This past Sunday it was International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. All over the world many Christians were gathered in churches or in other groups and prayed for the millions of Christians who are still experiencing intense persecution because they love Jesus Christ.
The first time I heard about persecuted Christians was maybe 20 years ago, and the stories I heard stuck with me. Since then I’ve had a strong interest in knowing about, praying for and supporting my Christian brothers and sisters who pay a heavy price for following Jesus in many countries in the world. I have been supporting Open Doors for many years, and I can’t think of many organizations that I support more fully than Open Doors which was started by the little Dutchman, Brother Andrew in 1955. Each year they publish a list called the World Watch List that tells of the 50 countries where most Christians face the fiercest persecution. This is a sad list of 50 countries where Christians have few rights and where many of them experience severe persecutions.
Here is the World Watch List for this year:
I encourage all of you to check out Open Doors’ website and find info of how you can support, encourage and bring hope to persecuted Christians all over the world.
John 15:18-20: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you”
2. Timothy 3:12: “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted”
Romans 8:35-39: “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I thought these three videos complement each other very well. First, a very sharp, sadly true and thought provoking teaching from the lead vocal of Casting Crowns, Mark Hall, about the slow fade that so often happens for Christians when they start to listen to what non-Christians and Satan believe and think and slowly start ignoring the life-giving truths of God:
Keith Green talks about some of the same in this song where he laments the fact that so many of us Christians seem to lose the fire we may have had early on in our walk with Christ, but he comes to a place in the song, and came to that place at the end of his too short life on earth, where he saw that it was and is only the grace of God that we can trust to always sustain and cause us to not fall into sin and stuff that will destroy our lives and bring death in our relationships with God, ourselves and other people (Romans 6:23):
And finally this simple song about what to do when life is difficult, and you’re tempted to listen to the lies of the enemy who wants to bring you into the mud of mediocrity, sin, compromises and counterfeits. All we can do is turning our eyes upon Jesus, the initiator, author, sustainer and perfecter or our faith (Hebrews 12:2):
Blessings, Torben – who is so glad that my relationship with God is not based on what I do/say/think/feel or don’t do/say/think/feel. I’m so glad that everything is built on Jesus who never changes!
I thought I would post some of the beautiful images of one of God’s daily, but extravagantly beautiful masterpieces that I took at the Black Sea in Bulgaria a few weeks ago.
What a privilege to start a new week by sharing life with my colleagues at Grace Ministries International. That all of us can sit and share openly about our lives. Tears were shared. Laughs were laughed. Prayers were exchanged. Life is messy. Spiritual life is often very messy. No simple solutions and answers will satisfy the deepest of our questions. And yet everything is extremely simple. But hard to accept.
It’s a thing of beauty when we come together and share openly. Without excuses, explanations, promises or any other fig leafs. When we encounter each other from the nakedness that we were meant to always live in. The unashamed nakedness that says: “this is what’s going on in my life”. The place we can experience where we don’t have to hide, but where we – as God’s broken cup family – can pour out our hearts to each other and feel safe in knowing that I am neither capable of fixing my own cup and mess nor somebody else’s. All we can do is with a doubting, shaking finger point each other in the direction of Jesus Christ. He is the only hope for all of us. I am not the hope for anybody. I have many people asking me questions about spiritual life. And more and more often I get to say the most freeing words possible: “I don’t know, but I know God knows”. I don’t have to know. I thought I did. 30 years were spent trying to save myself and other people. I was a very poor excuse for a Savior. It was never my job. But I thought it was. I saw God as incompetent and weak, and I saw myself as the most competent person around, so obviously it fell on my plate to fix myself and others. I only managed – as is always the case when we created beings try to fix another created being – to make a big mess out of all of it. Because I didn’t have the power. I prayed for the power, and God said no. The power is his. He doesn’t want to share his power with us. His desire is to display his power through us. Through our cracks. Through our weaknesses. Through the mess we make.
Without my questions, struggles, failures and weaknesses, God’s light couldn’t shine through me. All people would see if I lived a perfect life would be me. They would admire me and put me on a pedestal. But that’s not God’s desire for my life. And, at the end of the day, it’s not my desire either. Not the real me. The real me, at times very well hidden deep in my spirit, wants to bring God glory. The real me wants to be the earthen vessel that God can do his work through. The real me rejoices when God does miracles through me, because I get to experience God’s power at work.
