3 February 2013
Dear Phyllis,
I have come to the position that the message of surrender is about as ludicrous a message as it gets. Joe Carrol used to say, “The central issue today is not whether you have accepted Christ, but has Christ accepted you.” Amen! How we ever got into this mess is beyond me. Somehow the Gospel message got turned around to make God the plaintive pleading with criminals to accept His offer of forgiveness. That is mind boggling! When Apple came out with their latest version of I pad people were lined up at stores at 1:00 o'clock in the morning to get in line to buy one. At 9:00 AM when the stores opened it was a dog fight to get inside to buy an I pad before they sold out. It would be like a salesman going out side with a carton of them pleading with customers, “Excuse me sir, I have a free I pad here that I would like to give to you. Would you please accept my offer and take an I pad?” Finally after a great deal of persuasion, the sales person is able to bring the customer down to his knees to surrender and accept a free I pad.
As young man, when I became a Christian, I first thought the Lord must be very pleased with Himself that He got such a fine man to be a follower of Christ. I was several cuts above the average, and it would be good to have such an outstanding man to proclaim Jesus. Oh my goodness, I blush in my sleep today. It wasn't long before I discovered that life wasn't that way. As the Lord began to open my eyes, I saw how lucky I was that He let me in. But now I wonder if He didn't make a mistake. I don't have any trouble with surrender today. I have almost gotten past the point of pleading with Christ to accept me.
After my life collapsed 23 years ago I was talking with a fine Japanese brother. He flippantly remarked, “Why don't you surrender your life to Christ?” Ordinarily that should have been a very insulting remark. My goodness, I had given up a promising career as an officer and pilot in the Air Force to serve the Lord. I had been serving the Lord on the mission field as dedicated as possible for 30 years at that point. I thought I had surrendered several years ago. But when he raised that question why I hadn't surrendered, I was surprised by my own reaction. I burst into tears and blurted out, “Because I don't know how! I have been trying to surrender for 30 years and I don't know how to do it.” Since then I have been pleading with the Lord to show me how to surrender. But recently I have gone past that point.
The other day, in my mind, I saw myself standing in line with a number of people offering themselves as candidates serve the Lord; everyone hoping He would accept them.
The guys in that line were applicants to be a candidate. This was quite a bit different from the usual invitation to surrender to give your life to be a missionary. Jesus wasn't pleading for candidates to come forward. The guys in that line would have rushed forward if the chance had been given. In the days of our Lord here on earth, we read in Mk 3:13, “He (Jesus) goeth up into a mountain and calleth unto Him whom He would...and ordained them to be with Him.” No doubt there were a great deal more than 12 to choose from. There were probably hundreds of desirous young men who would give anything to be chosen as one of Christ's disciples. In speaking of priest, Heb. 5:4 says, “No man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God.” This certainly was true of the of both OT priests and prophets. They didn't have aggressive Jewish young men who said, “I am going to be a prophet.” There were a lot of self-appointed prophets, but there was a basic difference between the self-appointed ones and the ones ordained of God. I see no place to indicate that this system of selection has changed to operate in the NT era. The other day as I was standing at the end of this imaginary line I thought of my own qualifications on why the Lord should accept me. When I looked at my application form, I was embarrassed that I ever stood in that line, and got out. Now I have placed in a request to heaven; I have asked the Lord if He would give me a broom and let me sweep out His cow barn. That would be the greatest honor I could think of. Oh, I would be grateful if the Lord would let me do this.
I wonder what I am doing in Thailand. It would be a bad stretch to call myself a missionary. I certainly am not retired. I am not employed or working for a living. I do teach a little. This past week has been an excellent week teaching at Annie's kindergarten. Annie, of course, is gone. But it has been good to be back talking to the children. Sangha is somewhat back in the line as a possible candidate for salvation. He was at church today.
A week ago last Saturday, I spent four hours talking to an outstanding couple. The man is a professor at Mae Jo University, and his wife has a nursing school. Boom (Mrs.) called last week asking me to speak to her school and said they have some carpentry work they want me to do. Yesterday Pammy and I went over there to talk to them. This could be a very positive contact. I met Mr. and Mrs. Bancho at the sports day through the directors of the kindergarten. Boom said her daughter had gone there three years ago and they have been close friends with Sangha and Lec since then. I promised to do what I could to help them with some carpentry. Their cabinets are terrible. I may have to make a whole new kitchen for them. I plan to tell them straight out that I am not in this for money. The only reason I get up each morning is to tell others about Jesus. If this isn't the reason we live, why – pray tell – are we still on this planet? They probably will give me something for making some things for them but I would be equally willing to do it for free.
