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Abandoned Times - March 14, 2006


 


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Abandoned Times 

 

 SVM2 (Student Volunteer Movement 2)

www.svm2.net

 March 2006  

 

A movement has begun…. SVM2 is a grassroots student mission movement made up of disciples from many organizations, campuses, ministries, and churches committed to Abandoned Devotion to Christ, the urgent Global Proclamation of His gospel, and Spreading the Vision to as many of their peers as possible.

 

IN BRIEF

 

1.      Abandoned Devotion - By Dan Cook
2.    Global Proclamation - By Ralph Leo
3.     Global Ministry Bytes: Forced Submission: Children, Poverty's Most Vulnerable Victims - By Chris Heuertz
4.     Overcoming Barriers To Involvement: How Could God Ever Use Me? - By Andrew Scott 

5.    Resources For Building the Student Mission Movement On Your Campus

6.      Books Of The Month

 

Abandoned Devotion Reflection

 

Be the Warrior

By Dan Cook

Dan is a student leader at Emmanuel Bible College in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  He is a man whom God is using to stir a deeper vision for the prayer movement for the nations.  You can contact him at danielrobertcook@gmail.com.

 

So here we are, and what's next? This life of pursuing God and being obedient to him - it's not easy. At times it's joyless. At times there is no peace, and no rest. God leads us, but to where? What is He doing and how is He involving us? It can be so easy to ask question after question about what is going on. I wonder how Abraham felt when he was asked to leave everything he knew and just go. "Go where?" He didn't know. Or - how about Joshua, when he was told he would be leading God's people into the promised land. "What, me?" The sure thing is that God has called us, and we are a part of his purpose.

I was speaking with a friend the other day, and I want to use the same analogy to illustrate something that came up in our conversation. We had been talking about where God leads us and how He does it and it seems so hard at times to know exactly where we're going. Then, when we finally get some understanding of things, it feels like we're inadequate for the task. Truth be told though - we have the Holy Spirit and He will be strong in us in the midst of our greatest of weaknesses.

What I thought of was that, if we are in the army, we simply don't know where we're going - ever, until we are given the command to go. Surely, we are all in the army of the Lord - and so this fits quite well. You see, those who are in the army don't know that they have to go halfway across the world overnight until something happens halfway across the world which demands their involvement. They simply won't just go and be sitting ducks. Neither would they go in advance and anticipate that something is going to happen. No - instead, they wait. And while they wait, they train, and they become more disciplined and more ready. They learn more strategies and learn the tactics and strategies of the enemy so that when the time comes, they will be able to go in without any problems.

The waiting time. It's hard, right? We've all been there. Jesus had a waiting time - it was actually most of his life. He was 33 when he died, having had a couple decades of "training" and then three years of ministry. There is a time and season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3). So here is a challenge: when you're in the waiting time - waiting for your "orders" - be ready, and be stretched. And don't miss the orders when they come!

The other aspect of this is that as the orders come we can be sent anywhere. Presently, God is doing a lot of things all over the world. It's not hard to see it. The same can be said about the enemy. The powers of darkness are desperate, trying their hardest to disable the church from fulfilling the Great Commission, and also dragging the rest of the world into the pits of darkness. Constantly there are battles going on in the heavenly realm, yes the spiritual war that we are involved in ("our battle is not against flesh and blood..." Eph 6:12, see also 2 Cor 10:3). God has strategies and has planned times of attack on the enemies strongholds. Part of the reason we need to be so attentive to the Holy Spirit while we intercede is so that we can properly discern what battles are being fought and then join in as He leads. God can use us in spiritual battles that are being fought halfway across the world. He can take us there in the spiritual realm, or, he can take us there physically. Half of the battle is fighting against the powers of darkness. The other half is showing love to a lost and dying world. So we engage on two fronts.

So we wait to be given orders. If we're open enough to it we can be given orders all the day long, every day. Be led by the Spirit, put on the armor of light, and do what He desires. God is calling many of us to go halfway around the world to serve Him among the nations. Are those your orders? Have you ever really asked yourself this? Would you be ready tomorrow? Be ready, because when the orders come, they come, and you go.

In summing up - we're all in the army of the Lord. Some of us have different roles, but we're all involved. Be useful to the Lord then on these two fronts - through prayer, fighting the powers of darkness, and through showing love and providing hope to this lost and dying world. I want to challenge you to go beyond your limits. Learn about spiritual warfare. Learn about what you need to do to tear down the strongholds of the enemy. It seems that our churches (for the most part in North America) have given up on this war we're in. It's as if we've gone up to the front lines, and laid down our armor and weaponry, and ran the other way. It's as if we're losing without putting up a fight. Rise up above this! You have been recruited by the Lord of Hosts for a purpose. Be strong in the Lord (Ephesians 6:12), live it out, and let the Lord live through you. Be the warrior. Go and fight!

