Wednesday, November 12, 2008
When God Makes a Choice For Our Lives
When I wrote the article on high cost choices and low cost choices, I was simply thinking about choices. We do make lots of choices and they have lots of consequences. But then there are those choices we don't make, God does. God chooses certain things for our lives and some of these are totally out of our control. It may be the death of someone we love. It may be the loss of a job or home that was out of our control. These are not easy for us -- we are human beings who love to be in control and resist continually God's control. When I was a young married woman I had plans for my life and family. I even went so far as to make a plan of when my kids would be born and how far apart each one would be. I felt I could control this (wow -- talk about arrogance)! After our first child was born we waited about 2 years and decided it was time for child number two. I got pregnant close to the planned month. 16 weeks into the pregnancy I had a miscarriage. I remember one night crying and almost shaking my fist at God and asking why. In the silence of my room I clearly heard these words, "it's hard to kick against the goads". I had no idea where that came from and it sounded vaguely like something from Scripture. I looked it up in the book of Acts. Paul in recounting the story of his conversion, said that Jesus said these words to him after asking him, "why are you persecuting me"? That's exactly what I was doing, kicking against the goads. A goad is a cattle prod used by herders to move the cattle in a certain direction that the person wants them to go. They have a sharp spike at the end that doesn't probably feel to great to the cow that is being directed by it if that animal wants to go in a different direction. I was thinking I had a choice in all this but God had other ideas. Instead of submitting to His plan, I was kicking against that sharp pointed stick. I learned a huge lesson (but one I've had to repeat learning over and over again). Sometimes we do make a choice but many times God makes the choice for us. How do we respond? We can submit or we can kick against the goad.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
High Cost Choices -- Low Cost Choices
We all make a lot of choices in life. Some are high cost and some are low cost. Some of our high cost choices might be things like who we marry; where we live; what vocation we choose, etc. They effect us greatly and in fact determine much in our lives. Then there are the low cost choices. They might be things like; what we eat today, what we choose to wear, what color we paint our living room, which pair of shoes to buy, etc. They don't have that great of an impact on our lives and are fairly easy to change.
It would be wonderful if we could always put a choice into either one box or the other and then determine how much effort and thought should go into making that choice. Sometimes we mix up the value of choices. We put too much effort and consideration into a low cost choice and not enough consideration into a high cost choice. We end up scratching our heads and wondering how in the world did we ever get into this situation.
I think most of us get better at determining what kind of choice is before us as we age. Life teaches us what has value and what really doesn't matter. Unfortunately for most, the choices made in youth often are the high cost choices and affect the rest of our lives. That's where knowing and believing in a God who forgives and extends grace to all of us is a great comfort. Some of my choices can't be undone. But I can see God's grace and His ability to use even what I only valued as a low cost choice when in reality it was high cost to shape and mold me and use all my choices to ultimately bring glory to Himself.
It would be wonderful if we could always put a choice into either one box or the other and then determine how much effort and thought should go into making that choice. Sometimes we mix up the value of choices. We put too much effort and consideration into a low cost choice and not enough consideration into a high cost choice. We end up scratching our heads and wondering how in the world did we ever get into this situation.
I think most of us get better at determining what kind of choice is before us as we age. Life teaches us what has value and what really doesn't matter. Unfortunately for most, the choices made in youth often are the high cost choices and affect the rest of our lives. That's where knowing and believing in a God who forgives and extends grace to all of us is a great comfort. Some of my choices can't be undone. But I can see God's grace and His ability to use even what I only valued as a low cost choice when in reality it was high cost to shape and mold me and use all my choices to ultimately bring glory to Himself.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
My Conviction About Adoption
I wanted to post a document I wrote a couple years ago about my convictions about adoption. I still feel strongly about this subject matter and love the stories that illustrate my convictions. The Scripture that is at the start of the article is God's Word that spoke very clearly to me in 2005 about proceeding in our attempt to adopt. So here it is.
II Thessalonians 1:11-12
'To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and that by His power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.'
God used this Scripture to convey the following as it relates to our adopting children:
This is a good purpose that we have set out to do.
This is an act that has been prompted by faith.
Our desire is that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in us and we in Him. (Whatever the outcome, whatever the circumstances, no matter how difficult.)
From the book ‘Into the Arms of Strangers’ by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
‘Then the door opened, and there stood this little lady, barely taller than myself. Her hat sat all askew on her head, and her mackintosh was buttoned up all wrong. She peered at me from behind a big pair of glasses. Suddenly, her face broke into the most wonderful smile, and she ran to me and hugged me, and spoke to me words I did not understand then, but they were, ‘You shall be loved.’ And those were the most important words any child in a foreign land, away from her family, could hear. And loved I was.
