Where Does Our Value Come From?

 

WHERE DOES OUR VALUE COME FROM?

Journey To Completion

 



    

Genesis 1:26-27

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.   So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them; male and female he created them."

 

 

    It seems like every time I sit down to write a blog or to say something, that God just reaches into my heart and pulls out part of me.  This is the case as I sit here writing this blog.  I just finished our Great Commission Ministry Update, which I was pretty candid about a huge need that we have and yet as soon as I finished it, I started wondering and doing some quiet reflection of where does our value come from?  Being in a faith-based ministry and watching our monthly income decreasing rapidly, maybe that is why I started questioning my value and where I get it from.  Is it money, family, friends, professional relationship or the work that my value comes from?  I knew but maybe I needed a "refresher course" from God.
    "Value is a personal quality. You can only be value by a person.  You can't be valued by an impersonal force."  Value is a human trait, thus yes I am repeating myself; it takes people or a person to make you feel valued.  Who values us? Where does my value come from? If I do matter, then how much or to who do I matter, and how much do I matter?  Have you ever thought about those questions, I know I have in the past and especially the last couple of months.
      I would first say I am valued by family and friends, or at least I think so.  When they call you, text you, or use social media to tell us we matter, our eyes brighten and our hearts are lifted.  A great example of how our family and friends are affecting our value is through the use of Facebook.  When we post something or it is our birthday (Now be honest with yourself), how many of us don't see how many like it, share it, write a comment or even just wish happy birthday. 
     Yes family and friends definitely affect our value, but there are definitely some problems with seeking our complete value here. 

• It will NEVER be enough.  We will always want more.
• Because of need for more, it could make us always need to be in a relationship.  We will need a relationship to validate our value.  Relationships are tough and take a lot of work to sustain, thus we could end up putting stress upon us and those we are in relationships with.
• It makes us vulnerable.  People change.  Does that mean we are of less value?  A loss of a family or friend, who justifies our value dies or moves away, it can makes us vulnerable and feel like we don't matter. 
• It can become a popularity contest.  Does it mean that more popular people are valued more?  If we are totally seeking our value from family and friends, then does it not make sense that the more popular person is the one of more value. 

    What if our value does not come from personal relationships, does it mean we are seeking them from professional relationships?    "If not from the love of our family and friends, then perhaps from the approval and esteem of our colleagues, our boss, our tutor or even a teacher. Perhaps it is our achievements, our productivity, our success, that will win the respect of others, and underwrite our worth."  As stated above the same problems exist with seeking our value from professional relationships. 
     But we MUST remember that value is a personal quality and I/we/you can only get it from a person.  Our value can ONLY COME FROM ONE PERSON OR RELATIONSHIP.  That person and relationship is God.  He is personal. He is Eternal. And He is Love.
      The advantages of getting our value from God are simple:

1. Everyone can seek it and get it.  There are no elites, no popularity contests, no conditions.
2. We don't have to earn it.  It is a free gift.  It was freely given.  God paid for it already through His Son, Jesus Christ.  Read John 3:16.
3. There is no fear of not being of value.  God is not going to stop loving us.  He is love.  He is eternal.  He is never going to change.  His love is without conditions. 
4. God is infinite.  The value we get from each other is short-lived while we are here, but God is will be there for us forever.  "The value we have in the mind and heart of God is infinite.  To whom do we matter and how much?  To God, and enough to die for us, as our anthem pointed out."

    Now I need to give you the one disadvantage of having our value grounded in God.  It is that we are demanded to share this truth with everyone and thus we MUST treat everyone with the same value that God as for us. 
    So when you are struggling like I have been with my sense of value, please understand that to God you are the most valuable, loved, prized and important person.  God sent His Son to reconcile the world and solidity our relationship with Him, but more importantly we MUST remember that Jesus came just from me....I am of value.

 

    



THE ROAD I CHOSE!!!

 



Waiting For My Flight-A view I see a lot, different place-same view

 

THE ROAD I CHOSE

 

    I have been called a missionary, an employee, a warrior, a man, a leader, a father and the one I choose to call myself is a Servant.  Where I am today, where I will tomorrow and where I was yesterday are all places that I chose to be.  You are probably wondering where I am going with this.  You see, God called me as He does all of His to follow Him and do His work, but like all of us; we have a chose.  A chose to answer that call or a chose to ignore it and walk away.  I chose this road.  I chose it because of the love I have for my Lord and the desire to follow Him wherever He calls. 

     Some of you might think that this is the life.  I get to travel to exotic locations, doing the work of the Lord.  That it is wonderful watching a person make a decision that will affect their life forever.  That I meet exciting and loving people.  I have heard some of you say that I must never worry when I am traveling because the Lord walks with me.  All of the above are very true.  But there is the other part that is not so glamorous. 

