East meets West

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Mark McMillion

This is a “Fields” newsletter that I sent to friends in October of 2003, after I’d been living in Jakarta, Indonesia for around 6 months.

God bless you and greetings again. This time, instead of giving you “the big picture”, I want to zoom down to just one of the many events that make up what it means to live this life. More than anything, it has to do with just being God’s partner, flowing with the rhythm and timing as He leads, makes a way and does the work.

“Great”, you might say, “but what in the world does that mean?” As in any human endeavor, there are golden opportunities and occasions where you have to respond, sometimes quickly, before the chance is gone. Over the years, it’s been something to see these possibilities not just as coincidences but as “God’s set ups”. There was one recently and we even were able to get a few photos of it.

The street kids’ school project here in Jakarta is still one of my major concerns. At the beginning of September, I went there with my friend Thomas to bring their monthly gift which some of you have sent, and to just “see how they do.”

The director looks over the cards to see if they would be useful for the school.

One of the things we offer people is a set of 40 colorful flash cards in English for children. Some are explicitly Christian and would not be acceptable there. But others strike at themes that are found in both the Christian and Muslim faith, drawings illustrating “All things were made by God”, “Be kind”, “God loves a cheerful giver” and others. We felt that, because of the warm and positive nature of these cards, plus that they could be used for learning English as well as reading Indonesian, possibly the teachers and administrators at the school would want to receive a set.

As you can imagine, finding common ground between Islam and Christianity can be a challenge. But it is there and perhaps more than some realize. After our customary introduction and snack which they served, we brought out our cards as we explained our idea that perhaps they would find them beneficial to their work.

After counseling with the English teacher, they feel the cards would be a help.

The founder of the school and his team looked them over carefully. There were around 20 which we felt they would like. They could see that they were very basic and embraced themes that were as dear to them as they were to us. It turned out that, after they counseled together, they did feel the picture cards would be something they could use.

The founder of the school excused himself and we were left in the room with one of his teachers and one or two of the students and helpers. I’m sorry I don’t exactly have the photos to show the transition of how all this changed into what happened next. But there was a real interest in the simply, colorful pictures which had text in English and Indonesian.

It’s wonderful the faith and power God gives for times like this.

I struck up a conversation with a few of the ones there, as best we could, considering that neither of us spoke the other’s language. So I pointed at a picture of the sun and said the word. And they said “mati hari” (literally “the eye of the day”), the word for the sun in Indonesian. Or I would say “prayer” and they would nod and agree and say their word. The teacher from the school who was still there was the English teacher. He doesn’t really speak much English but he was able to help a little in bridging the gaps.

Our joy is seeing their joy, the happiness of those we share God’s love and truth with.

As it went along, I was noticing that there seemed to be more and more kids coming in. Pretty soon the room was full of 30 elementary school kids who were really listening, watching, participating and wanting to know what it was all about. We talked about love (“kasih”), faith (“iman”), peace (“damal”), friends (“sahabat”), God (“Allah”), and cleanliness (“kebersihan”), all themes from the drawings.

Gestures and facial expressions can get the thought across when words fail.

What could have been a pretty rowdy atmosphere instead had almost a hush over it. The kids’ natural respect for instruction of this type was mixed with their curiosity and surprise to hear someone of another faith communicating to them on values they perhaps thought were only their own.

My friend Thomas came back and he saw an opportunity to catch a special moment on film. At times like this, it’s not always easy to remember to get out the camera and to try to capture the moment. You can ruin the atmosphere by getting everyone distracted. So you try to take a few shots while being as unobtrusive as possible.

The flash card that drew the most discussion was “Angels watch over me”, something they seemed to know a lot about. They told me about Gabriel. I agreed and asked if they knew about Michael, which they did. They were surprised and pleased. We looked, talked, discussed and agreed. Talk about East meets West! But I was having fun and doing my best to make it fun and exciting for them, pantomiming things when necessary to make the idea understood and just really being thrilled by what seemed like a spontaneous open door to reach out to all these young people who had dropped by to see what this stranger from the other side of the world was talking about.

Sweet kids hearing old things from a new angle and a different light.

I hope somehow the special-ness of the occasion is portrayed here. For me at least it felt like a minor miracle that such a coming together could be engineered by God’s Spirit between me and people of such a different age, background, and religious upbringing. Truly He is the one who can break down the walls, bridge the gaps and put people on common ground when there is a mutual respect and faith for Him and His ways. If I was a musician I would have played them a song. But in this case the Lord used what we had: a gift for teaching and the joy of sharing Him with others to make an interesting and special occasion for young people who probably don’t have many opportunities like that.

