For 1000 years, through dark and medieval ages, the church in Europe languished with a stark contrast between what the clergy could do in ministry, which was everything, with, on the other hand, what the laity could do in ministry, which was nothing. Just like the nominal folk religion in Maluku, lay people were assumed to have nothing to offer.
Fortunately, over the last 500 years many Biblical perspectives have been restored, starting with the priesthood of every believer, which is that every believer is able to approach God directly without the agency of an ordained priest. When God takes a depraved sinner and creates in them a new spirit, making them a new genus of being, He makes them 1) siblings of Jesus and 2) incarnations of the Trinity. Every believer has a double-right to enter into the holiest Presence of God because every believer is a sibling High Priest with Christ and every believer is one with God.
But Jesus was also King, which office, through God's Presence living in them, God the Son also lives out through every believer. As the Son lives through us we manifest His kingship. Paul writes that we have been seated with Christ on His throne ruling over the universe. Christ shared his kingly authority with 82 of his disciples even before His death. What's more, He also taught that greater things we would do than did He, when God's Presence came to live in every believer. Even now, just like Jesus had, we have His authority as princes and princesses in His royal family to cast out demons, heal, and perform other supernatural signs of God's loving Presence.
It is really kind of amazing that the truth of the Son as Prophet living through His Body has been for so long muted and dormant. Yet the evidence is undeniable that God is channeling the Son's prophetic ministry through many believers today already, and He wants to do the same through every other believer as well. As Paul said, “Passionately yearn that you may ALL (every believer) prophesy”. (1st Cor. 14:1)
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
New Years 2012 Prayer with Fasting Report
I decided to do a 72 hour fast and prayer time in the first week of 2012. I initially just invited a couple friends to join me, friends whom I knew to be yearning for a deeper move of God in their lives. But then I thought I may as well send out an invitation to a slightly broader group of relatives and friends, ministry colleagues, old Bible college alumni and Facebook friends.
Eventually about 30 people from Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Weyburn, Regina, Moose Jaw, Calgary, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops, Cranbrook, Grand Forks, Chilliwack, Langley, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Jakarta and Maluku fasted at different levels and prayed at the same time.
We were a bit shocked but of course very thankful how soon and powerfully God showed up. The first night of fasting with prayer the 10 or so people praying in Indonesia in two different provinces simultaneously (including myself) experienced the amazing sweet presence of God to the point that most were unable to stand and there was much laughter and supernatural joy for about 2 hours.
But emotional experiences are not the point or goal and I feel this initial phenomena was intended to help us persevere regardless of any enjoyable bits. So regardless of the initial fireworks, I am actually much more happy with how much praying I was enabled to do during the 72 hours. While people sent me some prayer requests, as I began praying for them I feel I received unexpected alternate issues to pray for them as well. ( I am wary of interference from my own imagination however so for now I'll just wait and see how much was accurate). When I would receive a new image or issue to pray for it was accompanied by a wave of God's presence inducing euphoria/elation/ecstasy and I laughed till my stomach hurt.
I hope that the addition of fasting to our prayer lives becomes a weekly habit. Even if it is just one meal every week, or get up to pray a few hours before breakfast, I know God will honor our fumbling baby steps far abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.
Eventually about 30 people from Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Weyburn, Regina, Moose Jaw, Calgary, Prince George, Williams Lake, Kamloops, Cranbrook, Grand Forks, Chilliwack, Langley, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Jakarta and Maluku fasted at different levels and prayed at the same time.
We were a bit shocked but of course very thankful how soon and powerfully God showed up. The first night of fasting with prayer the 10 or so people praying in Indonesia in two different provinces simultaneously (including myself) experienced the amazing sweet presence of God to the point that most were unable to stand and there was much laughter and supernatural joy for about 2 hours.
But emotional experiences are not the point or goal and I feel this initial phenomena was intended to help us persevere regardless of any enjoyable bits. So regardless of the initial fireworks, I am actually much more happy with how much praying I was enabled to do during the 72 hours. While people sent me some prayer requests, as I began praying for them I feel I received unexpected alternate issues to pray for them as well. ( I am wary of interference from my own imagination however so for now I'll just wait and see how much was accurate). When I would receive a new image or issue to pray for it was accompanied by a wave of God's presence inducing euphoria/elation/ecstasy and I laughed till my stomach hurt.
I hope that the addition of fasting to our prayer lives becomes a weekly habit. Even if it is just one meal every week, or get up to pray a few hours before breakfast, I know God will honor our fumbling baby steps far abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.
Prophecy Books
I read the following books on prophecy over the last couple months to try to learn a bit how to be more sensitive to the Lord's voice on a daily basis.
I was a hard skeptic about supernatural perception and healing (except for my own mystical experiences with God of course!) until I was invited to an evangelical Christian prophecy seminar in the summer of 1997 in Regina and was startled awake by the cold water of PROOF spraying in my face. As an eye-witness and recipient of prophecy in action I could not deny it any more than deny gravity.
So I really appreciated the first books in my list, “Growing in the Prophetic” by Mike Bickle, “You May All Prophesy” by Steve Thompson and “Extraordinary Power for Ordinary Christians” by Eric Tammaru a former beat cop. They start from the perspective of the antagonistic doubter and then walk you through some powerful evidence in baby steps then get into their majority content of practical how-to. One other reason Bickle's work is very valuable is because he writes from the perspective of a pastoral administrator, not a prophet, so there's lots of practical advice (and stories!) that will be helpful to pastors not comfortable with, yet reluctantly open to, the prophetic. Tammaru is the most accessible with LOTS of stories but very short. If you find reading to be work then start with him.
