The Person of Christ

For the Son of God, the incarnation meant a whole new set of relationships: with his father and mother; with this brothers and sisters; with his disciples; with the scribes, the Pharisees and Sadducees; the Roman soldiers and with lepers and prostitutes.  It was within these relationships that he lived his incarnate life, experiencing pain, poverty and temptation; witnessing squalor and brutality; hearing obscenities and the hopeless cry of the oppressed.  He lived not in sublime detachment or in ascetic isolation, but 'with us', as 'the fellow-man of all men', crowded, busy, harassed, stressed and molested.  No large estate gave him space, no financial capital guaranteed his daily bread, no personal staff protected him from interruptions and no power or influence protected him from injustice.  He saved us from alongside us."

-Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ

Decide This Doubt for Me

The Lord will happiness divine
On contrite hearts bestow;
Then tell me, gracious God, is mine
A contrite heart or no?

I hear, but seem to hear in vain,
Insensible as steel;
If aught is felt, 'tis only pain,
To find I cannot feel.

I sometimes think myself inclined
To love Thee if I could;
But often feel another mind,
Averse to all that's good.

My best desires are faint and few,
I fain would strive for more;
But when I cry, "My strength renew!"
Seem weaker than before.

Thy saints are comforted, I know,
And love Thy house of prayer;
I therefore go where others go,
But find no comfort there.

Oh make this heart rejoice or ache;
Decide this doubt for me;
And if it be not broken, break,
And heal it, if it be.

-William Cowper

Jesus

"Those who celebrate the mighty resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, have an awesome responsibility.  When we say, 'Alleluia! Christ is risen,' we are saying that Jesus is Lord of the world, and that the present would-be lords of the world are not.  When we sing, in the old hymn, that 'Judah's Lion burst his chains, and crushed the serpent's head,' are we ready to put that victory into practice? ...Are we ready to speak up for the truth of the gospel over the dinner table, and in the coffee bar, and in the council chamber?  Let's make no bones about it: if Easter isn't good news, then there is no good news.  But if it is - if it is true that Jesus Christ is risen indeed - then Easter day, and the Easter message, is the true sun which, when it rises, puts all other suns to shame."

-N.T. Wright, For All God's Wrath

"How was I to cross it?  If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof.  I wanted certainty.  I wanted to see him eat a bit of fish.  I wanted letters of fire across the sky.  I got none of these.  And I continued to hang on about the edge of the gap... It was a question of whether I was going to accept him - or reject him.  My God! There was a gap behind me as well!  Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble - but what of the leap to rejection?  There might be no certainty that Christ was God - but, by God, there was no certainty that he was not.  There was not to be borne, I could not reject Jesus.  There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me.  I turned away from it, flung myself over the gap towards Jesus."

-Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

Faith

"Nowhere is there a perfect faith, and therefore it follows that we are partly unbelievers.  Yet in His kindness God pardons us and reckons us as believers on account of our small portion of faith.  Meanwhile it is for us to shake off carefully the remnants of unbelief that remain within us, and fight against them and ask the Lord to correct them; and so often as we toil in this struggle we must flee to Him for succor.  If we consider aright what is given to each man, it will be very clear that those who excel in faith are rarest, those with a middling faith are few, and the most are endowed with only a small measure."

-John Calvin, Institute

"We are not saved because we have a strong subjective faith.  That is to focus the matter on us, and besides our faith is not strong.  It is weak and vacillating.  We are saved because of the promises of God made known to us in the pages of the Bible.  In other words, Christian faith is a Bible-based faith.  Or, to put it in still other words, we are saved not because of our faith but because of God's word.  Faith is merely receiving God's promises and believing them on the basis of God's character."

-James M. Boice, Two Cities, Two Loves

Good Friday

When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ my God! All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe, Spreads o’er His body on the tree; Then I am dead to all the globe, And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.

