Enjoying the Rain

Location: Lunch break at work for a few more minutes, to be finished later somewhere else, hopefully today, on June 18th.

Today, as I pulled into my parking space at work, the rain came and began to pour. I carefully covered up my satchel since it had my computer in it, and walked to the building, getting pretty wet. You know, I enjoyed the rain. Do you ever enjoy the rain? Sometimes it feels so nice, sounds so pleasant. Is it not good to be alive?

This morning I was remembering recent years, especially some special days when I was in Romania. A year ago today, friends were visiting us there and the Lord told us to “be ready” in the morning. During breakfast we got a call that a foster girl had nowhere to go, and we began a wonderful week of full-time child-sitting. The year before, on this same day, M. and I got engaged to be married, while hiking in the mountains. Have I told you how wonderful our marriage is? It is a great delight!

Now the sun is out and reflecting off the roses. When it is like this, it is hard to remember the rain and the pain of days gone by. Somehow, so many of those challenges fade into the fond memories of delight and blessing.

Just last Saturday, for example, we had a small emergency when I accidentally stabbed my wrist with a steak knife. A call to 911 and five stitches later, it has become a memory. Though not a pleasant experience by any means, I hardly recall the pain as the Lord heals my wrist quickly and beautifully.

  

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this post yesterday, so now it is June 19th, again at my lunch break. It has been a pretty good day so far, with a mix of good and sad. For example, I had to do some reading for work, and I was able to take it outside and spend an half-hour reading in the gorgeous June weather. The trees and flowers and breeze seem so full of life! On the other hand, I was surprised to hear that a certain resident had passed away last night, and another will likely die today. In my work with elderly persons, people die nearly every week, if not every day.

So much of life is perspective. It makes all the different when you are working at your job. It makes all the difference in your marriage. It makes all the difference in how you process the news you hear. It makes all the difference when your light switch breaks. What is your perspective? How can we change our perspectives when necessary?

I have been asking myself this a lot lately in relation to living a life of joy and fullness and peace. Life necessarily includes work. Life on this earth comes with pain and death. How do we take it all in stride without hardening our hearts or withdrawing from the difficulties around us? 

What does true joy look like?

I have an idea, but this time, I am not going to answer that for you. Enjoy!

Have You Ever Been Moved By God?

Location: My front porch on a day off, June 6, at 12:30pm.

Have you ever been moved by God?

I am tired of people beating around the bush, and I am serious.  Have you ever been moved by God?

I am reading a book right now, that seems to have a lot of my own story in it: The Insanity of God, by Nik Ripken.  In this story, he tells of his work in war-torn, Muslim Somaliland (in Africa).  His sixteen-year-old son dies suddenly, and his Muslim colleague then walked (and hitch-hiked, etc.) for five days to come to the funeral in Nairobi, Kenya.  This Muslim man, upon his return to Somaliland, shared with the rest of the Muslim staff that he does not understand how the Christians at the funeral could know where this young man now is (sharing eternal life with Christ).  Then he asked why the followers of Jesus had not shared such truth with the people of Somaliland.  Why, indeed?

Yesterday, on the radio, during my seven-minute drive home from work, I heard an interview with one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square student protests of 1989, Chai Ling, who then came to America to search for the Truth.  Only after 20 years of life in America did she find Jesus, through the story of one of her own countrymen, (Brother Yun, I believe).  She asked why none of the American Christians told her about Jesus during those first 19 years!  Why didn’t they?

I am here to tell you that I have been moved by God.  Today in my house, reading Ripkin’s book, I melted into sobs as my Lord moved my heart.  I have been moved to travel the world, to places and cultures so foreign that I cannot clearly describe them to you.  I have been moved by God’s gentle Spirit alone in the night, or with my wife in a familiar, normal place.  I have been moved by my Father when I was on a high mountaintop, worshipping and exulting in the blessed life I have.  I have been moved by God when I questioned the very essence of God Himself, and who I am, and what I believe.  I have been moved by God during some of the best times in my life, and during some of the worst.

Yet to look at me, I look like an Average Joe.  Daily I have to refocus my attitude and put my hand to the grindstone.  Dishes need to be washed, rent must be paid, and the trash taken out.  In fact, I have come through some challenging seasons.  I am sitting on a porch in Franklin, Indiana, and if you pass our house while walking your dog, you may not notice that I am someone who has been moved by God!

