Tell Your Children "No" - and Yourself.

When my kids were little I used to tell them, "no," just because I thought they needed to be told no sometimes.  I used to tell them that it was so they'd better appreciate it when I told them "yes."  Now I have a more biblical basis for the suffering I inflicted on them (although it wasn't much suffering, but still a denial of the flesh). 1 Peter 4:1-2 says that we should suffer in the flesh "so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God." 

In today's society we're so focused on gratifying the flesh - the lusts of men - that we make living for the will of God an afterthought or something to be done on Sundays.  Let us be willing to join in the fellowship of His suffering (Phil 3:10).  Let us die to the flesh (Gal 2:20), no longer gratifying our selfish desires or demanding that we be constantly entertained. Rather, may we have Christ live in us and live for the will of God (Phil 4:2).

How To Measure Maturity as a Disciple

How to Measure Progress/Maturity/Growth as a Disciple

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how you can really measure spiritual maturity.  To me there’s several Philippians 2:4-8, where we’re told: 1) Christ didn’t regard equality with God as something to be grasped; 2) Christ emptied himself/ became a servant/ lowered himself to the form of man; 3) Christ humbled Himself; and 4) Christ became obedient to the point of death.  So obviously we want to see humility and obedience and exaltation of God (not self) in a disciple.  The other measure of Christlikeness that really stands out to me is that Christ was a disciple maker and He definitely called all of us to make disciples.  How then can we be considered a mature disciple if we aren’t ourselves making humble obedient disciple making disciples?

I’ve also been reading a book called “Deeper Experiences of Famous Christians”  One of the things that has really stood out to me is the death to self that has to occur before someone really experiences depth in their relationship with Christ.  This isn’t another measure but a description of “emptying yourself” as Christ did.  Are you willing to give up your comfort, your feelings of happiness, joy, and everything important to you and rely wholly on faith?  (It's not that God doesn't want us to have joy, but that he doesn't want us to exalt feelings over Him, or the gift over the Giver.) When you come to this point, you’ve achieved a new measure of maturity.

These are some of my first thoughts on measures of maturity. I’m planning to think more and write more, but in the mean time, tell me your thoughts.  How would you measure spiritual maturity/progress/growth as a disciple of Christ? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

If I were to write a book...

... I wonder if anyone would read it.  I'll develop my thoughts on my blog and see if anyone is interested.  If any of the topics below interest you or if you'd be interested in my thoughts on them, comment or drop me a line and I'll elaborate in another post. (I'll likely elaborate anyway as I play with these thoughts, but it might be a while before I get to the one you're most interested in.) These are some of the topics I'd want to address:

• The primacy of making disciples and how it fits with God’s penultimate goal of glorifying Himself.
• What is a disciple?
• How making disciples (the basic building block of the church) is set aside for rapid church reproduction, a/k/a church multiplication, a/k/a most modern attempts at CPM. Might entertain the question of whether God ever intended for us to try to go fast in church planting.
• Would Jesus make disciples using a workbook?  If not, how would he do it?
• Do you have to know how to read to be a disciple?
• In order to make a disciples what must people know? i.e. when Jesus said, “teaching them to obey all that I have commanded” what did He mean?  Is it possible to obey all he commanded?  How do we teach people to obey? Is telling them to obey the same as teaching them to obey?  Is there something implied there regarding training?  How do you train people to obey?  Doesn’t that imply changing their heart?  How do we change people’s hearts? How can we make them mature spiritually?  How can we equip them for service?
• How do we measure spiritual maturity?  Isn’t by someone’s outward actions – their obedience to Christ?
• How this focus on obedience can become problematic (lead to works based theology or create Pharisees) and often causes people to become cultural christians or religious with no real spiritual life.
• In order to not create Pharisees- spiritually dead church members, we should focus on developing faith (which will necessarily result in obedience).
• We don’t teach people to have faith by focusing on faith, but by focusing on the object of faith, which inspires faith. (a/k/a faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God).
• What are the best methods to hear the word of God? What practices should be developed? What disciplines should be practiced?
• The importance of the gospel being shared to believers – it is the power of God to salvation.  Are we completely saved from sin and it’s destructive force the minute we put faith in Christ or do we need continual salvation?

