Dana's Christian Journey

musings of a thankful cancer survivor

Author: Dana

  • Brainerd

    —

    Dana

    I grew up in a section of Chattanooga, Tennessee called Brainerd. We drove on Brainerd Road, we went to church at Brainerd, and I cut grass in Brainerd Hills. Only recently, though, have I learned of the man for whom my community was named.

    A friend gave me a book called THE HIDDEN SMILE OF GOD in which John Piper writes about the fruit of affliction in the lives of three men of faith: John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd. In October of 1747, at the age of twenty-nine, David Brainerd died of tuberculosis in the home of Jonathan Edwards (preacher of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”). Two years after his death, Jonathan Edwards published THE LIFE OF DAVID BRAINERD which he wrote using his young friend’s diary. Through this writing about a hidden life of ministry to the American Indians in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, scores of missionaries have been inspired to surrender all for the sake of the Gospel. Piper quotes Brainerd’s diary:

    When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirsting for holiness the more unquenchable… Oh, for holiness! Oh for more of God in my soul! Oh, this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God… Oh, that I might never loiter on my heavenly journey!

    How marvelous are the ways of God! He speaks through His Word, through His Spirit, and through the lives of men and women who are abandoned to Him. As David Brainerd battled rejection, loneliness, depression, wilderness, and terminal disease, he often wondered if there would be fruit. But Jesus promises to abide in those who abide in Him with assurance of much fruit. Only God knows the full result of David Brainerd’s life. Sixty years after his death, a group of missionaries serving the Cherokee Indians in Chattanooga, Tennessee decided to name their mission for the young man who had given his all.

    Seeing a man “carry his cross” and follow Jesus inspires us to enter the sufferings of Christ and live boldly. Perhaps one way we do this is by entering the sufferings of those around us. Jerusha Edwards, the seventeen year old daughter of Jonathan, cared for David Brainerd the last nineteen weeks of his life. Four months after his death, a father buried a teenage daughter who had contracted tuberculosis while caring for a visiting missionary. Such men and women are a part of the great cloud of witnesses cheering us on.

    “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1

    “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” Hebrews 13:12-14

  • message

    —

    Dana

    A dear friend was given the opportunity to share a brief word with a group of missionaries. This was his encouragement: “Be your message.”

    If your message is faith, live by faith. If your message is generosity, be generous. If your message is mercy, be merciful. If your message is love, then love.

    What if your message is Jesus? Was Paul arrogant to write, “I urge you to imitate me”? Paul confessed being the chief of sinners, yet he knew the mystery of God: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” As he yielded himself to His Savior, Paul knew Light would shine forth. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul knew he was becoming his message. He never claimed to arrive, but he knew the aim of the journey. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

    How do I become the message of Jesus? No doubt God must do a mighty work in my heart, but what work am I to do? “Then they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one He sent.’” Oh to believe in the One God sent… every moment… every day… in every situation. If I believe He is the Way, I will want to spend time with Him and listen to His words. Oswald Chambers wrote, “It is natural to be like the one we live with most; then if we spend most of our time with Jesus Christ, we shall begin to be like Him, by the way we are built naturally and by the Spirit God puts in.”

    So if you want to be merciful, sit at the feet of Jesus and know His mercy… then put into practice what you learn. If you want to love like God does, hang out with Jesus and receive the love this world desperately needs… then freely give what you freely receive. If you want to be the message that brings life, draw close to the One who is Life… then be Life to all around you.

    “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13

  • privilege

    —

    Dana

    I feel privileged to know several missionaries, but in a real way, Jesus calls us all to serve in such a capacity… no matter where we live. I heard a brother from Guatemala share the incredible way God changed his village. Jesus saved this man and charged him to stand against the evil one and declare hope and forgiveness of sins for all who would put their faith in Him. This man became a missionary in his own village. Now he is taking orphans off the street, leading them to Christ, and training them to go into all the world. “I believe these children will be the world’s greatest missionaries because they know the One that saves and they know no comforts in this world.”

    Comforts may not be wrong, but the missionary sacrifices such rights for a greater good. Certainly Jesus gave up comfort as He left His throne in Heaven to come to this earth. “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” His mission involved hardship and He was willing to endure all to save us. Now He sends His disciples. “As You have sent Me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”

    We may want to argue or say we have pressing business, but Jesus does not waver in His requirements. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and turns back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” “Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

    Who will answer such an invitation? It sounds like Jesus is calling followers to pain and trouble. Sir Earnest Shackleton put out an invitation in a London newspaper before his quest to Antarctica in the early 1900’s: “MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY; SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER. SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.” Thousands responded. Why?