 

Global Proclamation Reflection

 

A Tragic Trend

By Ralph Leo

Ralph served for six years with Young Life and now is working with SVM2 as an Area Coordinator for the Northeast (U.S.) and lives in New Hamphshire.  He can be contacted at rleo@gmail.com.

 

There is something very tragic in our midst.  There is something murderous, no, better yet, suicidal, that lurks within the Church.  I call it suicidal because it comes from within.  This is precisely why it is so dangerous because it seems so innocent. As is often the case, the most wretched enemies are usually veiled in innocence.   We've all heard it before, maybe even thought it ourselves… "Those people who have never heard the Gospel as presented in the Bible aren't really condemned to eternal spiritual death, are they?   I mean, that would be so unjust of God, right?" 

Wrong. The truth is that a person's knowledge or lack thereof concerning Jesus Christ is not the thing that condemns them before a holy God.   In fact, Paul clearly states in Romans 2 that ultimately, it is each person's failure to comply with the Law (either explicitly as found in the Bible, or implicitly as written on our hearts/conscience) that renders us guilty as we stand before a holy and just judge. [1]  This is why in the very next chapter Paul can say that "Jews (those who know the Bible) and Gentiles (those who don't) alike are all under sin" and that "There is no one righteous, not even one…" [2]  Why is this the case?  So that "every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God." [3]  And then the culmination, beginning in Romans 3:21,

"But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known… this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.   There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus… [4]  Where then, is boasting?   It is excluded… for we maintain that a man is justified by faith… Is God the God of the Jews only?  Is he not the God of the Gentiles too?  Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through the same faith. [5]"

It is the clear testimony of Scripture then, that neither the opportunity nor the lack of opportunity to reject Christ is the reason for our condemnation, whether Jew or Gentile. We are condemned because of our inability to obey God's law, period.   It is also the clear testimony of Scripture that one thing alone is responsible for an eternal acquittal – explicit faith in Jesus Christ.  As Peter testified in Acts 4:12, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

And yet many [6] within the Church still hold that people who have never had the chance to respond to the Gospel in faith are likely to find eternal favor with God, thereby avoiding judgment.   Sadly, this view has been perpetuated from many pulpits and seminaries.  There are basically two camps who hold this position, pluralism and inclusivism.  Pluralism contends that God, not Christ, is the center of the religious universe.   It teaches that all paths eventually lead to the top of the mountain, and that Christ is merely one of many options to God.  Inclusivism says that Christ and his work on the Cross are the only means to God, but that it's not necessary for someone to have a conscious knowledge of this fact, since many people live in remote corners of the world and have not known about Jesus (through no fault of their own).  

Both of these views are unbiblical, inasmuch as they contradict the clear testimony of Scripture, Church history, and experience. [7]  Why is it then, that despite said difficulties, such large numbers of Christians in the West [8] still contend that it's not really vital to carry the Gospel to the far corners of the earth?  I think the answer is quite simple – it gets our own guilty consciences off the hook.  Face it, if we take the Bible seriously, it might mean a radical shake-up of our comfortable little Christian lives!   If we take God at his Word, and believe Him when He says that "there is no one righteous" apart from explicit "faith in Jesus Christ" it means that our world is turned upside down.  All of a sudden, our tiny hopes and dreams of school, career, family, etc. pale in comparison to the reality that one third of the world's total population (over 2 billion souls) lives in societies with little or no access to a Message that we in the West have come to take for granted.   I live in New England, and compared to much of the US there aren't very many Christians in these parts!  Still, there are about twenty solid churches in my city of only 29,000 people.   Compare that to Turkey, for example, where there might be five or so tiny churches in a city like Istanbul with 15 million people!  Let alone the smaller cities and villages in the east that don't even have one believer living there.

Friends, the notion that people can experience the joys of heaven without conscious faith in Christ alone is indeed suicidal.   It is harmful to the cause of missions – what urgency is there to preach the gospel if people can be saved some other way?  It is harmful to the message of the Cross, effectively emptying it of its power, because it means that Christ died in vain.   It is harmful to the legacies of those like Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, and Jim Elliot who have given everything they had because they knew there was no other hope for mankind.  What's more, it is detrimental to our own faith, because subscribing to such a belief system means that we don't really savor, honor and treasure Jesus Christ above all else ourselves.  And that is the real tragedy. 