So I am telling you clearly right now: God is real, powerful, and compassionate.  His heart-beat could be mistaken for someone calling Your Name.  If you have never been moved by God, cry out to Him now.  He is real.  The Jesus who died for me also died for you, and He rose from the dead to offer both of us the hope of new life, eternal life, abundant life.

I want to take away your excuse that no one ever told you, so I am telling you now.  If you have ears, please listen.  Jesus walked on this earth to reveal God the Father to you and me, and we are the objects of His affection, by grace, not merit.  No matter your background, you can have the certainty of His faithfulness to stand upon–not mine, not yours.  God is faithful and loving beyond our imagination.  He sends His Spirit to interpret His divinity to us in a way we can understand, morsel by morsel, glimpse by glimpse.

If you hear a whisper calling you, “Beloved,” whether you have heard it before or it is the first time, let yourself be moved by God.

If you have been moved by God, do not wait for people to notice, but tell them.  Tell them with your words; tell them with your life.  Tell them with your heart.

God moves.  Is He moving in you?

Granted

Location: My office in Franklin, Indiana, at 12:43pm on the 31st of May.

Another month has come and gone.

How was it?

Did you use the month wisely? How did you spend your time? These are questions I like to ask myself regularly, not to chastise myself, but to gauge where I am compared to where I want to be, and to try to take steps in the right direction.

Things have been getting steadily better from my point-of-view, though there is still much to be done. We are still playing catch up from previous months, but we are making headway.

Our marriage is fun and wonderful, worth every moment we invest in it. I pray that the Lord is glorified in our marriage, too–after all, it is His grace that holds us together! This same God continues to refine our hearts and our attitudes in our day-to-day lives, mine through my job, and M.’s through her work in our home. H. is growing and teething, and we thank the Lord for the good health that she has enjoyed. M. and I have been very healthy, too, despite a lot of illness at my work. As a family, we are still struggling to find our niche in the local Body of Christ, but we are fellowshipping with other believers whenever we can. I have now prayed and read some Bible passages with a coworker over lunch twice in the past two weeks, and last night I got to read and pray with a neighbor. We are trying to carve out time for leisure, too. M. has been planting some flowers and a few vegetables, and she also has been studying sign language. I have begun reading again, and I am trying to get back into sports a little. I do not really enjoy running, but I am looking forward to challenging myself tomorrow in a local race.

Last week, we did have a water main that broke, putting our whole town on a boil alert. It did not last more than a day, but it was enough to remind me how much we depend on water, and how quickly we could become desperate without it. In my life, we take it for granted, even though thousands of people around the globe spend a good portion of their day fetching drinking water.

I think it is the same with Jesus. We take Him for granted too often, even those of us who know Him well. It is an easy mistake to make–we make it with our spouses and our parents and our teachers and others, too. We take important people for granted, unintentionally. Yet God is the very source of our life, and Colossians tells us that the Son of God holds everything together. Only by the grace of my Father am I who I am, do I do what I am, do I take my next breath. Nevertheless, it is only when I start to imagine that God is far away from me that I start to remember how important He is.

Lord, You are more important than anything in my life, than life itself. Remain ever before me, and anchor my soul in You!

To be Wronged and Grateful

Location: The veranda at work on my lunch-hour, at 12:31pm on the 19^th of May.

What is important in life?

Currently, I work with persons who were born at least two generations before me; in the past, I worked with children and young people.  In each case, I try to learn from persons of other generations so that I do not someday finding myself learning an important lesson too late to put it into practice.  For example, did you thank God this morning that you were able to brush your teeth?  That you had teeth to brush?  That you remembered to brush your teeth?  That you could walk to and from the restroom?  That you could communicate your intentions to a family member nearby?  That you had a family member nearby?  That you had running water?

Maybe it sounds absurd, but I have lived in places where I did not have running water.  I have a daughter who is too young to communicate to me exactly what she is thinking or feeling.  I work with people who do not have teeth, or who do not have the ability to brush them, or the memory to remind them to do so.  I have friends in wheelchairs who cannot walk to the restroom, and I know persons without the arms or hands needed to hold a tooth brush.

