A passion for the glory of God and the passion for pleasure all wrapped up in one.

Please read through the two quotes slowly and think about their implications when it comes to 1. Your daily pursuit for pleasure (what things will you do today to enjoy yourself?), 2. God’s desire for His own glory (what things will you do today to bring God glory?) Do you view these two questions as having little or nothing at all to do with each other?
These two quotes from Jonathan Edwards are the two most clear statements I have ever heard on this most critical issue…how can I live my life for the glory of God (the one thing that I am most fearful of failing at…to fail at this is to waste my life) when my heart has such a passion for pleasure…a passion often wrongly directed to things that have nothing to do with God or things that are contrary to the character of God. The path most chosen is “one or the other”…”either or”…Edwards thinks not and argues that the Bible calls for something different.
“Because God infinitely values His own glory consisting of knowledge of Himself, love to himself, joy in Himself He therefore valued the image communication or participation of these in the creature and it is because he values himself that he delights in the knowledge and joy and love of the creature as being Himself the object of this knowledge, love and complacence. Thus God’s respect to the creatures good and His respect for Himself is not a divided respect but both are united in one as the happiness in the creature aimed at is happiness in union with Himself” Jonathan Edwards

“God is glorified within Himself in these two ways, by appearing to Himself in His own perfect idea of Himself or in His Son who is the brightness of His glory. Two, by enjoying or delighting in Himself by flowing forth in infinite delight in Himself or in His Holy Spirit. So God glorifies Himself towards the creatures also in two ways; by appearing to their understanding and communicating Himself to their heart in their rejoicing and delighting in and enjoying the manifestations that He makes of Himself. God is glorified not only by His glories being seen but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He may communicate and that the creature receive His glory, that it might be received by the mind and the heart. He that testifies his idea of Gods glory doesn’t glorify God so much as he that testifies his approbation of it and his delight in it.” Jonathan Edwards
These two paragraphs are quoted in Piper’s sermon;
A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: Why We Need Jonathan Edwards 300 Years Later (10-10-03) 56:49 John Piper A God Entranced Vision of All Things Conference Message 1

The passion for pleasure in our hearts is God given and He intends that we satisfy that passion in the One object that is infinitely satisfying, the One thing whose nature is pleasant, lovely, beautiful, (all of these in a holy/Godlike/unique way) enough so as to satisfy God Himself…the One object is God. To delight in anything else above, in the place of or alongside of God is to reduce the all satisfying glory of God and equate it/count it unworthy to be compared to that of infinitely lesser beings or things…this is the heart of all sin Jer 2:13; Rom 1:21. When our passion for pleasure finds its satisfaction in the knowledge of and delight in God…we attain the end for which we were created…the glory of God. Thus our pursuit for holiness is our fight for joy in Christ…the battle to turn our hearts from lesser pleasures that we might delight ourselves in the Fountain of delight. Although I had listened to his argument “God is most glorified in man when man is most satisfied in Him” these two quotes from Edwards have served to crystalized the point and impress the urgency to “violently vehemently pursue my joy in Christ” for that is the only way my God will be glorified in me.

The critical “why” of the where, what and how of missions

               What is our “why” in missions? Why do we seek to do all that we do in the name of missions? Knowing that we posses hearts that are desperately wicked and deceitful we should not sweep over this question lightly. Rather we should spend prayerful time trying to give an honest answer before the Lord.

              I recently shared a short devotion with a group of brothers and sisters who have banded together to do a church plant. The question we sought to answer is the one asked above. Although this is a different audience the different questions that I address in the devotion below might be of use to you. It reads…

              “On what basis are we moving forward as a core group in trying to reach the lost in Nairobi? On what basis are we going to pay the price that attaching ourselves to a group like this demands us to expect? e.g. time, comfort, money, death…its what Christ meant by “no one can come after me unless he takes up His cross and follow me…” It cannot be a sense that “I want to give something back to the community”, or a vague “it’s the right thing to do” not even if you say “coz the Bible says we do it” I say this now and will argue later that the Bible does not only tell you what to do but how and why you should do what you do…and all these must be in place for our mission to be God’s mission. The wrong “why” will only take you so far and will in no way please the One whose work we are seeking to engage in.