I was a hard skeptic about supernatural perception and healing (except for my own mystical experiences with God of course!) until I was invited to an evangelical Christian prophecy seminar in the summer of 1997 in Regina and was startled awake by the cold water of PROOF spraying in my face. As an eye-witness and recipient of prophecy in action I could not deny it any more than deny gravity.
So I really appreciated the first books in my list, “Growing in the Prophetic” by Mike Bickle, “You May All Prophesy” by Steve Thompson and “Extraordinary Power for Ordinary Christians” by Eric Tammaru a former beat cop. They start from the perspective of the antagonistic doubter and then walk you through some powerful evidence in baby steps then get into their majority content of practical how-to. One other reason Bickle's work is very valuable is because he writes from the perspective of a pastoral administrator, not a prophet, so there's lots of practical advice (and stories!) that will be helpful to pastors not comfortable with, yet reluctantly open to, the prophetic. Tammaru is the most accessible with LOTS of stories but very short. If you find reading to be work then start with him.
After you read those you might want to try “Prophetic Evangelism” by Sean Smith. This guy is a fiery African-American preacher and it sure comes through in his writing. You'll have to bite your tongue here and there at his creativity with English (interesting grammar and unfamiliar terminology), but it is worth it to press through because he has some very practical cut-to-the-quick principles, practices and guides to prayer for the novice. He also includes a lot of gripping stories.
That leaves the more scholarly, thicker and most useful books; “Developing Your Prophetic Gifting” by Graham Cooke, and “Prophets and Personal Prophecy” and “Prophets Pitfalls and Principles” by Dr. Bill Hamon. I'll talk about Hamon's stuff first. These are the 1st and 3rd volumes of a series. I didn't read the 2nd volume because it was too general for my purposes, and then I found that Dr. Hamon gave a synopsis of it anyway in vol. 3 which I appreciated because then I realized I hadn't missed anything not reading vol. 2.
You may find yourself pausing at a couple of Dr. Hamon's eschatological and ecclesiological positions, but then again he doesn't claim to be a Biblical scholar, rather a down-to-earth practitioner of spiritual gifts. So just set those few theological curios aside and tune in to the rubber-meets-the-road practicalities. Really stuffed with solid, practical practices from like 30 or 40 years of non-stop full time ministry in the gifts of the Spirit. His ideas of how prophets and pastors should work together should spark some thinking in the reader who is a pastor wondering how to manage church governance with prophets operating.
The last book on my list, “Developing Your Prophetic Gifting” by Graham Cooke, is the most thorough, well-written and organized. It could really suit for a 1st year Bible college text. If you only read one or two on this list, I would have to recommend Bickle's and Cooke's books, in that order. But its up to you.
Addendum: I also found a very useful old book by a doctor professor from Fuller Seminary named John Wimber. The book is called “Power Evangelism”. If you don't like reading much (hmm well then I guess you may not have made it till here!), take heart because this was made into a video series which your church secretary should easily be able to order in for you to watch. You might even be able to borrow it! (hmmm there should be a unified database of church libraries with interlibrary loaning) Well anyway I really liked Wimber's approach because he came at it scientifically as a respected academic. I believe the Vineyard denomination came out of his work.
That leaves the more scholarly, thicker and most useful books; “Developing Your Prophetic Gifting” by Graham Cooke, and “Prophets and Personal Prophecy” and “Prophets Pitfalls and Principles” by Dr. Bill Hamon. I'll talk about Hamon's stuff first. These are the 1st and 3rd volumes of a series. I didn't read the 2nd volume because it was too general for my purposes, and then I found that Dr. Hamon gave a synopsis of it anyway in vol. 3 which I appreciated because then I realized I hadn't missed anything not reading vol. 2.
You may find yourself pausing at a couple of Dr. Hamon's eschatological and ecclesiological positions, but then again he doesn't claim to be a Biblical scholar, rather a down-to-earth practitioner of spiritual gifts. So just set those few theological curios aside and tune in to the rubber-meets-the-road practicalities. Really stuffed with solid, practical practices from like 30 or 40 years of non-stop full time ministry in the gifts of the Spirit. His ideas of how prophets and pastors should work together should spark some thinking in the reader who is a pastor wondering how to manage church governance with prophets operating.
The last book on my list, “Developing Your Prophetic Gifting” by Graham Cooke, is the most thorough, well-written and organized. It could really suit for a 1st year Bible college text. If you only read one or two on this list, I would have to recommend Bickle's and Cooke's books, in that order. But its up to you.
Addendum: I also found a very useful old book by a doctor professor from Fuller Seminary named John Wimber. The book is called “Power Evangelism”. If you don't like reading much (hmm well then I guess you may not have made it till here!), take heart because this was made into a video series which your church secretary should easily be able to order in for you to watch. You might even be able to borrow it! (hmmm there should be a unified database of church libraries with interlibrary loaning) Well anyway I really liked Wimber's approach because he came at it scientifically as a respected academic. I believe the Vineyard denomination came out of his work.
Happy reading, and trying some stuff!
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Luke 11:5-13
Well I couldn't say for sure but I guess that consistency has recently born fruit in the decision to fast and pray for 3 days in the first week of the new year. I have also been reading a bunch of different books (some not that good!) on tuning in to God's leading on a daily basis, especially in order to minister His wonderful loving Presence to others. So I guess filling my thoughts with that stuff as well inspired me to do this prayer-with-fasting.
I was very pleased when about 17 people have now agreed to join together to fast and pray for up to 72 hours (different folks with different types and levels of fasting depending on their ability). People from Regina, Prince George, Moose Jaw, Cranbrook, Jakarta and Maluku.
So I made a Facebook group called:
Luke 11:5-13
This is for members to post the things they are currently praying for so we can join together. And if they get some sort of message they feel is from the Lord they can post that too.
