Sharing the Gospel story | Thoughts Along The Journey

Have you heard the story of Trey?

Posted on February 9, 2021 by wtdavid

Have you heard the story of Trey? That’s not his real name, but hopefully this story will be a reminder to each of us of the power of the Gospel to change a life. Slowly, deliberately, but surely.

Here’s how my friend shared the story with me.

“I met Trey several years ago on a street in Chiang Mai. The Lord prompted me, for some reason, to speak to him. I invited him to have a coffee and we chatted for a while. A few weeks later, we met again and at that point I invited Trey to come and visit our church. He wasn’t really interested. He subsequently ‘dropped off my radar screen’. I prayed for him but didn’t run into him again for several years.

Then one day, there he was, walking down the same street again as I was. We grabbed a coffee together and caught up on what had happened since we last saw each other. I later asked if he wanted to visit a cultural exposition that was being held in the coming weeks. He agreed to go with me.

As our friendship grew, I asked Trey if he might be interested in reading the Bible together – just reading it and discussing what we thought the Bible was trying to say to us. He was willing, though it wasn’t an enthusiastic willingness. And so, we started reading the Bible together.

Then the pandemic hit, and we were forced to meet virtually on our cellphones. In one of those virtual meetings, we read the passage from Mark 1:14-15. As we talked about what it meant, Trey came to understand faith and repentance, and that day he gave his life to Jesus.

As we continued to meet, it was a joy to listen to Trey’s prayers: short but so simple and sincere. Trey started reading the Bible 5 minutes a week and praying for 5 minutes, then it became 15 minutes per day! God was building into this new disciple!

I introduced Trey one day to another person in our community group. I thought it would help him to get to know other believers, and that he might be encouraged to join our community times.

Recently, Trey told me how he had talked with one of his co-workers about the Bible. They talked about what each thought the Bible passage meant! I pray that Trey will become a disciple who makes disciples. He is certainly not done with ‘growing in Christ’. So, I (along with others in the community) keep praying and walking alongside him.”

So, have you heard the story of Trey? Hopefully this story has been be a reminder to each of us of the power of the Gospel to change a life. Slowly, deliberately, but surely.

Filed under: Community, Discipleship, Repentance & faith, Sharing the Gospel story | 4 Comments »

Wrestling instructions

Posted on April 6, 2020 by wtdavid

A helpful post from Karry which we will re-post here:

It seems all the world is united. We are waging a climactic battle against one common enemy. It is a virus about one-half micron tall. A few hundred years ago nobody understood. Certainly, when Paul wrote Ephesians, people knew nothing of germs.

Of course, we all should battle the Covid-19 virus. Let’s sequester ourselves, flatten the curve, and wash our hands. We believe, however, there are even greater things in play than our health or individual survival. Our ultimate concern has to do with eternity. We wrestle against the “rulers … authorities … cosmic powers over this present darkness … spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” As serious as the Covid-19 virus is, our ultimate battle is more serious. It has eternal consequences.

The whole world is living this trauma in different ways. Several times each day, we have to stop to remind ourselves. God has not lost. He has not lost a battle. He has not lost control. He has not lost sight of us. We have not slipped out of His protecting hands.

When anxiety encroaches and fear sneaks in, we stop, and we remember. We are wrestling a spiritual battle for minds and affections and allegiance — starting with us. The identity of our enemy is the devil and his evil spirits who operate under the cloak of this present darkness. Their strategy is to deceive our minds and hearts and, ultimately, to weaken our faithful allegiance to Christ. Anxiety and fear are their allies.

God supplies us with armor against such thoughts and emotions and impulses. The text says we are to take up the “full” armor God supplies. The first thing on is the warrior-girdle of truth. It is bound strong around the waist beneath all the other equipment and anchors everything in place.

Take truth. Bind it thick and strong around your core. Connect your thoughts to it. The warrior-girdle of truth will protect you from the devil’s lies and the fear he means to incite. The truth is, our perfect Father keeps his eyes on us. He has us always and forever in His hands. The world shakes now. But his love is unwavering. His intentions are undeterred. Our hope is certain. That is truth.

Lashed securely to the girdle of truth, our impenetrable breastplate is Christ’s righteousness; we have all of it. The devil cannot accuse us of sin. Jesus paid for our sin. This virus is not sent by God to destroy us. Jesus died for our sin. On our feet is the gospel of peace. This virus is not hostility from God. His anger was expended at the cross.

Faith is the shield that protects us from the fiery darts of the devil. Those lies are extinguished by faith. The reality and finality of our salvation in Christ is like a warrior’s helmet protecting our minds from the attacks of our enemy. Our salvation is sure.

While we battle to defeat Covid-19, we also remember our ultimate battle. Our primary means of wrestling comes in verses 18-20. We pray. God is our sovereign. Christ is our redeemer. The gospel is our peace. Our faith is in Him. Our salvation is settled. God’s Word is in our hands. We stand in this armor…to pray. We pray for each other, and all the saints. We pray for their protection. But we pray for more.

This armor of God is really for people like us – people who have aligned ourselves with God’s mission in history. This is a missionary’s text. It is missionary armor. I don’t want to lose sight of that. Especially in this time of crisis. God, please grant us all boldness in witness.

All around the globe, we World Team members are quarantined. Paul himself, wrote this in chains. But he remembered, even in chains, he was Christ’s ambassador. While we wait, let’s pray and ask God to embolden our witness. Now while we are confined. And later once the quarantine is lifted.