     The not so glamorous is the loneliness and worry of the road.  As I make these trips, there is not one trip that is only a few hours long.  The typical trip is an average of 10 days.  This is 10 days away from your family and friends.  It is getting to the airport 3 hours early at the beginning, having a unusually long layover in a "foreign" airport, where although English is spoken it is not their first language so you are struggling to understand, then there are the flights for many hours at a time.  And to make each flight worse, I am making these flights without family and most of the time alone.  Even with a team, I still miss my family, the loneliness of being away from them, and the worry that they will be fine. 

But this is "THE ROAD I CHOSE."  It is the Road that I would not change.

It is a Road that I would not be able to make without the emotional support of my family.  It is the Road that I could not be on without the prayers of the many that pray for us.  It is the Road that I could not be on without the support of many of you who sacrifice so much for us to do this. 

Someday this Road will come to end.  How many more days I will be on this Road I am not sure of.  I will continue this Road until God pulls me away or tells me enough.  But no matter where the Road will lead I will claim the promise from Jeremiah 29:11- "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
 

    

That Time Again.....A Ministry Newsletter Blog

THAT TIME AGAIN!!!

    In just a few days from today, I will begin a season of travel.  The first stop on my travels is viewed in the picture on the left and the other stop this time is below on the right.  Over the next 9 months, I will be traveling every month but one.  It seems like God is  opening lots of doors.  Please pray for me, my family, the people I will be meeting with and of course that God gets the Glory.

    I have been trying to write more blogs and let you know what is going on in the ministry that God has called us in to.  I hope you are reading them because God is really doing some great things in the region.  This trip will be a whole lot of preparation for future projects with teams.  But will also include many opportunities for prayer and sharing the one real Truth. 
    As I told you in the first paragraph, I will be traveling every month but one over the next 9 months.  As you can guess these trips or excursions are tough.  They are tough on many levels, from physical and emotional to financial.  Please pray.
    I will try on this trip to use the blog more to let you know what is going on, where I am and how God is working. 

WHAT IS HAPPENING???
    God has really been taking care of us this year.  He has had to take care of us because if you look at things that have happened, it can only be God who has brought us through everything.  In our lives, good and bad; we need to always look at the hands of God in our lives.  And for us we can see God's hands throughout our lives.  Here are some of the ways we have seen the hands of God:
1.  I had a health scare with my blood pressure spiking to dangerous levels, but I never felt any of the side effects.  Today although we are monitoring it, it is at the lowest levels of my life.
2.  Our son recently got married to a young lady that was an answer to our prayers.  We had prayed that God would bless him with a partner in life that would be a biblical example and that is exactly what God gave him.  They are a perfect compliment to each other and they put God first in their lives.
3.  In the recent years, I have been able to reconnect with friends from my childhood and my college days.  These friends have taught me how to forgive, how to look at my past with fondness and that through it all they are there to walk this road with us. 
    These are just three of the ways we have seen God in our lives but there are so many more.  God is always with us, we just need to look for them.  Jeremiah 29:11 says:  "For I know the plans I have for you--this is the LORD's declaration--plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."  This one verse is something we all must remember.

A TOUGH SUBJECT
    God has really blessed us since we started this journey in 2001, at that time with the International Mission Board, then in 2005 when we started the second part of our journey with International Commission.  Earlier I spoke about God being with you and in our journey with International Commission, we have seen Him so very much in our lives especially in our financial situations, although we have seen our financial situation decrease over the years.  Yes the tough subject I am going to talk about is Great Commission Partnership. 
    God calls us to follow Him.  He really calls us to go therefore and make disciples of the world, sharing His love and good news.  Each of us that are "followers" have this command in our lives.  We are called to GO, to PRAY, and to GIVE.  Some cannot GO, but all of us can PRAY and GIVE.  What are you doing with this command? 
    International Commission is a faith based ministry, which means that we need people (JUST LIKE YOU) to come along side of us to pray for us and to financially partner with us so that we can stay in the ministry.  Is partnership biblical?  Please look at the ministry of Paul and the other disciples who had people and churches come alongside of them so they could continue in the work.  We have been blessed to have many partners who have come alongside of us and it is this core that has kept us going.  Over the last 6 months, our financial Great Commission Partnership has reduced by as much 25% on a good month.  We need you to pray with us about our financial situation.  We have now begun to tap into our savings in order to meet our daily needs.  Pray that God will lift up people who are called to come alongside of us.  Pray that many of our partners who had to reduce or stop their partnership will feel God calling them to increase their amount or begin again.  Please pray that God will continue to meet all of our needs.  Pray that God will give us peace in this current situation.  Thank you for your prayers.

