Getting My Boots Dirty

We recently had our half night of prayer. So some of us were setting up, and it was raining.

William immediately put the boys to work carrying the heavies in the rain. It had been raining for a while, and some of the ground was muddy.

It took about 2 minutes before several of us girls started to feel like slackers, so we went over to help.

So the boys started passing over some of the lighter stuff so that we didn't get our shoes too wrecked or slip in the mud. But some of the girls wouldn't get close enough for the boys to actually hand them anything.

I thought that was a bit ridiculous, so I stomped through the mud to get the different things that needed to be carried. The second I did so, several of the girls and a few of the boys were horrified: "You'll wreck your boots!"

"So?" I pointed out that they were cheap, and had lasted me for three years already, so it didn't really matter that much. I would rather help.

The next day I was wondering about why I was so annoyed about it - about people wanting to stop me because they wanted to keep my shoes nice. I mean sure, priorities people, but that didn't explain why I was so annoyed.

It's because their attitude was that you get to choose where you are going to help.

And that's an attitude I work really hard to get rid of in my own life and in the lives of the children I teach.

If you are helping, you are doing what is necessary. And sometimes, the thing that is necessary is something you really don't want to do. But you do it anyway, because it's what is needed.

Especially in our service to God we need to be really wary of this view. We do NOT get to choose what we are going to do. God commands, and we need to obey. Even small examples of us "choosing" when choosing really means disobeying make it more acceptable in our eyes to choose where we will be obedient. That's DISOBEDIENCE! And it's not acceptable in God's eyes.

Sure, this was such a tiny thing that it really didn't matter in the scheme of things, and the others were saying it to be nice etc, but even small cases of givign in to our flesh lead to bigger and bigger examples of weakness, disobedience, and sin.

(Oh, and incidentally, my boots were just fine.)

Thought's From My Quiet Time

“...as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.” (From 2 Thessalonians 1:5)

Christ rarely calls us to an easy path. We rarely go through life without trials, without difficulties, or without persecutions for our faith. Yet it is these things that show us worthy for heaven.

Why? Because when we refuse to give up God in the midst of trial we show Him as our supreme desire. When we are patient and joyful in the midst of suffering we demonstrate that God is our comfort, and that He is more than sufficient.

I seem to bounce from one trial to another. I’m sick (again) with another potentially serious undiagnosed problem that’s clearly recurring. I’m having to fix problems other people have made at work. I still have family and friends who like making fun of me for my faith. And yet it is in these times that I have the biggest opportunity to show God as worthy.

LORD, help me to make the most of these opportunities, that Your name may be glorified in my life!

Shopping With A Purpose

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Feed The Hungry

Our Feed the Hungry Director from Germany, Jean-Pierre Rummens, was also present on the day and shared many stories of his adventures with FTH. Jean-Pierre shared a particularly moving story of little Joe. An orphaned baby, left for dead, little Joe was discovered by the team near the border of Ethiopia.

At three months old, he was very sick and malnourished; his skin, so dry it was like sandpaper. Everyone had given up on him, including his guardian and his doctor, but the team believed for a miracle and travelled several hours to the Ugandan border to buy medicine and baby milk formula. Within a week the baby was out of danger and was expected to live.

"The most amazing thing was that, all that effort - a trip to buy milk and medicine, travelling to the hospital, buying food for the guardian cost only $20! The baby almost didn't make it for just $20! I've never forgotten that story - and the lesson that so little can make such a big difference." remembers Jean-Pierre Rummens.

Feed the Hungry.

Already Gone

However, to try to restore relevancy to Scripture, what do we usually do these days? We add guitars and drums to the service. We think that the Church needs to follow the culture in order to be relevant. But cultural forms do not make you relevant, they just make you cool. Truth makes you relevant.

Pg 110 of Already Gone by Ken Han & Britt Beemer

The Mark of the Christian

The Christian really has a double task. He has to practice both God’s holiness and God’s love... Not his holiness without his love: that is only harshness. Not his love without his holiness: that is only compromise. Anything that an individual Christian or Christian group does that fails to show the simultaneous balance of the holiness of God and the love of God presents to a watching world not a demonstration of the God who exists but a caricature of the God who exists.

The Mark of the Christian by Francis A Schaeffer, pg 36.

Spiritual Gifts

Have you ever done one of those dorky spiritual gift quizzes? I remember doing one. The main thing I remember was that I insisted on marking some of the questions as negative and as a result got negative 2270 for the spiritual gift of celibacy.
All dorkiness aside, the fact of the matter is that “spiritual gifts quizzes” and the like encourage us to be LAZY CHRISTIANS.

My friend Stephen, after reading a few posts here, decided that I have the spiritual gift of evangelism. I’m personally going to guess no. I am not especially gifted in that area. I find talking about God difficult at times (as in, a lot of the time!). I’m not gifted. But I strive to be obedient.

And that’s the thing. We use our lack of “spiritual gifting” in an area to claim that we are not meant to do anything for it. If I got a dollar for every time I heard a Christian say “I’m just not called to do that” or “That’s not my gifting” I’d be able to contribute the entire costs of an international adoption to a few families. Which is extremely worrying.

We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do God’s work, and that includes a whole lot of things that we are not gifted to do, naturally or spiritually. But God gives us the grace as the time comes. Not before, but during. And the result is that He is glorified.

Our only calling is to Him. Our only gift is Him. And to Him alone we must be obedient.