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Articles About the Book of James

Thursday, March 7th, 2013

articles-about-the-book-of-jamesI just finished writing the last Bible summary for the Unit Study Treasure Vault. I wrote them all 10 years ago, spending 2-10 hours a day for two years, but I never wrote the summary of James. My children and I decided to memorize the book of James, and then I told God that I wouldn’t write the summary until God had made it real in my life. My sons and I memorized the book back when my daughter was a baby, and I forgot about what I had said to God.

Years later when I was building the Bible section of my membership site, I felt that God wanted me to put in the summaries to give parents a grasp of each book of the Bible before teaching it to their children. They were Charlotte Mason style summaries, where I tried to remember everything I could about the book after having read all the reams of extra material from the Old and New Testament classes.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in my car waiting for my husband and kids, flipping through the Bible. I went to James and started reading it. Suddenly I remembered what I had said to God, because lo and behold, each section had been made real to me, usually through painful circumstances in my life. Not only that, over the years that I’ve been a blogger, I’ve blogged about many issues mentioned in the book of James. As I read the book, tears splashed down my face, and I knew that I was ready to write the last summary. Here are some articles about the book of James, forged through suffering:

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True Friendship

Monday, February 4th, 2013

true-friendshipI am so grateful to God for my true friendship with Christie. I grew up with her in Guatemala, and we’ve kept in touch all these years over the phone and through letters. Recently my husband bought me a cheap ticket to go visit her. I hadn’t seen her in at least 6 years, so when the plane landed in Texas, I was overcome with emotion. This woman has a strong walk with God, and we’ve shared our painful trials with each other throughout the 40 years we’ve known each other. When Christie introduced me to her church friends and co-workers, she said, “We’ve known each other for 40 years…” and I kept looking at her, saying I don’t even look 40. She just laughed and insisted that it was impressive to be friends for four decades.

My friendship with Christie reminds me of the bond between Jonathan and David, where they made a covenant with each other because they loved each other more than their own life. When Christie went through agonizing pain in her marriage, I felt her pain as if it were my own. Sometimes I just wept with her. Other times I have been in distress, and one phone call to my friend would change everything and give me a quiet confidence in God. Yes, Christie has always drawn me closer to God, and our spiritual gifts are brought out full blast with each other because we have no secrets, we know each other’s weaknesses, and we want the best for the other person no matter what.

So what makes my friendship with Christie so deep? I know that I can trust her, and that she is for me. This is huge. She takes in what I say so that she can fully understand me. Lots of other people in my life listen to a small bit of what I say and then misjudge me and attack me, and I feel like I have to defend myself. It’s because they don’t truly know me. If they knew me, they would know that I love God with all my heart, and that anything that doesn’t fit within that is something I’m not aware of. I continuously want to grow in holiness, so I don’t mind at all when my friend says to beware lest I get prideful. I instantly take the rebuke to heart, because Christie wants my best and would never say something that would intentionally harm me.

Christie has said to me, “I don’t know what I would do if God hadn’t given you to me as a friend. You are such a gift from God.” I feel the same. My life is better for knowing her. Just this past visit I was reminded of how she treasures the Lord, as we both walked by the Spirit the whole week, prodding each other to walk holy, and to live a life more fully surrendered to the Lord. We want people to say of us, “God is with her,” like they did about David in Scripture, who was a man after God’s heart.

Many women expect their relationship with their spouse to be like this, and they don’t have the much-needed female companionship with other members in the body of Christ. Men can’t handle the way women chat on and on about something, so Christie is the valve that releases all the words that my husband is too tired to handle. On the other hand, my husband is also my best friend and knows me really well, and we are one in every way. I do not take this for granted.

How do you get to a point where you have true friendship like this with your husband? (Stay tuned for True Friendship with Your Husband….)

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Giving to Missionaries Should not be Capricious

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

giving-to-missionariesI don’t understand why people are capricious in their giving to missionaries. God prompts them to give to a certain missionary, and then they yank their support on a whim. A missionary would have to do something terrible for me to stop supporting him because if God prompted me to give, it would be disobedient for me to withdraw the funds. It is God whom I serve.

I hated the whole song and dance for people to throw a penny in the hat routine that I had to endure every time we went on furlough to the States. We visited one church after another, trying to prove that they should support us. My dad was an outstanding seminary professor, teaching Greek and New Testament theology to Spanish-speaking pastors all over the world. If we had to prove something, why didn’t the seminary students send recommendation letters about my dad? They could have easily done so, and I wouldn’t have felt like I was on display as a little girl, standing in front of churches.

One time while visiting a church in Canada on furlough, my dad spoke about all that was happening in Guatemala, and why the church should support us. After the service, my cousin’s daughter (who didn’t know that I was the daughter of the man who preached) said that my dad seemed like he was selling something.