I was very pleased when about 17 people have now agreed to join together to fast and pray for up to 72 hours (different folks with different types and levels of fasting depending on their ability). People from Regina, Prince George, Moose Jaw, Cranbrook, Jakarta and Maluku.
So I made a Facebook group called:
Luke 11:5-13
This is for members to post the things they are currently praying for so we can join together. And if they get some sort of message they feel is from the Lord they can post that too.
Monday, January 2, 2012
How to Develop a Good Prayer Habit
I have been slowly working away at developing a more consistent prayer life. I have hit on some techniques that I guess must be helping. Problem is when my alarm goes off at 4 or 5 am the temptation is just too strong to just turn it off and roll over and go back to sleep till 7.
The first key is to go to bed soon enough. How important are the tv shows, internet surfing, YouTube, Facebook and computer games? So I try to get into bed by 9:30 to be sleeping by 10pm so I can get a good 6 hours of sleep in by 4am. So I set two alarms, one very quite one in my bedroom and one very loud one in the living room. I ensure the time on the two clocks is synched and then set the quiet one in my bedroom for 3:55 (in the village) or 4:55 am (in the city), and the loud one out in the living room for 5 minutes later. I put my clothes in a pile to easily pick up in the dark and carry out into the living room. I get dressed next to the loud alarm and turn it off. After a few weeks of this my body learns to wake up a minute or two before the first alarm so I am not jolted nastily awake by the alarm. By the time I get to the far alarm I am sufficiently awake and far away from the bed that I can resist going back to bed because I have remembered how awesome it is when God intervenes!
The other thing I got into now is not having a coffee and bite to eat when I get up. So I get a 2 hour fast every weekday with my morning prayer time.
The first key is to go to bed soon enough. How important are the tv shows, internet surfing, YouTube, Facebook and computer games? So I try to get into bed by 9:30 to be sleeping by 10pm so I can get a good 6 hours of sleep in by 4am. So I set two alarms, one very quite one in my bedroom and one very loud one in the living room. I ensure the time on the two clocks is synched and then set the quiet one in my bedroom for 3:55 (in the village) or 4:55 am (in the city), and the loud one out in the living room for 5 minutes later. I put my clothes in a pile to easily pick up in the dark and carry out into the living room. I get dressed next to the loud alarm and turn it off. After a few weeks of this my body learns to wake up a minute or two before the first alarm so I am not jolted nastily awake by the alarm. By the time I get to the far alarm I am sufficiently awake and far away from the bed that I can resist going back to bed because I have remembered how awesome it is when God intervenes!
The other thing I got into now is not having a coffee and bite to eat when I get up. So I get a 2 hour fast every weekday with my morning prayer time.
I am back
Our internet was out of commission in Babar Islands for 2 months so I couldn't post. We came back on line on November 27th! Then Christmas happened. But one of my resolutions for the New Year is to write on the blog more frequently. I am also going to make it more reflect a journal and current events in my life and ministry. I'll be doing the occasional devotional item still, but will definitely try to relate the weekly goings on in the Babar Islands more. But look at the last post from me earlier today. Hope you get something useful out of it.
Temptation is a Personal Attack
Don't take it personally? You had bloody well better take temptation personally. Interpersonally in fact. If you downplay the constant stream of messages to you from the Deceiver, you have swallowed their biggest and best lie.
They want you to blame yourself for being a screw-up, for just being tempted, for "thoughts" "just occurring". They want you to dismiss their presence and influence. They don't want you to know they are constantly whispering lies to you.
So wake up! Open your eyes and your ears! Temptation is an external attack on you from demons who want to kill you, destroy you and steal every good blessing God has intended to lavish upon you.
Do not get sucked into blaming yourself for being depraved. God gave you a new spirit. You are a sibling of the second Adam, with a new spirit newly breathed into you by God Himself. With this new spirit God gave you one ability, and one alone:
So wake up! Open your eyes and your ears! Temptation is an external attack on you from demons who want to kill you, destroy you and steal every good blessing God has intended to lavish upon you.
Do not get sucked into blaming yourself for being depraved. God gave you a new spirit. You are a sibling of the second Adam, with a new spirit newly breathed into you by God Himself. With this new spirit God gave you one ability, and one alone:
- to enter and stay in His presence and never leave,
- to cling to Him constantly,
- to turn to Him for help every second.
Just do it!
Saturday, September 10, 2011
We need some freakin monsters on our side!
God's stories being spoken out orally is not enough. That is great that live humans are telling Bible stories.
But it needs to be bathed in suicidal unconditional surrender, in desperate, groaning prayer, in broken-hearted fasting and in crazy chance-taking to do signs and wonders.
Bible stories are just squiggles of carbon on dried out tree pulp. Just inanimate records of once live, embodied revelation. The original embodied and lived event is the real revelation. Bible stories whether oral or written are just abstract representations, fossils. What God wants His Word in the Church to do is to bring these fossils back to life in the here and now. Like Jurassic Park. We need some freaking monsters on our side! The stories are just computer code. We are the massive, slumbering Transformers that run on that code!
But it needs to be bathed in suicidal unconditional surrender, in desperate, groaning prayer, in broken-hearted fasting and in crazy chance-taking to do signs and wonders.
Bible stories are just squiggles of carbon on dried out tree pulp. Just inanimate records of once live, embodied revelation. The original embodied and lived event is the real revelation. Bible stories whether oral or written are just abstract representations, fossils. What God wants His Word in the Church to do is to bring these fossils back to life in the here and now. Like Jurassic Park. We need some freaking monsters on our side! The stories are just computer code. We are the massive, slumbering Transformers that run on that code!
