WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING THIS WEEK

I’ve been in a pretty intense seminar/discussion group all this week. It’s called “Contemporary Issues in Pentecostal Missions.” 

Some of the topics we have discussed are:

• Status of Women
• HIV/AIDS
• Poverty & Economic Uplift
• Persecution
• Church Planting
• Business as Missions
• Contextualization/Syncretism/Religious Pluralism
• War, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons
• Migration
• Short-Term Missions

The group of participants is made up people from Myanmar, the Philippines, the US, Samoa, Singapore, Bhutan, & Zimbabwe.

Here are the primary things we’ll each be taking home to our respective places of ministry:

The world is a mess.

Jesus is the only hope of the world.

God wants to use the church to make Jesus known to the world.

The Holy Spirit is available to empower & guide the church to make Jesus known in the world.

It’s been a great week.

GOD'S GREAT LOVE

I read Genesis 22 in my devotions today, about what was no doubt the greatest test of Abraham’s faith & obedience to God. There are incredible parallels with Christ’s crucifixion. For example, at least 3 times God refers to Isaac as Abraham’s only, beloved son.

The passage indicates that they spent 3 days traveling from their home to Mount Moriah, where God had instructed Abraham to take Isaac. Can you imagine the deep anguish that Abraham must have undergone every step & every moment of that journey toward the place of his son’s execution?

In addition, the one to be sacrificed carried the wood to which his body would be attached as he died.

There are many more details & observations that could be made, but we learn that at the very last instant, the angel of the Lord stopped Abraham from killing Isaac.

As we remember the Father sending Jesus into the world to go to the cross to give His life for our sins, one of the beautiful truths we see about God is that He doesn’t ask someone to do what He is unwilling to do.

Someone once asked a preacher, “Where was God when my son was brutally murdered?” The preacher, with tears in his eyes, said, “He was in the very same place He was when His Son went to the cross.”

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8).

How great & generous God’s love is for each one of us!

PERSEVERANCE

This word is very much a theological team. I learned about it in Bible college while studying the differences between Calvinism & Arminianism etc. But the idea has a lot of relevance for us today as we see our culture degrading before our eyes.

In my devotions today, I read several passages about various Bible characters who needed to persevere in following God’s plan in their lives.

Perseverance is a pretty unpopular word & concept for many people. The quest for immediate gratification mixes with it about as well as oil does with water.

It’s ironic that individuals & groups with evil intentions seem to be better at practicing perseverance than those with good, innocent, or even godly agendas or desires.

We live in a fallen, sinful world. The devil seems to infuse an insidious kind of perseverance in those who serve his purposes.

Good, godly intentions are worth persevering over. If we don’t know how to persevere, we will by default be overcome in the marathon of life. Allow God to develop in your life a quality that one of my old Junior High teachers used to call “sticktoitiveness.”

I love this old hymn:

CREATING DEPENDENCY

Something that we see regularly in life is what some have called the “need to be needed.” It manifests itself in many ways – the domineering family member who just can’t allow others to make their own decisions; the power-hungry elected official or bureaucrat who mistrusts the ability of the people he serves; even in the missionary who holds the purse strings & thus has the final word on what “the natives” do & how they do it.

In each of these cases, the underlying problem is in the one who supposedly has the power, the best ideas, & the most abilities. That person needs others to need him/her. It is sometimes called the “messiah complex.”

When we put our own emotional need to be needed over the need of others to function as God intended them to, life takes a nose dive. We don’t know the satisfaction of seeing the fruit of our mentoring & investment in others. We cheat others of the experience of making mistakes, & of experiencing God’s grace & our encouragement.

More than that, we are unintentionally trying to force them to put us in God’s place. The bottom line is that we are telling them to become idolators.

How can my insistence that someone do what I say make them an idolator? It is because I am usurping God’s place in my relationship with that person. I am becoming the source of their wisdom, the plumb line of what is right or wrong in their life. I’m making them dependent on me. No one can develop the kind of healthy relationship that God want to have with them if there is a dependency creator standing in the way.

