An Assignment ...

As part of the process for going to Korea I have to take a short online course called "Preparation for Missions." I just had to write a reflective paper about my call to mission and how it effects my goals and motives. Is only supposed to be a few paragraphs - but I've never been able to write a few paragraphs about anything. I thought I would toss the assignment up here since I haven't blogged anything for a while. 

Promised philosophical thoughts and Bible studies have been a long time appearing - being my usual pedantic self, making sure that every i is dotted and every t is crossed and every relevant verse is accounted for and explained ... you may be waiting a while but I am having fun. In the mean time enjoy the offering below.

Reflecting On My Call To Mission

God’s Call

Where to start?

I grew up listening to Eric B. Hare stories and I tended to take them personally because I was related to the Hare family. I heard the stories of how my family came into the church and they seemed quite miraculous to me.

(My Great Great Grandfather owned a boarding house and just happened to be going past the door of a visiting evangelist and heard the evangelist praying for him and his family which eventually lead to the whole family accepting the truth. On the other side my Grandfather was away from home when he went to an evangelistic tent meeting. The next morning he excitedly rang my Grandmother to tell her what he had learned, she interrupted him half way through and told him the rest of the meeting. When he asked how she knew, she answered ‘I saw it last night in a dream.’)

So from a young age I wanted to do ‘something’ for God. Life happens, I drifted along, never really doing anything ‘bad’ but not having a real relationship with Jesus either. I ended up teaching in an Adventist high school and then Jesus captured my heart. For the sake of complete honesty I have to admit that I did not go looking for Jesus, I was quite happy as I was (I thought) and if He had not actively pursued me I would not have come to know Him. He has been very patient and long suffering with me!

Over time I became dissatisfied with teaching chemistry to High School students. I want to teach something important to people who want to know it. Instead of shoving esoteric knowledge down the throats of kids who generally don’t care. (Think about it, unless you want to be a nurse or a doctor or something in the field of science why do you need to know about the insides of atoms?)

Two years ago I took leave from my job (I have since resigned) and started to travel. In the last year I have experienced personal reformation and revival in my life, and learned to rest in Jesus rather than striving to make myself righteous. Through a series of events I ended up at the Amazing Facts Centre of Evangelism, taking the four month course offered at Weimar College.

Part way through the Amazing Facts course after praying about what I was going to do next I received an unexpected email telling me that I had a job in South Korea teaching English if I still wanted to come. This email was the result of an application I had filled in 18 months before and never gotten a reply to. (Apparently my application had ended up in a spam folder and they had only just found it.) I still want to teach. I love teaching. But, I want to teach important and useful things to people who want to know them. English is useful and Bible is important. In Korea I will be able to teach both. Plus as an added bonus I have wanted to go and teach in Korea ever since my College days when a number of my friends did exactly that.

Before going to AFCOE I had been praying the prayer from Luke 10:2 (He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.) Praying for God to send me out into the field. It was then that the door opened for me to be trained at AFCOE. I believe that the call to Korea is another part of God’s answer to my prayer.

How does this call affect my motives?

I would not be honest if I did not say my motives were mixed. Yes I want to be in the centre of God’s will for my life and I believe that in going to Korea I will be. However I will also be filling a personal desire for adventure. I want to teach people to find that same rest, joy and peace in Jesus that I have found and I want to experience life in a non-English speaking country.

How does this call affect my goals?

This is a harder question; I’m not really sure what my goals are anymore. I don’t see Korea as being the rest of my life, but I also have no desire to go back to high school teaching. My one goal is to remain in the centre of God’s will.

I think what I would like to do is to teach/challenge people who are already Adventist to have revival and reformation in their own lives. Imagine how many missionaries there would be if all the people who say they are Adventist took the gospel commission seriously. I suppose I see the call to Korea as something that could potentially move me into this kind of role at a later date.

Basically this is something I am praying about and I am looking forward to seeing where God leads.

The Wrath of A Loving God

The Bible is full of the Love of God, from the famous John 3:16 to the equally famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13. The Bible also details the wrath of God; the torments of Hell prepared for the destruction of sinners and sin, genocide, 40 boys mauled by bears because the mocked a prophet of God (2 Kings 2:23-24), are but a few of the atrocities of God.

How does one reconcile the loving God with this other God who is capable of committing acts of violence that we would normally want to attribute to the devil?

Today I was reading 'The Character of God Controversy' by Steve Wohlberg and Chris Lewis, and I found the following quote; "...God's wrath is not a counterpoint to His love but rather an expression of it. Could it be that God hates sin less because it offends His nature ... than because it distorts our perceptions and separates those He loves from Him?" (pg 12 - actually this is in the foreword, I only just started reading the book. And yes, I do read all the forewords and introductions.) This quote started me thinking along interesting lines and I have the following offering to try to explain what I now think is not a dichotomy at all, but rather that the Wrath of God is an expression of the Love of God. This passage is in the form of an analogy not a Bible study and I would be interested in your thoughts about where the analogy breaks down or could be improved.

