Sunday, June 15, 2014

Transformations

image
Our Lord Jesus is the master of transformations. He turned Zacchaeus from swindler to philanthropist, Peter from impulsive coward to pillar of the church, Paul from murderous zealot to passionate follower, and on and on the list goes.

Jesus is still transforming lives to this day in the same ways. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). I once was an angry, bitter man who loved nothing but computer games and his own interests, but now Christ is transforming me into a compassionate man who ministers to orphans and desires the salvation for the lost.

I’m not there yet. There’s still so much lacking in me, yet since I am in Christ, I am a new creation. This promise doesn’t just extend to me; I’m not anyone special, but my God can do anything.

If you read this, know that God can use you for the same things, and His transforming power only begins to work when you trust Jesus for salvation. He will not stop until you are perfect – until you resemble His Son.

These are just a few stories of the Lord’s transforming power that I have seen over the past six months.

The First Convert

image
Several years ago we visited a village where the Muslim chief welcomed us and the gospel message. He gladly heard us and made provisions for us to have a structure where we could exposit the scriptures for them.

Yet even after several years, nobody in the village had come to Christ, and only two people – a man named Solomon and the chief himself – seemed interested at all in the gospel. There were a few exciting moments where people seemed to make professions of faith, but the passion and fire quickly died away.

Finally, last year, Solomon came to faith, renouncing his Islamic roots during the month of Ramadan. Imagine suddenly deciding you weren’t going to celebrate Christmas ever again on Christmas Eve. All of his friends, some of his family, and his neighbors all continued the month-long celebration, but he abstained for the first time, because his allegiance is now to Christ alone.

imageFast forward to January: we visited the village and found that Solomon’s seventeen year old son had also come to faith and was making some incredible statements. When we asked him how he came to faith, he said, “When I saw the futility of Islam and the gods of Africa and compared them to the new faith of my father, I knew I had to come to Christ.”

It is unbelievably important for a father to live out his faith in such a radical way that his children know that Jesus is real by his example. Solomon’s witness and faithfulness, even over a short few months, has already won his son over to Christ.

Although it was encouraging to see that Solomon was being faithful, the chief of the village was nowhere to be found. We learned that he was sick and receiving care in a city about an hour and a half away – a city we just so happened to be visiting.

From Victims to Missionaries


image
The nearby city where the chief was staying is home to a massive orphanage with over four-hundred children who have had one or both parents murdered for their faith in Christ. We have the amazing opportunity to show the love of Christ to these kids, ranging from age 6 to 18, and the opportunity to disciple them as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28, “Teaching them to obey all I have commanded you.”

The best way to train someone up is to bring them along with you and share your very life with them. As the apostle Paul said, “We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” These youth and kids are so dear to us that we go to Africa to share our very lives; so for several days, we stayed at this orphanage and brought several young men with us to minister wherever we went.

So those who were once victimized by religious persecution are now boldly going with us to share before the leaders of villages. The Holy Spirit of God can turn any victim into a mighty warrior who backs down before nothing. Make no mistake; these young men will be used for amazing things in the Kingdom of God. Pray for them!
 

Visiting a Chief

image
On one of these days, we were determined to track down and visit the chief using the contact information we were given. Our local contacts managed to call someone he was staying with, and we received directions. Taking two young men with us from the orphanage, we passed through a labyrinth of tight streets and marketplaces until we finally arrived at our destination – a quiet part of the city that would have looked right at home in a post-apocalyptic film.

I briefly wondered if we’d made a terrible mistake as the man led us through this desolate place, but soon, we arrived at a covered entryway where the chief awaited us. As fast as his feeble legs could carry him, he raced out to us, greeting us warmly and expressing his disbelief that we’d actually traveled all this way to visit him.

He welcomed us and we exchanged pleasantries, eventually opening up the scriptures with him and sharing the gospel with him. The young men with us shared their testimonies and what Jesus meant to them and the chief and those sitting with us all listened intently.

imageThen we told him the situation in his village – not many were coming to the church, and many had turned back to offering sacrifices to the gods of Africa. And as we spoke, the chief interrupted us, “This must not be! I will go back and tell the people to stop sacrificing to the gods and to begin attending church!”

“Wow,” I thought. Then we asked, “What about you? Are you going back and celebrating Ramadan? Are you once again sacrificing to the gods of Africa?”

The chief responded clearly, “Only Jesus can save me. Mohammad cannot save me, the gods of Africa have no power – I follow Jesus.”

God is saving even Muslim chiefs steeped in idolatry. If that is what He is doing now, imagine what He will continue to do in our lives. Pray for this man, that he will walk boldly in his confession and that many in his village will come to Christ.

