My brother told me to blog more...

and so this is for him. He tried to bait me with something about Joel Osteen, but I'm sick of being frustrated by his type.

I'm realizing I don't really truly know anything about prayer. Which means I really truly don't understand God.

I find myself getting frustrated, overwhelmed, and helpless as I survey the world. I'm discovering these massive problems (like Pakistan) and nothing I can physically do is really going to make a difference.

I'm exhorting, begging people to pray - cause that's the only thing we really can do - and yet I have to fight myself. Part of me feels like that won't accomplish anything. I want to actually make a difference, solve the problem, do anything. And yet, for all practical purposes, my hands are tied. So I suggest we pray as a last resort.

Could my thinking be more backward?

I serve the God of the universe, who invites me to enter into conversation with Him, to petition Him to move in the earth and I'm told He will! Yet coming to Him more often than not is my last course of action, instead of the first thing my heart knows to do.

No wonder I don't know God.

God calls us to so much more - to really know Him, to walk in step with the Spirit, to pray continually. If I really understood what it meant to be in constant conversation with the most powerful and loving being in the universe, how could I not pray continually?

I have so much to learn. Lord, teach me how to pray.

Pakistan Part Two

I wrote this for our church newsletter:

For Christians in Pakistan, the persecution has never been worse.

Globally, militant Islam has been on the rise for several decades, and this has been seen in Pakistan as well. However, tensions rose dramatically with 9/11 and the ensuing war in neighboring Afghanistan. From mosque to mosque and town to town came a cry of revenge: “For every Muslim killed in Afghanistan, kill two Christians in Pakistan.”

There is a very strong sense of brotherhood within Islam. If a Muslim anywhere in the world is offended, injured, or killed, or if Islam is treated with disrespect, Muslims all over the world will respond with protests and demands for justice. Though Christians profess a similar doctrine as a key tenet of our faith (I believe in the holy catholic [universal] church…), we often are not aware of the suffering our brothers and sisters in Christ are enduring, and we rarely respond to their persecution.

In Pakistan, Christians faithfully attend church services, not knowing if they will walk out unharmed. Christian villages and their residents have been burned. A harsh Islamic blasphemy law makes it illegal to even compare Mohammed, the Koran, or Allah to Christianity—much less actually share the gospel. Scores of Christians have been imprisoned or martyred on charges of blasphemy, which are often completely false. Pakistani Christians seeking asylum in the United States are often met with unsympathetic immigration judges who do not understand the reality of the death threats they have received from radical Islam.

The stories of many, many Pakistani Christians are too horrendous to share in this publication, but they are real. We must not turn a blind eye to those who suffer. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we have to support them, though we know nothing of the reality they face every day.

Pray for Pakistan. Pray when you learn of international news and politics. Pray for the Christian Pakistani community here in America as they try to intervene on behalf of endangered family and friends. Pray that God would protect strengthen, and encourage His people, especially those imprisoned and experiencing severe persecution. Pray that Christians would be faithful lights in the midst of great darkness and that God would draw many unto Himself. Pray that the strongholds of Islam would be broken and that God’s glory would be displayed in Pakistan and throughout the earth.

Pakistan Part One

Note: I was asked to write a short article about persecution in Pakistan for our church newsletter. This is part one, giving background, and I'm going to interview a family in our church that recently left Pakistan for a second part in a couple of weeks.

In the aftermath of genocides, the world community has developed a naïve but standard response. “We didn’t know, so we couldn’t respond, but we’ll try to do better next time. Never again!” From the Holocaust to Cambodia to Rwanda, all too often the world looks the other way until it is too late.

As members of the body of Christ, we must be aware of what is going on across the globe, right now. In dozens of countries, millions face severe restrictions, imprisonment, and death because of their minority status. Our connection to these goes far beyond shared humanity – they are family, brothers and sisters in Christ. In one particular place, persecution is severe and rising.

Pakistan is a tumultuous country, sharing tense borders with Afghanistan and India. Internal and international rumblings and connections with terrorism are often highlighted in the news. But for Pakistan’s three million Christians, less than 2.5% of the population, their persecution often goes unnoticed.

