That feeling of not knowing. That absence of concrete information. The gray area. That irritating lack of clarity. Define it however you want, but know that I definitely hate it. This is probably a side-effect of my western upbringing where everything is five-year planned, written down in several different documents and signed by several different people before it is actuated. There is no room for uncertainty where I come from. You don’t book a hotel room without paying a deposit or handing over some piece of ID. You don’t start building a house without a specific plan for the structure and for the money to complete it. You don’t open a business before you have the assurance of customers and employees.

But here in the eastern part of the world where I am, uncertainty is not such a big deal. Things can start without a definite plan, and change along the way. In fact, it happens all the time.

It feels a lot like my relationship with God. Except the uncertainty is only on my part.

To be clear, trying to decipher my personal feelings from God’s divine leadings can often be like trying to find a genuine Coach purse on Canal street, New York. You know that it’s possible that there’s a real one there, but the fakes look so convincing that you can hardly tell the difference. And while I am trying to make the distinction between God’s ways and mine, I end up living in a state of extended uncertainty where the future is as clear as a back road on a moonless night.

But what if God wants me to learn to live like this?

What if God doesn’t want me to be sure? What if God’s plan is for me not to have a plan – but rather to take life moment by moment; to pray today for guidance and launch out doing the work for the day – even without certainty that it is in fact the work for today – trusting that if it isn’t God will correct the path. My western nature rejects this completely and fights against it tooth and nail. But my heart which is still being moulded by the Master Planner is learning to live with it.

I recently read a portion from the Desire of Ages where it said Jesus made no plans for himself. Each day He submitted Himself to the plans of the Father. Not each year, nor each month, but each day – suggesting that He only knew on the day what He was to do. To further support this idea, another portion of the Desire of Ages notes that Jesus had no place of His own but depended on the hospitality of His disciples and of friends. Now if that isn’t living in uncertainty, I don’t know what is. But maybe that is where God wants all of us to be.

And maybe living without assurances is a lesson that I am to learn. I’m not sure.

I’m uncertain.

The world says self-esteem is how you should feel about yourself after you look at your own attributes and add to that the input of others. God says self-esteem is how you should feel about yourself after you look at the One who made you and the worth He has placed on you.

But when it comes to how you feel about yourself, who should you really be listening to?

The world says you came about by an accidental explosion that was entirely without plan or purpose. God says you were created in His image (Gen 1:26,27); crowned with glory and honour (Ps 8:5) and the crowning work of the world’s Creator.

The world says you should snip it, tuck it, plump it, pierce it, straighten it, dye it, paint it, and or remove it – you can’t love it until you’ve fixed it. God says it’s okay to love yourself – He already loves you.

The world sees your colour, gender, ability, nationality, weight, and height, and then adds and subtracts points accordingly. God sees you and for Him there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female (Gal 3:28) for we are all equal in His sight.

The world sees your errors, infirmities and old age and says you’re useless. Then it locks you away in prisons, rehabs and retirement homes and throws away the key. God sees your errors, infirmities and age and says “you are precious in My sight” (Isa 43:4). Then He sent His Son to die on a cross so you could spend eternity with Him.

One soul is worth more than all the world. For one soul Jesus would have passed through the agony of Calvary that that one might be saved in His kingdom. – Ellen G White, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, May 3, 1982.

Like I said, with self-esteem, it’s all about perception. Whose are you going to go with?

One Wednesday night she brings her brother to church with her. He is older and attends the University here. The following Sabbath when I do not see him, I ask her about it. Through her limited English I find out that she is the only Christian in her immediate family. Both her parents are Buddhists. She came to know God some years earlier when her grandmother started bringing her to church. She does not understand that this is a big thing for a teenager her age. This is also probably a good thing.

I am not an expert on Buddhism, but from what I gather it is not an extremist religion. It is unlikely that you will be killed for choosing to be a Christian. In fact, most Thai Buddhists I have met are open to hearing about Jesus, even if they do not necessarily believe He is for them.

Where it is similar to other religions, however, is that Buddhism is more than just a religion. It is not like Christianity which many people can tune into for one day each week and turn off 24 hours later. Buddhism is a culture. It explains the reason Thai people do a lot of things they do. It is a lifestyle. It advises how you eat, work, play and relate to others. So when someone, like my friend, relinquishes Buddhism, they in many ways give up some of their culture.