Imagine...

A love triangle; the Girl, the Good Guy who loves the Girl, and the Bad Guy who the Girl thinks she loves.

All the Good Guy wants to do is spend time with the Girl, to shower her with gifts, to keep her safe, make her happy and love her. And he can't. Because, the Girl is enamoured, bewitched and  infatuated with the Bad Guy.

The Bad Guy uses and abuses her, beats her, steals her stuff, and generally makes life miserable, except for when he doesn't. Sometimes he is utterly charming, and he makes such hope-filled promises, he knows just how to manipulate her, he has his finger on her hopes, her dreams and her fears. Telling her lies about the Good Guy he destroys her trust and installs fear in its place.

Is it any wonder that the Good Guy hates the Bad Guy? Wants to destroy him? Wants to wipe away the memory of him?

Now lets broaden the picture ...

The Good Guy is the Ruler of the Region and the Bad Guy is his Prime Minister. The Good Guy knows that the Bad Guy has been embezzling from the treasury and fermenting rebellion. The Good Guy knows that for the health of the kingdom he must remove the Bad Guy and punish him, make an example of the Bad Guy and all his supporters.

Now the Good guy has a dilemma, if he acts against the Bad Guy the Girl will be caught up with the supporters and have to be punished, confirming for her all the lies the Bad Guy has told. He needs the Girl to come to him first, of her own free will, out of love, then he can deal to the Bad Guy. So he waits, he deals with the worst crimes, the ones he can not, must not leave to continue and he ignores the others. Waiting for the Bad Guy to make a mistake, to expose himself to the Girl in a way that she can not excuse. And he woos the Girl, attempts to teach her to trust, to recognise his love, to release the fear.

The Girl, she sees the acts of love and favour and she appreciates them, but she also sees the punishments and they confuse her, worry her, scare her. She knows she must decide, eventually, but being either ignorant of the full picture or refusing to believe the evidence she does perceive, she has no idea of the urgency of the situation.

The analogy should be fairly obvious, the Good Guy is God and the Bad Guy is the Devil. The Girl is you, and I, and every other human on this planet.

And now I'm going to stretch the analogy just a little further;

As a friend of the Girl you have a number of options;

1. Tell her the Good Guy, the King, loves her unconditionally, that it doesn't matter what happens when he finally acts against the Bad Guy he will forgive her of anything, so "don't worry you can have them both, stay with the Bad Guy as long as you want. All those other punishments? the wrath of the king? Don't worry it won't effect you." 
2. Tell her that the Bad Guy is evil and the King will destroy him! And he'll destroy her too, just like he destroyed X, Y and Z, unless she straightens up and does the right thing, otherwise you too will encounter the wrath of the King.
3. Point out the love and care of the Good Guy, expose the hurt and lies of the Bad Guy, discuss that justice insist that she will share the fate of the Bad Guy for crimes she has committed under the Bad Guys influence, while mercy promises pardon. Through reason and evidence build trust and love for the Good guy, show her that the Wrath of the King is an expression of the King's love for her and his misery at being separated from her and misrepresented to her.

What would you tell her?

Thoughts On Psalm 84:11

Psalm 84:11

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

Two things struck me this morning as I was reading this passage;

1.    First, the sun is the ultimate source of everything on this planet, well apart from God Himself. Consider;

a.    the sun provides the energy photons that interact with the chlorophyll in plant cells that causes the photosynthesis process to occur. This process makes organic compounds that are used to grow the plants that are then eaten by us and other animals.

b.    And, this process renews the oxygen in the air and removes carbon dioxide.

c.    In addition to this the energy of the sun also runs the water cycle. Without the sun’s heat water would not evaporate and then not rain back down on us. Without an operating water cycle the earth would very quickly become a parched dry and barren place and all water would be gathered together into the oceans, salty and undrinkable.

So the sun is the source of the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink.

However, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Which brings us to the the second point.

2.    A shield is a protection, it could be a traditional shield that protects us from harm from the attacks of others or it could be something as simple as an umbrella being used to shield or protect us from the harmful effects of the sun.

In Psalm 84:11 God is described as both a sun and a shield. As the Creator of the sun He is the ultimate source of life, He maintains every second of our lives and without Him we would immediately perish. However, in our sinful state we cannot exist in His presence, we would be destroyed so he also shields us from Himself, by placing a ‘veil’ around us to protect us from His sin destroying nature.

Then from His grace He provided Jesus, a way back through the veil into His presence that won’t destroy us, that will in fact recreate us into God’s character, or His Glory. Which just goes to prove the rest of the verse, He has not withheld His own Son from us, so He’s not going to withhold any other good thing either.