God Will Reveal

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Mark McMillion

The first year after I became a Christian, I was often really desperate in prayer. That can be good and usually is good. So often for many people, it’s like the verse that says, “No man stirreth himself to call upon Me.” (Isaiah 64:7).

But for me, maybe it had to do with the very rough experiences I’d had prior to coming to faith where my unbelief and life of debauchery had brought me to some real depths. So even after I came to faith and later came to the Lord, I guess it was almost like what nowadays is called “post traumatic stress syndrome” that was still affected me. Or perhaps it was like what Paul said, “knowing therefore the terror of the Lord…” (II Corinthians 5:11). The Lord had had to smash my pride and contrariness in order that the seed of the new life He wanted me to have could grow. And, at times, those experiences were terrifying.

So even after I became a Christian, I often was very desperate in prayer. Many of those prayers were along the lines of what King David prayed, “Search me oh God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139: 23 & 24) That’s a good verse and a good prayer to pray; what could go wrong?

Well, for me, some of my friends were beginning to tell me that perhaps I was so overwrought with desperation and heart-searching that it seemed like I was almost nervous or tense much of the time, rather than really resting in the Lord. I was so desperate, yearning and serious that it was an imbalance and the Lord wanted to lead me into a further understanding of His ways.

One thing that did come of all that prayer, the Lord often really did come through and I had some marvelous answers. But still, something wasn’t quite right. A friend talked with me about this and said something to the effect that “any time something hinders more than it helps, it’s time to abolish it.” He was saying that all my continual desperation and vehement concern to have a clean heart was making it so that I didn’t have the fruits of the Spirit that I should have, like peace and joy.

I knew the Lord was speaking through him. As so often happens, the answer came through reading the Word. Somehow I was later drawn to read Philippians chapter 3. There are those famous verses there, “I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to the things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13 &14) Great and famous admonitions and I felt I’d been doing the part of “pressing towards the mark”.

But it was the next verse, verse 15, that the Lord really used to punch through to me and to highlight what I needed to realize from His Word. Philippians 3:15 says, “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded. And if in anything you be otherwise minded, God will reveal that even unto you.”

Boy, did that hit my heart just where it was needed. Basically the verse spoke to me this way, “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect be thus minded.” [No one is really perfect because all have sinned. But we who are saved are now perfected in the spirit through salvation] “And if in anything you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.”

That was the part that really hit home and laid a new foundation stone in my Christian life. We are “perfect” already, in a sense, through salvation. But also there are times where things still need to be changed, where we are “otherwise minded”. And for those situations, there’s that huge promise there that “God will reveal it unto us“. He will reveal where we need to change and grow, where we are not all that we need to be in Him.

So it wasn’t like I needed to stop praying effectual, fervent prayers to the Lord. But this promise was something that I could claim and that would make it so that I was banking on His promises that He would reveal things that I needed to change in, rather than feeling that I needed constantly to whip myself into virtually a frenzy of prayer before God would be willing to communicate with me.

It really helped. It was a major step forward in my Christian life. My prayers were enhanced by being based on faith in His promises to reveal , rather than my anxious efforts to be desperate enough that God would be willing to answer.

“They that believe have entered into rest and have ceased from their own works.” (Hebrews 4:3 & 10) Those are pretty deep verses and probably there are more people around who actually need to “stir up the gift” (II Timothy 1:6) and keep their lights burning before their lamps go out through indifference or leaving their first love. But there may be some who could use this lesson the Lord taught me, that we do better to know and trust in His promises rather than our own self efforts. “The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy oh Lord endureth forever: forsake not the works of your own hands.” (Psalm 138:8) “He that has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)

“What’s the ‘Generation Gap’?”, she said

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Mark McMillion

Probably if you’re from my generation and live in the States, you may wonder why there’d even be a need to write something like this. “Everybody knows what the Generation Gap is!”, you could say. But evidently many don’t.

I was in contact with a friend in her 40’s from east Europe a few days ago and was telling her about my experiences growing up and experiencing “the generation gap”. Her response was,

“What’s the generation gap? I’ve always had really good relations with my parents and grandparents. What’s a generation gap?”

When I was 1, with my parents and grandparents. Kinder people and perhaps better times

Me, with my parents and grandparents.

That was really striking to me. It made me realize how in many ways her experiences and my experiences have not been the same. I told her that, in part, I’d been close to my relatives also growing up. I wrote a blog post “Texas People”, about my grandparents and the very good effect they had on my life as a child.

But I felt it would help her to have a better understanding of the world we live in today if I explained to her some about the way the Western World was in the times when I was growing up, a generation before her. My explanation may be too simplistic for some. But on the other hand, that’s what many people need in these times.

