For Parents of Missionaries

Jim Elliot was a missionary in Ecuador in the 1950’s. He felt God’s call to seek and save the lost. He was passionate about missions and longed to be on the mission field. He felt that God wanted to use him in a powerful way. And He did.

Like many young missionaries, he was discouraged from going to the mission field. When friends and family could no longer convince him to avoid the dangers of jungle life in South America, many well-meaning brothers and sisters in the US pointed to the great need for preaching the Gospel near home. Nevertheless, he was unshaken in his commitment to serve the Lord in South America.

In a letter to his parents, he wrote the following words:

“I do not wonder that you were saddened at the word of my going to South America. This is nothing else than what the Lord Jesus warned us of when He told the disciples that they must become so infatuated with the kingdom and following Him that all other allegiances must become as though they were not. And He never excluded the family tie. In fact, those loves which we regard as closest, He told us must become as hate in comparison with our desires to uphold His cause.

“Grieve not, then, if your sons seem to desert you, but rejoice, rather, seeing the will of God done gladly. Remember how the Psalmist described children? He said that they were as a heritage from the Lord, and that every man should be happy who had his quiver full of them. And what is a quiver full of but arrows? And what are arrows for but to shoot? So, with the strong arms of prayer, draw the bowstring back and let the arrows fly – all of them, straight at the Enemy’s hosts.

“Surely those who know the great passionate heart of Jehovah must deny their own loves to share in the expression of His” (page 132, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life & Testament of Jim Elliot by Elisabeth Elliot). 

I am thankful for parents who train their children up in the Lord in such a way that they choose to serve Him in foreign lands. I am thankful for the parents who in quiet prayer let go of their children and allow them to serve as Christ’s ambassadors far from home. I pray for those parents who will some day have to decide if having their children close to home is worth more than having spiritual grandchildren all over the world.

Parents of missionaries, join with us, your children in sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ! Strengthen us with your prayers. Support us with words of encouragement. Send us with your blessing so that we might be a blessing to others. 

The Writings of Jim Elliot

I am impressed by the men and women in history who have literally given their lives for Christ. I am talking about the martyrs of the Christian faith. I'm not talking about people who longed to die for Christ - the real martyrs were merely interested in living for Him and dying for Him was natural consequence of their living faith. I am afraid that many today would espouse such a faith but when it came down to it, their faith would falter. I wonder if my own faith would make the cut. 

This week I have been reading the life and journals of Jim Elliot - a man who was slain by the very people to whom He went to share the Good News of life in Christ! Jim Elliot was a simple young man. He did not have postgraduate degrees in theology and he was certainly not the founder of "Jim Elliot Ministries." He was a man who was deeply touched by God's Word and moved by His Spirit. Here are a few sections of his journals that have greatly touched me this last week:

A prayer: "Lord, make my way prosperous, not that I achieve high station, but that my life may be an exhibit to the value of knowing God." 

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." 

When Jim Elliot went to college he was seeking a college degree. But the most important degree he could receive would be the A.U.G. degree - the Approved Unto God degree. 

Jim set his alarm every night to waken him in time for prayer and study of the Bible. "None of it gets to be 'old stuff,'" he wrote, "for it is Christ in print, the Living Word. We wouldn't think of rising in the morning without a face-wash, but we often neglect aht purgative cleansing of the Word of the Lord. It wakes us up to our responsibility." 

"How wonderful to know that Christianity is more than a padded pew or a dim cathedral, but that it is a real, living, daily experience which goes on from grace to grace. And its goal -- sometimes seemingly distant, but bright and unfading, lit up and glowing with the beauties of the Sun of Righteousness." 

"God is still on His throne, we're still on His footstool, and there's only a knee's distance between!" 

"Cold prayers, like cold suitors, are seldom effective in their aims." 

