Discipling Nations

humbling

Making a drastic change can be a very humbling experience. Moving from the cool fall air, perfect temperature in the home, in a familiar territory, to an island where it is hot, humid and unfamiliar has been just that. Humbling. We have an air conditioner, but we dont use it so that we can keep the energy bill down. You might think, what is so bad about moving to an island? A tropical island. Well just like it is when you move anywhere new, you loose that sense of community that you had with friends and family so you have to build that up.
Familiarity. You have to find your way around, and if you are moving to a different country and sometime just a different province or state, you might need to find new stores with the best prices. These things are normal. But what we need to get used to is the culture. Since english is the official language of Belize, the language barrier is not much of a hurdle to get over, though, knowing spanish and or creole certailnly would go far. Becoming a minority is not something I would think many white people are used to. In Belize, if you are white and under the age of 50 or so, then you are assumed to be a tourist. You dont see a lot of white guys in there 20′s in San Pedro that live here, in fact, aside from the three of us, I have yet to see one.
If you are white, you are rich. That seems to be the perception anyway. One of the things that we have to humble ourselves with most and except, is that some of the poor people here will use you. They will ask for anything and everything. Some people will warn you about it. We were warned and it happened many times. At first we were reluctant to help our fellow man. Wallace is a good example. A poor local that we see from time to time. Really nice guy, and really poor. We have had him over a few times for dinner, a couple uninvited, but that is ok, were happy to receive him. Wallace asked if he could have one of our bottles of bug spray because the mesquitos were rediculous when we first got here 2 weeks ago. We didnt think we could spare any so we just told him that he could come by and use it anytime. I think that God is using wallace to humble us and to grow us.
Luke 6:29 says, “…and from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.” It goes on to say in verse 30, “Give to anyone who asks of you. And from him who takes your goods away, do not ask them back.” (NKJV).
In Matthew 5:44, God tells us to pray for those who spitefully use us.
I do not think that these people use us spitefully, but it seems like they certainly do not want to get to know you. This is another area that we need to humble ourselves. Meet their needs, invite them to dinner, and try to get to know them and most of all, pray for them.
Tyring to love somebody, and building a relationship with someone whom you know or suspect is only interested in your money or your things is difficult to say the least. But that is exactly what God called us to do, and that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus is the example that we are to follow.
We ended up letting Wallace borrow a bottle of our bug spray, he never did give it back, and that is perfectly okay with us.

we made it!!

Man! It has been a long time coming, but we finally made it. Jarod, Camden and myself made it to the island and are in it for the long haul. We left home and made it to Ambergris Caye. On the 10th of October. We have only been here one full day, and have already met up with some people we made friends with back in June when we came down for a week and we have met new people through the Oldhams.

We were able to bring a good sized suitcase full of Bibles to the island witch is an answered prayer. You can not buy Bibles on the island and so they are hard to come by. Most of the people here do not have a Bible to read, so they can not spend time in The Word. As we disciple people, we will give them a Bible that they can use.

It is so good seeing the Oldhams again. We are excited to see what God has in store for everyone.

Jeff introduced us to a guy from Honduras that is just awesome. Melvin barely speaks English and Jeff barely speaks Spanish so they piece things together to communicate and it is so cool. We are all going go need to brush up on our Spanish and creole. We’ll give it 6 months and I am sure we will make some progress. Right now we are worshiping with Julian and his wife Elizabeth and their 1.5 year old daughter rhea.

Julean wants to take us spear fishing but we don’t have a spear. I was thinking we could just fashion one out of bamboo, but I suppose that is not as practical as it is cost effective. I’ll see if I can update this again soon. Tomorrow we are going grocery shopping with Amy to find the places that are not oulandishly overpriced and those places that dont charge extra because we are white. The three of us do not have internet at our apartment, so we have to bum some interwebz off of the Oldhams. So For those of  you in contact with via email, we may not be able to email freely every day, so if we don’t get back to you right away, do not be offended.

