Athens

I was privileged to be able to spend last weekend in Athens with Matthew, Cacey and Elijah. We had a good time eating yummy food, watching the Braves, going downtown, playing some board games and...taking some fun pictures! Elijah can talk really well and is very smart. Cacey posted some of their favorite Elijah quotes on their blog a couple posts ago. Here were my favorites from the weekend: "Uncle Michael, I can't BELIEVE that you came to visit me!" and after listening to Matthew speak fluently in German he exclaimed, "How is that POSSIBLE?"

Sovereign Grace

I am currently reading through Daniel and just finished the story of how king Nebuchadnezzar was humbled to the point of behaving like and living among the beasts of the field. It's a very bizarre story...and one of God's sovereign grace being displayed. Grace? He had to behave like a beast for "7 periods of time" - which most scholars believe means 7 years (according to my ESV study bible notes)! Doesn't exactly evoke feelings of grace at first. But the end result, was the king saying,

"At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever,

for his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
and he does according to his will among the host of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand
or say to him, “What have you done?”

At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me." Daniel 4:34-36

That's why we can call it grace, I think. It also reminded me of a story in Acts where another evil king did not get such a chance to repent:

"On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last." Acts 12:21-23

Nebuchadnezzar deserved the same fate as Herod got. It was only by God's free sovereign grace that he was spared. It's the same for all those who trust in Christ. We deserve the same fate as those who will perish in Hell forever and it is only by God's grace through Jesus that we are spared. Praise be to Him that even to this day, "whosoever will" can enter into that grace! "'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.' For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his."

Musings

Last night as I was driving, some words from a Mat Kearney song (that's not a spelling mistake, he really only spells it with one "T"). He says,

"What am I doing here, if you're not with me?
What have I got to live for if its just my own dream?"

When I contemplate making my decisions for the future, I've got to remember that my life isn't my own. I've been bought with the blood of Christ and I am His...and life is pretty pointless unless I'm seeking Him.

This morning I was reading Psalm 111 and this verse stuck out to me:

"He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever."

I guess it struck me because it shows the Bigness of God. Not only is He the God that will remember His covenant to me - to never remember my sins, to be my God, to write his Word on my heart - but also He will provide for my daily needs. He's not just looking at the big picture and saying, "I already saved you, what else do you want??" He's also looking at minute details of my life and saying, "I gave my Son to save you, do you really think I'm not going to provide for your every need?" (Paraphrase of Romans 8:32). Bear in mind however, "tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and [the] sword" are examples of what He will bring His own children through in that same chapter of Romans. How does that work? Because He has promised that even those things are for our good in Romans 8:28 and that none of those things will separate us from His love. Our greatest need is Him. And He will provide for all the needs of those in Christ. Therefore, we should be the most free people in the world, willing to lay down our very lives to show His love to others! Wow, I have a long way to go...

One Trillion Dollars

I saw this on another person's blog, who was getting it from someone else. Pretty incredible!

Spiritual Disciplines

Christianaudio.com gives away one free audiobook each month and March's book is Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. I've heard from others that it is really good.

Thabiti Anyabwile

That's the name of one of my new favorite pastors. He was the keynote speaker at Briarwood's annual Global Missions Conference this year and preached through part of Matthew 9 and 10 brilliantly. Check out his blog if you're interested.

Tough Decisions

I had a tough choice when it came time to decide which car I was going to purchase. In the end it came down to these three choices:



Can you guess which one I chose? ;-)

Thankful

Since moving to Birmingham, I have experienced a lot of new situations. Never before have I felt so utterly helpless and thus reliant on the Lord for some of the most basic necessities. I want to give the Lord the glory he deserves for his faithfulness to me. As the Psalmist says, "But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works." Psalm 73:28

Problem: After getting back to America I had no car.
God's Answer: My brother Joseph gave me his car.

Problem: I stupidly moved to Birmingham without securing a place to live (I did think I had a place, but it didn't work out).
Answer: My newly married friends, Micah and Heather, allowed me to stay with them a few days and then a guy from my church, who had a house, invited me to stay at his house.

Problem: That house was way out of the way from work, church and my friend's house.
Answer: The Lord opened up a great deal for me at an apartment complex in a great section of town.

Problem: My car overheated and needed repairing after work one day. I couldn't get in contact with anyone from work and didn't know how I was going to get to work the next day.
Answer: One of the guys I work with and had left a message for, "randomly" turned his phone on and heard my message and picked me up for work the next day.

