Tag Faith

God is Faithful in Trouble

Todd R 2 Comments

Fellow travelers,

Psalm 71 was likely written by an old man, looking back over his life and the many instances of God’s faithfulness.  Looking back over a lifetime of walking with God strengthens his current faith, and he writes to strengthen ours.  Although some might expect a testimony of God’s faithfulness to talk about uninterrupted good fortune and all the good times the Psalmist has had, in verse 20, they write:

“You who have made me see many troubles and calamities
            will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth
            you will bring me up again.”

This man’s life, like most people’s lives, was filled with “many troubles and calamities,” yet these only strengthen his faith because God has rescued him every time in the past.  Without allowing us to experience trouble, how could God develop a track record of rescuing us?  John Calvin comments on this verse that:

“Had he always enjoyed a uniform course of prosperity, he would no doubt have had good reason to rejoice; but in that case he would not have experienced what it is to be delivered from destruction by the stupendous power of God. We must be brought down even to the gates of death before God can be seen to be our deliverer.”

God is always faithful, but we experience it especially in bad times.

Amen.

Christianity is Not in Decline. Ever.

Todd R 1 Comment
The tomb is still empty!

Too much of what we hear and read in this world is filled with phrases like “post-Christian world,” or “Christianity’s decline.”  Or we could read that we’re “living in the ruins of Christendom.”  However, because Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” our hope is not based on any ruin or decline we see in the communities and world around us.  While other things may end up in ruins or in decline, Christianity does not.  It was not in decline on Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross and it is not in decline now.

The best of the kingdom of God is always in the future, never in the past.  His kingdom is advancing daily.

Today, many will hear the good news of the kingdom of Jesus, and some may hear and be saved!  Also today, none will be snatched out of His hand! (See John 10:28)

The Death of Chairman Mao – History for September 9

Todd R 2 Comments
Photo by manos koutras on Unsplash

On this date in 1976, Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao, founder of the communist People’s Republic of China, died at the age of 82.  Some look at Mao’s death as a positive turning point for Christianity in China, since under Mao China had expelled all Western Christian missionaries between 1949 and 1953.  However, while it is impossible to come up with precise numbers across a 3.7 million square mile country, Christians probably were about 1 percent of China’s population when Western missionaries were kicked out, but by the 1980s about 5 percent of the population went by Christ’s name.  The Christian population grew by ten times, while the overall population doubled.  How did this happen?

Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, authors of the book “Clouds of Witnesses” say the key to this growth was “the resilience of the Chinese believers themselves…securely rooted in Chinese life before Mao.” [1]  In expelling missionaries, Mao was in part responding to “treaty ports” created at the end of the 1839-42 Opium War.  Through these ports foreign powers had extra territorial rights, allowing influences including missionaries to come in, but these ports also allowed opium to flow freely into China from Western countries.  Therefore, in the mind of many Chinese, Christianity became linked with both Western imperialism and opium addiction.  When Karl Marx said “religion is the opiate of the masses” he may have been thinking of this connection.  But native Chinese believers, sometimes planted by Europe-based evangelizing organizations like China Inland Mission, remained behind and spread resilient forms of Christianity that were attractive to the Chinese population.

John Sung
Several of these Chinese Christians are profiled by Noll and Nystrom, including John Sung who lived from 1901 to 1944, before Mao’s communist revolution.  Around Christmas 1926, Sung heard child evangelist Uldine Utley preach a sermon at Calvary Baptist Church in New York, near where he was attending Union Theological Seminary.  This sermon, along with other influences, countered the liberal Christianity he was being taught where the Bible was just “a collection of myths.”  He returned to China, determined to spread the gospel in the land of his birth with frenetic energy.  In a one-year period in 1931-2, Sung and a small group of missionaries “traveled over 50,000 miles, held 1,200 meetings, preached to more than 400,000 people in thirteen provinces, registered more than 18,000 ‘decisions’” for Christ.  Many of these new Christians formed traveling bands themselves.  Sung is considered the last great evangelist in China and Southeast Asia before Mao’s reign. 

Dora Yu
Even earlier, another driver of this resilient, Chinese Christianity was Dora Yu (1873-1931).  Dora’s ministry benefitted tremendously from a 1905 decision by Dowager Empress Cixi to replace China’s traditional Confucian civil service examinations with general public schools.  Under this system, mission-run schools became a valued option, and one of Dora’s early ministries was to train “Bible women” to not only educate women generally, but also to teach them the Bible, pray with them, and teach them to live by faith.  Mostly traveling by foot, in “1903, Dora Yu visited with 925 women and 211 children.”  Later, her ministry grew and she became famous for itinerant preaching, reaching many others who would carry on the Lord’s work.

Because of our proneness to look at
the bucket and forget the fountain,
God has frequently to change His
means of supply to keep
our eyes fixed on the source

Watchman Nee

Watchman Nee
In 1920, Nee Shu-Tsu would hear Dora Yu preach.  Later known as Watchman Nee, he “planted at least four hundred Christian churches over a thirty-year period of active ministry.”  He died in 1972 in a Communist prison after spending 20 years there.  Watchman Nee wrote that “Because of our proneness to look at the bucket and forget the fountain, God has frequently to change His means of supply to keep our eyes fixed on the source.”

