Justin Rose Update
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Justin Rose, from the Mayfair Community Church in Chicago, will be going to Kenya, Africa in the next few weeks with the Salvation Army's Central Territory's Mission's Bureau. We want to keep you all updated on his experiences so you can pray for him. Read up and pray on!
The last few months of my life have been strange. I’ve been living in my mother’s basement in a town that is foreign to me, I haven’t had a job, and I haven’t had that much to do. I’ve been waiting to go to Kenya. For more than a year I have been working with the Salvation Army mission’s department to go overseas and work. Late last spring the possibility of going to Kenya arose, and I was hoping to head out in September. September came and went and I was hoping to be able to go in January. January is gone, and now I am waiting. Last week I heard that I will be leaving in about two weeks.
But I can see that God has changed me in the last year. A year ago I would have been upset that I was continually in limbo and that the departure date was continually being pushed back. A year ago, my patience would have been gone around October in this Adventure of Patience. But I can see that God’s timing is, as it is said, best and that he does really know what is best for me.
Several months ago God revealed a passage to me that has been very encouraging. In 1 Chronicles 17 David tells the Prophet Nathan that he plans to build a House for the Lord. But the Lord revealed himself to Nathan and said that David had spilled too much blood and so his son, Solomon, would be the one to build a House for God. So in 1 Chronicles 22 David gives an order for all the skilled workers to start preparing materials for the House of the Lord. David used his own money to provide stones, iron nails, bronze, and cedar logs “without number” (verse 4). Even though David was not to build the Temple himself, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to help make preparations for it.
I was challenged to see someone work so diligently for something that they themselves were not going to do. But here I was, the one actually going to Kenya, and yet I did not have the same diligence as some of the people who were making preparations for it. Others were making preparations for my trip while I sat back and waited. Patience is a good thing, but God has shown me that patience isn’t lazy. We are not to be patient just to wait for things to come, but it involves continued diligence to complete the task ahead of us.
Please pray for me as I continue to prepare, pray that I would be diligent.
Also pray for my ministry in Kenya.
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Recapture
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
(By Lindsey Bailey) - I recently came across a verse while preparing to teach my youth group’s small group time. It’s a verse found in Ezekiel chapter 14. In order to understand the significance and greatness of the verse, it’s important to understand the situation the people of Israel found themselves in. The Israelites insisted on turning their hearts away from the Lord by worshiping idols and not truly living by the law the Lord had given them. In chapter 8, the Lord shows Ezekiel that even the elders have rebuked the Lord by setting up individual shrines to their idols. I know this sounds totally extreme and like we can’t relate to it at all, but when you hear the reasoning of the Israelites you might change your mind.
You see, the Israelites felt “abandoned” by God. They felt He had forsaken their land, and in so doing, had let the surrounding nations persecute them. In verse 12 of chapter 8 they say that the Lord could not see them anymore since He had forsaken the land. I don’t know about you, but I find myself feeling that in a way. Sometimes I see that I have come across difficult times in my life or hard issues to face, and I begin to think that maybe it’s all happening to me because the Lord has gotten far away from me, not me from Him. And so, in convincing yourself that the Lord is no longer close to you, you begin to find “comfort” in other things. You see, the idols that the Israelites worshipped were “easier” to worship, they gave them confidence because they could see them, and they made the Israelites feel secure. But in reality, it was a false sense of security since they were literally being attacked by foreign nations and not in a safe place in life at all.
So, we get to chapter 14 and the Lord is wanting to warn the Israelites about idols again, but this time he means the kind of idols that we have within our hearts. Verse 3 says “Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces”. What kind of idols are you setting up in your heart? What blocks are making you stumble? Just like with the Israelites, the blocks can be physical or spiritual. Regardless, they are taking you farther from the Lord, and it is becoming harder and harder to hear His loving voice saying He wants to be a part of your life, saying what He said to the Israelites in verse 5 of chapter 14: “I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for idols”.
You see in spite of being pushed away, the Lord seeks to recapture our hearts. He will do anything necessary to have us turn our eyes on Him again and begin to listen to His commands and desires for our lives. The word recapture is so full of hope. It implies that they were once close to the Lord and he now wants to go back to that. I don’t know about you, but I am often in need of being recaptured, and it’s so much easier to admit that when I am not putting physical or spiritual stumbling blocks in the way.
Just remember the Lord is crazy about you, He loves you with all His heart and wants you to be His forever. Whatever that stumbling block might be; money, power, fame, self-image, intelligence, popularity, selfishness, addictions or hardness of your heart, His love and mercy and salvation is high enough, deep enough, wide enough to get rid of those blocks and replace them with a hunger and thirst for Him.
