the first day of Ramadan

Well, it's that time of year again.

Today was the first day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, a month Muslims set apart to become holy, primarily through fasting from sun-up to sun-down. They won't eat anything. They won't even drink water. The most conservative won't swallow their own spit.

As we entered this Islamic holy month, I began to seek God about what how he wanted me to spend this time. I spent time researching fasting in the Bible, fasting from the perspective of Muslims, and even read a couple of Islamic sites which drew conclusions about fasting from the Bible (although they did make sure to note how the book had been tampered with, and could not be fully believed). It's interesting how the Enemy is really good about thwarting the truth just slightly like that.

Another example of Satan's tactics here is a story I heard from a friend yesterday. Said friend had been doing her practicum in the village for a couple of weeks, and was catching me up on the highlights of her time there. She mentioned one girl had become possessed while there. The following conversation ensued:
C: What happened? Did they see a witch doctor? (the normal practice here, the mixture of Islam with folk beliefs)
H: No, I have a friend who is real good in the Al Qur'an, and that took care of it.
C: And that worked?
H: Yeah, she was fine after that.

So, they learn that there is healing of demon possession can be found through reciting the Holy Qur'an. Smart one, Satan.

This month the majority of my friends here will participate in an empty faith so they can have forgiveness. They'll have to follow rigid rules in order to attain God's favor, and God's favor might not last that long after it is attained. But, if they don't follow the fast, then there will literally be more hell to pay in the afterlife (their amount of time in hell will depend on their actions here on earth).

I've been catching up on my Bible stories on fasting so I can retell them if conversation rises (as it surely will). One of the sweetest passages I read the other day was in Joel, and I pray this for my friends here.

Joel 2:12-13, "'Yet even now' declares the LORD, 'Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments. Now return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil.'"

the reason for God

Like I said the other day, I picked up Timothy Keller's The Reason for God at the airport in Singapore. A couple days later, I've finished about 160 pages (with quite a few left to go).

Being one of those that always thinks about things that really have little importance, I've always enjoyed philosophy, even deconstruction in which I can state I'm sitting on an Oreo eating a toilet. Maybe because of my fondness for the abstract, I've always tried to reason myself out of Christianity, mostly when I read the Bible or books defending the faith. Of course I've never come close to not-believing, I just like spotting the logical fallacies which run rampant in Christian writing and talk in Christian circles.

With that said, I've approached Keller's book with the mind of a skeptic, wondering if its arguments would hold up. The result? So far, I have found a couple of problems in its reasoning, but overall it's one of the least fallacious books on the topic that I have ever read--maybe because Keller is a pastor instead of an apologist.

And, with that out of the way, I'll continue to plug the book. If you want your mind stimulated, read it. If you want to be encouraged in your faith, and learn a lot of new things along the way, read it. If you want to prove him wrong, read it.

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

Oh yeah, and I just downloaded and will start to read Plantinga's "Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments," so I recommend that too, if you're willing to read Plantinga-jargon.

over the hump - 28/08/2008

It's Thursday...

Life:
It's Thursday and I'm sitting in Chiangi International Airport. My plane has a delay, so I'm trying to take advantage of Singapore's hospitality, which includes free, fast, wifi, among other things. As stated in the last post, my life is one of those things where no matter how hard I try, I can't do it gracefully, and usually the outcome is confusion and more problems. One of my more fleshly problems is pride, and I think this is just God trying to show me that I really am pitiful and there is nothing to take pride in, even in the eyes of the world. Six years ago he showed me that with salvation--I cannot boast that I believed in the name of the Lord, as He is the one who called me. Now he's breaking me down in every other way.

Anyway, the good news is I just obtained my new visa; I'm over the hump that has taken almost seven months to ascend.

Links:
Perlious Plunge at Holiday World - needless to say, I'm pretty excited, and am already thinking about Summer 2010.
7 Tough Questions to Ask Your Friends - I need this to be asked of me (hint, hint), and I need to ask others
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller - just bought it five minutes ago at a really high airport/Singapore price, but plan on reading it this week


Nobody's Got It All Together - Jill Phillips

Working hard to tie up the loose ends
So hard to decide who you let in
Put your best foot forward with a grin

I can see the fear behind your eyes
Wondering if someone will recognize
You’ve grown tired of keeping up the lies

Don’t whitewash the truth about yourself ‘cause
Nobody’s got it all together
If you want to be like everyone else well
Nobody’s got it all together

I have seen the darkness of my heart
And found a love that taught me its too hard
To walk through life and not let down my guard

What good is it to say please savior come
If there is nothing you need rescue from
Life is something no one has a corner on

Don’t whitewash the truth about yourself ‘cause
Nobody’s got it all together
If you want to be like everyone else well
Nobody’s got it all together

When the parts that are self righteous
Start to disappear
Every other life is
Just another mirror
And life is way too short to run and hide

Don’t whitewash the truth about yourself ‘cause
Nobody’s got it all together
If you want to be like everyone else well
Nobody’s got it all together

my Charlie Brown moment

Today I caught myself dripping wet, standing under a tree, with no place to go.