A lot of bad things have been happening in the world, and the Bible says that it is only going to get worse.  Only by the grace of God does something happen to one person and not to the next.  I mused recently, though, about how easily we get upset or overly concerned about relatively small things, and how our attitude affects everything we do and are.  Most likely, in ten years, it will no longer matter that it rained on my parade.  That embarrassing moment will no longer seem so terrible.  My second place finish will be forgotten along with the entire competition.  One sleepless night will not spoil my life.  One missed bus will not destroy my future.

In fact, one of the most amazing things about God, in my opinion, is that He can take what is horrid and make it glorious.  Humans, at best, can avoid evil, or respond to evil, or fight evil, or forget evil, or maybe even forgive evil.  God can take what is evil and make it holy.  He can take what was intended for harm, and use it for good.

Have you ever been wronged?  Lately, it seems like my family and other people I talk to have been wronged more than usual.  Is it not easily to become furious or hurt, and to let your imagination veer onto a road of retaliation or revenge or setting the record straight?  We all clamor for justice!

Instead, though, I have been praying to expand my appreciation for blessings.  More accurately, I dare to be more grateful.  I am finding that there are millions of things EACH DAY that I should be thankful for, things that Christians persecuted for their faith cannot enjoy, things that someone less healthy than I must forfeit, things that God is using to make me more like Him.  Often they do not feel good or look good or sound good, but when I remember that God is working for my good and for His glory, I can praise Him.  What an awesome Father we have!

Thank You, Father, for doing what is best, even when we complain about it, criticize You for it, and despise it.  We are grateful for Your grace that You offer us in Jesus, through the power of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I Am Afraid So

Location: My office at 12:45pm on the 17^th of May.

Yes, this is a second post in the same day, though I may not actually post them both in the same day.  I have been thinking a lot lately, and I am trying to get back into writing more. 

Yesterday, I was off work and there was an attempted robbery not far from us at a pharmacy, and shots were fired.  I have also been thinking about the future, about knowns and unknowns.  We have also been in conversation and prayer with several couples who are engaged and soon to be married.  These and other situations have caused me to think about fear.

Fear is not of the Lord, except in the narrow context of “standing in awe and respect in front of the Living God.”  All other fear is anti-God, harmful, and destructive.  Fear causes us to lose self-control and allows our imaginations to scream out worse-case scenarios.  Fear causes us to spew gossip out of our mouths until it spreads panic like a plague.  It causes us to forget reason, to ignore counsel, and become tense and upset.  Fear is best left in the mud, to be trampled and disdained.

Easier said than done, I know.

Are you afraid?  Do you recognize fear when it whispers in your ear?  It often comes in disguise.

When I find myself bowing to fear, I need to re-focus.

• First, I need to look at my Lord instead of my fear.
• Second, I need to ask Him what is important in my life.
• Third, I need to let go of everything else, momentarily, and take a deep breath of His peace.
• Finally, I need to re-orient myself to His perspective, so that when I push the “play” button again and re-enter the game, I am following Him instead of careening wildly.

“Fear not, for I am with you,” says the Lord.

Do you believe Him?

You Be the Judge

Location: My office desk at work, at 12:30pm on the 17^th of May.

Am I judgmental?  Are you?

Lately, it seems that several people who know me fairly well have been suggesting that I am judgmental.  The reason I pose myself the question is not to take offense, but rather to remedy any problem there may be.  We all make judgments and discernments, and some are necessary.  Do I do it in a wrong way?  Do I do it too much?  Do I fail to communicate clearly when my intention is to build up and edify?

Please feel free to let me know if you find me judgmental.  I am praying about it, asking the Lord to search my heart and humble me.

In the past, I have struggled against the temptation to be critical, and I have worked hard to be less critical.  Most likely, I can still improve in that area.  My criticism usually is an unfiltered response that could have been more tactfully stated; however, I have learned that it comes from my honorable desire to see things become the best they can be.  I am not really a perfectionist, but I do want us as the Church to be intentional in bringing our Bridegroom glory.  Certainly my tongue has wounded people in the past and still lacks restraint at times, but ever since high school I have been consciously reigning in my wit and my words in order to speak in ways that encourage and edify.

I trust that our Lord’s grace is sufficient for making me a reflector of His glory.  May His beauty dwell in each of us beautifully and powerfully!

