Kind of like a puzzle...

Today Louis and I borrowed Phil's trailer and headed over to Ike and Cecile's house about 25km away.  They are moving and offered me their dining room table, chairs, and stools.  It is a gesture most appreciated and everything packed very neatly into the corner of Louis' garage.  Louis said, "Isn't it amazing how God puts the pieces of the puzzle together?"  To which I remarked, "He certainly puts them together in an interesting order."  One would think the provision of a visa would be forthcoming, seeming to be much more critical than a table and chairs.  But the clear provision of God through the saints is no small thing, and I praise God for His faithfulness.

When you put a puzzle together, you take it out of a box that has a picture on top.  You see the end result before you begin.  When I think about God's calling upon my life to preach and minister in AUS, I can't see the complete picture.  Many of the puzzles I have worked over the years have beautiful landscapes with clearly defined portions:  blue sky, white clouds, green grass, trees, animals.  An exception is a puzzle I bought for Laura before she was my wife by M.C. Esher, the classic waterfall that seems to travel uphill.  The major difficulty of this puzzle is the lack of colour.  So much of the picture has the same dull hues and tones and everything seems to blend together.  When I look at the wilderness experience where I find myself, it's hard to tell exactly where I am or where I fit in.

It seems a little on the wild side that Laura would have sold our kitchen table and chairs back home, and now in a garage in AUS sits a table and chairs set aside for our future use.  When Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac his only son, the astute young man said, "Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"  Genesis 22:8 says, "And Abraham said, "My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." So the two of them went together."  Abraham built the altar, put the wood in order, and bound his son and laid him upon the wood.  After he took the knife in his hand to slay Isaac, the Angel of the Lord told him to stop, saying that He now knew that Abraham feared God because he had not withheld his only son.  Genesis 22:13-14 states, "Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. [14] And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of The Lord it shall be provided."

God has provided abundantly for me, my Jehovah-Jireh.  Shall I be as Isaac and say, "Here is a table and chairs, but where is the home I will use them in?  Where is the visa?  Where is the place I will dwell?"  It think it better to be as Abraham and say, "The Lord Will Provide."  There is no doubt in Abraham's words.  "Will" does not mean "might."  Abraham speaks with the certainty of faith.  I say as the father of the demon-possessed child:  "Lord I believe:  help my unbelief!"

When picking up the trailer, little Andrew (Phil and Linda's son) asked me a question.  He asked, "Do you wish you could go home to your family?"  "No," I honestly answered, almost surprised by my immediate response.  "But I wish they were here with me."  I have a table and chairs, but I don't have my sons and wife by my side.  God puts the puzzle together in His order and in His time.  As Corrie ten Boom used to say, we only see the back side of the embroidery.  God sees from the vantage point of eternity and knows what He is doing.  We see a random mix of color and say, "What beauty could possibly come from that?"  Eccles. 3:11 says, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end."

Most people start with the border when putting a puzzle together.  It feels like the puzzle of my life has been flipped upside down, and all I can see is the grainy cardboard.  In the middle of the table lies two pieces fitted together, and no border in sight.  God will provide all that I need in His time.  I long for the day when Jesus will say to me, "Now  I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your life, your only life, from Me."  Because of Christ's sacrificial payment I have a life to live.  As the song says, "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.  Though none go with me, still I will follow.  No turning back, no turning back."

To Do the Impossible...

Last night I did something that I don't always do.  I chose not to pray for any specific requests until God told me what to pray.  Sometimes I feel like I can fall into a rut of going down a "list" of sorts, praising God, asking blessings upon my wife and children, thanking Him for the Landman family and all those who are supporting me...these things are all fine and good to pray for.  But last night I said, "God, I'm not going to pray for anything until you tell me what to pray or how to pray.  My prayers are lame."  Then His words came to me like an invigorating rain upon my parched soul:  "Pray for the impossible."

Consider the implications of the statement.  How often do we limit our prayers to what is possible?  How common is the prayer that asks God to do what we could do ourselves?  What a difference it makes in our prayers when we pray for God to do what is impossible for us to do.  This works upon us in several ways:  1) it causes us to look to God's all-sufficient strength, wisdom, and power; 2) it causes us to admit our helplessness, weakness, and blindness; 3) it causes us to grow in faithful expectancy that what God has promised He is able to perform; 4) it allows God to be God.  Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven.  When the disciples heard that, they were shocked and asked, "Who then can be saved?"    "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).  A rich man will trust his riches and not look to God to supply his physical or spiritual needs.  He is sufficient in his own eyes.  When we limit our prayers to the possible, we limit God by our senses.  Spiritually speaking, this is nothing short of a catastrophic disaster.

Psalm 78:40-41 discusses the conduct of the children of Israel in the desert after God brought them out of the land of Egypt.  "How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert! [41] Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel."  Did you catch the second part?  Because of their unbelief, the Israelites provoked, grieved, tempted, and limited God!  When we pray according to sight and not according to the power of the Spirit, we limit God by our superficial prayers!  Isn't it ironic that prayer is the very means God has devised that we would use to release His power upon all the earth, yet that is the same means that can limit God?  We can be like king Joash, who struck three arrows into the ground when he should have struck five or six times.  Elisha was furious with the king, who was content with three victories instead of total victory.  It would not be enough to destroy Syria, the enemy of Israel (see the story in 2 Kings 13:15-19).  What a shame to not pray for victory because we cannot see how God will do it!

Receive this encouragement from the LORD to pray the impossible.  Are you afraid that God will not do it?  Are you concerned that God cannot do it?  Then you are not praying to the real God in heaven, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the great I AM.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and without Him I can do nothing.  For our God the miraculous is common operation.  Give God the freedom with an open invitation to do miraculous things in your life.  If this makes any sense to you at all, it is likely He already has!

