I grappled with the question of "Why God allows such horrific things to happen to His children?" In answer to those doubts I asked God to give me peace past understanding. He did give me that peace and He also gave me an assurance of His nature which is Love. Then He allowed me to experience a few moments in His Presence when I literally felt His presence like a warm blanket wrapped around me. I longed for that "mountaintop experience" to never end.
Flash forward a number of years and I am lying on a clinic bed in Hungary waiting to see the ultrasound picture of our baby at 13 weeks. Then the doctor tells me that there is no heartbeat and the baby has died. In a moment God whispered to my spirit...The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised." That voice, those words, were not from me but from God Himself, comforting and strengthening me in that time of loss.
There have been many other times, especially with relationship struggles, that He has given me such peace and the knowledge that He is with me, that He is my Defender and that no matter what road I travel, He goes before me and beside me.
Those have been "mountaintop experiences" that I will cherish, look back to and lean on, knowing that my God is so much greater than anything this world can send me. He is with me in the light but oh how close He is to me in the dark.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Why Do We Share Christ?
I wanted to share parts of a blog, written by Justin Long who attended a Lausanne (worldwide missions) conference. It addresses the question..."Why should we be engaged in missions?
"When Jesus looked on the fields “white unto harvest,” he neither set out to preach to them nor did he pray for God to divinely show them the truth. Instead, he instructed his disciples to pray for workers. (And then, shortly later, he sent the disciples out as workers).
With God all things are possible—as the many dreams of Jesus in the Middle East presently being seen attest—but at the same time we must also remember that God requires human interaction too. God could instantaneously present himself to all unreached peoples worldwide: but this would immediately relieve his Church, his lovely bride, of the responsibility that he gave us. If we are to obey the Great Commandment (to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, mind and to love our neighbor as our self) then we must obey the Great Commission (to proclaim the good news to all the earth). But there’s a catch: obedience to the Great Commission isn’t a one time event.
Not too long back I was telling one of our kids that he needed to go and clean his room. “But dad,” he said, “I cleaned it already.” When pressed for when he cleaned it, he said, “I cleaned it on Monday!” I then had to explain to him that a room needed to be cleaned more than once. Picking up needed to be done on a daily basis.
It could have gone differently. I could have told him to clean his room—and then, when he failed to get it done in an appropriate time, I could have gone and done it for him. It would have gotten the job done yet taught him nothing. The job, in effect, wasn’t about cleaning the room so much as it was about teaching the skills and habits of cleaning which he will use the rest of his life.
And how are we doing on our own task? The number of people who have no access to Christ, Christianity or the Gospel is presently increasing by an estimated 19 million per year. The reason is simple: not enough people are working among these groups to make a sustainable difference in the long run.
It is the long run that is important. It is not enough to engage a group with a few missionaries. We must engage them with sufficient missionaries—but even that is not enough, because that’s like cleaning our room once. We need to to pioneer a church planting movement which will plant churches capable of evangelizing the group to its cultural borders and sustaining that evangelism through future generations. That’s cleaning a room and keeping it clean. That’s learning the habits that are necessary—the habit of passing on to future generations what has been passed on to us, as Paul instructed Timothy to do.
In other words “completion” of the Great Commission is a task that is not done once and then forgotten. We must have sufficient resources to complete it every day. It’s possible for rooms to become messy, and possible for a group to become unevangelized. For a live fire demonstration of this, look at Europe. It’s very simple, really: if all a group has are missionaries, then when the missionaries go home – and they will – then future generations will not be evangelized. A non-christian home will not evangelize its children. If a growing church is not planted then in 20 or 25 years the seeds of the Gospel will be scorched, die and wither away.
To reach a group sustainably over time requires people willing to be long-term servants, humble older brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers in the faith. Otherwise it’s all for naught. Short-term workers can be useful, but they’re less like parents and more like doctors, dropping in when they’re desperately needed but not there for the day-in and day-out growth that keep them from being needed in the first place. Short term is useful but not the answer to the long-term inculturation of the gospel, translation of the Word, and discipling of first believers necessary for a church to be pioneered.