    Against all odds, Hudson Taylor left England in 1853 to take the gospel to China. Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddle left fame and success to live the rest of his life as a missionary in Asia. Jim and Elizabeth Elliot went to the unreached tribes in Ecuador. In 1956, Jim and four friends were murdered by those they tried to reach. Three years later, Elizabeth, three year old daughter, Valerie, and Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered missionaries, went back to live with the very tribesmen who killed their loved ones. Thousands of unknown disciples have left the comforts of home to take the gospel to all the world. Why?

    Perhaps we must see the invitation of Jesus in a different light. His call is much higher than Sir Shackelton’s and His purpose much greater. Jesus was not trying to scare people off with His words. He simply stated the truth, knowing the same enemy that opposed Him opposes all who follow. “Not everyone will answer My call. You must count the cost before you answer, but when you do, don’t turn back. I am inviting you to fight in a war of eternal importance. You must humbly walk by faith and learn to rely on My grace. Let your main objectives be to love and obey the Father. Remember His ways are not man’s ways. The Holy Spirit will direct and comfort you. You will face hardship, criticism, and perhaps even death, but do not fear… I am with you.”

    It is a privilege to follow a King.

    “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:33

    “They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.” Acts 5:40-42

  • jolt

    —

    Dana

    A friend, who just arrived last week from the south African country of Namibia, talked with many of our students who have expressed a desire to be involved in missions. After the meeting, John said to me, “I’m sorry if I came across too direct. I always feel sorry for the first group I talk to after getting back in the states.” Half of the orphans he and his mission team work with are HIV positive. They bury kids almost every week. Living among the poor and hurting makes re-entry into our wealthy land initially disturbing. I think we need to hear his jolting questions and piercing statements. “What are you doing now? Do you know Christ and does that make a difference in your life? Do you serve the poor here in the states? Do you care about the lost where you live? Do people see Christ in you? What makes you think you’ll be any different if you go live in a foreign land? You won’t! Serve the poor now. Share Christ now. Live Christ now. Wherever you live… be a missionary now. Don’t wait for some trip or some moment later in time.”

    As Jesus walked the earth, He often made jolting statements: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of God in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’” “If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”

    No wonder Jesus was despised and rejected. No wonder people turned away. No wonder He was crucified! Jesus was angry about the things that made His Father angry. He jolted those that needed to wake up. He offended those whose hearts were hard. “One of the experts of the law answered him, ‘Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.’ Jesus replied, ‘And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them…’” (see Luke 11:37-54) People might accuse Jesus of being insensitive, but we know He only proclaimed what the Father of love wanted said. None of those listeners will stand at the judgment and say, “Lord, why didn’t you tell us what you saw?”

    So what about today? Is our generation a righteous one? Has this world become good? Do the people of God practice what they preach? Do wealthy Christians in the western world have responsibility to the sixth of the world living in poverty? Is it God’s will that 100,000 people die every day without hearing Christ’s Name? The Living Word still jolts. May we recognize what God says to us and not turn away. May we be confident that a God of love speaks truth to listening ears and the Holy Spirit convicts humble hearts.

    But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold to our courage and the hope of which we boast. So as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’” See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…” Hebrews 3:6-15

  • dreams/vision/purpose

    —

    Dana

    When I was a boy, I dreamed of playing professional basketball. Some told me I was crazy, but I didn’t want to listen to skeptics. ‘Whatever you believe you can achieve’ was the motto I liked… so I believed. For some reason, though, I didn’t achieve. That dream never came true.

    When Taylor was born, I dreamed again. “My boy is going to be a professional basketball player!” When he was two years old, he could dunk on the play goal in our home! But despite those early accomplishments, I don’t think this dream is going to come true either.

    A long time ago, a son told his family a dream he had: “One day you will all bow down to me.” Sounds like a pretty arrogant dream… but it came true. This dream was not fulfilled because of goals young Joseph set or because father Jacob had connections in Egypt. Joseph’s dream came true because, despite every imaginable obstacle, God brought it to pass. It was His purpose.

    It was not God’s purpose that I play professional basketball. I’m confident He has greater purposes for my son and daughters. Their dreams of God are much deeper than mine. The Father has vision that is clear and precise. My vision is often blurred and imprecise, which is why stories like Joseph’s encourage me. “How does this pit fit into the dream You gave me?… slavery?… prison?… Lord, I can’t see!”

    God sees… and occasionally He lets us catch a partial glimpse. One day we’ll see clearly, but until then, we please Him by walking in faith. May we believe in Him no matter how things look. May we know His heart and trust His purposes.

    “I see what you can’t. I see the beginning, the end, and everything in between. When all seems to go against you, trust Me. I do not forsake my chosen ones. My solid purposes are rooted in My Son. He also trusted Me as He walked the earth, enduring every type of trial and temptation. He always kept in mind that nothing is impossible for Me. You should keep such truth in mind, too. Seek My vision and pursue My purposes and you will not be disappointed.”

    “But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” Psalm 33:11

    “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.” Ephesians 3:10-12

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