The story is long, so I won't go into the details of my life being living proof of Murphy's law, but I just want you to picture this: white girl in a brown-skinned world, standing under a big tree, wet shirt, wet, dirty pants and feet. No where to go, and no clue about where I was actually headed. It was raining hard, and I didn't have an umbrella since this is the dry season. I was very sad, and emotionally feeble from a rough day.

It took about fifteen minutes for me to turn to God, and even then my heart was weak and all I could do was a muffled prayer in my head of, "God, please let this all stop."

In that second I realized that it didn't take cancer to make me feel sad. It didn't take a tsunami, losing my job, having my family die in a car wreck. It didn't take a crippling disease, holding a dying child in my arms, being engulfed by war, or even being imprisoned. I wasn't beaten or teased, never harassed. Yet, at that moment, all that was within me was ready to give up, as if I had suffered some atrocity.

Paul should have addressed his letters not to people who were really suffering, but just to some twenty-something girl who was stuck under a tree during an hour-long rainstorm, because if he had, maybe I would have realized that I could persevere through such an ordeal.

^ That last part was sarcastic, for those who are less inclined to read it that way.

At the same time, I checked Tim Challies' blog tonight to find his post about trials and suffering, which only did more to convict me about the "trials" I have to endure. This is from the Valley of Vision:
Father of Mercies, Hear me for Jesus’ sake.
I am sinful even in my closest walk with thee;
it is of thy mercy I died not long ago;
Thy grace has given me in the cross
by which thou hast reconciled thyself to me and me to thee,
drawing me by thy great love,
reckoning me as innocent in Christ though guilty in myself.

Giver of all graces, I look to thee for strength to maintain them in me,
for it is hard to practise what I believe.
Strengthen me against temptations.
My heart is an unexhausted fountain of sin,
a river of corruption since childhood days,
flowing on in every pattern of behaviour;
Thou hast disarmed me of the means in which I trusted,
and I have no strength but in thee.

Thou alone canst hold back my evil ways,
but without thy grace to sustain me I fall.
Satan’s darts quickly inflame me,
and the shield that should quench them easily drops from my hand:
Empower me against his wiles and assaults.
Keep me sensible of my weakness, and of my dependence upon thy strength.
Let every trial teach me more of thy peace, more of thy love.

Thy Holy Spirit is given to increase thy graces,
and I cannot preserve or improve them unless he works continually in me.
May he confirm my trust in thy promised help,
and let me walk humbly in dependence upon thee, for Jesus’ sake.

free album: JJ Heller

In my life-quest to acquire as much modern folk music as possible, I stumbled upon the free download of JJ Heller's new album, "Painted Red." I've downloaded many free (and legal) albums in my time, and sometimes the songwriting/quality is what you pay for. This album, however, is different. (Had I heard of JJ Heller before now, I would have known that she would produce quality music.)

Download the album. Plus, donate some money.



"Painted Red"
If I could not hold a pen I would write of you on my heart instead
You have bought me with your blood and I am painted red by your love
If I could not say a word my life would speak of love I don't deserve

Hope means holding on to you
Grace means you're holding me too

what is written above your door?

I could go into a long story about how one of my favorite aspects of soteriology is found in Exodus 12 and the blood of the sacrifice on the doorposts of the houses of the Israelites, but I won't. Instead, I'll go directly into the story of what we recently found above our door. You see, for a while Erin had noticed an enveloped taped to the wall high above our front door. Since the ceilings here are pretty high, and we're both pretty lazy, we let it go, only imagining the big piece of wall that had been chipped-at underneath the envelope.

At the same time, there had been some...different things happening in our house.

It started with our money. Little by little, sometimes big by big, would disappear from the places where our money is kept safely. One morning Erin went to shower. At that time, she had been keeping close tabs on her money, as we'd seen so much disappear. She counted it before she showered. Our house helper and I were the only ones in the house, and when Erin came back, some of the money from her wallet in her purse was gone.

