He knows best

I was just hit by a sense of laughing at myself for the silly project that I’ve allowed myself to be engaged in for a while. The project is called ‘questioning God and whining at him for not understanding me and what I need and what I need to do’. It’s a project that certainly doesn’t bring any life to me or to the people around me who end up as collateral damage when I go down the well-worn path of self-pity, doubt and thinking I know better than God.

God, as always, is patient with me, and I believe he just used a couple of conversations yesterday to remind me that he knows very well what he is doing. I was talking to a Portuguese friend of mine on Facebook about the missions conference in Holland at the very end of 2001 where we met each other. This was also the conference where God called me into missions and completely changed the direction of my life. I wasn’t planning on attending this missions conference. I thought I had plans with my girlfriend, but when she decided to end our relationship in November 2001, I thought I might as well go to the missions conference….! There were no deeper spiritual reasons for going than the very human emotion that at least I would be with a lot of people around new year’s instead of puttering around by myself. And God saw that somehow my heart was open, and he called me into missions and changed my life!

I was also talking to my wife Jeannette and we were talking about the fact that we both really wanted to lead a Youth With A Mission Discipleship Training School (YWAM DTS) outreach team to Kenya in Africa in 2004 when we were both on staff helping leading a DTS in England. Unfortunately the base leaders wouldn’t allow the Kenya idea to happen, and instead we ended up leading a team to Ukraine. A year later God called us back to Ukraine and used our two and a half years in Ukraine to break us of much pride and set us on the path we’re still on of learning daily more about what it means to have Christ be our life and rest in everything he is and does instead of trying to produce life ourselves. Would we have gone (back) to Ukraine if we hadn’t been there before with the outreach team? God only knows.

The message from God in reminding me of these two instances is that God knows what he is doing, even when I can’t see the big picture at this point.

I know parts of what God has called me to do, and I’m impatient for more things to happen quicker. I often eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, and I think that I know what’s best for myself. I want things my way at my pace, but I know that at the essence of who I really am, in my spirit, I want what God wants for me. I want life his way. I want the plans he has for me and the ministry that he wants to do through me to happen in his order and in his way. I know that’s the truth, but I need to be reminded of it, when I’ve fallen under the control of my emotions and believe that nothing is happening…

Blessings, Torben – who just saw this picture of myself from my toddler days and know that God has been leading me all my life even through the experiences I still don’t understand

Was Mother Teresa right?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the little Albanian-born missionary to the least of these in India was a remarkable woman. No doubt about that. She gave her life out to suffering people in a self-sacrificing way that I know God was honored by and pleased with!

One quote, however, that she said has become almost known as a piece of Gospel truth in Christian circles. I saw it last week on Facebook. I heard it from friends the other day. I bet you have heard it too sometime these past weeks. If you do a Google search on it you’ll find out that people even claim that it’s in the Bible, even though that’s not the case. The quote from Mother Teresa goes like this:

“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much“

And the short version is of course: “God will never give you more than you can handle!” While that may sound good, and it’s considered true by many Christians, it actually isn’t true if you go to the Bible and start looking at the truths displayed there, or even if you look at your own or somebody else you knows life. There are many times where God wants us to be in situations where we are in way over our head. He longs to bring us into situations where we don’t know what to do, and we don’t have the strength to carry on. David calls that place “the valley of the shadow of death” in Psalm 23. It’s a lonely place where you come to the end of yourself. It would be the most terrible place in the world, if it wasn’t for the fact that Jesus promises to go with us there – “I fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod, and your staff they comfort me“. We come to the end of our own rope when we are burdened beyond what we can handle or what other people can handle for us. We hang at the end of the rope, and we have to let go and we are in a free fall. If God doesn’t show up we are in big trouble. We are out of alternatives. But he does show up in those times.

Paul experienced that God gave him a lot more than he can handle too, and he describes it like this in 2. Corinthians 1:8-9:

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, which came to us in the province of Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead“

‘burdened excessively, beyond our strength‘ Paul writes. I have been to that place. Many people have. Some have gone the road of bitterness when faced with sufferings, others have gone the path of brokenness and have encountered Christ there. But aren’t there Bible verses contradicting what I’m saying? No. There are verses talking about that we will not face temptations that are more than we can handle in the sense that we always, as God’s children, have a choice when faced with temptation (and remember temptation is not from God! He doesn’t tempt us!). There is a way out. We can choose to walk in the Spirit (Romans 8), say no to the temptation and walk away from it. Or we can choose to give into the temptation, and we get to experience death in our lives. The verse about God always providing a way out of temptation can be found in 1. Corinthians 10:13, and the fact that God doesn’t tempt anyone can be studied in James 1:13. But again, these verses don’t negate the fact that God’s plan for all of us is to bring us to a place of brokenness and surrender where we admit that we don’t have what it takes to live the life we want to live. Where we accept that we can’t do it without Christ doing it through us. It’s never about us getting strength from God to do our life. God wants to bring us to a place of death where we surrender to him and let him live his life through us. We are his unique expressions to the world, but it’s him who does it all. All I do is surrender and submit to him doing his will through my life.