Some of the ideas that will come out in some of these topics are the need for teaching the old testament as we really see God revealing himself in it and the law as it is a tutor to lead us to Christ. We also see the importance of faith throughout the old testament and the theme of remembering what God has done as something which inspires our trust in Him. We’ll also see that those who had faith acted.  There is no such thing as faith without action (although waiting or restraining oneself might be the actions of faith). Those who have greater faith are the more mature in Christ.  Can you have great faith without having great love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control?  Or can you have great faith and not walk in the spirit?  If you believe God’s way is best (that’s faith) then the action will be to follow his way.  What we believe matters – it affects our actions.

Bulging Disc Leads to Writing and Tweeting

MRI showing bulge pressing on my nerve.

 I've got a bulging disc in my spine which is pressing against the nerve root.  So my sciatic nerve causes severe pain to shoot down my leg when I get up or down from a sitting or laying position.  I'm going for daily treatment by a local physical therapist and praying that my back heals.  Right now, getting in and out of a car is difficult and I can't lift anything over 1 kilogram.  That makes my work tough.

So, after doing stretches and exercises, I put some ointment on my back and was laying around and thinking.  I talked to someone today who's planning to write a book on discipleship.  I thought I might have some things to say that others would be interested in on the topic. So I think I'll write some of my thoughts out on a blog and see if they develop enough that I could make a book out of it.  What I'd really like to do is see how much interest there would be in my thoughts.  So, I'm going to see what kind of feedback I get.

In order to get feedback, I want to let people know what I'm writing and when I've written some.  So I've set up a twitter account.  In fact I've set up a hootsuite account. (I figure if John Piper's using it that I can try it too.)  That way, I can post to facebook, twitter and linked in all at once.

So follow me on twitter.  My twitter account is @jeffinindia.  Click Follow @jeffinindia
.

Jumping on a Moving Train

Last week, I caught a train to Patna from Siliguri with the Johnsons, a couple moving to Siliguri to work with us. We had an amazing experience I wanted to share with you.

We showed up in the train station in the afternoon at about 1:40 for our 1:50 train. Of course we sat around the platform for over an hour and a half, since the train was late. We were supposed to arrive in Patna at 4:00 AM. I'd made arrangements with my friend, "V" that I'd call him from the station before Patna Junction to let him know when we were getting close. Since I knew the train was running late, I set my alarm for 4AM just in case the train made up some time.

So at 4 AM, I woke up and found the train stopped. I asked someone how long until we get to Patna. They said we were 2 hours away. I asked where we were and they named the place, but it wasn't on the list of scheduled stops. Maybe I should have suspected something because of that, but sometimes when a train is late, it has to stop at other stations to allow another train to pass. So, I went back to sleep, setting my clock for 5, just in case the fellow told me wrong.

I woke up at 5 AM to people discussing the fact that the engine had broken down. People were beginning to flee the train. I asked someone what to do and they said to get on another train. I didn't know for sure that they were right, so I decided to go and look to see if I could find someone who worked for the railways to find out for sure what to do. First I told the Johnsons where I was going, When I started to climb down from the train, I saw that our coach wasn't next to the platform because it's a very small station with a small platform and we were on a long train. When there's no platform, you have to climb down a ladder to the gravel bed beside the tracks. So I climbed down and started walking to the platform which was a couple of hundred yards ahead. There I found an engineer.

He said that the engine had broken down.

I asked, "is another engine coming."

He said in Hindi, "It will take a long time."

When an Indian tells you, it will take a long time, that means it will be an eternity, so I knew we had to figure out another way to get to Patna or we might be sitting there for 12 hours or more. So I asked him, "What can we do?"

 He said, "See that train that's coming, get on it."

"Do I need a ticket?"

"Do you have a ticket for this train?"

"Yes."

"Then just sit in the same coach," he said.

Not knowing how long the train was stopping there, I started walking as fast as I could in my flip flops back to the coach where the Johnsons were and my suitcase was.  As I'm quickly walking, I called them on the phone to inform them to get their stuff together quickly so that we could switch trains.  Then I got on the train, got my stuff, and we all climbed down the ladder from the train to the ground.  We started walking on the railway bed, which is covered with gravel down towards the Air Conditioned Car.  Then the train blew it's whistle and started moving.

I told the Johnsons, we have to get on the train quickly.  We aborted our journey forward towards the Air Conditioned car and started climbing up the ladder onto the non-air conditioned sleeper class car, which was very crowded, but was the nearest entry point to the train.  I saw that with the two of them climbing up and hoisting their luggage up that there was no way I was going to be able to board the train as it was picking up speed and would be moving too fast by the time they got up the ladder.  So I went to the next coach and started to climb up only to find the door was locked. I asked the people to open the door, but they didn't open it.