Problem: My car had a problem again a few weeks later and didn't know how I was going to get to work again.
Answer: The girl I co-teach with on Wednesday nights at church (where my car broke down) allowed me to borrow her roommates car (who was out of town and had offered her car to any one in such an emergency).

Problem: For a third time, my car broke...and then died...at least to the point where I didn't want to try getting it fixed.
Answer: Though it took 4 weeks, the Lord provided a much better car. During those 4 weeks, he time and time again provided rides to places I needed to go - especially to work.

I'm sure there are even more that I have forgotten about, but that is just a sampling of how God has provided for me time and time again in the past 7 months. "The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing." Psalm 34:10

Surprises

It's always nice to get surprises...especially from friends. Last week I got a package containing some very thoughtful gifts from some of my closest friends in China and another very thoughtful gift from one of my closest fellow teachers at SIAS (though he now lives in South Carolina). Getting them both on the same day was even cooler :-) I hope they know how much they mean to me - even if they wouldn't have sent me anything!

Referral

I just read a great article by C.J. Mahaney's blog on Christmas. Check it out.

St. Louis

I went to St. Louis a few weeks back and saw the Arch and, oh yeah, got to see my sister and Ed get married :-) (I'll let her have first dibs on posting her own wedding pics...well except for this one of us). It was an absolutely beautiful wedding - not just to the eyes, but to the soul also as we witnessed the fruit of waiting on the Lord.

Make My Life a Prayer to You

As I struggle for blog ideas, I figured I'd continue sharing song lyrics that I really like. This song came to mind today and I really like it...and old classic of Keith Green, Make My Life a Prayer to You:

Make my life a prayer to You
I wanna do what you want me to
No empty words and no white lies
No token prayers no compromise
I wanna shine the light You gave
Thru Your Son You sent to save us
From ourselves and our despair
It comforts me to know You're really there

Chorus
Well I want to thank you now
For being patient with me
Oh it's so hard to see
When my eyes are on me
I guess I'll have to trust
And just believe what You say
Oh you're coming again
Coming to take me away

I want to die and let You give
Your life to me so I might live
And share the hope You gave to me
The love that set me free
I wanna tell the world out there
You're not some fable or fairy tale
That I've made up inside my head
You're God the Son and You've risen from the dead

Jesus, I am resting

Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
Of thy loving heart.
Thou hast bid me gaze upon thee,
As thy beauty fills my soul,
For by thy transforming power,
Thou hast made me whole.

Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
Of thy loving heart.

O how great thy lovingkindness,
Vaster, broader than the sea!
O how marvelous thy goodness
Lavished all on me!
Yes, I rest in thee, Beloved,
Know what wealth of grace is thine,
Know thy certainty of promise
And have made it mine.

Simply trusting thee, Lord Jesus,
I behold thee as thou art,
And thy love, so pure, so changeless,
Satisfies my heart;
Satisfies its deepest longings,
Meets, supplies its every need,
Compasseth me round with blessings:
Thine is love indeed.

Ever lift thy face upon me
As I work and wait for thee;
Resting 'neath thy smile, Lord Jesus,
Earth's dark shadows flee.
Brightness of my Father's glory,
Sunshine of my Father's face,
Keep me ever trusting, resting,
Fill me with thy grace.

One Year Ago...

This is random because October 23rd is not special for any particular reason. I was just looking at some pictures and checked to see if there were any from last October 23rd...and there was! This was of me and my friends Chris, Brian and Katie. At the time, I had a bad haircut and we were doing Culture Week stuff :-) I wish I could be there to see this years Culture Week. Ok, actually I just wish I could see my friends, but it would be nice to see Culture Week too.

Same Toy, Different Boy[s]

See how durably toys used to be made? I used to love playing "people" (what we called the little plastic figures that go with the building they are playing with). So I was happy to see my little nephews playing with some of the same things I did.

Ma's Birthday

Last weekend almost everyone on my Dad's side of the family got together to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. It was the first time we had all been together in a group that large because since the last reunion there has been quite a few new additions to the family. You can see more pictures from the party on Matthew and Cacey's blog.

The Birthday Girl


Yummy, can I please have some cake!

William, Amy and Elijah

Max showing off his mad frisbee skills


Sorry buddy, but there are no touchdowns in frisbee!

