Category: Other thoughts

Don’t Waste Your Quarantine

On March 30, 2020

How a Global Pandemic Can Strengthen Your Prayers for World Missions

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world and impacts our own lives, we have a unique opportunity to better understand the circumstances of those in other parts of the world. In very real ways, Westerners have felt the desperation of wondering whether we will have the food and supplies we need for the coming weeks. We’ve questioned whether we’ll have a job and means of supporting our families. We have seen the fallibility of our healthcare system, one of the best in the world but still unable to keep up with the demands of a pandemic. We have experienced the way many of those who are least reached with the gospel people live daily: at the mercy of God to provide the next meal; placing their lives in the untrustworthy hands of ill-equipped doctors and under-equipped hospitals. So many men spend their days idly sitting around, unable to find work that could give them dignity in providing for their families.

Even more, on a spiritual level, we are now faced with the odd and challenging reality that we cannot meet together with our local church family for Sunday worship. Weekly fellowship may be happening, but not in the way we are used to: we are having to get creative. Parking lot coffee dates. Zoom Bible study and prayer meetings. For Christians living in Muslim-majority countries, these challenges are not new. Many are not legally allowed to gather to worship in the name of Jesus. Others, in Chad for example, are technically allowed to meet but are met with death threats, lose their jobs, face beatings or death from family and tribal members. You can see why convincing unbelievers to consider the truths of the Gospel, much less planting a church, is a challenge.

What does this have to do with your quarantine? God is sovereign over this pandemic, and He is working in many ways at once. We cannot attempt to understand all He is doing, but we do know that His character remains the same. This means that His love, mercy, justice, righteousness, wisdom, are all on full display during this season. It also means that His heart for the nations and for His church does not stop. He hasn’t put aside His desire to draw all people to Himself so He can sort out the mess of COVID-19! Your quarantine is meant to draw you closer to God’s character, His truth as revealed in Scripture, and to His heart. Part of that might mean that His Spirit reveals sins and grants you repentance. Maybe He gives you a new love for His church as a result of not having the privilege of meeting together with your church family.

I pray that it also causes you and me to pause and consider how we can better pray for unbelievers in other places who struggle to find food to eat and jobs to provide for their families and who don’t have good health care. These are the ones who are too busy just trying to survive to have much capacity to think about spiritual concepts such as life, death, sin, and salvation. These same ones in the Muslim world are unwilling to consider Jesus because of the severe persecution they will experience as a result of following Him. I pray that this pandemic causes us to love Christ and His Bride more so that we might better pray for believers around the world who don’t know the privilege of freely gathering for worship and preaching of the Word.

This quarantine may seem like a retreat from the world. However, God can use you and me to impact the world for His kingdom through our prayers.

Let’s keep our bodies inside, our hearts on Christ, and our prayers towards the growing of His kingdom. Don’t waste your quarantine!

Unchangeable, A Poem

By kimberly

On March 7, 2016

In Other thoughts

Many different houses; always constant God.

Various new cultures; One unchanging Lord.

Numerous languages; omnipotent God.

Ever-changing friendships; never changing Lord.

This world is not my home; I hope in You, Lord.

Knowing You’re unchangeable; my joy is in You, God.

Pleasing Man or Pleasing God? Thoughts on Galatians 1:10

By kimberly

On March 24, 2015

In Bible, Ministry, Other thoughts

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Galatians 1:10

In ministry and life, it is easy to muddy our motives. Even the best “works” for the Lord that we do are often tainted with the sin of pride or the desire to please others. This is no less true for the missionary on a foreign field. We give up a lot: family, friends, church, comforts, health, and many things that are familiar. In return, the majority of people back home who support our ministry can put us on a higher pedestal than is deserved. Many forget that we are normal people, struggling with normal sins and problems and temptations that every Christian struggles with. The only difference is we are doing it in a strange culture. Many times the sins and struggles become even more magnified: there is no cushion for hiding our sin problems when we are stripped of all that is familiar.