Then I waited for the next door to come as the train was moving and starting to move pretty fast.  I was actually running beside the train trying to hoist my small bag up onto the train (about 6 or 7 feet up) while I was running alongside the train.  I called out, "Moojay mudud deejeeay!" ("Help me!)

Fortunately the people grabbed my bag for me.  Then I was trying to grab onto the rail on the ladder and get my feet up on the rungs of the ladder while running alongside the train.  I felt like what it must have felt like to be in an old western movie galloping next to a moving train and jumping on it to rob it.  Finally, I got up on the train.

It was packed and there wasn't any place to sit.  I moved towards the doorway that had been locked and stood in the walkway.  The Johnsons started navigating their way down the aisle towards me.  Meanwhile a policeman came and scolded me for getting on the train.  I told him I had a ticket for the other train and the engineer had told me to get on this train.  He then told me that getting on a moving train will result in an accident.  I told him that my friends had already boarded and I couldn't leave them and begged his forgiveness and he moved along.

The Johnsons and I stood there in that doorway for the duration of the journey, which was about 2 hours. 

I told Trish what had happened and she told me how dangerous it was.  Looking back, it was crazy to try to get on a train moving that fast, but in the moment I wasn't thinking about the danger, just that we had to get on that train.  It was an experience I hope to never have again, but what an adventure it was!

God’s Building His Church

One of the things that has been amazing in our journey here in India is seeing how God works.  We once thought that teaching doctrine to uneducated pastors and church leaders was a daunting task. We knew that first we needed to lay a solid understanding of who God is and of the need for faith in Him.  We decided to do this through chronological Bible story telling.  The amazing thing is that through what we thought was foundation laying, we’ve seen God teach people deep theological truth.

Pastor Charles Kujur

Recently, Charles, a pastor we’ve been training,  said, “Joseph passed by many temptations and he did not even commit sin against God. He abides in the Word of God. God blesses us in our lives abundantly, and His blessings are a light which is lifted up that others can glorify God and have respect for God’s people.” It’s amazing that through Bible storytelling, which we sometimes call oral inductive Bible study, Charles understands the preeminence of God and His glory.  He understands that God’s blessings are given so that we might glorify Him. This is an example of the kind of observations many church leaders are now making. 

We go chronologically through 49 Bible stories to help them clearly see God’s redemptive story.  We use an interactive method where we go through the story 3 times. Then we dig into the story to find the spiritual truths. Finally, we make practical and personal application from the story and the spiritual truths.   

The results in the last few months are that many of the participants are digging deeper into God’s word. They understand deep concepts like the sovereignty of God, His faithfulness, the way He plans and accomplishes His plans, His mercy, and the way He foreshadows or gives examples of things to come.  One student observed that just as there was only one door onto Noah’s ark by which men could be saved from destruction, there is also only one way to be saved from the penalty of our sins – entering into God’s salvation through Jesus Christ.  Another realized that the tar that covered the inside and outside of the ark provided covering and protection.  In the same way Christ’s blood provides us protection and covering.  These aren’t lessons we taught them.  We simply taught them how to meditate on scripture and ask the right questions and they came to know the truth by meditation and revelation of the Spirit of God.  This is exciting to us, because they are learning to feed themselves, a necessary step towards being able to teach others to do the same.

Just as Charles said, God blesses as people abide in His Word. The result is that the church is built up.  God is building His church.  Through the people who are His church God is exalting Himself.  We praise God for the opportunity to be a part of this. We also thank Him for all who are participating in making this possible.

Lessons From The Quest for Authentic Manhood

Today we started the first of a 24 week series called Men's Fraternity: The Quest for Authentic Manhood at our office. From the first lesson there's a few truths I want to share.

First off he shared what it's going to take to get through the 24 weeks. I think 2 of these are essential for success in any endeavor worth doing:

• toughness - to stick to it and see it through
• courage - to examine yourself & adjust
• vulnerability - willingness to be real with others

The third you can say is necessary for personal growth, which is always accelerated in the context of relationship.

The other lesson comes from the two statements, "Manhood is in a state of confusion," and "Confused men create major problems." Isn't it always true that problems result from confusion or a lack of knowledge or belief in the truth? Think about it and you'll see that every major problem derives from this.