I am going to see what I can do about a shower, I have not had one in two days.

it has been a while

Hey everybody! I am sorry I have not posted anything in a while! Here is what is going down right now. We got our tickets and will officially be leaving for Belize on October 10, 2011 and will be coming back to visit 6 months later on April 20th. My last day at work was September 1, 2011. So that will give me a month to get some things in order and out of the way including the 3 weddings I will be going to before we leave. God is doing some pretty amazing things to prepare us for our trip.
I will post something soon, I just need to gather myself first.

the wisest man

I was riding my bike today day when a thought came to mind. I started thinking about King Solomon and how God made him the wisest man who has ever and will ever have lived. What a blessing that is! I was thinking about that and then I was struck with another thought. Surely He was not the wisest man ever. What about Jesus? Was Jesus Wiser than Solomon?
I thought to myself, “Well of course, Jesus is Lord.” like many of you are probably thinking right now. But I can not just stop there, I can not sleep on that. When God makes a promise you can take it to the bank. What he says goes. God’s word is truth because God is truth. Which brings me to my next point. Jesus is Lord as we established just a bit ago, but He was also the Son of man. He was on earth and was human. God tells us in the Bible that Solomon would be the wisest man ever to have lived. Was Jesus the exception? Would God not have specified an exception? As far as I know, God did not expect us to pick up on exceptions in the Bible by ourselves. That is, He would not say something and then expect us to assume that He also meant something else if He did not say it. Is it supposed to be understood or assumed that the Son of God, who could call on legions of angels to come down from Heaven at any given moment, who had the power to do ANYTHING including raise the dead (if you recall Lazarus in Matthew 11:1-45), and who displayed what might seem to be unparalleled wisdom was, in fact, the wisest person ever? It sure is easy to. Jesus was human as much as He is God. It is easy to see why we might just say, “Jesus is Lord so of course He was the wisest man ever.” But consider that if Jesus was the wisest man ever, then what God promised Solomon would not be true. It is easy to see it this way. The Lord is our creator, Jesus is Lord, Jesus took the form of man, how could He not be the wisest man ever? It’s not like God made a promise to Solomon and then decided to send Jesus to save us all and was like, “Oh dang, sorry Solomon I forgot I was gonna send Jesus down there for all mankind so that thing I said about you being the wisest man ever, well I take it back”. God knew before time that he was going to send His Son Jesus to save us. So if Jesus was in fact, the wisest man ever, would that not mean that God went back on a promise?

minimalism

To leave a comment on a post, just click the title and scroll to the bottom.

Lately, I have had minimalism on my heart. Minimalism in general is awesome. I am currently trying to be more and more minimalist with each passing day. We as human beings love stuff, we all know that. We also know that money does not buy happiness. It’s a cliche that we here all too often. But we still hear it because so many don’t take it to heart. They think to themselves, “Yeah, I should get rid of some stuff.” But they never do. So my question is this, Why do we still buy things to try to make us happy instead of buying only those things which are practical or can further the kingdom of God? This is within reason, of course. We will still buy little things here and there like books we enjoy reading like a sci-fi book or an ipod to listen to music or whatever, things that can change our mood or help us escape a stressful day. I am no exception.

I catch myself in seasons of want from time to time and realize how fortunate I am not to have any money. I often see things like a car and I think to myself, “If I had a metric ton of money, I would totally buy one of those.” This, of course, implies that if I could just buy that car, I would be so happy. If I had that car, my happiness factor would increase 6 fold. Which we know is only momentary.
It’s funny though, for some people, it is easier to buy more and more stuff than it is to get rid of stuff. Some people collect things “just in case” like my mom, while others may have emotional attachments to things because they are family heirlooms or something similar. Which brings up another good point, having things because they were given to us and not because we saw it and had to have it.
Then there are those with a mental illness called hoarding. You’ve seen the show on T.V., Hoarders, where people have been collecting various things for years at a constant rate and now their home is literally filled to the ceiling with stuff. Pathways are made by piling things up to the side just to get through everything. That is a sickness as we have recognized and if you suffer from this you may consider talking to a counselor about this as this could be the result of underlying issues.
I would like to discuss why being a minimalist even to a slight degree would benefit most people today.

From a biblical perspective, we recall Jesus telling the disciples in Luke 12:33 to sell their stuff and build their treasure in heaven.

“Sell what you have and give
alms; provide yourselves money
bags that do not grow old, a treasure
in the heavens that does not
fail, where no thief approaches nor
moth destroys.” (NKJV)

Jesus was not telling them to live in poverty, but just to simplify their lives. This is why I decided to be as minimalist as I can be. I just want to simplify my life. When you do not have a ton of stuff to worry about and loose, nothing to clutter your life or home it is just liberating. It is hard to explain. I try to imagine how okay I would be if my home caught fire and burned to the ground, and I can quite honestly say, that I would not be phased one bit.
“Awe man! My favorite shirt got burned to a crisp… Oh well.” That is likely the monologue to take place. I just do not have anything that I hold in super high regard. Granted if I lost my laptop, it would set me back a little bit, but ultimately I would still praise God because other things are more important, like getting out of the building safely.

