jim larson's thoughts
If you’ve tasted of His sweetness
19-Jul-09 17:40This post is for Christians.
There is so much in Jackie Pullinger's message in this video I posted the other day that I had to transcribe it in freeform style that follows Jackie's delivery. I hope she doesn't mind. She says most everything I've been trying to say for the last several years, only far better. If you're reading this in Facebook it may look a bit funky. It should look ok if you go directly to the original post on my blog, at least it does in my browser.
_____________
The principle of the Gospel is this:
the Gospel always brings life
to the receiver
and death
to the giver.
If the Gospel brought death to Jesus Christ why would we think that in preaching the Gospel it would any less for us?
So no.
He says, “If anybody would be my disciple,
he must take up His cross and follow me.”
If it killed Him to give life to us,
and he invites us then to do the same,
why would we expect that it would be any less?
So the mixture of our message is life and death,
and laughter and tears,
and such it is, but for us,
life is never ordinary here.
Life is never flat.
And this is what Jesus said about His Father in John 17: “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life,
only to take it up again. No one takes it from me.”
Jesus was not sentenced to die by His Father; he was allowed to choose.
“I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again,” and he said “This is why my Father loves me.”
God the Father had this extraordinary plan of winning you and me for eternity by having His Son killed.
But His son voluntarily responded. No, it’s not so easy for Him to respond. In fact he spent His whole life practicing.
And even the night before it was still difficult for Jesus. And he said, “God, is there another way? Is there another way?”
And I know many, many people in the church say, “Is there another way?” And in our Hong Kong churches it does look as if there’s another way. Normal Christians live a normal Christian life, go to meetings, jump up and down on stages, while we are exhausted and dying, and “Oh you’ve got a special ministry Jackie,” and I say, “Well no, I think, think we’re all called to give up our lives. Would you like to do this with us? We’d really like some help.”
The poor people all over the earth who have never heard of Jesus, they are the poorest people. They are desperate for food. They are desperate for blankets, they’re desperate for medicine, they’re desperate for water. The most number of people worldwide who’ve never heard about the love of our Lord Jesus Christ are desperately poor. And they are not going to come here to hear the Gospel—we have to go there.
So . . . why haven’t people gone?
Something to do with guarding our life.
And living a normal life
so other people can go.
But I say, “No, why don’t you all go if you’ve tasted such good things?” Go the ends of the earth because those poor aren’t going to watch Jesus on TV. They haven’t got electricity.
They’re not going to hear about him unless we go,
so would you?
I’m here with a plea for you.
If you’ve known the love of God,
if you’ve tasted of His sweetness at all,
there’s no other way to serve Him except giving up your life. And this is voluntary.
This is not a sentence of death . . . at all!
We’re not sentenced to death. We’re just privileged
to answer His call.
What The Well is really about
18-Jul-09 03:54Christ's call is to feed the hungry, not the full; to save the lost, not the stiff-necked; not to call the scoffers, but sinners to repentance; not to build and furnish comfortable chapels, churches, and cathedrals at home in which to rock Christian professors to sleep by means of clever essays, stereotyped prayers and artistic musical performances, but to raise living churches of souls among the destitute, to capture men from the devil's clutches and snatch them from the very jaws of hell, to enlist and train them for Jesus, and make them into an Almighty Army of God. But this can only be accomplished by a red-hot, unconventional, unfettered Holy Ghost religion, where neither Church nor State, neither man nor traditions are worshipped or preached, but only Christ and Him crucified. Not to confess Christ by fancy collars, church steeples or rich embroidered altar-cloths, but by reckless sacrifice and heroism in the foremost trenches...
C.T. Studd (emphasis mine)
it's not just about rescuing sex workers or preventing kids from getting started. That's actually only the first step.
Not long after I felt God saying to come here, I heard the song "Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble" for the first time, at Urbana 2000. Screaming it as loud as I could along with 18,000 others, I had something of a vision, of former bar girls as "dancers who dance upon injustice". I still have that vision, only now the dancers have names and faces. They're still getting freed up, still learning that they can dance, but they're coming along.
Comments (1)Is there another way?
18-Jul-09 03:14Message from Jackie Pullinger. The irony of course is that there was another way. Thank God that Jesus didn't think like we do. Are we ready to think like Him?
Comments (0)Family Video
29-Jun-09 08:54Would Jesus use computers?
We started to make this video for a contest that we found out about just hours before the deadline. We didn't make it, but finished it anyway.
The quality is better, at least for me, if viewed directly on youtube.
Comments (4)
Very cool church
01-Jun-09 09:16I didn't like a couple of my more recent posts. The 'net already has enough blogs and web sites by Christians criticizing stuff other Christians do. To be sure, criticism itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at the way Jesus took it to the Pharisees. But here I'd rather focus positively on living like Jesus and keep the criticism at minimum. After all, I think a big reason that people don't live like Jesus is we really don't take the time to ask how to do it.
I teared up at the end of this video. "If I'm not being taken advantage of, I'm not being like Jesus." There you go.
Comments (2)Will the real Jesus please stand up?
03-May-09 09:46Some of the commentary on my previous post, "Kingdom Coolness", reminded me of a poem by British author Steve Turner.
How to hide Jesus
There are people after Jesus.
They have seen the signs.
Quick, let’s hide Him.
Let’s think; carpenter,
fishermen’s friend,
disturber of religious comfort.
Let’s award Him a degree in theology,
a purple cassock
and a position of respect.
They’ll never think of looking here.
Let’s think;
His dialect may betray Him,
His tongue is of the masses.
Let’s teach Him Latin
and seventeenth century English,
they’ll never think of listening in.