Whether it is a European missionary, a child preacher in New York City, a Chinese man temporarily studying in New York City, or a Chinese woman walking miles through the countryside:

“How beautiful upon the mountains
            are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
            who publishes salvation,
            who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” – Isaiah 52:7

As Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 – “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  This rock is the gospel of the kingdom of God, and not even a brutal regime like that of Chairman Mao could prevail against it.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Noll, Mark A.; Nystrom, Carolyn.  Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (2011).  This post is drawn from chapters 12 and 14.

Sometimes, Victory Over Giants Takes Time

Todd R 2 Comments

Do you have giant problems?  Problems that seem too big to overcome, and that just won’t go away?  There was a time when Israel had problems with literal giants and that story may encourage us with our own giant problems.

In Deuteronomy, Moses’ re-telling to Israel of their history as they prepared to finally enter the Promised Land, the second verse says, “It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.”  This eleven-day journey took Israel 40 years after being delivered from slavery in Egypt because they had giant problems.

40 years earlier, Moses sent spies into the land promised by God, not to say whether or not they should conquer the land (God has already decided that they should), but only to document what they saw.  These spies reported back after 40 days in the land at Kadesh, the same place Moses was delivering his address in Deuteronomy.  Unfortunately, the spies did more than document what they saw, they also injected their own opinion: “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.”[1]

Although the spies agreed the land was very desirable – “And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.” – they added three objections to the report: “However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.”[2]  The people are strong, the cities are strong, and some of the people – the descendants of Anak – are actually literal giants.  The spies probably thought they were doing the right thing by presenting an “accurate” report of Israel’s military chances in Canaan, but in doing so they were opposing God and His promise.  Only two of the twelve spies – Joshua and Caleb – tried to encourage the people to take the land, but the report of the other ten made the people want to stone Joshua and Caleb to death[3] instead of entering Canaan.  So, God punished the people by making them wander in the wilderness until the entire rebellious generation died, for 40 years.

However, over that time God would also show His people in specific ways that they could overcome the spies’ objections so they could enter the land as He had promised.  It would take time, and more experience of God’s power.

Moses tells that during the wilderness wandering, Israel learned of others who had conquered giants.  In Deuteronomy 2:10-11 Moses recounted land taken by the Moabites: “The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim.  Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim.”  In 2:20, he recalled land taken by the Ammonites: “It is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before the Ammonites, and they dispossessed them and settled in their place”.  These “Emim” and “Zamzummim” were like the “descendants of Anak” the spies were afraid of, but those giants were conquered.

Also, in Deuteronomy 3, Moses reminds Israel of their own victories that happened before entering Canaan.  They had defeated Sihon, king of Heshbon, and Og, king of Bashan, object lessons of what God could do, and specifically related to the objections of the spies, who had reported of Canaan that “the cities are fortified and very large.”  Deuteronomy 3:5 reports of the conquered cities of Bashan: “All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, besides very many unwalled villages.”

While the spies worried about the giant “descendants of Anak,” Moses reminds Israel that Og, Hesbon’s king, was like one of the giants reported by the spies.  Deuteronomy 3:11 describes him: “(For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.)”  Therefore, before crossing the Jordan into Canaan, Israel had overcome both fortified cities and giants.  Why should they worry about the discouraging report of the spies, instead of trusting Joshua and Caleb’s testimony about God?

Therefore, if you have giant problems, seek the testimony of others who have conquered giants, and the testimony of your own experience with God, and be encouraged by the words Moses used to close this section of his message: “You shall not fear them, for it is the LORD your God who fights for you.”[4] But overcoming giant problems might take time because He wants to show us His power in ways we can’t imagine.  Israel took 40 years to make this 11-day journey because that is what God required to prepare them.  Israel was not ready for the Promised Land when they first left Egypt.  Allow God the time to prepare you, and He may also show you His power over your giants.

[1] Numbers 13:31
[2] Numbers 13:27-28
[3] Numbers 14:10
[4] Deuteronomy 3:22

Barbs in Our Eyes

Todd R 1 Comment

As Israel was preparing to enter the Promised Land of Canaan after wandering in the wilderness, God gave them many instructions through Moses about how they were to live when they got there.  One of the instructions was to eliminate all of Canaan’s inhabitants.  Part of the warning not to ignore this comes in Numbers 33:55, which says:

“But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.”

What this is communicating is the urgency of getting rid of anything that could influence us to sin, and this applies as much to us as to ancient Israel.  In Israel’s case, the nations they were to remove from Canaan were under God’s judgement for centuries of worship of false gods, which included practices like ritual prostitution and child sacrifice.  God knew that His people would be tempted by these foreign gods and practices unless all trace of them was eliminated.

For us, God also wants to protect us from false gods and harmful practices and habits, and the phrase “barbs in your eyes” is a picture of the urgency for us to get rid of anything that would tempt us.  Think about it: If I had a thorn in my eye, I would drop everything and not be able to do anything else until I got it out.  Until the thorn was gone, it would be my one and only priority.  In modern times, God doesn’t tell His people to attack other nations in judgement, but He does want His people to attack sin with the same zeal.

So when I read “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell” it leads me to ask the question:

Do we remove sources of sin from our lives as urgently as we would a barb in our eye?