"What a brutish master sin is, taking the joy from one's life, stealing money and health, giving promise of tomorrow's pleasures and finally leading one onto the rotten planking that overlies the mouth of the pit. It is with honest praise to God I can look up tonight and rejoice in His loving-kindness in delivering me from a life of useless frustration and the ultimate agonies of the gnawing, undying worms of remorse and regret." 

"Missionaries are very human folks, just doing what they are asked. Simply a bunch of nobodies trying to exalt Somebody." 

In studying the separation of the Levites in Deuteronomy 9 and 10, and of their having "no inheritance," he wrote, "Lord, if Thou wilt but allow me to take this set-apart place, by Thy grace, I shall covet no inheritance. Nothing but Christ." 

"No one warns young people to follow Adam's example. He waited till God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this 'being asleep' in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all. Instead we are set as bloodhounds after a partner, considering everyone we see until our minds are so concerned with the sex problem that we can talk of nothing else when bull-session time comes around. It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women -- but he can think of them as he ought -- as sisters, not as sparring partners." 

"Fix your eyes on the rising Morning Star. Don't be disappointed at anything or overelated, either. Live every day as if the Son of Man were at the door, and gear your thinking to the fleeting moment. Just how can it be redeemed? Walk as if the next step would carry you across the threshold of Heaven. Pray. That saint who advances on his knees never retreats." 

"Our young men are going into the professional fields because they don't 'feel called' to the mission field. We don't need a call; we need a kick in the pants." 

Elisabeth Elliot,  Shadow of the Almighty: The Life & Testament of Jim Elliot. NYC: HarperOne, 1979. 

10 Ways to Raise a Missionary

10 Ways to Raise a Missionary

1.  Share you authentic faith with your children through joint service and worship.

2.  Be generous with your time, possessions and friendship, in other words, be hospitable.

3.  Serve people who are different than you, culturally, linguistically and economically.

4.  Expose your children to different foods, sports and forms of entertainment.

5.  Talk with your children about current events in the news and pray for these things.

6.  Encourage your child to see the spiritual benefits of learning a second language.

7.  Teach your children to develop a Christian worldview, to think with the mind of Christ.

8.  Use your family vacation time to visit small congregations and serve other people.

9.  Encourage your children to do a short-term mission trip in college to a foreign field.

10.  And most importantly, pray for and with your children.

10 Ways to Raise a Child not Interested in Missions

1.  Warm the pews of your local congregations on Sunday and make your children go with you.

2.  Make yourself very busy, be stingy with God’s blessings and don’t invite people into your home.

3.  Stay in your comfort zone and stay away from people who are different than you.

4.  Avoid trying new foods, sports, and forms of entertainment that are not American.

5.  Take an interest solely in your own country and think ethnocentrically about world events.

6.  Encourage your child to learn a second language in order to make more money after college.

7.  Let the world teach your children how to think and to follow the different fads and fashions. 

8.  Use your family vacation for personal benefit only! It’s all about you and your “needs!”

9.  Encourage your children to do get a summer job to be more competitive in the job market.

10.  Wish the best for your children and encourage them to make something of themselves.

www.jonathanhanegan.com

The Mission in Argentina

This is a video I made about God's Mission in Argentina. Will you pray for our work?

East Caracas Church of Christ

Here is the video that I made to celebrate our 8th Anniversary at the East Caracas Church of Christ! I hope you enjoy it! For more information, please visit: www.idcVenezuela.org

Iglesia de Cristo en el Este from Jonathan Hanegan on Vimeo.

Jesus, Our Rosetta Stone

Step back for a moment and contemplate God’s point of view. A spirit unbound by time and space, God had borrowed material objects now and then – a burning bush, a pillar of fire – to make an obvious point on planet Earth. Each time, God adopted the object in order to convey a message and then moved on. In Jesus, something new happened: God became one of the planet’s creatures, an event unparalleled, unheard-of, unique in the fullest sense of the word.