Let’s think;
humble,
Man of Sorrows,
nowhere to lay His head.
We’ll build a house for Him,
somewhere away from the poor.
We’ll fill it with brass and silence.
It’s sure to throw them off.
There are people after Jesus.
Quick, let’s hide Him.
This poem was written in the 1970's. The coolness movement might call for some updates to this poem, but in deference to Steve and my need for sleep, I'll pass on attempting that myself. You get the idea.
I do want to re-emphasize however that I'm not saying that the coolness stuff is all bad. Much of it is quite good and I am grateful for it. I just think we'd all agree that we need to be careful, to not let our packaging of Jesus get in the way of who He really is and how He may peronally want to confront us and the cultures we live in.
Comments (7)Just what is a mission trip, anyway?
03-May-09 09:14Word is coming in of mission trips being canceled, even trips to Thailand, because of the H1N1 flu scare.
Whie a mission can be a self-declared purpose, in its Christian usage it refers to being sent, not only by a church or agency, but ultimately by Jesus Himself.
Does Jesus send people on missions, only to cancel due to an unexpected possible risk?
We made our family exploratory trip to Thailand during the SARS scare of 2004. Flight attendants all wore masks, and we had to fill out a questionnaire upon arrival, verifying that we weren't sick. Lots of trips were cancelled that year as well. A friend commented then, "We should be going to pray for the sick, not staying home."
Comments (3)Kingdom Coolness
28-Apr-09 11:49Over the last few years, churches have discovered coolness.
A pastor friend of mind likes to attend the cool church conferences around the country--hip, branded events with names like Q, Echo, Exponential and Orange. Q--the ultimate coolness name--is happening right now. I saw it on my friend's Facebook page and looked at the site. Among the presentations this year are "Justice in the Suburbs", "Ensuring Social Entrepreneur Success" and "The Spirituality of the Cell Phone".
I am all for coolness in church. I think Jesus was incredibly cool. It's too bad that Clint Eastwood was never given a role playing Jesus. I can picture him, writing in the dirt, "Where's the man?", then standing up with his back to the sun, calmly eyeing the blustering Pharisees with rocks in hand for a few timeless seconds, spitting at a beetle, then another pause, and finally monotoning a raspy "He who is without sin, go ahead . . . ."
But I'm not sure that the current focus on coolness is even close to that of Jesus, because, at least as far as I can tell from my outside vantage point, it seems more concerned with packaging Jesus in cool ways than actually being like Jesus. Jesus was cool because he was simply genuine and unpretentious, whether letting a prostitute kiss his feet or chasing temple merchants with a whip. The current movement seems more concerned mainly with interacting with cultural ideas and forms, both affirming and critiquing. To be sure, I see this as a huge improvement over the church's historical tendency to either criticize or ignore most of culture outside of christendom (besides the Super Bowl), or perhaps worse, to approve or reject cultural forms based on nothing other than traditional taste. When I was at Wheaton in the 70's, secular classical musicians were hailed in concerts at Edman Chapel while master guitarist Phil Keaggy was relegated to the gym. In that we've come a long way.
So churches are cooler now, but is it the right kind? Is it getting us any closer towards really making genuine disciples of all nationalities, or is it in fact simply bringing our window dressing up to date? It's one thing to be cool because it makes for good marketing, and another because it's simply who you are, single mindedly focused on your mission. One must ask: if our focus were more on directly being like Jesus than honing our packaging, may we not only be far more cool, but far more effective?
Comments (14)Something's gotta change
19-Apr-09 07:38Today Sophia, a former student, brought a 16 year-old by the house to see if she might join The Well. Fon lives with her alcoholic, abusive dad and 11 year-old brother. Her inner wounds became obvious within minutes of conversation. When she was out of earshot, I exclaimed to Sophia, "She's been raped." "Yes, that's right," Sophia replied. Fon also gave herself a drug-induced abortion last year.
I wanted badly to just walk around the table, put my arms around Fon and tell her, "Here is a man who loves you. Here is a man who won't hurt you." But Thai culture isn't much for hugs, and besides it would have been a too quick in any culture, especially for someone hurt by men like this.
Fon's older sister is not far away, living with a boyfriend. He just wants to be with her for fun, not get married. When he told Fon's sister, she cut her left arm repeatedly.
We don't have a safe place for someone as wounded and love-starved as Fon. The neighborhood around our main centers is too drug-infested. I'll call Joyce at Abba House tomorrow.
When we moved here nearly 5 years ago, Fon was 11. Much of her hurt has happened since then. Of course we couldn't have known her--she lives in another province. But it made me think of how many more have been so badly hurt even in the few years since we came here; how many thousands were abused just this last week.
We can't keep letting this happen, folks.
Comments (1)Five things I would do
19-Apr-09 06:29full time if I could clone myself:
1. Outreach. Street Pastor of Sukhumvit, something like that.
2. Start a healing/recovery home for broken teen girls and young women.
3. Rural community development in Buriram or another province.
4. Build an international network that works to reduce the sex industry in Thailand.
5. Plant a non-traditional, culturally relevant urban church.
6. Start an alternative school for poor kids and young adults who have missed their opportunity to learn, if they ever had one.
7. Oversee The Well. Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be doing that already.
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- If you’ve tasted of His sweetness
- What The Well is really about
- Is there another way?
- Family Video
- Very cool church
- Kingdom Coolness
- Will the real Jesus please stand up?
- Something's gotta change
- Just what is a mission trip, anyway?
- Five things I would do
- Roll over, everyone!
- A different kind of hood
- Blog 2.0
- Special request
- Open your world
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Reply #8 on : Mon December 10, 2007, 20:51:12