My parent’s generation was the ones who fought in World War II. My dad was a soldier in North Africa during that war. It’s considered in many ways to be the last “good war”. The Germans and the Japanese back then were trying to take over the world and to subjugate so many countries. For a while they were successful. But the other countries fought back, helped in a big way by the intervention of the USA.

Coming home from the war

So after World War II, Americans were feeling really good about themselves as they’d helped to defeat evil in many ways. All the American solders came back to the USA, got married and started settling down, having kids. They just wanted to finally enjoy the good life and be successful and fulfilled. Before World War II, back in the 1930’s, the world had experienced “The Great Depression” and things were really bad economically just everywhere. The Great Depression didn’t really end till World War II came along.

So during the late 1940’s, all through the 1950’s and into the early 1960’s, almost everyone in the USA and other parts of the western World were just wanting to be successful, prosper economically and to sort of bask in the afterglow of their finally having some stable times and prosperity after the great difficulties of the 1930’s and the victory of World War II.

When I was 4, at perhaps a happier, more wholesome time in the history of America

When I was 4, a “Baby Boomer”

All this time their kids were growing up, people like me and millions of others. If you ever hear of the word “Baby Boomers”, this is the name that is given to my generation. It’s called that because when all the soldiers came back from World War II, they all got married and suddenly there was a big “boom” in the birth rate. There weren’t so many people born during the period of World War II. But for 10 of 15 years after the war, the birth rate really went up dramatically and it was called “the Baby Boom”. That’s what I’m a part of so my generation is called “Boomers”.

But here’s the problem. Those folks of my parents’ generation were basically satisfied and content to build up their material possessions and to get rich, if they could. Most didn’t realize that there were a whole lot of things that weren’t right in their society, like racism and segregation for one. Also, I’m sad to say, their Christianity was often shallow and formal. They had little interest or background in actual spiritual experiences or personal knowledge of the things of the Lord. Many were very religious, but it was often superficial.

All the while their kids, people like me, were coming to realize that things weren’t really the way they should be and not as nice as it seemed on the surface. So often their parents were not much involved in their kids’ lives but were into the country club, making more money, buying another big car or just other things than taking time with their kids.

Then in the late 60’s it was like “a perfect storm”. Very many things happened at nearly the same time. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was a serious shock to people around the world. The escalation of the Vietnam war meant that tens of thousands of people my age were being sent to far off southeast Asia to fight in a war that most people didn’t think should be happening. Huge racial riots were occuring all over America as the African Americans in the USA were demonstrating for basic human rights that they’d been denied as US citizens for centuries.

Also the youth culture at that time had begun to use drugs like marijuana and psychedelics in their search for deeper truths and alternative experiences. And the music of that time, with things like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan were bringing in a totally new and different kind of culture that was mostly totally opposed to the superficiality and materialism of the older generation.

So during that time the “generation gap” became apparent. Multitudes of young people ran away from home, sometimes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, to hitchhike and travel around with other young people. It was the time of the hippies and the whole alternative lifestyle of the late 1960’s that grew tremendously back then.

I was totally in the middle of all that. There were large riots at universities across America against the Vietnam war. There were huge rock concerts like Woodstock. So many young people were looking for something more than materialism and the shallow secular values they’d been brought up with.

And it was during this time that what’s called “the Jesus Movement” happened. Hundreds of thousands of young people all over America and actually all over the world more or less spontaneously, individually ended up coming to the Lord in their desperate search for the truth. That’s exactly what happened to me.

It didn’t matter if they came from a Christian family or not. Many didn’t but still ended up finding that the God of Abraham was real and that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t some weak, namby-pamby religious figure that rich white people worshiped but that He was exactly who He said He was. He was still alive and well, able to answer prayers and lead our lives in a new direction.

So that in a nutshell is what is meant by “the generation gap”. I was thinking of adding a song here from the Beatles, perhaps the most famous music group of that time. It’s a song where two parents are talking about how their teenage daughter has just run away from home. The lyrics are so significant, here they are:

“She’s Leaving Home”

[This is the part about the young girl running away from home]

Wednesday morning at five o’clock as the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more
She goes down the stairs to the kitchen clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside she is free.

[This is the words of her parents, talking about how she’s run away after, so they thought, they’d done so much for her.]

She (We gave her most of our lives)
is leaving (Sacrificed most of our lives)
home (We gave her everything money could buy)
She’s leaving home after living alone
For so many years.

Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that’s lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband “Daddy, our baby’s gone.”
“Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?”
“How could she do this to me?”