This video is an interesting interpretation of this idea of idols taking us away from the Lord, and the Lord being bigger and more powerful than them.
God Bless you and keep you close to His heart!
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Book Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
(By James Davisson) - “For Preservation is a Creation, and more, it is a continued Creation, and a Creation every moment.”
To be sure, a number of you have heard me talk about this book, and one or two may already be sick of my constant admonishments that you read it. If you have yet to do so, you would do well to pay attention to these few words. There’s not enough space to speak to even half of what makes this book so great, so I will poke about it a little and tell you what I think is most important, and hope that you will follow my advice and sit down with ‘Gilead’ for a few hours one day.
Gilead is a letter from a father to his son. The father, John Ames, lived his whole life in a small town in Iowa, spent most of it preaching and living alone there; when he was very old, a woman came to his church, and asked to be taught the faith and baptized, and told him to marry her, and he did. So John is very old, and has a young son, and decides to write him a letter telling him whatever he thinks his son should know about his life, and his father and grandfather’s life, and the world and the loveliness of it.
Friends, there is such beauty in this book I cannot tell you even the smallest part of it. To read this book is to see the world with an old man’s eyes, and the world he sees is achingly beautiful. John Ames talks about how Creation is really a great Preservation, the Lord’s continual re-creation everything as it is, holding it together in His mind, so to speak:
“There’s a mystery in the thought of the re-creation of an old man as an old man, with all the defects and injuries of what is called long life faithfully preserved in him, and all their claims and all their tendencies honored, too, as in the steady progress of arthritis in my left knee. I have thought sometime that the Lord must hold the whole of out lives in memory, so to speak. Of course He does . . . the finder I broke sliding into second base when I was twenty-two years old is crookeder than ever, and I can interpret that fact as an intimate attention.”
The great beauty of creation, the love for God’s world, even though it be but the shadow of what we will have in Heaven, is a big deal in this book. Whenever I read it, things like sitting and drinking tea in the dark, or walking in the night snow, or looking at the sky off the back porch, take on a lovely, sacred quality that hardly bears description. John Ames likes to think that in Heaven, the world as we know it and the events that happen here will be “the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.”
Since John Ames is trying to tell his son about himself, much of the book concerns his relationship with his own past, trying to tell a story about himself and his family so that his son will understand where he comes from, and what the world is really like. The other part of this book that speaks most directly has to do with memory. Ames wants to tell a story, but he wants his story to mean something to his son, and to us, and he understands that what that means is finding meaning in memory. He puts it like this:
“Perhaps that is the one thing I wish to tell you. Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. For example, whenever I take a child into my arms to be baptized, I am, so to speak, comprehended in the experience more fully, having seen more of life, knowing better what it means to affirm the sacredness of the human creature. I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect. That’s the pulpit speaking, but it’s telling the truth.”
For me, this is a powerful thing. I so rarely have any inkling of what any particular experience may really mean; I worry that I will never see the plan of my life, because I have no prophetic visions, just as John Ames never has any such thing. For him, and for me, and perhaps for you, too, the visionary aspects of life are meant to unfold in memories of things. Part of what this means, I think, is that understanding the way God works in our lives takes time, and we are often, if not always, unaware at any given moment what we are meant to understand from a particular experience.
I’ll leave you with some final words on the subject from John Ames:
“‘Strange are the uses of adversity.’ That’s a fact. When I’m up here in my study with the radio on and some old book in my hands and it’s nighttime and the wind blows and the house creaks, I forget where I am, and it’s as though I’m back in hard times for a minute or two, and there’s sweetness in the experience which I don’t understand. But that only enhances the value of it. My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature. I remember my father down on his heels in the rain water dripping from his hat, feeding me a biscuit from his scorched hand . . . I mention it again because it seems to me much of my life was comprehended in that moment. Grief itself has often returned me to that morning, when I took communion from my father’s hand. I remember it as communion, and I believe that’s what it was.”
There you have it, folks. Please read this book. If you need to borrow a copy, I’ll have a few handy, and you can ask me for one next time you see me. The Lord bless you and keep you all.
James
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Purity
(By Jonathan Taube) - Okay, think about James Bond. Now quickly, what are the first few things that come to mind? The Golden Gun? “Vodka Martini; shaken, not stirred?” Sweet tuxedos? I thought you’d say sweet tuxedos. You see, as you may or may not know, I’m getting married in about four months and I walked into the tuxedo shop last week thinking the same thing. I walked out a while later having picked out a completely Bond-esque, From Russia with Love era tux. We’re talking the white jacket with the black pants. Let’s see, how best to describe this… ah yes: completely sweet.