              In writing to the Corinthians Paul speaks of the carefulness with which he approached that church planting venture “according to the grace of God as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation…” 1 Corinthians 3:10. In line with that he warns all who continue with the work to be very cautious of how they engage in God’s work of building His Church 3:10b, because all that we do shall be one day judged; 3:12-17. The context here no doubt refers to the content of their proclamation, Paul argued for Christ centered/Cross centered preaching from 1:18-31, 2:1-5 and in the text we are considering argued that the foundation that was laid was “Christ”. But that is not all that will be judged on that great day. In the next chapter Paul again refers to this day and points out to us something else that God will look at, I Corinthians 4:5 “Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. Why we are doing what we are doing is of cardinal importance.

            But before we answer that question (why are we a part of this core group that is seeking to see a church started in Nairobi) let’s deal with the question that the paragraph above has raised. “If that’s the case (a strict judgment awaits all who engage in this task), I’m not sure I want to get myself involved with this “spread the Gospel build the Church of Christ business?” To answer in brief I will say, well you don’t have a choice …you are already in the business; the task comes with the salvation package, you can’t have a swim and not get wet. We dealt with this at the meeting so allow me to state it in brief here. The great commission wasn’t addressed merely to the disciples, Matt 28:20, all who the disciples taught were to be taught all the commands of Christ, which would include the command to go and make disciples. We see this happening with the those that they taught in Jerusalem Acts 11:19-21 note the Apostles up to this point remained in Jerusalem 15:2. Paul expresses his confidence in the believers at the church at Rome regarding their ability to “admonish” each other Rom 15:14. The word used here means to “instruct”. In 1 Corinthians 12 we learn that we are all part of the body. In Ephesians 4:15-16 we learn that through the things we “speak” to one another we are to build up the body. Many other references could be given to prove the point but I trust that these suffice. The task has been squarely laid on our shoulders to do it badly will cost us, to not do it will cost us still Matt 25:27 (the dude with only one talent).

         So we go back to our question, what is our “why” as we seek to engage in this work? Answer, because we delight in seeing God glorified through the salvation of sinners (note here that this salvation that begins with our election Eph 1:4, manifested in our justification Rom 3:26, is ongoing in our sanctification 1 Corinthians 3:18 and will be consummated in our glorification 1 Peter 1:7-9; Rom 8:28-30). This is the only life that is not wasted. To grasp how we end up with that we need to take a look at the big picture of our lives. We were created for His glory Rev 4:11; Col 1:16; Isaiah 43:7. But we all rebelled against our Creator and glorified the creature Rom 1:21, Jer 2:13. This act naturally attracted the wrath of the one and only glorious God who will not share His glory with another, whose glory demands that all such inconsistencies be set right. God who in eternity past foreknew all these chose to bring himself glory by choosing out of these rebels a bride for His Son. This He would do by pouring the wrath that they deserved on the Son, Eph 5:25-26. Thus they would be free from the penalty, power and eventually presence of their sin (that which glorifies anything else in the place of God Rom 1:21; 3:23; Jer 2:13) and thus be set free to delight in the glory of God, Jn 17:3; Is 55:1-2; Jn 4:14, 23; Heb 9:14; Ps 16:11; 34:8; Phil 1:20-21, 3:8. Thus we who are in Him have finally tasted that for which we were created, true eternal satisfying pleasure in God, not fame, nor earthly wealth, nor sensual sin. Thus the pursuit for the glory of God becomes for us our singular purpose Phil 1:20-21. God has chosen to glorify Himself by saving sinners Eph 1:6, 14, 17, 2:4-7. This He is accomplishing through the Church Eph 3:10. So when we seek to see a local assembly born in Nairobi what we are seeking is to see God glorify Himself by bringing salvation to His elect a salvation which He begun in eternity past and will bring it to a glorious end when He returns for His Bride. “Through whom we have recieved grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations…” Rom 1:5.  This glorious task is to us our single passion. We say to all who would ask us why we would dare live such a  life “ 13 for if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. ” AMEN.

A passion for missions…REALLY?

