Missions Blog

I wrote a number of posts in the past that I never published. This is one of them.  I didn’t want the details like Boot Camp to confuse anyone.

One of my favorite things in life is when people experience the presence of God for the first time in prayer. If you know me very well then you that I am burdened for people who know a lot about God, but don’t know God very well. Matt Chandler preached a great sermon about this. This can run the gammit from crazy legalistic rule followers to serious grace abusers. Either side is really sad. I love when people really connnect with the living God during worship and prayer and all the sudden they feel like their world is completely changed. A lot of the Boot Camp students here are experiencing that right now. They seek after the Lord and the find Him, it almost sounds like a scripture or something.

It is humorous in life how we interpret everything through our culture and experiences. No matter how much we want to be “all about what the Bible says” we are goign to struggle with this. A good example for me was when I would read biographies of great Christians. I would read how they prayed 12 hours a day and God moved mightily in these revivals. Well my experiencse in prayer for the most part had been boring, so I assumed these guys were just bored for like 12 hours. I wish the biographers had written “and they enjoyed it” after some of these stories.

To be honest, a lot of my time spent with the Lord were incredible and amazing, but not always. That was really frustrating. I just assumed the problem was with my sin and/or that Jesus didn’t like me that much. That whole Hebrews “they must believe He is and that He is a rewarder of those that deligently seek Him” thing seemed like an after death sort of thing. One time I was at a prayer meeting that was rather lifeless and the guy leading prayed to end us “God you are worth an hour and a half of hard prayer.” I wanted to yell “ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SO HARD!” I didn’t, it wasn’t really his fault. He didn’t know any better.

It wasn’t until my friend Chad started pray meetings at his house every Wednesday night that I learned a lot of the whys and hows of prayer. You can read all the books you like, but you are going to have learn this stuff through experience. You are probably wearing the glasses of “boy howdy prayer can be boring”, but you need to throw those off and remember again that you can encounter the living God.

The following is a great post by a friend of mine about the things the Lord has been teaching her. I think that this pertinent to most believers, so I am reposting it here with some of their personal information taken out of it due to their future plans of working overseas.

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Hey guys! This is Nicole. I felt like writing down some things that the Lord has been showing me this past month. (Oh, and by the way, the amazing title came compliments of Mr. Ryan himself. He’s really cool.) Being here at boot camp has been a life altering experience. During one class a few weeks ago the Lord began to speak to Ryan and I both about the same issue. I wrote furiously everything God was saying, and have been meaning to type it up, but haven’t had a chance until now. So here goes… First of all, the Lord showed me how much I try to gain a status of holiness without the Holy Spirit. We spend so much time discussing, thinking & being taught about holiness, that often times we jump ahead of God and attempt to be holy apart from the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. “But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.” ~2 Thessalonians 2:13

The result is that we look really good on the outside, but have not been changed by God nor rely on His strength and love. We might even do the things the bible says are good for the believer to do, and not do things that it says we shouldn’t do…all the while neglecting the heart issues and intimacy with sweet King Jesus. We might have all of these activities lined up, and have scripture to back up why they are good to participate in, yet what is our motive? I feel as if we try to earn God’s favor while acting like we are not. We are proud. We teach on holiness and how to live “holy” instead of encouraging and teaching on intimacy with God. From my experience, these teachings have not encouraged me to love Jesus with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength. Instead they have caused me to judge holiness in my brothers and sisters in a way that breeds comparison, disdain, dirty thoughts, disfellowship, pride, a “holier than though” mindset, etc. I may have all of the activities to make me look good to my fellowship, and even the right lingo, but that does not mean that I am pleasing God by my actions. In fact I believe that God is disgusted by my actions and for sure the attitude of my heart (which I have become pretty good at hiding).

I often felt like our group at A&M was the “IT” Christian fellowship and that we were the only group in town who really heard from the Lord. Of course I would never say this out loud, these were mainly subconscious thoughts, but they came out in my negative talk about other groups on campus. These thoughts and unrighteous judgments are what God has been revealing to me. For instance certain Christian sororities have had a bad connotation in my head for a long time. I confess that to you and ask for your forgiveness. I judged those sisters wrongly, without truthfully even knowing much about them. I’m sure somewhere I heard a negative comment or judgment about them, and instead of praying for my sisters, I allowed hatred to gain a foothold in my heart. How gross is that!!! For a long time I have basically hated, and kept a distance from my sisters in the Lord!! How can we allow such dissension to take place amongst the believers? We need to join together to pray, seek the Lord, encourage one another, & fight the enemy. The truth is that we need all parts of the body of Christ, and no part is better than another. We are all dearly loved children of God. Praise Jesus!

