31 March 2013
Dear Phyllis,
He is risen! That was the traditional
greeting for 1st century Christians on Easter morning. I
suppose it is still applicable. Several years ago I was talking with
a Kichijoji speaker who had come from Tokyo to Kobe for the Easter
morning service. I assuming said, “What are you going to say
about the resurrection tomorrow?” Surprisingly he replied, “I
don't plan to speak about the resurrection.” “Why?”
“Because every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday.” That was a
pretty good response, but there is some argument both ways.
Robertson McQuilkins were one of the
top TEAM families in Japan for 15 years from 1953 to 1968. I had the
privilege of having the McQuilkins live with me one summer that
enabled me to see their family from the inside. There certainly were
more dynamic missionaries in Japan. There was no shortage of empire
builders who were busily engaged in promoting their own ministry.
There were some missionaries who lived a very affluent life-style.
But there were very few who lived more wide-out,
everything-for-Jesus, than the McQuilkins. They were the only
missionary family I knew that didn't own a car. They lived in houses
with six kids that very few missionaries would have lived in as a one
child couple. Muriel McQuilkin had a plain nylon dress that she wore
every day. On Saturday night she would wash and iron that dress, and
make it look as pretty as possible to wear it to church on Sunday.
Every day should be Resurrection Day. Every Sunday should be
Resurrection Sunday. But there is nothing wrong with taking one
Sunday a year, and dress it up to make it look especially attractive.
Having said that, that is my Resurrection Sunday message this year.
I really don't have one central theme
to write about this week, but there are several small items to
mention.
Visas are a real hassle here in
Thailand. It is virtually a miracle that I can stay here, but visas
are horribly expensive. Being married to a Thai, you would think that
I could get a spouse visa easily, but even spouse visas are
difficult. In order to get a spouse visa I would have to submit,
with my application, a statement that I have over a $2, 000 monthly
income. I don't have a fraction of that. The Lord has been good to me
in providing a way to get a volunteer visa by a letter from a
foundation of my dear friends Dave and Joyce Moore. To get a one year
visa, I have to travel to Penan, Malaysia each year, which costs a
great deal of money. But the real hassle is that all farangs
(foreigners) have to check in with immigration every 90 days. If you
are late for check-in, it cost 500 baht ($17.50) a day fine. Last
year I thought I was perfectly safe when I went to immigration for
check-in and was shocked that I got tagged for 6 months over-stay. I
had gone to immigration the previous check-in and had a receipt in my
passport showing that I was within limits But they told me, with my
visa, I had to leave the country. Fortunately, the law reads that the
maximum fine for over-stay is 20,000 baht ($750). I died. Where in
the world could I get $750 to pay that fine? Miraculously the Lord
did provided, and I got by by going up to Mae Sai on the Burma
border, paying my fine, and reentering Thailand. But I sure didn't
want to do that again. My last check-in was in December, and I hadn't
thought about it for several weeks. Tuesday night I was having a hard
time falling asleep when suddenly the thought of check-in struck my
brain. Terror surged through me. I leaped out of bed to check my
passport. The stamp on my passport read 16 March; and it was now 26
March. I didn't have to pray about what to do the next day. That was
a given. But even that meant I was 11 days over-stay – 5,500 baht
(close to $200). We scarcely had money enough for two days food, and
didn't have anything close to $200. I broke out in cold sweat so
badly my pajamas were wet. But I knew that was the Lord's problem –
not mine.
Quite miraculously, the next morning
the Lord provided 6,000 baht. Pammy pleaded with me to take the bus
up to Mae Sai, but my bike is cheaper and faster. It is exactly 250
km up there. At 10:00 AM I left Chiang Mai to head for the border.
Many people marvel that I ride my Honda that far in one day, but I
actually enjoy it. Northern Thailand is a beautiful country. It is
fairly mountainous. The first 80 km are going over a bit of a
mountain pass with a tremendous number of hills and curves. That road
is no fun at night, or in the rain, but Wednesday was a nice day, and
it was exhilarating going around those curves at high speed leaning
over on the bike, hoping the tires wouldn't slide out. For the rest
of the way, the road is more or less flat with one more section of
hills and curves. But all of those can be taken at high speed
reasonably safely.
I arrived at the border by 2:00 PM. The
immigration man was pleasant joking with me as I paid my 5,500 baht
fine. I ran across the bridge to Burma to the Burmese passport
control office, paid another 500 baht to get that stamp in my
passport, and was back in Thailand, legally, for another 90 days by
2:25. Praise God!!!
I had not stopped for anything going up
other than gas. On the way back I did allow myself more luxury by
getting a sack of potato chips and a cold drink at 7-11; and then one
more luxury stop for a popsicle at the last gas station before
hitting the mountains between Mae Kachan and Chiang Mai. Pammy was
very concerned about my trip and had given me her cell phone,
pleading that I call her. I did try at Mae Kachan to tell her the
good news that I had had a very good trip, and would be home in an
hour. But cell phones are a little past my pay scale. I can't use
those dumb things, and somehow I never was able to get her on the
line. Both of us were tremendously relived when I walked in the house
at 7:00 that night. It was really quite a miraculous day. The night
before I was agonizing in a cold sweat how I would get out of that
jam. The Lord miraculously provided the fine money. It was exactly
6,000 baht including the 500 baht in Burma. The weather was
excellent, the bike ran good, and I had made extremely good time
riding 500 km in 8 hours. I really wasn't tired when I got home. What
a miracle day!
But there is an interesting hidden
factor behind my over-stay incident. When we first met Pammy asked me
if I could make her a new bed. “We will need a double bed when we
get married.” It was a year later before I finally got the bed
made. People spend one third of their lives in bed, and I believe a
bed is one of the most important pieces of furniture in the house.
Accordingly, when I made our bed I made it one of the most important
projects of my life. It really is beautiful. We had bought a mattress
when we were first married that we had slept on for one year. But
after I got the bed finished, and put the mattress on the bed, for
some unexplained reason Pammy started sleeping in another room. It
really hurt me every night when she would get out of bed, go in the
other room, and sleep in a pile of pillows that looked like a rats
nest. Finally, I hit the breaking point. I thought, “If she doesn't
likes this bed, we don't need it. I can sleep anyplace”. It hurt
too much sleeping by myself in that double bed. A week ago she got up
at 2:00 AM to go in the other room. I couldn't sleep. At 3:00 AM I
got up, took the bed apart, and stacked it against the wall. Pammy
felt I did it as a statement of revenge to hurt her. She pleaded with
me to put the bed back together again, but I was adamant. I was
either going to sell or burn that dumb thing. For a week the bed was
a problem. I was stung by her rejection of me and the bed. There was
no way I was going to back off and put that thing together again. But
then at midnight Tuesday night the Lord got my attention.
The beat definition of justification
is just-as-if-I-never-sinned. When the Lord justifies us He
destroys the records, and it is just as if I never had done anything
wrong. That is not the way it works with me. If someone crosses
my line, and does something against me, I am going to engrave that in
stone, and never let anyone forget what they have done. I certainly
was not going to put that bed incident behind me. But the biblical
principle is “He shall have judgment without mercy, that hath
shewed no mercy” (Jm. 2:13). Man howdy, I was stuck! I was in
as bad a spot as I could get. I was 11 days over-stay, and didn't
have money to pay the fine. And every day I let it go was another 500
baht. If God didn't help me, death would have been a joyous escape.
If I wanted God's help, I better back off and show a little mercy. At
midnight I humbly told Pammy, “I'm sorry. I am wrong. I'll put the
bed back together.” I suggested that we just put the mattress on
it, but she wanted the headboard installed also. At 12:30 I went out
in my shop to get some tools, and at 1:00 AM we finally slept in our
reassembled bed. Perhaps the Lord might prefer that I put my stone
chisel away, and not engrave the offenses of others so deeply in
rock. If I want justification to work one way for me, maybe I should
use the same principle in showing mercy towards others.
The week before, we had had another
problem. Pammy had asked me to make a small cabinet for the bathroom.
When I went to hang it, I laid my drill on the kitchen island and
went back to my shop to get some other things. When I came back, I
found my drill lying on the floor. Pammy didn't like my laying things
on the kitchen counter. I was so angry that I vowed never to bring a
tool in the house again. The cabinet didn't get hung. A few days
later Pammy pleaded with me to hang the cabinet, and I refused. Dave
Moore was there and said a word in the Spirit – “That attitude
doesn't help”. I had to admit that it didn't help, and maybe it
would be wiser to do some things that did help, rather than
supporting the devil's work of division. Dave helped me get the
cabinet hung.
Another small, but strange thing,
happened last week. Twelve years ago, when I stuck my hand in the
saw, cutting off a bunch of fingers, an odd growth developed where
the surgeon had reattached my index finger and my middle finger. I
have no idea why or what it was other than it looked like a stone
about the size of a large BB. Over the years I have tried to dig it
off, but it was part of the skin like a wart. From time to time I
have thought about someday having it surgically removed, but it
wasn't hurting anything and I just let it go.
Two years ago a friend got us started
raising honey bees. At first I was very cautious about working with
the bee hives and handling the bees. Over time I learned that if you
are careful the bees are no problem. For two years I had never been
stung. But Thursday, as I was inspecting the bee frames in the hives,
I got my first sting. A bee got me on the middle finger of my left
hand. Of course it stung for a few minutes, but bee stings are part
of life, and it wasn't too serious. My finger and hand did swell a
little, but that was little more than a irritation. The next morning
I was rubbing my hand when suddenly the small rock wart fell off. I
have no idea what happened, or why it suddenly fell off – but it is
gone.
