“I have learned that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and what the heart knows today the head will understand tomorrow.” James Stephens*

Yesterday (Wed)

Paul and Teresa Kohler are missionaries to India who in the past six years have been instrumental in helping plant more than 250 new churches by training nonliterate men and women how to tell Bible stories. They trained 50 people who each promised to train at least 4 others to tell the Bible stories they had learned. Over a two year period they learned around 100 Bible stories and became walking Oral Bibles (though many of them cannot read.)

Paul has long been one of my “heroes”. He became Globe International’s first missionary 35 years ago. My first summer as a student at Liberty Bible College, I visited him in Tuxpam, Mexico (1974). It was then that God put His love in my heart for Latin Americans. Paul planted a dozen or so churches in Mexico before moving to India six years ago. His goal is now to help plant another 250 new churches in the next 18 months. A church is 7 baptized adults. Is that awesome, or what?!!

Our last journal entry told of helping Norma remember the main characters and themes of the first 8 chapters of the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. I should clarify that what I did is not an example of Bible storytelling, but rather an exercise in association. I helped Norma associate something she knows well, the interior of our house, with something unfamiliar to her, the characters and themes of Romans 1-8. Norma has been a Christian for over 20 years.

A 2002 scientific investigation of Church growth in Guatemala showed that though 33% of the population claims to be evangelical, only 30% to 40% of these have personally internalized saving faith–that means they can tell you what they believe and why they believe it. Once during a baptismal service, after the last person was baptized, one of the Elders of the congregation got baptized again as well. When I asked him why he did that he said, “I wanted to feel good like them.”

Recent studies are showing that the reason why many people don’t assimilate the message of the Gospel is because we have been taught to preach and teach logically to the head, when theology is more easily assimilated in the heart by narrative or storytelling. Many people learn by narrative much more easily than by conceptual communication. When we tell the stories of God’s great acts in history and our lives, we leave them open to choose for themselves and let God form their theology for them. My friend Paul calls that incarnational ministry–teaching others in the way they learn best.

*James Stephens, The Crock of Gold (New York: Macmillan); quoted in Ruth Sawyer, The Way of the Storyteller (New York: Viking Press, 1942), 16.

The “Mystery of the survival of the Jews”

There have been many times in history when measures were taken to eradicate the Jewish race. One of those occasions took place while the Jews were exiled and is recounted in the fascinating Bible story of Esther. In it we feel the power of God’s sovereignty at work.

I recently came across a message given last year by Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin. He is founder of a network of schools, colleges and postgraduate schools in the US and Israel, that promote the principles and values of modern Jewish orthodoxy. This was his Cedar message of April 2007, given in Efrat, Israel, a community he founded about 22 miles south of Jerusalem. In it he mentions being invited by two Universities in China to speak on the subject of “The Mystery of the survival of the Jews”. Here he states that there are two keys to their survival: first the covenant God made with Abram, making him a father before he had any children; and second, the practice of Abraham’s family, of telling the stories of God’s great redemptive acts. These stories impart identity, value, and destiny to their families. Many times these stories are put to song making them even more easy to remember (ie. the “Song of Moses” and many of the Psalms).

To illustrate the impact of how these stories have preserved Jewish culture, Riskin said he was invited to teach the Tora in English to a community of Jews in eastern India. While there, they sang him a song that lasted two hours and recounted the entire history of the Jews from Adam to the destruction of the temple. This community that had very little instruction, had a strong identity due to recounting the stories of the great redemptive acts of God.

What would our families be like if we learned to tell ours and the Bible’s stories of God’s great acts, as a frequent practice with our children and grandchildren? Would generations of our families be preserved? Would we restore the foundations of society?

Prayer Power…
Father, thank you for your wonderful and powerful stories through which You reveal Yourself and your love to our hearts. Help us learn them by heart and tell them with emotion to our children and grandchildren. We pray for Pastors and leaders in your Church that they will discover the power of Your narrative theology to heal the identity crisis in your children. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Psalm 149 – “Let the high praises of God be in their mouth. This honor have all His saints.”
Pro.29:23 – A man’s pride will bring him low, but the humble in spirit will retain honor.

Yesterday (Tue)
Norma comes to our house once a week to clean. She often brings one or two of her children with her. Since Helen is in the States I made lunch for them yesterday. At the table Norma told me she felt bad because her pastor was going to give a test on the book of Romans and she was embarrassed because she doesn’t know how to read. So I taught her how she could remember the main characters and themes of the first 8 chapters in 15 minutes, by associating them with the different areas in our house.