How willing am I to give up my culture for Christ?

In the west we have these long debates about music, dress and style of worship. We cling to our drums, and jewelry like lifelines, often tossing the word culture into the mix as a reason for holding onto them. I don’t want to judge whether these things are wrong or right. But when I meet people who give up lifestyles that they have been born into for Christ, I can’t help but wonder why it is so easy for them and so hard for us. Is it because they love Jesus more? Does it mean I love Jesus less?

Hmm. Something to think about.

I remember first asking what a concubine was at an age when I was probably too young to have been asking. I was told they were women who men slept with who were not their wives. I came away not thinking very highly of these women.

This week’s lesson however added some more light to the concept of the concubine. Though many of these women were originally maids or household slaves, being a King’s concubine seemed to be an upgrade. Their purpose was to bear heirs for the King and they were well taken care of for their service. Not a bad deal if you were a woman of Old Testament times. So you’re not a wife, but if we learned anything from Hannah (lesson 1) it was that a woman’s chief role back then was to strengthen the nation with heirs. So if your life’s purpose was to have someone’s babies, why not a King’s? It is also worthwhile to note that the man to whom the concubine bore a child was considered her ‘husband’.

Being the concubine of a powerful man also seemed to add a level of importance to a woman. Quite a few major scuffles in Old Testament time were provoked by issues related to a King’s concubine. See 2 Samuel 16:21 and 1 Kings 2 for details. One such concubine was Rizpah.

We first hear about Rizpah in 2 Samuel 3 where a rumour with her name attached to it starts a conflict between Saul’s son Ishbosheth and Abner that ends with Abner defecting to the House of David.

We see her again in 2 Samuel 21 when her sons are given to be killed in retribution for the acts of Saul. Here we see Rizpah’s faithfulness as she watches over the dead bodies of her sons and the other heirs of Saul who died with them.

I cannot imagine how Rizpah must have felt – watching her sons killed, not for anything they had done, but because of the actions of their father. She must have felt that to be the plight of her life – constantly being used and having her family used as a pawn in someone else’s drama.
Anyone who’s had to suffer because of someone else’s actions will understand how easy it is to grow bitter about such a situation. But there is no record of this from Rizpah. All we know is that she quietly and faithfully went about taking care of the bodies of her sons.

Life will inevitably deal us some unfair blows. The real question is: how will we respond to them? Will we be faithful to God and to our responsibilities? Or will we take actions that the rest of the world would see as justified? And even if we choose to be faithful, how long will we hold out?

Rizpah watched her sons’ bodies for many weeks. Even though the eventual result was that David ordered the proper burial of her sons along with Saul and his descendants, she had no way of knowing if and when this would have happened.

Like Rizpah we may not know when God will reward us for our faithfulness. But we know for sure that He will – If not in this life, then in the life to come.

Furthermore, we do not know how far reaching the influence of our faithfulness may be. Rizpah was one concubine, whose influence was more than the sons she bore for the King. What will your influence be?

This year’s speakers include Thando Malambo, Eric Walsh, Jay Gallimore, David Asscherick, Jeffrey Rosario and many others. General Conference Pres. Ted Wilson will be the Sabbath speaker. For a full line up of speakers and to register visit the GYC website. Also check out the Facebook group pages and event listing for Generation of Youth for Christ, to connect with others travelling to the event from around North America and the world.

If you’ve never heard of the conference, check our archives for posts from previous conferences in the series. Leave us a comment and let us know if you will be there!

Nwamiko Madden, His Image Ministries

I was a skeptic when I walked in…

I’ll admit it. I didn’t even stay at the hotel. I made the 45 minute drive across town to the Delta Mississauga each day of the event held August 19 – 22. I had not been to the Eastern Canada Youth Conference (ECYC) in 2009, but I heard it had been okay, so I decided to spare a vacation day for the cause this year.

Attendance at the opening plenary on the Thursday night was low, but the message from Eastern Canada Youth President, Valmy Karemera was not lacking any substance. He talked about what it means to be fully persuaded Christians. For one, it means having a precommittment to God – being ready to give whatever God requires before He even asks us to do it. It also means being willing to be separated from the crowd. Just as Abraham was willing to be separated from those around him for the sake of Christ, so we must be if we are to honestly call ourselves fully persuaded Christians.

