Changes

It's been a month since I've posted anything, because this has been a busy month. Our sons were home with us, which was a lot of fun. We celebrated Christmas in the US, which is a very rare event in our family. We traveled to Georgia and to Arkansas. We reconnected with old friends and mourned the loss of a close family friend. Looking back now, I can't believe that all of this was packed into just a few weeks.

However, life is settling back into a semi routine. . .but not for long. We are preparing for another huge change. We don't know the exact timing, but we expect that by this time next month we'll be on a plane for Istanbul, Turkey. The government where we were living previously denied our NGO's application for re-registration, so we will not be returning there in the immediate future.

We have been in Istanbul as visitors a number of times so we aren't quite going, like Abraham, to a land that we know not. However, we also realize that visiting a city and living in it are two different experiences. We will be learning a new (but, thankfully, similar) language. We will have to meet and form all new friendships. Randy in particular will have to learn new ways of doing his work.

Besides moving to a new city, we are also adapting to a new phase of life with two boys in college. With Hannah Grace coming along so late in our lives, it will be many years before we have a truly empty nest, but sending both guys off at once will certainly impact our family in ways we probably don't fully realize yet.

Please pray for us as we work through all of these changes in our life. Pray that we can quickly adjust and work effectively in our new situation.

Merry Christmas!

This morning I read two different blogs that dealt with the amazing truth of the incarnation. (You can read those here and here.) Immediately I thought of my friend Emerald, who rejected Christ several years ago. When she told me about her decision, it was on the basis of the incarnation. She would not accept that the all-powerful God who created the universe could limit Himself to experience thirst and hunger. How could a transcendent God need food? Who could imagine God falling asleep in a boat?

When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating this truth that my friend turned away from. We celebrate the Word made flesh and come to live among men. Every one of us understands the reason for Christmas, but I personally don't believe I spend quite enough time pondering all the implications of this miracle. Jesus allowed Himself to feel the limitations of a human body. Yet it is precisely this concept of incarnation that repels so many of our Muslim acquaintances. What we celebrate as the glorious, miraculous foundation of our faith they reject as an illogical absurdity at best, and blasphemy at worst.

As we prepare to go back overseas, please pray that the Holy Spirit would do the work of opening blinded eyes and softening hardened hearts. We can't convince a Muslim to believe that God Himself would take on flesh, experience fatigue, hunger, thirst, pain, and eventually death and resurrection because He loves them. We can only share that truth, love them, and pray that they will see Jesus with eyes of faith.

Keeping Christ in Christmas

Being back in the US this year for the Christmas season, I've begun to be a little confused about the so-called Christmas wars and the battle to keep Christ in Christmas. As I listen to people talk, as I read Christian blogs and news sources, even as I listen to Christian radio, one question keeps coming to mind: Are people trying to keep Christ in Christmas, or are they trying to keep our beautiful traditions and memories in Christmas?

Where we live there is no cultural celebration of Christmas. There are trees and lights, and Grandfather Frost, but those are all New Year traditions. Christmas is a holiday that is only celebrated by professing Christians. Our Muslim neighbors understand that unless they acknowledge Christ as the Word made flesh, they don't--they can't--celebrate Christmas rather than a Winter Holiday. How ironic that they grasp the real meaning of Christmas with such clarity!

If you're saddened by the fact that cashiers say "Happy Holidays", or that your child's school is observing a winter festival, or that the municipality has erected a holiday tree, take a moment and remind yourself that only Christians can genuinely celebrate Christ's first coming and look forward to His second coming. Then, instead of getting involved in a campaign to "keep Christ in Christmas", get involved in activities that will bring people to know Christ as Lord and Savior. Make it your goal to keep Christmas in Christ.

If You Knew Who Says to You

Every once in a while, someone will walk up to us after we've spoken at a conference and tell us that it takes a special person to do what we do, or that God really knows the right person to call overseas, or something along that line. I've always been uncomfortable when that happens. Normally, I remind them that we go overseas and share the Good News because God gives us the grace to do so.

Too often we think that God asks people to do something--teach a class, preach a sermon, give generously to support the work of the church, go overseas, serve the needy--and we lose sight of just exactly who is asking. To paraphrase A. W. Tozer, we may view God as coming to us hat in hand asking for assistance. We understand that God wants to us to do good works, but we forget that He asks us to give what He has already prepared beforehand.

Jesus told the Samaritan woman "Give me a drink." Her response shows that although she certainly thought it an odd request, she never doubted for a moment her ability to give Jesus what He asked. She missed the point of the request. The Creator and Lord of the universe did not need to sit at a deserted well and wait for this woman to provide what He was lacking. The point was for this woman to realize what she was lacking.