I told Norma to imagine, that when she comes to our house, Jesus meets her at the garage door and welcomes her in. That’s the introduction. The first person we see in Romans is Jesus. “He is good news. God reveals his righteousness through the good news of Jesus.”

Then you come in and talk with Steve and Helen in the INSTE office. They’re not Guatemalan’s. They’re foreigners from the nations. The rest of Chap. 1 is about all the nations being sinners and needing Jesus. That’s Chapter 1. In the living room she sees a man with a little round covering on his head sitting in a chair. He’s a Jew. Talking with him he says that all Jews are sinners too. That’s Chapter 2. So we all sit together in the living room, Steve and Helen with the Jew, and we remind her that all people everywhere, Jews and everyone, can receive forgiveness in Jesus. That’s the theme of Chapter 3.

Then we sit down to have lunch with Abraham who is already at the table. He tells us that he received forgiveness by believing God’s promise that Jesus would come through his children. That’s Chapter 4. From there, we go into the kitchen and find Adam and Jesus standing together. They are brothers. Adam is the first man and father of all sinners, and Jesus is the second man and father of all God’s kids. When you identify personally with Jesus on the cross, Adam in you dies. Adam and Jesus are Chapter 5.

Then we walk outside to hang up the clothes and find a cross and 2 tombs. The first guy went up into Jesus on the cross and he died to sin (Chapter 6). The other guy went up into Jesus on the cross and died to the law (Chapter 7). That’s chapters 6 and 7. This is our home where we live together and love each other, which we can only do by walking in the Holy Spirit. And that’s what Chapter 8 is about.

We went through it again: First she sees Jesus, then Steve and Helen and a Jew, then Abraham at the table, then Adam with Jesus in the kitchen, and a cross with two tombs. Then we come to life in the Holy Spirit. So Norma told me the analogy and what each of the characters represent. She got it right the first time. She thanked me for patiently teaching her and went home happy. I told her it was a pleasure.

It takes work and study to get the Bible in our heart in such a way that the Holy Spirit can produce creative analogies, stories and parables, in fun and interesting ways that our family and friends will like. What would our families be like if we took the effort to spend time with them in this way?

God awakens us to our destiny
Reading Ezra and Nehemiah the past week, we observed God waking folks up to His mission and their destiny in that mission. Most of the Jews in Babylon were born there, like the Israelites in Egypt. “God woke up the spirit of King Cyrus” who made a decree for all Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple to pray for him there (a gentile king wanting Yahweh’s people to pray for him – surely influenced by the prophet Daniel – who himself never returned to Jerusalem). This was the 2nd Exodus of Israel. There were three trips made: the first brought a spiritual reform to God’s people (rebuilding the temple), the second a moral reform to God’s people (marital covenants), and the third brought community and business reforms (rebuilding the city walls). God’s mission is holistic, restoring wholeness, health and peace to those who flow with Him.

The leadership of the prophets (Haggai and Zachariah) in the first wave, the priests (Ezra) in the 2nd wave, and the governor (Nehemiah) in the 3rd wave, was essential for the success of God accomplishing His mission. You have to dream God’s dream with all your heart, pray and fast His dream in order to fulfill God’s mission. If it can be done without that, it’s not God’s dream, it’s your ambition. God wakes up our spirit putting in us a strong sense of His destiny for our lives which builds in us a strong enough foundation to be able to overcome all the odds. Only men and women convinced of God’s mission can overcome the opposition that will rise up against the Lord’s way.

Lately I’ve been strengthened by some new friends the Lord has brought into my life who are mentors focused on accomplishing God’s mission for them. Dr. Randy Peck, M.D., has an infectious joy in blessing others to be a blessing. For the past 8 years he’s been in the business of helping others discover God’s purpose and mission for their life. He’s a networker of networks. He mentors people into experiencing the love of God daily so they can give that love to others. God has awakened Randy’s spirit. Would you like to have your spirit awakened? Randy can help. Check out his web site and be blessed.

http://www.randypeck.com

I was especially blessed by this entry: Uncommon DESTINY Coaching

Prayer Power…
Father, thank you for seeing my need even before I do. Thank you for bringing Randy into my life. Bless him today and return to him a thousand fold all the blessings he gives to me and others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Psalm 148 – God of wonders beyond our galaxy – you are holy!!

Pro.28 – the righteous are as bold as a lion.

We look one more day at the possibility of being saved from being babes in Christ. This passage is compelling: “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men… Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the Head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:14-15). “We are to grow up in every way into him … into Christ.” The only way to grow up is to grow up into Him. You cannot by the very nature of things grow up in every way when you commit yourself to a system of thought organized around one man or a group of men and their emphases. They imperfectly comprehend Him Who is the Truth; so they hold truths about the Truth. You must break out from blinkered systems and “with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord” become “changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another.”

