12.02.08
How King David Might Approach Thanksgiving
Psalm 145
A Psalm of Praise, of David.
1 I will extol You, my God, O King,
And I will bless Your name forever and ever.
2 Every day I will bless You,
And I will praise Your name forever and ever.
3 Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised,
And His greatness is unsearchable.
4 One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts.
5 On the glorious splendor of Your majesty
And on Your wonderful works, I will meditate.
6 Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts,
And I will tell of Your greatness.
7 They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness
And will shout joyfully of Your righteousness.
8 The LORD is gracious and merciful;
Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.
9 The LORD is good to all,
And His mercies are over all His works.
10 All Your works shall give thanks to You, O LORD,
And Your godly ones shall bless You.
11 They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom
And talk of Your power;
12 To make known to the sons of men Your mighty acts
And the glory of the majesty of Your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
And Your dominion endures throughout all generations.
14 The LORD sustains all who fall
And raises up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to You,
And You give them their food in due time.
16 You open Your hand
And satisfy the desire of every living thing.
17 The LORD is righteous in all His ways
And kind in all His deeds.
18 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him,
To all who call upon Him in truth.
19 He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
He will also hear their cry and will save them.
20 The LORD keeps all who love Him,
But all the wicked He will destroy.
21 My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD,
And all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever.
I was reading my Bible yesterday over lunch and read this amazing Psalm and I thought it was awesome and I wanted to pass it on. Thanks be to God!
Being Thankful
We here in the US recently celebrated Thanksgiving. It is a great holiday, one of my faves, marked by copious amounts of delicious food and spending time with family and friends and (at least for Christians) reflecting and giving thanks for God’s blessings.
Like so many folks, I was thinking about all the many things I have to be thankful for and this year, especially with the beautiful growth of my relationship with Katie, I have some super extra special things I am praising God for.
I read an interesting article by John Piper last week that really gave me pause to think. If my thankfulness to God goes only as far as WHAT God does for me and never extends to being thankful for WHO He is, then my thanks is rather shallow and my lack of appreciation for God is rather insulting. God’s gifts to us are an outpouring of who He is. He is holy, loving, merciful, kind, righteous, magnificent…so many glorious things. While I need to certainly be thankful and thank God for what He does for me, I also, and more importantly, need to be thankful for who He is. I must glorify and praise Him for that.
Anyway, that is just something I was convicted of this Thanksgiving and my prayer for myself this coming year is that my praise and thanks to God will include my gratitude for the great and wonderful things He does for me as well my praise and thanks for who He is!
07.25.08
What is language?
We had an interesting lecture today that included a discussion on: what is language? what is language learning? At first glance, this seems like an easy question but closer thought reveals it is not so simple. Let me illustrate from an expamle from the talk.
Many people, when recalling their school days might say, “When I was in school I took history, math, science and Spanish.” Spanish does not really fit in this list. Why? Well, if you took a history class, you would expect to come out of it having acquired more knowledge than when you started. Same with math and same with science. In these subjects, as indeed in most school subjects, a student might expect to finish the class more having more knowledge than at the begining.
Is this true with Spanish, or indeed any other language? Not really. You still posses the same amount of knowledge, you have merely learned a new way to express it. Language is a means of communicating, not a subject to master or a skill to acquire.
On that point, language learning also differs from learning subjects like history and math in another way. You do it naturally. People don’t naturally acquire a knowledge of history. Or math. Or biology. Or whatever. You are taught those things. We all learned our first language without any special teaching or effort. We were simply exposed to it and acquired it. As such, everyone has a natural ability to learn a language. The ability is innate in our humanness. Pretty cool God made us that way.
Anyway, that is your random thought for the night!
11.21.07
Happy Thanksgiving!
“In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:18
“It is good to give thanks to the LORD and to sing praises to Your name, O Most High!” – Psalm 92:1
“Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.” – Hebrews 13:15
So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I am pondering God’s many blessings in my life. I am struggling with writing this post. Not because I am not thankful, I am thankful for so much and my burden is how to share with you my joy without sounding cliché or trite or flippant. I’m not sure how. How can I write what is in my heart, my inexpressible feelings for you all, for life, for my Creator, my Saviour? How can I capture them all?? I can’t, but here is a start, in no particular order…
family, friends, laughter, colourful fall leaves, pizza, long conversations, long walks, Christ, the smell of snow, my job, grace, board games, Skype, clothes, egg nog, accountability, forgiveness, exploring, Thanksgiving dinner, brothers, clean water, love, flip-flops, questions, my car, hand-written mail, hugs, relationships, answers, prayer, smiles, computers, mountains, my 5 senses, cats, faith, airplanes, the Bible, singing, puns, firm handshakes, my house, spider solitaire, godly parents, dimples, giraffes, zebras, other crazy animals, creativity, God’s creativity, cheetos, sleep, faithfulness, the ocean, colours, integrity, kids, old people, stories, sanctification, mistakes, missionaries, discipline, football, phones, mind, heart, wind, the unknown, stars, spaetzle, silence, people, warmth, ice cream, wisdom, winks, the Holy Spirit, shade, frisbees….
