What It Means To Be A World Christian

Let me share with you two or three events of the past week. I was talking with a couple of young members of the church who were asking, “What does God want to do with my life.” Specifically, both people had experience in universities, and on mission assignments that changed their view of the world and vocation. One person had gone on a mission trip to China and wondered what it meant for their future vocational plans. Another person was wondering if they should pursue “full-time Christian ministry.” Their stories highlight the need that all of us have to be world Christians, i.e. people who know that loving God means loving the world. But the question is, “How do you go about it?” Let me provide a few suggestions:

1. Be curious and informed about the world we live in and use it as an opportunity to pray. I’m a news addict. I regularly listen to CNN, the BBC, read the New York Times, Taipei Times, Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition, and more. If I listen unreflectively and unprayerfully, it’s just information in and out. If I’m not careful, I can become jaded.
   
   You can be hearing about a terrorist attack in Europe which can be followed with a happy commercial about some hair product (not that I need any of those!). You can easily detach yourself from the pain of the world, and internally be saying, “Thank God I am not living there, but just sitting in the comfort and quiet of my living room.”
   
   It can also be depressing as almost all the news is bad. Good news doesn’t sell. You don’t hear commentators reveling in the goodness of God’s creation. You never see a headline that says, “Today, billions of people will receive food, water, sunshine, and love from a bountiful, gracious God.” We seldom struggle with the problem of “Why is there so much good?” In all my years as a pastor, no one has ever asked me that question. On the other hand, many people ask, “Why is there so much evil?”
   
   So how should we respond to the news stream. We should be informed about the world. We should have more than one source about what is happening in the world than a secular news provider, and it should lead us to prayer, repentance, and a daily commitment to love God and people. As our mind is shaped, we can also interact and influence other people in a positive way to help them to shape their minds more Biblically.
   
   Let me encourage all of you to download one app. It is “The Gospel Coalition.” It is Biblically solid, and will help you to think through the big issues of our time. It takes up big issues like “How should we understand and relate to Islam, abortion, racism, same-sex marriage, etc.” In addition, it addresses many practical issues such as, “How do you forgive someone or a group of people where you been seriously damaged?” (that was one of today’s articles).
    

2. Use these resources as a prayer guide. Instead of just mindlessly absorbing information, begin to pray for the world. Someone once said that they used the newspaper to encourage them to pray for many of the hot spots of the world, that the Lord would bring his peace and redemption into the stories reported.
    

3. Ask the Lord what he wants you to do. For most of us, we need to realize that the will of God is loving people in the place we find ourselves. There is a sense in which all of us are called to be missionaries, i.e. to the people we interact on a daily basis. Our approach needs to be wise, prayerful, and provocative (remember the messages from 1 Peter).  For some additional help, you may want to read Paul Miller’s “A Praying Life” and the sequel to it on the book of Ruth which focuses on learning to love.
   
   Along the way, you may want to consider going on a mission trip, supporting a missionary, or an organization that cares for children around the world.  You never know where the prayer and love journey may take you. I can’t tell you how much  mission trips in my life to Mexico, Turkey, India, and Yugoslavia impacted my own life. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said (and I paraphrase), “You don’t know the path of discipleship. All you know is at the end there is joy.” Also reflect on the quotation above that the Christian life is  so much more than carefully trying to avoid sin, but courageously and actively doing God’s will. We need to give up our small ambitions, and realize as we are learning in Romans 6 that we have been taken out of the realm of Adam and brought into the realm of Christ. It’s large and spacious and means that all of us are called to be adventurous world Christians. So go and live large!

CHRISTMAS AT FRIENDSHIP

I always look forward to Christmas, and if my wife would let me the Christmas tree would stay up till July 4. Christmas was a time on the farm when everything got slower and snow covered the ground and the house, the streets and the town were filled with the sights, and sounds of the Christmas season. Many people in the world celebrate Christmas, but as Christians we celebrate with special joy because it announces the day when our Savior came to the earth to rescue us from sin, and death.

Like the song says, “God rest you merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our Savior was  born on Christmas day to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray, O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidings of comfort and joy.” So worship and bring your friends to hear this best of all good news. Here are the special events of the Christmas season:

1. Advent Candle lighting. Every Sunday, we will sing carols and light the Advent candles.
2. Christmas celebration, Sunday, December 21. The children will sing and have a play. Also our international students have formed a choir and will sing, and there will be the Christmas message.
3. Shida night market caroling. On Saturday, December 20, buy your lunch and come to the fifth floor at 5:30 pm. We will eat dinner together, practice the carols and then go to the Shida Night Market at 7 pm to announce to our friends and neighbors that Jesus Christ is born! At the end you are invited to come to our home for hot chocolate.
4. Holiday dinner, Sunday, December 21. The church will buy the hams, and turkeys. Everyone is asked to pitch in by helping provide the “sides.” This Sunday and next you can sign up to help out.
5. Christmas Eve service, December 24, 7:30 pm. This will take place in the 4th floor chapel. It will be a traditional service of lessons and carols, and readings in different languages from friends from all over the earth. Afterward (weather permitting) we will gather on the roof to sing carols, light candles and drink hot cider together.

Waiting on the Lord! One Year, 30 Year, 2,600 Year Prayers!

In Isaiah 40, Isaiah gives encouragement to Judah when he sees them in captivity under the Babylonians. Isaiah told Hezekiah that because of Judah's disobedience that they would go into captivity. He even sees Cyrus, the Persian coming to deliver them and permitting them after 70 years to return home. He tells them that they who "wait on the Lord will renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

What did it mean for them to wait on the Lord, and what does it mean for us? What does it mean to pray 10, 20, 30 years for something? How about 2600 years? This is the time from Judah's captivity to the present when we can see how God has been working during that whole time frame.

Waiting!  We hate that word, don't we? We can't stand to be put on "hold".  Everything today is supposed to be instant! We can't stand it when people don't text us back--NOW! We are upset when people don't reply to our e-mails. We can download our books instantly on Kindle. We get movies on demand on Netflix. "On demand"..."now"...doesn't that describe modern life? Yet how does a person brew good (not instant) coffee, play the piano, grow a marriage that lasts fifty years, walk with God. In all of those instances, "instant" doesn't work. Maybe God has another agenda in mind when he tells us to "wait."

Here is something interesting that I found out about Judah's Babylonian captivity. I found it in Paul Miller's A Praying Life, the best book on how to pray and wait on the Lord that I have ever read. (By the way, you can download it instantly on Kindle!) Because Judah went into captivity for seventy years and returned only to be disappointed again:

1. They learned to create synagogues (which was the precursor of the local church). They weren't able to go to the temple anymore.
2. They learned to cling to their scrolls--the Biblical story, as we must cling to the Bible and its story to make sense of our lives.
3. They were purified from mixing their religion with idols.
4. Their dispersion became the base from which Paul and others were able to spread the gospel.
5. They left the world with something unique--monotheism--belief in a transcendent, holy, personal God separate from the world. This was the foundation of Christian thought and modern science.
6. Because they were monotheists, they got upset when Jesus claimed to be the incarnate God and participated in Jesus crucifixion--the means of our salvation. Jesus was raised from the dead and we are blessed with that message 2,600 years later!

Don't you see that God is working on his timetable, not ours? He is about soul-making and the redemption of the world. He is in eternity. We are in time. So when we wait on the Lord and pray 30 year prayers (aren't there situations like that in our lives?), or 2,600 year prayers (the time from the Babylonian captivity to the present), we acknowledge that He is in control and not us, and we depend on His good grace to work things out "in his time." So "wait" expectantly for Him to show up...but again, in His time not ours!