She (We never thought of ourselves)
is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves)
home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She’s leaving home after living alone
For so many years.

Friday morning at nine o’clock she is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the motor trade.

She (“What did we do that was wrong?”)
is having (“We didn’t know it was wrong?”)
fun (Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy)
Something inside that was always denied
For so many years.
She’s leaving home. Bye, bye

And here’s where you can hear that song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=docIZINYZR0

I felt it would help my friend in east Europe to understand the world as it is now if she understood this series of events that happened in the western world in the generation before hers. This mostly didn’t happen in her part of the world. People who were living “behind the Iron Curtain” had a totally different experience and a totally different set of problems to deal with. I told her that it’s wonderful how she’s always felt close to her parents and grandparents. It just shows that material wealth and “serving Mammon” (Matthew 6:24), that’s been so prevalent here in the West, are not really the true riches that are most important.

So often in history God has had His times when a whole generation or nation almost suddenly swings toward Him in desperation and searching. Strangely, it even says in the Bible “God is in the generation of the righteous” (Psalms 14:5). And then Jesus called those of His times “you generation of vipers” (Matthew 23:33). Does that mean that some generations are good and some are bad? Everyone in one generation is good and everyone in another generation is bad? Of course not. But there do seem to be times in history when there have been great reapings, great harvests, great revivals that somehow find more fertile ground in one generation or time in history than in others.

It happened in my youth. It happened in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism in the 90’s. And it’s happening even now in some parts of the world. As Paul said on his missionary journeys, “God doesn’t leave Himself without a witness“. (Acts 14:17) There’s always been, and always will be, a sowing and a reaping going on somewhere.

Bonner McMillion (1921-2014)

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Mark McMillion

On Feb. 7 my dad, Bonner McMillion, passed away here in Austin.In his last days he contracted pneumonia but by then he was in a nursing facility and in extremely poor health. He is survived by his wife and three children, 8 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

My dad with my mom, on his 92nd birthday, November, 2013

As my mom likes to say, my dad owned three newspapers, wrote three books and had three children. Growing up around journalism and publishing is where I learned so much about printing, writing, publications and many aspects of graphic arts.

In his last years my dad and I were much closer than when I was growing up. Being a person who was somewhat at the center of events in the late 1960’s, my relationship with my parents was similar to how it was for millions of young people back then. But over the years I’ve come to realize how much of an influence my parents were in what I’ve done with my life.

I told you about my grandparents in the blog post “Texas People”. But here I’ll tell you about my parents. Although my father was a Unitarian, the outlook my parents brought me up with had a number of aspects to it which fit well with my later calling to a Christian missionary lifestyle.

If you’re going to be a Christian disciple and a missionary abroad, you need to be comfortable with being different. In a very real sense, I was brought up in an alternative lifestyle. Nowadays that seems to mean that you were home schooled and your parents were far out hippies or some kind of freaks. For me, it meant that my family were not nominal Christians in a city in Texas during the 50’s and 60’s when to not be a church-going Christian was very unusual.

A sign in all city buses.

But one of the things that seemed to be more or less totally accepted by everyone in my part of Texas was racism. When I wanted to take a city bus back then, there was a sign at the front of the bus, “Coloreds to the rear”. I was 17 years old before the schools in Texas integrated, in other words where African-American students were allowed to go to the same schools as white students.

Back of the bus.

African-Americans were compelled to sit at the rear of city buses. They couldn’t eat in the restaurants that my family could. They couldn’t use the public restrooms I could or drink at the same water fountain. This was just the way it was and virtually no one said anything against it.

But my parents did. They taught me it was wrong. Nowadays everyone looks at it that way. But when and where I was growing up, virtually no one at all did, including all the Christians I knew. But my folks taught me that to be racist was wrong and evil. I agreed with that and stood up for it. So I was teased and ostracized and I learned to stand up for what I felt was right, even if everyone else didn’t agree.

That’s been a real help in my adult life when standing up for the Lord and putting faith and God’s Word ahead of worldly wisdom and secular values.

Also my parents were politically active. I distinctly remember passing out political pamphlets with my mother on the street in the lead-up to the 1956 presidential election. I was really glad to be able to do that together with them and to stand up for the beliefs that I held with them.

Another alternative, almost weird thing my parents would do would be to take food to the poor and to take Thanksgiving dinners that my mom prepared to poor folks on the other side of town. This type of thing had a profound impact on me. I had no doubts about my parents’ sincere care for others and their benevolence to the needy and those in distress.