When Jesus Christ is the center of your faith and the center of your quest, then you are upon the Illimitable. Men and their views are exhaustible, but Jesus Christ the Divine is the inexhaustible. The Gospel of Thomas says that Jesus said that the Kingdom “is a movement and a rest.” You move toward Him, and you rest in something transforming and satisfying. Then there is a movement again and a rest—and so on, forever. “We are to grow up in every way into him.” The “in every way” is significant. It is a total growth—not merely spiritually, but mentally, emotionally, socially, and physically. You become “every whit whole” and “whole” after a pattern of the Son of God—the highest pattern of the universe. This is no lopsided growth—so spiritual you are unfit for material relations, or so material you are unfit for spiritual relations—but an all-round growth—in every way. So it is an eternal growth and a symmetrical growth. Nothing is more beautiful than a truly Christian person.

O Unlimited Christ, You are calling me to the Infinite—to partake of Your Everlastingness, to share Your Universality, to enter the Boundless. I come. Take my nothingness and make it into Your Everything—“in every way.” In Your name. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I am a Christian in “some” ways, may I shift to being a Christian in “every” way.

50 new facts and figures about trends and issues concerning empirical global Christianity.

VERY GOOD SITUATIONS
4. 10 million Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims have opted to remain within those religions to witness for Christ as believers in Jesus as Lord.

6. Everywhere on Earth can now easily be targeted with at least 3 of the 45 recognized varieties of effective evangelism.

8. The country with the fastest Christian expansion ever is China, now at 16,500 new converts (including births) every day.

GOOD SITUATIONS
15. Per hour of ministry, the 4 megapeoples most responsive to Christianity, Christ, and the Gospel are Jinyu Chinese, Pathan, Bihari, Maithili.

FORTUITOUS SITUATIONS
18. At a steady rate over the last 20 centuries, in all 239 countries, 71 million Christians have been martyred-killed, executed, murdered-for Christ.

20. Mainland China’s Christians have thousands of trained workers poised to begin evangelizing the world. (Have you ever been to a city and not found a Chinese restaurant?)

PARTLY GOOD SITUATIONS
22. Every person in the world belongs to, on average, 10 distinct and separate (and often conflicting) religious categories.

SOMEWHAT BAD SITUATIONS
23. Christian communicators largely ignore the huge potential of the globe’s 1,100 lingua francas, each with over 100,000 non-native speakers.

UNFORTUNATE SITUATIONS
25. The 5 most dangerous of all Christian vocations (over 3% murder rates) are bishops, evangelists, catechists, colporteurs, foreign missionaries.

BAD SITUATIONS
30. 40% of the church’s global foreign mission resources are being deployed to just 10 oversaturated countries with strong citizen-run home ministries.

32. Per hour of ministry, the 4 megapeoples least responsive to Christianity, Christ, and the Gospel are Levantine Arab, French, Czech, Russian.

33. 136 million new souls begin life on Earth each year, but Christianity’s 4,550 foreign mission agencies baptize only 5 million new persons a year.

34. Organized Christianity has total contact with 4,315 religions but no contact at all with 377 other religions and their over 34 million adherents.

35. Christians spend more on the annual audits of their churches and agencies ($970 million) than on all their workers in the non-Christian world.

37. Christian triumphalism-not as pride in huge numbers, but as publicized self-congratulation-is rampant in most churches, agencies, ministries.

38. Some 250 of the 300 largest international Christian organizations mislead the public by publishing incorrect or falsified progress statistics.

VERY BAD SITUATIONS
39. Despite Christ’s command to evangelize, 66% of all humans from AD 30 to the present day have never even heard of his name.

40. Out of 690 million Great Commission Christians, 70% have never been told about World A’s 1.9 billion unevangelized individuals.

42. Over 20 centuries Christians have announced 1,870 global plans to evangelize the world; 250 plans focused on AD 2000 fell short of goals.

44. Measures of personal evangelization by Christians indicate that 86% of all Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims do not personally know a Christian.

Prayer Power

Father, we pray today that you send forth laborers into your harvest. Turn our hearts to You and your Word that we may see the world as you see it, sense your mission and flow with you in your harvest. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“The love of Christ compels us because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2Cor.5:14-15

We are considering “in every way you were enriched in Him.” “In every way” includes the body. I have often imagined a convention of bodies talking about the people who inhabit them. A body stands up and says: “Oh my, the man who lives in me doesn’t know how to live. He ties me up into knots by his fears and worries and resentments. Then he blames me for getting out of sorts, and I’m dosed with all kinds of medicines that have nothing to do with my ailments. If he knew how to live I would have no ailments. My ailments are all rooted in his wrong attitudes and reactions. I wish he knew how to live. I’d be well.” Another body stands up and says, “The man who lives in me is wonderful. He lives in Christ and hence knows how to live. He is harmonious and adjusted and happy. You should see how we get along. I would do anything for him—and do! I go beyond my own capacity for such a man—he’s a joy to live with.”