So this remains the journey of brokenness. Embracing myself when I stumble and fail. Accepting that I will always have unanswered questions. Understanding that God doesn’t have to answer all my why-questions. My experience tells me that he seldom answers those. Living with the fact that I don’t have it all together and being humble enough to rejoice in the fact that God loves me and does work through me in light of all my weaknesses and failures. Not just in spite of them.
The journey of brokenness for me seems like a long journey. People talk about a short season of brokenness in their lives. That may be true that they experienced intense brokenness for a shorter period of time. But still, brokenness remains a life long journey. My human will is strong, and it’s so tempting for me to listen to my flesh, elevate myself to a position and seek to have my needs for love, acceptance, worth and security met my way. I did it my way, Frank Sinatra sings. The Bible calls that flesh, and it says – and rightly so – that it will lead to death (Romans 6:23). Death in my relationship to God, myself and other people. When I do things my way and eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil instead of resting and eating from the tree of life, I will always experience this death and this felt separation from God, other people and even myself. I end up feeling out of touch with my real self inside of me.
So, God, once again I ask you to be the courage and strength in me that causes me to stand and accept what you’re doing and not running away from you and your ways. You know that the real me wants what you want, but my flesh and my wounded emotions tell me to take a hike and do things my way for my sake. I ask you to continue this breaking process. I don’t say this easily, because I know how much it hurts. But I also know the life it brings to me, and even to other people around me, when I rest in my broken state of being and allow you to be all I need in me and through me. So I ask you to continue to break me and to never give me more success and a higher position than I can handle. I want to live in the honest humility of knowing who I am in you. The humility of freely saying: I am the disciple Jesus loves! Nothing more. Nothing less.
Thanks that you embrace me in my messiness. If I had to have it all together before I could encounter you, it would never happen. Thank you that you love me on days of great celebration and rejoicing and of days of great self-pity and much complaining.
This is my life. This is my sacrifice to you. I thank you that you tell me that it is a pleasing sacrifice to you, because it’s honest.
Dear blog readers! It’s about time that I get back to updating this blog site. I have been traveling to Bulgaria and Ukraine these past two weeks, and haven’t had much writing time on hand. Now I’m back in the States, and as usual after one of these missions trips I am filled with things that have touched me, challenged me, excited me and made me wonder. And I will be writing about some of these experiences these next few days.
As I’ve been writing about before, it’s interesting to see how God continues to fulfill the global calling that he has given me. Bulgaria ended up being the 40th country that I’ve visited in my almost 33 years on Planet Earth. Absolutely overwhelming to think about that I’ve visited 40 countries already and that I’ve been allowed to minister God’s grace to people in many of them. I’m delighted that God continues to give me opportunities to go to the nations of the world and minister to his children and other people I run into. In reality Jeannette and I just don’t have the type of money we need to make these trips happen. But God doesn’t care a whole lot about my perception of reality. He has his reality. And in his reality money is not an issue. I’m sitting in my friend’s Tim Galloway’s office here at Grace Ministries International since my own office downstairs is still recovering from the recent flooding in the state of Georgia. Tim has these wise words posted on his wall:
“God always finances His plans. Where God guides, God provides. God never orders something that He doesn’t pay for”
Amen brother! I need to be reminded of these truths often. And I know that it’s true. I see it in my own life. In 2009 this poor missionary got to share the good news of identity, life and freedom in Jesus Christ in countries as diverse as the United States, Denmark, Greenland, Nigeria, Bulgaria and Ukraine! I am in awe of how God unfolds his plans in my life. I am amazed that he continues to give me opportunities to share him with the gifts he has given me. I was excited to see all the good stuff he is doing through other Grace-ministers from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Croatia, England and the United States during our conference in Bulgaria. What exciting times we live in! God is changing this world from within, one individual at a time. More and more people are daring to ask questions such as: “there must be more than this?” and find the answers they’re looking for in the very person of Jesus Christ.