Things like this and much more influenced my life to move towards some kind of public service. That was what I was directing my studies towards when I was in university here in Austin in the late 60’s. Through God’s mighty and miraculous hand, He worked in such a way to bring me to a form of “public service” that was far greater than getting involved with the often fruitless life that modern politics can lead to.

Instead, God brought me into a life of Christian service for Him in many lands. But it was my parents’ example of going against the grain and standing up for the downtrodden that set the tone for my life of being a fighter for the Lord’s cause against the spiritual darkness that comes against that cause from so very many quarters.

My dad taught me to care about those who were hated and to not feel I had to succumb to the whims of the majority. I would not have had the life I’ve had without all that I learned from him and my mom.

The Miracle Suitcase

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Mark McMillion

There were so many experiences I had from the time I spent on the mission field which basically were supernatural. The other day I thought of one I included in a newsletter around 2008.

I was living in Ukraine and I planned a trip to Norway. Along the way one of those “God’s little miracle” situations happened which is almost possible to overlook if you’re not sensitive to the hand of God when He intervenes in a miraculous way. Here’s what I put in my newsletter from August of 2008

Just to get from here in Ukraine to Oslo, Norway is no small thing. Flying from here would be extremely expensive. So I found a budget airline that flies from Warsaw, Poland to south of Oslo, Norway. But to get to Warsaw from my city in south east Ukraine was a 700 mile (1200 kilometer) two-nights-and-a-day ride on a bumpity, former USSR train. There was next to no sleep.

After the flight from Warsaw, I landed at the airport about 70 miles south of Oslo, got my small suitcase off the luggage carousel at the airport and found my way to a bus that would take me to Oslo.

Virtually as I was boarding the bus, way out in the airport parking lot, an elderly man quickly came up to me, speaking Polish. I understood that he thought I’d taken his suitcase. He produced the baggage tag that went with the suitcase and, sure enough, it was his.

I looked real closely because the suitcase I’d brought on the trip was borrowed and it seemed like one that not a lot of folks have. But I did notice that the one I’d brought out of the airport to the bus was somehow newer than the one I brought on the trip. About that time, one of the Polish man’s friends came up to us with my suitcase, identical in every way to his except mine was just a little bit older.

What happened was that, when the one I took had come around on the luggage conveyer belt, I saw it and took it. The plane had not been full and it never occurred to me that there could possibly be another bag on the plane that looked the same as mine. It was virtually a miracle that he found me in the airport bus parking lot, just before I was getting on the bus with his suitcase for the ride into Oslo.

I don’t care to even think of how much of a hassle it would have been if I’d not been found by that man just seconds before I boarded the bus for the 90 minute drive to Oslo. I suppose something might have eventually worked out if I had needed to phone the airport about it. But in Oslo, one of the most expensive cities in the world, it would have been a nightmare of time and expense.

That’s how good things can happen to you when you’re praying and others are praying for you. I really thought about all my friends who were praying for me at that time. It was surely just the Lord doing that little miracle to keep me from having to suffer for days from that mix up about the suitcase. Thank the Lord! And thanks to all of you for your continued prayers.

Isn’t that amazing? I was seconds away from boarding that bus with the wrong suitcase for the long ride to Oslo. Those folks found me way out in the parking lot at the last moment. Some would wave all this off as a “lucky coincidence”. For those of us who know and live for the Lord, we know it was more than that. It was “…the Lord working with them, and confirming His Word with signs following.” (Mark 16:20)

The Greatest Song of All

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Mark McMillion

I am not a musician but music has always played a really big role in my life. I’ve sometimes wondered how my life would have been different if I‘d ever been able to learn to play guitar. I got to where I knew a lot of chords but I just never could get the strumming part down. Oh well.

I’m thinking of sharing different times in my life when some song really spoke to me, lifted me or affected me. But then I’m realizing how very personal it all is. Each song I think about I hesitate from sharing because it’s such an opening into some of the most personal moments of my life.

For example, I wrote a blog post about “The Radio Miracle” how that, during an indescribable few weeks when I was 20, when so many things happened to bring me to the brink of death and hell, that at one point in the middle of the night when I was in desperate prayer, my radio came on without my touching it. And a song of that time was just then playing which said, “Lift up your fellow man, lend him a helping hand, put a little love in your heart.” The words of that song were the words of God to me for that moment, conveyed through music, by a complete miracle.

But just a week before that, I’d been listening to a completely different kind of music, by my favorite group at that time, The Rolling Stones. I’d listened for the first time to their most recent album back then, “Beggar’s Banquet”. The voice of darkness that so strongly came through that album very nearly claimed my life. That’s what I wrote about in “Lucifer and the White Moths”.