Some people have emotional attachments to things. Which I would not necessarily say is unhealthy, but it is just material. It will eventually be destroyed. We can not take to heaven with us.
My mom has some golf clubs that were passed down to her. They were custom made by her grandfather. She has been meaning to hang them on the wall for display for the last 20-something years and still has yet to do it. So they have been sitting in our garage everywhere we have lived for a long time. Her intentions were good. She wanted to display them proudly and bring honor to my great grandfather, but how much good do they do in the garage? Now she has this guilt because she wanted to do something honorable with an heirloom that she never got around to doing. These clubs linger over here all the time, she thinks about them all the time and it eats at her. Imagine the freedom of appraising these clubs, selling them and ultimately getting rid of them.
It really comes down to what Andy Stanley calls the principle of the path in his series destinations, which I would recommend and encourage everyone to listen to because it is a great 4 part series. He tells us that the principle of the path is that direction, NOT INTENTION, determines destination. My mom had the best intentions with the clubs, but she never started down the path to do what she wanted to. You can want it with your whole heart, but if you do not act on it, It is just not going to happen.

Some people collect things “just in case”. “What if I need this in the future?” I used to do this. I thought, “Man I can’t get rid of this, what if I need it later” especially with old computer stuff. I was a pack rat when it came to electronics. Honestly I am not sure how or when I adopted the mentality of, “What if I need this later?….. Oh well.” I have severed emotional or “what if…” attachments to things that just are not practical to keep around.
I found my progress reports and my report cards that I received in kindergarten through second grade. I thought it was really cool, but I realized that these were not something I needed to hang onto. I read them and laughed, reminisced and compared my behavior to my 4 year old nephew, then I shredded them and moved on. It is just more stuff to hang on to.

Probably the best reason to get rid of stuff is the reduction of idolatry. By nature, we as humans tend to put things before God. “I think I will wake up early and go clean my car then go back to bed and when I get up again, Ill read my Bible.” Why should your quiet time with God and diving into God’s word (dare I ask?) take a….backseat to your car or any other object. Why not read your Bible and spend time with The Lord our God before you play Xbox?

There are so many reasons to be more minimalist and what I mean by that, is just simplifying your life. I do not believe it is wrong to have things as long as they do not take precedence over your relationship with God.
Perhaps that looks like selling your brand new vehicle and buying one that you can pay cash for or pay off much quicker or maybe getting rid of some old clothes by donating them to Goodwill. Being more minimalist just for the financial benefit alone is certainly a good idea. God talks more about money than he does about heaven and hell. He tells us in Proverbs 22:7

“The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower is servant
to the lender”.

One thing I have personally noticed from my own personal journey to minimalism is less stress generally and financially, less clutter, I am less distracted, I have less things to keep up with, I have less concern about what I am going to wear the next day, less guilt as I described earlier, more freedom from emotional ties, I could literally up and move and not worry about what to do with my stuff. I could pack up to leave to another country in less than a few hours and be completely ready to start a whole new chapter of my life. If my home burned down, I almost would not even notice.

Here and here are some great resources for those who want to be more minimalist.

Thanks for reading!

Serving The Lord, guilt free.

So I am continuing my study of Isaiah and I love it. Im in the sixth chapter right now. This is the chapter that talks about the Seraphim praising God on His throne and purging Isaiah of all sin by touching a Coal to his lips.
I actually went back to read this chapter again because it is so cool. I had read verse 14 in chapter 8 and highlighted it because it says,

“The Lord of hosts, Him you shall hallow;
Let Him be your fear,
And let Him be your dread.”

When I read that I thought, “Ok, that’s a cool verse to know and memorize”, but it did not hit me until I reread chapter 6.
Isaiah had a vision. It also never really occurred to me, by the way, that when The Bible talks about visions, it is not talking about a thought someone had that must have been from The Lord because it consumed their thoughts and/or it came to them immediately after prayer or anything like what we might experience as a vision from God today. These visions seemed real. Like really real. They were awake when most of them happened. We know this because The Bible does not say that the person was dreaming. It says they had a vision. So Isaiah has this vision where God is sitting on His throne and Seraphim were flying above God on His throne and praising Him. They had 6 wings, with two they flew, they used 2 to cover their feet, and two to cover their face. The Bible tells us Isaiah fell to the ground and said,

“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips.
And I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”

It seemed like he was thinking about Exodus 33:20 (“For no man shall see Me, and live”)
So Isaiah thought he was going to die after seeing The Lord. But he did not. Why? Because it was only a vision and he did not actually see God. Now THAT is a vision. I have never had what I might consider a vision these days and question whether or not I was going to die almost immediately for having seen God.
The Bible continues and tells us how after the seraphim touched Isaiah’s lips with the coal and purged all his sins, God asked who He should send in verse 8. Isaiah, now being guilt free after having his sin purged says, “Here am I! Send me.”. Now, Isaiah is letting God be his fear, and letting God be his dread. Being free from from all of his guilt, Isaiah now has no fear in serving the Lord.
Mark Copeland asks this question, “If we really believe our sins are forgiven, would we hesitate to go and do whatever or wherever the Lord would have us?”.