At times, the world takes note, as it did last month when six World Vision workers were murdered. But we cannot realize the courage it takes to walk into church knowing one might not get to walk out. Harsh Islamic law means that on average, at least one Pakistani Christian is imprisoned and another killed each month, often on trumped up blasphemy charges. Whole Christian villages have been destroyed, and many more homes and churches burned. Splinter groups from both the Taliban and al-Qaeda actively pursue Christians. Brother Andrew’s organization Open Doors ranks Pakistan as the fourteenth most persecuting country in 2010.

So what can we do? The honest answer is that we are limited in how we can respond. But three things are essential. First, educate yourself and those around you. Be aware of the persecution that is threatening so many of our brothers and sisters around the globe. As you do this, pray. Use the information you’ve learned to pray specific prayers for persecuted Christians. Sign up for updates from The Voice of the Martyrs or Open Doors, and pray as you receive news from believers around the world. Finally, reach out to internationals here in our own community. Many have their own stories of persecution, as well as family in areas where they may still be at risk. Get to know them personally and pray with them.

Calling, Butterflies, and Fools

I'd been helping my brother collect for the biology insect collection for about an hour. There seemed to be a certain butterfly that was taunting us, as Robert made several attempts to catch it. It was man enough to not fly above and beyond the trees, but it always seemed to stay just out of reach. (This prompted Robert's status update: "Freakin' Lepidoptera! You know who you are!") Robert had chased it all the way down and back up the field for a couple of minutes. I was determined to get it, so I grabbed the net.

For a full minute or so, my full attention was completely on capturing the freaking Lepidoptera. Sprinting, pivoting, almost tripping, sidestepping back as it fluttered just ahead of my swinging, swooping net, I was oblivious to everything else - the weeds I was crashing through, my brother's tired laugh, the cars honking as they passed on their way to the soccer game. I didn't care, because I was going to catch it.

I looked like a fool in the process, but I caught it.

Driving home, I thought about the chapter I had recently read in Os Guinness' book The Call - "Everybody's Fools."

"Fools for Christ" are not actually, or literally, or objectively fools but those who are prepared to be seen and treated as fools for Christ's sake. Since the world in its pretended wisdom foolishly thinks itself wise, it sees God's true wisdom as foolishness. Those faithful to God must therefore break with the world and bear its folly. They are what I call "foolbearers," acting out of love for Christ and wearing the world's shame as a badge of allegiance and honor.

Guinness acknowledges that "Holly folly has unquestionably gained a bad name in some Christian circles and for solid reasons. Sometimes it inspired what looks like plain weirdness...sometimes it has been used to justify flagrant anti-intellectualism..."

I've spent a lot of time in the past couple of years thinking and trying to be anything but a fool. I want to be an intellectual Christian. I want to communicate with media with excellence, not at the sub-par level expected from anything with a "Christian" label. At some level, these pursuits are good. We're called to love God with all our minds and all our strength. Our work as creators made in the image of the Creator should be excellent. But the focus has to be on God and His glory, not 'engaging (read: impressing) the world' or being 'relevant' or any other catchphrase or side effect.

Christians have made mistakes in the last century when it comes to interacting with culture and being intellectual, and it's not wrong to want to move beyond these. However, I'm forced to acknowledge how often my motivation for not being foolish is purely selfish and not to glorify God. Who do I think I am? Am I better than the prophets? The apostles? Jesus?

Calling entails the cost of discipleship. The deepest challenge is to renounce self and identify with Jesus in his sufferings and rejection.

Foolbearing is essential to calling because it is the true way to count the cost of identifying with Jesus. It is the price of obeying His call, renouncing self, and taking up the cross to follow Him.

Foolbearing is essential to calling because it positions us unmistakably before the world as a counterculture, antithetical to the world's very being. In the gospel there is an antithesis to the world that we dare no relax, a cost to discipleship that we cannot waive, a challenge to obedience that we must not conceal, and a scandal to faith that we should never airbrush away. If loyalty to those truths puts us beyond the pale, so be it.