The God who fills the universe imploded to become a peasant baby who, like every infant who has ever lived, had to learn to walk and talk and dress himself. In the incarnation, God’s Son deliberately “handicapped” himself, exchanging omniscience for a brain that learned Aramaic phoneme y phoneme, omnipresence for two legs and an occasional donkey. Instead of overseeing a hundred billion galaxies at once, he looked out on a narrow alley in Nazareth, a pile of rocks in the Judean desert, or a crowded street of Jerusalem.

Because of Jesus we need never question God’s desire for intimacy. Does God really want close contact with us? Jesus gave up Heaven for it. In person he reestablished the original link between God and human beings, between seen and unseen worlds.

In a fine analogy, H. Richard Niehubr likened the revelation of God in Christ to the Rosetta stone. Before its discovery scholars could only guess at the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics. One unforgettable day they uncovered a dark stone that rendered the same text in three different languages. By comparing the translations side by side, they mastered hieroglyphics and could now see clearly into a world they had known only in a fog.

Niebuhr goes on to say that Jesus allows us to “reconstruct our faith.” We can trust God because we trust Jesus. If we doubt God, or find him incomprehensible, unknowable, the very best cure is to gaze steadily at Jesus, the Rosetta stone of faith.

--

Philip Yancey
Reaching for the Invisible God (135-39)

Seminar in East Caracas

Living the Moment to the Fullest

I have been a little anxious lately, a little impatient. Well, possibly more than just a little impatient! These words of Henri Nouwen are a great remember to live the moment to the fullest:

Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control: the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not a waiting passivity until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somewhere else. Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.

Let us live the moment to the fullest! 

Happy New Year!

The Intimate Friendship of Jesus

WHEN Jesus is near, all is well and nothing seems difficult. When He is absent, all is hard. When Jesus does not speak within, all other comfort is empty, but if He says only a word, it brings great consolation.

Did not Mary Magdalene rise at once from her weeping when Martha said to her: “The Master is come, and calleth for thee”? Happy is the hour when Jesus calls one from tears to joy of spirit.

How dry and hard you are without Jesus! How foolish and vain if you desire anything but Him! Is it not a greater loss than losing the whole world? For what, without Jesus, can the world give you? Life without Him is a relentless hell, but living with Him is a sweet paradise. If Jesus be with you, no enemy can harm you.

He who finds Jesus finds a rare treasure, indeed, a good above every good, whereas he who loses Him loses more than the whole world. The man who lives without Jesus is the poorest of the poor, whereas no one is so rich as the man who lives in His grace.

It is a great art to know how to converse with Jesus, and great wisdom to know how to keep Him. Be humble and peaceful, and Jesus will be with you. Be devout and calm, and He will remain with you. You may quickly drive Him away and lose His grace, if you turn back to the outside world. And, if you drive Him away and lose Him, to whom will you go and whom will you the seek as a friend? You cannot live well without a friend, and if Jesus be not your friend above all else, you will be very sad and desolate. 

Thus, you are acting foolishly if you trust or rejoice in any other. Choose the opposition of the whole world rather than offend Jesus. Of all those who are dear to you, let Him be your special love. Let all things be loved for the sake of Jesus, but Jesus for His own sake.

Jesus Christ must be loved alone with a special love for He alone, of all friends, is good and faithful. For Him and in Him you must love friends and foes alike, and pray to Him that all may know and love Him.

Never desire special praise or love, for that belongs to God alone Who has no equal. Never wish that anyone’s affection be centered in you, nor let yourself be taken up with the love of anyone, but let Jesus be in you and in every good man. Be pure and free within, unentangled with any creature.

You must bring to God a clean and open heart if you wish to attend and see how sweet the Lord is. Truly you will never attain this happiness unless His grace prepares you and draws you on so that you may forsake all things to be united with Him alone.

When the grace of God comes to a man he can do all things, but when it leaves him he becomes poor and weak, abandoned, as it were, to affliction.

Yet, in this condition he should not become dejected or despair. On the contrary, he should calmly await the will of God and bear whatever befalls him in praise of Jesus Christ, for after winter comes summer, after night, the day, and after the storm, a great calm.

by Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