• 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!

We know what to do

Posted on January 11, 2017 by wtdavid

I remember well one of our first groups of interns serving at the Paris Prayer Conference. They were given several days to ‘figure out’ the Paris metro system before taking a group of participants to different sites each day for prayer.  On day one of the conference, they brought all the participants from their hotel to our mparis3ain meeting place.  When they arrived, I ‘tested’ them by asking what metro line they had taken to get to the meeting place.  “You took line 6, right?” Their reply caught me by surprise: “No, we took line 3!  It looked like a shorter route.”  I had always taken line 6 to get to the meeting place.  I knew what to do to get to the meeting place.  Where in the world did they come up with the idea of taking line 3?

How I felt then, was how I felt today when Rebecca & I read this comment in the devotional, Saving Grace, by Jack Miller: “Depend on the Holy Spirit.  He is the sovereign one.  If you want to know how to exercise your gifts with love, ask the Father to give you the Spirit with his control, presence, and guidance.  Ask him to humble your heart, to make you depend on him, to help you to listen to him with sensitivity, and to give you an obedient heart.  It is often the case that we don’t listen to the Spirit because we’ve made up our minds that we already know what we should do.”

God does want us to make plans, but those plans should involve daily listening to the Spirit to see if He is moving us in a different direction; to work in a different way or to just do something differently than the way we always did it before.

It’s not a daily ‘throwing out’ of our plans and direction.  It’s a daily re-submitting of our hearts and plans into His hands.

It starts by asking the Father for the Spirit, and listening collectively to His voice.

Filed under: Holy Spirit, Planning, Prayer, Uncategorized | 2 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 »

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 »

What are we expecting?

Posted on January 2, 2017 by wtdavid

For the first time in a number of years, our local French church held a New YComposite image of hands showing expectationsear’s Eve service.  One of our elders shared a brief meditation on the text: Haggai 2:6-9.  Not
exactly the text that many of us would have chosen for such an occasion.  However, his main point struck home and came in the form of a question: what are we expecting of the Lord in 2017?

In my mind, I came up with a number of ‘expectations’ for this coming year: more disciples, more workers, more communities of believers and the simple joy of seeing a number of French people confess Christ and be baptized.  All good expectations, but the point of our elder’s meditation was that our expectations should centre around God’s glory; on God receiving the glory, the credit.

“And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts.”  (Haggai 2:7)

If all my expectations centre on me and what I can accomplish, I am actually more dependent on myself than God.  This runs counter to our very ‘raison d’être’ which is: to glorify God by working together to establish reproducing churches.

By asking the question: what are we expecting of the Lord in 2017? I (and we) can assess the true motivation of my heart in 2017.  Yes, I want to see more disciples, more workers, more communities and many French people coming to Christ.  However, I want that to happen in the context of an ever deepening reliance on God.

That is my prayer; 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 to experience anew His forgiveness and to receive the honour of being one of His children so that I might bring glory to Him first and foremost.

Filed under: Assessment, Expectations, Hope | 7 Comments »

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 »

Providence?

Posted on December 12, 2016 by wtdavid

Providence?  Kind of a strange word to our ears today, but which is psalm-104-1rich in meaning for our daily lives.  We could talk about His foresight, guidance or sovereign hand over all things happening in our lives and in this world.  Yet, that ‘comfort’ needs to go much deeper into our heart so as to produce a change in how we live and act in light of this biblical reality.

The Heidelberg Catechism is one of several Protestant catechisms.  It was written in 1563 and follows the standard pattern of question and answer, where the question is normally asked of a catechumen (that’s a word to look up!) who then responds with the appropriate answer, summarizing numerous biblical texts.

One of the questions (Question #28) relating to God’s providence is the following:

What does it benefit us to know that God has created all things and still upholds them by his providence?

Answer: We can be patient in adversity,¹ thankful in prosperity,² and with a view to the future we can have a firm confidence in our faithful God and Father that no creature shall separate us from his love;³ for all creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they cannot so much as move.⁴

¹Job 1:21, 22; Ps 39:10; Jas 1:3.

²Deut 8:10; 1 Thess 5:18.

³Ps 55:22; Rom 5:3-5; 8:38, 39.

⁴Job 1:12; 2:6; Prov 21:1; Acts 17:24-28

Knowing that God cares for us in such a way gives rise to patience, thankfulness and assurance.  If we apply this thought to cross cultural ministry today, it would mean:

  • There is ‘light’ at the end of the tunnel when learning the language of the people among whom we serve
  • Our witness is never in vain, even if rejected by those to whom we are called
  • We should be saying ‘thanks’ a lot more than we currently do

If you were asked the question: What does it benefit us to know that God has created all things and still upholds them by his providence?   Would your response contain anything about patience, thankfulness and assurance?  The joys and difficulties of cross cultural work call us to together think more deeply about God’s providence.

 

Filed under: Language learning, Sovereignty, Thankfulness | Leave a comment »

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