It was much later, when I was grown up really, and interested in the background of the transports, that I asked my foster-father, Daddy Rainford -- they asked me to call them ‘Mummy Rainford’ and ‘Daddy Rainford’ -- why they had chosen me to be in their family. He answered, ‘I knew I could not save the world. I knew I could not stop the war from starting. But I knew I could save one human life. And as Chamberlain broke his pledge to Czechoslovakia, and as Jews were in the greatest danger, I decided it must be a Czech Jewish child.’
I know we can not save all the children in the world. What we attempt to do seems to make such a small difference but it makes a world of difference for those one or two that we ‘save’. When you look at all the children in the world who are in need of a family to love them I think saving a child from some of the darkest places in the world is something important for us to do. Russia is a place that most do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Most children there will never hear the gospel. Seeing a child taken from that country and hopefully respond to the gospel -- who knows what spiritual impact that may have on a whole country!
In the light of all humanity, it seems like adopting a child or two is a very small thing.
From the magazine, Mission Maker 2005, Article Lord of the Slums, Section 4 by Scott Bessenecker.
The Power of Justice
‘Summer heat in Cairo can be unforgiving. When that heat combines with the smells in the garbage village, zeal quickly melts into lethargy. I remember climbing the hill to the monastery where we lived inside this garbage-collecting community. Next to me, a team of donkeys suffered under an impossible load of garbage, struggling to reach the crest of the hill. Atop the garbage, the donkey-cart driver urged the beasts forward with a whip. My daughter Hannah, who has a huge heart for animals, looked at me with pleading eyes as the tormented donkeys struggled up the hill. As much as I felt sorry for myself, panting up the hill in 110-degree heat, I began to have compassion for the donkeys. Why, I wondered. These aren’t soul-bearing creatures. They live to serve. What could I do anyway? I couldn’t relieve their plight any more than I could relieve my own misery, climbing that insufferable hill.
Step by sweaty step we pressed on. My conscience and my daughter continued to trouble me. Finally, I gave in. Without a glance backward from the donkey-cart driver (nor, do I guess, much noticeable relief for the donkeys). I shouldered the back of the garbage cart and began to push. What good is it, I wondered, to add to my suffering only to give some inconsequential relief to these beasts, without the owner’s thanks? Still I kept pushing.
At the top of the hill, I turned right toward the monastery and the donkeys turned left. Immediately, I came upon Romany, sitting in his usual spot outside his butcher shop. He was waiting for enough business to justify slaughtering another pig. Every day we stepped through the blood and entrails that flowed in little rivers down the hill outside Romany’s butcher shop. Romany, a Coptic Christian, had been a good friend to our team and me since we arrived in the garbage village.
As I passed, Romany said three words that have changed my life. He said. "God saw that." I had not been aware of Romany’s watchful eye from his perch atop the hill. He wanted to remind me that to serve the suffering counts in God’s eyes. Acts of justice and mercy do not go unnoticed by everyone -- God sees. How much more is that true when we seek the justice of people made in God’s image, in the midst of their suffering.
For many evangelicals in the West, personal holiness has been the focus of spirituality. Sin becomes a highly personalized issue to be addressed only by the sinner. Righteousness is considered in individualist terms. Worship is centered on my actions: Have I read my Bible? Did I hurt anyone in my thoughts words, or deeds? But in Scripture, personal and social righteousness and justice are inextricably linked: :Away with the noise of your songs? It will not listen to the music of your harps. but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" (Amos 5:24). Leaving concern for justice out of our lives invalidates our worship. To focus on the personal to the exclusion of the social is not biblical.
In his book Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen substantiates the fact that confronting social evil is the thoroughly biblical calling of those who follow Christ. God gives power, not for personal aggrandizement, but as a trust to utilize on behalf of those who have none.’
My desire is to live my Christian life with those words, ‘God saw that’ written over everything I do. Many things of our life are hidden things, only God sees. But our acts of mercy and justice that are extended even to the ‘least of these’ is our worship to God and He delights in that."
From the magazine, Mission Maker 2005, Article Lord of the Slums, Section 6 by Scott Bessenecker.
Life Lessons from the Garbage Heap
"A month in the Egyptian garbage community in Cairo gave me new eyes. Things that at first repulsed me became quite normal. The hot, passionate desperation I felt toward the conditions in the garbage village gradually cooled to a settled comfortableness. But poverty confused me. Is life lived on sorted trash okay? Maybe the life of a garbage collector is not so bad. The people in the community seem fairly content with life. Besides, the conditions are likely not much different from life in medieval Europe -- probably better. Should I encourage foreigners to come into such places as agents of change, especially rich, North Americans?
