willing to die?

An overseas Korean pastor met secretly with Christians in North Korea, encouraging them that they were not forgotten by people in the West. Once the believers learned that he was a minister, they pleaded with him to baptize some converts.

“Are you willing to die for Jesus?” the pastor asked each person before he baptized them.

Every one nodded affirmatively.

Later the people asked him to serve the Eucharist, which he gladly did. Some of the elderly Christians had not received communion in forty years.

A few days later, a group of Christians from a nearby town arrived, excitedly responding to a word-of-mouth of the pastor’s visit. When they were told he had already departed, they “fell to their knees and began pounding the ground with their fists.”

from “Their Blood Cries Out” by Paul Marshall p. 96
quoting Andrew Wark, “North Korea’s Hidden Church,” News Network International, January 16, 1995

hand-crafted disciples

If we really want to help someone grow, we will have to help them in a way that fits their wiring. Our great model for this is God himself, for he always knows just what each person needs.

He had Abraham talk a walk, Elijah take a nap, Joshua take a lap, and Adam take the rap. He gave Moses a forty-year time out, he gave David a harp and a dance, and he gave Paul a pen and a scroll. He wrestled with Jacob, argued with Job, whispered to Elijah, warned Cain, and comforted Hagar. He gave Aaron an altar, Miriam a song, Gideon a fleece, Peter a name, and Elisha a mantle. Jesus was stern with the rich young ruler, tender with  the woman caught in adultery, patient with the disciples, blistering with the scribes, gentle with the children, and gracious with the thief on the cross.

God never grows two people the same way. God is a hand-crafter, not a mass-producer. And now it is your turn.

God has existed from eternity, but he wants to do a new thing with you. The problem many people face when it comes to spiritual growth is that they listen to someone they think of as the expert – maybe the pastor of their church – talk about what he does, and think that is what they are supposed to do. When it doesn’t work for them – because they are a different person! – they feel guilty and inadequate. They often give up. But spiritual growth is hand-crafted, not mass-produced. God does not do “one size fits all.”

John Ortberg, in You Lost Me, by David Kinnaman

reading the bible

We come to the Scripture to be changed, not to amass information.

Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster, p. 69

happiness in denial

Self-denial is simply a way of coming to understand that we do not have to have our own way. Our happiness is not dependent upon getting what we want.

Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster, p.113

jesus’ agenda

It was not the great public issues that Jesus traded in but the great private issues, not the struggles of the world without but the struggles of the world within.

Telling the Truth, Frederick Buechner

improper reading of the bible

Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it – yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon Him.”

William Law

the value of tracts

The person who answered the door, took my message in insolent silence, and left me standing in the hall. She is the daughter of a heathen old man named Betteredge- long, too long, tolerated by my aunt’s family. I sat down in the hall to wait for my answer – and, having always a few tracts in my bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard; but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series addressed to young woman on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was devoutly familiar. Its title was “A Word With You On Your Cap Ribbons.”

“My lady is much obliged, and begs you will come and lunch tomorrow at two.”

I passed over the manner in which she gave her message, and the dreadful boldness of her look. I thanked this young castaway; and I said, in a tone of Christian interest, “Will you favour me by accepting a tract?”

She looked at the title. “Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If it’s written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If it’s written by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about it.” She handed me back the tract, and opened the door. We must sow the good seed somehow. I waited till the door was shut on me, and slipped the tract into the letter box. When I had dropped another tract through the area railings, I felt relieved, in some small degree, of a heavy responsibility towards others.

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins, p. 213

patronizing nonsense about jesus

I’m trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really silly thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That’s the one thing we mustn’t say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He’d either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he’s a poached egg – or else he’d be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But don’t let us come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He hasn’t left that open to us. He didn’t intend to.

The Case for Christianity, C. S. Lewis, P. 45

He will now behave as he hopes everyone will someday behave. Because civilization isn’t  a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, re-created daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away.

The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway

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afraid of the dark

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?

Maurie Freehill c/o John & Rebecca P