At the end of Thursday I was a little less of a skeptic.

Friday morning brought the workshops and more people. There was too much quality and quantity for me to give you everything but here are the tidbits of the ones I managed to attend:

Reasons to believe: Persuading the Mind and the Heart was done by Pastor Richard Roschman of the Heritage Green Adventist church. He touched on controversial topics including doubt as part of the Christian experience and why having doubt doesn’t mean you’re a terrible Christian.

Former television actor, Nwamiko Madden of His Image Ministries took on the sexy topic of Movies, Music and Spirituality, the sum of which left a friend of mine quite upset when it was suggested that certain types of Christian music she enjoyed listening to might not be as virtuous as she thought. Names of people, artists and films have been withheld to protect the innocent, but I would pose the following question: Is there really any such thing as innocent entertainment? If it doesn’t turn us to God, then what does it do?

Dr. Ron Du Preez from the Michigan Conference led Persuasively Peculiar Among Pluralistic People. Don’t let the long name fool you though, this Christian Foundations workshop went deep into how properly interpreting and studying the Bible can help us be fully persuaded Christians. He also outlined a six step Biblical process for making good decisions in a secular society. My fingers grew tired from writing.

There was so much to this conference that space doesn’t allow me to mention: the evening devotionals by C.A.M.P.U.S‘s Steven Conway; the morning devotionals by Pastor Jason Williams; the Sabbath message from Malcolm Douglas. But what moved me most was the commitment of the young people I met who were fully persuaded for Christ.

The 23 year old young woman who has spent the last couple months working in the Gimbie Adventist Hospital, Ethiopia; the team of ECYC youth who went on a Mission Trip to Zambia for several weeks this summer; those who stayed here and took part in a summer canvassing program; the ECYC executive and their teams who, though being scattered around different portions of Canada and being involved full-time in school or work, devoted themselves to the development of this growing movement; even the young people who went on outreach on Sabbath afternoon, knocking on doors and handing out literature despite the overcast sky and the slight rain.

My brother, who I dragged along for the Sabbath portion was impressed; I was impressed. And it led me to this one conclusion:

Fully persuaded young people create other fully persuaded young people. Our witness is by our testimony – our own personal testimony. This is how we will win others for Christ in this generation.

I came a skeptic. I left fully persuaded.

That’s right. All. That includes your pastor, your neighbor, Mother Theresa, Barack Obama, you and most definitely me. We have all sinned. It’s a tough pill to swallow and as we get closer to Christ our understanding of this will go through different stages. Here are a few:

DENIAL
We all have heard the denial of this fact in one form or another. It comes in the shape of the “humanity is inherently good” theories. The lesson points out however, that when we understand what true goodness is, and when we measure ourselves against God, the only good one, we find that we all are flawed.

DECEPTION
The lesson talks about a number of misconceptions the world may have about sin and evil. One is that humanity has and will continue to improve and that morality is increasing. But is this really true? There are arguments on how many days of peace the world has had since World War 2, and although no one has settled on a number, most people’s estimates are alarmingly low. Our turn away from God and into sin has meant increasingly violent times across the world.

On a much smaller scale however is the self-deception that leads us to think ourselves better than others because we see our sin as less extreme than that of others. Another self-deception is to think that we can fix our own sin problem through our own effort. But we would be wrong on both counts.

ACCEPTANCE
It can be depressing to realize our true state. But what a relief to know that through Jesus we can find redemption and salvation. When we accept our sinfulness and turn to Him, we can find righteousness through faith in Him. It means we can be truly without sin before the father, because we become covered in Jesus’ righteousness.

REPENTANCE
There is no other way to Salvation. Once we realize our sin, we’ve got to admit it, and give it up. And no one can do this for us – we must do this voluntarily on our own. When we do, however, we receive the power from God to overcome the temptations that come our way in the future.

RECREATION
We all come before God sinful, but we do not need to stay this way. God’s love created for us the opportunity to be cleansed and to have new life in Him. We are no longer the sinful beings we were, but we are recreated into sons of daughters of Christ.