Lunch Hour

Location: My desk at work, during my lunch break (it is 12:23pm) on the 5^th of May.

As I think I mentioned, I finished my four-month correspondence course, doing a significant part of the work during my lunch breaks.  So as I have been trying to get back into some sort of routine of “real” life again, I was trying to figure out when I could write.  Why not during my lunch breaks?  So hopefully, I will be posting more frequently on my blog again.  Perhaps I will also manage to use my lunch hour to do other writing once again, and to start meeting with friends and co-laborers in Christ.

Yes, I enjoy conversing with people—not on that shallow chit-chat level that makes up 95% of our conversation—but on a heart-moving, world-impacting level.  Have you been challenged lately by what someone said to you?

Last night, M. and I were challenged by the pastor of a church we visited, who declared that you cannot be a person of faith if you have not walked faithfully through the “valleys” of life.  This made me think about my past and present, considering the highs and lows.  I have been challenged already by the circumstances of friends and Christians in different parts of the world, much worse than anything I have ever faced: A young pastor being tortured in solitary confinement in Iran because of his faith; a medical student who hopes to return to Pakistan to serve Christians who live under the threat of severe Muslim persecution; the Church in Nigeria, in which more Christians were killed last year than any other nation—excepting, perhaps, North Korea, statistics for which are not available due its closed borders.  Could I be faithful under torture, under threat of my house being burned or my church bombed, or in the relative oblivion of Communist work camps?  Can even I walk faithfully through the much less dangerous circumstances that face me at home and at work, challenging my joy and peace?

In addition to that, I have been thinking about our busy culture, after two conversations with two different people.  It is entirely counter-productive.  Let’s stop being busy.  It is not healthy, not effective, and not good.  Everyone feels this immense pressure to be busy, but it produces maddeningly few benefits.  Let’s walk slower, chew slower, respond slower, and be slower to make mistakes.  Like love, it is not something that happens to you; it is a choice.  Take your time, think about it, and decide to slow down.  Though I may be swimming upstream, this is a goal of mine.

Finally, God continues to work on me and in me.  However, I have been noticing that our Father has been working on some of you in the same ways.  Two examples in “real time” are in humility and intimacy.  Some of you, like me, have been praying for any pride in you to be crushed, destroyed, and extracted.  You want to be humble, gentle, beautiful.  That is a painful prayer to pray, with painful consequences.  Nonetheless, the humiliating discomfort merits the result, and in my life, this has led me to consider my roles in my family, my community, and my work.  I am realizing that my Lord is calling me, whom some of you know as a teacher and preacher and leader, to bow and discern how to serve my wife so that she shines more brightly.  I am seeing that at present, it is her ministry that is most effective, most important, and most relevant.  So my job as head of the household is to kneel and serve in everything I do, so that the Lord’s glory shines more easily and clearly through my wife.

The other is intimacy with God.  I just heard an extremely well-known, radically-loving preacher confess that in the midst of all he is, he found himself missing the intimacy with His Lord that he once had.  He started looking back over old sermons and spending more and more time in the Word of God, and the Lord has been fanning that flame of intimacy in him again.  In the same way, I have been hungering for more intimacy with my Lord.  Distractions and challenges have knocked me off my feet, and I am crawling desperately forward into the lap of my loving, protective Father.  Have I lost intimacy I once had with the Lord?  I do not know.  What I do know is that I want to know Him more.  I want to love Him more.  I want to spend more time with Him, to let His heartbeat resound in me.  I want to go deeper with my God, no matter the cost, no matter the challenge, no matter the road.  I want to go all the way.

Do you?  Do you ache for greater intimacy with your Creator?  Do you find pride whispering to your heart, even though no one else sees?  Do you find your world busy and spinning, leaving you dizzy and dazed as time flew by you mercilessly?  Do you empathize with persons not so different from you who are facing terribly difficult circumstances—far greater than anything you have ever imagined?

What are you going to do about it?  I bless you in the Name of Jesus.

Back in the Game!

Location: Our apartment in Franklin, Indiana, on the 28th of April, at 8:06pm.

Tonight we heard a sermon on the radio about “getting in the game.”  I have always cheered for the underdog.  I vaguely recall a movie, maybe Mary Poppins, in which a horse–not even present at the start of the race–enters the racetrack, comes from behind, catches the pack, and ends up winning the race!  Right now, that is how I feel.  We have just entered the racetrack, and we are still behind, but we are now in the race!  