I’m excited to see the next 40 countries God wants to take me to
Blessings, Torben – who was so tired after coming home from traveling that he ended up putting his cell phone in the washing machine. Somehow that didn’t help the performance of that device….but thanks to some good Facebook friends I am already getting a different phone today!
It was one of those key moments in life for this dad and his little girl who were watching a baseball game a few days ago in Philadelphia, United States of America. He catches a foul ball, and the rule is that he can keep it as a souvenir. To baseball fans it’s a big deal to catch a ball used in a Major League Baseball game. And he is celebrating with his friends seated around him before he gives the ball to his three year old daughter who wants to see daddy’s new ball…Watch this video and enjoy the beautiful reaction of this young father to her daughter’s action:
He could’ve yelled at her. He could’ve shown his disappointment. He could’ve rejected her. But he didn’t. He chose to show her that she was much more important than the gift he had just given her that she had rejected unaware of its value.
To me this is a beautiful picture of my relationship to God. He gives me many good gifts every day. And I often don’t use them or throw them away, because I’m unaware of the value of what I have received from my Father.
Many people believe that God is disappointed with them. I used to think so too. Satan had used a line from a song that went like this: “when God looks at me, he sees me with sorrow, always afraid, always running away“. That’s how I viewed God. He was disappointed in me. But God is not disappointed in me, even when I don’t receive, misuse or reject his good and valuable gifts.
I once asked a group of discipleship students from different nations what they thought God would think of them if they fell asleep while reading in their Bibles. Sadly, many answered that God would be disappointed in them that they couldn’t stay awake and scorn them for their weak faith. A Ukrainian man who had only been a Christian for a few months raised his hand and said: “I would imagine that a good father would be happy to have his child fall asleep in his arms. I think God feels the same way”.
God delights in you no matter what you do, say, think or feel!
Zephaniah 3:17: “For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs“
Blessings, Torben – who hopes that I will respond like the Phillies’ fan dad when I experience this type of key moments with my sons or daughters some day!
It’s been a bit more than a year and a half since this blog site saw the light of the cyber space day. I thought I would give you, dear reader, a chance to listen to a little devotion that I did a few weeks ago where I talked about the reality of my brokenness, the reality that I don’t know everything there is to know about living my life as a follower of Christ, and the places I go to when I’m just plain, old disappointed in myself and how I live my life.
You are very welcome to listen to this devotion here on Grace Ministries International’s website.
Here is the quote that I read in the devotion plus a few other quotes that talk about the truths that I reflect on in the devotion.
“Jesus, my brother and Lord, I pray as I write these words the grace to be truly poor before you, to recognize and accept my weakness and humanness, to forgo the indecent luxury of self-hatred, to celebrate your mercy, and trust in your power when I am at my weakest, to rely on your love no matter what I do, to seek no escapes from my innate poverty, to accept loneliness when it comes instead of seeking substitutes, to live peacefully without clarity or assurance, to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in my life fade away, to belong no more to myself, not to desert my post when I give the appearance of staying at it, to cling to my humanity, to accept the limitations and full responsibility of being a human being – really human and really poor in Christ our Lord” (Brennan Manning in Reflections for Ragamuffins)
“Your real new self will not come as you’re looking for it. It’ll come as You look for Him (Christ). Only in Him will I know who I am” (C. S. Lewis)
“And now, with God’s help, I shall become myself” (Søren Kierkegaard)
“My primary identity rests on what God has done for me through Christ” (Brennan Manning).
I hope that God will bless you and speak to you through listening to what He has been teaching me.
I have been thinking some about a verse from Romans chapter 6. It’s verse 23, and it goes like this:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
Typically this verse is used in an evangelism context where Christians talk to non-Christians about the fact that if you choose to stay in your sin you’re going to end your life in Hell (‘death’ in the verse). The fact is, however, that this verse is not spoken to non-Christians, but to Christians. It’s a part of Paul’s letter to the Roman church, and it talks about realities that we as Christians experience today as well. The verse talks about clear choices with clear consequences.
If I choose sin and choose to live according to who I used to be (a sinful person with a sinful nature), and not according to the truth of who I am now (a new creation, 2. Corinthians 5:17, who wants to do what God wants to do, Ezekiel 36:26-27), I experience death. What does ‘death’ mean? Death in a biblical understanding often means ‘lack of life’. And in this verse it’s talking about how a believer, when he or she chooses to sin, chooses to live as a hypocrite (hypocrite=not living according to who you really are), you experience death in your relationships to God, to yourself and to other people.
