Is walk-up evangelism (sharing your faith with strangers) a mandate of the Bible? I see in Matthew 28:19 that Jesus commands us to “make disciples of all the nations” but does not prescribe the method.
This is good news for those who want to obey Jesus but are terrified, or simply incapable, of talking to strangers. We are to make discples. I believe that means we are to figure out a God-honoring, effective method of doing so, and do it, according to our personal strengths.
Being consistent in our faith, our word, our actions: consistency seems to be one of the major keys in letting others know you are serious, authentic. This is something to be strived for. I’m writing it down to remind myself.
I’m finally getting around to reading a book given to me last Christmas, Tony Dungy’s Uncommon: Finding Your Path To Significance. It’s a good read, easy and quick. I’ve spent a couple days on it and am almost done reading it. It’s just good to see people who are in, or who have been at the top and in the spotlight, standing up for what is right–promoting faith, morality, manliness, and Godly character.
Dungy’s book uses wisdom from the Bible throughout. In 2011, I got more wisdom from the Bible than from any other source. Not coincidentally, this was the first year I planned time every day to reading the Bible and completed the Biblegateway.com Bible-in-a-year reading plan. I missed a day here and there and caught up the next day, but overall it was a very consistent run. (My plans were great, but execution a little lacking. Still working on that!) I’m starting over again in 2012. Who knows what fresh wisdom God will reveal through His Word this year? I look forward to finding out.
A tragedy of child abuse at Penn State was revealed last week, and the school has gone through waves of shock, sadness, anger, and grief. Last Thursday, Penn State Cru’s campus director, Tim Henderson, delivered a message titled A Deficiency of Love. By Tim’s own testimony, “the leading of the Spirit was so obvious it was ridiculous.” The talk has been widely redistributed and is an excellent perspective. I am linking to it here: Love and hope in the midst of tragedy.
This is Pad Thai, and it was probably my favorite lunch. The Thai teachers who took us out to eat laughed at us a lot, saying “Foreigners love pad thai!” Why, yes, we do. I’m not ashamed!
One of my favorite experiences in Thailand was English Club, hosted by the church where we served. English Club was held on Sunday afternoon, after worship service. It is a great opportunity for Thai students (of all ages) to practice English with native speakers of the language and get some free education on a very popular subject. We had a good time teaching English Club and getting to know the students.
Matthew 22:36-40
New International Version (NIV)
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Footnotes:
- Matthew 22:37 Deut. 6:5
- Matthew 22:39 Lev. 19:18
I need to roll these around in my head all day long, remembering and practicing them. It is way too easy to complain and be unpleasant.
Blogging is hard work. Committing to keeping up a blog is hard work. Sometimes I think that what God is doing in our lives and in the lives of people we meet is just kind of mundane, “typical” God work. What a ridiculous idea! Everything God does is noteworthy. I should definitely be writing more about it.
What brought me back to Epic Tales today isn’t a AACF thing, though I will mention briefly that summertime AACF is remarkable in the way that the students who are here totally own it, get excited about it, and reach out to everyone they meet for the sake of the Gospel, with relatively little input from me and other staff. That’s cool and I love their energy. It also allows me to direct some energy to around-the-house kinds of things that have been put off for too long, preparations for the coming school year, and other personal development.
So the big thing that disrupted my blogging inertia is our missions trip to Thailand next week. Alisha and I will be teaching English (Alisha mostly, with whatever help I can give), working in the church, and perhaps even doing some IT work (me, mostly, on that last one) in the province where Alisha worked for six months in 2009. For her it’s a wonderful opportunity to return, reconnect and serve in a short-term program. For me it is a totally new cultural experience and a chance to find out about the place where Alisha spent most of our engagement time.
Friends and family have helped finance our trip and been diligent in prayer. The preparations are pretty much done and we are excited to go. If you’d like to help financially, we are still raising funds to cover our plane tickets. A big prayer request is that our missionary contacts in Thailand have told us that they are struggling to find us housing; please pray that we’ll have a place to stay!
God has arranged all of this–we actually had a few alternate summer plans and God opened the door to this one–and has given peace in it. That’s exciting. He answered all of our “what about this/that?” prayers and showed that it would work out. Now we’re just excited to travel and see what God has in store in Thailand. The truth is, it will be tough to make any spiritual impact there. The country is firmly into its own form of Buddhism, and alternative religions aren’t really strongly considered. If we only go and return with a bigger heart for those who don’t know Jesus, that will be a “productive” missions trip. Let’s see what God has planned for us in Thailand for the rest of July.
This Friday I have the privilege to speak at Epic on the topic of worship and its various forms in the Bible. It’s the second time I’ve delivered the message in this academic year. In the fall, I spoke on 1 Corinthians 2, about the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
Speaking is fun but not a strength of mine–I usually leave it to the experts, the other staff in our ministry–so I have been spending a considerable amount of time working on my talk.
Please pray with me that God will allow something sensible to be spoken through my lips this Friday!
Stephen Hawking: God didn’t create universe
“The ‘god’ that Stephen Hawking is trying to debunk is not the creator God of the Abrahamic faiths who really is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing,” said Denis Alexander.
“Hawking’s god is a god-of-the-gaps used to plug present gaps in our scientific knowledge.
“Science provides us with a wonderful narrative as to how [existence] may happen, but theology addresses the meaning of the narrative,” said Alexander, director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.
