Psalm 16:5

The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.

God's Warth is Coming... Are You Ready?

You had better listen to the words of Jesus, “Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, shall enter, but he that does the will of my father in heaven.” If ye by the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh, ye shall live. If you live after the flesh, you’ll die! The cross does not give us a minor shift or two with regard to a few of our ethical and religious values. The cross radically disrupts the very center and citadel of your life from self to Christ. And if the cross has not done that, YOU’RE NOT A CHRISTIAN! My Friend face it, young rogue, you’re not a Christian until the cross has radically disrupted the very center and citadel of your life! And brought you from a life of commitment to serve self…What are the focal points of the reign of your self? If you’ve gone to the cross in union with Christ, it’s been shattered!"
- Al Martin

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Present Your Bodies a Living Sacrifice

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, 
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 
- Romans12:1  

The big move is under way. As I write this, I am sitting in a nice hotel room which was provided to me through the goodness of God in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My first stop however outside of the United states was a taste of home:


No kidding. That is where I ate tonight in Toronto. Right swell on the taste if I might say. 

This past week has been a flurry of activity, saying good buy to friends and family, traveling across the US to North Carolina, then back to Georgia. Tomorrow I leave for Ethiopia and then on to Malawi on Friday. 

Pray for the good pleasure of God and His Spirit to Go with me. May Christ be magnified. 

Thursday, April 17, 2014

41 days and counting

In just 41 days, the Lord willing, nikupita ku Malawi! I will be getting on a plane bound for Toronto, Canada and after an all night layover, its off for the warm hart of Africa the next day. Time is flying! Two nights ago I watched a video presentation on the work going on in Malawi. It was so good to see video of my friends there, all the little children, the beautiful scenery, Lake Malawi.... It was a joy to hear the children singing their songs and saying passages of Scripture in English, to see Zach and Shadrich tell of the different aspects of the Lord's work and of His care for them all. Oh to God be the Glory great things He hath done!

Chifukwa chake tsopano iwo akukhala mwa Khristu Yesu alibe kutsutsidwa amene iwo akuyenda osati mwa thupi koma mwa Mzimu. Pakuti chilamulo cha mzimu wa moyo mwa Khristu Yesu chandimasula ine ku lamulo la uchimo ndi la imfa. Pakuti chimene chilamulo sichidathe kuchita popeza chidafoka mwa thupi, Mulungu adatumiza Mwana wake wa Iye yekha m’chifanizo cha thupi la uchimo, ndi chifukwa cha uchimo, natsutsa uchimo m’thupi: Kuti chilungamo cha chilamulo chikakwaniridwe mwa ife, amene sitiyendayenda monga mwa thupi, koma monga mwa mzimu. 

Romans 8:1-4
Tionana!

Thursday, April 10, 2014

1,800 mile weekend

This past weekend, I did something I have never done before - I drove 13 hours each way to go to church. Well, I did want to say goodbye to some friends and see Colorado again, and I really had the urge to get in my car and drive somewhere. So on Friday night I looked at the map, called some friends in Colorado and scheduled to stay there Saturday night. The next morning, I hit the rode for the most impromptu long distance trip I've done since the Terri Schivo Case down in Florida. 869 miles/ 12hrs 45 min later (68 mph average speed, 3 stops, and speedlimits as high as 80 MPH), the Lord brought me safely to my destination in Monument, CO. I drove through the most snow I had seen all winter:





But that's jumping ahead. I drove through the great Texas Hill Country first:


Then some rather uninhabitating stretches of real estate:


Good news is Texas keeps the highest speed limits around (75 on the little road above, 80 on I-10):



The only things that seemed to live out there are windmills and oil wells.


Northern New Mexico was beautiful:


But, not to be compared with Monument and Colorado Springs the next day:




That's Pike's Peak above.

On Sunday, I visited Reformation Church in Castle Rock where Kevin Swanson and Mike Chappa are elders. Excellent message in the morning on Spiritual Warfare from Ephesians 6. Had a great time catching up with friends and saying goodbye.

In the afternoon I visited a small Baptist church in Colorado Springs, then at 5:45 PM Mountain time, headed home, knowing that I had to be at work by 7:00 am Central time to start work. In the grace of God, I arrived tired but happy at 6:45am central, just in time for work. I slept very well that night after having been awake for nearly 38 hours straight... In less than 48 hours, I had covered almost 2000 miles, gone to two churches, visited with friends, listened to multiple sermons and part of a book while driving, drove through rain, wind and snow... God is so good! And tomorrow, destination Indiana. This time by plane though so travel time will be greatly reduced.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Malawi - once again

There is nothing like being shaken out of your reality by being dumped in someone else's reality. That is what going to Africa did for me. It made me realize there is much more to the world than i had really understood. It put all of the "blessings" we have in America in their place. When you go to a place where you are grateful to have the bare necessities in life and then find that with Christ there you can be content without all the vast number of things that fill our lives here in the states, it can be radically life changing and make you long for that. When you can walk the streets, open a Bible and share for an hour with a gathered crowd about Jesus and the Gospel, or look into the smiling faces of the orphan kids, or minister to the sick ones, when you find a place where one can actually be a blessing to others because it doesn't take much in worldly goods to reach hundreds of people, when you see the suffering and the darkness, the Muslims and their mosques, the witch doctors and their bondage, you begin to feel like Christ did: He looked at the crowds and had compassion on them. It says Jesus went everywhere doing good and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom. Jesus said at then end of his life, after he had demonstrated how to live to his disciples, after he had made them fishers of men, Go into all the world and preach the gospel, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. That is the great mission of the church, make disciples, preach the good news, baptize the converts. Show Christ to a lost and dying world who is in rebellion against God. What a privilege! The angels were not given this blessing, we were! We are in Christ's stead according to Paul and through us, Christ comes and preaches peace to those who are afar off.

Lord willing, I will be returning to a land I have grown to love, a land which speaks in a strange tongue, which has strange customs, a land where I stick out as radically different as one of the only white people in the area. Yet it is a land where the words of the Bible are so abundantly true, the gospel makes peace between those of different places and ethnicity. It brings together the Jew and the gentile as one man, to be framed together as the temple of God. There is nothing that shows the transforming work of the gospel, the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, than when those who outwardly look very different, who culturally are very different, yet who fall together as brothers in the love of Jesus Christ. What a picture of unity!

So brother's, pray for me and the Chichewa speaking people of Malawi if you think of us, pray for the spirit of God to be poured out on the ministry of the gospel, pray for love, purity, holiness, righteousness, unity, and great fruit. The only hope of Africa is Christianity, the only hope of America is Christianity, the only hope of the world is Christianity. So pray brothers, pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers for the word, laborers willing to die in this world for Christ that they and others might live in the next for Him.

Until next time, tionana!

Friday, January 17, 2014

Hath not God Chosen the Poor of this World to be Rich in Faith?

So now for the people of Africa - the ones that actually give Malawi its warm heart.