Thankfulness

As we've approached the holiday, I've been thinking lately about the necessity of the spiritual quality of thanksgiving. I see this holiday as distinctively Christian in nature because it is rooted in one of the most central spiritual outcomes of the life of grace and was born out of a Christian world view.

Of course I look forward to the holiday for all the obvious reasons- some needed time off and some time with family I haven't seen in a while. It's great to have Taylor home from college for a few days and I always look forward to the annual Thompson football classic.

But this Thanksgiving I am committed to driving home the point to my family that the Christian virtue of thanksgiving is to be so central to the way we live that a holiday celebrating it should be more than just an event- it should be a true celebration of a spiritual outcome that is uniquely brought about by the gospel.

Here's what I mean- I don't really see that one can truly exist in a state of thankfulness unless He has embraced the reality of the cross. To be thankful FOR something we have to have someone to be thankful TO. The Bible says in Romans 1:18-23ff that a person without Christ exists in a state of rebellion against God not just because He has seen the reality of God's existence and denied that reality but that He has seen His grace and has rejected it and is therefore ungrateful.

So when I say that one cannot truly live a life of thankfulness without embracing the gospel I don't mean that a lost person does not feel thankful at times, but that he or she cannot truly know the life of thankfulness without truly knowing and understanding and embracing the ultimate truth of their existence- that Jesus Christ has paid the price for their sin and has become a ransom turning back the wrath of God and giving the regenerated sinner all the glorious benefits and blessing he enjoys.

I know this scriptural truth at the very core of my being. It was not until I embraced the reality of the cross that I was truly set free. Since embracing the reality of the cross every day for me has been a day of perpetual thanksgiving and praise. I can now see that no matter what life might hand me, because I know the ultimate and sustaining love of the Father as demonstrated on the cross, His love is the love I have looked for in every other love and His joy is the joy I have looked for in every other joy and His beauty is the beauty I have looked for in every other beauty. So even in hardship my eternal standing has not changed. I can drop my idols and give up on self righteous ways. The worst things that happen to me he will use for good, the truly good things can't be taken away and the very best is yet to come! Therfore I can say like the Psalmist, "This is the day the Lord has made, we WILL rejoice and be glad in it!" (Psalm 118:24) Thankfulness is an act of the will in response to the overwhelming and sustaining grace of God.

My lack of thankfulness are the result of my idolotary. As John Calvin put it, “Our hearts are perpetual idol factories.” That is precisely what Paul says in Romans 1. Rather than giving thanks, the unbeliever exchanges the glory of God for the glory of corruptible idols. Therefore in my most base idolatrous and fallen state, what I perceive as thankfulness is simply a rehearsing of my desire for things to fill my heart that will never satisfy. Thanksgiving for a lot of people is merely raising a toast to all the idols that are keeping them in bondage.

So I don't truly know thankfulness until I have truly known His grace. Until I know I have been created by Him, given life by Him, sustained in that life by Him, pursued by His grace to find salvation in Him and that the very fact that I know and understand what it is I am thankful for I cannot truly know the meaning of it.

Someone has said that "an atheist is someone who when he feels really thankful, has no one to thank."

This is why when one reads scripture it becomes clear that thankfulness is a central outcome of the life of grace. The Bible says to "always give thanks" (Eph. 5:20), "whatever you do in word or deed, always give thanks..." (Col 3:17). Over and over again the Bible teaches us that the heart of the redeemed believer is characterizd by perpetual thankfulness and joy.

I remember as a young pastor how blown away I was by the words "I am so thankful..." at so many hospital rooms and deathbeds. I have sat with many people who even in the midst of great tragedy were able to say "blessed be the name of the Lord!" I can see now after many years as a pastor that this is what happens as one embraces the cross of Christ. This attitude comes from waht we understand in the gospel in the cross of Christ. As Christians we can see that the worst thing that ever happened was also the best thing that ever happened. Gratitude is one of the purest characteristics of a life that has been captivated by His grace.

I have seen true thankfulness up close and personal in some very surprising places lately. I am a man who has been truly blessed. I have known sorrow but for the most part my life has been comfortable. Teri and I have known what it was like to live without much money but we have never known true poverty. My family is blessed with good health for the most part. We have always had good medical care available to us, a nice roof over our head and food on the table. But I have met people recently who often have none of these things and yet have a joy of the Lord that is beautiful and contageous.

I have met people recently whose lives are characterized by thankfulness and joy in spite of the fact that they are living in the midst of terrible poverty and disease and even at times persecution for their faith. Like the pastors I met in Orissa India who minister in a place where Christians are sometimes killed for proclaiming the gospel and yet they couldn't wait to tell me about what God was doing in their lives. Or like the Christians I met in the Middle East who have seen family members shot dead on their way to a Christian school and yet have chosen to forgive and to love their enemies and pray for them and continually give thanks to God for His grace. Or like the elderly woman I stayed with in Slivia Bulgaria who had been arrested by the Communist government many years ago for illegally practicing her faith and had lost her job and everything she owned and yet possessed the incredible countenance of a woman who loved Jesus with all her heart. Or like the family who has chosen to live in a Delhi slum so they can take care of children and teach them about the incredible riches of God's grace.