Medically speaking, I can't imagine how
there could be any connection with a bee sting and a wart falling
off, but somehow they did seem to be related. Maybe it is wrong to
try to derive a spiritual lesson from the small incidents of life but
I couldn't help thinking that perhaps the Lord had something to say
to me through this incident. If there is a meaning, perhaps it is
that sometimes the Lord sends painful events in life to clear up
totally dis-related problems. I wasn't happy to get stung by the bee,
but I was grateful to have the wart gone.
In both cases with the problem of the
bed and the cabinet I felt perfectly correct. I was right and Pammy
was wrong. I might have been right, but my attitude didn't help. And
the Lord had to put me in an agonizing dilemma with my over-stay to
resolve the problem of the bed. Praise God, I lost both argument, and
peace has come to our home again.
Praise God, He is risen – even in my
heart;
bill
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Smarts
24 March 2013
Dear Phyllis,
Well, we are one more week closer to the moment when Jesus shall appear, and receive the crown on earth that He so justly deserves. For my part, I have done very little to advance His Kingdom here in Chiang Mai this past week. Yesterday was the graduation for the kindergarten where we have been teaching. I have no idea why, but the director asked me to sing a cowboy song and yodel for the program. I desperately refused, but he would not take no for an answer, and I found myself standing in front of several hundred people making an idiot of myself. I am willing to be a fool for Christ's sake, but I'm not sure how my performance advanced the cause of Christ.
On a more positive note, I was speaking at Kichikun's church last Sunday. The story is told that there was another famous preacher in London in the days of Charles Spurgeon, Joseph Parker. A visitor from the states had heard of Parker and went to hear him one morning. He came away raving, “What a preacher! I never heard such a message in my life.” Then the next Sunday he went to hear Spurgeon. He came away from that meeting raving, “What a savior! I never knew that Jesus was so wonderful.” Needless to say my goal is to be like Spurgeon. But for 55 years I have done very little preaching in that vein. I am very good at preaching about sin. I have an abundance of research material right under my chin. I frequently preach about principles of the Christian life. Occasionally I preach about prophecy. But seldom do I speak, holding Jesus up to show forth His luster. In an attempt to change my message I have decided to speak about the beauty of Christ as found in Song of Sol. 5:10-16. (I have told you all about this several times before.) There are twelve points and last Sunday I was on the 4th point in verse 11 – His head I like fine gold. It doesn't take too much exegesis to figure out what that means. As far as I know, the expression, “he has a good head,” means, he is pretty smart, in any language. That is certainly true in Japanese – “atama ga ii desu” – and it is also true in Thai. Obviously, this verse is referring to Christ's head; and that means, He is pretty smart. In typology, fine gold, always speaks of deity. So quite obviously, this verse means that Christ's head is the wisdom of God.
To talk about the wisdom of Christ would be like taking about the expansiveness of space. The entire life of Christ is an exhibition of brilliance. One of the best incidents was the engagement Jesus had with His enemies during the last week. They got together to try to trap him. Perhaps the cleverest trap was the issue of tax. Should they pay tax to Caesar? That was a lose-lose question. Whichever way He goes they have Him. His answer was one of the most brilliant response ever recorded. He asked for a coin, and then said, “Whose inscription is this? Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and give to God that which is God's.” Brilliant!
In talking about the head of Christ I suggested that Jesus was a very intelligent man for two reasons. One was by DNA. Medical science has learned that, in a pregnancy, the baby's blood comes exclusively from the male seed. Because of the virgin birth, Jesus was the only baby that has ever been born without the contaminated blood of Adam in his veins. During pregnancy, there is not a drop of the mother's blood mixed with the fetus. Because the conception was exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit, there was none of Adam's or Mary's blood in Jesus. Therefor the Blood of Jesus was absolutely unique. This would have made Him a very unusual child. The only glimpse that we have of Jesus' adolescence was the incident that happened when He was 12, and was sitting with the greatest intellects in Israel discussing several topics. Everyone was amazed at this unusual child. He must have been a very easy child to raise, and a very good learner. It is safe to say, Jesus had a very good head. But that doesn't help us. We are struck with the DNA that was given to us; and some have a better head than others.
But there was another feature about Jesus and His brain that does help us. He obviously was bathed in the Word of God. To what degree Jesus had memorized the Scripture is not recorded, but we cannot read the gospels without noticing how much His mind was saturated with the Word of God. It is significant, in His dealing with the devil in the wilderness, that the first thing that came out of His mouth was, “It is written”. Throughout His entire ministry, the Scripture was dominant in His thought process and everything He said.
It has been suggested that there is something about the Word of God that if anyone saturates their mind with it, the Bible can make you smarter. In Acts 20:32 Paul says, “I commend you to God and the Word of His grace which is able to BUILD you up.” The Greek word BUILD that Paul uses here is actually construction term. It literally means to construct, or to build. This seems to be true. John Bunyan may be a good example of this. Bunyan was an uneducated man. It is doubtful that he had much more than an elementary education. But he was a man steeped in the Bible. In commenting about Bunyan, in the cover sheet of The Holy War, Wilbur Smith said, “There is something about the Bible that had a profound effect on Bunyan. In his writings he speaks knowledgeably about a wide spectrum of subjects ranging from astronomy to military maneuvers. He accurately speaks of Greek and Hebrew texts. He writes on a par with any intellectual. Somehow, because of his devotion to the Word of God this man has received and education.”
In making a subjective appeal in my message I suggested that there were three things the Lord could do for them. The first being that if they immerse their minds in the Word of God that could improve their brains like it did for Jesus and John Bunyan.
Secondly, the Lord could give them wisdom. 1 Cor. 1:30 says “...Jesus Christ, who of God is made unto us wisdom”. It is a pretty common phenomenon that most people get a whole lot smarter when they get saved. My goodness, if the very Spirit of Christ lives on our hearts, it would stand to reason that that should make us a little smarter than we were before. I remember when I was first saved, stationed in Grenville Miss., there was a family of four boys of a low intellect young mother living in a car in a junk yard. Richard Ore was about 12 when he asked Jesus to come into his heart. Three months later a friend told me he saw Richard sitting on a stool in a dinner with his Bible open talking to a man like a preacher. We were amazed how the Spirit of Christ gave that young man such a brain. Here in Thailand, Paul reports that his 14 year old daughters are dumbfounding their teachers, and have led two of them to Christ. The brilliant surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, says that anyone can have knowledge, but wisdom comes from God. All it takes is study to accumulate knowledge. Any college graduate should have a fair amount of knowledge about their major; but we all know that some of the brightest minds in Harvard are some of the most stupid people in America. Anyone who is a US senator is supposed to be a smart man, but we wonder if most of them aren't brain-dead.
In critical circumstances the Lord has promised to give us special wisdom (Mt. 10:19,20). In 1935, the Shinto military government was tightening the screws on churches in Japan. The restrictions kept getting tighter. The police in Ogaki told Mino Mission that they couldn't sing on Sunday. The founder of the mission, Sadie Lee Widner, said, “Here is where we draw the line.” The next Sunday, her house was filled with Christians on their knees worshiping the Lord, when Miss Widner looked up to see the police standing in the middle of the room writing down the names of those there. She got up off her knees, and went to confront them. She demanded, “Look at them! They are worshiping the true God in heaven. More than that; we are not going to stop!” She went on, “I have been in Japan 20 years and the only time we were asked not to sing was when your emperor was dead lying in his casket in Tokyo. Out of respect to your emperor we refrained at that time. The other day you gave the same order that you did when your emperor died.” The police suddenly turned ashen gray and bolted from the house. Mino Mission never stopped singing. Betty Whewell askded Miss Widner, “That was brillinat. How did you thnk of that?” Obviously that was the Holy Spirit that answered the police.
Thirdly, there is something more wonderful than the Lord just giving us wisdom. He has promised to lead us. We all know Prov. 3:5,6 – “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path”. Oh, me, that is a good word! When we talk about the head of Christ, it is good to remember that he not only is smarter than we are, but He sees the big picture. He sees things that are hidden to us. It is pretty stupid to think that we are smarter than God. But that is a common phenomenon.
It is almost universal that young folks think that they are smarter than adults. When I was 20, getting my pilot's license, my instructor told me never to get in clouds. He said you can't tell up and down. I had never flown in clouds, and couldn't believe you couldn't tell up and down. Unbelievably, I thought I was smarter than him. One Sunday morning, I checked out our little bug smasher, and took off to fly to an airport about 30 miles south. There was a light cloud deck at about 1,500 feet and I had little difficulty climbing through it to get VFR (Visual Flight Rules) on top at 2,500 feet. I could see the sun was above me. Flying south for 20 minutes, I thought I must be close to the field and looked for a way to get down. There was a small hole in the clouds, and I tried to spiral down. Half a turn later I was in the clouds and learned an important lesson in life. The instructor was right. I totally lost control of the aircraft, and was helpless to break an out-of-control spin. Miraculously, I came out the base of the clouds at 900 feet right in a valley. Four hundred yards either way I would have crashed in a mountain. Once I saw where the ground was I was able to recover from the spin, and my admiration for my instructor soared.
Unfortunately, an enormous number of people think that their way is better than the Lord's. I challenged the folks last week, “If you were lost, and yet had a very reliable GPS with you, don't you think it would be the essence of wisdom to follow the GPS?” But we have something much better than a GPS. We have the wisdom of God, along with the heart of a loving Father, who is willing, and capable, of directing our lives.