You can point to a place like China where the Gospel grew without outside missionaries, but don’t forget that missionaries like Hudson Taylor and many others pioneered it there first. They endured long enough to plant a church which could withstand persecution.
I don’t think we’ll ever have sufficient missionary workers to evangelize the whole world at one point, and at that point Christ will return (as many Christians interpret Matthew 24:14). So we need to build up a church capable of sustaining that effort over time so that at some future point the task is accomplished and will continue to be accomplished. It is “after” the task is accomplished (and sustainably so, I think) that Jesus will return.
I wish we could abandon “end times” thinking. I think it’s a bit of a oxymoron. For Christians there are no “end times” or “last days” in the long view. This age may end, but we will continue on. For people who will live eternally, “last days” is a bit of tunnel thinking.
What will happen after Jesus’ returns? We will worship him forever, enjoy him forever, and rule and reign with him. Thus, worship continues. Learning about him and his nature continues. Caring for his creation continues. Love never fails. Obedience to Christ never stops. A million years from now, I’ll still be alive, still loving my wife and children, still worshipping my king, and—I hope!—exploring this wonderful universe He has created. I’ll be laughing over this 70 years and the trials I endure. A billion years from now, I may not even remember this period.
What does not continue? Fame. Fortune. Power. Hunger. Sickness. Sin. Death. (and possibly many more things.)
So, let’s not consider the church to be the waiting room for eternity, but rather be about the business of the Kingdom now. Let’s do the things that will last for eternity."
Thursday, February 14, 2019
The First Valentines Day
In the third century, the Roman Empire was ruled by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus. He was nicknamed Claudius the Cruel because of his harsh leadership and his tendency for getting into wars and abusing his people. In fact, he was getting into so many wars during the third century that he was having a difficult time recruiting enough soldiers.
Claudius believed that recruitment for the army was down because Roman men did not want to leave their loves or families behind, so he canceled all marriages and engagements in Rome. Thousands of couples saw their hopes of matrimony dashed by the single act of a tyrant. And no one seemed interested in standing up to the emperor.
But a simple Christian priest named Valentine did come forward and stood up for love. He began to secretly marry soldiers before they went off to war, despite the emperor’s orders. In 269 A.D., Emperor Claudius found out about the secret ceremonies. He had Valentine thrown into prison and deemed that he would be put to death.
As Valentine was awaiting execution, he fell in love with a blind girl who happened to be the jailer’s daughter. On the eve of his execution, with no writing instruments available, Valentine is said to have written her a sonnet in ink that he squeezed from violets. Legend has it that his words made the blind woman see again. It was a brief romance because the next day Valentine was clubbed to death by Roman executioners.
St. Valentine gave his life so that young couples could be bonded together in holy matrimony. They may have killed the man, but not his spirit. Even centuries after his death, the story of Valentine’s self-sacrificing commitment to love was legendary in Rome. Eventually, he was granted sainthood and the Catholic Church decided to create a feast in his honor. They picked February 14 as the day of celebration because of the ancient belief that birds (particularly lovebirds, but also owls and doves) began to mate on that very day.
It’s wonderful to know that Valentine’s Day is really founded on the concept of love in marriage.
Taken from Mark Merrill blog
A Story of Reconciliation
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:1-3
"Rhiannon Lloyd holds trauma recovery classes for both Hutu and Tutsi survivors of the Rwanda genocide. If you were in her shoes, what would you say to these devastated people? Many have experienced rape or maiming or witnessed the murder of their family members.
This is what she does: in the shelter of a church house they meet for three days. Dr. Lloyd first persuades her grieving flock to write down on a piece of paper the worst experience that they had. When the awful facts have been confronted in this way, she has them come together in small groups to tell each other their stories. This is often the first trembling step towards trusting other people
Finally the terrible atrocities are listed on a large sheet of paper for all to see and the group is asked "What does God feel about this?" She then draws a big red cross through the list of hurts, symbolizing the cross of Christ. "This is the only place we can bring our sorrows," she tells them. "This is one of the reasons Jesus came to earth; not only to take upon Himself our sins, but also the sin of those who have sinned against us. Stand and tell God of the pain in your heart," she tells them. "What you saw, what it did to you. If you're angry, tell Him. If strong emotion comes, don't hold it back, because God will be weeping with you."