My good friend, Gary, asked me the other day if I knew how to hang doors. He is in the process of building a house and had seven doors that needed to be hung. What a mess! I have hung a lot of doors over the years and these were as challenging as any I have ever done. The Lord has helped us, and things have turned out better than what I had hoped for. But Friday I was trying to cut out the holes for the door knobs and struck something metallic that destroyed my hole saw. That's fun. I don't know how I am going to get those door knobs on but I will probably have to use a jig saw. I was so drained Friday night that I just wanted to go home and go to bed.
This is supposed to be the dry season in Thailand. We will go for an honest three or four months with almost zero rain. But last week was almost like the wet season with rain for three days. Wednesday night Gary invited me to shower and get cleaned up at their house, and then go out with them for a meal. I was looking forward to that when I heard thunder off near our house. I had lost one computer to rain, sitting on the balcony of our house, and my present computer was on my chair there. I told Gary that I had to go home immediately. For the next half hour I cheated death on my motor bike. I enjoy riding motor bikes very much, but some of that charm is wearing off. Riding in a hard storm at night makes viability impossible. The rain stings my face and wet glasses are like driving a car with no windshield wipers. The only way I could see was to get between two cars where the lights of the car behind me shown on the car in front. I could see the blur of the car in front. But if the car behind passed, then I was back to looking at two dim blurry tail lights. And at high speed I was pushing the traction of my bike tires. I had to go through three traffic signals, but the storm had knocked out the denki (electricity) so the lights weren't working. You talk about a dog fight – like you never saw one. At the last light there was a terrific traffic jam of hundreds of cars going in all directions trying to get through that intersection. I got beside the front tire of a large truck who was trying to force his way through the traffic coming from the left. He would inch forward until he got that lane blocked so he could get through. When at last he got the traffic blocked from the left I had a clear shot to get by, and breakout into an open road. I began to accelerate when suddenly a car came out from behind another car directly on my right. I never saw him until he was inches from my right handle bar. I have no idea why he didn't kill me. I was still shaking when I got home ten minutes later soaking wet. It still makes me sick to my stomach to think about it.
I am presently dealing with spiritual problems like you would not believe. This would drive me nuts except it looks like an old movie. I have learned over the years that the lines in spiritual problems are no so clear. It is not so black and white. To each of the warring parties it is black and white. They are right and the other person is wrong. But to the neutral observer it is maddening. It has been accurately said that Christians can be worse than unbelievers. That is true. A Christian will do things out of deep convictions even if they are wrong. They do it because they think they are right. The worst treatment I have ever had in my life has been at the hands of outstanding Christians. It would almost be easier if we had to deal with hostility of open persecution than blood-letting between Christians. Christians in China said, when they were in prison, the church was one. There are no denominational boundaries in prison. But when they got out, they squared off fighting with each other over doctrinal issues.
The all time most famous rift was between George Whitfield and John Wesley. I read a letter that Wesley published against Whitfield that was shocking. But Wesley felt he was doing the will of God in publishing it. Tragically the fight between them was over Calvinism. From a biblical position, you could lay up an argument that they both were right. But that didn't help the anguish that thousands of believers had to deal with that fight. Fierce conflict have gone on since the days when Paul and Barnabas couldn't agree about John Mark (Acts 15:36-40. But most cases today do not have such a pleasant solution. I have two friend who are warring with each other. In both cases their vocabulary is inadequate to describe how bad the other fellow is. Both men call the other one an enemy agent. I am in the middle, and believe I understand both men. I don't believe the Lord views these men the way they view each other. And, of course, both men are grieved that I am still in fellowship with the other “devil's man”.
The spiritual environment here is as clear as a London fog. There has been a number of outright lies told. This makes it difficult to believe anything from that quarter. And yet I am not in the business of running people off for occasional failures. In most spiritual conflicts there are incidents where one could point to places where the other person lied. The simple solution is Mt. 18:15-17; first, one on one direct confrontation. If that doesn't work, then take two or three others to confront the offender. If that doesn't work, then take it to the church. And if that doesn't work, then kick the offender out. Unfortunately that only applies in horizontal offenses. You certainly couldn't do that with Wesley and Whitfield. Paul didn't suggest doing that with the immoral bird in 1 Cor. 5. There is a difference between offenses between brethren and church discipline like adultery. Tragically church discipline is almost unheard of these days. Few pastors are willing to do it, and fewer still have the spiritual qualifications to effectively implement it. I felt Rosemary might have been saved if she had been properly dealt with by a spiritual body. Unfortunately the men who were our board of elders did not have the spiritual credentials, and their solution was psycho therapy and secular psychology. It didn't work.
I don't know what I am dealing with here. The entire picture is incredibly confused. The only thing I know is Jesus. If Jesus doesn't save me I ain't gonna be saved. But I told Him the other day, that His very Name means savior. This is my hope.
Thank you for standing with us,
bill
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