Dana's Christian Journey

musings of a thankful cancer survivor

Author: Dana

  • ambassador

    —

    Dana

    The mission conference Susan and I attended a couple of weeks ago was held at The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove near Asheville, North Carolina. This 1,200 acre retreat center is dedicated to God for teaching, prayer, rejuvenation, and fellowship with God and man. In the buildings are many pictures of the Graham family throughout the years.  Russ Busby’s book Billy Graham — God’s Ambassador chronicles with word and picture the life and ministry of a preacher who has been all over the world.

    Many have interviewed the evangelist, and newspapers across the world have written their opinions, but I wonder what God might say about one of his servants. I’ll not get it exactly right, but it is good to remember that our Father in Heaven sees each of us clearly. He can evaluate perfectly the lives we live on this earth. As Billy Graham spends his last days in his home state of North Carolina, he continues to echo the humility he often shared with those who judged him: “I am counting totally and completely on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not on Billy Graham. I’m not going to heaven because I’ve read the Bible, nor because I’ve preached to a lot of people. I’m going to heaven because of what Christ did.”

    So here’s a proposal of what God might say. In brackets I’ll share facts of his life or quotes from Mr. Graham himself.

    I am going to select an ambassador — someone who will represent Me well and communicate My message around the world. There’s a little boy on a dairy farm in a southern state that I’m going to choose. He is learning to work from his daddy as he gets up at 3:00 every morning to help milk their seventy-five cows. He is an energetic little boy who loves My creation and loves to play outdoors.

    I am going to let him learn about Me from his mom and dad and Sunday school teachers, but when he is seventeen years old he’ll realize he must make a decision to give his life to Me. [This happened in 1934 during the last verse of the invitation song on the last night of a revival in Charlotte.]

    A few years later I am going to call him to preach, and this young man will answer My call. I am going to let him continue his education at Wheaton College near Chicago and there I will connect him to his life partner, a beautiful girl named Ruth. [Billy and Ruth were married August 13, 1943 after they graduated from Wheaton.]

    I’ll choose where I want My ambassador to speak and I’ll bring huge crowds to hear his message. I’ll open doors no one would think possible.  People will hear that I love them and that My Son is their hope.

    Billy will be criticized often, but he will not shrink back because he knows I am the truth. [His first famous revival was held in Los Angeles in 1949. Meetings were held night after night for eight weeks as Billy preached sixty-five times. In 1950, Billy held campaigns in six other U. S. cities and preached to 1.7 million people. Over the next decades Billy preached to millions of people all over the world. His largest crowd was in Yoido Plaza in Seoul, South Korea where 1.1 million people gathered to hear God’s truth. Billy was even permitted to preach in communist countries where normal religious freedom did not exist. He said, “I have had the privilege of preaching the Gospel on every continent in most of the countries of the world. And I have found that when I present the simple message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with authority, quoting from the very Word of God — He takes that message and drives it supernaturally into the human heart.”]

    I will show My heart to the citizens of his land and the world regarding race. I love all people and there should be no discrimination. All people are the same at the foot of the Cross and My message is for everyone. [Billy was a friend to Martin Luther King, Jr. When told he had to segregate his audiences in the 1950’s, Billy said he would not speak unless people of all races could sit where they wanted. In Jackson, Mississippi, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, separating ropes were removed and blacks and whites sat together.]

    I will let My ambassador sit with world leaders. I will let My servant encourage them and pray with them. I will let rulers, governors, and presidents know I care about them and that I want them to look to Me for wisdom as they make decisions. [Billy met with all these Presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He encountered other leaders: Winston Churchill, Golda Meir, Queen Elizabeth II, King Hussein, Kim Il Sung, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, the list goes on and on…]

    Billy Graham is just one of My ambassadors. Will you be one too? [Billy’s words: “I realize my ministry will someday come to an end. I am only one in a glorious chain of men and women God has raised up through the centuries to build God’s church and take the Gospel everywhere.”]