My favorite position, and the bottom line for guidance, is the 23rd Psalm. To recognize that, at best, I am little more than a stupid sheep. But I have a wonderful Shepherd who has committed Himself to watching out for me. What a blessing to be able to say, “He leadeth me”. I wish I was better at subjective guidance but, I make so many mistakes I frequently have to pray, “Lord, You know You have an exceptionally errant sheep on Your hands here, that needs special guidance. Lord I don't know the way, but You do. Please lead a blind man.”
It is wonderful that Jesus not only shed His Blood for us, but He also has a head like fine gold and is capable of making the right calls for us. At the close of my message, I asked the folks how many wanted Jesus to direct their life. The first hand that went up was Pammy's. Then slowly nearly everyone raised their hand. It would be great if that happens, but I fear only a few will actually be in a position to follow.
Sayonara,
bill
Dear Phyllis,
Well, we are one more week closer to the moment when Jesus shall appear, and receive the crown on earth that He so justly deserves. For my part, I have done very little to advance His Kingdom here in Chiang Mai this past week. Yesterday was the graduation for the kindergarten where we have been teaching. I have no idea why, but the director asked me to sing a cowboy song and yodel for the program. I desperately refused, but he would not take no for an answer, and I found myself standing in front of several hundred people making an idiot of myself. I am willing to be a fool for Christ's sake, but I'm not sure how my performance advanced the cause of Christ.
On a more positive note, I was speaking at Kichikun's church last Sunday. The story is told that there was another famous preacher in London in the days of Charles Spurgeon, Joseph Parker. A visitor from the states had heard of Parker and went to hear him one morning. He came away raving, “What a preacher! I never heard such a message in my life.” Then the next Sunday he went to hear Spurgeon. He came away from that meeting raving, “What a savior! I never knew that Jesus was so wonderful.” Needless to say my goal is to be like Spurgeon. But for 55 years I have done very little preaching in that vein. I am very good at preaching about sin. I have an abundance of research material right under my chin. I frequently preach about principles of the Christian life. Occasionally I preach about prophecy. But seldom do I speak, holding Jesus up to show forth His luster. In an attempt to change my message I have decided to speak about the beauty of Christ as found in Song of Sol. 5:10-16. (I have told you all about this several times before.) There are twelve points and last Sunday I was on the 4th point in verse 11 – His head I like fine gold. It doesn't take too much exegesis to figure out what that means. As far as I know, the expression, “he has a good head,” means, he is pretty smart, in any language. That is certainly true in Japanese – “atama ga ii desu” – and it is also true in Thai. Obviously, this verse is referring to Christ's head; and that means, He is pretty smart. In typology, fine gold, always speaks of deity. So quite obviously, this verse means that Christ's head is the wisdom of God.
To talk about the wisdom of Christ would be like taking about the expansiveness of space. The entire life of Christ is an exhibition of brilliance. One of the best incidents was the engagement Jesus had with His enemies during the last week. They got together to try to trap him. Perhaps the cleverest trap was the issue of tax. Should they pay tax to Caesar? That was a lose-lose question. Whichever way He goes they have Him. His answer was one of the most brilliant response ever recorded. He asked for a coin, and then said, “Whose inscription is this? Give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, and give to God that which is God's.” Brilliant!
In talking about the head of Christ I suggested that Jesus was a very intelligent man for two reasons. One was by DNA. Medical science has learned that, in a pregnancy, the baby's blood comes exclusively from the male seed. Because of the virgin birth, Jesus was the only baby that has ever been born without the contaminated blood of Adam in his veins. During pregnancy, there is not a drop of the mother's blood mixed with the fetus. Because the conception was exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit, there was none of Adam's or Mary's blood in Jesus. Therefor the Blood of Jesus was absolutely unique. This would have made Him a very unusual child. The only glimpse that we have of Jesus' adolescence was the incident that happened when He was 12, and was sitting with the greatest intellects in Israel discussing several topics. Everyone was amazed at this unusual child. He must have been a very easy child to raise, and a very good learner. It is safe to say, Jesus had a very good head. But that doesn't help us. We are struck with the DNA that was given to us; and some have a better head than others.
But there was another feature about Jesus and His brain that does help us. He obviously was bathed in the Word of God. To what degree Jesus had memorized the Scripture is not recorded, but we cannot read the gospels without noticing how much His mind was saturated with the Word of God. It is significant, in His dealing with the devil in the wilderness, that the first thing that came out of His mouth was, “It is written”. Throughout His entire ministry, the Scripture was dominant in His thought process and everything He said.
It has been suggested that there is something about the Word of God that if anyone saturates their mind with it, the Bible can make you smarter. In Acts 20:32 Paul says, “I commend you to God and the Word of His grace which is able to BUILD you up.” The Greek word BUILD that Paul uses here is actually construction term. It literally means to construct, or to build. This seems to be true. John Bunyan may be a good example of this. Bunyan was an uneducated man. It is doubtful that he had much more than an elementary education. But he was a man steeped in the Bible. In commenting about Bunyan, in the cover sheet of The Holy War, Wilbur Smith said, “There is something about the Bible that had a profound effect on Bunyan. In his writings he speaks knowledgeably about a wide spectrum of subjects ranging from astronomy to military maneuvers. He accurately speaks of Greek and Hebrew texts. He writes on a par with any intellectual. Somehow, because of his devotion to the Word of God this man has received and education.”
In making a subjective appeal in my message I suggested that there were three things the Lord could do for them. The first being that if they immerse their minds in the Word of God that could improve their brains like it did for Jesus and John Bunyan.
Secondly, the Lord could give them wisdom. 1 Cor. 1:30 says “...Jesus Christ, who of God is made unto us wisdom”. It is a pretty common phenomenon that most people get a whole lot smarter when they get saved. My goodness, if the very Spirit of Christ lives on our hearts, it would stand to reason that that should make us a little smarter than we were before. I remember when I was first saved, stationed in Grenville Miss., there was a family of four boys of a low intellect young mother living in a car in a junk yard. Richard Ore was about 12 when he asked Jesus to come into his heart. Three months later a friend told me he saw Richard sitting on a stool in a dinner with his Bible open talking to a man like a preacher. We were amazed how the Spirit of Christ gave that young man such a brain. Here in Thailand, Paul reports that his 14 year old daughters are dumbfounding their teachers, and have led two of them to Christ. The brilliant surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson, says that anyone can have knowledge, but wisdom comes from God. All it takes is study to accumulate knowledge. Any college graduate should have a fair amount of knowledge about their major; but we all know that some of the brightest minds in Harvard are some of the most stupid people in America. Anyone who is a US senator is supposed to be a smart man, but we wonder if most of them aren't brain-dead.
In critical circumstances the Lord has promised to give us special wisdom (Mt. 10:19,20). In 1935, the Shinto military government was tightening the screws on churches in Japan. The restrictions kept getting tighter. The police in Ogaki told Mino Mission that they couldn't sing on Sunday. The founder of the mission, Sadie Lee Widner, said, “Here is where we draw the line.” The next Sunday, her house was filled with Christians on their knees worshiping the Lord, when Miss Widner looked up to see the police standing in the middle of the room writing down the names of those there. She got up off her knees, and went to confront them. She demanded, “Look at them! They are worshiping the true God in heaven. More than that; we are not going to stop!” She went on, “I have been in Japan 20 years and the only time we were asked not to sing was when your emperor was dead lying in his casket in Tokyo. Out of respect to your emperor we refrained at that time. The other day you gave the same order that you did when your emperor died.” The police suddenly turned ashen gray and bolted from the house. Mino Mission never stopped singing. Betty Whewell askded Miss Widner, “That was brillinat. How did you thnk of that?” Obviously that was the Holy Spirit that answered the police.
Thirdly, there is something more wonderful than the Lord just giving us wisdom. He has promised to lead us. We all know Prov. 3:5,6 – “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path”. Oh, me, that is a good word! When we talk about the head of Christ, it is good to remember that he not only is smarter than we are, but He sees the big picture. He sees things that are hidden to us. It is pretty stupid to think that we are smarter than God. But that is a common phenomenon.
It is almost universal that young folks think that they are smarter than adults. When I was 20, getting my pilot's license, my instructor told me never to get in clouds. He said you can't tell up and down. I had never flown in clouds, and couldn't believe you couldn't tell up and down. Unbelievably, I thought I was smarter than him. One Sunday morning, I checked out our little bug smasher, and took off to fly to an airport about 30 miles south. There was a light cloud deck at about 1,500 feet and I had little difficulty climbing through it to get VFR (Visual Flight Rules) on top at 2,500 feet. I could see the sun was above me. Flying south for 20 minutes, I thought I must be close to the field and looked for a way to get down. There was a small hole in the clouds, and I tried to spiral down. Half a turn later I was in the clouds and learned an important lesson in life. The instructor was right. I totally lost control of the aircraft, and was helpless to break an out-of-control spin. Miraculously, I came out the base of the clouds at 900 feet right in a valley. Four hundred yards either way I would have crashed in a mountain. Once I saw where the ground was I was able to recover from the spin, and my admiration for my instructor soared.
Unfortunately, an enormous number of people think that their way is better than the Lord's. I challenged the folks last week, “If you were lost, and yet had a very reliable GPS with you, don't you think it would be the essence of wisdom to follow the GPS?” But we have something much better than a GPS. We have the wisdom of God, along with the heart of a loving Father, who is willing, and capable, of directing our lives.