The body is made by Christ, for Christ, and lives as it lives in Him. Some time ago I was threatened with a serious ailment. In the midst of it the Lord said, “In Me you are well and whole.” That phrase struck me—“In Me.” Out of Him I was not well and whole, but in Him I found that I was well and whole and have continued to be as I have remained in Him. It is as simple and profound as that! Here was a woman who because of her impossible way of life became ill, and one after another had to have her appendix, her gall bladder, and other organs taken out. The doctor said, “What are you going to do when you run out of parts?” She was allergic to all sorts of things. Then she was converted and began to live in Christ. Her allergies dropped away, her body bounded back to health, and she has amazing vitality and health. The body is His home and is at home in Him.

O Christ, You heal our sicknesses, but more, You save us from getting sick. We throw off our sicknesses by Your vitality within us. We live in Your health, Your joy—Your everything! I thank You. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: May I be so healthy in Christ that no disease germ can gain a lodging.

Yesterday (Sat)
Awesome!!! Last night as I shared about how to build a family that will last for generations, emphasizing fathers helping their kids learn to hear Jesus’ voice directly in their hearts through prayer; and rewriting and memorizing Bible stories to tell their kids and grandkids in fun and powerful ways. God’s presence came and moved hearts. This particular church has been known for its emphasis on eschatology. At the end of the service the Pastor’s wife confessed they had gotten off track and exhorted the congregation to return to the simplicity of the gospel.

2 Chronicles 31-33
31 – Prospering in the right context: “And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, in the law and in the commandment, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart. So he prospered.” What benefit is material prosperity if it doesn’t come in this context: serving the Lord with all our heart in love with His Word?!

32 – The blessing of a mentor: King Hezekiah had a brother and a mentor who walked with God (the prophet Isaiah). When it appeared that insurmountable odds where against him (the Assyrian threat), all it took was Isaiah’s presence with him, his prayer and encouragement to help Hezekiah realize that he was actually on the favored side of the problem. Hezekiah told the people, “…there are more with us than with them. With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles” (v7-8). Hezekiah’s faith was based on God’s mission.

33 – God can turn the most wayward children: Manasseh was only 12 years old when he became king of Judah. He went totally crazy in the occult, worse than the Canaanite nations before Israel. Tradition says he sawed Isaiah in half. So God had the Assyrians take him off to jail. When his world came crumbling down around him, he repented and the Lord had his throne restored to him. “Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.” Though Manasseh received forgiveness and personal blessing, the effects of his sins on others was tragic. He had poured out so much innocent blood in Jerusalem that no matter how much folks repented after that, though they received personal forgiveness, the blessing was only temporary. God couldn’t forgive the city and was forced to destroy Jerusalem to keep His Word, leaving it desolate for 70 years—for the sins of Manasseh.

There is more than one reason why the Church has to stand actively against social injustice. Not just for the temporary blessing, but for preservation of future generations.

Prayer Power…
Father, raise up this generation of Christians in Guatemala to learn your stories, sharing them often with their families, feeding their children with your Word, and standing against the social injustice all around them. It’s Your mission Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Psalm 138 – God will perfect that which concerns me! (v7) Lord, grant me the grace to change what can be changed and to trust You with the rest.

Studies show that Guatemala has the highest rate of homicide in Latin America with 70 murders for every 100k population, followed by Colombia with 65, Venezuela with 35, Brazil with 27 and Mexico with 12.5 per 100k. 40% of those murders are among children 10 to 19 years old. Also, 33% of Guatemalan girls enter into a common law relationship before age 18. 40% before age 22. 40% of those girls commit suicide.*

Jesus’ mentoring Church is their only hope for restoring the foundations of this society. We need your help.

Make a contribution by clicking here www.gme.org

Thank you!

* Statistics taken from sociology reports of the University of Hermosillo, Mexico, 2003 http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/pdf/417/41702603.pdf , http://www.eclac.org/publicaciones/xml/3/8283/anexo_grafico2.pdf

We have noted the phrase, “in every way you were enriched in him.” We must pause to emphasize “in every way.” We know that our souls are “enriched in him.” As we expose our souls to Him, miracles of changed souls take place. It works to the degree that that exposure to Him takes place. But will it work “in every way”? Does this enrichment turn out to be a total enrichment, enriching body and mind, social and economic relationships? The answer is yes. It is Life-touching, enriching the whole of life.