Mentors, parents, spiritual leaders, & even public servants are responsible to respect, believe in, & prioritize the best interests of those they serve. The best interest of every human being is predicated on a personal experience of the truth of God’s Word & continued growth based on that truth. 

Let’s be a bridge to genuine growth, not a barrier to it!

POVERTY & POWERLESSNESS

I can remember a number of people who grew up during the Depression who characterized their experiences by saying something like “We didn't have much, but we didn’t even realize that we were poor.”

This observation goes along with what I’ve been reading in a book about poverty. The book is God of the Empty-Handed, & it is written by an Asian Indian from an Evangelical Christian perspective. He sees poverty not so much as a lack of things, but as a condition of powerlessness. 

Unfortunately, almost all secular programs & many Christian ones that address poverty seem to be limited to this view.

Poverty results in part because political, economic, & legal power are concentrated in a small group of people, the elites. They see themselves as smarter, abler, better educated, etc. than the general population, the masses. The masses are inept & unable to direct their own lives; they need the elitist class to do that for them. Legislation, the judicial system, & even religious beliefs & cultural mores enforce this view of the 2 separate classes. The ultimate result of this complex of factors perpetuates poverty & guarantees permanent dependence of the masses on the goodwill of the elites.

This condition is not what the Founders of the United States envisioned. It is actually what they strove to avoid. They desired to insure that political, economic, & legal power are distributed as broadly among as many people as possible.

In this coming year, may many people be newly empowered by a renewing of our beloved nation. May that empowering not be limited to their political, economic, & legal condition. May it especially be true of their spiritual life as they come to know Christ & grow in their relationship with Him.

SOME THOUGHTS ON “FINISHING WELL”

We hear this term a lot, especially as we get older.

One temptation of those involved in ministry, working for Christian employer, or living in a Christian family, is to think that somehow that setting is more ideal & that they are less likely to experience the negative side of human behavior.

When we find out that Christian people are still imperfect, & when they fail to measure up to how we believe they should live, there is a big tendency to get cynical.

This temptation of skepticism usually grows over time. To finish well, we must learn to balance the ideal we desire with the reality we face every day. If we don’t, we will finish badly. We will expect the worst from people & will allow that cynicism to poison our relationships with people whom God has called us to influence toward His good purpose for their lives.

Actually, this on-going battle with cynicism can have a number of important benefits. 

First, it helps us to see ourselves & our own sins (grouchiness & impatience, for example) more clearly, showing us how dependent we are on God’s grace.

Second, it encourages us to pray for & encourage those who may be younger in the faith than we are.

Third, it can motivate us to believe that God is still at work in those He has in His wisdom & sovereignty brought into our lives.

Let's make it our goal to finish the year well, & to finish our lives well!

THOUGHTS ON THE SYRIANS

I have to be honest – As a disciple of Christ, one of the most distressing things to me personally about the Syrian refugee situation is how some have interpreted & applied Scripture to it. They have managed, either intentionally or in ignorance, to misapply the biblical teaching about individual & corporate Christian treatment of “strangers.”

They have then used that teaching to say that civil government must prioritize this over its responsibility to insure as much as possible the physical safety of its citizens.

At the same time, God can use what we believe to be foolish, irresponsible, even evil actions of people & governments to bring about His redemptive plan. THIS this is where the biblical mandate for caring for strangers applies.

I know of a number of congregations who are doing just that. They are befriending & building relationships with the refugees. Does this mean that they agree with the policy? Not necessarily. Does it mean that they are fulfilling the biblical mandate about “strangers” as the Lord intended? I believe it does.

Another question comes to mind.  After misusing Scripture to push and open border policy, will they then encourage or discourage active outreach to these “strangers” in order to make Christ known to them? I hope that, to be at least a little consistent, they would encourage it.

You see, the best defensive weapon (& maybe the best offensive weapon also) against Islamic terrorism & its terrible fruit is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.