My favorite position, and the bottom line for guidance, is the 23rd Psalm. To recognize that, at best, I am little more than a stupid sheep. But I have a wonderful Shepherd who has committed Himself to watching out for me. What a blessing to be able to say, “He leadeth me”. I wish I was better at subjective guidance but, I make so many mistakes I frequently have to pray, “Lord, You know You have an exceptionally errant sheep on Your hands here, that needs special guidance. Lord I don't know the way, but You do. Please lead a blind man.”
It is wonderful that Jesus not only shed His Blood for us, but He also has a head like fine gold and is capable of making the right calls for us. At the close of my message, I asked the folks how many wanted Jesus to direct their life. The first hand that went up was Pammy's. Then slowly nearly everyone raised their hand. It would be great if that happens, but I fear only a few will actually be in a position to follow.
Sayonara,
bill
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Gold Metal Marriage
17 March 2013
Dear Phyllis,
There are two types of successful marriages. There is the romantic kind where the natural sweetness of honey is in abundance and the partners just love each other. And there is another type where each one finds themselves locked into a challenging relationship from which they joyously would prefer to escape. But out of naked obedience to Christ they choose to make a volitional decision to honor and obey the Lord, and do what He commands as partners in marriage. It takes nothing of Christ to make a happy romantic marriage. Many unsaved folks enjoy that. But the Lord is honored the most in a dysfunctional marriage where both partners do their duty to make it work. The Hirotas are one of the finest I know. I am sure I have written about them to you before but for one more time...
When we first moved to Ikoma, in 1982, we went to Seibu department store in Osaka to buy a US oven. Sears had a tie-up with Seibu in those days where we could buy anything Sears from Seibu. The gal who was in charge of the Sears department was a fanatic for Americans, and we became instant friends. We later were a featured article in the Sears catalog in Japan. Kajino San went bonkers telling all her customers about this new American couple who had just moved to Ikoma. The phone was ringing daily with calls from her friends wanting to come meet us. Yasuhiko Hirota was one of them. He was very much into airplanes, and had gone to the states to get a pilots license. When he heard there was a former US Air force fighter pilot living in Ikoma he was slightly under Mach 1 coming out to see us. His first visit was purely airplane talk.
He was the eldest son of a wealthy company CEO. His dad had come from Taiwan as a teenager before the war. After the war his dad started making toys out of discarded coke cans and built it up to a large company making electronics for Sharp. Hirota was a spoiled playboy born with a silver spoon in his mouth. From his youth, he was shortchanged in disciplined but bathed in money. As a result he grew up unutterably irresponsible.
The first time he came to see us was strictly to talk about planes. Quite naturally, we took him with us to a meeting in Jim Blocksom's home. Along with airplanes, Hirota was also interested in any kind of ism coming down the pike, and took an interest in Christianity. It wasn't long after he first started coming that Jim told me that Hirota had accepted Jesus at his house one night. Hirota never bonded with Blocksom but became a regular feature in our home.
Miyuki was an average girl from a lumber business family in a small town in the mountains of Yamaguchi-ken. She grew up hardworking, and had become a successful career business woman. She was engaged in a business that – through no fault of her own – went belly-up, and she got stuck with a terrible debt for bankruptcy. At 32, she was confronted with the dilemma of starting all over again in life, and didn't want to make a mistake a second time. She too was a friend of Kajino san.
A year before then, Kajino had gone to a fortune-teller who told her, “Oh, oh, you are going to die of cancer in September”. It was now June. Kajino san immediately rushed to a hospital for a physical. No problem, but in August she was hospitalized for several weeks. Still no problem. When September came and went uneventfully, Kajino knew she had been taken by a charlatan. Miyuki knew Kajino's experience, and knew she was intensely careful about phoney fortune-tellers. She asked Kajino to recommend a reliable fortune-teller. Kajino told her that the best fortune-teller she knew was Bill Cook in Ikoma. Kajino knew that Hirota was a regular at our house and asked him if he would take this other girl out to see the Cooks. Hirota brought Miyuki out the first night.
When she came to see us, I asked, “What do you want?” She replied, “I want someone to give me advice what road to take in life.” I told her, “You have come to the right place. I know the best One to guide you”. And I told her about Jesus. She was on her way to New York to run a Japanese restaurant for six months, and I told her to come see us every night before she left. The next night, when she came, I planned to lead her to Christ. When I asked her if she wanted to accept Jesus, she replied she already had. “When?” “Last night. I did what you told me.” I couldn't remember telling her how to be saved, but obviously there was enough in the conversation that she asked Jesus to come into her heart. I asked, “Is there any change?” “I don't know but my heart seems different.” It sure was. She was born-again of the Spirit of Christ.
While she was gone to New York, Hirota a wrote her every day. During that time, he was in Los Angeles on business, and had a ticket to return to Japan. But his heart was in New York. Torn between business and romance, he canceled his ticket for his flight back to Japan and went to New York to see Miyuki instead. The ticket that he canceled was on KAL 007 that was shot down.
When Miyuki came back to Japan she had no where to live, and we invited her to live with us. That was one of the best moves we ever made. Hirota was at our house every night holding her hand as they sat in front of the fireplace in our home. Miyuki told me later that the main reason she said she would marry him was so she could get some sleep at night.
The marriage was a disaster. Miyuki went out of her mind. They were radically different. She was a highly responsible career woman, and he was an utterly irresponsible playboy. He was lazy and wouldn't get up on the morning. Worse than that he wouldn't return calls from customers. He had his own business and a secretary, but was more interested in playing war games like a 12 year old with his buddies than attending to business. Miyuki said if she wasn't a Christian that marriage wouldn't have lasted six weeks. But she was tough and put up with unbelievable nonsense.
It was a terrible scenario that she was locked into. Hirota's father had warned him, “If you marry that girl I will cut you off.” His dad was a frightening man that terrified everyone, including Miyuki. He didn't want his son to marry an ordinary girl like her. Hirota had taken a stand and married her anyway, but now she was stuck being cut off by the father-in-law with a husband that was incorrigibly irresponsible. But she was determined that she was going to obey Jesus and be a scriptural wife.
Shortly after they were married, Hirota's mother came down with cancer. They led his mother to the Lord on her death bed, and she had a clear testimony of being saved before she joyfully left for heaven.
Miyuk's mother was a dyed-in-the-wool idolater. She and the eldest son would go every morning at 5:00AM, an hour, to a mountain to worship an idol. When Hirota's mother died, Miyuki's mother had to come from Yamaguchi for the funeral. That was the first time she had been to Ikoma since her daughter had been married. At the funeral, some friends of Yasuhiko and Miyuki were talking to her mother. After the funeral Kosugi asked Miyuki, “Do you know that your mother is a Christian?” “No! Really?” Man howdy, was she saved! Her mother was as tough a Christian as they come. Through Miyuki's letters to her mother, she had told her enough about Jesus that she had gotten saved on her own. She had never been in a church or met a Christian, but she had given her life to Jesus, quit idolatry, and was reading the Bible everyday. Miyuki was ecstatic to hear that her mother was saved, and she became her closest Christian friend to this day.
There is no question, but what Miyuki is the dominant one, and is miles in front of her husband in every department. But she was determined to be a scriptural wife. Like no one I have ever met in my life, she has pushed him up from the bottom. She has forced him to become a responsible man of God. And he is. She refuses to take the lead and always puts him up front. She is just a very strong force behind the scene.
By nature Miyuki is not a cook or home-maker. She never had any interest in cooking before they were married. Rosemary was a top-of-the-line cook, and when Miyuki lived with us, Rosemary taught her cooking. Today Miyuki's cooking is as good as any I have ever tasted. Today she is famous for her world-class cooking.
Probably their greatest triumph was Hirota's father. As I mentioned before, he was a tough, fearsome, business man. But in his latter years the situation was radically changed. At one point. Hirota was able to talk his father into building a huge duplex American house for both of them to live in. With his age, his dad's health failed. He had diabetes, and Miyuki was responsible for cooking for him. She studied nutrition to fix the best possible food for him. He was extremely hard-head, and very resistant to the Gospel, but, with failing health, he found himself being led along like a little lamb by his daughter-in-law. She was wonderful in taking care of him. He got in a revolving door scenario of hospitalization until he finally arrived at the last stop. Hirota told him, “Dad, the only way you are coming out of this hospital is in a box.” That got his attention. One day one of the nurses asked Miyuki, “Does Ojii san (old man) practice any religion?” When Miyuki asked why the question, the nurse replied, “Ojii san refuses to eat any food until he prays to Jesus.” This was the first indication that he had changed flags. Shortly after that some relatives heard that he was on his death bed and brought some idols from Taiwan to worship. He threw them out saying he would only worship Jesus. It was a tremendous occasion when they laid his body to rest knowing that they had seen both his father and mother safely arrive in heaven.
I have no idea how they made it financially. Hirota's business was a failure. He was a computer genius and got in with a couple of Christian construction companies – both of which later went under. Years later I asked Miyuki how they were keeping food on the table, and she replied, “I have no idea.” But somehow they were. Hirota is really a gifted man. He is highly knowable about many subjects. He was into several businesses and somehow there was always some income.
Both of them are in their 60s now. Yasuhiko is following his father's weakens with diabetes. Through that, his eyesight is failing badly. He no longer drives a car. He still uses his computer but has to get his eye up to the screen to see it. Miyuki is showing the same loving care for Yasuhiko that she did for his dad. And, to his credit, he has been a faithful husband and done his best to be the head of their home.