There are many other incidents where music has carried me through deep valleys of despair that I don’t think I would have survived if a song hadn’t been on my heart and on my lips, virtually non-stop in some cases for weeks and even months.

I’d like to share a song with you that perhaps many of you know but some don’t. It’s called “The Greatest Song of All.” I don’t know the history or background to it but I first heard it in the 90’s, during what seemed like a time of great defeat and loss. I guess for me this song is such a combination of an incredible heavenly concept, really good music and a perfect text to the song. But maybe in some ways it doesn’t do much good to talk about a song since it’s a thing of itself which goes beyond descriptive words. I’ll paste it in here and hope it will be blessing to you.

http://youtu.be/IWjbZhbRZAE

“Ghost”

Posted on January 1, 2014 by Mark McMillion

In was in Budapest, Hungary around 1996 and I was sharing my faith with a young man, endeavoring to bring him to belief in Jesus. I told him about the spiritual experiences I’d had which helped me to come to have faith, some of which were fairly strange.

And one point he said to me, “I know, I know. I saw ‘Ghost’”. I was struck by this. He was talking about a movie from a few years before which, to my mind, gave a very interesting portrayal of the realities of the spiritual world, at least in a Hollywood-originated movie.

In the movie,”Ghost“, the main actor, played by Patrick Swayze, is suddenly murdered while out with his girlfriend, played by Demi Moore. The movie then goes with him into the spiritual world where he’s what we’d call a ghost, disembodied from his former self but still living in this world, unseen by mortals.

It’s a fascinating movie with great acting, romance, suspense, humor and an intriguing narrative. But the reason I’m writing this is how one scene or character so strongly impacted me when I was seeing it at that time.

I won’t go into the details but in the 80’s and early 90’s I had two traumatic life events that were unexpected, deeply unwanted and which could have even snuffed out my life. They left me gasping for breath spiritual and emotionally for a long period of time.

For me, what was needed was deep and total spiritual and emotional healing if these events were not to be the effective end of my life. My personal life as a disciple of Christ and as a happy, complete human being was in danger of being ended through trauma over these two events.

So it was with great interest that I viewed one portion of the movie “Ghost”. Patrick Swayze’s character had had one or two encounters with other beings in the spiritual world who could see him and communicate with him, which normal humans could not.

At one point on an underground subway, he encounters what can only be considered a ghost. This very belligerent ghost claimed ownership of the subway Patrick Swayze was travelling on. With great difficultly Patrick Swayze engages in a dialog with this angry ghost, trying to find out how the ghost can do things and use spiritual powers that he had which Patrick Swayze didn’t have.

But in the conversation, it comes out that this ghost had either jumped off a platform of the subway to commit suicide or that he’d been pushed. One way or the other, he was not at all settled with the events of his life and was extremely unresolved, unrepentant, unforgiving and basically stuck in eternity with his anger, bitterness and unreconciled life.

At the time this spoke to me so much; it almost screamed at me, haunted me and scared the hell out of me. I saw so clearly how this ghost had gone out of this life and into eternity without restitution or reconciliation with those around him or with the events of his life. It was a very great provocation to me to not let my life become like that ghost. I saw how I must do all I could to find peace with God concerning the events that had happened to me. A not famous but powerful verse spoke to me when I thought of the lesson of what I’d seen in that movie, “Whosoever’s sins you remit, they shall be remitted and whosoever sins you retain, they shall be retained.” (John 20:23)

That evil ghost was living in anger and bitterness about the things that others had done to him in his life, retaining the sins committed against him. And he went into eternity with those grudges, bitterness and lack of forgiveness or reconciliation. I also knew of situations that had happened in my grandparent’s and great grandparent’s lives where divisions, cruelty and unresolved animosity had stayed that way for 60 years or more. I saw the results of things that had happened in 1915 which were still causing divisions, hostility and damage 50 years later, when I was a teenager.

It was all something the Lord was using to impress on me the urgency and the essentialness of reconciliation and healing from bitterness or being captured by some traumatic event in my life. Happily I can say I really feel I was able to have the heart washing and deliverance that was needed so that I could go on with my life in the blessing of God, not defeated or captured by events of my past.

But it was a searing, grave warning that I feel I was only barely able to make it through by the grace of God. And, sadly, I know right now today many who’ve been through similar things who perhaps have not really been able to survive it. Some incredible injustice, some betrayal by ones they loved most, some disappointment that effectively ended their hopes, dreams and even their belief in God.