Our radically Islamic neighbor, Somalia, has threatened to kill anyone who dares to spread Christianity in her country. On several occasions they have lived up to their words. As we pray, dream and plan on ways of taking the Gospel to every nation, tribe and tongue  let us first take a critical look at what we are doing at home to reach the lost in our community. Our churches exist in communities full of lost people, they work for us, we work for them and with them…some live next door, others live within our doors…yet many of them have not heard the good news of Jesus proclaimed to them. Our Churches have no burden for the lost…at times we do not even show a burden for the lost who regularly attend our services. If we have no passion to reach those who live amongst us…how can we profess a passion to reach those in hard access regions?  Churches that are planted from passionless churches often show no passion for the lost in their communities. Before we think about reproducing ourselves let us ask if we really want more churches out there who look like us. The most convicting fact though is that in most cases the members of our congregations lack this passion for the lost because we who lead them show no passion for the lost…we might talk about it…but rarely demonstrate it.

The recently completed census counted over 2,000,000 Somalis living in Kenya today. They have curved themselves a large portion of Nairobi that’s come to be known as “little Mogadishu”. With close to 500 of them crossing the border every week, their population is constantly spreading to other suburbs every year. By the providence of God the foreign mission field is in many ways being brought to town. The guy next door is practically the guy who three years back was living in “in-accessible” Somalia. I personally have over 20 of them as neighbors, which means that for me these realities lay a practical demand upon my life. They lead me to ask myself the question…”how sincere is my “passion” for the unreached in hard access regions whilst my neighbor yet remains unreached?” This is the same question I pose to you.

The forgotten mission

Who shall I send?

I’ve been hanging out with a group of college kids from the states who are here on a missions trip…watching them has triggered thoughts about the mission field I live in, that which neighbors my country and my responsibility. It all started with a visit to a massai village in Amboseli, followed by a video in which were clips of Wusakile ministry (a church plant that I served in briefly in Zambia) cupped off by some time spent with kids at Kibera two days ago and Mathari today. Everywhere I look, I see fellow countrymen who do not know Christ as Lord, I see churches that preach a cheap hopeless prosperity gospel, which is no Gospel. Although most churches in my Baptist circles would state that they have a passion for missions both local and foreign…the reality is we are doing very little. What could be the reason for our slackness? A few ideas creep into my mind…most likely all tainted by some form of ignorance or another…but for what its worth here is my two cents worth:

1. The Misplaced Christ

We sing about Him, we hear Him mentioned every now and then in the message, we even “pray in His name” but it really is not all about Him. In our hearts…our motives for coming…our pursuit in the “worship” time, He often gets the backbench. I think our Churches could easily make the priority of gathering “running a smooth crisp service”…flawless in all that was done…not a bad thing in itself so long as it is not the end that we seek. We could turn it to a social gathering where the chief end is to impress those who come by giving them what they want…whatever that may be, thus judging the end product by a majority vote. We have in many ways fallen into the trap of evaluating church through the opinions of men not the Head of the Church…the One who walks among the seven candlesticks and evaluates each local body of believers. When we relegate Christ to becoming merely a part of the service “Knowing Him and making Him known” takes a back seat as well. For when the center of all that we do is about knowing Him, no one can stop us from making Him known

2. The Misplaced Gospel

We see no place of the Gospel in the life of the believer…it is looked upon simply as a message for unbelievers to hear. In Letters to the Church in Rome and that of Ephesus the Gospel features predominantly…in his other letters he points his readers back to the Gospel as the source of the grace they need to grow in Christ; Col 2:6-23 he points them to what they have become in Christ all they need to live the Christian life…not legalism…not help from angels, In Ephesians He spends the opening chapters explaining different facets of our salvation, in chapter two he zooms in on our unworthiness, Christ’s great grace, and the mind-blowing results of God’s work in us, in chapter three he is talking about the great blessing that we have in receiving the revelation of the mystery…he is rejoicing for the great honor of being granted ministry of preaching it, and praying for the Ephesians that they might be strengthened so as to grasp the grandness of what we have through Christ…then and only then does he let loose and rolls out imperative after imperative to these Christians…

My point is when the Gospel is taken out of its central place; the central commission left to the church looses its place. When we forget how great a salvation we have received we loose the urgency of taking that salvation to the dying world around us. A heart saturated in the Gospel that saved us is a heart that needs little encouragement to seek the glory of the One who died for us, by taking that Gospel to the lost.

