Pammy

4 January 2015

Dear Phyllis,

Pammy has contacts with some hill tribe people in the hills about 18 km from here. She was up there yesterday visiting some families and came home with a girl on her bike. When she introduced the girl to me she said, “This is our new daughter. Will that be alright?” I was a little surprised, but calmly responded, “Well, I guess so. Okay”. The girls Thai name is something like blessing. By deleting the L, I suggested, “What about calling her Bess” I may later convert that to Beth. She is 16 from a difficult background. The parents are divorced and she was living with her father and three boys. They were making a boy out of her and had given her a hair cut where her side burns are shorted than mine, and I just had a military hair cut a week ago. So it looks like, for a while, we have a new daughter.

I have mentioned that about ten months ago something radical seemed to happen to Pammy. There is no explanation. As best as I can recall, there was a day when I got home and asked ,”Did you have a good day?” Pammy replied, “No, it wasn't good. It was great! I have spent all day with Jesus.” Indeed there does seem to be a radical change. When we were first married she would spend 12 hours a day playing computer games. It seemed super natural to me. Then, of course, there was TV, money and a lot of other very unfortunate things. After that great day with Jesus, she was singing and writing songs about Jesus all day long. I don't think she has played a computer game since then, and the TV has been off. About three months ago she startled me by saying she had parted with all jewelry including her ear rings. I don't know if there is a woman in Thailand that doesn't have pierced ears and ear rings. I didn't expect her to stay on that extreme high forever and she hasn't. But even after losing a little altitude she is still amazingly good.

At the moment she is like a dendo (evangelism) addict. It is almost like she has an addiction to evangelism. Two or three months ago she led five people to Christ. Feeling her responsibility to nurture them, she starred a little meeting here on Sunday morning. I was opposed to it, but it is hard to draw a line against something that the Lord seems to be blessing. Two weeks ago she met these hill tribe people who were trying to start a new church. This has been the hot spot for the last two weeks. She is like a pig in hog heaven. I have never seen her so happy.

Friday evening she had two couples come to help her with an outreach at an evening market. I really like the way she did it. They took quite a bit of paraphernalia from here to set up a stall. They had a table with tracts and other a pamphlets. When they got home three hours later I asked if they passed out a lot of tracts. She said “No, very few.” She said she didn't want to make the Gospel look cheap. I really like that. It is a big thing here to see something on the ground. Some fellows dishonored the Lord a few years ago in Laos by scattering tracts on the ground. Rather than using the shot gun approach of trying to reach everyone, they were trusting the Lord to give them two or three that were genuine seekers. It was a very high quality presentation of the Gospel. Three years ago I went with two brothers to a market one morning at 6:00 AM, and we stood there shouting at the top of our lungs preaching the Gospel. People stared at us like we were mad. I am not opposes to open air meetings, but in that case I felt we moved the Gospel back rather than forward that day. With Pammy she is not doing something she thinks she ought to do, it is the joy of her heart.

A month or two ago Paul challenged me to write something for Facebook. He and my friend Pascal got me set up on Facebook, but I am still not much further ahead than I was before I bought my first computer. With great effort I was finally able to figure out how I could post something on Paul's page. Writing these daily devotionals has been a real challenge for me. As it didn't take long for me to run out of things to say, I decided to start drawing from the Inverted Kingdom. I first wrote this thesis several years ago, but felt it should be rewritten. I have been writing my daily offerings for Facebook from my heart which I hope will give a better format if they are ever collected together for another book. Recently I have been blown away by the Holy Spirit. I felt something should be said on this subject. Yesterdays devotional was as follows.

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The Dove

Yesterday we were discussing how God created various animals dispositions to demonstrate spiritual truth. We talked about sheep and goats to show the nature of children of God and the unsaved inhabitants of this world. In heaven Jesus is known as the Lamb that was slain (Rev. 5:6). On earth the lamb is the weakest of animals. Previously we have discussed how, in heaven, the Lamb is the highest symbol of strength and power. I know of nothing that more clearly demonstrates the intrinsic contrast, of the Inverted Kingdom, the kingdom of God, and this natural world, than the most terrifying force that there is, is the wrath of the Lamb. The day is soon coming when all humanity will cry to rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them from the wrath of the Lamb (Rev. 6:16).

In like manner the Holy Spirit is known as the Dove. It is of up most significance when the Holy Spirit made His appearance in the gospels He came on Jesus as a Dove (Mt. 3:16). The Dove has been universally accepted as the symbol of the Holy Spirit today. The Holy Spirit is perhaps the greatest mystery of the Trinity. If we can say that there are three levels of the Godhead: the Father is in heaven and totally unknowable. John said that “no man hath seen God” (Jn. 1:18). But in Jesus, God became a man that we could see and touch. All that can be knowable of God is seen in Jesus. But in the Holy Spirit we have an even lower level. Jesus was born in a cow barn, but the Holy Spirit is born in human hearts. Jesus lived in a sinful world, but the Holy Spirit lives in human flesh. Oh how can it be?!!! How is it possible that the Holy Spirit lives in my heart? How can He live in this heart that is so cold? How can He live in human flesh that takes such delight is the vilest forms of impurity? The Holy Spirit is the administrator of the church, and the church is a war zone. The Holy Spirit is the only contact we have with the Godhead. The Father and Jesus are in heaven. The Holy Spirit is here with us on earth. But the Holy Spirit is the most sacred. Blasphemy against the Father and the Son is forgivable, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only unforgivable sin (Mt. 12:31). It was the Holy Spirit that first moved in creation (Gen. 1:2), and He is the Dove that is with us today. Is there a greater mystery?

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I am sorry this is so poorly written but the graciousness of the Holy Spirit to live in our hearts is a subject that just blows my mind. How poorly we know Him.

If we are serious about walking with the Lord and serving Jesus, best we understand right now that things in His Kingdom do not always go our way, and the Kingdom of God is basically wired up dead backwards from this world.

It is hard to believe we are at the year of our Lord 2015. As Jesus tarries, may this one be the best one yet.

Happy, blessed, and a fruitful New Year for Jesus,

                                                                                    bill

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Paul Almstead click on Uncle Paul's Bible Study