This verse in Galatians 1 has convicted me recently. At times when I have hard days and complain in my heart about the heat, the work load, the lack of conveniences, the lack of fellowship and deep friendship because of our chosen lifestyle, I am forgetting who I am living for. If my eyes and heart are focused consistently on the Lord, aiming to please Him, I am counted worthy to serving Him and am able to do so joyfully. When I look at my own problems or at my lack of worldly wants and needs, or even at the encouragement we receive from supporters, but forget Who it is I am serving, I quickly lose my joy and desire to serve. According to this verse, I also don’t deserve the privilege of being a servant of Christ. He has promised that following Him means losing much in the present life and gaining much in the life to come. How can I be His servant if my eyes remain on the things of this world? I am not worthy.

As one woman wrote me in a letter a few months ago, “You may be normal people with normal problems but at least you are serving.” This encouraged my heart. It is true for each of us who follows Jesus, no matter which country we are in. We are all normal people with normal sins and normal problems. There are two questions that must be answered. The first is: “Is Jesus enough? Is He worth it?” Is Jesus worth giving up, each day, my desires, my comforts, even those things I think are necessary to my well-being? The next question is, “Are we serving the Lord alone, or still seeking the approval of man?” Am I serving with a pure heart even when no one knows? Am I working wholeheartedly and with joy when no one says thank you? May it always be said of you and me that despite all, we are serving the Lord. He is enough for us.

I write this from my heart partly in attempt to encourage you to remain steadfast, keeping your eyes fixed on the prize which is Jesus, our joy. He is worth living for and dying for. I also write this as a plea for prayer. We need God’s grace daily, each moment, if we are going to thrive in life and ministry for the long term. If I am not seeking the approval of God alone in a place of ministry like Chad, then why am I here?! Your prayers and encouragement to us are important as God continues to sanctify us and prayerfully use us in this place, and we are grateful for you.

The Time is Short

By josh

On October 8, 2014

In Chad, Ministry, Other thoughts

We are approaching the end of our whirlwind trip to the States and we have less than two weeks before we will be moving to Chad. We’ve spent hours packing and repacking (and sometimes repacking). We’ve driven over 3,000 miles to visit family, friends and supporters. We’ve spent hours in doctors offices getting checkups, shots, prescription refills, and Judah even had a cavity filled (I know, already!?). We’ve seen God’s faithfulness demonstrated over and over again, and we finish our time here with heavy hearts but also high hopes. Emotions are all over the map as we say goodbyes, make final preparations, and collapse at the end of the day in prayer that God would help our children adjust well and that our marriage would thrive despite the immense pressures of daily life in Chad.

I am overwhelmed by an acute sense of my weaknesses and limitations. I’m not competent to complete this task. I like to sleep in a house cooled to about 68-70 degrees, not lay there sweating under a mosquito net hoping for a drop into the 80s. I love Mexican food. I prefer thick green grass to rocks and dirt. I’m not even that good at sharing my faith. Sometimes I struggle for the right words; sometimes I am too self-absorbed to even notice the needs and opportunities around me. I sweat. A lot. Am I crazy?

Maybe, but one thing that’s settled in my mind is that there’s nothing else I’d rather do than move to Africa to bring the Great News to those who certainly could use some. Millions in Chad exist among ethnic groups with NO ONE to preach to them the most amazing message in the history of the universe. And with my eternity secure in the hands of the One who spoke the world into existence, what do I have to lose? A little comfort? This illusion we call “safety”? If we believe in the absolute Sovereignty of God, then we must also believe that the American suburbanite is no safer than the missionary in the most dangerous field. What did the Apostle Paul mean by “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” in Colossians 1?

²⁴Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,²⁵of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,²⁶the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.²⁷To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.²⁸Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.²⁹For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

It seems to me that Paul is saying that through his own suffering he testifies to the One who suffered for us, proclaiming His greatness by Paul’s willingness to joyfully endure suffering for the sake of the church and those who would be added to it. Oh that we would view danger, risk, and suffering in the same way Paul did!

So here we go – by faith in the one who is made strong in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:8-10).

In the words of John Patton:

Among many who sought to deter me, was one dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was, “The cannibals! you will be eaten by cannibals!” At last I replied, “Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms.

soli Deo gloria