The Biblical events need to be re:incarnated, revealed in our flesh afresh, anew in current contextualized embodied, acted revelation. The stories of Jesus and apostles performing signs and wonders like casting out demons and healing the sick and prophesying what they could not possibly know naturally, are not picturesque parables to teach some sublime spiritual truths: they are models and patterns for how we are supposed to replicate their ministry NOW, once again being filled with His empowering Presence to heal, to point out our need for God and reconcile the masses to God, only as His awesome Presence moves, only by the agency of His unique incarnation, Jesus.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Godless Ghosts (cont'd)
Recently I wrote on Pascal's wager, which goes like this: “If there is no God and you live for Him, then when you die (and all consciousness and memory of whatever you did in your life vanishes, so whether you sin or serve all is forgotten as if it never happened), you have lost nothing. If there is a God however and you reject Him, then you will have lost everything”
Problem is of course Pascal was thinking in a totally Christian environment, so the god in his wager he assumed to be the Christian God. But Pascal's wager could work with a variety of god's without telling you which one was the right god, so you could live your life for god, but the wrong god, and you lose anyway.
And now of course it is very common for people to believe in ghosts, an afterlife, extra sensory perception and miracles with NO god. With multiple universes and dimensions with multiple conflicting laws of nature possible, they like to think anything is possible and nothing is explainable, or that everything miraculous is attributable to unknown, yet-to-be-discovered natural laws.
And that's exactly the kind of atheist I was. No arguments or rationale convinced me that there is a God and that Jesus is the only way to truly know God. I was not convinced by argumentation about fossils and floods. No, I was convinced by a spiritual revelation of God's loving presence channeled through a Christian explaining and qualifying it as in and through the name of Jesus alone. This is the kind of evidence the world needs now. They need to experience God and the gifts of His spirit directly through Christian agents who verbally qualify it as in and through the name of Jesus alone. And that is why we need revival with signs and wonders accompanying.
Hit and Run
In the city of Tual, Maluku, Indonesia I got on a minivan bus at the side of the road when there's this loud bang and clattering right by the minivan and I look out and there is an old man of about my age laying face down in the middle of the street obviously just knocked down by this motorbike which is also laying down beside him and the driver as well crawling out from underneath the bike! Then some people rush up and help the old pedestrian to his feet as the motorbike rider also stands up staring in shock and dread at the old guy. Then our minvan driver slowly pulls away from the curb into the night and some random guy out of the crowd runs up to the scene and punches the side of the minivan cause he thinks the minivan was involved! Suddenly I am aware of a possible nasty scene developing with a mob gathering accusing the bus driver of involvement, and with us in the middle of it all as easy marks to blame it all on and pay everybody compensation! But before these thoughts could even solidify in my mind or say anything the driver had already eased away wisely getting us out of there. Now I understand why people do that here!
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Imagine No Religion
Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and all North Africa and the Mediterranean were Catholic and Orthodox lands up till the 600's. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Justinian555AD.png)
About the beginning of the 600's the Muslims started conquering and subjugating these Christian lands, forcing conversions. The Muslim empire continued conquering and expanding into Christian lands for 500 years, that is from the 600's through the 700's, the 800's, the 900's and the 1000's. Finally in 1096, after 500 years of losses to Muslim expansion, the Catholic nobility of Europe decided to fight back and try to liberate the Catholic and Orthodox lands now occupied by Islamic forces.
In general the Catholics lost and the Muslims won. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Mediterranean_1450_.svg)
While parts of the Balkans were regained along with Spain eventually, yet descendants of the Muslim invaders still occupy parts of the Balkans to this day, and the eastern part of Orthodox Greece and part of Cyprus is still occupied by Muslim invaders. The Chirstian majorities of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Arabia and Egypt and all North Africa were mostly forced to convert to Islam. Islamic traders, missionaries and armies were then free to expand from country to country further and further afield; West all across North Africa to Morocco and across to crush all of Christian Spain, ever East along the coasts of Asia as far as China and on into the Pacific, and South along Africa's East coast deep into the Southern hemisphere as far as Madagascar.
The mainly Catholic response to Muslim imperialism, now popularly called The Crusades, lasted around 200 years. This belated Catholic resistance to 500 years of Muslim expansion into and conquest of Christian lands, and the Muslim response that crushed the Crusades, resulted in between 200,000 and 1.5 million deaths on both sides over 200 years.
But squabbles between the world's great religions really has nothing over the record of modern athiest states. Just as Europe's Catholic nobility finally fought back after 400 years of Muslim invasions of Christian lands, so also when atheist Nazi Germany attacked and occupied Catholic Poland in 1939, the Poles and their allies fought back, immediately drawing Christian England, Canada and Australia into the 2nd WW.
For the record:
Soviet revolution: killed 9 million
Soviet forced starvation: killed 4 million 1921-23
Stalinist Russia: killed 20 million
Nazi Germany:
in death camps killed 12 million
outside camps killed 54 million
Communist China: killed 60 million
Total Deaths Attributable
to Athiest states: 156 million killed
John Lennon sang “Imagine no religion.” We don't need to. It is too clear where athiesm leads.
About the beginning of the 600's the Muslims started conquering and subjugating these Christian lands, forcing conversions. The Muslim empire continued conquering and expanding into Christian lands for 500 years, that is from the 600's through the 700's, the 800's, the 900's and the 1000's. Finally in 1096, after 500 years of losses to Muslim expansion, the Catholic nobility of Europe decided to fight back and try to liberate the Catholic and Orthodox lands now occupied by Islamic forces.
In general the Catholics lost and the Muslims won. (See map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Mediterranean_1450_.svg)
While parts of the Balkans were regained along with Spain eventually, yet descendants of the Muslim invaders still occupy parts of the Balkans to this day, and the eastern part of Orthodox Greece and part of Cyprus is still occupied by Muslim invaders. The Chirstian majorities of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Arabia and Egypt and all North Africa were mostly forced to convert to Islam. Islamic traders, missionaries and armies were then free to expand from country to country further and further afield; West all across North Africa to Morocco and across to crush all of Christian Spain, ever East along the coasts of Asia as far as China and on into the Pacific, and South along Africa's East coast deep into the Southern hemisphere as far as Madagascar.