This is why I say that for the Christian, thanksgiving is much more than just an event celebrated once a year, it is the dynamic outcome of understanding what Christ has done for us. And that is a reality we celebrate every moment of our lives.

Caleb's Story

We have many missionary friends around the world who have come out of our church and with whom we have an ongoing partnership. The following email just arrived from one of friends who is working in a large country in Asia. I think it is a story we all need to hear. I have purposely left out the identities of names and places for their protection.

Hello Everyone,

I want to tell you a short story that may turn into a long story. Around twelve days ago, on Nov. 4, in the countryside near where we live, a baby boy was born to a poor village family. He was delivered safely but the family soon realized that he had a birth defect that is very common to this area: he was born without an anus. Many children particularly in this prefecture of our province suffer from this condition. The baby’s stomach becomes distended and bloated and typically the baby dies within a few days of birth.

The family did what most villagers in our area do with unwanted or deformed babies: they abandoned the boy outside in a desolate area to die of exposure and starvation. It sounds very cruel to us, and certainly it was a very wicked thing to do, but imagine yourself in their situation. I don’t want to justify what they did. I want only to illustrate the injustice in our world that left them with so few options.

My wife and I were talking about what if we were living back in Oklahoma or California and had this baby how different his situation would be. He first of all would have been born in a warm and dry hospital where literally dozens of qualified doctors and nurses could have immediately diagnosed his situation and taken the necessary steps to repair his defect. We would have medical insurance that would cover his expensive bills, and we could probably count on the generous support of our church (whether it be FBC, CRBC, or SFMBC) to visit and encourage us in the hospital, pray for us, cook meals for us, and even help us with any other expenses incurred in the process.

Caleb by contrast was probably born in a freezing cold concrete or dirt floor bedroom with no medically trained personnel of any kind. His parents have no insurance, probably subsist on less than 300 USD a year, live hours away from any hospital (and it’s probably the kind of hospital most of us from the western world wouldn’t even want to think about going into even if we were very ill). The government here only allows them one child which means most crippled or deformed babies are abandoned in the hopes of having a healthy one next time. His parents have no Christian brothers and sisters to speak truth and hope into their lives. In short they were hopeless and desperate people, so they left their son outside to die.

As it sometimes happens in these awful situations, God intervened for Caleb, much in the same he did for the girl child (Israel) of Ezekiel 16. It so happened that an anonymous farmer was ambling by on his way to cut wood or tend livestock when he heard a baby crying. He found Caleb lying on the ground freezing and starving to death and for some reason his heart was moved with pity. So he gathered him up and brought him to our city to the orphanage hoping that at least Caleb could die with a roof over his head. The orphanage here is not a nice, bright, well-funded operation like we’re used to in the U.S. It’s a small grim place where only a few kindly women work. When they took a look at Caleb, they knew in their hearts that his case was hopeless. To feed and nurture him would only make the pain caused by the blockage of his bowels increase. They decided to put him in a small room in the back on a counter away from the other children and wait for him to die in few days.

As near as we can tell that’s the story of how Caleb’s life begun and was supposed to end. We don’t know who his parents are, where they live, or even who the nice farmer was who brought him to the orphanage. Much of what is in this story concerning his parents is guesswork based on the social circumstances and customs of this place. What we do know is that a farmer found this deformed baby abandoned in the field and brought him to the orphanage. The orphanage workers will tell you that most of the children who come to them, come to them via someone like the nice farmer finding them unwanted in the open country. From this point though his story becomes much more clear.

Again left for dead and written off as hopeless by the orphanage workers God rescued Caleb again. There are two European girls here who are also involved in the same kind of work we are but with a different organization. They’re both single in their late twenties, and were crazy enough to follow God to the other side of the world rather than lead a life of comfortable ease like most of their peers at home. Anyways, these girls are in the habit of visiting the orphanage and playing with the children there every Saturday. In fact my wife and I were over at their house this last Friday, the 13th, for dinner and briefly talked with them about their plans to go to the orphan house the next day.

When they got to the orphanage the next day, they were surprised to hear the sounds of a baby crying coming from the back since all the children at this orphanage are big kids, not babies. The ladies tried to keep our friends from finding the starving baby in the back, but they wouldn’t be denied and when they discovered him and began to feel the terrible hopelessness of his situation, they refused to believe it. Their reasoning was if God had sustained this child thus far when he’s been twice cast aside maybe He will work some more miracles for him. After much pleading and haranguing, the girls managed to convince the orphanage to sign the baby over into their foster care.