I hope you will take my list for what it is, incomplete, imperfect, incapable of expression. But I am so thankful for everything the Lord has given me, has given us! I am thankful that He continues to be faithful even when I am not thankful. Anyway, I hope everyone has a blessed and wonderful Thanksgiving!!
11.08.07
Pile of Rocks
I will be bringing the note pictured above to Peru with me. It will be in my carry-on so I will be sure not to lose it. But David, why are you going to bring an ordinary hand-written note with you to Peru? That seems silly? Let me explain:
I am appying for a resident visa to live and work in Peru. To do this, I needed to mail to Lima a copy of my passport that had been authenicated by the Peruvian Embassy here. Well, I was thinking I could just bring my passport to the embassy and they could make a copy, stamp it and away we go. That was not the procedure though and I had it copied and notarized, authenticated bythe Fairfax County Clerk of Courts and then the embassy would authenticate that it was a true copy. Because of needing to do all of the afore mentioned during normal business hours, it took me about two weeks to get it all done.
Next step was mailing it to Lima, Peru to the SIM ofice there. As these are important documents, I wanted to entrust them to a trusted international courier so they would get there safe and sound. So I took them off to the news agent shop near my work who is an authorized FedEx, DHL, UPS shipper. I told him I wanted to send them FedEx and we packaged them up, addressed them, he gave me his phone number so I could call and get updates and that was that.
Off to Charlotte I went for the SIM orentation, blissfully assuming my documents were speeding their way to Peru. A couple days later I phoned the shop to check on the progress. “No it has not arrived. Maybe call back tomorrow.” The next day, he called me and said the address I gave him was wrong and they needed the phone number or email of the recipient so they could deliver it. Strange, I thought. The address had been correct. Oh well, no biggie. I emailed Peru and got their phone numbers, emails etc and the next day called the shop and gave him the info. A couple days go by, email SIM Peru…no, no one has called them or emailed them about the package!
I called the shop back. He said that the FedEx office had tried emailing and calling but got no response. He also said that if nobody claimed it in the next 48 hours it would be abandoned and destroyed!!! WHAT?! I informed him that the recipient had neer been contacted and asked him to give me the tracking number which I would pass to Peru so they could use that to claim it. So he gives me the tracking number which I then email to Peru…
I am in class all day and get back in the evening to check my email and find a note from Peru that they called and told FedEx the tracking number but that FedEx claimed it was an erroneous number and that, in any event, they didn’t have any documents to deliver to SIM!! WHAT?!
So I am very concerned. I try calling the shop that night but they are closed of course. The next morning I try again and they are not open yet. I called FedEx directly and explained to them the situation and they asked for the tracking number. I tell them. “Oh no, thats not our tracking number, that is a UPS tracking number”. JIGGA WHAT?! So I call UPS, yes it is their number, yes it was for a package going to Peru, but no contact information had been provided to them so package had been abandoned! WHAT?!
At this stage, it is like 8am. I am very angry. The agent guy at the shop had totally botched everything. Why he took it out of the FedEx envelop, put it in a UPS one, messed up the address, then lied to me about it and not given the contact info I gave him…I don’t know. Let me insert here my many thanks to Katie who was on the scene like a champ. Katie, if you are reading this, you are a blessing thank you! She let me vent about the situation and prayed right then for me and that the papers would be found.
I emailed Peru, explaining to them everything I had found out and telling them I would speak to folks at SIM to figure out what to do next. I went to the morning prayer meeting vexed but after some worship, I turned the situation over to God and since there was nothing that could be done, I prayed silently and just decided to take a good attitude and put it behind me. Continuing to be mad was not going to accomplish anything.
Later that morning, Bob comes in and slips the above note in front of me during the class!! WHAT?! They received the package??? PRAISE GOD!!! I found out later that the Peru office had prayed together that morning about the situation and had called UPS on the off chance that it was still there and it was!! Just thinking of it even now makes me so thankful!
So, back to the original question: why am I keeping this note? In the Old Testament, the Israelites would often build piles or rocks or do other things to commemorate events in which God had demonstrated His faithfulness and His grace. This note is my pile of rocks!! It reminds me that God is sovereign. That God is good. That God is faithful and I can trust Him. I know that hard times and difficult situations will come up while I am in Peru. It will be nice to look at my simple, hand-written note, remember a time when God demonstrated His great faithfulness and be encouraged that He will do it again.
11.06.07
What are you filled with?
“What you are filled with will spill over when you are bumped” – Ravi Zacharias
That is a quote (not sure if it exact or not) that I heard today. I have been thinking about it and it really is intriguing to think about. It implies two things, no actually three things: 1) that I am filled with something, 2) that I will be bumped and 3) that something, whatever it is, will come out when I am bumped.
1) What am I filled with? Well, the quick answer is the Holy Spirit but I think we can go deeper then this and think about actual behaviour. Am I filling myself, my thoughts, my actions with love, respect, kindness, patience, etc…or something else?