I grew up watching James Bond movies with my dad, catching the newest Bond flicks in theaters, and dominating all comers on Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. But as much as I like Bond, there’s no denying the fact that he holds, and perhaps has even been responsible for somewhat influencing mainstream secularist views of sexuality. He’s always after a new girl, and he’s often guilty of objectifying the women in his life. And whether we like to admit it or not, we are influenced by the things we see.
Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23, NIV)
Bond may be very mild compared to the way sex is presented in many movies, and movies aren’t the only thing flooding our society with sexual messages. Some of the best rock and roll (well, at least hair metal) songs ever written are unfortunately just catchy melodies disguising sexually explicit content. Two of the most well known musicians in the entire world are Madonna and Michael Jackson, the one wore her underwear as her outerwear and the other invented the crotch grab… and the moonwalk. I recently even saw a preview for a new TV show about a 14 or 15 year old girl who becomes pregnant and, apart from being overly dramatic, it seemed to me that it really glorified the whole ordeal as some sort of right-of-passage for this young girl. Let’s face it; we live in a world of darkness when it comes to sexuality.
Here’s what got me thinking about all this, “There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much a spiritual mystery as a physical fact. As written in Scripture, ‘the two become one.’ Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never ‘become one.’” (1 Corinthians 6, The Message)
Sex is something God has made to be good, but He made it very specifically, and commanded very explicitly, that it is to be enjoyed inside the commitment and intimacy of marriage. This is for our own protection, for our own good; but even more so, for His glory.
The Message continues, “… In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love… Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.”
The world needs to see God’s standard for love and intimacy, for commitment and interdependence modeled in the church. It’s part of His plan for the whole world to know Him. Here’s the problem though, the Church is not free of sexual sin. The Church is not free of pornography. This is proven and we can’t ignore it. We need to remember that we have been called to a higher standard and do our part to flee from sexual sin and to rely on God’s help for strength and on God’s love for fulfillment.
Young men, that means staying away from pornography. It means being accountable to another believing brother whom you trust because you were never called to do it on your own. It means treating all women with respect as your mothers and sisters in Christ. It means honoring God with your body by demonstrating sexual purity in your speech and in your actions, showing those around you a different standard than the one they are shown everyday by the world. Reach out to the men in your church with wisdom, they can be wonderful guides.
Young women, it means respecting yourself and paying no heed to the pressure that the world tries to crush you with, to look, to act, or to feel a certain way. God your Father has created you in His image and delights in you. Don’t sell yourself short, and don’t let anyone else either. You need accountability as well, with a believing sister whom you trust. Reach out to the women in your church with wisdom, they can be wonderful guides.
And to our elders in the church: we need your support on this narrow road. We don’t need you to pretend nothings wrong, or avoid the difficult parts of the Christian walk. We need you to model purity, and expect the same from us, but also to understand that we live in a different world than what you experienced as a young person. We’re not making excuses, but asking for acceptance that goes hand in hand with discipleship and accountability.
So as Christ’s body, let’s put the mystery back into the way we look at sex. Let’s no longer allow our enemy to pervert one of God’s great gifts. In times of struggle, this is what we are called to remember, “…You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19b-20)
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The Earth
(By Ian Smith) - Have you ever had one moment that was completely silent and completely wonderful as you were sitting outside? The more and more I think about it, the more I find the place in which I live now, the earth, to be beautiful. It really hit me this last summer. I had finished playing a game of soccer and was sitting down to catch my breath when suddenly it was taken away from me all over again; a large sun, the trees, it all struck me as so beautiful, for it is, and more than that the earth is our home.
When God created all things, he uses this phrase “good”. In the original language it was expressing the fact that the thing he had made looked sort of like him. It is the same word that refers to the goodness of God throughout the Scriptures. At the same time, the first humans get the command to “subdue the land.” In the original language, it’s more like what’s printed on the side of cop cars, “protect and serve.” That was the first task of the human race. It is so easy to forget what we’ve been asked to do.
God knows that we are physical beings, that we are beings whose minds who work with what we see and hear. Do you know that thousands of Christians in other traditions never pray with their eyes closed? Do you know why? Because they think that all things draw us into prayer, into God; not distract us from it. This earth has the goodness of God in it, why would it distract us from him?
The more we read the Scriptures, the more we see the fact that there is never meant to be a lasting permanent separation between us and the earth. In fact in the end, God decides to make “his home among men” as it says in the Scriptures. God comes from heaven to live here, on this earth, which it says is our home. That’s the real beauty of living in Christ as well; we get this earth as a gift, and we will see it as it is meant to be.
This whole thing expresses something deeper too. We as Christians receive everything as a gift. Everything we do expresses that God has given us everything and what we give to him is only ever what he has given to us. When we give our offering, we actually give it back, because it was God’s own. This just symbolizes the fact that we bring nothing in.