Once in charge of the babies the girls flew into action. They quickly named they boy Caleb and rushed him to the capital city in our province, bought airline tickets and were hoping to fly the baby to a bigger more modern city where the baby could receive better treatment than is available in our somewhat backwater province. However, as one of the girls was preparing to board the plane with Caleb, airline officials came and notified her that she would not be allowed to take the baby because: 1) they did not want the baby to die on their plane and 2) they were afraid despite the orphanage’s paperwork that perhaps Caleb was being kidnapped. This meant that Caleb would have to take his chances with the local hospital in our capitol city.

Yesterday, Caleb underwent an emergency surgery. The doctors told our exhausted friend, who had stayed up all night with Caleb, that his chances for survival were almost nil. For one thing, the operation is very invasive, and to complicate matters, Caleb’s blood pressure had already dropped dreadfully low. In fact, it was so low that the doctor said he would not even consider the operation if he didn’t know for sure that Caleb would die without it. In our local Sunday morning group we all spent considerable time in prayer, but one of the girls told me that there was not a lot of hope…we should have known better.

Guess what? Today we heard that Caleb had, despite the doctors predictions and our own fears, been brought through by God’s hand again. The doctor successfully created a colostomy for Caleb and another opening for him. He remains in very critical condition, and he certainly isn’t out of the woods yet, but every hour he survives is a victory and he is one step closer to making it.

Is our God amazing? Isn’t He a father to the fatherless? Is He not a God who defies our descriptions and expectations? Can anyone save like Him? Who brings hope to the hopeless if not He? Should God in his providence continue to uphold Caleb don’t you really believe that his life will be one miraculous praise song to God? I want to ask all of you to pray for Caleb right now and every day for the rest of his life. In his short life, he has walked closer to death than most of us ever have, and I am so curious to see what becomes of him. The best case scenario is that he pulls through this and his follow-up surgeries and, in a year or two, someone adopts him, maybe even somebody reading this e-mail.

I also should mention that my two friends who are taking care of him aren’t exactly swimming in cash and have undertaken this attempt to save his life with no idea how they are going to get the money to cover all his medical bills and other expenses. Please no pressure at all, and they would much rather have your prayers than your money, but if anyone does feel the Spirit’s leading to give, you can contact us and I’ll try to find how we can connect some of your generosity to the girls’ needs in looking after Caleb.

For information on how to help, email info@councilroad.org.

lessons from India

What if I were to tell you that in India there are over 400 million who have not even heard the gospel? What if I were to tell you that in the Middle East, there are over 175 million unreached unengaged people? Do those numbers surprise you?

They do me.

When one considers that there are more lost people in these parts of the earth than there are actual people in the United States it puts the world's darkness in perspective. This is why I believe it is absolutely essential for a church like ours that is serious about embracing the Great Commission cause to put energy and resources where they are most effective. One part of the answer is to support the missions efforts of the IMB- the largest missions sending organization in the world. The mission of the IMB is to plant churches around the world but especially in the places where the gospel has not yet reached. Another part of the solution is to support other para-church organizations that God is raising up to fill in the gaps that are not a part of the IMB strategy. Global Action, as an example, does not have the same priority of planting churches, but has developed a simple philosophy of connecting resources to national leaders who have ministry ideas but who don't have the means to accomplish them.

It is those kinds of missions objectives that Kyle and I were able to see up close and personal on our trip to India.

Like the ministry in Calcutta that cares for children in the slum near the convent founded by Mother Teresa. This ministry of Global Action not only cares for the physical need of the poorest of the poor in the slum, but they also give these children an education and teach them of the love of Christ. This is a ministry that is truly having an impact on the physical and spiritual needs in this dark and desperate place. You get the sense as you are observing this ministry that these are the places to which Jesus would be drawn.

Or like the evangelical church in which I was privileged to preach that is positioned right smack dab in the middle of the Calcutta slum surrounded by hordes of beggars, trash dumps, card board houses on sidewalks, and scattered Hindu temples and shrines. I was surprised when over 200 people filled the church, enthusiastically worshiped for over 2 hours, shared testimonies and sang with great joy and gave praise to God.

Or like the conference Kyle and I attended for young pastors in Ranji who are proclaiming the gospel in a part of India that has very little Christian presence. We sat with them all day in a small hotel in this city of about 500,000 as they listened intently, took notes and enthusiastically shared what Christ is doing in their churches. One gets the sense that even in the places around the world where there are very few Christians, God is at work. The Spirit is moving. And in those places where He is at work, we want to join with Him.

All of us have a mission. All of us who call upon the name of Christ are missionaries in our mission field. We are all given the responsibility of loving all people to Christ and helping them on their journey with God and others. But in addition to the mission field that we all live and work in every day, we also have an even greater responsibility to take the gospel where it has not yet been proclaimed. To take His commission seriously is to ask ourselves "where has this gospel not yet been proclaimed?" and "Who will proclaim it if we do not take the responsibility?" If we are to "make disciples of all the nations" we must take a decidedly proactive approach. There is no greater joy or greater objective that any of us could commit.

We are to have a local impact AND a global impact. That is the purpose we are all given and it is a purpose worth giving our lives to accomplish. This is just one of the lessons God has taught me in my trips to India and the Middle East.