Yes, that is what missionaries are reduced to: having to sell what they do. It’s stupid. Look, if God doesn’t prompt you to support a missionary, don’t support him. If God does prompt you, don’t be disobedient and bratty to pull away your support for no reason, just because you want more money in your pocket. All of our money belongs to God. It’s not ours. Many missionaries have had to leave the mission field because of capricious givers who disobey God.

On the other hand, missionaries do need to be making a difference in people’s lives. We should see God working. If God is not working at all, it seems like God wouldn’t have prompted us to give in the first place, though. In the Czech Republic, it sometimes takes 10 years of witnessing and hard work for one person to be converted. Even though God is working, there might be no conversions for years. But now, 12 years later, we see lots of soft hearts toward God that were not there a decade ago. God is definitely working.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if God initially prompts you to support a missionary every month, it is God that you are obeying. I think it would be easier if fewer churches who really know the missionaries could support with bigger amounts, so that the missionaries don’t have to drag their children on display to 30 churches that we had to visit every furlough to “peddle our wares” or prove that God wanted my dad to continue to serve at the seminary that he loved so much. Give to God and be faithful to follow through to support the missionaries that He wants you to support, and don’t forget to pray for them.

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Shining the Joy of Jesus

Sunday, December 23rd, 2012

joy-of-jesusPulling up to the church, I walked into the sanctuary, where the rest of the choir members were gathering. This was the first time for me to ever be in a Christmas choir. When an invitation to join the choir was announced a month ago, I knew I had no time for it. My husband said, “You will never have time. Do it if you want to do it.” It meant than my husband had to watch the kids on Thursday nights for four weeks. He said he didn’t mind doing it. I loved the rehearsals. Our choir director has a fun sense of humor.

After practicing for an hour, the church members started coming in, so we descended from the stage. At the right time we lined up along the wall and stepped up to the risers. I looked out over the people. We were here to lead them in praise to God. As we started singing, I felt like I was with the angels in heaven. Joy emanated from my soul.

joy-of-jesus-2An elderly man came up to the stage to lead us in communion. He is one of the elders, a man with the sweetest, gentlest expression I’ve ever seen, like he has spent his whole life with Jesus. That’s the expression I want when I’m old, I said to myself. Have you noticed how elderly people are either bitter toward life (cranky and never satisfied with anything) or sweet (contented with life and easy to be with)? I want to be in the second category.

joy-of-jesus-3Last year this same elderly man gave the Christmas sermon. He had trouble walking up the stairs. Then he messed up several of his lines, but he quickly corrected them. And every time he finished with one of the pages of his notes, he would drop it to the ground. He apologized that he had to drop his papers, but it was impossible for his hands to turn them at his age. At the end of the sermon when the people were filing out the door, I went up to him and said, “I loved your dramatic flair in dropping each page as you were finished with it. I’ll have to remember that for when I do public speaking.” He laughed sweetly as I told him how moving his sermon was.

The elderly gentleman stepped down, and we sang our last song. “Joy, unspeakable joy rises in my soul…” Joy filled my soul, and when I looked into the faces of the people in the audience, their faces lit up with joy as they looked into my face. I must have looked like the gentleman, the one I want to be like, shining the joy of Jesus as we sang this Christmas service.

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God is Sovereign

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” (II Timothy 3:3-4)

We are seeing these very attributes in our society today. People are murdering innocent children in schools, gunning down audiences at movie theaters, and opening fire on shoppers at malls. The morality of our country has visibly gone downhill, even in the last few years.

Someone recently posted on Facebook: “Having a hard time right now, just trying to understand how we’re supposed to have any faith in humanity when every day there seems to be a shooting or some other tragedy going on? I know we’re supposed to give it up to GOD, but I have to admit I’m struggling….It just seems like this world is so full of hate and violence… Breaks my heart… I guess all I can do it keep praying…”

I answered: We’re commanded in Scripture not to have faith in humanity, who will automatically sin because they are born sinful and in rebellion to God. We must put our faith in God alone. God’s holiness shines in stark contrast to our selfishness. Even as believers we are selfish, so we can’t expect unsaved people to act in a way that is righteous.

Yes, God holds all the molecules of the universe together, and He can stop any event from occurring. But if He did, we would all be robots, unable to make our own decisions. The only reason sin exists is because God gave us free will. And yet God causes every event (no matter how hideous) to be transformed into good for us, even if evil was intended by the people who perpetrated it. God is good. He is good all the way through, with no evil anywhere. That’s what’s so beautiful about God.

