• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

Who is your one?

Posted on January 20, 2017 by wtdavid

Last week, I attended church with my older brother. I was taken by a statement and a slogan that the pastor shared with this group of believers.

He read a familiar text from Ephesians 1:1-14, emphasizing these verses: “Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”

Then he made this statement: “I want to talk with you about ‘your story’.  However, ‘your story’ does not start with who you think you are.  Your story begins with who God says you are.”  God set His love on me, on you.  He pursued us ‘one by one’ and chose to make us part of His family.  “Mission,” he said, “starts with knowing who we are.”

That resonated with me.  It was the Gospel applied to or being worked out in mission.  Our story is wone-bisrapped up in Him and our mission flows out of that identity.

Then he shared this slogan via a question: “Who is your one?”  Who is the person God has put on your heart?  Are you close to anyone who is far from God?  Are you in touch with anyone who is wondering how they fit into God’s mission in the world?

“Who is your one?”

As a worker with World Team, your ‘story’ begins with what God says about you, “who is your one?”

It’s another way of stating the Central Ministry Focus of our WT Ministry Framework.

“Who is your one?”

Filed under: Challenge, Gospel, Mission | Leave a comment »

Faulty foundations

Posted on January 17, 2017 by wtdavid

“Foundations are forever”.  However, can ‘foundations’ ever be changed?  If those ‘foundations’ are found in our own life and soul, can they be altered?  That is the discussion we’re having around this ‘virtual’ lunch table today.foundations-1

Obviously, our first answer would have to be that ‘all things are possible with God’ and that foundations can be changed by His powerful work in our lives.

Yet, the road to that change may be more difficult than we might imagine because along the way we will confront our weakness, our idols and our own naiveté.

Changing faulty foundations puts us face to face with our own weakness: that is, in our own strength, we are incapable of bringing about the long lasting change needed. Simply put, we need God.

Changing faulty foundations causes us to confront our own idols: the idol of reputation where we strive to have others think well of us; or the idol of self-sufficiency where we refuse to let others serve and help us because we don’t want to appear needy.

Changing the faulty foundations makes us aware of our own naiveté: that is, how little we really understand the depth of our sin and selfishness.  So many of the faulty foundations in our own lives and ministries are the fruit of our shaky grasp of the doctrine of original sin.

However, faulty foundations are also an opportunity to face head on those sinful habits and actions that need to be ‘put off’ in order, by grace, to ‘put on’ those qualities, those elements of character, those new foundations which will cause His name to be honoured in our lives and ministries.

An example of this kind of change would be helpful.  

Filed under: Change & transition, Church planting, Gospel | Leave a comment »

Where we stand

Posted on January 10, 2017 by wtdavid

Yesterday, I received an encouraging note from Heidi (WT Canada) about whwe_take_a_stand_small_graphicat she is expecting God to do in her and through her in this coming year. One of her prayerful expectations is for the hearts of university students to be revived as to the need of the unreached around the world.

That prayer point made me think of a quote from Richard Lovelace’s book, Dynamics of Spiritual Life:

“Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude. In order for a pure and lasting work of spiritual renewal to take place within the church, multitudes within it must be led to build their lives on this foundation.”

You can ‘translate’ this quote into many other cultural systems (such as honour/shame, for example), but the thrust remains that our life is first built on how God sees us.  Our life is not defined by what we do nor by what others think of us nor by how we are viewed by the community around us.  Our starting point is God, not ourselves.

For us as cross cultural workers, this is never an easy task.  We are by nature ‘activists’.  The idea that we must count on someone else for what we need, rubs us the wrong way.  Yet, that daily decision is where the greatest battle lies for us.

If we choose to find our value, our honour, our acceptance in what God says and has done for us, then the rest of our day will be focused away from us onto others and particularly onto God.

Filed under: Gospel, Grace, Value | Leave a comment »

What do you want to do with your life?

Posted on January 9, 2017 by wtdavid

“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

I remember a pastor once saying that repentance and faith were linked together in the minds of the biblical writers.  You could not talk about repentance without following up and talking about faith.  Likewise you could not talk about faith without turning to consider repentance.

My prayer, for this New Year, is that the Holy Spirit would search my heart (Psalm 139), put His light of truth on those places where my motivations are not pure, and drive me back to the Cross.  This is a prayer of repentance. As I consider what I want to do with my life, how I want to invest my energies in 2017, I begin by opening my heart to His ‘searchlight’ and work in teaching me to lay aside the sins that encumber me on my journey with Him.

