The Best News in the World - Bracelet Edition

As Christians, we have the best news in the universe. But do we present it as it is meant to be presented?

While we were in Peru, we made a craft with the villagers often referred to as a "Gospel Bracelet." I would then get up and, using the bracelet, explain God's great news for all humanity. This week, I'd like to share with you how I shared the message with them.
YELLOW - GOD
God is our creator, our maker (Acts 17:22-31). As our maker, he has the right to command how we should live. And he expects us all to live according to his way.

Also, our Creator loves us and wants to be a Father to us. He wants us to know him and be with him.

But to be with him and to know him, we must live by the rules that he set forth, which are perfectly summarized by Jesus in this way: "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:29-31).

Basically, God expects us to love him more than anything else in the world, and he expects us to love others and always do what's best for them and serve them.

BLACK - SIN
Sin is not living up to God's standards. Romans 3:23 says that "all have sinned." Every person on the planet has not lived by God's standard of life. We have not loved him more than anything, and we have failed to love each other with selfless service.

By not living God's way, we have earned his punishment. "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). God must cast us "away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" where we "will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). This is called Hell, and it is not a pleasant place to be.

Yes, God loves us and wants us to be with him, but he also must punish sin. He is holy and cannot stand sin (see Habakkuk 1:13). He must punish wrongdoing if he is to remain righteous. We cannot fix the wrong we have done. Going to church and doing good things cannot save us from the punishment.

RED - CHRIST
God is the only one who can deal with the problem of our sin. And he sent Jesus Christ as the solution.

Jesus came into the world and lived the way God wanted him to - he did not sin. Because he lived a perfect life, he could die in our place and pay for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21). After dying for our sins, he rose back to life (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

Because Jesus died for our sins, he is now the bridge to God (1 Peter 3:18). He is the only way that we can get back to God.

WHITE - CLEANSING
John 3:36 tells us that if we believe Christ for salvation, then we will receive eternal life. God will forgive our sins and make us "white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18).

What does it mean to believe? It means to turn away from everything that we have done wrong and everything we have tried to do right and to not trust in that to save us. It means to trust in Jesus and Jesus ONLY for forgiveness and salvation from the penalty of our sins. It means to trust who he is and what he has done as our only hope. It means to receive him as Savior and Lord of our lives.

When we do this, God says that we will "become children of God" (John 1:12). He calls us his children, and he becomes our Father. He will not cast us to Hell for our sins and will instead let us be with him in Heaven after we die.

GREEN - NEW LIFE
Because of what God has done for us, we do not stay the same. We begin to grow and become like he intended us to be. We learn to love God as we should through reading the Bible, through prayer, through obeying his commands, and through worshiping with other believers. We also learn to love others and serve them through good deeds and through telling others about Jesus.

HAVE YOU BELIEVED THIS MESSAGE? WILL YOU? WHY OR WHY NOT? HOW CAN YOU SHARE THIS MESSAGE WITH SOMEONE YOU KNOW THIS WEEK?

The Greatest Obstacle to Missions

President's chapels were always one of my favorites at Columbia International University. Our president at the time, Dr. Murray (mentioned in the last post) spoke with passion and conviction, always challenging us to share our faith or be involved with missions or live godly lives.

And that week's title (the same as the title of this blog) sparked much curiosity and discussion as to what he would say. My friends and I would joke that he was going to just say "YOU! YOU are the greatest obstacle to missions! Now GO!" I'm sure if he had, he would have still done it in a fair and biblical way that would have been convicting.

But that's not what he said at all. In fact, he led us to a rather unlikely passage, a passage that until that day I hadn't connected with missions, nor seen as an obstacle to it. He took us to Matthew 9:36-38:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Get Involved In Missions
Prayerlessness is the greatest obstacle to missions. So in this final post I just want to leave you with a simple challenge: Get involved. If you are already involved, great. If not, take the first step to becoming a "world Christian" by starting small: prayer.

Start praying for the nations. Start praying for missionaries. Start praying for God to raise up missionaries to go and work his harvest field. Just start praying. Prayer is a powerful gift of God that unleashes his purposes on the earth.

Disclaimer
Prayer is a dangerous thing. You may find, as I did, that when you begin to pray for peoples who don't have the gospel, God might do something strange. He may call you to go (see Matthew 10, immediately following Jesus' call to prayer).

Resources
I would like to give you a couple of resources that will help you begin your journey of prayer for the nations:
Operation World - an annual prayer guide that walks you through the world, giving stats and prayer requests for every political nation in the world. A good guide available online or in print.
Joshua Project - daily prayer focused for unreached people groups. Great site with great info on the work left undone.
Also, your church may have prayer guides/letters for missionaries they support.