At first there is silence, but sobbing and wailing soon overcomes the cultural reserve of the Rwandans as people pour out their grief, anger and hopelessness before the crucified Christ. A long time later, when quiet returns, they sing softly the old chorus "What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear." Eventually Rhiannon brings in a big, rough wooden cross and positions it on the floor with a pile of nails. One at a time, believers begin to slip forward and taking their tear-stained piece of paper with its record of horrors, they kneel and nail it to the cross of Jesus. All afternoon the hammer pounds, echoing the agony of Golgatha, a reminder of Jesus' complete identification with our sufferings.
On the third day an amazing thing happens. People begin to testify that in the midst of genocide, God was at work in the darkness. They talk of heroes, Christian reconcilers who were the first to die. Anger at God begins to turn to empathy for God as believers contemplate His heartbreak over the way we humans treat one another.
With grief now resting lighter upon many, talk of forgiveness begins to emerge. Jesus is seen, not only as the innocent and suffering Lamb of God, but also the resurrected and righteous Judge who will uncompromisingly administer justice. Even now His hand of vengeance is stretched out toward the wicked, the very persons haunting the memory of survivors.
"If they repent, is it all right with you if God forgives them?" Rhiannon asks. Each person contemplates this question, weighing their own testimony of cleansing against their grief, many finally concluding that if God forgave them, they must eventually forgive others. Truly this is "beauty for ashes", the promise of God. Isaiah 61:1-4 " (Healing the Wounds of the World by John Dawson)
Today, throughout the world, other such movements are taking place. And they are taking place amongst Christians.
"Identificational repentance is proving to be the key to opening doors that have been closed for centuries. One of the most significant examples is the Reconciliation Walk, coinciding with the 900th anniversary of the Crusades. European intercessors have walked the routes of the Crusades from west to east, carrying proclamations of repentance to Muslim and Jewish communities for the slaughter done in Christ's name. The response has been mind boggling...I don't know why we waited 900 years to repent for the Crusades, but I'm glad the breakthrough among Islamic peoples is coming in our lifetime!
In the United States, people are taking prayer journeys where American Indians were oppressed or massacred. In addition, there are prayer journeys to the historical slave ports of West Africa where black and white Americans weep together, learn together and find an intimacy that has eluded less radical believers, (Dawson).
Listed below are some other examples of recent reconciliation movements:
1. Re-enactments
In Sydney, Australia, united Christians dressed in period costume gathered near the Opera House to remember the violent mass rape of female convicts by male convicts shortly after the arrival of the first fleet. An account was read publicly, Christian men asked forgiveness of their countrywomen and then escorted them ashore with the affection and dignity that they should have experienced the first time. Now, whenever the first story is told the action of Christians in the "90's must be told with it, thus sowing a healing memory into the story of the land.
2. Solemn Assemblies
Common around the world, these events have multiplied alongside the vision for seasons of united prayer and fasting. In Hawaii, 27,000 people gathered in a stadium to worship God and to seek forgiveness and reconciliation over the way elements of society had wounded one another in the story of the Islands. At the end, a Japanese leader knelt before the crowd and asked forgiveness for the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
3. Commemorative Ceremonies
Significant dates related to such things as genocidal atrocities arc becoming reconciliation events when believers gather to memorialize these painful memories in annual observances. German Christians have led the way.
4. Interactive Citywide Musical Events
Heal Our Land, a contemporary musical written for united church choirs has toured American and UK cities. Repentance and reconciliation prayer dealing with the wounds of America is featured. Similar events using the arts have emerged in several countries.
5. Justice Action Forums
In New Zealand and Australia, Christians are beginning to work with government agencies dealing with injustices in land use and the tribal claims that have been ignored. If there are unjust laws in your nation that perpetuate division, Christians cannot remain silent.
6. Representative Leadership Forums
Around the world Christians are acting as peacemakers by bringing together the leaders of opposing sides. Private Christians have taken surprising initiative in doing the diplomatic work required to get factional leaders or even heads of state to talk to one another.