3.   The Misunderstood predicament

We as the Kenyan church exist in a context where physical needs abound. We have poverty and corruption all around us. These external needs affect us greatly…and they ought to. But there is a greater need still that which God sees when He looks at the world. When God looks at the lost He sees a more urgent need for they are spiritually naked, poor and sick Rev 3:17, and the consequences of these needs are incomparably worse. Christ did not come to primarily address the physical John 6:26-27, He came to redeem man from the curse of sin, Mark 1:35-38, 10:45, in tandem, the church has been called to address the source of all problems; sin, and the antidote is the Gospel of Christ. When we misdiagnose the problem we do the greatest disservice to the very ones we seek to help…for we the church have been left to cater to their greatest need, their need as sinful men to be reconciled to a holy God. Our focus on their physical problems will take its right place as a tiny finite demonstration of Christ’s great love for us shown by His death on the cross on our behalf. To merely address the outward problem of poverty and sickness is utterly useless if it is not predicated upon the work of Gospel proclamation. Note, my argument here is not that the two problems are equal and that both should be addresses neither am I saying that the Church has no role in addressing physical needs, I am saying that when we address their physical needs we ought to be using it as a means to dimly illustrate the love of Christ shown us on the cross, to which we point all men, for outside the crucified Christ there is no hope…not for the poor or the rich. We are stewards of the most potent, most powerful transforming life giving “agent” in our fallen world…the Gospel concerning Christ, Rom 1:16-17; II Tim 1:10; I Corinthians 1:18. Let us not lay It down only to take up rusty, broken, blunt implements as we seek to give hope to a dying world.

4. Our Misplaced Joy

In many ways I feel as one who has forsaken the incomparable joy of sacrificing self (comforts both of this world and that of serving in a place and a people that I feel at home with) so as to reach others. Christ taught that unless the grain dies it cannot bear fruit, John 12:23-28 This is especially the case when it comes to preaching the Gospel in the sprawling slums of Nairobi and reaching out to communities that live in hard access regions. When we die to all the little trappings of pleasure that are around us and come to God with no strings attached…laying our all on the altar, then we make room for the incomparable joy that is to be enjoyed by all those who like Christ “sacrificed” their own little joys for the eternal joy of others; Heb 12:2, Psalms 126:6. We trade the infinite joys of tomorrow to enjoy the insufficient, temporary joys of today. Very few of us are willing to sacrifice…time, money, pride or life to know the great joy of taking part in the greatest task man has ever has “glorifying God through the reconciliation of sinners through Christ” this is accomplished as we make disciples of Christ among all the people groups around us. And we have been gifted with 42 of them just in our country!!!

May our gracious God revive our hearts to the great task that He has called us to, and may He strengthen our hands to lay hold of the plough, and to keep faithful to the task.

The Savior’s message “Go and tell”

Was meant for me, I know full well.

Just the need alone to know

Can be God’s gentle call to Go.

Some to distant lands may fly;

Others telling friends nearby;

All this precious Hope may share,

And give, and intercede in prayer.

Honoria A. Groves

Lunching with an atheist

about two months back I had the pleasure of going out for a lunch that I was not paying for…so as you can imagine I was really enjoying myself. as we were conversing at the table (we were five of us, a christian couple from my church, a young lady friend of theirs and a german young man whom she had met randomly and invited her to church) the topic about the demise of christianity in the west came up. I thought of asking the german visitor if he attended church at all to which he answered, “no I don’t…actually I am not a christian at all!” my delightful lunch was about to take a turn. within a few minutes we were engrossed in a deep philosophical discussion about the existence of God…we were not arguing, our voices were not raised but we were definitely engaged in an intense debate. he did not believe the Bible was the Word of God did not believe that there was even a God, labeled christianity along with all other man made religions etc so we could not begin from the Gospel because he even rejected the idea that sin was a real thing however although we did not start from it we kept going back to it just because philosophy never saved any man. the class I took with Joel Arnold came through for me like the winning lottery ticket on the day of the draw (its just an illustration) his world view had way to many inconsistencies and I did my best to shake his false foundation in between sharing with him the Good News about Christ.