We are called to be holy, but holiness comes from the grace of God, not ourselves. We can’t conjure it up. All of this sounds obvious and these are all things that I have heard people talk about, but rarely seen people live out. One huge thing the Lord has shown me lately is how often I judge others, mainly in my thoughts, and that effects how I view them. Ask Him to reveal to you thoughts that you have that are not of Him, mainly about others. I have found that quite often I judge others by what I see. I think that discernment and dealing with sin has its place of course. I’m not saying we should be easy on sin. The key to what I’m saying is that the judgments I made did not lead me to want to help the people, pray for them, and desire them to know God on a deeper level. Instead I compared myself and first, felt good about how “advanced” beyond them I was in my walk with God, and second, looked down on them for not understanding or being “righteous enough”.

If we discern that somebody is dealing with something, is in sin, or may not have the revelation that we do yet about an issue, we should be led to LOVE them, pray, teach and exhort. When we see sin we should desire restoration, sanctification, obedience and the conforming of that person into God’s image. I think that in order to avoid the extreme of, “waiting on the Lord so long that we end up never talking to anybody about Jesus and really just use ‘waiting on the Lord’ as an excuse to keep from having to work for the kingdom”, we have overcompensated and become the other extreme of, “Go, Go, Go, do, do, do, who needs to use the gifts when we can talk about them, I don’t have time to spend with Jesus because by-golly people are dying and going to hell and I have to rescue them all by myself, although I have heard cool stories of men praying 10 hours a day and obviously if I am not doing that, than I am not a Christian, although last time I tried to pray for 10 hours, I ran out of things to say and I didn’t feel productive if I was just sitting with the Lord, so I stopped praying and later felt like a failure…I don’t know if I will ever achieve the “spiritual holiness” of John Wesley…I bet God is mad at me…I must have lost my salvation…maybe I was never saved to begin with?”.

OK…so maybe I went a step too far with that one, but I think it’s funny…and sad because there is a lot of truth in it. I have seen people, including myself, burn out because they relied on their own strength, and not on the Joy of the LORD! The Lord is a good Father and desires us to obey. We have to obey. However, I think many of us are allowing the enemy to influence and condemn us. Instead we should be in an intimate relationship with God, out from which our ministry flows. I have a lot more to say, but it will have to wait for another time.

Basically God is sooo good and full of love! He is the righteous judge, not us. We are called to LOVE above all else. I confess that I have not been doing this. Forgive me Lord Jesus for trying to earn my salvation by performing for you and for allowing hatred and bitterness to creep into my heart for others. Help us to receive your love and be able to extend it to our brothers and sisters. Thank you for being so patient, gracious, and merciful. Nicole

PROVERBS - Are Bloggers Scoffers?

Adrian Warnock asks this question about himself and others. While it is a good question for us bloggers to consider, I thought that it also had some good questions for us all. Read away.
From the article…

How many of us seek out correction and welcome it? Do we not instead inwardly smart and find ourselves secretly hating the person who dared to correct us? “It’s my life,” we say, “I didn’t ask you for your advice!” Sadly, we are often only too willing to criticise others, often in an angry dismissive way — we who ourselves hate the notion of others correcting us!

When you read of the scoffer, don’t think about other people. Instead, ask yourself: “Am I like this — even just a little bit?” For the character of the scoffer is not set in stone.

Thanks for Challies.com for this one.

1. When you share something and people think it is strange and don’t like it, call it conviction. When someone shares something you think is strange and don’t like, call it discernment.

2. Assume that someone’s lust/gluttony/cursing problem is worse than your unlovingness/unkindness/just generally being a jerk. God is willing to overlook your sin because you hand out tracts, the good kind.

3. If something bad is happening to someone else assume it is because of sin. If something bad is happening in your life assume it is spiritual attack or persecution.

4. If you ever disagree with anything someone says, make sure to write off the 90% of good stuff they are saying. After all, a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. I don’t care if their book did point out a bunch of stuff I needed to hear.

5. Use the word heretic all the time. Don’t worry about whether it is true or appropriate. People need to know you are serious. Get really mad at people that call you one.

6. Establish a million extra-biblical rules. Make sure that everyone serves Jesus out of fear and “responsibility” and never cheerfully with grateful heart. You may be robbing people of their joy, but they can suck it up.

7. Preach the Bible as completely inspired and authoritative, but make sure to never talk about the verses that people “abuse”. Verses like “my burden is easy, my yoke is light” and “learn from Me because I am gentle and humble of heart” turn people into slackers. Don’t even get me started on Jer. 29:11.

8. Always believe the person that speaks the loudest and with the most certainty about their views. Become this person.

9. Always preach about the sins your not involved in. That way you can be really ungracious about it and not feel like a total hypocrite.

10. Preach a standard even you can’t keep. Preaching a standard twice as hard as you actually want people to keep will produce the results you’re looking for. People typically compromise and will only come halfway. Don’t worry about the condemnation they feel for the other half.

11. Never let people see you aren’t as spiritual as you portray. Don’t let on that you are feeling sad/depressed/stuggling with sin. This could cause people to stop esteeming what you have to say. You can suck it up and hold it together until Jesus comes.