If any of this rings a bell with you, think about going into the afterlife and still having those unresolved bitternesses, grudges and unreconciled events following you right along into eternity. If that’s you, I implore you to do what you can to “First be reconciled to your brother” (Matthew 5:24). Or if nothing else, at least be sure you have peace with God about any unresolved, horrific events of your life that may haunt you into eternity unless you find or make peace with God and others.

Well, it’s Christmas

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Everybody’s different. Paul said in the Bible, “One man esteems one day above the other, another esteems every day alike.” (Romans 14:5) I guess I’m like the second group there when it comes to holidays. But also there’s just something about Christmas, or at least there should be. In many parts of the world, it’s the most revered holiday of the year. And of course if you’re a Christian, you know it’s supposed to be the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

For probably I can say “literally billions of people”, the story of the birth of Jesus is known to them through the Christmas carols and all the hoopla that goes on each year in late December. Or early January if you are of the Orthodox branch of Christianity.

But I guess I’m hoping to be more than informational here in this post. Being a Christian and/or a believer in the God of Abraham is more (or should be more) than information and knowledge. It’s supposed to be something that goes to your very soul and essence of your being, changing it radically and totally.

Like God said in Ezekiel, “A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you. I will take the stony heart out of you, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) I can certainly say with all my soul that this is what happened to me. I was like “the tin man” in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” I just felt like I didn’t really have a heart. Or if I did, it didn’t really work very well at all.

That’s why when I came to the Lord and I was told that I needed to love the Lord and tell Him I loved Him, I just told Him that I felt like I hardly even knew what love was. I believed in Him. But He would have to teach me how to love Him or actually love anybody for that matter. Over the years I think I can say that He has heard that prayer and gradually given me more of a heart that can love Him and others.

This may not be the kind of Christmas message you’ve heard very often and maybe it’s not even the kind of Christmas message someone is supposed to share. But, sadly, often Christmas has been a pretty rough time for me. For one, just being really honest, it seems to happen with me that the enemy of God seems to especially want to act up around this time of the year.

Some of the most dangerous situations I’ve ever been in happened right at Christmas and it even involved other Christians. The darkness just hates the light and it seems the enemy of God brings depression, anger, and whatever else he can get a hold of to try to break into the camp of the saints and into their hearts at Christmas time, even more than at other times. Maybe you’ve never experienced that or maybe you have. But I have repeatedly and it’s made me a little wary of Christmas time.

On the other hand, I think that if I can steer myself around that particular danger and make an effort to make Christmas a time of personal devotion and a time of specially drawing near to the Lord, I’ve found that it can be a really wonderful time.

Like it is for many people, the songs of Christmas, Christmas carols that really sing about Jesus have been a special thing for me all my life, even when I wasn’t a Christian. I’ve heard a number of friends of mine say the same thing about a certain Christmas song, that it’s not only their favorite Christmas song, it’s their favorite song of all.

But I’m speaking about the song, “Oh Holy Night”. It is just one of the most stirring, soul-quickening songs I’ve ever heard, probably the most so of any song. I suppose if you aren’t a Christian, it might not speak to you. But if you are, it’s just like a national anthem of heaven, or something like that. For me each Christmas, whether I’m with my family or not, whether I’m with Christians or not, the high point of Christmas is hearing and singing this song. I’ll add it in here.

I hope you can singing it from the bottom of your heart and be moved, touched and thankful for that holy night when our dear Jesus was born. Without Him we can do nothing good and be nothing but lost and hopeless souls.

I’ve had a really pretty good year and I hope you have too. It is such a thrill how I’ve been in connect with so many this year, friends new and old, both here in the U.S. and literally all over the world. I know the darkness rages against us all so much. So it’s always a thrill to hear of all of you how are keeping the faith and continuing to stay on the Wall of His will wherever you are. I love you very much. I pray you have a great Christmas and a blessed coming year for Him. Thank God for the Holy Night which has made our wonderful lives possible. With love, your friend, Mark

God Is Light

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I was 21 years old in Houston, Texas. It was a cold day in early February and I’d hitchhiked there to try to find some “Jesus People” I’d read about in the newspaper. The article said they believed in God and in Jesus and in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

I’d believed in God for several months but I just couldn’t figure out who Jesus was. I’d read all the way through the Bible and I could see that Jesus was really important but I just couldn’t figure it out. I’d gone to some churches but no one really talked to me and it just didn’t seem to have any reality to it, although I knew they taught and believed the Bible.

I found those young Christians and they asked me, “Are you going to heaven?” I told them, “Well, if my good is more than my bad, I’ll go to heaven. But if my bad is more than my good, I won’t.” They didn’t agree.