My cute little niece Gemma

Spurgeon

I found a book of sermons by C.H. Spurgeon in the library today and was comforted by this quote: "O how safe, then, is every one that trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not his faith that is the condition, not his assurance; it is the simple fact, that Calvary is set perpetually before the eyes of God in a risen and ascended Saviour." Taken from the sermon, The Blood, he preached on December 12, 1858.

Gospel Living

"Learn to interpret your life in terms of what God says about you because you're united to Christ instead of interpreting the Gospel in terms of where you are in your struggle." Sinclair Ferguson

Hudson Taylor, part 4

Hudson Taylor knew that living in China was going to require a strong faith. So he resolved to move men by God through prayer to the best of his ability. One example of this was at work. His employer was a forgetful man and often times forgot to pay him on time, so Hudson would have to remind him. There was nothing sinful about reminding him, but Hudson decided that he would no longer remind him; he would instead pray and ask God to remind him (and thus move men by God through prayer). This was not some form of manipulation on Hudson’s part – trying to use God to accomplish what he wanted – no, it was a form of trust. He was saying to God that he was totally dependent on him for all his needs. This form of trust stretched him greatly. The next time his pay was due, his boss did indeed forget to pay him. Hudson continued praying and waiting…until he had only one coin to his name. Then he gave that coin away to a man with a sick wife and hungry children (but just so you know, it wasn't easy for him to do that - he begrudingly did it at first, but soon realized the joy in doing so). Low and behold, he got a letter the next day from a stranger containing enough money for the week. But still he didn’t get his pay and the next week was in the same situation as before. I won’t go into the exact details of how his prayer was finally answered, because it would take too long. But I will tell you that his patience and prayer paid off. In the strangest of circumstances, his boss finally paid him!

As I wait to go back to China, not knowing how long it will be, I want to live a life of faith where I am. As Hudson reasoned, if he couldn’t live by faith at home, what made him think he would be able to live by faith in China?

A Glimpse of My Place

I promised that I would take some pictures of my apartment once I finally had it decorated. Well, I've probably done as much as I will get done to it and I finally got it cleaned up today, so here you go:

Labor Day Weekend

I got to go home this weekend. Not wanting to take the risk of my car dieing half way, I opted for the Greyhound route again. It actually wasn't so bad this time. The worst part is always the Atlanta station because it's so loud and dirty feeling. I had a great time at home though. It felt like it had been a lot longer than 6 weeks since I had last been home, so it was nice to catch up with my parents and to eat a lot of my Mom's yummy food :-) Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad.

Hudson Taylor, part 3

I know it’s been several months since I began my posts on Hudson Taylor (all of 2 of them), but I still want to pick up where I left off and continue to write about him and his life and what I have gleaned from the book.

Soon after his conversion, he felt a strong desire to be used by God. He began to pray about what God wanted him to do with his life and felt a strong calling to China. Only being 17 at the time, he could not yet fulfill this calling to go. So what did he do? He prepared the best he could. Despite not having a teacher, he learned over 500 Chinese characters and their meaning (though he didn’t know how to pronounce them), he began to study his Bible more diligently, he worked hard at assisting a doctor and learned all he could from him and he ministered to people living around him.

I’m eager to go back to China, but I know that I need to be built up in the faith and be more equipped before I am ready to live there full time. I can identify with this part of his story:

“It was evident to those whose opinions he valued most that the time had not yet come for him to go forward [to China]. He was too young as yet. Further training and experience in the things of God were needed. It was well, no doubt, that it was in his heart to leave all and follow wherever the Master led. But was He leading just at that time to China? To his parents and friends it seemed not.”

Three and a half years he waited before it was time to go. That number is not my hope. I’m not counting on being sent out after waiting for that length of time. I just want to be faithful until it is time to go.

Church Sign Boards

My job requires me to do a lot of driving so I see many "clever" church sign boards. I get really upset at the message on many of them. In their attempt at being clever they give Christianity a really bad name in my opinion. I mean this sign (along with many others) doesn't even carry a true message! My faith in and of itself isn't getting me to heaven anyway - it's the One in whom my faith is in. And is the point to merely get people to come into the church building or to show them how wonderful Christ is? How many people are going to feel compelled to come to church after reading that type of message? And if they do come, is it going to be for the right reason?
Then there's also the "CH CH What is missing?" UR! Yuck...
Can't remember all of them, but you get the point.