So while Mother Teresa was a wise woman, she wasn’t right that God never gave her more than she could handle. And from so many of her other writings, I know that she often came to the end of herself and cried out to God to intervene. And he did. And he does. And he will for you and me today. God’s timing is always perfect. I often disagree with his timing, but that’s me wanting to be God and assuming that I know best. God knows best. God knows how to bring me into places, situations, relationships, circumstances where I’m in way over my head and where I come to the place of finally surrendering to him and throwing myself in his arms fully. He longs for that. And the truth is that I, as a child of God, also long for that. I’m just so often confused by the noise and distractions of my soul and body life that I don’t hear the Spirit’s voice in my spirit whispering: “give up, surrender to my love and you will experience the life you always wanted”. Thank God for the truth in this quote by C. S. Lewis:

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world“

I don’t like the megaphone anymore than anybody else does. But I’m thankful for the life that God has given me because he has given me much more than I can handle.

Blessings, Torben – who is very excited about his trip to Bulgaria and Ukraine these next few weeks!

“Happy birthday, dear bloooog…happy birthday to you!”

Today is a special day in the life of this blog site. It’s www.abrokencup.wordpress.com’s first birthday! 

103 blog posts after this site was launched on January 6, 2008 while sitting in Kiev, Ukraine it’s time to look back at the first year and reveal some of the statistics regarding this blog.

6870 views in a year gives an average of just about 20 views each day. The busiest day was September 24 where 87 views were recorded. 

The most popular blog entry is somewhat of surprise to me, since the single topic that most people were wanting to know something about was the old hymn It Is Well With My Soul written by Horatio Spafford. 

Other very popular topics include two blog entries about my beautiful home country of Denmark titled The Happiest Country In The World and 16 Things You Should Know About Denmark

Many people ask the question: why is Christianity so boring, and hopefully they see in this very popular entry that it’s simply a lie that Christianity should be boring! Others look for info about one of my heroes, Watchman Nee, and others again are starting on a journey with Christ and would like to learn more about listening to your life. A large group of people struggle with doubt and would like to learn more about how to trust, while others again want info about LEGO!

Also a large number of people are dying to know why I don’t eat cheese and when spring actually starts…! 

And finally a good number of people are searching for questions relating to Christian faith: how to share the Gospel with others?, how can I be a blessing to others?, how does God view indifference?, can the Bible really be true?, and is there any rest to be found in my life?

Two blog entries suffer the disappointment of only having been read once (even though they include some excellent songs!): Three New Year’s Songs and I Hope You Dance – they will be hoping for better times the coming year

This concludes the first year of blog entries. I am looking forward to another year of writing thoughts, insights, funny stories, and all kinds of other stuff here on this site!

Blessings from a proud father of the birthday boy

Torben

Fireproof

We went to the local dollar theater tonight to watch the movie Fireproof. 

I came away from the movie with tears still waiting to dry out completely on my face. The movie is absolutely wonderful, and really a must-see if you are married and have any interest in keeping your marriage alive and beautiful, also if you don’t have big problems right now. And if you’re even dreaming about getting married some day, I would definitely also recommend this movie to the best of my ability! It’ll be out on DVD January 27, and we have already pre-ordered our copy right here. You can also get it at amazon.com

In a day and age where more than half of all marriages, also within the Church, fall apart…In a time where Hollywood send out movie after movie portraying the wonderful and God-ordained institution of marriage as either the death of romance and fun, something that is dull and that can only be spiced up by an affair with someone, or just as a place where the man is controlling his wife or more often these days the other way around where a hysterical and demanding wife controls her semi-brain dead doormat of a husband…In these days where I know many people making poor choices in the area of relationship…And in a time where it’s easy to lose hope and just accept that “that’s just the way it is“….this movie was like a breath of very fresh air!

Cynics will watch the movie and focus on the B-movie level acting, but if you decide to leave your heart open when you watch the movie, I’m confident that you will be touched by the beautiful and life giving message of hope that runs through the story in the movie. 

