How Could We Not?

"Is not the Lamb who was slain worthy of the reward of His suffering?"

-Paris Reidhead

You live among the least of these, the weary and the weak

And it would be a tragedy for me to turn away

All my needs You have supplied. When I was dead You gave me life

So how could I not give it away so freely?

And I´ll Follow You into the homes of the broken

Follow You into the world

Meet the needs for the poor and the needy, God

Follow You into the world

Use my hands, use my feet to make Your kingdom come

To the corners of the earth until Your work is done

Faith without works is dead. On the cross Your blood was shed.

So how could we not give it away so freely?

And I'll Follow You into the homes of the broken

Follow You into the world

Meet the needs for the poor and the needy, God

Follow You into the world

And I give all myself, I give all myself, I give all myself to YOU

And I'll Follow You into the homes of the broken

Follow You into the world

Meet the needs for the poor and the needy, God

-"Follow You," by Leeland

The Waiter

"It is on God that we should wait, as a waiter waits--not for but on the customer-- alert, watchful, attentive, with no agenda of his own, ready to do whatever is wanted. "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expection is from Him" (Ps. 62:5) In Him alone lie our security, our confidence, our trust. A spirit of restlessness and resistance can never wait, but one who believes he is loved with an everlasting love, and knows that underneath are the everlasting arms, will find strength and peace."

-Elisabeth Elliot Quest for Love pg. 163

2010 Set Apart Girl Conference!!!

For all the young ladies, this is a glimpse into next year's conference!

My sister and I were so blessed to be able to go this past summer,

And we greatly recommend it!

What is the secret of great living? Entire seperation to Christ and devotion to Him. Thus speaks every man or woman whose live has made more than a passing flicker in this spiritual realm. It is the life that has no time for trifling that counts."

-Amy Carmichael

Foolish Things

I just finished reading Chasing the Dragon by Jackie Pullinger.

I was greatly inspired and amazed at this first-hand account of God's power to transform lives.

Jackie Pullinger was twenty years old when God called her to go to Hong Kong. She obeyed, bought a one-way ticked on the cheapest boat she could find, and sailed away...asking God to show her where to get off. God led her to the Walled City of Hong Kong, called "Hak Nam", or "Darkness" in Chinese. She arrived in Hong Kong with HK $100 (which was about $14.50 in English dollars at that time.) This city was truly dark, both physically and spiritually. Lawlessness abounded, and policemen hesitated to enter. It was filled with filth, crime, pornography, brothels, and drug dens. In the six acres of land that made up the city there lived 30,000 people stacked in crazy-angled apartment blocks.

Jackie found herself inexpressibly joyful in this city. This was where God had called her! She began living the simple gospel, loving the least of these, which in her case were the innumerable drug addicts, gang members, and prostitutes which filled the city. She spoke to them of the love of Christ, but more than that she lived His love, because so many people that she spoke to had their minds so deadened by drugs that words were useless, and Christ's love had to be shown to them. For years she lived there and poured out her life for these people. While other missionaries came and "shared the gospel" for days, weeks, or months and then headed home, Jackie stayed. The top gang leaders who were watching her guessed that in six months she would be gone with little effort on their part to get rid of her... it wasn't until four years later that they decided perhaps she wanted to stay.

God is mighty, and many began to find new life in Christ. Addicts who had been on drugs for decades came off of them instantly and painlessly---by the power of God. Women who had been prostitutes since they were young girls, either by force or because it was the only way to earn a living and survive, left their trade and found new life and freedom in Jesus. Whole gangs were brought to the God who is Love, and ceased their violence and crime to follow Him.

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This is only a brief overview of this amazing story. You will have to read it for yourself! Our God will use anyone who is willing to forsake all and follow Him. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He is looking for childlike people who will become the foolish ones of this world and trust Him with reckless abandon. He is looking for people who are desire not to save their lives, but to lose their lives for His sake. He is calling to those who are His body, who call themselves by His name, to lay down their lives for the lost and the least. He is calling you.

Go

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(I posted a similar video before. This one has different pictures, but still taken by the same person- Annie Wesche, the Ludy's assistant. The words are the same as the other video- Jackie Pullinger. It is definitely worth hearing again.)

The Sacred Claim

"The principle of the gospel is this: the gospel always brings life to the reciever and death to the giver."

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Also, I have been listening to several podcasts by Jackie Pullinger. They are so good and so challenging. Here is where you can get them:

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=117

Some of my favorites include: Eyes to see, Lord, give my Your heart, Intimacy, and God uses foolish things. I challenge you to listen to them.

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"The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest." -Matt. 9:37

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and one earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." -Matthew 28:18-20

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The Sin of Sodom

"Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom:

She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness;

neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy."

-Ezekial 16:49

Redemption

The Bias of Degeneration

"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Romans 5:12.
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man's sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb 19:26)---an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced min with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and upright, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition.
Sin is the thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches sin in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. "And this is the judgement" (the critical moment), "that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light."