The mainly Catholic response to Muslim imperialism, now popularly called The Crusades, lasted around 200 years. This belated Catholic resistance to 500 years of Muslim expansion into and conquest of Christian lands, and the Muslim response that crushed the Crusades, resulted in between 200,000 and 1.5 million deaths on both sides over 200 years.
But squabbles between the world's great religions really has nothing over the record of modern athiest states. Just as Europe's Catholic nobility finally fought back after 400 years of Muslim invasions of Christian lands, so also when atheist Nazi Germany attacked and occupied Catholic Poland in 1939, the Poles and their allies fought back, immediately drawing Christian England, Canada and Australia into the 2nd WW.
For the record:
Soviet revolution: killed 9 million
Soviet forced starvation: killed 4 million 1921-23
Stalinist Russia: killed 20 million
Nazi Germany:
in death camps killed 12 million
outside camps killed 54 million
Communist China: killed 60 million
Total Deaths Attributable
to Athiest states: 156 million killed
John Lennon sang “Imagine no religion.” We don't need to. It is too clear where athiesm leads.
Street People Receive Knighthood
Avoiding things that can harm you is perfectly natural. Perfectly.
Ancient Hebrew tradition has a proverb warning young Israelite men to avoid loose women. But Jesus did the opposite. He chatted with a woman of bad reputation and in the process transformed her into a saint.
Ancient Hebrew tradition commanded avoiding lepers. But Jesus did the opposite, instead reaching out His hand and touching a leper and in the process healing him.
If you believe that Jesus is God's unique incarnation and that there is restoration with God through no other name, then you have the right and ability to bask inside and incarnate God's powerful Presence, the same Presence that raised up Jesus to life from the dead. But you must be willing to go against conventional wisdom.
Whom did you avoid last week?
Seriously. Think about it.
An annoying relative? A bore? A street person scrounging for bottles? Someone who hurt you?
Don't trust in the approval of the beautiful, the influential, the talented and strong.
If you believe that Jesus is God's unique incarnation and that there is restoration with God through no other name, then you have the right and ability to bask inside and incarnate God's powerful Presence, the same Presence that raised up Jesus to life from the dead. But you must be willing to go against conventional wisdom.
Whom did you avoid last week?
Seriously. Think about it.
An annoying relative? A bore? A street person scrounging for bottles? Someone who hurt you?
Don't trust in the approval of the beautiful, the influential, the talented and strong.
Trust rather in God's approval. He wants you to go love the poor and the weak.
Go against society. Cross the room. Walk away from the cool, the smart and the rich and rather go spend time with the marginalized. And God's loving Presence through you will transform them before your eyes into angels, your royal siblings.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Godless Ghosts
Yesterday I posted on Pascals wager. I knew that it was flawed even before I posted it. Problem is, that kind of logic might have worked with a lot of Westerners 50 years ago, but now many people believe in an afterlife WITHOUT God. I myself was one of these.
If one meets someone interested in this kind of discussion, one might tighten the focus and talk about the unique and exclusive claims of Jesus. All other world-class faiths allow other ways. If you are a good Christian, you can still reach nirvana, according to the Hindu faith. The same goes for Islam and Buddhism and countless folk beliefs.
Jesus said however that there is no other way to be happy in the after life except in submission to and trust in himself alone.
So if Jesus is wrong, and you follow him, it doesn't matter whether you follow Christianity or some other faith or even a religion, because the particular tenets are not important to the other faiths but what is important to them is that you are a good person. (Bad people need not apply).
But if Jesus is right that he alone is God in the flesh and that trusting him is the only way, then it would be stupid to say he was wrong and go off and follow some other faith.
So to update Pascal's wager, if Jesus is wrong and you live a good life, then it wouldn't matter what faith you follow. And if there were no God it wouldn't matter how you had lived. But if Jesus' claims are true then it is imperative for your eternal welfare that you allow him to love and forgive you, adopt you as his child into his big family, and surrender to his loving help to live his way.
If one meets someone interested in this kind of discussion, one might tighten the focus and talk about the unique and exclusive claims of Jesus. All other world-class faiths allow other ways. If you are a good Christian, you can still reach nirvana, according to the Hindu faith. The same goes for Islam and Buddhism and countless folk beliefs.
Jesus said however that there is no other way to be happy in the after life except in submission to and trust in himself alone.
So if Jesus is wrong, and you follow him, it doesn't matter whether you follow Christianity or some other faith or even a religion, because the particular tenets are not important to the other faiths but what is important to them is that you are a good person. (Bad people need not apply).
But if Jesus is right that he alone is God in the flesh and that trusting him is the only way, then it would be stupid to say he was wrong and go off and follow some other faith.
So to update Pascal's wager, if Jesus is wrong and you live a good life, then it wouldn't matter what faith you follow. And if there were no God it wouldn't matter how you had lived. But if Jesus' claims are true then it is imperative for your eternal welfare that you allow him to love and forgive you, adopt you as his child into his big family, and surrender to his loving help to live his way.
Friday, July 1, 2011
A Wager of Galactic Proportions
A wise man (Blaise Pascal) once said something like this:
If God doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter how we live. The only meaningful record of our lives, our memories, would be completely obliterated in death.
Whether we love or hate Him, pretend He doesn't exist, do good or evil;
Whether you starve to death at age 2 or live in luxury till 90;
Without a God,
All would be erased when the maggots ate our brains.
All memory of our lives disappears at death,
All manner of lives lived,
All becomes meaningless nothing: we might as well have never existed.
