On Tuesday of this week, one reality of ministry to refugees forced its way into my life for the first time. I received a call informing me that one of the Karen refugees that attends the church in Phoenix--a young man in his early 20's, had taken his own life earlier that day!
He had been in the U.S. for a year already, had been working, had purchased a vehicle, and yet was struggling learning English and adjusting to life in America. He had been in an accident a few days before, an accident that didn't cause any injuries, but which totalled his car. What pushed him over the edge?
It could have been his inability to communicate with those involved in the accident, the police at the scene and his own insurance company. It also could have been the reality that the pay off from the insurance wasn't sufficient to cover what he owned on the loan of the car and he was now looking at owing a few thousand dollars and having nothing to show for it. Ultimately, only God and the young man really know why he did what he did.
But personally, I know one thing for sure. I need His grace to be able to minister to these people so that the abnormally high suicide rate among Southeast Asian refugees isn't reinforced by the Karen or Chin people.
I'd appreciate your prayer for them individually and as a group, and for Helen and I to be able to love them and help them make the huge adjustment to life in America--an adjustment that seems so challenging to some that they would choose death over trying to make it.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
LIFE and LIGHT, a summation
As you can probably tell, I've only scratched the surface of what the Lord has shown me regarding LIFE and LIGHT. And to be honest, it would take much more time than I have to give in order to express on this blog even half of it. So I think it's best for me to summarize as succinctly as I can the key points I've learned and then leave it alone.
In John 8:12, Jesus said that He was the LIGHT of the world and that those who follow Him will no longer walk in darkness, but will have the LIGHT of LIFE. To follow Jesus is to no longer walk in darkness, where proper interaction with everything external to us, never actually takes place. Because He is the LIGHT, He brings illumination, He makes it possible to see everything as it really is--as God designed it to be seen. But that's not the key point. The key aspect of His being the LIGHT of the world and illuminating things properly, is that now those things can be interacted with as God intended them to be. This is crucial to understand and it's the thing I had missed for so long.
And in His LIGHT, seeing everything properly, God Himself is also seen in a new and proper way. When He is seen for who He really is, there will be an insatiable desire to interact with Him properly. And when we take that step to interact with Him properly through the death and resurrection of His Son, we actually receive LIFE as He intended us to have it.
For the first time ever, we begin a proper, ongoing interaction and exchange with our Creator--dependent on Him and receiving an "abundance of LIFE" that we had never experienced before. This is a "fullness" of LIFE, where we are alive at every level, as we were originally designed to be. And once He gives us this LIFE--proper interaction and exchange with Him, He then gives us the desire and the ability to interact and exchange with everything else around us in the way He originally designed us to do so. He is in His proper place and everything else in its proper place--all of which magnifies His greatness, His splendor, and His glory, yet also brings satisfaction to us.
If you think about it, one of the things that made the earthly LIFE of Jesus so unique, was the fact that He interacted with everything: God the Father, the Holy Spirit, HIMSELF, the devil, His parents, His siblings, and every other person--He interacted with all of them in a way that no one else ever has--because He did so in the way God designed--for His glory, and their good!
As followers of Jesus, we now have and live in His LIGHT--which makes true LIFE with our Creator possible. And because we now have LIFE as He intended us to have, we then can function as LIGHT in the day to day world in which we live, interacting with everything in the way He designed, and having the blessing of perhaps being a vehicle of providing LIFE to others.
In John 8:12, Jesus said that He was the LIGHT of the world and that those who follow Him will no longer walk in darkness, but will have the LIGHT of LIFE. To follow Jesus is to no longer walk in darkness, where proper interaction with everything external to us, never actually takes place. Because He is the LIGHT, He brings illumination, He makes it possible to see everything as it really is--as God designed it to be seen. But that's not the key point. The key aspect of His being the LIGHT of the world and illuminating things properly, is that now those things can be interacted with as God intended them to be. This is crucial to understand and it's the thing I had missed for so long.
And in His LIGHT, seeing everything properly, God Himself is also seen in a new and proper way. When He is seen for who He really is, there will be an insatiable desire to interact with Him properly. And when we take that step to interact with Him properly through the death and resurrection of His Son, we actually receive LIFE as He intended us to have it.
For the first time ever, we begin a proper, ongoing interaction and exchange with our Creator--dependent on Him and receiving an "abundance of LIFE" that we had never experienced before. This is a "fullness" of LIFE, where we are alive at every level, as we were originally designed to be. And once He gives us this LIFE--proper interaction and exchange with Him, He then gives us the desire and the ability to interact and exchange with everything else around us in the way He originally designed us to do so. He is in His proper place and everything else in its proper place--all of which magnifies His greatness, His splendor, and His glory, yet also brings satisfaction to us.
If you think about it, one of the things that made the earthly LIFE of Jesus so unique, was the fact that He interacted with everything: God the Father, the Holy Spirit, HIMSELF, the devil, His parents, His siblings, and every other person--He interacted with all of them in a way that no one else ever has--because He did so in the way God designed--for His glory, and their good!