1 Romans 2: 12-15

2 Romans 3: 9-10

3 Romans 3: 19

4 Romans 3: 21-24

5 Romans 3: 27-30

6 According to a recent Newsweek poll, 67% of Evangelicals and 90% of Catholics said that there were alternate paths to salvation apart from conscious faith in Christ.

7 I would love to further refute these unbiblical teachings, but that's for another day!

8 It is interesting to note that the concept of saving faith apart from conscious knowledge of Christ is conspicuously absent in the non-Western Church.  Some of  my good friends in other parts of the world are shocked when I tell them that many Christians in the West hold such positions.

 

Global Ministry Bytes

Asking Ourselves if God Might Use Our Lives to Serve in these Arenas of Ministry
 

Forced Submission: Children, Poverty's Most Vulnerable Victims

By Chris Heuertz

Chris is the Executive Director of Word Made Flesh and is based in Omaha, Nebraska. Chris can be contacted at chris.heuertz@wordmadeflesh.com

 

I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors – and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. — Ecclesiastes 4:2,3 

Childhood is meant to be a time to enjoy life, to play and pretend, to be cared for and loved. It is a time for growing into an understanding of how society and culture function. On some level, all children learn about power and submission. Ideally, these lessons are taught in the context of a community's nurturing embrace – loving parents, extended family, church leaders, and teachers. However, outside of community, beyond the gates of isolation and neglect, lies a hard teacher: poverty. Its cruelty often leads to death, and children are some of its most vulnerable victims.

Let me highlight a few stories: One of our teams in Bolivia was in La Paz working with a ministry among children living on the streets. A fight broke out between two of the kids, and one of the boys slit the throat of the other. The team was at his side as he bled to death in the plaza. A sweet four-year-old girl in the care of one of our children's homes in Chennai, India, couldn't fight for life any longer. She came to our community in a weakened and underdeveloped state because her parents were very poor and couldn't cope with her profound physical and mental disabilities. Suspected to have been HIV positive, she died from congenital heart disease. One of the boys on the streets in Galati, Romania, was building a fire in the sewer. The fire got out of control, and the boy was badly burned. He died a few days later, alone, in a local hospital. Another child in Galati was begging at a street corner when he was killed by a hit-and-run driver who was never identified or arrested.  

Poverty didn't teach these children submission; it forced itself upon them, making them subject to its tyranny. Each one of these precious children carried the potential to establish a godly legacy – to become the matriarch or patriarch of a righteous generation. Each one had hopes and dreams that were laid to rest with them in their premature graves.  

But we must look beyond such earthly graveyards. Reading Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, He begins His story by introducing us to two people, two souls. The first is a rich man who was "dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day" (Luke 16:19). The second man is a man who begs named Lazarus, who lay at the rich man's gate and was "covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores" (20-21).  

Only two sentences into the parable, Jesus has already hinted at a hidden truth and a magnificent love. The man who begs is powerless and ignored, while the rich man is self-absorbed and has less concern for the man who begs than the dogs that licked the poor man's sores. Still, Jesus does not give the rich man a name, but He names the man who begs Lazarus (which means "he whom God helps"). Furthermore, this is the only time that Jesus names a character in one of His parables. God honors Lazarus by speaking his name and thereby including it in the Scriptures. The rich man's name is neither uttered nor written because his wealth and power are fleeting if they are used without concern for the poor or regard for the Kingdom.  

When Lazarus died, the angels carried him to rest in Abraham's bosom, a place of blessedness and a home for the righteous. Though forced to submit to poverty in life, Lazarus received his reward after death. Conversely, the rich man had many choices in life. After death, however, he was forced to submit to the torment of hell, where he was admonished by Abraham,

"Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." He answered, "Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment." Abraham replied, "They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them (Luke 16:25-29)."

In his disregard for the teachings of Moses and the Prophets, in his apathy and disconcern for the poor man Lazarus, the rich man showed his unwillingness to submit to God. Lamenting his wrong choice, the rich man finally thinks of someone besides himself – his five brothers – hoping they might be warned to submit to the One he wouldn't. Still, for him, it was too late. Will we listen to the same teaching, we who, through Jesus, have even a greater revelation of truth than the rich man had? The words of Jesus and the Prophets are clear: if we claim to love God, we will have concern for the poor.

