“Vibrations” or Prayer?

If there is any unity of expres­sion in the newslet­ters mis­sion­ar­ies are wont to send, it is found either in their requests for prayer or in their thanks­giv­ing for it. All mis­sion­ar­ies desire and need prayer for their daily liv­ing, for their min­istries and for those to whom they min­is­ter. So do the rest of us.  None of us is immune from need­ing a touch from God.  Such being the case, it behooves us to actu­ally pray when we are asked. Not every­one does.

When my dad was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal with a seri­ous con­di­tion, many answered affir­ma­tively to my mass e-mail request­ing prayer. But some responded by say­ing, “Tell your dad I’m think­ing about him.” Others said, “Tell Uncle Bill I’m send­ing him hugs.” One even men­tioned that pos­i­tive vibra­tions were on their way. What about prayer?

If there had not been so many such replies, I would have chalked them up to either the prod­uct of spir­i­tual immaturity—or laziness—or of new age phi­los­o­phy. Having received a double-whammy in prayer train­ing, partly from a Jewish grand­mother who prayed about every­thing and partly from Oswald Chambers in the pow­er­ful daily devo­tional guide My Utmost for His Highest, my con­science bugs me if I ever try to get away with a mat­ter by just think­ing about it. Prayer means going to God with an indi­vid­ual or a sit­u­a­tion until we get the “mind of Christ” on the mat­ter. That is not to say that our thoughts are of no con­se­quence. The Bible has a lot to say about thoughts both in the way of instruc­tion and admo­ni­tion.

• The med­i­ta­tions of our hearts are to be accept­able in His sight (Psalm 19:14).
• Our thoughts are to be pure, lovely, true, of a good report, etc. (Philippians 4:8).
• The secret place of the Most High is to be our dwelling place (Psalm 91), not the past (Philippians 3:13), not the for­mer things (Isaiah 43:18).
• We are to avoid our own coun­sel and the imag­i­na­tions of our hearts (Jeremiah 7:24).
• We must refrain from rev­el­ing in our lusts (James 1:14–16).
• Still, if we think some­thing before Him, He is able to sur­prise us beyond any­thing we can con­ceive (Ephesians 3:20).

My ques­tion is, “Can we project our thoughts toward another to achieve any expected results, pos­i­tive or oth­er­wise?” Your input is wel­come.

Hunger for His Kingdom (Part 2)

I first started think­ing seri­ously about the king­dom of God when I was at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1988. The king­dom of God was the main theme of the School of World Mission where I was attend­ing. In almost every class the pro­fes­sors referred to the king­dom of God. Although I grad­u­ated from the school with a greater under­stand­ing of the king­dom of God, this new under­stand­ing made me real­ize that I was just begin­ning to get a glimpse of the awe­somely glo­ri­ous king­dom that God has estab­lished.

In the past year my wife Mary Nell and I have started study­ing the para­bles of Jesus for the pur­pose of under­stand­ing more about God and His king­dom. There are a num­ber of para­bles in Matthew which begin, “The king­dom of heaven is like … ‚” and they con­tinue:

• a man who sowed good seed in his field (Mat 13:24)
• a mus­tard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field (Mat 13:31)
• leaven, which a woman took and hid in three mea­sures of meal (Mat 13:33)
• trea­sure hid­den in a field (Mat 13:44)
• a mer­chant seek­ing beau­ti­ful pearls” (Mat 13:45).

Parables like these give us more under­stand­ing into the mys­ter­ies or secrets of the king­dom of God. However, like the dis­ci­ples we must go to Jesus and ask him for under­stand­ing (Mat 13:10–11; Mar 4:10–11). In fact, I believe all the para­bles of Jesus are for the pur­pose of giv­ing us greater insight into the secrets of God’s Kingdom, while hid­ing the mean­ing from those on the out­side.

I want to encour­age all of you who are hun­gry for more insight into God’s king­dom. Take another look at the para­bles of Jesus and other ref­er­ences in the New Testament that speak of the Kingdom of God. You may want to begin with the para­bles in Matthew that open with the words, “The king­dom of heaven is like …” You will find it a very enlight­en­ing study. After all, we are liv­ing even now in God’s king­dom and will con­tinue to live in it through­out eter­nity. Not only will we live in it but we also will receive it as our own, for the Bible tells us that it is the Father’s good plea­sure to give us the Kingdom (Luk 12:32). Furthermore, He has ordained that we will reign with Christ in His Kingdom on the earth (Rev 5:10). Until then, I pray, “Your king­dom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6:10).