Foolbearing is essential to calling because it is Christ's way of responding to injury. All of us as followers of Christ will flinch at times from the pain of wounds and the smart of slights, but that cost is in the contract of calling and the way of the cross.

I'm called to chase greater things than butterflies. I'm called to seek God and His Kingdom and righteousness. I can't remember the last time I pursued those things with half the focus and abandonment I gave the freaking butterfly. I'm a fool!

I'm a fool who desperately needs to die to myself and take up my cross and become a foolbearer, to the glory of God alone.

Grieving With Those Who Grieve

In this poem, the author and speaker are not the same (specifically in the first two stanzas). I do have a sense of grief, but it’s not out of my personal experience or loss. It’s much more about grieving with those who grieve, and longing for That Day.

“That Day Is Not Here Yet”

Where, O Death, is thy sting?
It’s here, piercing my soul,
Draining me of all I once assumed.
I know someday I’ll laugh,
Reminiscing, as of a dream,
The pain so engulfing today.
But That Day is not here yet.

Grief is all I know.
Today’s victory is another’s,
And this my only comfort:
The victory of the grave is not eternal.
But today the piled dirt and hard cold stone
Keep me anchored to this world,
Even as I long for another.

I live in the pain of this tension:
The Already and the Not Yet.
Jesus is life and hope.
And hope does not disappoint.
(Except in this shortsighted fact that)
We hope because we see not.
That Day is not here yet.

Death is already conquered,
But it is the enemy to be destroyed last.
Earning wages of the Fall, we all with Adam die
Even as all in Christ will be made alive.
Everything within me groans, with all creation,
For the reconciliation and final redemption
When all things will be made new.

There is hope.
But That Day is not here yet.

Random Thoughts

Today was the first Sunday of missions week at our church, and the services were incredible.

I want to go to the Unreached. I want to mobilize the Church to go to the Unreached.

My heart is burning within me, and this passion isn't going away.

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I've been thinking about the "Kingdom of God" recently. It's definitely a concept we talked about at Semester, and while it's something I've always been familiar with, I think it's probably harder for Americans to understand it. We really like our concepts of rights, but as Bauman said, rights are an American invention, not a Biblical principle. As a Christian, I have no rights, only responsibilities. God asks for my unconditional surrender, not my vote in the democratic process.

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I was going back through old posts, and I found this verse, quoted from the Message.

God, it seems you've been our home forever; long before the mountains were born, long before you brought earth itself to birth, from "once upon a time" to "kingdom come" —you are God. - Psalm 90:1-2

I like the phrasing here. I love how it brings out the story motif.

And I like how Moses ends the psalm.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.

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Tomorrow marks the start of new year for me. I have goals and plans for this year, but I trust that God has even greater plans, plans that I don't see yet. More than anything I want to be apart of His plan for His Kingdom, not my plan for my life. Just as He orchestrated the events of this past year (and all the years before that) in ways I would never have begun to imagine, He will prove His faithfulness again this year, because that is who He is.

May this be my prayer this year:

I do not ask to see the way
My feet will have to tread;
But only that my soul may feed
Upon the living Bread.
‘Tis better far that I should walk
By faith close to His side;
I may not know the way I go,
But oh, I know my Guide.

His love can never fail, His love can never fail,
My soul is satisfied to know His love can never fail.
My soul is satisfied to know His love can never fail.

-For the glory of the King and the growth of His Kingdom!

When I Grow Up...

There are lots of things I want to do right now. Two top the list.

(Studying to get an expensive piece of paper doesn't quite make the cut.)

I want to read and think about great books.

I want to learn how to use pictures and videos effectively.

In short, I want to be a STORYTELLER.

Words, graphics, videos, I don't care. I just want to communicate in story.

Why?

Because that's how God revealed Himself - in story.
And that's how my heart responds best - to story.

Currently, I'm not a storyteller. But I want to learn. How I want to learn!