I said they are one of the finest marriages I know. It is hard to imagine a worse combination, and a text book for a dysfunctional marriage. There was no natural sweetness of honey in their marriage. But simply out of grim determination to honor and obey Jesus, both of them have done their part and proven the grace of God in overcoming reaction to the other. Both of them have had to learn to die to themselves and live for the sake of the other. Thirty years have passed. Miyuki still gets irritated and, no doubt, she is a challenge to Yasuhiko, but they have honored the Lord like few couples I know. They are gold gold medalists in heaven in my book.
See you next week,
bill
Dear Phyllis,
There are two types of successful marriages. There is the romantic kind where the natural sweetness of honey is in abundance and the partners just love each other. And there is another type where each one finds themselves locked into a challenging relationship from which they joyously would prefer to escape. But out of naked obedience to Christ they choose to make a volitional decision to honor and obey the Lord, and do what He commands as partners in marriage. It takes nothing of Christ to make a happy romantic marriage. Many unsaved folks enjoy that. But the Lord is honored the most in a dysfunctional marriage where both partners do their duty to make it work. The Hirotas are one of the finest I know. I am sure I have written about them to you before but for one more time...
When we first moved to Ikoma, in 1982, we went to Seibu department store in Osaka to buy a US oven. Sears had a tie-up with Seibu in those days where we could buy anything Sears from Seibu. The gal who was in charge of the Sears department was a fanatic for Americans, and we became instant friends. We later were a featured article in the Sears catalog in Japan. Kajino San went bonkers telling all her customers about this new American couple who had just moved to Ikoma. The phone was ringing daily with calls from her friends wanting to come meet us. Yasuhiko Hirota was one of them. He was very much into airplanes, and had gone to the states to get a pilots license. When he heard there was a former US Air force fighter pilot living in Ikoma he was slightly under Mach 1 coming out to see us. His first visit was purely airplane talk.
He was the eldest son of a wealthy company CEO. His dad had come from Taiwan as a teenager before the war. After the war his dad started making toys out of discarded coke cans and built it up to a large company making electronics for Sharp. Hirota was a spoiled playboy born with a silver spoon in his mouth. From his youth, he was shortchanged in disciplined but bathed in money. As a result he grew up unutterably irresponsible.
The first time he came to see us was strictly to talk about planes. Quite naturally, we took him with us to a meeting in Jim Blocksom's home. Along with airplanes, Hirota was also interested in any kind of ism coming down the pike, and took an interest in Christianity. It wasn't long after he first started coming that Jim told me that Hirota had accepted Jesus at his house one night. Hirota never bonded with Blocksom but became a regular feature in our home.
Miyuki was an average girl from a lumber business family in a small town in the mountains of Yamaguchi-ken. She grew up hardworking, and had become a successful career business woman. She was engaged in a business that – through no fault of her own – went belly-up, and she got stuck with a terrible debt for bankruptcy. At 32, she was confronted with the dilemma of starting all over again in life, and didn't want to make a mistake a second time. She too was a friend of Kajino san.
A year before then, Kajino had gone to a fortune-teller who told her, “Oh, oh, you are going to die of cancer in September”. It was now June. Kajino san immediately rushed to a hospital for a physical. No problem, but in August she was hospitalized for several weeks. Still no problem. When September came and went uneventfully, Kajino knew she had been taken by a charlatan. Miyuki knew Kajino's experience, and knew she was intensely careful about phoney fortune-tellers. She asked Kajino to recommend a reliable fortune-teller. Kajino told her that the best fortune-teller she knew was Bill Cook in Ikoma. Kajino knew that Hirota was a regular at our house and asked him if he would take this other girl out to see the Cooks. Hirota brought Miyuki out the first night.
When she came to see us, I asked, “What do you want?” She replied, “I want someone to give me advice what road to take in life.” I told her, “You have come to the right place. I know the best One to guide you”. And I told her about Jesus. She was on her way to New York to run a Japanese restaurant for six months, and I told her to come see us every night before she left. The next night, when she came, I planned to lead her to Christ. When I asked her if she wanted to accept Jesus, she replied she already had. “When?” “Last night. I did what you told me.” I couldn't remember telling her how to be saved, but obviously there was enough in the conversation that she asked Jesus to come into her heart. I asked, “Is there any change?” “I don't know but my heart seems different.” It sure was. She was born-again of the Spirit of Christ.
While she was gone to New York, Hirota a wrote her every day. During that time, he was in Los Angeles on business, and had a ticket to return to Japan. But his heart was in New York. Torn between business and romance, he canceled his ticket for his flight back to Japan and went to New York to see Miyuki instead. The ticket that he canceled was on KAL 007 that was shot down.
When Miyuki came back to Japan she had no where to live, and we invited her to live with us. That was one of the best moves we ever made. Hirota was at our house every night holding her hand as they sat in front of the fireplace in our home. Miyuki told me later that the main reason she said she would marry him was so she could get some sleep at night.
The marriage was a disaster. Miyuki went out of her mind. They were radically different. She was a highly responsible career woman, and he was an utterly irresponsible playboy. He was lazy and wouldn't get up on the morning. Worse than that he wouldn't return calls from customers. He had his own business and a secretary, but was more interested in playing war games like a 12 year old with his buddies than attending to business. Miyuki said if she wasn't a Christian that marriage wouldn't have lasted six weeks. But she was tough and put up with unbelievable nonsense.
It was a terrible scenario that she was locked into. Hirota's father had warned him, “If you marry that girl I will cut you off.” His dad was a frightening man that terrified everyone, including Miyuki. He didn't want his son to marry an ordinary girl like her. Hirota had taken a stand and married her anyway, but now she was stuck being cut off by the father-in-law with a husband that was incorrigibly irresponsible. But she was determined that she was going to obey Jesus and be a scriptural wife.
Shortly after they were married, Hirota's mother came down with cancer. They led his mother to the Lord on her death bed, and she had a clear testimony of being saved before she joyfully left for heaven.
Miyuk's mother was a dyed-in-the-wool idolater. She and the eldest son would go every morning at 5:00AM, an hour, to a mountain to worship an idol. When Hirota's mother died, Miyuki's mother had to come from Yamaguchi for the funeral. That was the first time she had been to Ikoma since her daughter had been married. At the funeral, some friends of Yasuhiko and Miyuki were talking to her mother. After the funeral Kosugi asked Miyuki, “Do you know that your mother is a Christian?” “No! Really?” Man howdy, was she saved! Her mother was as tough a Christian as they come. Through Miyuki's letters to her mother, she had told her enough about Jesus that she had gotten saved on her own. She had never been in a church or met a Christian, but she had given her life to Jesus, quit idolatry, and was reading the Bible everyday. Miyuki was ecstatic to hear that her mother was saved, and she became her closest Christian friend to this day.
There is no question, but what Miyuki is the dominant one, and is miles in front of her husband in every department. But she was determined to be a scriptural wife. Like no one I have ever met in my life, she has pushed him up from the bottom. She has forced him to become a responsible man of God. And he is. She refuses to take the lead and always puts him up front. She is just a very strong force behind the scene.
By nature Miyuki is not a cook or home-maker. She never had any interest in cooking before they were married. Rosemary was a top-of-the-line cook, and when Miyuki lived with us, Rosemary taught her cooking. Today Miyuki's cooking is as good as any I have ever tasted. Today she is famous for her world-class cooking.
Probably their greatest triumph was Hirota's father. As I mentioned before, he was a tough, fearsome, business man. But in his latter years the situation was radically changed. At one point. Hirota was able to talk his father into building a huge duplex American house for both of them to live in. With his age, his dad's health failed. He had diabetes, and Miyuki was responsible for cooking for him. She studied nutrition to fix the best possible food for him. He was extremely hard-head, and very resistant to the Gospel, but, with failing health, he found himself being led along like a little lamb by his daughter-in-law. She was wonderful in taking care of him. He got in a revolving door scenario of hospitalization until he finally arrived at the last stop. Hirota told him, “Dad, the only way you are coming out of this hospital is in a box.” That got his attention. One day one of the nurses asked Miyuki, “Does Ojii san (old man) practice any religion?” When Miyuki asked why the question, the nurse replied, “Ojii san refuses to eat any food until he prays to Jesus.” This was the first indication that he had changed flags. Shortly after that some relatives heard that he was on his death bed and brought some idols from Taiwan to worship. He threw them out saying he would only worship Jesus. It was a tremendous occasion when they laid his body to rest knowing that they had seen both his father and mother safely arrive in heaven.
I have no idea how they made it financially. Hirota's business was a failure. He was a computer genius and got in with a couple of Christian construction companies – both of which later went under. Years later I asked Miyuki how they were keeping food on the table, and she replied, “I have no idea.” But somehow they were. Hirota is really a gifted man. He is highly knowable about many subjects. He was into several businesses and somehow there was always some income.
Both of them are in their 60s now. Yasuhiko is following his father's weakens with diabetes. Through that, his eyesight is failing badly. He no longer drives a car. He still uses his computer but has to get his eye up to the screen to see it. Miyuki is showing the same loving care for Yasuhiko that she did for his dad. And, to his credit, he has been a faithful husband and done his best to be the head of their home.