In Romans, Paul tells us that all of have sinned and fall short of God’s glory. But later in 2 Corinthians 5:7 he reminds us that “… if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

That’s a final stage worth striving for.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not knocking crusades. I know they work. I just wonder whether they work here – that is, within North America. I think the question is worth examining when you realize that the North American Division, with a growth rate of 4.3% over the last five years,  ranks 8 out of 13 in terms of church growth among all our divisions*. In fact Divisions with the most developed countries seem to have the slowest rates of church growth.

Could it be that the traditional methods may not be as effective here?

Just for fun, do your own study. Next time you’re at church count all the people who became new members in the last twelve months. Minus from that number immigrants who transferred their membership. Then minus those who were re-baptized. Take away all the children who’ve been attending church for years but who just decided to get baptized. Now tell me how many you have left.

If your count was as low as mine then maybe, like me, you’re thinking that we need to find new ways to spread the gospel to those around us everyday. You know who I mean. The person who sits beside you at work – the one who just made the last payment on his 2009 hybrid and isn’t really in need of anything. Or your hairdresser who’s too busy running her own business to take a week night off. Or your next door neighbor Fred and his partner Gregory. They need to know Jesus too don’t they? So why aren’t we finding post-modern methods to share the gospel in our post-modern world?

In the book Evangelism, Ellen G White urges us to seek the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in spreading the gospel, and tailor our outreach methods to every situation. In other words, the one-size-fits-all strategy for evangelism will not work.

So how do we do make the change? Maybe by making our evangelism more individual focused than mass focused; or by using things like our health message to welcome in our health trendy society.//For this reason I am excited by the recent efforts of our church leaders to make this year’s evangelism strategy a bit different by including outreach in the areas of health, family and finances.**//But most of all we should be intentional and Spirit led about evangelism, recognizing that it is broke the way it is now, and we should fix it.

*Stats provided by Adventist Global Mission Frontline Edition 20th Anniversary Edition.

** Added July 2, 2010.

Sports were kind of a big deal to the Greeks, which was probably why in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 9:24-27) and again in his letter to the Philippians (Philip 3:12-14) Paul likens the Christian walk to a race. In a race there is a prize or a goal that every one strives for. Similarly in the Christian walk our aim is to grow in Christ, so that we can win the final prize of eternity with Him.

In order to compete well in a physical race, training, preparation and the “e” word (Exercise) are necessities. Yet consistency seems to be a problem for a lot of us when it comes to exercise. For me, as soon as the temperature drops below 10? C ( 50?F) it’s a wrap. The only exercise I will be doing after that is the walk from my front door to my car.  The consequence however is that the fitness that I worked so hard to achieve over the warmer months, wanes away due to lack of consistent exercise.

Isn’t it kind of the same thing with our spiritual lives too? In order to develop the strong Christian characters that will take us through to the end, we need to exercise our faith. And this comes through challenging ourselves to study more; in taking chances based on our faith and in putting our complete trust in God. Too often though, we hit the winter season in our Christian athletics program. This winter season comes with distractions that shift the focus away from spiritual exercises. Distractions like exam periods, where we are too busy studying to have daily devotions; or work pressures that leave us too stretched to share an encouraging word with someone else; or even church activities that keep us so overscheduled we have no time to spend in meaningful prayer with God. Our winter season might even be a period of doubt, where we can’t believe in God’s promises to us because we can’t see the tangible proof, and so we stand paralyzed, unable to exercise our faith. Whatever our winter season may be, the longer we stay in it, the more we will decline in our spiritual fitness.

The good news however is that it doesn’t take a lot to get us going again in the right direction. Even a body that had not been exercised in a long while will begin to show improvements with small acts of physical activity. My creaky, lazy body may not be able to jog a mile my first week out. But I can walk around the block. And the next week I can walk two blocks, two times. In a month, if the exercise is consistent, six days a week for at least thirty minutes a day, I should be able to jog a couple miles without difficulty.

Our spiritual life is the same. Small steps like daily prayer and study and sharing our testimony with others help us develop the spiritual fitness we need to run Paul’s race.

God expects us to maintain our physical beings and our spiritual beings by exercising both. So what are you waiting on to get going?

Have you ever had that feeling? Like your best wasn’t good enough – like the entire sum total of your efforts wasn’t adding up to diddly squat? Of course you have. It’s called failing. And we’ve all experienced it in some shape or form at one time or another.