Today alone, over 16,000 graves are dug for children under the age of five who died of hunger-related causes.  These children's mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and communities go on, longing to eat the scraps that fall from the tables of the rich. Will we show a godly concern and share our power, wealth, and love with them? The children we know who have died this year had little or no opportunity to choose something other than pain and suffering in their short lives. During their earthly lives, they were oppressed and forgotten, forced to submit to poverty's reign.

Their submission was forced upon them by poverty – an evil master. Thankfully, our submission is not forced but joyfully given. We voluntarily give it to a compassionate and just Master. Submitting to Him means accepting the hard teachings of Jesus and the Prophets. We may be called to "throw away" our power, wealth, and prestige. It may mean giving away in love what we have saved for our whole lives, like Joseph of Arimathea, who gave his tomb to a poor Man. It may mean lifting our eyes to meet those begging at our front gate. It may lead us to "waste" our very lives, throwing them at the feet of Jesus. Whatever our submission entails, we can rest in the joy that He goes with us, using our willingness to bring love and justice to the little ones whose names He holds close to His heart.

Overcoming Barriers to Involvement

 

How Could God Ever Use Me?

By Andrew Scott

Andrew is Vice President of Recruiting for Operation Mobilization USA and is based outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He can be contacted at Andrew@usa.om.org

 

You would have been quaking too if you had been asked to do what he was asked to do! Rescuing hundreds of thousands of people out of slavery from under a ruthless king and being given the job of managing them and their possessions on a trip through a desert towards a country you knew nothing about. Moses found it easy to think of excuses why he was not the right person (Ex 3&4). It took God 30 verses in Exodus to get him to agree to go and even then Moses was not so convinced and rather reluctant.  

Continue on through scripture: Barak, Gideon (Judges), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Paul to name a few of the ones who faced a similar crisis of belief when the feeling of unworthiness or inadequacy seemed to drown out the voice and reassurance of God their Father. The reality is that we all struggle with this feeling of inadequacy. (Recent research tells us that this is the number one issue holding God's people back from moving forward in missions). I believe that this struggle is not based on reality, rather it is based on our feelings.

Back to Moses! His feelings seemed to blind him to the fact that the living God was speaking in an audible voice, out of a bush that was not burning…awesome! His feelings seemed to deafen him to the truth of the words of reassurance from this very present, speaking audibly awesome God. His feelings seemed to blind him to the power of God even as his staff turned to a snake and back again and then there was the leprous hand thing. Amazing realities right before him, but Moses' personal inner struggle with "there is no way I can do this thing your asking me to do" meant he missed the reality of an awesome, living, powerful and very patient God standing right before him asking him to join Him on an amazing journey of faith. In short, his personal feelings of inadequacy drowned out the reality of God and all He is.  

Why? And why do these same feelings hold so many of us back from obediently following God. Maybe a reality check would help -

1)   The Reality of who God is. Moses somehow missed the point that God was making – "Is it not I, the Lord?" (Ex 4v11) In Isaiah 40 God asks Israel again    "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth." In other words, "Hey! Do you not realize who is speaking here!" The God who has called us out as His children and also His ambassadors to a fallen world is all powerful. He created everything that exists both in the seen and unseen worlds and in Him all things hold together (Col 1v17).  

This same God spoke to an awestruck group of disciples (just after He rose from the dead, walked among them and was about to ascend into the heavens…a pretty good indicator to the fact that He was an all powerful God) and said "I am with you always!" So, if our God created everything, holds everything together, is with us as we live and move around amidst these things that He created (even the unseen spooky things) and can deliver on all He promises, then we can move forward into obedience with great courage. Remember that Courage is not the absence of fear but doing the right thing even in the presence of fear.

2)   The Reality of Who we are (Eph 2 9-10). We are His masterpiece (He made you the way He intended - gifts, passions, personality, etc) created in Christ Jesus to do good works (He made you with a purpose in mind, to do His work among the nations) which He prepared in advance (He has been working on this one a long time). You are uniquely made for a unique task - God knows this and is leading you towards it. Don't fear whether you can do it or not. If God is leading you towards it, then you are made for it.

3)    The Reality of the situation. It is not about us but it is truly all about God. The sooner we give up our self-serving attitude that tells us that this Christian life is about our happiness, our security, our future, or how we feel and realize that it is about God and His glory, His agenda, and His mission; that we exist for Him and not Him for us, then how we FEEL will not hold us back from getting involved more deeply with God.  