However you do it, just be sure that you pray that the task would be accomplished, that God's glory would be revealed among the nations.

How do you pray for missions? Are there other resources you know of that will help others pray for the nations?

The Best Birthday Ever

Today was our final day of ministry with the Rockwells among the Quechua of Peru. It has been an intense week physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Along with it being our last day, it was also my birthday.

We went to a national park this morning, where Danial partook of as many climbing activities as possible, including his desire to scale mid-way up the canyon walls (he did not do this though). We had a picnic lunch in a windy, glorious canyon that brought huge refreshing to my soul. I still don't get how anyone can look at something like this and say there's no God. After lunch, we went to our final village of the week.

Everything went normally, except that we had a group of adults that were sitting across from the children who also made gospel bracelets. I explained the meaning of the beads as Larry translated into Quechua. Afterwards, some more dialogue went on, and I stood by and prayed that God would open these people's eyes. One of our drivers, who's a believer, shared his testimony and further challenged these adults to trust in Christ alone. Larry told me after we had prayed that it was a very good thing, and that God was doing great things. As we were sharing the gospel, it seemed that several of the ladies were being pricked to the heart. I don't know yet what the final outcome was, but I could tell that the Holy Spirit was moving on them.

The Quechua people are a people without the hope of the gospel. They are without Christ and cut off from the God who created the world in which they live. As we were driving down the mountain back to the center here, I could hardly keep from crying. My heart breaks as I consider these people - and all of those who don't have Christ. And as my heart breaks for them and my desire to see them saved grows, the only cry of my heart is "Here am I! Send me" (Isaiah 6:8). Please pray for me as God leads me to wherever he would have me spread the glory of his name!

Day 3 with the Quechua

Sorry for last night's silence; the internet wasn't working here.

Yesterday went well - we went to one village in the afternoon and did our VBS program. There were over 20 children there, and we made the gospel bracelets and I explained the gospel to them. Larry and I had some good conversation about the Quechua and what they believe, and I found it interesting that they don't really have a concept of life after death. Coming down the mountain, as we drove by soem of the people, I found my heart breaking for them, for their hopeless situation, and for their need to know Christ, the greatest treasure and hope-giver in the universe.

It sounds like the missions bug may be biting another member of our team...Danial has expressed great interest in coming back and possibly making it longer term. Praise God for his work!

Today will be our last day with the Rockwells, as we take an overnight bus back to Lima. I will hopefully get in a final post before we leave, but if not, I will give a final update on returning to the States.

Please pray for us, that we would be faithful to finish the work that God has for us here. Pray for traveling mercies tonight and that we would all be able to rest. We will be touring Lima a little tomorrow and then taking an overnight flight back to the States. So pray that God would protect us and more importantly that he would give us a chance to lift up his name!

Harvesting Wheat and Planting Seeds of the Gospel

We helped harvest wheat today. That's something I never thought I'd be doing. We hauled wheat from two fields to a threshing area which seemed like a pretty good hike, given the geography - including wheat on some pretty steep slopes. It was a grand experience to see life in a simpler time. The Quechua are not accustomed to machines that do the work or make it easier. No, everything is done by hand. We all thought of the story of Ruth and how the people then were to leave some behind for strangers. It helps the story to come alive a little more to do firsthand what they were doing back then. Our labors have created in-roads to the village for Larry to be able to follow up on, which no doubt will lead to future opportunities for the gospel.

After that, we went to another village, where we were also granted great success. We played soccer with the locals and then performed our skit about the story of the Prodigal Son to them. Larry gave some explanation for them, as well as reading the Bible story in the Quechua language. We then did our craft, and I was given the opportunity to explain the craft, thus sharing the Gospel. It was an incredible experience to be able to tell the Quechua of a God who created them and tell them how they can be in right relationship with him. More games followed, and as we left the village, Larry told us that they had been invited back to show the villagers a film series on Genesis.

All in all, today was a great day. God is really using our team to enhance the Rockwell's ministry, and he's growing all of us to rely on him more and to be bold with the message of the Gospel.

We have two more days left here, and it's easy to do a couple of things.

One, we can focus on the end in sight and lose sight of the things that God has us here to do. We can easily become distracted by thoughts of sleeping in our own beds or being somewhere that we know the language. In doing so, we will not be so willing to pour ourselves out now while God has us here. So pray that we would not look at coming home and let our own desire for the many comforts we enjoy to distract us from our work.