They showed me, “For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8 & 9). And they just kept showing me verses from the Bible. I’d never had anyone do that before and they knew them well. They showed me this one, “But as many as received Him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12)

Actually they were showing me a lot of Bible verses and I didn’t understand them all. But I could see they were really full of them and they had a strength and conviction I sure didn’t have, even though most of them were younger than me. Another verse that I did understand was Revelation 3:20 which is where Jesus said, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. [they told me that was the door to my heart] If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him…”

Towards the evening, while they were having a Bible study, the conviction of the Lord just came upon me so strongly and I raised my hand and told them right then that I wanted to ask Jesus to come into my heart. So I went out into the middle of the room and they prayed with me to receive Jesus.

Were there lightenings, thunders and a great earthquake when that happened? No. I’d already had quite a lot of experiences that had helped to prepare me for even being able to get to the place where I could receive the Lord. So it was sort of a quiet (new) birth for me right then. But I still didn’t really know who Jesus was. I stayed with these folks for a few days and maybe two days later I asked one of them, “But who is Jesus?” So they showed me the famous passage from John chapter 1 and that really, really changed my life.

John 1:1 says this, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then the 14^th verse says, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And they said, “That’s who Jesus is. He is the Word. He was with God in heaven and He came to earth, died for us, rose from the dead and will return some day.”

The impact this had on me was virtually indescribably. I’d had no idea of this or at least it had never dawned on me at all before that. I guess you could say that I said in my heart right then, “There are two of Them! God isn’t up there by Himself. Jesus is there with God and was there before and will always be!”

Immediately I excused myself and went quickly to an empty room to pray. I prayed about as desperately as I ever have, pouring out my heart to, not only God, but to Jesus this time, for the first time. I don’t know how long I prayed but, back in those days, my life was in such shambles that I seemed to have to pray like that somewhat often.

At the end, when I sort of “came back down”, after I’d felt like I’d come before the throne of God and of Jesus, I found that I was surrounded by my friends there who’d been praying for me as I prayed. And then one of them shared a verse with me that has always stuck with me. “This then is the record which we have heard of God and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” (I John 1:5)

God is light. No darkness. I had in my past known so much darkness in so many forms. But now I’d come to the light. There was so, so much that still needed to be washed and cleansed from my mind and even heart. But I had been brought to, and had found, the Light. It’s like the verse that sums up the salvation experience that millions have had, “Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated up into the Kingdom of His dear Son, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13 & 14)

“Judge Righteous Judgment”

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Mark McMillion

The first Bible verse I ever memorized was John 7:24, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” Boy, I needed that verse. I had come to believe in God in the previous few months, after very nearly dying and not going to heaven. So I knew from experienced that God was real. And I knew that the Devil was real. But I hadn’t at that time become a Christian as I just didn’t know who Jesus was. But I began to read the Bible vociferously because I knew it was the book that told about the God I’d come to find was real.

I’d been so horribly misjudging so many things at that time. I think that’s the reason that God put that verse into my mind and heart right then because I really needed to look at things differently and judge things differently. But when you think about it, the whole idea of judgment is not a real popular concept nowadays, whether you’re a believer or not.

When they think of judgment, so many Christians immediately remember what Jesus said, “Judge not, that you be not judged”. (Matthew 7:1) And so they get the idea that we’re to just sort of acquiesce and go along with almost anything since, “We aren’t to judge.” Hmm. And then the atheists and agnostics often feel that there’s no right or wrong anyway, no good or bad, no truth. So “judgment” just becomes almost a bad word.

Judge righteous Judgment-flattened Is that really how it should be? Don’t we all make judgments all the time? Every decision you make is in some ways a judgment, based on your values, your information, your ethics and your interests. So actually we’re all making judgments and we have to.

Jesus said plainly in that verse He put into my heart that we’re to “judge righteous judgment”. But what is “righteous”? Here the believer and the unbeliever may go different directions. A believer will know that righteousness is found in God and the unbeliever hardly even believes in any kind of righteousness since “Who are we to judge?”

But the Bible often says that we are to judge, not in a self-righteous way but in a Godly way, on His foundation, with His eyes of mercy and truth. Paul told the Corinthians, “Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Don’t you know that we shall judge angels? How much more the things that pertain to this life.” (I Corinthians 6: 2 & 3)

Jesus even said of Himself, “My judgment is just; because I don’t seek My own will, but the will of the Father which has sent Me.” (John 5:30) Maybe that’s a secret or key. If we are not seeking our own will or way but are seeking God’s way and His best, then our views and judgments can be more aligned with God’s love and justice. That way, our judgment on maters big or small will be moving towards the “righteous judgment” He wants us to have.