::

The following link is to a video depicting Christ on the cross by Mars Hill Church of Seattle.  It is graphic in nature; young children and those sensitive to violence should watch with discretion.  

http://www.marshillchurch.org/special/goodfriday08/default.aspx

::

Weakening Dollar Hurts Missionaries

I just ran across this article in the PCA's magazine ByFaith.  A possible recession in the US would continue to affect those of us that live "by faith" through the financial support of friends, family, and churches.  And while this is true, the reality is that all of our money comes from God.  It's his, not ours, not to hoard, but to share.

http://byfaithonline.com/page/pca-news/weakening-dollar-hurts-missionaries

The Greatest Cause in the World

"The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the treasure he is." -John Piper

Gandhi on Christians and the Bible

“If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.”

Proximate Justice

I've begun reading about proximate justice at Comment Magazine, published in part by Gideon Strauss and Steve Garber, and I was struck by what a reader said in response:

"Shaped as we are by a robust Kingdom vision, in which "sins and sorrows grow no more, nor thorns infest the ground," it can be tempting to become so forward-looking that we forget about the hard work necessary in the here and now."

prosperity gospel

Todo en Matachi es muy grande!

The phrase of the week was "Todo en Matachi es muy grande!"  Everything in Matachi is very big!!  In reality, nothing is... it's a tiny town of 3,000 with one paved road and 45 minutes from the nearest decent sized town.  It started as a joke but ended up challenging us to view the world with God's eyes.  Matachi is a small, nothing town but, Lord willing, great things will come from this town.  The week has really been wonderful and I'm blessed to have been here.  I look forward to returning to teach in the future.

Luciano, a student from Argentina.  As I had hoped, we befriended a rancher and rode his horse this afternoon.

Susie, a family friend and my translator, Luciano, and I after eating sweet and sour chicken.  Susie and I cooked the food that night and used skewers for chopsticks.  A great evening.

Teaching the Arabic script to the students.  I taught about 18 hours in four days; class topics ranged from communicating gospel truths through stories, the Arabic alphabet, and discipleship issues.

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Mexico to the 10/40

I'm in Matachi, Chihuahua, Mexico, for the week teaching a course on evangelism at Instituto de Movilizacion Misionera.  I have five students going through a two-year residential program before heading to the field, somewhere in the 10/40 window, for a minimum of two years. 

I spent Sunday in Chihuahua, the capital city, with the students, the director, and a long-time family friend (also my interpreter) who works for the missions organization that founded the school.  We attended 2 church services hoping to meet prospective students.  The first church service, at the most missions minded Methodist church in Mexico, lasted two hours.  "Es normal," I thought, we're in Mexico, church lasts longer.  I had no idea what we were in store for: a 3.5 church service that started at noon at one of the largest protestant churches in Chihuahua, including a 90 minute praise and worship session and a show and tell for a 6th grade Sunday school class.  We were hoping to sneak out right after the director spoke but the pastor asked us to stay to speak to people after the service. 

We drove the three hours to Matachi last night and passed by the largest Mennonite community in North America.  Apparently, during the 1920s a mass exodus of Mennonites from Canada arrived in Mexico.  The Mexican government assured that they would be left alone.  This is one of the most bizarre things I have ever encountered!  To think of a group of 80,000 Mexican-passport holding Mennonites living in the middle of Chihuahua, complete with beards and long dresses.

Classes began this morning.  A Mexican pastor who planned on teaching about church history didn't show up today so I might have to teach the entire six hours a day for the rest of the week.  I have a lot of prep work to finish but I'm looking forward to it.   I'm reading My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok and Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God's Unfailing Love by Jerry Bridges and I hope to finish both by the end of the week. I'm also planning on befriending  a rancher and riding some horses.  We'll see how that goes.

Missions as Fasting

"...I've always thought of missions as a fasting of many of the blessings in life.  When we normally fast - we abstain from food - something so seemingly essential to life - to remind us of what is even more essential - our relationship with Christ.  We fast because there is urgency of some other matter - more urgent than eating.  In missions, we fast the blessings of family, friends, and all the blessings and opportunities of life in the US - because there is something even more essential to life - our relationship to Christ whom we follow and seek to make known.  And we fast these blessings - because there is something more urgent than even our family and friends - the Gospel going to the perishing among the 2.5 billion who have little or no chance to hear the Gospel."

-Michael Oh