The other danger, especially after a day that went as well as today, is that we could think we have things down. We can begin to rely on ourselves and our own agenda, and not look to God as the source of the strength that we need to persevere. So pray that we wouldn't get complacent but still look to God to equip us for this good work.

The Best Laid Plans

I've often said that plans look good on paper. They'll work just as we have foreseen and envisioned them to happen. That is, until you add the human element.

I've learned over the years though that just because plans don't go the way we want them doesn't mean that we have failed. In fact, often God causes us to rely on him instead of our own abilities.

I would say that today was a lesson in reliance. We've planned out how we think the VBS program should go in the Quechua villages. We've divided into teams and each been assigned our roles. We've planned our respective parts so that we can be effective in the ministry that God has us here for.

But today, we did not follow those plans. And it was frustrating at times - at least for me. I've learned to generally go with the flow over the years, and so I was able to cope with the necessary adjustments. But, you see, I had this plan. We were going to come in, engage the kids, share the gospel via translation, and they were supposed to get saved. Whole villages of children were supposed to come to Christ. It was supposed to look a lot like the book of Acts.

God, however, had other plans. One part of his plan was to remind me that, while I am here to help spread the gospel, our ultimate aim is to assist the Rockwells in the ministry that God has for them. And Larry was encouraged by what happened today.

We went to two villages, and we did our craft in each one. The craft was the gospel bracelets with colored beads for each part of the gospel. Gold reminds us of heaven, where God is. Black reminds us of the sin that keeps us from God. Red is Christ's blood shed for us. White is the purity that we have when we believe in Jesus and he takes away our sin. And green reminds us to grow in Christ-likeness. So we were able to share the basics of the gospel message with many children today - and even some of their parents. But more importantly, we've helped Larry and Sandy make connections that they will be able to follow up on and continue to show Christ to.

I am humbled and gladdened by God's change of plans. We have had a very effective day today, in spite of our plans not "working." God's plans are far greater anyway, and he knows better than we what to do.

As we approach tomorrow, I have no idea what to expect. But I will be leaning a little more on God to guide us and equip us to serve the Rockwells as they seek to reach the Quechua of Peru.

Please continue to lift us up. We are daily in need of God's grace to accomplish the good works that HE has for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

Two Travel Days and a Day of Rest

Friday was spent in travel from the States to Lima, Peru. Then, we spent Saturday riding a bus from Lima to Huaraz. We arrived late, tired from the days' travels and hungry. The Rockwells fed us and then sent us to bed.

Today, we attended a Peruvian church, where our team leader Phil spoke on John 13:34-35, charging us to love one another. The Rockwells then treated us to lunch - I had some authentic chicken fajitas.

The weather and the scenery here are fantastic. I hope to post some pictures later.

The afternoon was pretty relaxed. Danial and Phil decided to hike up a mountain, and Taylor and I had the chance to ride up with Larry Rockwell into the village where Larry was hoping to share the gospel with a woman in one of the Quechua villages. We ended up going to someone else's house, where Larry showed a video on creation, read the story of Christ's birth and then read John 3:16-21 from the Quechua New Testament. It was an incredible experience to be a part of, to see firsthand some of Larry's work.

After dinner we met to discuss our team devotional, today's topic focusing on why we are here. It was settled in all our minds that we are here, that the goal of this missions trip and all others, is that God would receive glory from the nations (see Psalm 67:3-5). We then each shared why it was important for us to be on this mission trip. It was a delight to see how God had led the seven of us to come to Huaraz, Peru.

Tomorrow will mark our first day of work. We'll be going up to one of the villages and will have an afternoon VBS. Our craft is making gospel bracelets with colored beads to represent the different parts of the gospel message. We will also be teaching (I'll be covering the Story of the Bible, and Phil will be teaching on Luke 15). we'll also be playing games and performing a skit.

Please pray for us:

• that we would be well-rested and healthy. The altitude has affected me and probably to some extent all of us. So far no other health problems have arisen.
• that we would be faithful to what God has called us to do. We will be serving people of another culture and will be well outside of our comfort zones. We need to be able to pour ourselves into this work and pour ourselves out to the Quechua people.
• that the Lord would bring many to know him. Pray for souls to be saved and lives to be transformed. The gospel is powerful and able to save (Romans 1:16). Pray that by God's Spirit The Quechua will put their trust in Jesus and turn from their idols and spirit-worship to serve the living God (see 1 Thessalonians 1:9)

Thank you for your prayers, and may God use them to bless the Quechua of Peru. Hope to report tomorrow night on how our first day went.