I thoroughly enjoyed watching a movie filled with real hope. And hope based on the only one we can ever trust fully: Jesus Christ! He is the hope for the hopeless. He is the hope for marriages that are falling apart right and left. He is the one who can fix any marriage, if the two spouses chose to surrender their own pride and allow Christ to teach them what humility and love really is!

How I rejoice when I meet couples, and I do know several of them, where they can tell me their story of how when they were on the brink of divorce, like in Fireproof, can tell of how God saved their marriages and their families. So often Christian movies have only focused on the salvation aspect of what Christ did for us. And that is certainly super important that he saved all believers from Hell and is offering salvation and Heaven at the end of our lives here. But there is more to it. That’s only the first half of the Gospel. The rest of the Gospel is about Christ giving us life and hope and changing us from within. And this movie portrays this fact beautifully. Human effort is not enough to have a marriage, or any other relationship, that is truly alive and life giving. Only when we find our strength and life in Christ do we have anything to offer to our spouse or our friend.

I hope you’ll rent/buy this DVD and watch it and allow God to speak words of hope into your life. He did to Jeannette and me tonight, and we thank God that he is the one who has kept our marriage alive and growing the first 3,5 years, and we’re delighted that we know he’ll continue to do that as we surrender ourselves and our will to him and his will.

Fireproof definitely gets six stars out of six!

Blessings, Torben

Here is a video from Fireproof with a beautiful worship song to God:

The rest of the Gospel

If I had to pick one book that has really challenged and changed me within the last year, it would have to be Dan Stone’s The Rest of the Gospel. It’s a small book from a small publishing house by an unknown author, but it is a masterpiece. Nothing more. Nothing less. I have just given away my only copy of it to a friend of mine who wants to know more about who he is in Christ, but I intend to buy a bunch of them and have them to give to people who truly want to know the truth about how life in Christ looks like.

Here are just a few quotes from the book. May they challenge you, maybe make you buy the book and read more (?), and may the Holy Spirit show you more of who you are in Christ if you’re already a believer. If you’re not a believer, I would still encourage you to read the book and get a taste of the life and freedom that Jesus Christ has bought for his children.

“You are not waiting to become holy and blameless and beyond reproach (Colossians 1:22). God sees you as holy and blameless and beyond reproach before him right now. When he looks at you, he sees the nature of his son. He sees you as love. He sees you as joy. He sees you as peace. He sees you as righteous. He sees you as redeemed. He sees you as justified. He sees you as perfect. He sees you complete” (page 103)

“It is an affront to God to keep talking about how unworthy we are. It’s a statement of unbelief. “I really don’t believe what God says about me; I believe what I think about me”. We’re never going to anywhere that way. It isn’t being humble. It’s a false humility. It’s the teaching of tradition and the flesh, because it appears humble. What’s truly humble is agreeing with what God says about you. Nothing more. Nothing less. We are the righteousness of God (2. Corinthians 5:21). We don’t look it all the time. We don’t feel it all the time. We don’t think it all the time. But we are” (page 104)

“Any activity that’s giving you your identity is an idol and is only contributing to the false self. Our false self thinks it needs external things or activities to give it life. It wants the stroking, the external affirmation, the place of authority, or the the public place to make pronouncements. We are dangerous living out of our flesh, because we’re using others to validate us. But when we no longer need those externals – when we are in Christ and who he is has become foundational truth in our life – then we can handle externals, because we don’t need them for our identity. God will take us through situations again and again to bring us to the place where he is our total life, where we are living out of our true identity. Once we are, he can give us back the external things” (page 107)

“Even if we’re messing up, we’re not a liability, because he’s (God) going to use it somehow in our life or in somebody else’s life, or both” (page 111)

“This is why we have to fail (in our attempts to please God through with our religious activities). God couldn’t be God and let us succeed in the flesh, or we would never know Spirit life. We have the Spirit – we do contain the living God – but if we don’t live out of him in our daily experience it’s like we don’t have him in us at all. Our failures at living the Christian life press us into knowing him as our life” (page 123)

Amen, brother!

Torben

FAQ about why I don’t eat cheese

I was looking through some of my old blog posts on my old blog www.torbenriisjensen.blogspot.com and I came across my old masterpiece about cheese. And since – for some reason – I’ve gotten a lot of the good, old questions about why I don’t eat cheese these past weeks, I thought I would reprint this FAQ for a new generation of blog readers! It was written two years ago, but nothing has changed! Enjoy

Q: Why don’t you just make a FAQ where you answer all the questions regarding why you hate cheese and never eat it?
A: Here it is!