Back with another list. People seem to like the lists. Thoughts just kept flooding to my mind. Thanks to the people that helped me with this one. Once again, I think that I have done all these things.

Writing lists like this can drag our sinful habits into the light and hopefully wake us up. Most people that read the last list seem to enjoy it and knew exactly what I was talking about and said they had done those things. But tonight I heard from people who asked questions like “does anyone actually think that way?” or “do you know anyone that actually does that.” Praise the Lord if you have no idea what I am talking about and have been fortunated enough to avoid this stuff.

Once again, I think this only offends us if we see ourselves in these things. Father, please continue to help us move from being just radical to radically loving. Help us to look like your Son.

1. Figure out exactly what Christianity must look like and then preach it as loud as possible. As people buy in, make sure that you let them know if they ever depart from your model they will lose their faith.

2. Read a biography and conclude that the person was like that all the time and try to live it out. If you ever take time to rest or don’t pray at least 5 hours a day, beat yourself up.

3. Decide you’re a prophet and figure out what is wrong in everyone else’s life. Share with everyone you know what is wrong with the common people you know in public settings. Use sentences like “If they would just do this” or “the reason bad things happen to them is because…”

4. View God as mean and annoyed with you. Treat everyone else the way you think God treats you.

5. Try to figure out what the most extreme thing you can do or say in every situation and then do it. If you ever fail consider yourself guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

6. Assume all the problems in your church are everyone else’s fault and not yours. Never consider how your church would be if everyone was like you.

7. If anyone shares about something you have never experienced consider yourself more mature and knowledgeable and completely write them off. Give them a negative look or make sure that they see the disapproving look on your face. Make sure to grab everyone you know afterwards and let them know how wrong this person was. Preach to them from your experience.

8. Assume that everyone that isn’t involved with your group or church isn’t very spiritual. Treat them like you are the expert and they know nothing.

9. Never praise anyone. Always focus on the negative…after all isn’t that how God treats people?

10. Two words…GUILT TRIPS!

11. If anyone ever leaves your church or group consider them apostate. Find out some new thing they believed and pinpoint that as the reason they aren’t “doing well”. Never allow anyone to believe that. Even though you don’t think people can lose their salvation, make an exception. Scratch that, they were probably never saved to begin with.

Of course, it’s not like I have done any of these things …

Man this sounds really mean. This is more about the extremism that too many people take on in Christianity. I have fallen victim to some of it and I hope you won’t. I guess it is only offensive if we see ourselves in any of these. Hopefully we can laugh about and then move on from overly judgmental attitudes towards ourselves and others.

By the way, I am all about us living radically for King Jesus, but not in these ways. I have seen myself and others spend too much time being “radical” and not enough time radically loving. May our Father help us all.

Patristic, Presbyterian, Puritan, Post-Modern, Pentecostal: Thoughts on the Sabbath

Ben Arbour wrote down some good thoughts on the Sabbath. As someone who is learning a lot about resting and the reality of burn out I really appreciate these thoughts:

We have to learn that in order to redeem the time, we must rest so that in our work we can truly redeem the time while we are working. Further still, we must learn that when we play, we are redeeming the time. Still further, if we do not allow ourselves to play, we are not truly redeeming the time.

The Sabbath is one of the most revolutionary things that God gave to the nation of Israel. He ordered them to take time off. While the rest (no pun intended) of the world worked 7 days a week, Israel got to enjoy this time to worship and recharge.

I have taken time to “rest” but have felt guilty for it, or that I could be spending my time more wisely. The problem comes when my soul begins to die. I may be able to continue to do the outward ministry of my “profession”, but on the inside I feel lifeless, tired, and disconnected from the Lord. I continue to teach and disciple, but I see the fruitfulness decline. When I take time out to rest and play it gives me a new energy in my soul to minister to and love people.

This resting and playing can take different forms, from playing a video game with a friend, watching a football game, discussing a book you have read or talking about theology. It is really just whatever you find to be genuinely restful and fun.

Matt Chandler once preached a sermon about the various festivals in the Old Testament and the harsh punishments that were to be carried out on those who violated them. He interpreted these commands as “Party or I will kill you.”

I hear all sorts of crazy stuff when talking to people about missions and the unreached. Please, please don’t say these things in front of me.

1. But Michael, there is a lot of work to be done here.

2. I was reading Concentric Circles of Concern and…

3. I think we’re all called to be missionaries. I am a missionary to my next door neighbor.

4. But won’t the 144,000 witnessed just finish the job after the rapture?

5. God is sovereign, it doesn’t matter what I do.

6. I’m just not called.

7. I don’t really want to.

8. Gospel for Asia says….

9. I think that America is the darkest place on the planet because…

10. It isn’t safe.

11. Israel…

Got anything else? I read where someone said the unique thing about blogs is the interaction between the blogger and the readers, so please comment away. If you don’t get one of them I can explain it.