The past several months have pushed us to our limits, if not beyond.  I am celebrating, because I just finished my job-related course, which took a significant amount of my free time.  H. is now sleeping through the night most of the time, which is also helping our sanity.  However, we have struggled to find our niche in the local Church, and the Lord has been humbling us through our Christian brothers and sisters.

So we have fallen behind on our correspondance and our social relationships, but we are determined to get back in the game.  Today I narrowed our email accounts to less than one hundred emails each, which is a start, and now I am blogging for the first time this month!  I am determined to get back in the saddle with our email writing and blogging.

We survived the culture shock we always face when visiting a department store to pick up some needed clothing items, and we finally picnicked with my mentor and his family on Saturday (it was their first time meeting our nine-month-old baby!).  Last Sunday we managed dinner with other friends we had not seen in a long time.  We also made contact with some friends and family members (in Chicago, New Jersey, Romania, Italy, and Spain) with whom we have not talked for a long while.  H. even got her first taste of ice cream!  The spring weather is starting to blossom, and a new day is dawning.  We are eager to engage life once more.

Thank you for all your prayers.  Our God is such a Romancer!  Our marriage is truly a delight!  We have been hearing marvelous stories from the mission field about the moving of God’s Spirit in the lives of people in every corner of the globe.  We have also heard from men and women like us, needing encouragement to be the sons and daughters of the Most High that they are, now that the blood of Jesus adopted them into His Father’s family.  We have another opportunity to teach via radio, and an interesting opportunity surfaced at work last Friday.  Besides, if I start writing again, people might start reading my blog again

However, “slow and steady wins the race.”  That is what I learned from “The Tortise and the Hare.”  We plan to sit quietly, letting the Lord perfect and sanctify our hearts and our lives, using us only if and where and when he wants to do so.  We are praying about the opportunities we have.  Not all are for us.  The Apostle Paul says that only he who competes according to the rules wins the race.  I will only run as the Lord leads, lest I run in vain.

I am tired of running.  I am tired of seeking the voice of God in the voice of other people.  It is time for me to wait upon the Lord again, to let Him renew me with strength, to mount upon wings as eagles by His grace, to run and not grow weary, to walk and not faint.

The Lord has brought us through a tough time.  Like the groundhog who sees his shadow, if I take my eyes off the Son of God, I am in danger of sinking back down into a hole, praying to reach the light at the end of the tunnel.  So now that we are looking out of the hole at the world around us, we peer with the eyes and heart of our Father, letting Him plan our course.  And when we run, you will know it!  There will be no stopping us!  You will see us blur past the scoffers and the distractions, striding lithely in the victory of redemption and grace.

May God get the glory!

Empty

 Location: Our apartment in Franklin, Indiana, on Good Friday, the 29th of March, 2013, at 4:56pm. 

On a sunny day-off, and three walks later, I finally gave into my desire to write. Usually it is one of the most ardent desires in my mind while remaining one of my lowest priorities. For example, you can see that though March was much less stressful for me than January and February, I still was unable to catch up on my writing and correspondence. I still have unopened mail in our apartment, I have not yet begun playing sports, and we still have not resolved the question of how to be best involved the local church. I have not yet finished the DVD-based course I have to take for work, and on top of work itself, that has left very little time for anything else in life.

So we are looking forward to the end of the course next month; by then we are hoping to have our feet back under us. Our God is good, though, and He is strong when we are weak and empty. As I mentioned, we have had a good March, and we are looking forward to all He has in store for us. Despite the demanding schedule, we have managed to see some of our friends and family. We also try to take one day of rest each week (today, for instance), which quickly becomes our favorite day of the week. The Lord uses that to bring us through the weekends I have to work, such as this weekend.

If you are wondering how I do it . . . don’t. The past several months have been a great challenge for me, and while this past month has been several times better, I have found myself grumbling to my Father. I have felt like I have been forced to invest my time in things that are not valuable from an eternal perspective. The more I let my attitude slip, the poorer I reflect the beauty of the glory of the Lord God. 