Even as believers, we can easily accept the idea that we're saved by grace through no merit of our own yet act like God needs us to give Him a drink of water. We never doubt for a moment our ability to serve God (until He graciously allows us to reap the consequences of working in our own strength). He doesn't ask us to serve because we have something to offer Him. He asks because He has something to offer us.

Next time you believe God is directing you toward some ministry, stop and remember who it is that is asking for your service.

Sacrifice

This is from two years ago, but I still think about these things whenever the Qurban holiday comes up on the Muslim calendar.

Yesterday was Qurban--the Festival of Sacrifice--in the Muslim world. It is a day to remember the sacrifice that Abraham made on Mount Moriah. Islam teaches that it was Ishmael, not Isaac, that was placed on the altar that day.

The idea of a substitutionary sacrifice--whether the death of a ram in Isaac's place or the death of Jesus Christ in our place--has no acceptance in Muslim theology. It is all about works.

We were out yesterday to take Hannah Grace to the doctor, and passed herd after herd of sheep being prepared for slaughter. Those who can afford it are expected to purchase a sheep and have it butchered. They must then share a portion of the meat with those who are too poor to buy their own.

One prominent cleric was lamenting the fact that most people in this country have lost "the essence of Qurban". For them, it's a day of feasting. For butchers, it's a day of price gouging. Few people take time to remember the "real meaning" of this holiday. Sound familiar?

As believers, of course, we would love to help them understand the true essence of Sacrifice. In many parts of the Muslim world yesterday, the streets ran red with the blood of sacrificial sheep. Needlessly.

When the World Calls You a Hater

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26 ESV

Many people consider this to be one of the more difficult verses in the Bible. Generally, commentaries define hate as "a lesser degree of love", meaning that we must love our families and ourselves less than we love Jesus if we want to be His disciples. That is a good understanding, but I believe it means more than just "loving less".

In his book, In Search of the Source, Neil Anderson tells about the years he and his wife spent translating the Bible into the language of an isolated, primitive tribe. When they came to this verse in Luke, his team of local assistants had as much difficulty with it as the rest of us. The words seemed plain enough, and the meaning seemed clear enough, but surely Jesus didn't mean what it sounded like He meant! As they struggled through this dilemma, God allowed a circumstance that answered their question.

This stone age tribe followed traditions and practices that had been handed down through the generations. We would consider many of these pagan and barbaric. One young believer was called on by his clan to fulfill his obligation to them as a male family member on one occasion. Participation would be a clear violation of Christian belief. Non-participation would anger his family. In the end, he chose obedience to Christ over pleasing his family.

This young man told the missionaries that he truly loved his family, but they were convinced he actually hated them. There was nothing he could say or do, no apology he could offer, short of going along with this ungodly practice, that would change their minds.

Sometimes we make choices because we honor and love God above all else. Sometimes those choices cause the people we love and care about to believe that we hate them.

The reason this topic has been on my mind is something I've seen on Facebook in recent weeks. The details aren't important--who or what or why. My motivation is to simply encourage anyone who is being called a hater because they had the courage to speak the truth in love. Don't let the world define for you what it means to be a hater.

Now, if you've been speaking the truth in some attitude other than love, well, that's a different matter altogether. I would encourage you to check out this link.

Love People. . .Hate Sin

First of all, we don't want to insert a new and revised definition of hate into anything the Bible teaches about hate. When we come across the word hate in the Bible, we need to stick with the dictionary definition, not a definition that has been expanded to include all sorts of other things.

So what do we learn from the Bible, specifically the New Testament, about hate (read: extreme enmity, strong aversion, distaste)?

Paul tells us in Titus 3:3 that hating others is characteristic of the lost, not believers. It is an action and attitude that marks our old life before Christ, but not our life in Christ today.

In the book of 1 John, the apostle gives us a number of tests which will prove or disprove whether we are truly God's children. Several of these proofs deal specifically with hate. We learn that anyone who claims to walk in the light but hates his brother, in reality walks in the dark. Everyone who hates is a murderer and does not have eternal life. A person that says they love God but hates their brother is a liar.

These passages make it perfectly clear that haters (using the standard definition) are not children of God. There are, however, some things that the children of God do hate. Jude tells us in his letter to have mercy with fear on sinners, but that in doing so we will find the pollution of the flesh that characterizes their lives very distasteful. In the book of Revelation, Jesus commends the church in Ephesus because they hate--they have an aversion and a distaste for--the sinful deeds of the Nicolaitans. Paul himself, in the book of Romans, grieves over his tendency to commit sin--the very thing he hated. He felt extreme enmity toward his own sinful nature.

If we stop here, it's very simple to understand hate from a Biblical perspective. We can't hate people and claim to be filled with light and truth. We can't be filled with light and truth without finding sin distasteful. But Jesus' teachings introduce some other aspects of hate that many people find difficult to swallow. As I think over this redefinition of hate, I believe that those difficult passages help explain, at least in part, why Christians are sometimes labeled as haters.