I said they are one of the finest marriages I know. It is hard to imagine a worse combination, and a text book for a dysfunctional marriage. There was no natural sweetness of honey in their marriage. But simply out of grim determination to honor and obey Jesus, both of them have done their part and proven the grace of God in overcoming reaction to the other. Both of them have had to learn to die to themselves and live for the sake of the other. Thirty years have passed. Miyuki still gets irritated and, no doubt, she is a challenge to Yasuhiko, but they have honored the Lord like few couples I know. They are gold gold medalists in heaven in my book.
See you next week,
bill
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Watchman, what of the night?
10 March 2013
Dear Phyllis,
Last week at our Wednesday morning prayer meeting, Ed Pue told us something that is the most shocking word I have ever heard. The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that the Bible is hate speech, and a felon crime. There was a classic case in Canada where a school board had voted that sexual perversion should be taught as normal in the curriculum of the public school system. A Christian group had opposed this move, and printed up some pamphlets quoting the Bible statements that sexual perversion is an abomination. This case went to the Supreme Court, and they ruled that the Bible is hate speech. We are not near the last days – we have arrived. The only thing remaining is the inauguration of the anti-Christ. When a society hits that level there is no recovery. We have known that Canada is slightly more liberal than the states, but we are hard on their heals, and only millimeters from the same degradation. Three weeks ago the popular TV comedy show, Saturday Night Live, did a show where the Crucifixion of Christ was a comedy mockery. Very funny. When that level of obscene putridity is put over on prime time TV as a comedy show, we have hit the bottom. The only vocal protest to that show was by the Muslins, who revere Jesus as a prophet. The Christians were silent. Ed suggested that it would be interesting if the Canadian Supreme Court would rule that the Koran was hate speech, but we can say with confidence that this would never happen.
I am not a big fan of Sid Roth, and I do not agree with every thing that Rick Joiner says; but I believe some of what they say is correct. The other day I saw a program of Rick Joiner on Roth's TV program. Joiner said that recently he had the most frightening dream of his life. He said it was so real it was more like an experience rather than a dream. In his dream he was in a log cabin walking from room to room. He saw small fires breaking up out of the floor. Someone was putting these fires out. He was about to leave when he saw another fire break out in the room where he was. He went over to stomp that one out. But then he noticed a hole in the floor. When he looked through the hole he discovered the the entire underside of the building was on fire. The foundation of the building was being burned out. I have no trouble accepting that this is accurate.
One can hardly question whether or not the foundation of American society has been destroyed or not. Where we are today would have been shouted down as impossible 150 years ago. I know of no time in human history where there has been a Christian society that hit the level of depravity where we are today. No doubt there have always been abortions in any society. Moral standards have always been tainted with every form of sick sin. The devil has always challenged the Word of God since the days of the Garden of Eden. None of that is new. But I know of no Christian nation where vile evil has been put into law as good and the Bible has been held up as bad. The Bible has been banned in many places. The devil's attack on God Word has been unrelenting. Thousands have been martyred for the Word of God. False prophets and the devil's theologians have done their best to discredit the authenticity of the Scripture. None of this is new. But when the Supreme Court of a Christian nation rules that the Bible is hate speech – that is the first time. All societies since the days of Noah on have been riddled with immorality. Depravity was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. No military force could defeat the army of Rome. Rome rotted from within. Even so it is doubtful that Rome, in its most depraved state, had the inundating flood of putridity that spews from computers world wide today. Porno and every form of sexual perversion is at the finger tips of nearly the entire population today. Providing this menu for fallen nature can only be disastrous. And then to teach in the public school system that sexual perversion is healthy...? We have crossed the line. I see no other possible conclusion than the foundation is gone.
On the Sid Roth show, Roth asked Joiner if he thought it was too late, or could the foundation be saved. Rick Joiner replied that the only possible hope for turning the flood of evil back was the church. He said that the church was the only fireman that could put out that flame. That certainly is true. I am conservative, but a conservative political agenda is not the salt and the light of the world. Jesus clearly said that we are. The church is the only preservative salt and illuminating light that God has placed in this world. If the church fails, the devil wins. In their discussion about the dire state that we are in today, Roth suddenly burst out with great optimism, and declared, “I believe we are on the verge of the greatest revival the world has ever seen.” Nice talk, but I sadly fear he is wrong. I fear the car has gone through the guard rail. The car has gone over the cliff, and we are only meters from the crash at the bottom. How can it be otherwise?
I am not sure what the church is. Certainly that carnival act that is on television is not the church. This is what is portrayed as the church. Joel Olstean and his 50,000 rapture d listeners, enthralled with a cozy message of feel good religion, is not the church. This is not the Gospel of Christ. The very essence of that message, and most of what is offered up as Gospel in America, is what I can get. The fundamental point of that message is a give me religion. It is what can I get? When Mary broke the bottle, and pured out everything she had in anointing Jesus, Jesus said that what she did would be go unitedly wherever the Gospel would be preached throughout the whole world (Mk. 14:9). Why? Because this is the Gospel message. This is what the Gospel produces. It is not what I can get, but what I can give. The flow must be outward. If the Gospel message isn't – because Jesus gave everything for us, we should give everything for Him – what, pray,tell, is it? Didn't Jesus say something about taking up a cross and following Him? Didn't Jesus say something about leaving all to be His disciple? Where is this in the feel good message? This is the problem with America today. When the Gospel message got turned around to make the flow in, rather than out, the power of the Holy Spirit left, and the world came in. There is no question but what the world is the dominant force in the church today. And that worldly church has no fire hose.
Fortunately there is a church in the world today. But it is China – not America. A friend of mine was in a meeting with about 70 Chinese pastors a few years ago. The speaker asked how many had been in prison for the Gospel. About a quarter of the hands went up. Then he asked, “How many are willing to go to jail for Jesus?” Every man in the room leaped to his feet. I can't imagine a similar meeting of American pastors who would leap to their feet declaring that they would go to jail before compromising on basics. The church of God is functioning and moving on – but it is in the Orient. America is gone.
When the cry was made, “Watchman, what of the night? “ The reply came back; “The morning cometh, but also the night.” (Isa. 21:11,12). We need to consider both sides of that word. Gomen nasai. I am sorry for writing so much about coming gloom, but I am obsessed with what I see every day. Someone wrote a book, Obama's Four Horsemen. I have no idea what the book says but I have no problem in seeing the first Four Horsemen of Revelation 6 as being in place today in America. The White Horse of political conquest is all there. All the chemistry for the Red Horse of war to break out any moment is in place. With Iran and the Islamic terrorist movement galloping on, Obama has taken a posture to dismantle the US military. We now have a Secretary of Defense who is the most anti-military minister in American history. And we will soon have the director of the CIA who is a Muslim. We are begging for war. A child with a 5th grade education can do the math on the US economy. But the greatest brains from Harvard see no problem in steering the country on a course of guaranteed financial collapse. The government is now running on a budget of 43 cents of every dollar by borrowed money. Margret Thatcher warned, “Depression comes when you can no longer find someone else's money to spend.” Bankruptcy is inevitable. A deft man can hear the hoof beats of the Black Horse of economic collapse. And the Pale Horse of death and hell is right behind. These four horses are within hearing range now. I see no way Christians are going to be exempt from a very hard time in America very soon.
I passionately believe in the immanent return of Christ. That is one doctrine that cannot be moved. But I fear we may be off on our view of the rapture. I believe the rapture will be at the last trump (1 Cor. 15:52) – whatever that means. No one wants suffering. But I believe it will be a good thing when judgment begins with the house of God (1Pet. 4:17). It is a good day when a house wife picks up a broom to clean a house. And it will be a good day when the Lord picks up His broom to clean out His house. It will be a good day for the house, but a bad day for the rubbish. It will a healthy day when there is a line drawn in the sand for those who are the true followers of Christ to step forward. This will separate a great deal of the wheat from the chaff. There might be some sort of a revival when the church gets cleaned out, but I seriously doubt that it will be the kind of revival Sid Roth has in mind.
The Scripture is clear that we must take a pretty hard shellacking. Dan. 7:21, Rev. 13:7 and a host of other scripture warn that the devil is going to overcome the saints. Even the two witnesses in Rev 11 get killed. We see in Rev. 7:9-14 a great multitude who come out of great tribulation. There is nothing wrong with that. Who cares how rough the passage is as long as we safely get to the right destination. If the roughness of the passage makes our arrival more glorious, then the rougher the better.
There is no question that the night cometh. The lights are going out and deep darkness is covering America and Canada at an unbelievable rate. Fifteen years ago I never thought I would live to see America in the state that she is in today. I don't believe that Obama is the anti-Christ, but he certainly is setting the stage for that Man of Sin. But the darker it gets; that should be a tremendous encouragement to us that we are getting that much closer to the morning. The Lord warned the persecuted believers in Smyrna that they would have a hard time for ten days. We can tough that out. The anti-Christ will only have his day for seven years. That may not be a lot of fun, but seven years will soon be over. Every hour, every day, every year is just getting us that much closer to the morning.
The early settlers headed for California had one last tough hurdle to get over before they got to their destination. Donner's pass. It was a long dusty ride going across the vast western prairies. When they got to the bottom of Donner's pass, the going got rough. It was no fun going up hill to that deadly summit, But looking at the eastern slope must have been an encouragement that they were nearly to California. Soon that pass would be behind them and they would be in the plush environment and pleasant climate of California.
Oh praise God! The anti- Christ is almost here. Soon we will have the mark of the beast. That will separate the wheat from the chaff. We will have a great opportunity to take a bold stand for Jesus. Soon we will be dealing in the genuine temple shekels of heaven, and not this monopoly play money that we are dealing with today. A sacrifice will be a real sacrifice – not these minor inconveniences that we call hardship today. All of this is good news. The fat lady will sing, and it will all be over.