    (Facts and quotes are taken from Billy Graham — God’s Ambassador, by Russ Busby, published in 2007 by Harper Collins Publishers.)

    “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” II Corinthians 5:20-21

  • India

    —

    Dana

    This past weekend, Susan and I attended a mission conference in Asheville, North Carolina. Mission India is one of many Christian organizations who long for all of the 1.2 billion citizens of India to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ. The only strategy that seems feasible in a land of 1200 languages and dialects is for local Christians to become missionaries to their own people. As the fire of God spreads from village to village, Mission India celebrates that 10,000,000 people have become disciples of Christ during the past five years.

    Chano only had a 7th grade education, but when he gave his life to Christ at the age of nineteen,  he knew God had created him for a purpose. Beginning as a helper in an afternoon Children’s Bible Club, Chano discovered he had a gift of teaching. God has used Chano mightily not only to impact children, but to train other believers to be leaders. Over 73 churches have been planted through the work of a young man the world would have called hopeless.

    At age fourteen, Renu sustained a terrible brain injury from falling off a roof. Doctors said she would never be normal again because the damage was permanent. A local pastor heard of the accident and went and prayed for the young girl. God healed her; Renu became a Christian; and now at age twenty she is a teacher in an adult literacy program that teaches women about Jesus as they learn to read. She expresses a great desire for the poor of her land to become literate and for her nation to shine for Jesus.

    The emphasis of the conference was: ‘Look at what God is doing!’ We were encouraged to pray for his Word to spread and to seize opportunities to support our brothers and sisters. Many Christians endure severe persecution as they leave other religions to follow Jesus. They have counted the cost and decided it is better to keep eyes on a heavenly home. We have much to learn from their example.

    “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.” I Corinthians 1:26-29

    “They admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:13-16

  • appropriate

    —

    Dana

    God wants us to appropriate all He offers in his Son, but how? It is tempting to pursue wisdom or peace or healing or a particular gift… but God wants us to have more. He wants us to appropriate Jesus Himself… More than that, He wants us to know his Son. Paul wrote, “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 take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Philippians 3:11-12)

    A. B. Simpson was born in Canada in 1843 and became an early student of God’s Word. He loved to preach, to write hymns, and to encourage Christians to reach out to the neglected people of the world. After moving to New York City, Simpson started the Christian and Missionary Alliance and served the Lord until he died in 1919. Simpson often shared that the turning point in his life came when he realized God intended everything to be about Jesus. This is a paragraph from a writing entitled Himself:

    I prayed a long time ago to get sanctified, and sometimes I thought I had it. On one occasion I felt something, and I held on with a desperate grip for fear I should lose it, and kept awake the whole night fearing it would go, and, of course, it went with the next sensation and the next mood.

    Of course, I lost it because I did not hold on to Him. I had been taking a little water from the reservoir, when I might have all the time received from Him fullness through the open channels.

    I went to meetings and heard people speak of joy. I even thought I had the joy, but I did not keep it because I had not Himself as my joy.

    At last He said to me – Oh so tenderly – “My child, just take Me, and let Me be in you the constant supply of all this, Myself.” And when at last I got my eyes off my sanctification, and my experience of it, and just placed them on Christ in me, I found, instead of an experience, the Christ larger than the moment’s need, the Christ that had all I should ever need was given to me at once, and for ever!

    And when I thus saw Him, it was such rest; it was all right, and right forever. For I had not only what I could hold that little hour, but also in Him, all that I should need the next and the next and so on, until sometimes I get a glimpse of what it will be a million years afterwards, when we shall “shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of our Father” (Matt 13:43) and have “all the fullness of God.”

    So let us ‘take hold’ of Jesus… nothing more and nothing less. And let us believe God’s great mystery and spread his good news.

