Sunday, August 28, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Bolivia Post Trip - Some Thoughts from Liz
Well, I have my first guest blogger here -- my daughter Liz! She is 11 years old and went with me on our trip with Food for the Hungry and Mountain Christian Church to Bolivia. Here's what she wrote:
BOLIVIA
Five things that were memorable:
1. The plane rides definitely 2. How I communicated with the children in Bolivia (since I faile at Spanish) 3. Turning 2 liter bottles into mini garden fences 4. Going out to eat and watching a play about the Bolivian culture at the same time 5. Doing a clean-up job at a little piece of land (turned out to be really fun) which looked like a dump.
Five thing I learned:
1. How different the world is 2. How beautiful artwork there is (in Bolivia) 3. That Bolivian (Para Ti) chocolate is the third best chocolate in the world 4. That I can dance 5. That I can survive a day with only two hours or less of sleep.
BOLIVIA
Five things that were memorable:
1. The plane rides definitely 2. How I communicated with the children in Bolivia (since I faile at Spanish) 3. Turning 2 liter bottles into mini garden fences 4. Going out to eat and watching a play about the Bolivian culture at the same time 5. Doing a clean-up job at a little piece of land (turned out to be really fun) which looked like a dump.
Five thing I learned:
1. How different the world is 2. How beautiful artwork there is (in Bolivia) 3. That Bolivian (Para Ti) chocolate is the third best chocolate in the world 4. That I can dance 5. That I can survive a day with only two hours or less of sleep.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Bolivia Post Trip - The BIG Gospel
The very first post on this blog is titled "What is the Gospel?" It is a video of Thabiti Anyabwile explaining the gospel -- or good news of Jesus Christ -- at the Desiring God National Conference in 2010. The reason I posted this is found in 1 Corinthians 15 where it speaks of the "first importance" of preaching Christ crucified. In our travels to Bolivia, none of this changed -- it just got magnified and became BIGGER.
How? Well, let me try to use an analogy to explain this. Let's say that you buy a nice oil painting, frame it and hang it in your house. You admire the God-given talent of the artist in creating such a beautiful work. You notice several aspects upon first hanging it on the wall and are blessed to be priviledged to have such a nice piece of art. Over the next days and weeks you have friends and family over and inevitably show this painting to them. And these people start to notice certain details and aspects in the painting that didn't notice before. The depth of the painting becomes even deeper and your appreciation of it grows. And in time you start to observe it for yourself and find details you had not seen before. And this continues. And so it is with the gospel on our trip to Bolivia.
What happened while we were there is that the gospel of God, man, sin, Jesus, response was absolutely and positively confirmed. People need Christ. Without Him, they are lost and destined for hell. This is the lynchpin and overarching / all encompassing aspect of the BIG gospel. There are other facets to the wholistic gospel as it is called. Whoa! Am I changing the gospel? By no means! I simply point to Luke 2:52 where we see Jesus increasing in 1) wisdom 2) stature 3) favor with man and 4) favor with God. As image bearers (see Genesis), we are called to the same and to be "witnesses" as Acts 1:8 says. The great illustration that John from Food for the Hungry gave during one of our worldview sessions during our trip is that of a four pane window with each of the items listed above as being a part. Many north American churches only focus on one of those panes -- the spiritual -- much to their detriment due to the neglect of the other three. All of them are important and need to be addressed and rightly handled.
To give you an idea of how this plays out in life, I'd like to share a powerful story that was shared with our team while in Bolivia. There was a missionary in Chile that had gone out into a rural area that suffered from abject physical poverty. Many of the people there were malnourished because of an utter lack of food. This missionary came across a man and decided to give him a tract about the good news of Jesus Christ. The poverty stricken man promptly took the paper tract, put it in his mouth, and ate it. He then replied to the missionary, "What is your God going to do about my hunger?" This is exactly where those other aspects of the Gospel play out through mercy ministries, building of relationships and just showing the love of Christ in a multitude of ways. To prove this, all you have to do is look at all the things Jesus did during His earthly ministry -- feeding the 5000, healing the sick, and on and on and on. The spiritual is vitally important, but if it is not backed up with works exemplifying a transformed life it tends more often than not to ring hollow to those whom we try to minister to. This is the BIG Gospel.
How? Well, let me try to use an analogy to explain this. Let's say that you buy a nice oil painting, frame it and hang it in your house. You admire the God-given talent of the artist in creating such a beautiful work. You notice several aspects upon first hanging it on the wall and are blessed to be priviledged to have such a nice piece of art. Over the next days and weeks you have friends and family over and inevitably show this painting to them. And these people start to notice certain details and aspects in the painting that didn't notice before. The depth of the painting becomes even deeper and your appreciation of it grows. And in time you start to observe it for yourself and find details you had not seen before. And this continues. And so it is with the gospel on our trip to Bolivia.
What happened while we were there is that the gospel of God, man, sin, Jesus, response was absolutely and positively confirmed. People need Christ. Without Him, they are lost and destined for hell. This is the lynchpin and overarching / all encompassing aspect of the BIG gospel. There are other facets to the wholistic gospel as it is called. Whoa! Am I changing the gospel? By no means! I simply point to Luke 2:52 where we see Jesus increasing in 1) wisdom 2) stature 3) favor with man and 4) favor with God. As image bearers (see Genesis), we are called to the same and to be "witnesses" as Acts 1:8 says. The great illustration that John from Food for the Hungry gave during one of our worldview sessions during our trip is that of a four pane window with each of the items listed above as being a part. Many north American churches only focus on one of those panes -- the spiritual -- much to their detriment due to the neglect of the other three. All of them are important and need to be addressed and rightly handled.
To give you an idea of how this plays out in life, I'd like to share a powerful story that was shared with our team while in Bolivia. There was a missionary in Chile that had gone out into a rural area that suffered from abject physical poverty. Many of the people there were malnourished because of an utter lack of food. This missionary came across a man and decided to give him a tract about the good news of Jesus Christ. The poverty stricken man promptly took the paper tract, put it in his mouth, and ate it. He then replied to the missionary, "What is your God going to do about my hunger?" This is exactly where those other aspects of the Gospel play out through mercy ministries, building of relationships and just showing the love of Christ in a multitude of ways. To prove this, all you have to do is look at all the things Jesus did during His earthly ministry -- feeding the 5000, healing the sick, and on and on and on. The spiritual is vitally important, but if it is not backed up with works exemplifying a transformed life it tends more often than not to ring hollow to those whom we try to minister to. This is the BIG Gospel.
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