Repentance though is regularly linked to faith. Faith is expressed in one way thdailyrough the words of this short verse from Psalm 90.  Daily, I must find my joy in the love that God has for me.  Daily.  This is an expression of my faith.  The Psalmist’s words are meant to convey that the day is ‘defined’ or structured by the context in which I place it.  I can express my faith by finding my joy daily in the unending, unconditional love of God for me.

There are times when I easily forget to find my joy in God’s love.  The result is often complaining and dissatisfaction.  What I want to do with my life becomes just that: a question of ‘my’ and how I can find satisfaction apart from God. Daily I should drive the roots of faith deeper into that love displayed in Jesus Christ.  Then what I will want to do with my life and how I will want to invest my energies will be an expression of thanks to the God of all grace.

Daily.

Filed under: Gospel, Love of God, Repentance & faith | Leave a comment »

Making decisions

Posted on December 15, 2016 by wtdavid

decisions1

Making decisions is not an easy task.  Sure, some will say that they have no problem making decisions.  However, ‘decision quickness’ can have a dark side when it doesn’t consider a decision’s impact on others.  Others will say that decisions just take time. By that they mean, there are so many factors to consider, as well as prayer to offer, that a decision just cannot be made rapidly.

We as cross cultural workers are, in particular, subject to a certain inertia when faced with decisions, small or large.  We can ‘rush’ to a decision without seeking prayer and needed counsel. Or we can take such a long time to think about a decision that our ‘no decision’ becomes a decision. The time it takes to decide can cause the event or the God-given opportunity to pass us by because we waited so long to decide.

Granted, cross cultural ministry decisions involve both subjective and objectives elements. We see what is in front of us, but we also know that we rely on the Spirit of God to give us the wisdom and insight we need to discern the direction in which we should go.  However, I wonder if the roots of our inertia are really more a lack of skill, and a strong desire to want to look good before others.  To put it another way, we look to avoid the shame of having to take responsibility for our decisions.

Further skill training in decision making would be a good review for all of us; learning again how to prayerfully assess a situation and then create a process by which we can come to a decision.  However, we must not forget the desire that strives within us to gain the acceptance of others. Our decision making process touches more on our character and heart than anything else.

A strong dose of a firm confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from his love would be  the start of a ‘treatment’ towards healing our hearts. This assurance would remind us that our honour is found in Him first, not in how others judge us based on our decisions.

As we move towards the start of 2017, I would challenge us as individuals, teams and a global community to learn how to better make decisions and how to speak the Gospel to one another in such a way that it actually has an effect on our daily lives.

 

 

 

Filed under: Decision making, Gospel, Planning, Prayer | 2 Comments »

Why Am I Not Happy?

Posted on December 1, 2016 by wtdavid

My unhappiness can stem from various causes.  Sometimes, the cause can be found in external events or circumstances.  Sometimes, the cause is just a plain unhappy-child-3‘B.A.’ as friends used to say, that is, a bad attitude.  Whatever the cause, unhappiness can be a sign that something has stepped between us and that which we prize more than anything else.  In other words, something is blocking us from our idol and that makes us unhappy.

As cross cultural workers, I think we can be blinded to what are the idols in our lives and ministries.  One that runs particularly deep is a sense of or the idol of entitlement.  We push back when people try to put us up on a spiritual pedestal as if we are some super saint.  “We are just normal Christians like you,” we reply.  Yet, we become unhappy very quickly if there is a problem with our support being deposited or the reimbursement of vouchers we have submitted.  We may not say it out loud, but we certainly are thinking: “I deserve better than this!”

The idol of entitlement can quickly give rise to a critical spirit.  Before we know it, we can be running our agency down as if everything people do is “not up to snuff” and declaring that ‘other agencies’ do a much better job.

Psalm 139:23-24 are verses that talk of the daily ‘pruning’ that God wants to do in removing idols from our lives.  Happiness returns to my heart when the ‘everlasting way’ takes me back to Jesus and I recognize how the idols in my life never meet the deep needs of my heart.  Only Jesus does.

And because Jesus does, I love where He has placed me.  I love World Team because that is the community He has allowed me to serve in and where His work will continue to be done in my life at this part of my journey.

Filed under: Attitude, Gospel, Idols | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 206 other subscribers

  • Categories

  • Recent Comments

  • Archives

  • Goodreads