    “I have become [the church’s] servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness – the mystery that has been kept for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Colossians 1:25-27

  • Aslan

    —

    Dana

    While we were in Europe this summer, we decided to hop over to pre-Olympic London for a couple of days. We found an affordable hotel just across from Kensington Palace where it just so happened that the ThreeSixty Theatre Group was performing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a play based on the classic book by C. S. Lewis. On a cool evening under a circus tent in Kate and William’s neighborhood, we watched the wonderful story of Jesus translated to the land of Narnia.

    In the 1940s, as four children from war-torn London entered a magical world, they found talking animals and a kingdom poisoned by the White Witch. Tragically one of the children, Edmund, is quickly deceived — blinded by the evil witch. Where was hope?

    Matilda Battersby, a writer for Britain’s The Independent, did not seem too impressed with the first part of the play (though eight-year-old John and the rest of us were mesmerized). But when the Lion came on the scene, even a hard-to-please critic was impressed: “Things picked up in the second half with the arrival of Aslan… He stole the show.” (May 30, 2012)

    Is that not the world’s greatest truth? When Aslan comes… everything changes. When Jesus truly enters the picture… people are impacted. Some hear His Name and resist His love and His will; others hear His voice and are awakened to eternity.

    C. S. Lewis put it this way in his book:

    Here the Beaver’s voice sank into silence and it gave one or two very mysterious nods. Then signaling to the children to stand close around it as they possibly could, so their faces were actually tickled by its whiskers, it added in a low whisper — “They say Aslan is on the move — perhaps has already landed.”

    None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning — either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again.

    It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in it’s inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

    (From The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis; copyright 1950 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.; p 74)

    As Jesus continues to be the hope of the world, may we be among those who carefully proclaim His Name.

    “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord…” II Corinthians 4:3-5

  • relationships

    —

    Dana

    I heard eight-year-old John talking in the back seat of the car last week on the way home from school. Looking in the rear view mirror,  I saw him pretending to talk on a cell phone and his side of the conversation went like this: “Hey Sanna. How have you been doing? We are doing fine here. I sure hope things are going well in Sweden. Take care! Bye.”

    I laughed to myself and marveled at the meaning of this imaginary phone call. John went with us to Sweden this past summer. It was his first time on an airplane and he was quick to strike up a conversation with any stranger he happened to meet. On one leg of the journey he sat next to a business man from South Korea who spoke little English. But the language barrier does not deter a child. Soon John and his new friend were playing a card game and having a great time… at least John was :).

    Of all the people we met at the Youth With A Mission base in Sweden, Sanna became John’s best friend. Sanna lives in a nearby village and has to ride a bus a couple of hours to reach the base. She is probably in her thirties and has experienced some difficult trials in her life. She volunteers with YWAM, and the missionaries pour out God’s love on her. She in turn poured out God’s love on John. She treated him as an honored guest and played with him with great energy. I could tell when we departed that the adult and the child would truly miss each other. But I guess I didn’t know that ‘conversations’ would still be taking place almost three months later.

    Our team got to help the missionaries with some practical things. We accomplished several work projects and each person, including John, pitched in and did his or her share. Often God allows relationships to be the highlight of mission trips. God loves to build relationships! His first priority is to develop a deep relationship with each of his children. He treasures this far above any knowledge or skills we may possess. He knows each of us intimately and He wants us to know him in like manner. “Come spend time with me. Sit at my feet and learn of me and you will see I am gentle and humble in spirit. Don’t just know me as a distant God who has all power and wisdom; know me as Father God who created you and who cares for you with unfathomable love.”

    God’s second priority is that we develop deep relationships with one another. “Do you really know your brother? Do you really love your sister? Do you really care for your neighbor? Suppose a person wants to honor me by giving a generous offering; I want that person to lay the gift aside until any conflict is resolved with a brother or sister. I want my children to love one another. Strong relationships please me far more than you can imagine.”

    When Paul wrote letters to the early Christians, he often called individuals by name whom he had come to love in the course of his journey. “Greet Philogus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them.” (Romans 16:15) We often skip over such parts of the Bible, but God might want us to know that such communication is dear to his heart.

    Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your , with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

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