2) What is going to bump me? People. Situations. Events. Relationships.
3) When I get bumped in life, what flows out? What is my reaction?
Interesting to think about. I hope I am filling myself with the fruit of the Spirit! (Galatians 5:22-25; Philippians 4:8-9; James 3:17-18) That is what I want to spill out when I am bumped.
11.04.07
Amazing testimony
Wow, I wish y’all could have heard the testimony we heard today at church, it was amazing. A bunch of us went to an Arab-Christian service this morning which was really great. I have said this to a few of you but let me state it again, one of the most amazing things about the church is its diversity! Worshipping with brothers and sisters from a different culture and language is breath-taking and I am sad that so many people will not experience the full richness of the Body of Christ until they get to heaven.
Anyway, back to the service it was small, maybe 20-30 people and it was so fun to listen to the worship. It was all in Arabic (we had ear pieces that a translator translated into English). It is funny how you don’t need to know the words to understand the praise in a song to God. After some songs, a young lady was asked, impromptu, to give her testimony which I have summarized below:
She was a lawyer in a big law firm in Kartoum, Sudan. She had wanted to learn english and one day saw a Westerner reading an english newspaper so she asked him if he could help her learn english. He gave her an Arab-English Bible and helped her learn using that! As she read and began to understand more, she starting thinking about Jesus more and secretly was reading her Bible. It came to pass that her father died. The woman came to the home and the family were there crying over the dead father and she prayed to Jesus that if he was really who he said he was, then to prove it and bring her father back to life. The father opened his eyes!! What?!? What!?!
As a result, the woman gave her life to Christ. She was meeting secretly with other Chrsitians and continued to study the Bible, pray and know the Lord. One day, after returning from work, her family had found her Bible and began to beat her. They accused her and questioned her as they beat her asking “Are you a Christian now??” She remembered that Christ said that anyone who denies Him, He will also deny so she held fast to her faith in spite of being beaten nearly to death. She managed to escape and walk across Sudan to a town with more Christians but had to leave the country for fear of her family finding her.
Her testimony was meant as an encouragement to us missionaries who were there. If that man had not introduced her to Jesus and the Bible, she would be a successful lawyer in her own country, living at home with her family but she would be dead in her sin. There are so many milions of people who have not yet heard the news of salvation and forgiveness in Christ. They will not hear unless someone tells them. It was such a powerful testimony and I wish you could have heard it. God is at work all around us and all over the world in powerful and amazing ways. He can raise people from the dead for His glory. He can protect His people from harm and bring them to physical safety for His glory. He can forgive sins and change lives for His glory. Awesome! This is our God!
11.02.06
Ebenezer
Oh give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples. Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; speak of all His wonders. Glory in His holy name; let the heart of those who seek the Lord be glad. Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face continually. Remember His wonders which he has done, His marvels and the judgements uttered by His mouth – Pslam 105:1-5
A week and a half ago I was on a business trip and in the nights alone in my hotel room I had the pleasure of spending uninterupted time with the Lord and particularly looking back on the past few years. On October 31st three years ago I came to Virginia from England. I had no money, no job, didn’t know anyone really…It was a crazy time! It is amazing to look back now and see the Lord’s provision and hand in so many things, guiding and providing in so many ways for me. It is awesome! The above Pslam tells us to make known the deeds of the Lord and to remember His wonders! I want to do that and remember some of the great things the Lord has done for me since I came here:
1) Providing a place to stay with cousins who loved me, helped me look for a job, get settled, meet people and look after me in so many ways! Thank you Lara and Brian…I really would not be here in Virginia without you guys!
2) A great church. Through the Suttons I found Immanuel and not only found a place where my faith was strengthened, taught and refreshed but I found myself in a great community of believers.
3) Friends! The Lord has provided me more amazing, caring, encouraging anf fun friends here then I could have ever asked for. I remember my first few days here in the big DC area, wondering if I would ever meet any good friends in a city where everyone is so busy. The Lord answered my prayers beyond every expectation.
4) Spritual growth. I came to DC perhaps an adolescent Christian. The Lord put me around great Christian men and women to disciple me, encourage and challenge me and hold me accountable for my actions.
5) The goods. yes, we all need a place to stay, food, clothes…the Bible says not to worry about them, that the Lord will provide all those things as we see Him. It is hard not to worry and I worry about that stuff even now BUT…I have lived three years in one of the most expensive places in the country…and was unemployed or under-employed for half that time! Crazy to look back and wonder how I ever made ends meet on what I was making??? The Lord provided!
I decided to come here under strange circumstances which I won’t detail here but the Lord eased my spirit and spoke to me to say that He would be with me in Virginia and take care of me and that He had already provided a place for me here. Amazing! Thank you Lord for your unwavering and unending faithfulness and love for your constant provision for me and bringing me here to Virginia. You are awesome God and help me to remember your deeds in my life and to share them and help me to trust you as I continue to follow you. Amen.