The picture I used in this post was taken from a blog called, “THIRST and CRAVE” that can be found here.

Isaiah

I love the book of Isaiah. I just started a study on the book, and what I love about it is how blunt Isaiah is about everything. Of course he is a prophet so everything he says is from The Lord of Hosts Himself. The first few chapters are like a suspensful thriller because it really lays out just how badly Judah and Jerusalem have screwed up.
I find myself thinking, “Oh man, they’re about to get it.” I also find myself wondering how on earth they could get the God of the universe so angry. But when you really get down to it, is the nation of Judah and the City of Jerusalem really that much different than modern day America? Are they really that different any modern day country or nation for that matter?
The first verse of Isaiah points out how God created a people who rebelled against him. The world today, much like the time described in Isaiah, is filled with hypocritical worship and rebellious children who do not know the father. That is people who do not trust God or have faith but go to church on Sundays (1:2-3). We’ve all heard the expression “Playing Church”. The world today is a corrupt and has turned away from God (1:4). The bible Isaiah describes it, “…Like a body with festering wounds and sores from head to toe, yet asking for more.” Gross. Can you imagine getting on the train in Dallas and sitting next to someone who has festering wounds all over the place? I think I would find another place to sit. I can love them and not judge them from a seat that is not immediately next to them. Who would not want to move? You would not want to be mean, but more than that, you do not want what they have, right? That is how God describes the nation of Judah as a whole. Man! I feel like Isaiah is speaking directly to us!
In 1:15 the Bible tells us that “God will not answer their prayers and that He will turn or hide his eyes from them.” Harsh. But it continues in the next verse through verse 18. (1:16-18) God gave them a chance to repent like He always does, because He is Awesome. He pleads with them through Isaiah, The Messianic Prophet, to do good and that their sins will be washed white as snow. Jesus of course had not died on the cross yet so they could not just pray for forgiveness. But I look at that sentence where God pleads with them and I think to myself, do we not have a humble God or what, that He would plead with US? He is the God of the Universe! He created everything. The name Isaiah means, “Salvation is of The Lord”. We can not be saved unless it is through God. So why would he plead with his own creation? Why not just say, “Abra kadabra, you love me now and there is nothing you can do about it!”? My own interpretation is this: Have you ever wished that you could create a love potion and give it to the guy/girl of your dreams? Would that not just be the cat’s pajamas? So now your feelings are being reciprocated by somebody you have always admired, you get married, have kids and live happily ever after until you decide that you are going to stop with love potion. It’s been 20 years so surely they have developed a genuine love for you right? Wrong. The potion wears off and now this person is hardcore upset because you forced them to feel something they did not actually feel. God gave us free will. He let us decide the path we take and the destination we arrive at. (Andy Stanley did a sermon on “The Path Principle” in his series “Destinations”. Check it out if you have not already.) Why would he force us to do something we would not otherwise choose? Can God make his own creation love him more than anything? Sure, but would that be free will? I do not think it would. So God pleads with us instead of forcing us. He wants it to be organic.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts. Let me know what YOU think.

Update

Well the blog seem to be coming together. I was surprised how much work was actually involved in creating a WordPress blog. I guess I underestimated it. Much of what I was doing was back end stuff so you may not notice a difference.

Ashley Miller

June 30th marks the beginning of a beautiful time for one incredible young lady. Ashley Miller passed away at 3am Thursday morning. She had been diagnosed with cancer about 1.5 years ago and has been battling ever since.

Ashley was an absolute inspiration. She was spunky, stubborn, very witty, she loved others unconditionally and was a privilege to be around. She was 16 years old, and lived every one of them to the fullest that she was able too. Even in the face of death had a fighting spirit that made even the strongest of people seem so weak.

Ashley, we love you and will miss you more than words can describe. We know that you are in the presence of The Lord our God and Creator and we know that you will be one of the first to welcome each of us into The Kingdom of God when our time comes.