But the main thing is not the comfort level of our circumstances, but that Jesus will be here to receive the reward of His sufferings. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and His Christ. And He will reign forever.
Oh, hallelujah!
bill
Sunday, March 3, 2013
God's Path
3 Mar 2013
Dear Phyllis,
Last Friday night I sat at an empty table, silently looking at the front door, through which no one walked. Finally, Pammy said, “Let's go out in the kitchen and you can teach me the Bible”. It wasn't too great. At 8:30 we turned off the lights, and went up stairs. I sat in my chair on the balcony and watched World War 2 historical You Tube series on my computer. That wasn't exactly what we had in mind.
The other night Pammy and I were trying to have a time of prayer. She prayed first. When my turn came I started to pray, and suddenly words simply would not come out of my mouth. I groaned and panted so hard that Pammy asked if I was alright. I replied, “Physically I”m okay, but spiritually there is something desperately wrong.”
“What is that?”
“The people in this muban (housing area) aren't saved.”
I feel like a man sitting in the path of a huge tsunami that is about to hit here in a few minutes, trying to crank the car to flee. But the car won't start.
I wonder what Noah felt like for 100 years as he was building his ark. Peter called him a preacher of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5). He must has warned his neighbors, friends, and relatives about the coming danger. He had access to his grandfather Mathuselah, and his father Lamech. His great grandfather was Enoch, who walked with God. When Enoch's son was born, he put the name on him, Mathuselah which meant “Upon His decease will be the going forth of waters”. You can't get anything more clear than that. Mathuselah was God's time clock. He and his son, Lamech, were there every day while Noah was building the ark. The Bible calculations show that Noah's father, Lamech, died five years before the flood, and Mathuselah died the year of the flood. We can't pin it to the day from the Scripture, but I rather suspect that when we get to heaven, we will see, the moment Methuselah took his last breath, there was a loud clap of thunder; Noah and his family were already in the boat with the door closed, and the rain began. We are living through a rerun of that today.
Samuel Rutherford said, “Christ has His own gate where He will come in.” While we stand at the door with flowers waiting for the Lord, He will come in the side door unannounced. The ways of the Lord are so much different than ours. We are very good at drawing a path on a map, and telling the Lord how to go from point A to point B. But the Lord has His own road, and frequently will get there some other way; quite different than what we expect.
When Adoniram Judson set sail from America, he was on his way to India to work with William Carey. Very much against his plans, he wound up in Burma. He labored in Burma for years seeing minimal results. His first convert was not a Burmese but a Karen minority tribe man. His life was a terrible heart break.
Several years ago I had the privilege of spending an afternoon in Takelec with the number two man in the Baptist convention of Burma. He said that they still have a long ways to go among the Burmese, but work among the minority tribe people is almost done. There are two ways of looking at that. It is true that several of these minority groups now have a strong Christian culture. They are Christian in the sense that America was a Christian nation until the past two decades. But not everyone in America was saved. An enormous number of the Karens, Kachins, Ahkas, and secveral other groups are genuine believers but much of that Christianity is more culture than saved believers. If Judson was to come back today and see the change in Burma and the number of Christians, he would be overwhelmed with gratitude. This was not what he expected, but the Lord did get His work done, and used Adoniram Judson, in a very major way, to do it.
One of the major experiences of my life was building the Karuizawa language school chapel. We had tried unsuccessfully for two years to raise funds to put up that building. At a committee meeting one day, I suggested I could do it. “How?” I would make glue lams – laminated wooden beams. That was a major miracle project. As I got into it, the Lord began to do miracles for me to the degree that I thought I could do anything. I got very arrogant in faith. I wanted to show people how faith could move mountains, and I was the man who could move them. I felt it was critical that we have good weather the day we put up the beams, and – of course – I asked the Lord for His day. I came up with a day that I felt certain was the day to do it. It was right in the middle of the rainy season, but that made it even better because it would be an outstanding miracle. I was absolutely euphoric with faith. Man howdy, did we get wet! It didn't rain – it poured every minute we were outside. The only time it quit was when we went inside for lunch, and when we finished at 8:00 o'clock that evening. The building was a great success, but I was a severally chastened man when I saw how the Lord went out of His way to show me that He was in charge of His work – not me.
Another major event in my life was “my cow experience”. When the world began to go crazy with computers, I was determined that was one road I would never go down. But in 1994, when I was in the states, my son, Dave, bought me a beautiful word processor for $150. That changed my life. Oh me, it was amazing! If I made a mistake, I could correct it by simply hitting the delete key. I could change entire sentences. I could record what I had written on a floppy disk. I could print out my letters in different fount and even add colors. And most of all – it had a spell check! With a wave of a wand, that word processor brought me out of the world of near illiteracy to being a gifted letter writer. But three years later my word processor went south. Something went haywire, and I couldn't get it fixed. I thought, shigata ga nai (there is nothing I could do abut it), I will just buy a new one in Japan. After a very diligent search, I was surprised to discover that they simply did not sell English word processors in Japan. True, they had tons of word processors, but they were all for Japanese. They did have English on them, along with half a dozen other languages, but, man howdy, were they complicated, and terribly expensive. I could learn the wiring diagram for the space shuttle before I could figure out how to work a Japanese word processor. And the price was about or five times higher than what my little English one cost. I felt like a bird that had his wings clipped. My letter writing days were over.
Then one day in, 1999, Rusty White called me. I had just gotten back from a trip to SEA where I was smuggling Bibles into Vietnam. In those days I was working at New Life League as a carpenter, and that was my sole source of support. I didn't get paid if I wasn't working there and my trips to SEA were expensive. Rusty had just bought a penshon (small hotel) and wanted it converted for a church. I was a major job. I desperately needed the money I would get for working at NLL, and working for Rusty was free. But, shigata ga nai, it was the Lord's work and I couldn't refuse him. Rusty came up in a tiny pickup truck and hauled most of my shop to Higashi Yoshino, near Nara. I wound up spending three months down there building a very nice church and home for them; but didn't make a yen.
The Whites had good support, and money was no problem. Rusty's dad was a PHD making a lot of money. The Whites were calling home almost every day, and anything that they wanted, his dad would send out in the mail. I had been praying asking the Lord to give me a new English word processor for over a year. Now I saw a way the Lord could answer my prayer, with a little help from me. Rusty was deeply grateful for all the work I had done for them, and I was sure he would be delighted to give an orei (gift) for my services. I told Rusty one day, “If you would like to do something for me, I would be grateful if your dad could get me an English word processor in the states”.
Two weeks later Rusty walked in with a silly grin on his face, and a huge box in his arms. It looked like he was carrying a washing machine. With great delight he said, “Can you use this?” I opened the box to find a large professional electric typewriter. The box was covered with $50 stamps. Mr. White had bought me a top-of-the-line office typewriter. My heart sank. It wasn't a word processor at all. It didn't have a spell check. It had a very small memory. To check something, I would have to type it out on paper, look at what I had written, and redo it. And it was huge. I couldn't carry it around with me like my little word pro. I didn't know what to say. There was no way I could use it, and I couldn't say thank you. It was worse than nothing. I never took it out of the box and left it in the room when I left weeks later.
I could understand how Mr. White could make a mistake like that. He had banks of stenographers working for him, and an electric typewriter would be their hearts desire. But he didn't know that I didn't know how to type, and couldn't use a typewriter. But my problem was the Lord. I couldn't understand how Jesus could make such a mistake. He knew my need, and it was Jesus that I had asked to give me a word processor. I thought this was worse than a dirty tick that the Lord had pulled on me. I felt just like I had asked Jesus for a horse to ride to church, and He gave me a cow instead. And I couldn't drink the milk. I called that “my cow experience”. I mean to tell you it was a big problem. For a long time I was afraid of the Lord. I told Jesus, “If this is the way You do business, count me out. I can't trust You. I might ask You for a car and You will give me a boat instead.” For months I couldn't ask the Lord for anything. In my dilemma I asked the Lord why He made that big mistake. He told me clearly, “This is what you get for trying to help me out. You asked Me, and then you thought you would help Me by asking Mr. White.” Okay, I could understand that.
But I was really at odds with the Lord. I thought if He hates my letters that much, I am through. Roald Lidal was going to the states, and could have easily bought me a word processor while he was there. But I refused to ask him.
Then one day my friend, Tagawa, was going to Akihabara. Akihabara is the craziest electronic place in the world. It is the electronic center of Tokyo. If there is anythng electronic in the world, Akihabara has it. I asked Tagawa san to see if they had any English word pros in Akihabara. He came back saying that he couldn't find an English word pro, but they had tons of lap top computers. In desperation, I thought, if I could get close to a word pro with a lap top computer, perhaps that might be an answer. The next week I went in with him. He took me to a little hole-in-the-wall shop on the 8th floor of a building. When we walked in, there was a little IBM lap top sitting on a table for $100. Tagawa went out of his mind. He said, “This has everything!” I didn't have $100 but Tagawa san said he would give me $50. He was so excited, I bought my first computer for $50. They cost $2,500 to $3,000 in those days.
I was delighted that at last I had something I could type on that had a spell check and worked just like my word processor. More than that, pretty soon, I got into e-mail. Then I began to branch out into the cyber world. How I thank God for “my cow experience”! Had it not been for that, I never would have got immersed in the cyber world. I never would have gotten into e-mail, and a host of other things. God knew my need, and gave me a painful experience, so He could give me the best. I was waiting for Him to come in at one door, but He came in a totally different way.