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The Bent of Regeneration

"When it pleased God... to reveal His Son in me." Gal. 1:15-16

If Jesus Christ is to regenerate me, what is the problem He is up against? I have a heredity I had no say in; I am not holy, nor likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is to tell me I must be holy, His teaching plants despair*. But if Jesus Christ is a Regenerator, One Who can put into me His own heredity of holiness, then I begin to see what He is driving at when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into any man the heredity disposition that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives are based on that disposition: His teaching is for the life He puts in. The moral transaction on my part is agreement with God's verdict on sin in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The New Testament teaching about regeneration is that when a man is struck by a sense of need, God will put the Holy Spirit into his spirit, and his personal spirit will be energized by the Spirit of the Son of God, "until Christ be formed in you." The moral miracle of Redemption is that god can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a totally new life. When I reach the frontier of need and know my limitations, Jesus says---"Blessed are you." But I have to get there. God cannot put into me, a responsible moral being, the disposition that was in Jesus Christ unless I am conscious I need it.

Just as the disposition of sin entered into the human race by one man, so the Holy Spirit entered the human race by another Man; and Redemption means that I can be delivered from the heredity of sin and through Jesus Christ can receive an unsullied heredity, viz., the Holy Spirit.

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*Note: See 1 Corinthians 15:12-17,

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Reconciliation

"For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew not sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." 2 Cor. 5:21

Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The Christian religion bases everything on the positive, radical nature of sin. Other religions deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ faced in men was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the Gospel has lost its sting and its blasting power.

The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus Christ took upon Himself the heredity of sins, but that He took upon Himself the heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that He might make the sinner a saint. All through the Bible it is revealed that Our Lord bore the sin of the world by identification, not by sympathy. He deliberately took upon His won shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the whole massed sin of the human race---"He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew not sin," and by so doing He put the whole human race on the basis of Redemption. Jesus Christ rehabilitated the human race; He put it back to where God designed it to be, and anyone can enter into union with God on the ground of what Our Lord has done on the Cross.

A man cannot redeem himself; Redemption is God's "bit," it is absolutely finished and complete; its reference to individual men is a question of individual action. A distinction must always be made between the revelation of Redemption and the conscious experience of salvation in a man's life.

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-Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, Oct 5th-7th, pp. 279-281

Bring ALL... and Open Wide

"Bring all the tithes into the storehouse,

That there may be food in My house,

And try Me now in this,"

Says the LORD of hosts,

"If I will not open for you the windows of heaven,

And pour out for you such blessing

That there will not be room enough to recieve it."

-Malachi 3:10

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Murom, Russia

(Here are the remainder of the Russia pictures I never posted. Sorry it took so long!

Note: remember I had been posting the trip in backwards order, so this is the beginning of the trip, which we spent in Murom and Papolina.)

After nearly 30 hours of travel time, we arrived in Murom. The last several hours had been spent in a little bus taking us from the Moscow airport to the city of Murom. After checking into our motel, we headed to a busy center where many young people could be found. As we walked up we saw benches full of teenagers smoking, drinking, or just hanging out. Kolya, leading the way with Sasha, looked back and said, "Who wants to talk first!?" I smiled at him, so he picked me. Trembling yet excited, I glanced up and spotted a group of girls my age, nodded to Sasha with a nervous smile, and we headed over to them. Some seemingly hilarious joke had them all laughing loudly, when suddenly they spotted me. I stood in front of them while their roaring laughter turned to dead silence in the matter of two seconds and all eyes turned to stare at me. (talk about uncomfortable!) But God gives strength and boldness to His children, and as I began to speak God's beautiful mystery He gave me the words and I relaxed a bit. These girls were genuinely open to His word, for even in the midst of their seemingly joyful exterior, one look in their eyes gave away the fact that they were painfully searching. Pray that God captures them all for Himself!

Kolya shared with this big group of teenagers next. Boy were they a rowdy group, full of jesting but also full of questions. One girl named Sveta was also listening, and then she came and asked many many questions. I think I told you about her before. She is the one who asked, "Why doesn't God just come down here to earth and show us that He is real?!", to which Kolya replied, "He already HAS!"




These are Kolya's wanna-be sons. They wanted him to adopt them and bring them to America in his suitcase.



Notice how they can freely drink on the streets, even this boy who is probably younger than me.

Here we are at Yazik and Natasha's house for some fellowship. We had yummy Russian pizza, then tea and cookies (of course), watched a little Russian Winnie the Pooh (so cute!), wrote our first email home, and played UNO.

I didn't play since I was preoccupied with Yaz' little daugther Yulia. I made friends with her without saying a word. (Isn't it amazing that without a word being spoken, you can love someone? I think that saying "actions speak louder than words" is quite true.)

Yulia is three years old and very cute. At first she was very shy, but soon she was chatting up a storm and telling me everything. I had no idea what she was saying; Russian is hard enough to understand, let alone Russian baby talk! Then she was running to her room and getting all her toys to show me. Soon my hands were piled with all kinds of toys while I said, "How beautiful!" or "cool!" or named all the animals that I knew the names for.

When Sveta saw Yulia chatting away and me not understanding any of her questions, she laughed and said (while Sasha translated), "Capa, you should just say 'Yes', 'Yes', 'Yes'!"

So Yulia would chat away while I said, "Da, Da, Da". Sveta is actually Yulia's aunt, since Natasha is Sveta's older sister.

We had such a good time of fellowship together!

Pastor Yaz was so happy to recieve the gift of a mandolin! He did not know how to play it at all, but once I told him what the strings were, he began figuring out chords.

He loves music and he must teach his older daughter Aleena to play some, because she picked up the mandolin right away and started picking out a tune.

Yulia