I wrestled with God, Is it a mistake to call workers with notions of transformation to long-term residency in slum communities? Might it only bring Western standards of housing and cleanliness to people who are just fine with things as they are? After all, slum dwellers have their own culturally defined norms for quality of life.
"Oh God" I prayed, "if you want me to call people to lives of sacrifice and to catalyze change, then you’ll have to convince me. By the way, " I added, "could you answer me in the next forty-eight hours, before we leave this place?"
Several hours later, I dreamed about the dung truck. I always smelled the dung truck before I saw it. The smell became a taste at the back of my throat: pasty and bitter. The dung truck driver hauls away the accumulated animal waste from the ground level of houses and from animal pens both inside and outside of homes.
The dung haulers shovel dung into large wicker baskets, then carrying the baskets on their shoulders or heads, they walk up a plank ramp and dump the contents into the back of a flat-bed truck. In the process, these men become caked in dung from head to foot. High temperatures, over one hundred degrees, release the dung’s pungent odor, making this task more intense than someone reading this in comfort can appreciate.
In my dream, I walked past a dung truck. To my horror, I saw my children -- Hannah, Philip, and Laura -- sitting on top of the mountain of dung heaped on the truck bed. Amazingly, even with every inch of their bodies covered by animal waste, they appeared perfectly content sitting on the dung.
I felt the Lord ask," As their father, are you satisfied? Even if the children are satisfied, are you satisfied?"
I still sift through the meaning of that dream but it immediately implied that a child’s contentment with a saturation does not always reflect a father’s heart. The father yearns for so much more for his children.’
This story has illustrated to me how easy it is for us to think, "they are okay with their situation so why shouldn’t I be okay with it". We have a God who is "not willing that any should perish".
That must be my focus on all of life too. What can I do to be God’s tool to save one from perishing. Will this be the hardest thing we have ever done? Probably. But I know God is with us and goes ahead of us every step of the way.
II Thessalonians 1:11-12
'To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and that by His power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in you and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.'
God used this Scripture to convey the following as it relates to our adopting children:
This is a good purpose that we have set out to do.
This is an act that has been prompted by faith.
Our desire is that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified in us and we in Him. (Whatever the outcome, whatever the circumstances, no matter how difficult.)
From the book ‘Into the Arms of Strangers’ by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer
‘Then the door opened, and there stood this little lady, barely taller than myself. Her hat sat all askew on her head, and her mackintosh was buttoned up all wrong. She peered at me from behind a big pair of glasses. Suddenly, her face broke into the most wonderful smile, and she ran to me and hugged me, and spoke to me words I did not understand then, but they were, ‘You shall be loved.’ And those were the most important words any child in a foreign land, away from her family, could hear. And loved I was.
It was much later, when I was grown up really, and interested in the background of the transports, that I asked my foster-father, Daddy Rainford -- they asked me to call them ‘Mummy Rainford’ and ‘Daddy Rainford’ -- why they had chosen me to be in their family. He answered, ‘I knew I could not save the world. I knew I could not stop the war from starting. But I knew I could save one human life. And as Chamberlain broke his pledge to Czechoslovakia, and as Jews were in the greatest danger, I decided it must be a Czech Jewish child.’
I know we can not save all the children in the world. What we attempt to do seems to make such a small difference but it makes a world of difference for those one or two that we ‘save’. When you look at all the children in the world who are in need of a family to love them I think saving a child from some of the darkest places in the world is something important for us to do. Russia is a place that most do not know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Most children there will never hear the gospel. Seeing a child taken from that country and hopefully respond to the gospel -- who knows what spiritual impact that may have on a whole country!
In the light of all humanity, it seems like adopting a child or two is a very small thing.
From the magazine, Mission Maker 2005, Article Lord of the Slums, Section 4 by Scott Bessenecker.
The Power of Justice
‘Summer heat in Cairo can be unforgiving. When that heat combines with the smells in the garbage village, zeal quickly melts into lethargy. I remember climbing the hill to the monastery where we lived inside this garbage-collecting community. Next to me, a team of donkeys suffered under an impossible load of garbage, struggling to reach the crest of the hill. Atop the garbage, the donkey-cart driver urged the beasts forward with a whip. My daughter Hannah, who has a huge heart for animals, looked at me with pleading eyes as the tormented donkeys struggled up the hill. As much as I felt sorry for myself, panting up the hill in 110-degree heat, I began to have compassion for the donkeys. Why, I wondered. These aren’t soul-bearing creatures. They live to serve. What could I do anyway? I couldn’t relieve their plight any more than I could relieve my own misery, climbing that insufferable hill.