Filed under: Prayer, Sharing the Gospel story | 3 Comments »

A simple read

Posted on June 28, 2019 by wtdavid

I read a fair number of prayer letters of fellow WT workers. It allows me to catch a small glimpse of their world and to be more informed in my prayers for them.

Sometimes, a simple read opens a door to an insight into a culture and to how fellow World Team workers are seeking to apply the Gospel in the context where they find themselves. Here’s one recent example:

“It is K- New Year, one of the biggest holidays in this Asian country where everyone travels to their home provinces for a 3-day festival which marks the end of the harvest season … Our family spent some of the holiday in PV province and had the opportunity to attend the infamous Mango Party. Our fellow teammates, J & C have been hosting the Mango Party for over ten years during K- New Year. It is an event that embraces the traditions of the K- holiday of playing games and fellowshipping together, but also brings Jesus, our risen Savior, to the forefront during a time in this country where there is much focus on spirit worship … During this holiday, T & I, reflected on how in most religions water represents washing, cleansing, or starting over. As we watched people seek advice and guidance through elders and monks at local temples, our hearts were stirred once again to share the true living water of Jesus Christ with those we live amongst daily. In our own power and strength, we can never wash away our sin or cleanse ourselves enough. How amazing is it that we have a Savior that loves us so much that he gives us Living Water EVERY DAY so that we may NEVER thirst, that we can come to him in our own broken condition and be accepted into his family and stand in the cover of his grace.”

Imagine that, a Mango Party that offers an opportunity to share the ‘water of life’ with others in that culture.

It was actually at a festival that Jesus made that famous pronouncement: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” (John 7:37-38)

Thanks to my World Team colleagues who shared this insight in a recent prayer letter! Much food (or ‘water’) for reflection!

Filed under: Contextualization, Gospel, Sharing the Gospel story | Leave a comment »

Drilling down

Posted on September 1, 2017 by wtdavid

ArchibaldAlexander Archibald Alexander was a professor for many years in the mid nineteenth century at Princeton Theological Seminary (USA). In his work, Thoughts on Religious Experience, he asked ‘why’ we grow so slowly as Christians. Ray Ortlund records Alexander’s response to his own question in this way:

“First, he rounded up the usual suspects: “The influences of worldly relatives and companions, embarking too deeply in business, devoting too much time to amusements, immoderate attachment to a worldly object,” and so forth. But then he drilled down further and asked why such things even get a hold on us, “why Christians commonly are of so diminutive a stature and of such feeble strength in their religion.” He proposed the following reasons:

“There is a defect in our belief in the freeness of divine grace.” Even when the gospel is acknowledged in theory, he wrote, Christians define their okayness according to their moods and performances rather than looking away from themselves to Christ alone. Then, in our inevitable failure, we become discouraged, and worldliness regains strength in us, with nothing to counteract it. “The covenant of grace must be more clearly and repeatedly expounded in all its rich plentitude of mercy, and in all its absolute freeness.”

Two things stand out for me in Alexander’s response. One is the relevancy of his words almost two hundred years later. How often do you and I determine our ‘okayness’ by our feelings or our actions, as if God’s favor towards us depends on our ‘work’ rather than His work? So many of the things Alexander describes can still ‘catch us in their web’ and keep us from turning our eyes regularly to Christ.

The other is the importance of ‘speaking the gospel’ to ourselves daily by ‘expounding the (the covenant) of grace in all its rich plenitude of mercy’. To put it in other words, when we ‘preach the gospel’ to ourselves daily, it is not by a simple repetition of the facts of the Gospel. Rather, when we ‘speak that gospel’ to one another, we are to search together to know more and more the height, width, depth and breadth of His love for us (Ephesians 3:18)

How might you describe the depth of the richness of His mercy today? Why not share that in a note or a whatsapp message with a fellow worker in the Gospel?

Filed under: Gospel, Grace, Sharing the Gospel story | 6 Comments »

Lost people matter

Posted on June 29, 2017 by wtdavid

Have you ever come to the point where you have said to yourself: “I think I’ll just go and get a ‘regular’ job”? As if to say that letting go of ministry would give you a ‘much easier’ life?

With a couple of colleagues, my wife and I are reading through the book: The Attentive Life. I stumbled across this quote today in my reading: “The gracious indwelling of God with his people is not an invitation to settle down and forget the rest of the world: it is a summons to mission, for the Lord who indwells with his people is the one who goes before them in the pillar of fire and the cloud. So the promise of his presence is clinched in the words, “Up, let us go hence.” There is a mission to be fulfilled. There is a conflict to be waged with the powers of this world.”

Our calling is not one to a ‘cozy time by the fire’, but rather one where a God who abides in us, and we in Him, will cause us to see others as He sees them. We will see lost people who matter to God. We will see men and women created in His image, yet living broken lives separated from Him.

There are days when our calling wanes. Those are the days when we need to drive our ‘root system of life’ deeper into Jesus, deeper into His steadfast love and grace. Yet, it’s easy to tell ourselves we need to do that, but it’s just plain hard sometimes to make it happen.

That is why we need to cry out to God for His help in learning to ‘abide’ in Him; in learning to be attentive to Him in all that happens in our day. We can remind ourselves of the importance of abiding. Others can remind us as well. However, God needs to work in our hearts to cause us to draw near to Him and draw from His fountain of grace and wisdom.

Lost people do matter to God. Abiding in God will thrust us out as cross cultural workers into the world with a renewed heart to share His Gospel.

Lost people matter to God. Lost people will matter to us as well.

Filed under: Calling, Gospel, Sharing the Gospel story | 4 Comments »

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