We are truly amazed at how God works in situations where arrangements do not come together as we anticipated. Translation of the Karen GPHD has been in progress for a couple of months. We asked for the final Word doc file initially but when we received the pdf, we realized the book needed a lot of formatting. We could not make changes before Tim arrived, and left this in the Lord’s hands. As Tim introduced God’s Plan for His Disciples, it certainly ignited interest in some who are there. In fact, two sisters would like to translate God’s Plan for Young Disciples into Karen and Thai and GPHD into Thai. This could be the spark that ignites a movement of God in Thailand. Join us in prayer for the church in Thailand. Will God bring revival to a place where tradition has hindered more than helped?
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As someone who is often asked to preach, I am challenged every opportunity that my purpose for preaching and the desired outcome always be for the right reason. To check my heart, I turn to the master preacher, Paul. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).
This is a perpetual challenge. We can never think that because the Lord has helped us on one occasion that He will always provide the same results. As water is life to a plant, so is the Spirit to the mind and heart of a preacher. He is constantly the source of fresh inspiration. James Stewart, the renowned Scottish preacher said, “the aims of all genuine preaching are to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” (Heralds of God, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1972, page 73). Passion for preaching with the right purpose will always result in fruit for the glory of God. ““For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10–11).
We have just attended a new group who are studying God’s Word by using God’s Plan for His Disciples as a guide and they were on Lesson 3 on Baptism. It was so exciting to see how Scripture was speaking directly to their hearts as the Holy Spirit enlightened their understanding. Though their salvation in Christ was very real, the command to be baptized was becoming clearer through reading the Scriptures. The spiritual impact of identification with Jesus in death, burial, and resurrection was growing in meaning. God’s Word will “not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” The more we allow its truth and power to teach us and transform our lives, the more freedom and joy we will have. We saw this happening tonight! “And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord” (Genesis 19:27). Do you value His presence that much?
“Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain” (Exodus 34:2). It was at this occasion that Moses asked to see God’s glory. What do you want to see? “Then Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the Lord” (Joshua 6:12). To appreciate the presence of the Lord requires a priestly mind and heart. It is never gained by ritual or routine. “They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord; then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her” (1 Samuel 1:19). Answers to our need come more often from through worship than requests. Worship puts our hearts in tune with the Lord and His desires. “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch” (Psalm 5:3). Giving ourselves to the Lord prepare the heart to waiting in patience. “I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress” (Psalm 59:16). Our souls are refreshed when we tell the Lord what He is to us. There are amazing opportunities that we have long prayed for but require that we patiently wait for the Lord’s timing. Paul understood this concept and is a great example of one who was sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit forbade him from speaking the Word in Asia, he waited for new direction and God’s opportunity.
“And on the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come together. One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us” (Acts 16:13–15). From this connection, a jailor and his household was saved, and a church was planted. I can only imagine what God would do if each of us were this sensitive to the Spirit. Let us grow in this sensitivity and experience the work of God in a fresh way. As Rosemary and I are traveling to see some of our family scattered across parts of the Northern Midwest, I am always keeping my eyes and ears open for ministry opportunities. Though most of our work is overseas in at least 25 languages, some of these same people groups have immigrated to the United States.
As we are spending time with our family, I learned that there is a large population of Hmong speaking people who originally came from North Vietnam. Since we already have two of our books in this language, I will pursue connecting with these people to see if our training can be used to impact them with God’s Word. We also discovered a connection with a Nepali believer in this area. The new Nepali God’s Plan for His Disciples is almost ready to print and will be forwarded to this person as soon as possible. Our human minds often look at opportunities like this as remotely able to result in any work of God. That could be said of so many places and people Jesus took time to reach. These were people overlooked by the religious leaders, but they were the ones most open to the gospel. I will never know whether these are the Lord’s “open door” unless I try. “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:4–6).
This statement of Paul is truly our attitude. The more we see God work through NFI the more we realize that none of this work could happen unless the Lord was bringing together all the elements. For that reason, I am reminded often that God does His greatest work through us when we feel our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). We must fight against the tendency of our flesh to take credit for our ministry. At the same time there is a subtle thing that goes on in our hearts that manufactures false humility. James warns against deception from our own minds (1:22). Hence the constant need of a close walk with the Lord that develops a tenderness and sensitivity to His correction. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the momentum of what God is doing. More amazing is the fact that He is allowing us to have a little part of what He is doing. WE ARE HUMBLED! In all the Lord puts on our plate, the amazing connections and reconnections, the reception by people we have never met before, and the eager enthusiasm by so many to learn from God’s Word, all give us a sense of awe and worship.
One of our deep concerns is that we clearly represent the Lord in how we lead persons into the study of God’s Word. It makes me think of Paul’s work with the Corinthian church. He wanted the result of his labors among them to be such that they “are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:3). This is a measure of any ministry that directs attention away from those who minister to our Lord and Head who called us to minister. If our aim is to make a name for NFI, we have lost the central vision of this work. Pray with us that in all things Christ will be exalted and those we serve see Him with greater clarity. Tim and I have often talked about the hindrance that tradition injects into God’s work. It is interesting that I ran across an article in a mission’s magazine that admitted how traditions introduced many years ago by ‘old school’ missionaries were hindering indigenous Christians from grasping a biblical model. Just last week I heard a message from a dedicated missionary who denounced traditions from the “Western Church” and then proceeded to explain how they were being used in their ministry to the local people.
Jesus faced the same problem with the religious leaders of His day. “Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:1–3). What we are discovering almost all over the world is that the simple reading of God’s Word opens the door for obedience because the Spirit confirms and convicts through what is read. If we only realize that the powerful work of the Spirit does not need human help. In fact, when we try to aid the Spirit with traditions or man-made ideas, we actually hinder His work. |
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