• 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!

He mentions my name

Posted on July 5, 2019 by wtdavid

I remember playing for our university football (that’s ‘soccer’ for those from North America) team. Each day before a match, the coach would post the starting players for the next day’s game.  It was always a bit of a traffic jam in front of the posted sheet as everyone on the team wanted to see if ‘his name was mentioned’.  It was always a disappointment when you looked at the list, knowing you had been ‘mentioned’ the previous week, only to find that you were not ‘mentioned’ this week.

Mark Jones, in his book: Knowing Christ, makes this statement: “Since Christ ‘always lives’, he always intercedes. There is no Christian alive who has not had Christ mention his or her name to the Father.”  Every time, we look up to God, we can be certain that our name has and is being ‘mentioned’.  We are His, and because of that bond, Christ ever lives to plead our need, and speak of us before the Father.

Multiple applications came to mind as I mulled over the notion of the intercession of Christ on our behalf:

  • When I walk out my door to reach, invest, or equip another, I do not go out alone. Christ is interceding for me, for His glory, that hearts might be opened, that faith might be deepened.
  • My worth is not dependent on my ‘output’.  My status as a child of God has been settled forever in heaven, and this frees me to engage others from a heart that knows it is loved.
  • It is not just myself and others who are interceding in prayer.  Jesus Christ is interceding before the Father on our behalf.  To put it in colloquial terms, this just takes prayer to a whole new level.
  • Though I may grow weary in prayer, Jesus ‘ever lives to plead our need’.  It is the divine hand that reaches out and picks us up in the midst of our exhaustion to let us know that when our strength comes to its end, His strength is only just beginning to be manifested.

Your ministry week may have been tough.  So, may the knowledge that Jesus Christ ever lives to intercede for us before the Father strengthen and encourage your weary heart and mine!

Filed under: Identity, Prayer, Value | 3 Comments »

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 »

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