Q: How can you not like cheese?
A: It’s really not that difficult. It’s not wrong to not like cheese. Cheese is just one food product type. It’s really not any stranger than not liking green beans or mustard. It is in fact a fairly low percentage of the world where cheese is something that “everybody” eats. Look at China, India and the rest of East Asia. No cheese. Look at all of Africa and much of South America: very little cheese. And that may be something like 70-80% of the world’s population that is not obsessed with cheese! And I’m okay being a minority in my part of the world.

Q: Did something happen when you were little that made you hate cheese?
A: Hmm…..boring answer: no. More interesting answer: there was in fact one incident where my brother, Carsten (you can confirm the story with him (!)), took a piece of bread with butter and cheese and a bread knife and tried to force me to eat the cheese…! He was so tired of my sister and I constantly talking about hating cheese, and I guess that drove him to desperate means of communication. Today Carsten is a more peaceful cheese-lover who has to live with the pain that his sons, Christian and Jakob, don’t eat cheese either. Like uncle, like nephews!!
Q: Have you always hated cheese?
A: Yes, Always. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hate cheese. It’s been going on for a bit more than 32 years now. My parents used to say that it would change when I grew up. They gave up quite a few years ago.

Q: What is it you hate about cheese?
A: Everything. The texture. The smell. The look of it. The fact that it is a product that has come to be through a process of putrefaction/decay/rotting which my dictionary suggest as proper translations of the beautiful Danish word forrådnelse. I feel physically bad when I see people eat cheese, especially when they seem to enjoy it. It makes me sick to my stomach. And Jeannette and I have a clear-cut rule that says that she has to eat a piece of chewing gum after she has tasted the forbidden fruit. For some reason she loves cheese:-(

Q: What about cheese on pizza or lasagna?
A: I’m completely orthodox, and I don’t eat cheese on pizza or lasagna either. And trust me: a pizza or lasagna without cheese is wonderful. In fact I dare you, dear reader, to try it and see for yourself. All of a sudden all the other yummy ingredients will taste of so much more when they’re not overwhelmed by the stinking and foul-tasting cheese. Trust me!

Q: Do you eat any kind of cheese?
A: Nope. None. Not even cream cheese or the like.
Q: Have you ever tried cheese?
A: There have been clever people who have tried to trick me into eating cheese. I recall a Norwegian mother who thought she was pretty brilliant when she put cheese in some rolls that I apparently liked. But other than these crimes towards humanity I haven’t eaten cheese with my knowledge.

Q: But how can you not like cheese when you’re from Denmark where they make such good cheese?
A: I’m happy that so many people spend their money on Danish cheese and support my home country that way, but I’m more than happy not to eat cheese products. I enjoy a whole range of other Danish products, especially red hot dogs, so I don’t feel like a national traitor either.

Q: What do you do if you’re in somebody’s house and they serve food with cheese?
A: I do my best to avoid eating it. Obviously I can end up in some social contexts where it’s only appropriate to try to eat whatever is served, but in most homes it’s okay to say that you don’t eat cheese. These days we have people who don’t eat or are allergic to numerous things, so it’s normally not a big deal.

Q: Is your whole family cheese-haters?
A: My parents and my brother love cheese, but my sister is on my team. She doesn’t eat cheese either, and we enjoy being part of our little exclusive club

Q: If you had to choose between killing your wife Jeannette and eating cheese what would you choose?
A: What an insane question!! Obviously I would never hurt my wonderful wife, but still….eating cheese…….I’m not sure I could do it. I’m not sure I could swallow it…….Please….if you read this and are into torture and have plans of catching me….please consider another means of torture….:-(

Q: Will you ever start eating cheese?
A: No. I will not.

Torben

Still haven’t found what I’m looking for…(video)

21 years ago U2 released this song that has become one of their most popular songs all over the world. Millions associate themselves with the seeking attitude in this song. Always searching. Never finding. Never satisfied.
Have you found what you’re looking for? What was it?

I am so glad that I have found what I was looking for. I was searching for many years. I found Jesus. Or more correctly: he found me. He found me and gave me forgiveness, life, identity, peace and joy. I know who I am in him. I have found myself loved and accepted in Jesus Christ.

“Our hearts are ever restless, until they find their rest in You“, (St. Augustine)

“I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jesus Christ) 

Torben

Renew Me – 2008’s first video

One of the songs that spoke to me many times in 2007. It has a beautiful focus on God doing the changes in me. It’s not about me pulling it together. It’s all about him changing me from within.

So renew me
Remake me
Undo me
Unbreak me
Come into the empty spaces
Of my broken places
And consume me
Complete me
Pursue me
Redeem me
Let Your Holy Spirit living through me
Renew me