Culture Shock!

A major misconception of Americans is that Australia, being English speaking, is very similar to America.  There is an idea that we are perfectly compatible culturally.  I am still only beginning to see the nuances and subtleties which make the cultural expanse so wide, perhaps as wide as the Pacific Ocean.  This is a distance that cannot be spanned except through the power of the Holy Spirit and God's grace.

The Landman family and I have been visiting Sonja in the hospital for about a week now nearly every day.  The hospital is very clean, modern, and the staff is highly professional.  But I saw something yesterday in the medical offices that would never fly in a San Diego hospital!  In the ward where Sonja is staying, there sits a wheelbarrow filled with alcohol:  beer, rum, wine coolers and other miscellaneous alcoholic beverages.  You don't believe me?  But there it is, covered with a net so recovering patients don't help themselves in passing.  I joked with Louis that the state-run hospital is making sure they have future visitors, or at least returning ones!

It turns out that this "Wheelbarrow of Goodies" can be obtained through purchasing raffle tickets.  To me, the entire concept is unthinkable and counter-intuitive.  The negative side-effects of binge drinking is common knowledge, yet here is a hospital supplying a wheelbarrow full of alcohol!  Since it is for a good cause, perhaps the end justifies the means.  I'm seeing the same confusing message among churches here as well.  In talking to a Aussie brother the hyper-Pentecostal movement did much damage in the church and the residual effects are still seen everywhere.

The Aussies do not have the Christian heritage and background that Americans do.  Louis told me about an article he read that reported on the discounts senior citizens can obtain in Australian brothels!  I do not relate these things to say that Australia is wrong and America is right.  To the contrary:  there is no country in the world that has had so much light of the Gospel shone into it as America.  But we have largely failed to allow our light to shine in our Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth.  A lost person is lost.  There are no degrees of salvation.  Had the light from Jesus Christ revealed in America shined with the same luster and brightness in Australia, Australia would no doubt be a different world!

The people of America, Australia, and all the nations of the earth need the salvation wrought only through faith in Jesus Christ.  My prayer is that Australia would be freed from the power of the "Rainbow Serpent" whom the Aboriginal people worship to this day, and be drawn to Jesus Christ through sound doctrine.  May God loose the chains of legalism, crush the head of humanism, and deliver people from the emotionalism that has left people embittered, embattled, and confused.  May Matthew 11:5-6 be fulfilled in this place even now:  "The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. [6] And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me."  Instead of being offended by those who do not know Christ, let us reach out to them.  The cultures of the world are all different, but we all have the same need:  we all need forgiveness, salvation, and righteousness, which are only found in the shed blood of Jesus Christ received through faith.

Biblical Prayers

I'm the kind of person who does not mark in the Bible.  I do not condemn any who feel free to do so, but I don't desire to place any of my commentary or thoughts on the same page as God's Word.  Every time I crack open the pure Word I seek to gather the fresh manna that can only come from above.  I refuse to be chained to only one point in a passage.  The people did not eat manna in only one fashion:  the scriptures say they "ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it..." (Num. 11:8).  The tragedy was that the children of Israel did so because they grew tired of it.  May that never be said of us, that we would desire the cucumbers, melons, and leeks of Egypt when God has provided of His personal stores manna for us to be spiritually sustained.  Manna after a day would stink and breed worms, and yesterday's portion is inadequate for today's lessons.

I have made an exception, however.  In the back of my Bible there are many blank pages on which I have begun a couple of lists.  On one page I list all verses that confirm the divinity of the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Thought the word "Trinity" is not found in scripture, the concept is clearly taught throughout.  Words are inadequate to describe God (since the summation of God is not possible being infinite in nature), but sometimes a single word can be used to sum up a paragraph of thought.  John said that if the deeds of Christ were recorded in books the world itself could not contain them (John 21:25).  Another list that I have recently begun is prayers in the Bible.  How wonderful it is to pray the truth of God's Word back to Him!

This is a prayer that I found during my daily reading today in Col. 4:12 that I am praying for myself:  "Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God."  How often do we labor to pray, not labor in prayer!  There is a difference!  Epaphras was a slave of Christ and his devotion was observed in his fervent laborious intercession on behalf of the Colossian church.  The summation of his prayer was that the followers of Christ "may stand perfect and complete in the will of God."  They were followers of Christ not through their efforts, but by the will of God.  They were to find their completion in Jesus Christ, not through the keeping of man's tradition.  The zeal of Epaphras for the Body of Christ was revealed through his fervent prayers.

I want to stand perfect and complete in the will of God.  There are those "realists" in the church who will decry this as wishful thinking, but I believe this is God's will for all who follow Christ.  We are to put on the whole armor of God and having done all stand girded and ready for battle (Eph. 6:11-13).  This can be done in us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us without measure - without measure!  Elisha had a double-portion of Elijah's spirit, which was a hard thing, and we have been granted through rebirth in Christ the same Spirit without measure!  We are complete in Christ, needing nothing in addition to Him.  This is not to say that we can do our own thing by ourselves, for we are part of the Body of Christ.  Col. 2:8-10 says, "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. [9] For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; [10] and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power."

Refuse to be cheated from your God-ordained birthright in Christ.  May we stand perfect and complete in Him, and gather the fresh manna as Ruth gleaned after the reapers in the field.  Boaz saw her, loved her and told the reapers to leave some extra behind.  Have we not benefited in the same fashion since our Savior openly dotes upon us?  It may be that God will have mercy on us and open our blind eyes and deaf ears to the end we might glorify Him more!  He has raised us from spiritual death:  shall we not through Jesus enter into abundant fullness of life?  John 10:10 says, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."  The deeper life in Christ is available to all who seek it in faith.  When Jesus is lifted up, He draws all men unto Himself.