God is sovereign. My husband mentioned last night that there are many calamities like natural disasters that we think are evil but aren’t. Over 100,000 people are killed instantly. God gives life and takes it because He is ruler of all, and the giving and taking of life is not sin for Him, because He made us and our days are numbered. All things, evil and otherwise, are divinely orchestrated by God to transform us into His image so that we can experience a closer walk with God. It’s easier to accept the death of a loved one if you understand that their days were numbered before the foundation of the earth, and they lived out precisely the days that God intended for them to live out.

Ultimately God is in control of all things. He knows about and predestines all things that will take place because of our depravity, and He weaves it into a beautiful tapestry. Someone once said that we see the back side of the tapestry, with all the knots and mess, and that when we’re in heaven, we will see the beauty of how God actually controlled even the evil things, setting limits for evil, and creating good out of the evil. And how are we to respond? Trust Him. If you have to understand everything before you trust God, you are not trusting Him. We will never fully understand God because He is infinite. And yet He is good. He commands us to walk in holiness, and we repeatedly rebel against that command. He finally gives us over to our sin until the entire nation collapses like Sodom and Gomorrah.

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The Star of Bethlehem

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the dark, formless void. And God said, “Let there be light.” There was no sun, no moon, no stars, only random chaos with light emanating from none other than God Himself. Other places in Scripture we are told, “God is light. In Him there is no darkness at all.” (I John 1:5) So at the beginning of the universe, the beginning of the space-time continuum, God begins emanating light in all directions. Behold the glory of God!

Angels sang (Job 38:4-7) as earth was created in full technicolor, glorious in all the realms of the universe with galaxies and stars and planets innumerable. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-4;14) The very breath of God going forward in words was the action of Jesus forming life and holding all the molecules together through the power of His will. “For in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) and “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17)

And people beheld the glory of God in the face of Christ. “For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (II Corinthians 4:6) But was that glory visible? The face of Jesus could not have been shining with light, or everyone would have recognized Him as God. So He left His light glory behind, setting aside His mighty power and glory, taking the disguise of a slave and becoming like men. (Philippians 2:5-7)

And at the moment of His birth, a strange emanation of light was seen above where He was born, bright enough to be seen by astrologer magicians in faraway countries that had heard a prophecy that a King would be born when a strange light emanation (unlike a star) was seen. The magi packed up and traveled on the road for about two years (thousands of miles) until they arrived at the “house” where Jesus was. So the light emanation above Jesus remained there just long enough to lead the magi to the King, and then we hear no more about it. I wonder how those magician’s lives were affected, and why it was so important that those three men follow the star when no one else did.

I heard a sermon by John MacArthur over a decade ago, where he stated that the star was actually the glory of God. He used Scripture to support his view, pointing out that the star was moving, which means it couldn’t have been a real star. It “went on before them, until it came and stood over where the Child was.” (Matthew 2:9) Ever since then, I have been mesmerized by the star. I, too, want to follow.

Matthew 2:9b-11a: “And lo, the star which they had seen in the east went on before them, until it came and stood over where the Child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And they came into the house and saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell down and worshiped Him…”

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My Favorite Thankful Song

Wednesday, November 21st, 2012

Having grown up in a third-world country, I sometimes saw people I loved living in houses with dirt floors, with a live chicken walking across the living room. We often had no running water, or the water would come out of the tap looking brown. It had amoebas, so we couldn’t drink it. There was mold on our walls where I grew up. The electricity would go off at any time and sometimes stayed off for hours. An earthquake demolished the entire city when I was six years old. A few years later a bullet almost killed my sister.  People begging in the streets had no arms and legs.

We truly don’t understand how good we have it in the United States. We covet the next shiny object and are never satisfied with our lives, even though we have a warm house and food on the table. This reminds me of the verse: “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.” (I Timothy 6:8)

In honor of Thanksgiving, I would like to share my favorite thankful song:

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Extend Grace in Strained Relationships

Friday, November 16th, 2012

If you have strained relationships with people in your extended family, I challenge you to extend grace to them. Forgive the wrongs they’ve done. Reach upward and ask God for the strength to show genuine love to that person. I know it’s impossible. But with God all things are possible. Open your heart God-wards, and God will love that person through you.

I have deep, beautiful relationships with people today that a decade ago I could have never imagined being close to. God is the great Healer. God changed the way I reacted to the person that I felt wounded by. As a result of my changed countenance, the other person saw God’s grace in my life, and God was glorified through me. Healing happened.

Our lives on this earth are too short to be fighting with people we’re supposed to love. If you only had three days to live, would you still fight? This life is like a vapor; it really is a metaphorical three days. Who cares if the other person is wrong? Give up your rights. Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up.

Even though I don’t normally like western music, I love this song because it encourages us to forgive freely and live life to its fullest. No, you don’t have to go sky diving, but I see that as a metaphor for taking a risk to love the way God has commanded us to love.

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