James, “the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19), had some important things to say about this. “So speak and so do as those who shall be judged by the law of liberty. For He shall have judgment without mercy to those who’ve shown no mercy. And mercy rejoices against judgment,” (James 2: 12 &13). Merciful judgment. It all comes back to a loving God, a loving Savior, a pleading, interceding Holy Spirit, all moving in us to be wise and merciful in our judgments, whether they be tiny daily decisions or our most major “affairs of this life.” (Proverbs 4:23)

Jesus reproved the Pharisees because they were so busy with tiny details like tithing their spices and had “omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy and faith,” (Matthew 23:23) We are called on to judge righteous judgment, judgment with mercy, led by God’s wisdom and Word. And like Paul said in that verse above, it’s even going to be a part of our job in the world to come. So Lord help us all to judge righteous judgment, to be basing all we do on His foundation of truth and love and to be learning now in this lifetime to see things through His eyes, so we’ll make the best decisions and to be examples to others of His loving justice and judgment.

Conviction or Condemnation

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Mark McMillion

The difference between conviction and condemnation was something I struggled with a lot as a young Christian. It seems to be something that’s not often touched on or even understood by many Christians. But for me, learning the difference between conviction and condemnation was a battle that I had to win if I was to grow in my Christian life.

Simply put, God convicts us of specific sins or weaknesses, giving us hope that if we bring it to Him, He can and will forgive us and heal us. On the other hand, it’s the Devil that condemns us, saying that we’re just generally bad and hopeless. It’s been understanding the difference between these two that has been an essential part of my being able to get to grips with some of the sins, failures and shortcomings of my life and to also recognize when the voice of Satan is trying to bring hopelessness to me in some matter.

Is what I’m saying here according to God’s Word? In John chapter 8, the Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who’d been caught in adultery. They called upon Jesus to agree to the writings of the Jewish law that she should be stoned to death. But Jesus said to them, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” And the next verse says, “When they heard it, they went out being convicted by their own conscience”. (John 8:9) Jesus’ words brought conviction.

How about the Devil’s words? In Revelation 12:9 the Devil is called “the accuser of the saints”. The devil is like the prosecuting attorney in a courtroom, constantly bringing our sins before ourselves and God, calling for our condemnation and judgment.

But there’s another kind of condemnation and one that’s perhaps even more subtle. The apostle John wrote, “If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” (I John 3:20) Some people have a lot of trouble with that. Their heart condemns them in several ways. For one, since we are all sinners (Romans 3:23), then without the rebirth through salvation in Jesus, each of our hearts overcomes us through one sin or the other.

Sometimes though, even if you’re saved, your own heart may have the habit or tendency to condemn you. It’s like negative thinking. A verse that helped me on this one time was “He that justifies the wicked and he that condemns the just, both of these are an abomination to the Lord.” (Proverbs 17:15) You can get to thinking, “Oh I’m really humble because I’m always so down on myself”. But it’s not the way the Lord wants us to be in the spirit. For us to condemn ourselves is actually an abomination to God, according to that verse, just as much as if we were justifying the wicked,

Maybe the most famous verse about condemnation is, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which be in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1) But in some ways, it’s a thin line to walk. On one side, we don’t want to “fall into the condemnation of the devil” (I Timothy 3:6). God forbid. But that sure doesn’t mean in any way that we want to harden our hearts against the gentle chiding voice of the Holy Spirit which “will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment”.

It comes down to which voice you are learning to listen to. We don’t want to be in tune with “the accuser of the saints” or our own heart that can condemn us. But we do want to have a clean conscience that can help to be a guidance to us. And even more than that, we want to have a clear channel to the voice of the Lord Who will convict us and lead us in the paths we are to walk in.

Someone said one time that it’s like a chain with a weak link. We’re that chain and we all have weak links, sins, and weakness, areas that we need to change and grow in. The Lord takes a look at the chain, probably sees a number of weak links and He points out the one that He wants to work on. He points to one weak link and says, “That one right there, give that one to me and I’ll fix it.” But then the Devil comes along and says, “Oh my God, that is a bad chain! It’s bad! It needs to be totally thrown away!”

That’s the difference between conviction and condemnation. One is specific, doable and brings hope for change and improvement if there is repentance. The other is general, totally negative and also hopeless. God help us all to know the difference between condemnation and conviction and to learn to recognize the Lord’s voice of conviction that brings change, hope and progress. “For Godly sorrow works repentance to salvation, not to be repented of. But the sorrow of the world works death.” (II Corinthians 7:10)

Mark McMillion

Creeds and Deeds, Facts and Acts

Category Archives: My Past