Hunger for His Kingdom (Part 1)

During the past year I have noticed a hunger grow­ing in my heart—a new inter­est in under­stand­ing and teach­ing more about the Kingdom of God. Both John the Baptist and Jesus came preach­ing, “Repent for the king­dom of heaven is at hand” (Mat 4:17). The king­dom of God (also called the king­dom of heaven) was cen­tral to all that they taught.  Jesus came to reveal the king­dom of God to us and to teach us how to live in it. All through the Acts of the Apostles (Act 8:12) and into the epis­tles (1 Cor 15:50) the writ­ers speak of the king­dom of God. There is no ques­tion that it is a very impor­tant sub­ject that we should seek to under­stand and model to all who will hear.

Jesus said, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His right­eous­ness” (Mat 6:33). That is a verse that has always been of great inter­est to me and still is. I often ask, “What is the king­dom of God?”  How do you seek first the king­dom of God?” Almost all of the answers I receive reveal that most peo­ple do not under­stand what the king­dom of God is or how to make the “seek­ing” of it a pri­or­ity in their lives. The king­dom of God is elu­sive to many of us as it was to the dis­ci­ples of Jesus. We can­not see it, yet it is among us, even within us (Luk 17:21). We are told to seek it now. However, we will not expe­ri­ence its full­ness until Jesus comes in His glory and reveals it in the new heav­ens and the new earth (2 Pet 3:13).

I say the king­dom of God is elu­sive. I say that because it is some­thing that can­not be seen. It is dif­fi­cult to under­stand and even more dif­fi­cult to explain. It is like a beau­ti­ful but­ter­fly that darts back and forth around your head.  One sec­ond you see it and the next you don’t. You reach to take hold of it, and it flies away. It seems to slip through your fin­gers.

It is hard to grasp. Maybe the rea­son is that it is a king­dom not of this world (Jhn 18:36), an invis­i­ble spir­i­tual king­dom, at least at this point in time.

Look for the sequel to this post next week…

Let’s Reverse the Statistics

A sta­tis­tic that is very trou­bling to me is that 80% of all mis­sion­ar­ies will never fin­ish one term on the mis­sion field, or if they do, they will not return for a sec­ond term (a term is con­sid­ered a three-and-a-half year period). I heard this while I was in mis­sion­ary school and the first thing I said to myself was, “No way! That sta­tis­tic can­not be true.” I thought about the tes­ti­monies I heard the first day of school by the stu­dents. Callings were explained, scrip­ture was read, and tes­ti­monies were shared about God’s lead­ing to mis­sion­ary school. I was impressed. At our grad­u­a­tion exer­cise every­one was excited to go forth into the ripened fields of har­vest. I was sure my class of 1980 would do a great work for the Lord. I believe that as a class we were a bless­ing to many peo­ple in dif­fer­ent parts of the world, but the Read More

Watch Out, Social Web! Here Comes WIM!

For the past sev­eral months, a few of us on the WIM staff have been brain­storm­ing, re-thinking, dream­ing and learn­ing. Our main ques­tion has been: “How can we uti­lize tech­nol­ogy for the king­dom of God?”

I had been work­ing on a new web­site for WIM for months already, but a shift hap­pened when Andy Toth, our Director of Training, came into my office and and dropped a DVD on my desk. I was dread­ing watch­ing it because the cover looked really bor­ing (I know, I know, I’m not sup­posed to judge by that). When I finally got around to watch­ing it, I was blown away by the impli­ca­tions. I was hear­ing about things like Web 2.0, donor forums, and cause-centered giv­ing. My goal for the new WIM web­site changed from mak­ing a pretty design to cre­at­ing a place to have a con­ver­sa­tion with you, our friends and sup­port­ers. I want you to have the abil­ity to col­lab­o­rate, share, and inter­act with WIM (and each other) in a more per­sonal way. What causes do you think are impor­tant? How do you want to be involved? And how can we help you do that?

That’s why I’m excited about our new web­site. Yeah, hope­fully it looks good, but mostly I hope it will be a tool that helps us start a con­ver­sa­tion. Thanks for your will­ing­ness to be a part.