   

A Love Story

   

 

 

Our Wedding Day



 

 

 

A Love Story

    Almost 33 years ago, I met this wonderful person after going through what I thought was one of the toughest years of my life.  I will save that story for another time.  So I walked into our college food service where I worked and met, Jeannine.  You know that saying that "sometimes you just know this is the one."  Well that is exactly how I felt about Jeannine.

    To make our long story short, I asked her out she said no.  But I was persistent and finally she gave in and asked me out and of course I said yes.  Like I say before, I knew she was the one.  A few short months went by and we got engaged.   Then after dating and being engaged for 18 months, we got married.  

    Not long after we were married, we moved.  This would be the first of many moves that Jeannine would agree to without complaint. Eleven in the first 5 years of marriage and then feeling the Call of the Lord and moving to the Middle East.  All without complaint.   This is the way that she has been our whole marriage.  She loves without conditions.  Over the last 30 plus years, Jeannine has been an answer to my prayers more than I have been an answer to her. 
    Jeannine seems to always know what I am thinking, probably before I even know what I am thinking.  She stands next to me in every decision, of which I think many she does not agree with.  As I have followed the Lord, she has followed with me.  I know that she gets concerned and is concerned every time that I leave.  But still she hugs me, kisses me and says that she loves me and is praying for me.  She has cried when I cried and laughed when I laugh.  She supports me when I complain or am upset, never saying a cruel or unjust word.  She stands with me during the darkest moments of our lives and brightest moments.  She is the example in every way what the Bible says a wife is to be.  She loves me a 100 percent of the time, and many times she gives more. 
    This is the woman that God made just for me.  Many have said that God knows and plans for us to prosper and that is what Jeannine is for me.  Without her I would not be the person I am.  She is my gift from God.  We have had almost 33 years together and in one month, we will be married for 31 years.  I would like to have another 33 years with this woman, Jeannine.  She is my life, my love and my everything.

Family

 

  

FAMILY

 

    



    It has been almost a month since my last blog and I am trying really hard to do a blog once a month about a subject that is important.  Family for Jeannine and I is, next to our relationship with God; the ultimate most important factor in our lives. When we lived in the Middle East we learned another definition of family.  In the Middle East, family is everything.  There are traditions that say when a family member comes to you for help, you are to help them.  If a family member shows up at your door you are to house them, feed them and take care of them for 6 months and no questions asked. 
    Last month, our son got married to a wonderful person.  Two years ago our daughter married a wonderful person.  And our family grew.  But is this all my family, the answer is a simple no.  So it again feigns the question, what is family. 
    The Bible says the following about family:
          1.  Family is a key concept both in a physical sense and in a theological sense. The concept of family was introduced in the very beginning, as we see in Genesis 1:28, "God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth..."
          2.  Family members look after each other in every situation.
          3.  The Bible has a more communal sense of people and family than is generally held in Western cultures today, where citizens are more individualized than people in the Middle East and definitely more so than the people of the ancient near East.
          4.  Through Jesus' ministry we see another and eternal definition of family.  Jesus' ministry, "He is making the clear theological point that in the Kingdom of Heaven, the most important family connection is spiritual, not physical.  This is a truth made explicitly clear in John's Gospel, when the evangelist says, Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God" (John 1:12-13)."
    "So what does the Bible say about family? The physical family is the most important building block to human society, and as such, it should be nurtured and protected. But more important than that is the new creation that God is making in Christ, which is comprised of a spiritual family, the Church, made up of all people who call upon the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. This is a family drawn "from every nation, tribe, people and language" (Revelation 7:9), and the defining characteristic of this spiritual family is love for one another: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:34-35)."
    Again what is family.  I think the Bible is very clear we are all one family.  And if we are to really go back to the creation story then we all are related (although distant) through Adam and Eve.  I think we, as a world; have forgotten we are one family.  I feel it is time that we remember this and follow what God says and that is "to love one another."  Loving one another is not just words, to love we MUST have actions.  So the question I have for us all is do our actions meet our words?  I sure pray that my actions meet my words but I am sure that I fall short a whole lot of the time. 
     Thank you for reading my blog and being part of my family....
   
   



How Do I Know God Is Speaking To Me

 

 

How Do I Know God Is Speaking To Me?