Yes, His ways are much different than ours, and vastly better. Praise God!
bill
Dear Phyllis,
Last Friday night I sat at an empty table, silently looking at the front door, through which no one walked. Finally, Pammy said, “Let's go out in the kitchen and you can teach me the Bible”. It wasn't too great. At 8:30 we turned off the lights, and went up stairs. I sat in my chair on the balcony and watched World War 2 historical You Tube series on my computer. That wasn't exactly what we had in mind.
The other night Pammy and I were trying to have a time of prayer. She prayed first. When my turn came I started to pray, and suddenly words simply would not come out of my mouth. I groaned and panted so hard that Pammy asked if I was alright. I replied, “Physically I”m okay, but spiritually there is something desperately wrong.”
“What is that?”
“The people in this muban (housing area) aren't saved.”
I feel like a man sitting in the path of a huge tsunami that is about to hit here in a few minutes, trying to crank the car to flee. But the car won't start.
I wonder what Noah felt like for 100 years as he was building his ark. Peter called him a preacher of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5). He must has warned his neighbors, friends, and relatives about the coming danger. He had access to his grandfather Mathuselah, and his father Lamech. His great grandfather was Enoch, who walked with God. When Enoch's son was born, he put the name on him, Mathuselah which meant “Upon His decease will be the going forth of waters”. You can't get anything more clear than that. Mathuselah was God's time clock. He and his son, Lamech, were there every day while Noah was building the ark. The Bible calculations show that Noah's father, Lamech, died five years before the flood, and Mathuselah died the year of the flood. We can't pin it to the day from the Scripture, but I rather suspect that when we get to heaven, we will see, the moment Methuselah took his last breath, there was a loud clap of thunder; Noah and his family were already in the boat with the door closed, and the rain began. We are living through a rerun of that today.
Samuel Rutherford said, “Christ has His own gate where He will come in.” While we stand at the door with flowers waiting for the Lord, He will come in the side door unannounced. The ways of the Lord are so much different than ours. We are very good at drawing a path on a map, and telling the Lord how to go from point A to point B. But the Lord has His own road, and frequently will get there some other way; quite different than what we expect.
When Adoniram Judson set sail from America, he was on his way to India to work with William Carey. Very much against his plans, he wound up in Burma. He labored in Burma for years seeing minimal results. His first convert was not a Burmese but a Karen minority tribe man. His life was a terrible heart break.
Several years ago I had the privilege of spending an afternoon in Takelec with the number two man in the Baptist convention of Burma. He said that they still have a long ways to go among the Burmese, but work among the minority tribe people is almost done. There are two ways of looking at that. It is true that several of these minority groups now have a strong Christian culture. They are Christian in the sense that America was a Christian nation until the past two decades. But not everyone in America was saved. An enormous number of the Karens, Kachins, Ahkas, and secveral other groups are genuine believers but much of that Christianity is more culture than saved believers. If Judson was to come back today and see the change in Burma and the number of Christians, he would be overwhelmed with gratitude. This was not what he expected, but the Lord did get His work done, and used Adoniram Judson, in a very major way, to do it.
One of the major experiences of my life was building the Karuizawa language school chapel. We had tried unsuccessfully for two years to raise funds to put up that building. At a committee meeting one day, I suggested I could do it. “How?” I would make glue lams – laminated wooden beams. That was a major miracle project. As I got into it, the Lord began to do miracles for me to the degree that I thought I could do anything. I got very arrogant in faith. I wanted to show people how faith could move mountains, and I was the man who could move them. I felt it was critical that we have good weather the day we put up the beams, and – of course – I asked the Lord for His day. I came up with a day that I felt certain was the day to do it. It was right in the middle of the rainy season, but that made it even better because it would be an outstanding miracle. I was absolutely euphoric with faith. Man howdy, did we get wet! It didn't rain – it poured every minute we were outside. The only time it quit was when we went inside for lunch, and when we finished at 8:00 o'clock that evening. The building was a great success, but I was a severally chastened man when I saw how the Lord went out of His way to show me that He was in charge of His work – not me.
Another major event in my life was “my cow experience”. When the world began to go crazy with computers, I was determined that was one road I would never go down. But in 1994, when I was in the states, my son, Dave, bought me a beautiful word processor for $150. That changed my life. Oh me, it was amazing! If I made a mistake, I could correct it by simply hitting the delete key. I could change entire sentences. I could record what I had written on a floppy disk. I could print out my letters in different fount and even add colors. And most of all – it had a spell check! With a wave of a wand, that word processor brought me out of the world of near illiteracy to being a gifted letter writer. But three years later my word processor went south. Something went haywire, and I couldn't get it fixed. I thought, shigata ga nai (there is nothing I could do abut it), I will just buy a new one in Japan. After a very diligent search, I was surprised to discover that they simply did not sell English word processors in Japan. True, they had tons of word processors, but they were all for Japanese. They did have English on them, along with half a dozen other languages, but, man howdy, were they complicated, and terribly expensive. I could learn the wiring diagram for the space shuttle before I could figure out how to work a Japanese word processor. And the price was about or five times higher than what my little English one cost. I felt like a bird that had his wings clipped. My letter writing days were over.
Then one day in, 1999, Rusty White called me. I had just gotten back from a trip to SEA where I was smuggling Bibles into Vietnam. In those days I was working at New Life League as a carpenter, and that was my sole source of support. I didn't get paid if I wasn't working there and my trips to SEA were expensive. Rusty had just bought a penshon (small hotel) and wanted it converted for a church. I was a major job. I desperately needed the money I would get for working at NLL, and working for Rusty was free. But, shigata ga nai, it was the Lord's work and I couldn't refuse him. Rusty came up in a tiny pickup truck and hauled most of my shop to Higashi Yoshino, near Nara. I wound up spending three months down there building a very nice church and home for them; but didn't make a yen.
The Whites had good support, and money was no problem. Rusty's dad was a PHD making a lot of money. The Whites were calling home almost every day, and anything that they wanted, his dad would send out in the mail. I had been praying asking the Lord to give me a new English word processor for over a year. Now I saw a way the Lord could answer my prayer, with a little help from me. Rusty was deeply grateful for all the work I had done for them, and I was sure he would be delighted to give an orei (gift) for my services. I told Rusty one day, “If you would like to do something for me, I would be grateful if your dad could get me an English word processor in the states”.
Two weeks later Rusty walked in with a silly grin on his face, and a huge box in his arms. It looked like he was carrying a washing machine. With great delight he said, “Can you use this?” I opened the box to find a large professional electric typewriter. The box was covered with $50 stamps. Mr. White had bought me a top-of-the-line office typewriter. My heart sank. It wasn't a word processor at all. It didn't have a spell check. It had a very small memory. To check something, I would have to type it out on paper, look at what I had written, and redo it. And it was huge. I couldn't carry it around with me like my little word pro. I didn't know what to say. There was no way I could use it, and I couldn't say thank you. It was worse than nothing. I never took it out of the box and left it in the room when I left weeks later.
I could understand how Mr. White could make a mistake like that. He had banks of stenographers working for him, and an electric typewriter would be their hearts desire. But he didn't know that I didn't know how to type, and couldn't use a typewriter. But my problem was the Lord. I couldn't understand how Jesus could make such a mistake. He knew my need, and it was Jesus that I had asked to give me a word processor. I thought this was worse than a dirty tick that the Lord had pulled on me. I felt just like I had asked Jesus for a horse to ride to church, and He gave me a cow instead. And I couldn't drink the milk. I called that “my cow experience”. I mean to tell you it was a big problem. For a long time I was afraid of the Lord. I told Jesus, “If this is the way You do business, count me out. I can't trust You. I might ask You for a car and You will give me a boat instead.” For months I couldn't ask the Lord for anything. In my dilemma I asked the Lord why He made that big mistake. He told me clearly, “This is what you get for trying to help me out. You asked Me, and then you thought you would help Me by asking Mr. White.” Okay, I could understand that.
But I was really at odds with the Lord. I thought if He hates my letters that much, I am through. Roald Lidal was going to the states, and could have easily bought me a word processor while he was there. But I refused to ask him.
Then one day my friend, Tagawa, was going to Akihabara. Akihabara is the craziest electronic place in the world. It is the electronic center of Tokyo. If there is anythng electronic in the world, Akihabara has it. I asked Tagawa san to see if they had any English word pros in Akihabara. He came back saying that he couldn't find an English word pro, but they had tons of lap top computers. In desperation, I thought, if I could get close to a word pro with a lap top computer, perhaps that might be an answer. The next week I went in with him. He took me to a little hole-in-the-wall shop on the 8th floor of a building. When we walked in, there was a little IBM lap top sitting on a table for $100. Tagawa went out of his mind. He said, “This has everything!” I didn't have $100 but Tagawa san said he would give me $50. He was so excited, I bought my first computer for $50. They cost $2,500 to $3,000 in those days.
I was delighted that at last I had something I could type on that had a spell check and worked just like my word processor. More than that, pretty soon, I got into e-mail. Then I began to branch out into the cyber world. How I thank God for “my cow experience”! Had it not been for that, I never would have got immersed in the cyber world. I never would have gotten into e-mail, and a host of other things. God knew my need, and gave me a painful experience, so He could give me the best. I was waiting for Him to come in at one door, but He came in a totally different way.
Yes, His ways are much different than ours, and vastly better. Praise God!
bill
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