All disappears exactly as if it had never happened.
However, if I obstinately choose my own selfish way, and He does exist, I will have lost everything for eternity.
Therefore I will choose to love Him, because if in the end all memory of my life is lost, I would have lost nothing. But if He exists, I gain everything.
Friday, June 17, 2011
A couple weeks ago on Babar island I took my motorbike on the trail to Tela to see how passable the trail was before dragging along Kathy. I came to one narrow log bridge. There was a flat rock filling a pothole smack in the middle of the trail, right at the start of the bridge. I had to drive right over it. But as I gave it a bit of gas, the back wheel slipped sideways on the slippery rock, pointing the bike off to the left. At the same time the rear knobby tire grabbed onto the rough rock on the side and, well, I shot off the edge of the bridge. The bike fell straight down with a flip 'n twirl somersault and then whumped the stony creek bed, while I was launched 4 or 5 meters and landed on a big boulder.
Slow mo replay: As the bike went left off the bridge, the front wheel dropped off the edge, then the engine hit the edge of the bridge and forward motion abruptly transferred into a somersault, the whole bike pivoting over where the engine was grabbing the edge of the bridge. The bike pivoted in a cartwheel and I was catapulted into space. But my weight and fall trajectory at the same time tipped the bike into a left ward fall so it flipped lengthwise and sideways at the same time. It just happened to be in a laying down position as it slammed into the stony creek bed, the axles pointing at the sky.
I vaguely remember doing some fancy foot work and hand placements as I myself made contact with the creek bed, intentionally rolling into a somersault to lessen the impacts. You can bet I thanked God I was thrown clear. I only got a few scrapes, wrenched my back, burned my ankle on the muffler and got some pancake-sized bruises on my knee and wrist.
As I lay on my back in the water writhing and screaming for a second or two, I was at the same time aware that this display was futile and I'd better get my backpack and bike out of the water before they were water-damaged. Whimpering, I immediately struggled to my feet again and limped over to the bike to stand it up. Fortunately no water went up its tail pipe. The stainless steel tail pipe was now all dimpled like from hail damage, from slamming into the stones of the creek bed.
So now I had the bike nicely standing upright, parked down in the creek bed and no one for miles and no way to get it out because the creek banks were too steep. I climbed up out of the creek, took off my soaking wet shirt and layed it on a bush to dry. The sun was warm and dried me quickly. Calming down I realized I could make a ramp of rocks to walk the bike out. I went back down into the creek and started gathering head sized rocks to build a ramp. But then some other motorcyclers came and stopped to help and so we just lifted the bike straight up onto the edge of the bridge, and my ramp building was abandoned.
I pressed on to Tela but didn't feel so good for some reason. The back forks were really bent so the rear tire was rubbing on the fender, making a burning rubber smell and a loud growling sound that caused some discussion amongst the gardeners I passed. Having met with the priest to arrange work with the translation team, I wanted to go back home to Tepa. I sawed off some of the chunks of fender using my trusty Gerber multi-tool, and headed home, crossing that bridge again, this time real careful like.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Maximizing Misfits
Who's responsible for misfits?
You are.
You are.
Skipping out, dropping out,
acting up and out,
disrupting, rebelling, fleeing,
Challenging!
The misfit gets blamed for missing the fit.
But why do we want the misfit to conform?
Well......maybe we don't.
Maybe its just the managers who want them to conform.
Is someone in your circle "causing problems"?
Why not come alongside them, help them achieve their dreams?
Is someone you know messing up at work or school?
Maybe the system's cramming a square peg into a round hole.
Don't join in breaking their will;
Smash the mould that's killing them.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Testimonies?
In normal English usage "testimony" refers to a factual recounting of a real event which an eyewitness experienced. Maybe it is a traffic accident, maybe war crimes.
(Not a "testimonial" which has a commercial connotation associated with an endorsement of a product by its user)
In evangelical/fundamentalist Christian subcultures of Canada "testimony" bears an additional sense of a personal account of how God-in-Christ intervened miraculously or providentially in the speaker's life somehow. Often it is limited specifically to the process of how a person initially turned from an unbeliever to a believer, or was "saved". (In many "charismatic" (in the theological sense) churches one may "testify" at many, if not most, religious meetings, and this "testimony" may be about some more recent event in the believer's life which they interpret as being an instance of God's intervention in their personal life and of their (eventual) positively evaluated response to God.)
I have witnessed middle-aged to elderly people attending a meeting invited to stand and spontaneously give a "testimony". I remember several times being struck and fascinated by vivid detailed glimpses into of regular people's personal life events situated 30 or 40 years in the past, the minute details still sharp from repeated retellings over the decades. And I recall thinking "but what has God done in your life recently?"
Now, language and consciousness are indivisible aspects of being human. Our human awareness and experience of existence is impossible without numerical, lexical, logical and grammatical polarities such as "I/you", and "body/thing", and "this/that" and "one/two". On the other hand the very concepts of "body/mind", "language/awareness" or "speaking/acting", while on the one hand help us think and improve our experience and use of these "things" (for love, mercy and justice), at the same time this codification sets up an unreal split or division between them. I would like to say "Speaking and acting are indivisible" but this statement self-destructs because it is equal to saying "two things are one thing" which is not currently logical in English.
Nevertheless, I believe action speaks and speech acts. Therefore, the Christian "testimony" consists of more than a story told in words: it is also actions and attitudes. How we act towards and treat our family, neighbours, acquaintances, school mates, work colleagues, other drivers on the road and people we don't particularly like, speaks volumes. But we have known this since kindergarten, when we heard it said: "Actions speak louder than words". So testify to your world about your current love affair with God-in-Christ through your whole life, today.