So now that we know these things, let us delight in what we see around us! But let us also be aware of a deeper reality, this place was a gift, given for us to take care of, and the seeds of this earth will grow trees in a new garden, where the tree of life is; where we and God will live forever. So when we take care of this earth, remember that we are really just cleaning up our house.
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Who You Aren't | Who God Is
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
(By Amanda Keene) - God. That is my topic for this article, and as I began to pray about what I was going to write, I felt like God laid it on my heart to give you a look into my life right now to see how He is moving in my life. So here we go…
My internship began about a week and a half ago when I walked into Olive Branch Mission and onto the Life Transformation floor. Life Transformation is a long term residential program for men who are struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. This program provides biblical counseling and practical education to help individuals overcome their addictions and lead wholesome, fully transformed lives. There are 12 guys in this program who are being led through this transformation.
Now, I went into this internship with the frame of mind that I was going to learn a lot about the social work field as far as the logistics and behind the scenes stuff that goes on in an agency. Little did I know that this internship would be spiritually challenging and would stretch my faith in ways I couldn’t understand. My first week was filled with learning about Section 8 housing, Social Security Income, Disability Income, housing assessments, referral forms, and the list goes on. All of this new information flooded my mind, and as my three hour long staff meeting last week drew closer, I began to wonder if my mind could take anymore. I sat down at this meeting with my co-workers and the CEO of the Olive Branch Mission, who happens to also be a pastor, and the meeting began. “You guys need to find out who you aren’t and who God is.” This simple, yet profound statement started off our meeting and for the next three hours, the pastor poured out his heart by telling us what God had been laying on his heart about his personal relationship with Christ and about Olive Branch Mission. “You guys need to find out who you aren’t and who God is.” Let that sink in for a little bit…
Now fast forward to just a couple of days ago. I was sitting in on a class with the guys, and this class is called Addictions. The definition for addiction in this class is the following: “A reoccurring compulsion by an individual to engage in an activity that is difficult to discontinue once an individual has commenced the activity.” In this class, the men learn more about their addictions and how to avoid the temptation of falling back into their former addictions all mounted on the foundation of Scripture. James 1:12-15 says
“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.”
During this class, the men went through this Scripture and talked about their own temptations and their own struggles. They talked about these “reoccurring compulsions” that arise and how they each individually go about avoiding these temptations. Just as some background, majority of these men has been fighting drug addictions for 10 years and beyond. I have heard testimonies from these men in which they have told me that they thought that they’d be battling the addiction for life. They had lost hope and just remained in the self destructive cycle of drug use. Satan had them right where he wanted them, yet somehow, God brought each one of them to Olive Branch, and they are living testimonies of God’s unending love and grace.
Addiction… for some of you, as you read the definition that I wrote out in the last paragraph, you felt the butterflies in your stomach and something resonated with you. You know that definition applies to your life, and you understand the hopelessness that comes from not being able to kick that addiction. The addiction may be to money, work, sex, pornography, food, drugs, shopping, or any number of things. I want to tell you that you are right. You can’t kick the addiction. Let’s re-visit the statement from earlier: “You guys need to find out who you aren’t and who God is.” You cannot deliver yourself from the addiction. You cannot say no to the temptations to fill that craving. You cannot stand up to Satan and say “no.” But God can. That’s who He is. He’s love and He can deliver you, He can help you avoid temptation, and He can make Satan flee in an instant. It doesn’t matter if you have been addicting to drugs for 20 years, or addicted to pornography since middle school, or addicted to shopping since you got your first credit card. God wants to take that addiction from you; you just need to let it go. Easier said than done, right?
I want to end with some suggestions that I’ve received from some of the men here in the Life Transformation Program and then with a passage from Hosea. First, a key to fighting temptation is equipping yourself with the word. Look up passages that pertain to your struggle, write them down, and memorize them. Know them so well that when you are tempted to act on that reoccurring compulsion, you can whip out that Scripture and proclaim it! Second, don’t work through this addiction alone. I know that addictions and sin in general is embarrassing to talk about with other people. Yes, it’s uncomfortable, and yes, we don’t like to do it, but do it any way. “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). Find accountability and support, because you can’t do it on your own, and God doesn’t want you to do it on your own. Finally, pray and seek after God. I pray that you walk in faith, believing the promises that God has made to you. I’d like to close with Hosea 11: 1-4; 8-9 which I think paints a picture of God’s love and grace:
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them….How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I turn and devastate Ephraim. For I am God, and not man- the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath.”
Rest in the assurance that God loves you and even when you fall, He’s there to pick you back up and embrace you. He loves us more than we could ever know…
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