As followers of Jesus, we now have and live in His LIGHT--which makes true LIFE with our Creator possible. And because we now have LIFE as He intended us to have, we then can function as LIGHT in the day to day world in which we live, interacting with everything in the way He designed, and having the blessing of perhaps being a vehicle of providing LIFE to others.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Another ALS connection...prayer needed
Earlier today I spent about twenty minutes on the phone with a woman named Jan, a woman in her mid-50's that is very successful in business and was recently diagnosed with ALS. Through a good friend of mine who met a good friend of hers, I was made aware of her situation and her friend cared enough about her to call me and ask me to give her a call.
Her legs have weakened to the point where she is now in a wheel chair and it has only been about 8 months since she first noticed her foot was acting strangely while she was exercising.
Although I don't have ALS, (but do have something similar: SBMA,) I've been down the path she is just beginning and I sense that God gave me a special ability to encourage her and challenge her during our conversation.
Please keep Jan in prayer. Her business was expanding and life was in many ways better than it had ever been--and now this! It was clear in talking to her that she needs the life that can come from knowing her creator and I'm convinced that she is open to considering Him at a level she never has in the past. Pray that Helen and I will be able to meet with her and her husband and be an expression of His love and truth.
And of course, continue to keep the situation in Myanmar, (Burma) in prayer.
Her legs have weakened to the point where she is now in a wheel chair and it has only been about 8 months since she first noticed her foot was acting strangely while she was exercising.
Although I don't have ALS, (but do have something similar: SBMA,) I've been down the path she is just beginning and I sense that God gave me a special ability to encourage her and challenge her during our conversation.
Please keep Jan in prayer. Her business was expanding and life was in many ways better than it had ever been--and now this! It was clear in talking to her that she needs the life that can come from knowing her creator and I'm convinced that she is open to considering Him at a level she never has in the past. Pray that Helen and I will be able to meet with her and her husband and be an expression of His love and truth.
And of course, continue to keep the situation in Myanmar, (Burma) in prayer.
"Eternal" LIFE pondered and defined
With the fresh understanding God gave me of what LIFE and LIGHT mean, so much more of the bible and my own life began to be more understandable. The common understanding of "eternal" LIFE never did sit well with me. Limiting the concept to a LIFE that never ends, that goes on forever and ever, although true, just doesn't express what it's really all about. Jesus had much to say about LIFE, and as the very essence of it and creator of all living things, it's definitely worth the effort to really try and understand what He was talking about.
As sort of a study "geek", I'm big on trying to find the real definition of things and then expressing them in a simple way. And I've learned over the years that it's valuable to listen to those whom most people would consider experts on any given subject--those people who actually work within a certain field as their primary vocation. What would their definition be? So, it makes perfect sense to me to look at what Jesus Himself had to say about "eternal" LIFE and to discover whether He Himself may have given His definition of the concept. And sure enough, He did, in John 17:3. According to Jesus Himself, "eternal" life is: knowing God the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom God the Father has sent into our world.
According to Jesus, the primary meaning of "eternal" LIFE isn't living forever, although that is an aspect of it that is brought out in other places. No, the key thing to understand is that "eternal" LIFE is "knowing" God the Father and His Son. The word "knowing" in the original language was the word that expressed experiential knowledge of something. In other words, the knowledge that is the result of constant/regular, interaction with something--not just intellectually but also emotionally, physically, and so forth. It's not just mentally acknowledging facts as true, but actually having a personal interaction with that which is external to us. Just a life itself is interacting with and exchanging with that which is external, so "eternal" LIFE is interacting with and exchanging with that which is external to us: God the Father and His Son! It's an interaction and exchange in the context of relationship.
With what I've written so far as a bit of a backdrop, I'll try to bring this all together next time by sharing what I now understand Jesus to mean in John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world, he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the ligh of life."
Until then...
As sort of a study "geek", I'm big on trying to find the real definition of things and then expressing them in a simple way. And I've learned over the years that it's valuable to listen to those whom most people would consider experts on any given subject--those people who actually work within a certain field as their primary vocation. What would their definition be? So, it makes perfect sense to me to look at what Jesus Himself had to say about "eternal" LIFE and to discover whether He Himself may have given His definition of the concept. And sure enough, He did, in John 17:3. According to Jesus Himself, "eternal" life is: knowing God the Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom God the Father has sent into our world.
According to Jesus, the primary meaning of "eternal" LIFE isn't living forever, although that is an aspect of it that is brought out in other places. No, the key thing to understand is that "eternal" LIFE is "knowing" God the Father and His Son. The word "knowing" in the original language was the word that expressed experiential knowledge of something. In other words, the knowledge that is the result of constant/regular, interaction with something--not just intellectually but also emotionally, physically, and so forth. It's not just mentally acknowledging facts as true, but actually having a personal interaction with that which is external to us. Just a life itself is interacting with and exchanging with that which is external, so "eternal" LIFE is interacting with and exchanging with that which is external to us: God the Father and His Son! It's an interaction and exchange in the context of relationship.
With what I've written so far as a bit of a backdrop, I'll try to bring this all together next time by sharing what I now understand Jesus to mean in John 8:12 Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world, he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the ligh of life."
Until then...
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