(Not a "testimonial" which has a commercial connotation associated with an endorsement of a product by its user)
In evangelical/fundamentalist Christian subcultures of Canada "testimony" bears an additional sense of a personal account of how God-in-Christ intervened miraculously or providentially in the speaker's life somehow. Often it is limited specifically to the process of how a person initially turned from an unbeliever to a believer, or was "saved". (In many "charismatic" (in the theological sense) churches one may "testify" at many, if not most, religious meetings, and this "testimony" may be about some more recent event in the believer's life which they interpret as being an instance of God's intervention in their personal life and of their (eventual) positively evaluated response to God.)
I have witnessed middle-aged to elderly people attending a meeting invited to stand and spontaneously give a "testimony". I remember several times being struck and fascinated by vivid detailed glimpses into of regular people's personal life events situated 30 or 40 years in the past, the minute details still sharp from repeated retellings over the decades. And I recall thinking "but what has God done in your life recently?"
Now, language and consciousness are indivisible aspects of being human. Our human awareness and experience of existence is impossible without numerical, lexical, logical and grammatical polarities such as "I/you", and "body/thing", and "this/that" and "one/two". On the other hand the very concepts of "body/mind", "language/awareness" or "speaking/acting", while on the one hand help us think and improve our experience and use of these "things" (for love, mercy and justice), at the same time this codification sets up an unreal split or division between them. I would like to say "Speaking and acting are indivisible" but this statement self-destructs because it is equal to saying "two things are one thing" which is not currently logical in English.
Nevertheless, I believe action speaks and speech acts. Therefore, the Christian "testimony" consists of more than a story told in words: it is also actions and attitudes. How we act towards and treat our family, neighbours, acquaintances, school mates, work colleagues, other drivers on the road and people we don't particularly like, speaks volumes. But we have known this since kindergarten, when we heard it said: "Actions speak louder than words". So testify to your world about your current love affair with God-in-Christ through your whole life, today.
Friday, February 25, 2011
You and God
The two year old can’t talk, doesn’t have the words, but reaches up her hands to strong young daddy. He reaches down and lifts her up, cradling her in his left arm as she clings to his neck. He pushes open the screen door, strides into the back yard picking up a small plastic toy shovel on the way. Hands it to toddler. He walks into the garden, sets her down in a safe spot and shows her a digging motion with the toy shovel “Dig sweety. Dig like this!” She has no clue what a garden is- what planting, weeding, watering, harvest are. No clue about the fathers plan, about the future, how things work, what to do. She is blissful, ignorant- basking in daddy’s presence. He sets to work with a will and a purpose, turning over the fallow earth. She whacks the ground with the toy shovel feebly, spastically, wobbly gaze immediately towards daddy to see what’s next.
Weeks pass. The season progresses. There they are again, she with her toy watering can, watering stones and babbling to herself. Daddy is watering in earnest, systematically, with a view to the harvest.
Now toddler lounges in the luxuriant shade of a leafy green-bean teepee. Daddy is out in the sun picking luscious juicy plump tomatoes. He picks up toddler on the way to the house to enjoy yummy tomato sandwiches. “You worked hard, sweet-pea” he says lovingly as she rides in his arms with her head on his chest. “Look at what we grew!”
Weeks pass. The season progresses. There they are again, she with her toy watering can, watering stones and babbling to herself. Daddy is watering in earnest, systematically, with a view to the harvest.
Now toddler lounges in the luxuriant shade of a leafy green-bean teepee. Daddy is out in the sun picking luscious juicy plump tomatoes. He picks up toddler on the way to the house to enjoy yummy tomato sandwiches. “You worked hard, sweet-pea” he says lovingly as she rides in his arms with her head on his chest. “Look at what we grew!”
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Singapore Airport Freakout
So yeah our ticket back to Indonesia had us fly first from Vancouver BC south to Portland Oregon where we would then transit onto a much bigger trans-pacific flight.
So we're in portland airport and it is like 10 minutes to boarding time and I approach the check-in desk to see if we can maybe get a better seat with more leg room for the 11 hour flight to Tokyo. The clerk says "These boarding passes you have aren't good enough. I will issue you new ones." Ok I think fine. Who cares?
So then the clerk asks me if I have a return ticket to come back from Indonesia. No, I reply honestly. "Oh but you have to have a return ticket otherwise we can't let you board" Just great! He confers with a colleague and she comes over and looks intently at the computer monitor hidden from my view. She says to the first guy "No, this rule is for visa on arrival passengers whereas this passenger (me) already has a visa" But they call in some security supervisor ("Red Code") to tell them what to do.
Meanwhile they start boarding!
So this woman comes and reads the rules on the monitor and says "You will have to purchase a return ticket before we let you board". I am like praying my head off. "Lord please influence their hearts and minds to interpret and use their discretion to let us on this flight! Please give me the grace to receive whatever the outcome of this is! Please grant me the discernment and creativity to navigate successfully through this!"
So there are like five passengers left in the line-up boarding and the rest of the boarding lounge is empty and the security supervisor says "No: looks like you are gonna have to buy a return ticket. Let me see your luggage claim tags" Oh no! I think to myself, She is going to pull our luggage off the flight! Then she says "Let me just read the rules again" The 3rd last passenger disappears down the gangway to board. I feel inspired to stand up with our carry-ons and walk over to the gangway entrance like we are just about to board. I am standing in front of the boarding desk and the security supervisor is standing there staring at the hidden monitor. She says to the first woman "They are going to have to buy a return ticket" The first woman says nothing. So I feel inspired to stretch out my hand over the counter and point at the monitor screen that I can't see and say "But this rule only applies to people getting a visa on arrival in Jakarta whereas I already have a visa" At this point the first woman pipes up and says "That's right" The security supervisor then relents and says "oh ok I see. All right then. Off you go" And we are the last ones to board! Crud! Not the kind of excitement I need!