Step by sweaty step we pressed on. My conscience and my daughter continued to trouble me. Finally, I gave in. Without a glance backward from the donkey-cart driver (nor, do I guess, much noticeable relief for the donkeys). I shouldered the back of the garbage cart and began to push. What good is it, I wondered, to add to my suffering only to give some inconsequential relief to these beasts, without the owner’s thanks? Still I kept pushing.
At the top of the hill, I turned right toward the monastery and the donkeys turned left. Immediately, I came upon Romany, sitting in his usual spot outside his butcher shop. He was waiting for enough business to justify slaughtering another pig. Every day we stepped through the blood and entrails that flowed in little rivers down the hill outside Romany’s butcher shop. Romany, a Coptic Christian, had been a good friend to our team and me since we arrived in the garbage village.
As I passed, Romany said three words that have changed my life. He said. "God saw that." I had not been aware of Romany’s watchful eye from his perch atop the hill. He wanted to remind me that to serve the suffering counts in God’s eyes. Acts of justice and mercy do not go unnoticed by everyone -- God sees. How much more is that true when we seek the justice of people made in God’s image, in the midst of their suffering.
For many evangelicals in the West, personal holiness has been the focus of spirituality. Sin becomes a highly personalized issue to be addressed only by the sinner. Righteousness is considered in individualist terms. Worship is centered on my actions: Have I read my Bible? Did I hurt anyone in my thoughts words, or deeds? But in Scripture, personal and social righteousness and justice are inextricably linked: :Away with the noise of your songs? It will not listen to the music of your harps. but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" (Amos 5:24). Leaving concern for justice out of our lives invalidates our worship. To focus on the personal to the exclusion of the social is not biblical.
In his book Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen substantiates the fact that confronting social evil is the thoroughly biblical calling of those who follow Christ. God gives power, not for personal aggrandizement, but as a trust to utilize on behalf of those who have none.’
My desire is to live my Christian life with those words, ‘God saw that’ written over everything I do. Many things of our life are hidden things, only God sees. But our acts of mercy and justice that are extended even to the ‘least of these’ is our worship to God and He delights in that."
From the magazine, Mission Maker 2005, Article Lord of the Slums, Section 6 by Scott Bessenecker.
Life Lessons from the Garbage Heap
"A month in the Egyptian garbage community in Cairo gave me new eyes. Things that at first repulsed me became quite normal. The hot, passionate desperation I felt toward the conditions in the garbage village gradually cooled to a settled comfortableness. But poverty confused me. Is life lived on sorted trash okay? Maybe the life of a garbage collector is not so bad. The people in the community seem fairly content with life. Besides, the conditions are likely not much different from life in medieval Europe -- probably better. Should I encourage foreigners to come into such places as agents of change, especially rich, North Americans?
I wrestled with God, Is it a mistake to call workers with notions of transformation to long-term residency in slum communities? Might it only bring Western standards of housing and cleanliness to people who are just fine with things as they are? After all, slum dwellers have their own culturally defined norms for quality of life.
"Oh God" I prayed, "if you want me to call people to lives of sacrifice and to catalyze change, then you’ll have to convince me. By the way, " I added, "could you answer me in the next forty-eight hours, before we leave this place?"
Several hours later, I dreamed about the dung truck. I always smelled the dung truck before I saw it. The smell became a taste at the back of my throat: pasty and bitter. The dung truck driver hauls away the accumulated animal waste from the ground level of houses and from animal pens both inside and outside of homes.
The dung haulers shovel dung into large wicker baskets, then carrying the baskets on their shoulders or heads, they walk up a plank ramp and dump the contents into the back of a flat-bed truck. In the process, these men become caked in dung from head to foot. High temperatures, over one hundred degrees, release the dung’s pungent odor, making this task more intense than someone reading this in comfort can appreciate.
In my dream, I walked past a dung truck. To my horror, I saw my children -- Hannah, Philip, and Laura -- sitting on top of the mountain of dung heaped on the truck bed. Amazingly, even with every inch of their bodies covered by animal waste, they appeared perfectly content sitting on the dung.
I felt the Lord ask," As their father, are you satisfied? Even if the children are satisfied, are you satisfied?"
I still sift through the meaning of that dream but it immediately implied that a child’s contentment with a saturation does not always reflect a father’s heart. The father yearns for so much more for his children.’
This story has illustrated to me how easy it is for us to think, "they are okay with their situation so why shouldn’t I be okay with it". We have a God who is "not willing that any should perish".
That must be my focus on all of life too. What can I do to be God’s tool to save one from perishing. Will this be the hardest thing we have ever done? Probably. But I know God is with us and goes ahead of us every step of the way.
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