a few hours later we parted ways, he had been very open and friendly through the whole time so we all felt closer to him at the end of it all than at the beginning. despite that he had not called on Christ to save him. last sunday the couple that I had been out to lunch with that day gave me a message from our atheist friend, he wanted me to know that he was back in Germany now and is faithfully attending church!!! God can do wonders…pray that God would open his eyes to the sin that he is living in and grant him faith to call on Christ; mankind’s only hope.

The genesis of ministry in Nairobi…the roses and the thorns

Three months into post masomo(training) ministry…I’ve learnt two things…school taught me a lot…there is a lot that school did not teach me. I have the amazing opportunity to serve with the believers at Emmanuel Baptist and at Camp Lukenya. Both ministries have presented challenges that I was not expecting, e.g. handling a group of teens who did not seem to care at all about “expository preaching”…had to dig deep and teach myself how to warm up those dull un-interested teens get them loosed up and present the word in a manner that is appealing to them yet without compromising the message. At camp, its been mainly admin work, dealing with staff, doing job interviews for new employees, dealing with discipline cases etc…not the kinda stuff I came from college eager to do…but God has me learning all this from most probably the best guys I could.

Yet I have also gotten to do stuff that I really enjoy, teaching Bible study on Wednesday nights…we are going thru 1st Corinthians…beautiful stuff, loving it all the way, got to teach a workshop during the Leadership Conference and interact with the pastors as well. One thing I’m thankful to God for is that His mercy and grace are helping me along in the stuff I don’t enjoy doing so much (chiefly coz I’m largely un-experienced and feel as incompetent as I could) and in the things that I enjoy doing as well, He who called me indeed has been faithful thus far, I do not deserve Him, He has been good to me.

what about persecution in Sudan???

just accross our kenyan border, millions of christians bare the cross of Christ at a cost unexperienced by most of us. our Sudaneese brothers and sisters are facing persecution from muslim opressors. you and I have a sacred duty before our King to stand in the gap for our fellow saints in prayer to ask for grace on their behalf… to place our time, wealth and lives at the disposal of the Master for the work that He is doing in Sudan. http://www.persecution.org/suffering/country_info.php

I Cor 12:26 “and if one member suffers the other members suffer with it or if one member is honored the other members rejoice with it.”

please send up a prayer for them just now…

update

God has granted to me an awsome time this holiday. it has been fun getting to see my family again especially my nephew jesse…its so refreshing hanging around that little bundle of innocent joy. the time that i have spent ministering to tens and young adults this holiday season has implanted in me a great derisre to focus my future ministry tothis particular age group. It has hit me anew that this age group has a great potential to have an impact in on its society for God’s Name. It has been exciting working with a ministry that actually focuses on that age group (camp lukenya ministries) and i am definately looking foward to working with them in the future.
on the short term I get to travel to Uganda next week to work with teens there before i come back and start planning my trip back to school…my last year.
I owe my God loads of thanks for the mercies that He has shown me…for granting to me through His grace an oportunity to serve Him.

focusing on the harvest field

Nairobi my beautiful hometown is a city thats as diverse as any could be. it’s graced with a magnificent skyline in the city which is surrounded by slums crummed with the poor, highclass surbubs where the money bags of the nation sleep and a middle class that is slowly growing.

the issues that face it’s population which soars above 3 million people have been defined by many well meaning organizations in different terms ranging from poverty to corruption…but all these are mere fruits of a bigger problem…..Sin. the Gospel of Christ alone has the power to change lives..to give hope to the poor and the rich to give life to both groups for both are dead in their trespasses and sins. this must be done by all followers of Christ, the work mus’nt only be left for the Leaders of God’s people Eph 4:11-12 “ And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:” the work of the ministry in Nairobi will only get done when we all take up the burden to win over the city one soul at a time. Nairobi counts on you