OK. So anyway they also said they couldn't print off boarding passes for the last leg of our journey from Singapore to Jakarta. We didn't know why, but they said we could just get new ones when we went to board in Singapore. Fine.
So we go to the boarding gate in Singapore airport (and it is like at least a kilometre walk way out to the end of this ridiculously long terminal wing) and ask if we can board with the e-tickets we have and they say no we need to get new boarding passes. So anyway long story short here I am walking and running back and forth the one kilometre plus (so now my leg is killing me) from the boarding gate to this service counter trying to get this stupid boarding pass printed that Delta should have just given me. As it turns out, the Delta staff in Portland (yes, the same ones who didn't want to let us board without a return ticket) had completely changed our registered ticket number when they re-printed our boarding passes so that in Singapore they could find no record of our booking, and again this is 30 minutes before take off!! Argghhh!!! But a very helpful young woman of a different airline very adroitly helped us by reconstructing our proof of booking from looking at our old boarding pass stubs (which Kathy had saved, precious woman that she is) from our previous journey legs and also from looking at our luggage tags which showed also that we were booked all the way to Jakarta.
Moral: DO NOT FLY WITH DELTA!!!
DO NOT ROUTE THROUGH THE STATES IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!!
GOD ANSWERS PRAYER IN TIGHT SITUATIONS!!
So we're in portland airport and it is like 10 minutes to boarding time and I approach the check-in desk to see if we can maybe get a better seat with more leg room for the 11 hour flight to Tokyo. The clerk says "These boarding passes you have aren't good enough. I will issue you new ones." Ok I think fine. Who cares?
So then the clerk asks me if I have a return ticket to come back from Indonesia. No, I reply honestly. "Oh but you have to have a return ticket otherwise we can't let you board" Just great! He confers with a colleague and she comes over and looks intently at the computer monitor hidden from my view. She says to the first guy "No, this rule is for visa on arrival passengers whereas this passenger (me) already has a visa" But they call in some security supervisor ("Red Code") to tell them what to do.
Meanwhile they start boarding!
So this woman comes and reads the rules on the monitor and says "You will have to purchase a return ticket before we let you board". I am like praying my head off. "Lord please influence their hearts and minds to interpret and use their discretion to let us on this flight! Please give me the grace to receive whatever the outcome of this is! Please grant me the discernment and creativity to navigate successfully through this!"
So there are like five passengers left in the line-up boarding and the rest of the boarding lounge is empty and the security supervisor says "No: looks like you are gonna have to buy a return ticket. Let me see your luggage claim tags" Oh no! I think to myself, She is going to pull our luggage off the flight! Then she says "Let me just read the rules again" The 3rd last passenger disappears down the gangway to board. I feel inspired to stand up with our carry-ons and walk over to the gangway entrance like we are just about to board. I am standing in front of the boarding desk and the security supervisor is standing there staring at the hidden monitor. She says to the first woman "They are going to have to buy a return ticket" The first woman says nothing. So I feel inspired to stretch out my hand over the counter and point at the monitor screen that I can't see and say "But this rule only applies to people getting a visa on arrival in Jakarta whereas I already have a visa" At this point the first woman pipes up and says "That's right" The security supervisor then relents and says "oh ok I see. All right then. Off you go" And we are the last ones to board! Crud! Not the kind of excitement I need!
OK. So anyway they also said they couldn't print off boarding passes for the last leg of our journey from Singapore to Jakarta. We didn't know why, but they said we could just get new ones when we went to board in Singapore. Fine.
So we go to the boarding gate in Singapore airport (and it is like at least a kilometre walk way out to the end of this ridiculously long terminal wing) and ask if we can board with the e-tickets we have and they say no we need to get new boarding passes. So anyway long story short here I am walking and running back and forth the one kilometre plus (so now my leg is killing me) from the boarding gate to this service counter trying to get this stupid boarding pass printed that Delta should have just given me. As it turns out, the Delta staff in Portland (yes, the same ones who didn't want to let us board without a return ticket) had completely changed our registered ticket number when they re-printed our boarding passes so that in Singapore they could find no record of our booking, and again this is 30 minutes before take off!! Argghhh!!! But a very helpful young woman of a different airline very adroitly helped us by reconstructing our proof of booking from looking at our old boarding pass stubs (which Kathy had saved, precious woman that she is) from our previous journey legs and also from looking at our luggage tags which showed also that we were booked all the way to Jakarta.
Moral: DO NOT FLY WITH DELTA!!!
DO NOT ROUTE THROUGH THE STATES IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!!
GOD ANSWERS PRAYER IN TIGHT SITUATIONS!!
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
What Can I Do?
I was thinking about recent progress in relation to my work in holistic rural development and wondering how much credit I should honestly take. I want to accurately credit God where it is due and not steal His thunder.
I was tempted to say "I can do nothing: it is all God" but for the fact that he holds us accountable and responsible for our actions, to the point that someday for some he will say "Well done, wise and faithful servant of mine! Come on into the eternal blessings" - which tells me that God gives us credit for our actions.
My conclusion is that God gives us one ability and one alone: to choose to surrender/cling to him. We can cling a lot or we can cling a little. Only as we cling to him does he incarnate himself through us and do that which has lasting value.
I was tempted to say "I can do nothing: it is all God" but for the fact that he holds us accountable and responsible for our actions, to the point that someday for some he will say "Well done, wise and faithful servant of mine! Come on into the eternal blessings" - which tells me that God gives us credit for our actions.
My conclusion is that God gives us one ability and one alone: to choose to surrender/cling to him. We can cling a lot or we can cling a little. Only as we cling to him does he incarnate himself through us and do that which has lasting value.
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