7. Student Culture Exchange Programs
In post Apartheid South Africa 'African enterprise' takes students from one culture and visits another culture with a view to bring understanding, reduce fear and increase admiration for the 'otherness' of the other people group. In some countries Christian schools are seen as an agent of re-segregation so cross-cultural interaction programs are imperative.
8. Cross-cultural and Denominational Interchurch Hosting
It is increasingly common for pastors to exchange pulpits or for whole congregations to visit one another for combined services and fellowship. Congregations have specialty ministry gifts and the division of labor that God has created becomes evident when believers really begin to explore and 'see' one another in the life of the city.
These are just some ways that reconciliation can begin; ways that we can be in obedience to the call of Christ to be ambassadors of reconciliation.
"What an exciting time then to be a believer in Jesus, an intercessor involved in Christ's ministry of reconciliation! We have the answer! (See 2 Corinthians 5:18-20.) It is only when we are reconciled to God the Father that the "otherness" of another gender, race or culture becomes an attraction rather than a source of insecurity and division.
This is why Jesus gives the ministry of reconciliation to the redeemed in Christ, the living church. The pagans will never succeed as peacemakers. There is only one Prince of Peace." (Dawson)
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Reconciliation - Healing the Wounds of the Past
But you will be called the priests of the Lord;
you will be spoken of as ministers of our God.
Isaiah 61:6
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.
A few years ago, my children and I studied the Crusades of European Christians to the Middle East and the horror that ensued...wholesale slaughter of Muslims and Jews under the banner of Christ, called for by Church leaders. This year we studied the history of the Native Americans, learning about their forced removal from their lands to the desolate reservations...the promises made by our American government and then revoked time and again. In addition, I live in Charleston, South Carolina, a city of much beauty but also, of much historical ugliness. At one time there were four African slaves for every one white person. Here, much of the land was darkened by the blood, sweat and tears of men, women and children, forced into incredibly hard labor because of the color of their skin. The realization of what was done by my ancestors and by the leaders of my country, has grieved my children and myself.
"How do we respond to such deep, gaping, sometimes ancient wounds? The simple answer lies in the humility of Jesus expressed through His Body, the Church," (Healing the Wounds of the World by John Dawson).
It was 1993 and I was watching a video called The Hard Truth about the atrocities of abortion. Since Jr. High, I had always been outspokenly pro life. I knew the truth about abortion and it grieved me. But after watching this 9-minute video, I found myself suddenly, unexpectedly, on my face before God, wailing in grief over the sins of abortion, asking God to forgive "us."
Why "us?" I have never had an abortion? I have never encouraged a friend to have an abortion. I have, in fact, worked in three different crisis pregnancy centers, encouraging women not to have abortions. But at that moment, in light of the horrible truth of the mass slaughter of babies, something deep inside me identified with the sin...with the sin of the human race that I am a part of. The Holy Spirit allowed me to open myself to godly sorrow and confess before Him the sins of the land. This is what Christian reconciliation is all about.
"In responding to the broken heart of God, we need to identify with the sins of the nation in personal and corporate repentance. Even though Nehemiah was apparently a very righteous man and innocent of the specific sins that the nation of Israel had committed, when he prayed for the restoration of Israel he prayed as a member of the guilty nation, identifying with their sins, saying, "I and my father's house have sinned" (Nehemiah 1:6-7). Ezra went even further when he said, "Oh my God: I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens" (Ezra 9:6).
Both Ezra and Nehemiah were righteous men, but they so identified with the people that they were interceding for that they considered themselves guilty with them. You may be a righteous person who is not involved in any direct way with the vices present in your nation, but there is no temptation which is not common to humanity (1 Corinthians 10:13). We can all identify with the roots of any given sin, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)," (Dawson).
Today we live in a wounded world. Many of those wounds have strong, historical roots. These wounds often prevent the Gospel of Christ from healing a person's heart. As Christians, we can take two approaches to this problem. We can look at a situation, like abortion or the Crusades, or the Native American land grab or the forced slavery of Africans and say to ourselves, "I didn't do this." "I had nothing to do with it." If we take this stand, nothing will ever change.