4)   The Reality of Christ's call. Jesus does not suggest some options to us. He does not have opt-out clauses or possible counter proposals that we can draft and submit. His call was one of total abandonment of ourselves, our ambitions, our hopes and dreams. A total surrender to the Calvary Road where self has no place. When He calls us to Himself and to His purposes, He expects obedience, not excuses, not self pity, and not 20 reasons why we can't. He was speaking His truth when He said, "Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go, even of one's own self, can't be my disciple."   When the Master calls, don't stop to ask, "Am I able?"

5)    The Reality of the Enemy. We are in a Battle (Eph 6v12). The more we move forward against the enemy (Satan), the more he will come against us. From the beginning of time he has used the tactic of doubt. See your present doubting of these 4 realities for what they are - an attack of  the enemy. Courageously resist the devil and move forward in obedience to what God is calling you to. Don't let your feelings of inadequacy surrounding what you cannot do hold you back from what God wants and is calling you to do. HE is able to do exceedingly and immeasurably more then we can ever ask or imagine!
 

Resources for Building the Student Mission Movement on your Campus  

 

  • Global Prayer Team Guides – Gather your friends together and commit to meet regularly (at least once a week for 2 hours) to cry out to God on behalf of the emerging generation's involvement in global harvest and for the nations of the earth to respond to Jesus in our lifetime. Pick up a helpful guide to assist you with details and creative ideas for sustaining these teams at www.SVM2.net. Register your team on the Global Prayer Team page of the site and join the emerging prayer movement for the nations among the emerging generation.
  • Movement Manual – Do you have an established student mission fellowship on campus or in your campus ministry? To learn all the details and strategies for how to launch a ministry committed to highlighting the global purposes of God in your midst or to re-invigorate an existing one that may be dry and lifeless, pick up this rich resource at www.SVM2.net full of compelling and community-changing ideas and plans. It's time for grassroots movements to be cultivated on every campus in North America that impact the unreached for years to come.
 
  • Message Bearer Creed – Hundreds of your peers are stating their intentions to live radically for Jesus, serve God among the forgotten, and challenge their generation with this vision as well, by signing the Message Bearer Creed. Visit www.SVM2.net and state your intentions and then tell your friends about it and invite them to do the same. You are not joining an organization by doing so, but a movement of your peers that are committed to raise the bar in their generation of Abandoned Devotion to Christ and the Global Proclamation of His gospel. You will also then begin to receive bi-weekly Message Bearer Memos to encourage and build your faith. View past Message Bearer Memos on the "Writings" page of the SVM2 website.

 

  • Abandoned Devotion Facilitation Pack – Abandoned Devotion Gatherings have been taking place throughout North America over the last three years and have been proving catalytic towards developing a spirit of revival and passion for the nations among the student body. This Facilitation Pack includes PowerPoint, DVD clips, a schedule, details on how to prepare, set-up, and facilitate a gathering in your community, and promo materials to promote and get the word out about your gathering. Visit www.SVM2.net and when ready to do a gathering, let us know, and we'll get it on the calendar.

 

  • Go Mobilization Pack – There is a huge disconnect between short-term trip involvement and long-term global ministry commitment. This curriculum is used during short-term trips and helps to bridge this gap through simulations, Bible studies, and talks that focus our thinking on the long-term needs of the world during a short-term ministry trip. Get a hold of the pack for your upcoming short-term trip at www.SVM2.net.

 

Recommended  Books of the Month            

 

Abandoned Devotion (books to help us grow in discipleship)   

  • Abba's Child  by Brennan Manning

The liberating message of this book is that God longs for us to know in the depths of our being that He loves and accepts us as we are. God is our "Abba," our loving Father, who knows us far better than we know ourselves. The shocking revelation of this book is two-fold. Sin has a far greater grip on our hearts and lives than we imagine. And God, who knows this full well, loves us far more than we can imagine, and longs to bring us into deeper, more joyful, passionate fellowship with Himself.

 

 

Global Proclamation (books about reaching the nations for Christ)
  • Good News About Injustice  by Gary Haugen

International news accounts describe mind-blowing horrors of child prostitution, state-sponsored religious persecution, racial violence, torture and genocide. What can we possibly do in response? Can ordinary Christians make a difference? And where is the God of justice? The good news about injustice is that God is against it. Gary Haugen explains that God is in the business of using the unlikely to accomplish justice and mercy. This book offers stories of courageous Christians who have stood up for justice and also calls the body of Christ to action. Haugen provides concrete guidance on how Christians can rise up to seek justice throughout the world.

 

 

* These titles are both available at www.Amazon.com or www.fetchbook.info

 

 

    SVM2 Abandoned Times
Phone: 519.268.8778 / Fax: 519.268.2787
Email:  info@svm2.net / Website: www.SVM2.net

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