Advent Season 2011

As the Advent season quickly approaches, I am filled with both a sense of anticipation and excitement. I love this time of year and all that it brings, from serious reflection on Jesus’ coming to earth (and how that irreversibly altered the story of the world for the better... forever) to the simple joys of peppermint mochas and exchanging gifts. I love it all. :)

As a guide in my Advent season devotions this year, I am planning to follow along with a small book called Our Savior Come: An Advent Companion (there is also an e-book here). It is a series of reflection essays and scripture readings aimed at making the season leading up to Christmas a bit more thoughtful, purposeful, and worshipful. Our friend Nathan Shorb contributed one of the essays, along with a dozen other writers and artists. I can’t wait to begin the season, which starts November 27th.

Another thing to think about this season is how you can bless someone else. There are a million creative ways to do this so I am not going to go on and on about it. But one of the organizations I like is Samaritan’s purse. They do great things all year round, but there are a couple of fun ways to get involved during the Christmas season. One is Operation Christmas Child. In a nut shell; you select a child (age & gender), fill a shoe box with small gifts and practical things, then your box is given to a child in need (typically in a third world country) along with a small book explaining the good news of Jesus Christ. There is even a follow-up discipleship program for all the kids who accept Christ. To find a drop-off location in your area where you can take your box, click here. Another option is their annual gift catalog, in which you can donate towards one of their many global initiatives, either as a gift for yourself or someone else (an aside: it is always good to be sure someone would appreciate this as a gift first). My two favorite picks this year are #22 (Clean water for a thirsty community) and #44 (Baby chicks, they are just so cute), but there is a long list of terrific options.

If we have time throughout the season, we will keep you updated on some of our thoughts along the way. But before all that, Thanksgiving is literally right around the corner, so enjoy that special day whether you give thanks with family, friends, or just you and God.

Twenty Percent

We are at 20% of our monthly support goal. Praise God!

The Gospel Works

Erin and I have been taking a class through World Team called Gospel Foundations. In the class we are working through how to apply the Gospel to our lives, because as a professor of mine used to say, “As Christians we never move on from the Gospel, we move on in the Gospel.” One of the most basic truths of the Gospel that continues to amaze me is that it works. One of my favorite authors, in talking about the apostle Paul, put it like this: 

I have often reflected on the strangeness of the task to which Paul devoted his life: telling pagans that there is a single creator God rather than a multiplicity of gods was bad enough, but adding that this God had made himself known in a crucified Jew, who had then been raised from the dead, was bound to cause hoots of derision…. Yet Paul found that when he told this story, when he proclaimed that this Jesus was indeed the world’s true Lord, people (to their great surprise, no doubt) found this announcement making itself at home in their minds and hearts, generating the belief that it was true, and transforming their lives with a strange new presence and power. (N. T. Wright, Paul, pg. 100)

The strange power of the Gospel works. It worked then and it works now.

Some interesting French religious statistics

It has been too long since our last post, sorry for the silence. Today I was reading our friends and teammates blog, the Shorb's (who I introduced a few weeks back here), and I wanted to share their post on some more recent statistics about spiritual interest in France.

This was a study published in February 2011 and the most encouraging percentage to me was that even though only 36% said they believe in God (in general), 62% of the population said they would like to discuss the questions they have about God with someone. Not that it is always easy to identify who those people are, but it is awesome that for the majority of the French, if God exists and who God is, are important enough issues to be thought through and discussed. And that is just what we want to do, discuss it with them. :)

If you want to see all the statistics, hop on over to the Shorb's blog here. 

A brief update:

We have been in Ohio for almost a week now seeing friends, speaking with churches, and trying to build our support team. It’s been challenging but encouraging at the same time. God is at work, just not always in the ways we are expecting. As part of the trip we got to hang out with some of our super amazingly talented friends the Armstrongs and they showed us a music video they did for a musician named Josh Garrels. Erin and I thought it was amazing and since it was part of our experience here, we're sharing it with you. Enjoy.

A word from God to me

We are in Ohio this week (that’s right, OH–IO), working on developing partnerships for France and visiting family and friends. We visited three church services this weekend and were very encouraged by the music and preaching we heard and the people we met. Each gathering of believers was pretty different in look, feel and size but the message communicated and commitment to Christ demonstrated was consistent from place to place. I would like to share a bit about the different churches, because by the end of our trip we will have had the pleasure of visiting 6 or more, but I will save that for another post. For now, I want to share what God has been putting on my heart this week.

When God wants to teach me something He often does so by putting the message right in front of me over and over again, which is proof that He really knows me because if He only put it in front of me once or twice I would either miss it or assume a mere coincidence. The passage He keeps bringing to me over and over and over, through personal study with my friend Brittany, 2 services this weekend and a conversation with my mentor this morning, is Philippians 2:1–4…

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

The section title for this in my bible is “imitating Christ’s humility” and it can be a really challenging lesson. Truthfully, seeing this kind of unity and selflessness in action is rare. But I am encouraged when I read right after this part in Philippians and it shows the literal example of Christ doing this, and then the results. After Christ humbled Himself completely, making himself nothing and taking on the very nature of a servant and THEN being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross… after all that this is what happens in Phil 2:9–11.

“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

I think God is trying to show me that I need to humble myself more. I need to love and serve others more selflessly. And then my prayer is that through that, God will be exalted and glorified and the person and persons I love and serve will be one step closer to acknowledging and living in a way that displays that Jesus is their Lord too. One tangible way to do so, as encouraged by my mentor, is to not enter into interactions with people this week with my agenda as the main thing, but rather to start every interaction by seeking to encourage and love the people we meet. This was a wonderful reminder, because we are here to develop partners, which is important, but above that we are called to love the people God puts in our path. Please pray that Ryan and I would be putting others above ourselves this week, to the glory and praise of our Lord and King.

Wise words from the mouths of babes

“At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.’”
— Luke 10:21

I was helping in the nursery at church yesterday and was blessed by the words of a little one. I set up some fun puzzles and began inviting some kids to do them with me, so I invited Girl #1 (I’ve decided to protect her identity) to join me. She is 3.

Me: Hey there, do you want to work on these puzzles with me?

Girl #1: No, I can’t do these because I am too little.

Me: It’s okay; we will work on it together, as a team (so she smiled and came over and we began assembling the puzzle, then Girl #2 came over, she is 6).

Girl #2: I want to do this one by myself.

Girl #1: No, we are a team. No one can do this by themselves, it is too hard, but together we can do this.

At this point, I had to explain that it was okay if Girl #2 wanted to try the other puzzle by herself, but we could keep working as a team on ours. But I was struck by her words. She internalized what I said about working together and took it a few steps farther. She reminded me what the body of Christ is all about. It is about working together to accomplish God’s will and mission, and it is about encouraging one another and building each other up in love.

It is just like she said, on our own, each of us is too little to accomplish much, but together… we can do this. Much like the different pieces of a puzzle, each piece on it’s own doesn’t do much, but together its’ purpose is fulfilled. Anyway, It makes me smile. :)