How does this look like? It’s very practical stuff. If I choose to ignore what the Holy Spirit is telling me is the best thing to do, and I choose to sin, the results are simply worse relationships with God, myself and other people. I can’t be as open, vulnerable, honest and safe as I am when I don’t choose to sin. I don’t have to sin. Sin is not my master anymore (Romans 6:14). I don’t have to obey sin’s temptations (1. Corinthians 10:13). I recently heard an illustration where a speaker said that living as a believer is much like playing in a basketball or football match. Unless the referees blows the whistle and tells you that you’ve done something wrong, you can assume you’re doing right. As a believer filled with the Holy Spirit and his guidance in my life, I can be convinced that he’ll blow the whistle if I’m sinning. If he doesn’t blow the whistle, I can safely assume that I’m living according to God’s will and that I’m walking in the Spirit (Romans 8). As a Christian, and as a brand new creation in Christ (2. Corinthians 5:17) I have been given a new set of ‘default settings’. When you cut to the chase inside of me you find perfection, because you find Christ and what he has done in me. I am forever perfect in Jesus (Hebrews 10:14), and nothing I will ever say, do, think or feel or will not say, do think or feel will ever change that. But that doesn’t mean that I will necessarily get to experience the fullness of Jesus’ life here on planet earth. If I choose to sin, I will receive the wages of a sinful lifestyle. And the paycheck is death. It’s a lack of life. It’s a lack of intimacy with God. It’s a lifestyle of lying to my spouse and my friends and myself. It’s a masquerade where I have to cover up what I do and what I really think about myself. It’s a road of pretending, minimizing, exaggerating, hiding, lusting, or whatever your particular brand of flesh may be. It’s a reality of mediocrity, whining and pouting, because you don’t get to experience the fullness of relationships with God, with yourself and with other people that we desire. But God didn’t promise that we would ‘feel good and close to him’ when we choose to sin. He never said that we would have great relationships with other people, when we choose to sin. He said that choices towards sin will lead to death. Pure and simple. And then he was kind enough to leave us with another choice in the other half of the verse in Romans 6:23. I’ve seen the principle of death when I choose sin at work in my life many times. Most of my life I have been living in dishonest relationships with other people and trying to pretend that everything was okay when really that wasn’t the case. I’m so happy that Christ has shown me more and more of the life that’s available when we abide in him.
A wonderful gift to receive
The other half of Romans 6:23 again: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord“. It’s important to understand that ‘eternal life’ is not something we enter into the day we die and go to Heaven. Eternal life is the very person of Jesus Christ as shown here in a couple of different verses: “we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (1. John 5:20), “and the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son” (1. John 5:11), “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
Jesus is the eternal life, and he is given to us as a gift. And all that he is is given to us as a gift. It’s the gift of himself. Romans 5:17 calls it the gift of righteousness. Galatians 5:22-23 talks about Jesus when it talks about the fruit (singular, not plural!) of the Spirit. Jesus is the one who possesses all wisdom (1. Corinthians 1:24).
I want to learn more about who Christ is. I am tired of learning from other people and hearing other peoples’ wisdom. We don’t possess all wisdom, only Christ does. Just yesterday I was talking to somebody about what humility is, and it struck me that the best person to ask, but often the last one that we end up asking (…) is Jesus himself who gave us the invitation to learn from him in Matthew 11:28-29:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”
Christ invites us to learn from him. I am beginning to ask him more to teach me who he is and what eternal life really looks like. I don’t want other people to teach me. Other peoples’ experiences with Christ can be interesting to hear about, but I need to encounter Christ by myself and experience him heal, touch, direct, bless, challenge, encourage, strengthen, speak through me to really experience him and for it to really make a difference in my life. How I long for Christ to be more visible through me.
I love the line from this song called You Be Lifted High: “and I fall to my knees, so it’s You that they see, not I, Jesus, You be lifted high“:
As I already mentioned Henri Nouwen’s book The Return of The Prodigal Son has been a great read for me these past weeks. I like to eat this type of deep, spirit- and truth-filled book in small bites with some space in between the meals to properly digest all the beautiful food that is packed into less than 150 pages.