Take the mind. Forgive the personal illustration: I was toward the bottom of my class until I was converted. After conversion I said to myself, “This is no place for a Christian,” and I moved toward the top. There was a woman whose marriage was on the rocks, and she herself was empty and frustrated. She was converted and with conversion mentally awakened. At forty-five she decided she wanted an education, but would have to keep a full-time job to support herself. She entered the University and came out four years later with her degree cum laude. She was given a scholarship for an M.A. in Psychology and got all A’s. She has organized a continuous prayer vigil going on through the 24 hours, throughout the 365 days a year in shifts of half an hour each. I have found people in Japan, India, and Africa who take half hours of the vigil, difficult in America. The continuous prayer goes on night and day. This came from a once-empty and frustrated life. “In every way you were enriched in him”—mentally, spiritually, in life output. An African woman converted in a hospital, walked home seventy-five miles by stages, and through her radiant witness for Christ established five congregations on the way, the mission sending teachers and preachers to take over behind her. She left a trail of light and joy behind her—“enriched in him.”

O Father, how can we thank You enough that we need not be poor right next door to Your available resources. They are all ours for the asking and receiving. So I walk from my poverty to Your riches. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: A red hen sat on an open barrel of grain and starved to death—save me from the non-receptive mentality.

“Make it my own… Make me His own”

“Not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection … Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil. 3:9-10, 12).

When Paul repudiated his own righteousness and the so-called righteousness of the accessories, he did it to gain the righteousness of God. What was the righteousness of God? It was the righteousness that was manifested in raising Jesus from the dead. It was the positive righteousness that tackled sin in the cross and death in the resurrection. It conquered both. It was not the righteousness of taboo—you can’t do this, you can’t do that. It was the righteousness that walked up to the worst and conquered it by positive righteousness and love.

To know Jesus was to know Him and the power of His resurrection. This was not knowing about Jesus—a dead Jew. This was knowing the alive and universal Savior. To be in Him was to have resurrection power working in you. In the Belgian Congo in a village which had Roman Catholic Christians in it, there was always a shrine of the Virgin and Child in front of the village. The figure was a baby Christ. No baby Christ is sufficient to redeem the world. Only the Resurrected Christ is sufficient for that.

“I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” “Make it my own … made me his own.” When He makes me His own, then I make all the “its” my own. When I surrender to Him, things surrender to me. I don’t struggle to get “it”—I surrender to become His, then “it” becomes subservient to Him—and to me in Him. Everything belongs to me because I belong to Him. I possess nothing—and Everything. Glory be!

O Resurrected and Living Lord, I would know You and the power of Your resurrection in every thought, every word, every attitude, every moment of the day and night. Then I will live in final power and final glory. I do now, but I want more. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All the “its” of life are under my feet, for I am at His feet.

ALL THE CLINGING ACCESSORIES

“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own” (Phil. 3:8-9). The wonder of self-surrender to Christ is this: You not only surrender your troublesome ego, you also surrender all the accessories that cling to the ego to bolster it. It is pathetic how some people lean on some dead ancestor to sustain their present importance. I read a memorial tablet in a church saying that So and So was the son of So and So, and the grandson of So and So, M. P. (Member of Parliament). That M. P. was obviously put in to bolster his importance.

When Paul was crucified with Christ, all the accessories that clung to his old ego were crucified too. He swept the decks of them. From henceforth he would have no righteousness of his own, nor would he depend on the righteousness of any other thing or person. It was Christ and Christ alone.

He not only let these accessories go, he let them go with contempt—counted them as refuse (literally “dung”). He used extreme language for he felt extreme feelings as he saw people trying to add to Christ’s sufficiency, piecing Him out by adding this, that, and the other. He saw they were canceling the grace of God by these additions. Paul could say, “I do not nullify the grace of God” (Gal. 2:21). He did not nullify that grace by substitution (the Law), or by addition (the magnifying of a Christian rite or ceremony and making it overshadow the Center, Jesus Christ). It was Jesus only. Paul would have counted all these attempts at piecing out the sufficiency of Christ as “refuse.”

Paul wanted to be found in Him—not in this, that, or the other. He could say, “This one thing I do,” and “This one Person I know.” His impress is upon the ages.

O Jesus, my Lord and Savior and my All, I would have this same simplicity of faith and life and love. Prune me from all that saps my energy, my love, and my loyalty. I would have a single-minded and single-hearted devotion to You and You alone. Amen.

AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Jesus Only” is not merely a slogan—it is a profound reality.