 

 

    I was preparing this blog to be about family but over the last couple of weeks and especially this last week I have had to ask myself if God is speaking to us and if He is how do I know.   Let me give you a little perspective and history so that you will know why I have asked that question of how do I know if God is speaking to me.
    Six months ago I received an invitation to come to a country (to be named later in this blog).  The country is part of the battle that is going on in the region that God has called me to work in.  It is also a country that Christians are constantly being persecuted for their faith. When I got home and told my wife, she pretty quickly said she was comfortable with me going.  As the time has progressed and time for visa preparation, getting flights and planning Jeannine has gotten more apprehensive about my going.  All she asked was that I pray about it but that she doesn't want me to go. So I have been really searching the right answer. 
    So I have searched and this is what I have found out about what the Bible says about how God speaks to us:


1. Through the Word of God(2 Tim 3:16, Psalm 119:11, 105):This is the most clear and effective way of God’s communication with His people. If you want to know how things work perfectly, you need to read the manual. The Bible is God’s manual for His people. But as in case with other manuals, we often ignore the Bible. How often do we try everything else, but His word?
2. Through the inner still, small voice of Holy Spirit (Acts 11:12, Acts 13:2, Acts 16:6-7, 1 Kings 19:12, Isaiah 30:19-21)
3. Through the advice and counsel of the Men and the Women of God(Prov 12:15)
4. Through the Audible Voice of God (Acts 9:4-5)
5. Through Dreams  (Matthew 1:20-21) – There are many instances in the Bible, where God clearly communicates through dreams.
6. Through Visions (Acts 10:9-18)
7. Through Angels (Luke 1: 26-38) 
8. Through circumstances: However there is a danger of opening doors to Satan by letting mere circumstances dictate our lives. . So be wise and discerning with regards to your circumstances and expect God to speak to you through them.
9. By Inner Conviction and Peace: It is similar to the inner still, small voice of Holy Spirit.  God can give you deep conviction and inner peace about something.  (http://bibleseo.com/church/ways-god-speak-to-his-people/)

    Does God speak to us in all of the above.  Yes God does speak to us in the above methods.  But in this case of why I was searching for an answer because my wife asked me to.  So I did.  And in the end I cancelled the trip that was being planned. The reasons are simple:  see numbers 1, 2, 8, 9 and of course number 3. 

    Why do I share this?  It is because we all need to know when God speaks and HE DOES SPEAK!!!!

  

 

    

 

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the Ends of the Earth.”   Acts 1:8

                Where would we be today if Jesus had told the disciples to stay in Jerusalem or to only go to Judea and Samaria?  Would the Good News and Saving Grace of God ever have made it to us?  Where would Christianity and Eternal Salvation, THE TRUTH, be today?  Where would we be today? 

                I have been pondering this whole thought a lot lately.  Throughout the Bible it is about God, Our Father wanting a relationship for all eternity with us.  So Jesus was very deliberate in what he said to the disciples about going to all the world.  But what if the disciples would have been as disobedient as we are and said, Jesus said that but we are only going to go to Jerusalem or just to Judea and Samaria.  Where would we be today? What if they would have said, we only want to go to Judea, we will let others deal with the other places? Where would be today?

                God’s Word is to be obeyed... ALL OF IT.  There can be no picking and choosing of what to obey and what not to obey.  The disciples knew this and obeyed.   Thank you and Praise God that they obeyed and went to all of the areas.  The really great part is that their Call was not for the same area but God Called each of them to a different area.  Because of their obedience, the Gospel spread and we are a living testimony of that obedience. 

                Over the last few years there has been a movement by many churches, organizations and other groups to embrace Acts 1:8 as their mantra for missions.  I embrace, encourage and applaud this movement because it truly is obedience to God’s Word.  But I also caution those that embrace this to realize that not all are Called to Jerusalem or even to the Ends of the Earth.  Even within the confines of embracing certain areas, not all are Called there.  God Calls each of us to different places and areas.  Thus as Jesus did, we must embrace the mission area God has placed on the hearts of all Called.  We MUST celebrate their Calling and Praise God for the Calling.  It is partly about celebrating with them their obedience, but it more about Praising God that He is using all.

                In 1999, God Called me/us to the Ends of the Earth.  We did not know at that time the  specifics but we knew the Ends of the Earth.  In 2001, God called us to the Middle East and that Call has not changed.  Although the Middle Eastern region is the primary Call, in being obedient we are to tell people of Jesus wherever and at all times.  In Experiencing God Henry Blackaby says that “when we see God at work, we are to join into that work.”  So if God is working in any area we are to support, celebrate, and join in that work.  That is being obedient. 

                Obedience is not just for the individuals whom God Calls. It is for all of those that are friends, family, organizations, and churches that are aware of the Call.  When we see people called, we are called to pray for them, to encourage them and to support them.  It is not an option, it is obedience. 

                Now back to my original thought.   God through his son Jesus Christ created a perfect way to get the whole world to know Him.  That is to go to Jerusalem (our city), Judea and Samaria (our state and country), and finally the Ends of the Earth (the whole world).  Jesus didn’t say only one area. He knew that He was going to Call each of us to different areas, so it is His plan that we go everywhere. 

                I would encourage you to seek God.  He has Called you to go.  God has Called you to be involved with praying, encouraging and supporting those that have answered the Call.  Pray about what God wants of you.