And so I have taken my time reading this book that talks about the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke chapter 15 and the many aspects of life with God that the story, and the painting by Rembrandt portraying this story, point out.
Nouwen discusses many choices in the book. Choices I can make as a child of God. Choices that determine whether I get to live in the joy and peace of Romans 8 and the rest of the New Testament or whether I end up in the misery and mediocrity of Romans 7 and the reality of too many believers today.
Our choices have consequences. If I choose to live in the darkness even though I am a child of the light, I miss out on what God has for me. If I choose bitterness and not brokenness, complaints and resentments instead of gratitude and hatred and unforgiveness in place of love and forgiveness I miss out on a multitudes of gifts that are mine as a child of the king of the kingdom of God.
This passage about choosing gratitude over resentment spoke to me about one of these choices:
“Gratitude goes beyond the ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment. It is amazing how many occasions present themselves in which I can choose gratitude instead of a complaint. I can choose to be grateful when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. I can choose to speak about goodness and beauty, even when my inner eye still looks for someone to accuse or something to call ugly. I can choose to listen to the voices that forgive and to look at the faces that smile, even while I still hear the words of revenge and see grimaces of hatred.
There is always the choice between resentment and gratitude because God has appeared in my darkness, urged me to come home, and declared in a voice filled with affection: “You are with me always, and all I have is yours”. Indeed, I can choose to dwell in the darkness in which I stand, point to those who are seemingly better off than I, lament about the many misfortunes that have plagued me in the past, and thereby wrap myself in my resentment. But I don’t have to do this. There is the option to look into the eyes of the One who came out to search for me and see therein that all I am and I have is pure gift calling for gratitude” (The Return of The Prodigal Son, page 86)
I know this choice between gratitude and resentment very well. I have often spend a lot of time in the darkness complaining, whining, arguing, debating…without many positive results! Resentment and bitterness are like bacteria that start small and insignificant, but the more you and I feed them the more space they’ll take up, until we can’t see any beauty and love for all the negativity that occupy our thoughts and feelings. Resentment is also dangerous because it attracts company. You’ll always be able to find people to sit and share your resentment and bitterness with. I never had a hard time finding whining-session-partners, but I have begun seeing more and more how destructive it is for me to be a person of always finding fault and always concluding that God is holding out on me. I have been bitter at God many, many years, and for me it was a huge step to allow myself to forgive God. That may sound absurd, and obviously God, who does not make mistakes, does not need my forgiveness. But I had to go through the painful process of forgiving God for making me that the way he made me, and allowing the things – good, bad, and ugly – to happen to me that have helped me shape me into the person I am today. I had to forgive him in order to come to the place of being able to thank him for everything he has done, is doing and will do in my life! I still have some steps to take with him, before I am at the place of giving him thanks in all situations and under all circumstances. But that’s where we’re heading, God and me. And I trust him to continue to change me with his love and care, so I live a life of gratitude and not a life of resentment and bitterness.
As you can see I’ve decided to change the look of this blog site. I guess it was about time after a year and a half with the other look. I hope you like it
I do need something new too. A new look from Christ. A new touch from Christ. A new reminder that he loves me just the way I am. Also when I don’t live up to my own expectations. I thank Christ for his acceptance. I thank him that he understands that I have a hard time accepting his acceptance. I thank him that he continues to accept and love me in new ways. He understands that I need new experiences of who I really am. I need new spiritual touches from him. I need him to spend time with me in a way that works for me. He speaks my love language, and even when I feel that he doesn’t, he surprises me and I see his love for me in a new way.
I thank him that when I feel down and frustrated or maybe just bored he meets me in that place. And he embraces me for who I am.
I thank Jesus for who he is and that he makes all things new. In me. In the world.
This past Sunday it was International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. All over the world many Christians were gathered in churches or in other groups and prayed for the millions of Christians who are still experiencing intense persecution because they love Jesus Christ.
I encourage all of you to check out Open Doors’ website and find info of how you can support, encourage and bring hope to persecuted Christians all over the world.