In fact, these challenges that I have faced all have come as answers to prayer! So how dare I complain about the very things about which I have prayed? I pray about God maturing my faith. I ask Him to do His will, to glorify His Name, no matter what it costs me. I ask Him to use me as He wants, where He wants and when He wants. So why complain when He does?

The Lord has been convicting me of this lately, most recently through Philippians 2. Paul writes in this letter to have the “same attitude as Christ Jesus” when Jesus surrendered His rights to divine privileges and took the form of a bond-servant, humbling Himself even to death (which is what we remember on Good Friday). If I am complaining, or if you are reading this, then we are not dead. That means that Jesus has suffered much greater challenges than we have. Paul calls it “emptying Himself.” The Lord showed me that if I empty myself, and put the interests of others before the interests of myself, then I have nothing about which to complain. Then, like Paul says, I can do all things without grumbling or disputing.

This is a tall order. The only way I can do it is to constantly empty myself of my desires, my entitlements, my privileges, and my rights, and let the Lord fill me with His patience and peace and joy and rest. Then His glory shines brightly, like light in the darkness of a crooked and perverse generation.

Sorry I have not written lately: God has been working on the writer. I pray that He has been working in Your heart, too. When was the last time you emptied yourself? I bless You in the Name of the Jesus who rose from the dead, leaving an empty tomb.

Surprise!

Location: Our house in Franklin, Indiana, at 9:02pm in the snowstorm on the 5th of March.

 

 

 

 

“Suspense, . . . suspense!”

That’s what my entertaining French friend used to always say on stage.  Well, I have kept you in suspense for a month by not writing.  I apologize to you and to me, because I have missed you, and I have missed writing!  Two previously important things in my life have been sadly lacking over the past several months: writing and sports.

(Is anything lacking in your life right now?)

I know that life changes when you get married and have children.  However, I am striving not to be someone who was a friend to all when he was single, and then drops off the radar screen after he has a family.  The tension is that as a man of God, my first priority is always my relationship with my Father; my first ministry is my wife, and my second is my daughter.  Careful attention to those priorities, along with a challenging schedule at work and a 90-hour work-related course I have to work on in my “free” time, and I find little time for leisure pursuits.  Even our regular church involvement has fallen far short of what we desire.

(Are you living life the way you want to live it?)

To tell you the truth, I have been struggling to balance it all in recent weeks, and I appreciate your prayers.  In addition to the stress of my work and my schedule and less contact with the Church, I have been struggling in my heart.  The news is full of tragedy as a meteor explodes over Russia, a man’s bedroom is swallowed by the earth opening up in Florida, Syrian refugees are tramatized to dumbness at the horror they have experienced, Egyptian and Iranian-American Christians are held and tortured for their faith, human-trafficking continues to plague the globe, children are abandoned in India, churches are bombed in Nigeria, and the list goes on.  The news is not the problem; the problem is that I am groaning in Franklin about seemingly gigantic petty challenges instead of knee-deep in God’s adventuresome work in the midst of the suffering world.

(Where are you in relation to God’s global work?)

Thank you for your prayers.  I am doing better, and the Lord is giving me His perspective.  I know that I am right here, right now, right where my Lord wants me.  I know that there are thousands of people in Franklin, Indiana who are going to hell if the Church does not get Her act together and boldly live the beautiful good news in a way the watching world can understand!  I know that the way I love my family is hugely important, and my work among families suffering from dementia is significant.  My zeal is returning, my schedule is improving, and spring is coming!

(Have you loved your family well today?)

So since I wrote last, not a whole lot noteworthy has happened, except for the surprise celebration of my mother’s 60th birthday (pictured above).  Tonight we gathered with some of my coworkers for dinner, we are in conversation with our friends in Romania about the Lord’s work there, and the Lord is also leading us into deeper involvement in His local Church once again.  So next time I write, be ready!

(What can you do today that would make today significant?)

Until then, ask yourself if your obedience is impacting the world around You.  Do you know that the Lord placed you right where you are to glorify His Name in you?  If you cannot believe that, ask Him.  If you want to change this world, humble yourself anew into right relationship with your Father, through His Son, Jesus Christ.  If you want to make a difference, love your family like there is no tomorrow . . . there might not be one!  If you want to live an adventure, surrender your day to the Lord each morning and give God the glory, and watch what happens!

(Will you surrender?)