Now, logically, the house helper was the only one who could have taken it. And yes, even though our house helper treats us like her own children and we think of her as family, we did suspect maybe she was doing it. We were hurt and a little angry. I confronted her about the issue, not directly casting blame, but just letting her know what was going on. Erin and I prayed that whatever had happened would stop, that we would be able to forgive Ibu Mila, with whom we are trying to be lights, and that it would all go away.

The very next day, I came home and had a significant sum of money in my wallet from my most recent trip to the ATM. I put my bag in my room and went to help Ibu Mila in the kitchen. Two hours later, I had a portion missing. Ibu Mila hadn't left my side.

At this point, for a while that at the time did not seem connected, both Erin and I had experienced a darkness in our house. When Erin was here, I would pray as I was walking around the house, not liking the weird feeling. I would pray in the bathroom. Pray as I used the shower. It wasn't a good feeling. I didn't know it at the time, but Erin was feeling the same thing, and was praying every night before she went to bed that nothing evil would enter the house. Then more recently, Erin woke up several nights in a row, petrified for no reason but feeling something bad.

By far the strangest thing happened one night in Erin's room. She woke up to a light noise in the middle of the night. Assuming it was a magnet falling off her dry erase board, she rolled over and went to sleep. The next morning, Erin saw something underneath her bed, at the foot. It was a Chinese coin. To understand the weight of this, you have to know Erin. Her room is impeccably neat. She had just remade her bed the day before. There was nothing in her blankets but blankets. Moreover, even though her friend had recently traveled here from China, she had never owned a Chinese coin, and did not know where it could have come from.

Being Americans, we tried to think of as many scientific reasons as we could before we even thought of the spiritual realm. (Which, by the way, is very real here. Very. And not fun, although thankfully aside from these incidents I've been blessed to not witness its power.) We still can't explain what all happened, and of course people in the West will think it is ridiculous, but there is a striking darkness that is over the darker places in the world, and this sure is one of them. You don't have to be "sensitive" to the spiritual world or even be seeking it out to feel it, it's just there.

One night a friend of ours saw the envelope above our door. He decided to take the envelope down, only to find out that when he did it, inside were some incantations and stones.

We believe the weird animistic spell that was meant to keep spirits out of the house for the previous owners was actually acting as an invitation. We know the ultimate solution isn't to get rid of the envelope, but we did. We know the real solution is to worship the Conqueror of sin and death, which we do and will continue to do if more weird things keep happening.

Yesterday, I read one of the best...collection of thoughts...on spiritual warfare. It's a long article, but it's very biblical and insightful without fanning fanatacism and promoting Exorcist t-shirts. Highly recommended.

proprietary prayer

Recently, Mila's village began clearing space so they could build a house for Mila's mom. I was there the Saturday before they began building, and told Mila that I would be praying for the house and those working. I did.

Mila came to our house to work on Tuesday, and she said the walls were already in place, and twice as many people had showed up to work as expected. In the village, the whole village will participate. They were expecting twenty-five builders for twenty days. They got fifty.

I asked again on Thursday how progress was going. She told me she had phoned home the night before that the walls were almost finished, and that it was because of the prayers we had said. She said that when she heard of the progress, she began to cry (because it was unbelievable). She also said that her mother wanted to thank us, accrediting our prayers to their success.

That's one example of what God does when I least expect it. I've already explained that Erin and I have really been taking more things into prayer lately, and I am convinced that once our hardened hearts are beaten into an attitude of "Yes indeed, everything does belong to the Lord and he will expand his kingdom as he sees fit," then it becomes easier to pray. We are more eager to pray, and eager to be involved with the expansion of that kingdom.

In the past couple of weeks, God has answered some prayers I didn't know I had, and other prayers exactly the way I prayed them. There are some he refused, making my life a little complicated, but reminding me that the idea of proprietary prayer is really based on proprietary living--the idea that he owns the life I have, and everything that enters can be used for his glory if I would suck it up.

Lately I've been praying specifically for an unbelieving friend of mine who has experienced quite a bit of problems. The other day we were walking through the jungle (have I mentioned how much I love my life here?) when this song popped into my head, a testimony to her and a reminder to myself:
"Never Let Me Down" by Andy Gullahorn
I guess I learned the hard way that this world can’t give me what I need.
Even though the house I built on sand was swallowed by the sea, You never let me down. Sometimes I think I’ll only be content with things that money buys.
Its like trying to squeeze water from a stone – it will not provide.

But You never let me down.

You might let me cry.
You might let me sing.
You might let me feel a fraction of your suffering.

But you won’t let me down.

If I could just stop striving and surrender to Your holy power
I know Your loving arms will lift me up and never let me down.