Artist: Briton Riviere (1840-1920)

Let Jesus Come into Your Heart

When a mother heard her young son rummaging through the kitchen drawer she came in and screamed. There was the young boy standing with a long knife pointed at his chest ready to plunge the knife into his heart. His mother screamed and he dropped the knife and started to cry. She said, “What are you doing?” The young boy said, “I wanted to let Jesus into my heart.” The young boy went into the kitchen after he asked his mother about Jesus and how to go to heaven. She had told him to “Just let Jesus come into your heart.”

That event was not just a story but it really happened. This unbiblical presentation of the gospel almost cost her son’ his life. Where in the Bible does it say that we must “Let Jesus into our heart?” Answer? Nowhere! Should we also let Him into our kidneys, our liver, or our appendix? Come on. This doesn’t work. FULL POST

Photo: Flickr/Darius Saulenas - Creative Commons

Just about every Christian has memorized the closing verses of Galatians and Paul's description of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is the character of the man or woman who has been justified by grace through faith.

Yet as we review the list, and especially as we review it slowly and prayerfully, we may find ourselves growing weary and discouraged by how little of that fruit we see. We are still angry at times, still struggling with self-control, still not nearly as gentle as Jesus Christ was and is.

Paul's metaphor of the "fruit" of the Spirit can help us, though. Here are five things that are true of fruit trees and, therefore, true of the fruit of the Spirit.

1. Growth is Gradual. We are an impatient people accustomed to instant gratification. But fruit grows slowly. A fruit tree grows gradually and over many years of careful and deliberate cultivation. If you purchase a sapling apple tree today, a sapling which is already more than a year old and well established, and if you plant it in the right climate zone and in fertile soil, and if there are other trees nearby that can help pollinate it, and if you care for it exactly as you should, it will probably be close to 5 years before you see the first apple dangling from the end of a branch and many years beyond that before it is at its top production, bearing the most and best fruit. Trees are tended carefully, pruned deliberately, and loved patiently until they bear the best fruit. Our growth in character is also far more gradual than we may like but the patience that is to mark our lives first marks God himself; he is patient with us as we grow toward maturity. FULL POST

If any Christians can be known for following Jesus’ word on being “as wise as serpents and harmless as doves” it is Christians in Myanmar, formerly called Burma.

Surviving 50 years of brutal military dictatorship, they are alive and well. I asked how they emerged intact, without elongated stories of suffering and rationale for weakness. A pastor smiled: “Dr. Brian, we didn’t put signs on our buildings. When we wanted to build a church, we just built a house and made it larger. We kept our heads down.”

A little history matters in understanding the Myanmar church today.

After a century of British, colonial rule in 1948 (then called) Burma, was given independence. Some saw it doomed from the start, given independence occurred on the wrong day, according to astrological readers. Astrology here is core to what’s done and when it is done. In contrast to Thailand where appeasing spirits rule daily life, in Myanmar, reading the astrological signs matters so much that all kinds of governmental and business decisions will only be made when the Buddhist priest in reading the astrological signs, gives his ok. Even in building bridges!

Between British colonial rule and independence there was a hiatus when the Japanese ruled, a time of a rising of tribal enmities as non-Burmanese ethnic nationalities such as the Karen, Karenni, Chin and Rohingyas sided with the British. Some were not Buddhists and so when they supported the British they were seen as traitors to the nation and its religion, especially the Karen tribe. For years they were targets of persecution by the government, until 2012 when a treaty was signed. Only time will unfold the honor and integrity of this treaty. FULL POST

You may be one of those Christians who serves. And serves. And serves some more. When you head to church on Sunday you are preparing yourself to serve and when you return home you are exhausted. And if you are one of those servant-hearted Christians it may just be that the more you serve, the more you see how so many other Christians serve sparingly and half-heartedly. You may find that it is a challenge to serve Christ and to keep your joy.

Enter Serving Without Sinking by John Hindley. This is a book about what happens inside our minds and hearts as we do our acts of Christian service. It is a call away from weariness, discouragement, bitterness and joylessness as we serve. And it does that by pointing us to the greatest Servant of all--the one who came to us not to be served but to serve. "This book isn't primarily about our service. It's mainly about Jesus Christ, and about His service. ... Jesus does not want you to measure your life by your service of Him. He does not want your service to get in the way of your love for Him. He did not come to be served by you--He came to serve you." This one truth is remarkably freeing. It frees us from service done to earn or impress or compare and instead allows us to enjoy the ways in which he serves us. But, of course, when we are so loved and so served, we will long to joyfully serve in return. FULL POST

Duluth/Gwinnett CPA: This letter was sent to one of our most primary contacts on the Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico where every hear 40-100 people from mostly GA but all over the U.S. go to serve our great God by being His very hands and feet. The words (what God did through ordinary people is extraordinary). Seek today to how you might serve God wherever you go!

I pray great happiness for both you and your bride as you begin your new lives together in full retirement. I pray that your latter years in wealth and health and most of all in Him are greater than you ever imagined.

From the first year when we were so much like Jesus with no place for us to rest for the night, you have worked hard with and for us to bring Jesus Christ and a bunch of Georgians to the Dine, the Navajo people in Pueblo Pintado, White Horse, Ojo Encino, Torreon and beyond.

Sometimes we have to wonder if what we did was good, but that is not the case for you and great things and love you have shown for the Navajo people. You have changed hundreds of lives there as well as hundreds of lives here. You have made a great difference in the lives of many. You have helped hundreds of Navajo students sometimes with tough love but always with great love.

FULL POST