I recently went through a week of failure. It started with a Week of Prayer which did not look anything like the vision I had for it; continued with a bad presentation on Tuesday and climaxed with a failed attempt at explaining the basics of the Sabbath to a co-worker. By Friday it had led me to a vexing question:

Does God sometimes intentionally let us fail?

No, don’t protest, just think about it. How else could I pray and do my best and still end up a loser? I had taken on Week of Prayer outside of my usual responsibilities? Didn’t that count for something? I had said yes to presenting even though I absolutely hate speaking in front of others. Shouldn’t God have blessed the efforts of my willing heart? In the past three months I’ve made a concerted effort to increase my devotion time and study God’s word so I could be ready to give an account. So what happened to the words that God was supposed to give me to say as He promised in Luke 21:14,15?

So based on this I have to conclude that sometimes God leaves the door open for us to fail. At the very least it seems like failure is inevitable even if you are walking with Christ. And I’m not just spinning wool here, people. I’ve got proof:

Proof # 1 – Botched Exorcism
Matt 17:14-21 : A man brings his son to Jesus to be healed because the disciples tried but failed to do it. Talk about your bad performance review. I can just imagine how the disciples felt. And you could tell they were embarrassed too, because they “…came to Jesus privately…” to ask him what they had done wrong. But wasn’t Jesus the one who had sent them out in the first place? Hmm. Let’s continue.

Proof # 2 – Peter and the Rooster
Matt 26:69-75: Peter denies Christ three times. Jesus told Him it was going to happen. And though Peter thought He would never deny Christ, when he heard the cock crow three times, and realized that failure indeed was his. Who was more committed to Jesus as a disciple than Peter? It seems like moments of failure in this Christian walk are inevitable.

Proof # 3 – 1844
Really? Need I say any more? I have a new appreciation for William Miller. I thought my failure with my co-worker was rough, but imagine studying and praying and prophesying the return of Jesus not once, not twice, but three times and being wrong all three. I cannot begin to imagine the feelings of despair that arose from the 1844 Great Disappointment. Miller prayed and studied for years to come up with the dates in 1843 and ‘44, so how could he get it so wrong?

In every situation there were good intentions. So what went wrong?

In listening to a sermon by W.D. Frazee on Relating to Others’ Failures, my attention was drawn to the following text:

“Woe unto the world because of occasions of stumbling! for it must needs be that the occasions come; but woe to that man through whom the occasion cometh!” – Matt 18:7 ASV

The second part “…for it needs be that the occasions (of stumbling) com;” was what caught my eye. Are you telling me that occasions of failure are inevitable? But why? Here are a couple suggestions:

To reveal to us what is in our own heart
Sometimes it is only through failure that we see our own pride and devotion to self. At times these can even be disguised as zeal for Christ, but in the face of failure the difference it is clear. But as our own selfish motives lie open before us, we have the chance toe let Christ exchange them for humility and meekness.

So God can fulfill his purpose
Ministry of Healing p 489 reads”…He who is imbued with the Spirit of Christ abides in Christ…Nothing can touch him except by the Lord’s permission. All our sufferings and sorrows, all our temptations and trials, all our sadness and griefs, all our persecutions and privations, in short, all things work together for our good. All experiences and circumstances are God’s workmen whereby good is brought to us…”

To help us stay dependent and keep us humble
As one writer said, “Our short-changed prayer life is a warning signal, but we find that easy to ignore. Failure is much harder to ignore.”Another points out that self-confidence can be a great hindrance to God using us. But there’s nothing like a touch of failure to send us running back to God, submitting completely to His will and His guidance.

To test us and give us experience dealing with problems
Judges 3:4 reads “And they [other nations residing in Canaan] were left, to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of Jehovah, which he commanded their fathers by Moses.” Frazee noted that as Israel entered the Promised Land God allowed many of the heathen nations to remain in Canaan and to prevail against Israel on occasion to test the loyalty of the newer generations of Israelites to God. Could God be using our challenges and failures to test us? To prove to ourselves and maybe to others our loyalty to Him?

As I lick the wounds of my own week of failure I have learnt a few things about myself, which in essence, was what God was trying to do all along – teach me. What is He trying to teach you?

Photo thanks to Bob.Fornal