Stories of the Redeemed



Here are some of the young men the Lord has put in my life at the orphanage, whom I have the privilege of encouraging and being encouraged by:

Ibriham
imageHe has one more year left of schooling before he seeks to get a degree in music. His village was attacked and his family managed to escape right before a massacre, but his father returned to help others escape and never returned. They found his body by the riverside. Ibriham said, “When my father was murdered, I thought I would never stop crying,” but when he came to the orphanage, God comforted him so that he was able to write a song about how Jesus had dried up all his tears. He has a passion for missions work, and seeks to be a missionary when he finishes school. He is extremely strong in his faith, and it’s a privilege to serve the Lord alongside him.

imageIsaac
This is my 12 year old buddy who has a passion for photography and drawing, and he is quite the artist. He follows us wherever we go, and although he doesn’t say much, I pray the Lord is using our example to minister to him. His father was a pastor who was murdered by extremists, and he has a sister at the orphanage I finally had the privilege of meeting. Please pray for him, that God would open his eyes and that he would fully commit himself to the Lord.





And by the way, all of these young men have a terrific sense of humor. Fellowship with them is about as warm as you can get, and I rejoice that I know each of them.

In the United States, if we live as Christians, at most we will be inconvenienced. Yet around the world, our brothers and sisters are imprisoned, raped, and murdered just because they choose to love Jesus more than any false way. Pray that God will give us the strength to live up to the example our persecuted family has set!
 
imageFired at his job – Literally
This past April, I had the privilege of being reunited with my friend Edwin once again in Central America. Shot by his boss in anger and forced to return to his home-town, he met Jesus on the back porch of our church building last February. He was baptized last July and has been faithfully serving the Lord, even inviting others to come to the church, I recently wrote a blog about his story here: http://adexios.blogspot.com/2014/05/edwins-story-1-year-later.html

Please pray for him and the many others whose stories I have not even begun to cover here.
 

The Power of the Gospel

So you have seen the stories here. Now I will tell you what the Lord has put on my heart- the power of the gospel. I once preached in such a way to encourage believers using the scriptures, but something was missing— I was not proclaiming the gospel in every message.

Think about it, if the gospel has the power to turn a chief away from Islam and make him suddenly care about the spiritual state of his people, if the gospel has the power to dry up our tears, make us renounce our former ways, and endure imprisonments and beatings because of what our Lord Jesus Christ did for us, then imagine what effect it can have on the life of a believer!

I believe that the weakness we see in ourselves and in the local church is because we do not prioritize the preaching of the gospel. The apostle Paul once wrote that he was eager to preach the gospel to the church in Rome. Paul was ecstatic to preach the gospel to believers and to non-believers, that there would be a harvest – a harvest, I believe, of righteous living and of power.

If Jesus’s death on the cross has the power to transform a sinner, it also has the power to transform us and to remind us once again of God’s great love and the mighty power He demonstrated when he atoned for our sin and raised up Christ on the third day.

I believe that God will begin an incredible revival in our nation when the gospel is prioritized and preached once again in every message from every pulpit and from the lips of every believer. God is doing incredible things around the world when we preach Christ and His incredible sacrifice, so why not preach the same way here!

Therefore, please pray for me, that God will give me the words to say in preaching the gospel – that I will do it boldly and unashamed, and that He will continue to give me holiness and that He will continue to lead me in His ways.

I love you all in the Lord. Grace and peace to you,
- Paul

Friday, June 6, 2014

If Death is the End...

IMG_8068

Life is full of tragedy, seemingly without meaning. One moment you’re basking in glory, and the next, stricken and searching for answers.

I once heard the story of a man who spent his life in preparation for serving the gospel. Leaving his family fortune behind, William Borden graduated from Yale, studied at Princeton theological seminary, and departed for further training in Egypt – a bright, brilliant star.

He died shortly after – a light snuffed out. If death is truly the end, then Bordon’s death was a pointless waste.

It all seemed so senseless to me until I read and understood Micah 3:16-17:

“…those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name. ‘On the day when I act,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘they will be my treasured possession.’”

God’s purpose for our lives goes far deeper than ministry; He doesn’t want our ministry, He wants us. We are His treasured possession.

For the follower of Christ, death is not a period; it is a comma. God is not working on us so we can be more effective ministers; He is working on us because He loves us. Our story begins, not ends at death. God didn’t end Borden’s story; he turned the page and started the next chapter, as if to say, “I cannot wait for you to come home, son—today is the day.”

Ephesians 2:6-7 says that “…God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

God’s purpose for us is to display the riches of His grace to us. This is a task that will take all of eternity, since His grace is infinite. We will spend all of eternity watching as God unloads treasure after treasure from His infinite hoard of grace, mercy, and kindness. This is our story.

Life on this plane isn’t a movie; it doesn’t end with every loose end conveniently tied up, and we’re often left asking “Why” without hope of hearing an answer.

All of our pain, all of the seemingly senseless agony and tragedy of this life, all of our rejections and sufferings, and everything we’ve lost are all unwoven threads of an unfinished tapestry, but the day will come when all of our scars and all of our stories are woven together by the Master Weaver Himself. On that day alone will it finally make sense, but until then, we know that He is the God who walks with us through our pain.

Bordon understood this. One of the last things he wrote in his Bible before he died was this simple phrase, “No regrets.”

Welcome home, son.

Finally, it all makes sense.