Or we can take another approach. An approach that I was privileged to be part of after watching The Hard Truth. We can seek forgiveness for ancestral sins. While we honor our righteous ancestors (in my case through remembering and teaching ourselves and our children about the history of America...the wonderful things done by this country), honesty dictates that we embrace both the grandeur and the guilt.
"Have you ever attempted reconciliation (with someone) while the painful memories still tormented you? There will be no reconciliation with anybody until we bring our broken hearts to Jesus first. Healing begins when we honestly confront the past. Before we can even contemplate forgiveness, we need to face what really happened and bring it to the foot of the cross," (Dawson). That is what Christian-led reconciliation is. That is what it means to be the "priesthood of Christ."
"God does not put guilt on the intercessor. We are not individually guilty for what our group did or our (nation) did, but He is waiting for the 'royal priesthood,' which is the redeemed in Christ, to openly confess the truth of the matter before Him and before people, just as the ancient Hebrew priests once did over the sins of Israel.
You see, it is very difficult to forgive if you have never heard an open acknowledgment of the injustices that wounded you or your people. On the other hand, such grace for forgiveness is released when we are asked for forgiveness by those who identify themselves in some way with the identity of those who contributed to our suffering," (Dawson).
So what does reconciliation on the part of the Christian Church look like? I will share one woman's story tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
What is Revival...and how does it start?
'Return to me,' declares the Lord Almighty,
'and I will return to you,' says the Lord Almighty.
Zechariah 1:3
Praying for revival...it sounds like a good thing. Many of us have been in churches where the pastor prayed for revival. We might have asked for it ourselves. But do we really know what it is we are asking for? It's not something that just happens magically, all of a sudden. It won't be ushered in by the great words of some preacher or the passionate words of a song. Instead, it will come when we get rid of all the extra things within the Christian religion and desire God alone.
Revival is basically, a "return to God." People begin to desire God alone. A vital and fervent relationship with God is restored or ignited in the hearts of many. Suddenly, the cares of yesterday are not as important because people have, in mass, turned their attention to God.
One can identify six major "Awakenings" or revivals in the church worldwide — from 1727, 1792, 1830, 1857, 1882 and 1904. More recently there were the revivals of 1906 Azusa Street, 1930s Balokole, and the 1970s Jesus movement, which spread in the Americas, Africa, and Asia among Protestants and Catholics.
I'd like to highlight one of these revivals which Jim Cymbala talks about in his book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire. Try to imagine what it must have been like to be a part of this.
"Revivals have never been dominated by eloquent or clever preaching. If you had timed the meetings with a stopwatch, you would have found far more minutes given to prayer, weeping, and repentance than to sermons. In the 'Prayer Meeting Revival' of 1857-59 there was virtually no preaching at all. Yet it apparently produced the greatest harvest of any spiritual awakening in American history: estimates run to 1,000,000 converts across the United States, out of a national population at that time of only 30,000,000. That would be proportionate to 9,000,000 Americans today falling on their knees in repentance!
How did this happen? A quiet businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a Wednesday noon
prayer meeting in a Dutch Reformed church here in New York City, no more than a quarter mile from Wall Street. The first week, six people showed up. The next week, twenty came. The next week, forty...and they decided to have daily meetings instead.
'There was no fanaticism, no hysteria, just an incredible movement of people to pray,' reports J. Edwin Orr. 'The services were not given over to preaching. Instead, anyone was free to pray.'
During the fourth week, the financial Panic of 1857 hit; the bond market crashed, and the first banks failed. (Within a month more than 1,400 banks had collapsed.) People began calling out to God more seriously than ever. Lanphier's church started having three noontime prayer meetings in different rooms. John Street Methodist Church, a few doors east of Broadway, was packed out as well. Soon Burton's Theater on Chambers Street was jammed with 3,000 people each noon.
The scene was soon replicated in Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Washington and the South. By the next spring 2,000 Chicagoans were gathering each day in the Metropolitan Theater to pray. A young 21-year-old in those meetings, newly arrived in the city, felt his first call to do Christian work...Dwight L. Moody.
Does anyone really think that America today is lacking preachers, books, Bible translations, and neat doctrinal statements? What we really lack is the passion to call upon the Lord until He opens the heavens and shows Himself powerful."
It began with and will begin with prayer.
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