I do appreciate your support and your continued prayers. The spiritual battles here are much stronger than when I was still living in Texas. My health has been good and I bounced back from a very strong flu earlier this month in less time than was expected. It’s always such a blessing when I hear from you, to know how you are doing and to know that these newsletters are somehow a help to you. I miss you but I’m glad we can keep in touch this way.

Sincerely, Mark

Spiritual habits (Part 4) Memorizing God’s Word

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’d been a Christian for about a year when I was at a meeting of young people on a Saturday night. A friend of mine called me up in front of these 100 people, put his hand on my shoulder and looking out at everyone, said, “I just want you to see the results of memorizing Scripture.” And I guess he was right.

One of the habits I developed at the beginning of my Christian life was memorizing God’s Word. What happened was this. I’d been a Christian for around 3 days when a brother who was instrumental in my becoming a Christian said something to me that changed my life. He told me, “You know, if you’ll just memorize 3 verses every day, God will really bless you.” Somehow that really stood out to me and I said in my heart right then, “I’m going to do that.” Basically I did that for a long time and it’s probably been the most significant spiritual habit that I’ve had as a Christian.

Now I know this is probably not what you are hearing from the pulpit in your church on Sunday morning. But if you look at the people of the New Testament, you can certainly see that they memorized Scripture. It is written flat In the famous story of when Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, when the Devil came and spoke to Jesus, the Lord didn’t begin flaying his arms wildly and start screaming at the Devil. No, He just quoted Scriptures at him, Three times the Lord began His sentence with “It is written…” and went on to quote Scripture in answer to the Devil’s temptations. (Luke 4:1-13) The Lord knew the Scriptures of His day and could quote them verbatim when He needed to. And He often did.

Then when Jesus had gone to Heaven and the early church was beginning, the Apostles certainly knew their Scriptures by heart. On the day of Pentecost, when Peter needed to explain things to the huge crowd that gathered, he didn’t start spewing out his own ideas. He told them, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” and he went on to quote from that Old Testament prophet, as well as other places in the Hebrew scriptures, to explain to the crowd from the Word what was happening. (Acts 2:14-36)

Even all the way back in Job, what is considered to be the oldest book in the Bible, Job said to “lay up His words in your heart.” (Job 22:22) King David said, “The law of his God is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide” (Psalms 37:31). Actually there’s a lot in the writings of David about this, like Psalm 119:11 where David prayed, “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against You.”

But maybe this may all make you just groan and you think, “Oh, no! I can’t memorize anything!” Let me make this a little personal because it is. Before I came to the Lord, I didn’t have any special ability to memorize things. But with the Word of God, it was like certain verses were just so clear and simple, they stood out to me so much that it was almost like the Lord just placed them in my mind and there wasn’t really a lot of effort on my part. In other words, the truths in the Words of the Lord were so strong and important that memorizing it wasn’t a lot of hard work. It was like grabbing something that was really good for me or tasted good or was worth a lot.

we should memorze flat You may have already found that some Bible verses are almost already there in your memory. Or when you read them, they just jump out as strikingly significant. It’s those ones that mean so much to you, or that you know are timeless pillars within the Word of God, those are the ones you could make an effort to commit to memory.

For me, as soon as I found or recognized that a verse was of special significance, I’d make an effort to immediately write the reference somewhere. After a while, I built up a lot of verses like that and I ended up writing them on 3X5 cards, according to the books in the Bible they were from. I did that for around 3 years and it got to be a lot of verses. Believe it or not, I still have those cards with those verses and they’re still a part of my daily devotions.

In many ways I think of the verses I’ve memorized as my best friends. These are verses I’ve quoted to the Lord in times of desperate need, verses that have been boundaries for me to keep me from going astray, they’ve been wisdom for me in my dealings with others, they’ve been the comfort of God’s love speaking to my heart in some of my darkest hours.

Memorizing Scripture can be work and it can seem like something you can’t do. But the Word I’ve hidden in my heart through memorizing Scriptures has probably been more of a marking of my character than any other single thing in my Christian walk. Yes, it does take effort. But the people of the Bible did this and the returns on your investment of effort are immeasurable.

Spiritual Habits (Part 3) Prayer

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’ll never forget when my youngest son was 2 months old. I was holding him in my arms when he looked me straight in the eyes, reached out his arms to me and gave me this tremendous hug. It was breathtaking, such love. Nothing mental, no technique, just something from the deepest place of the heart, the child reaching out in love to his father. That’s how prayer should be. Prayer is really what it’s all about. The reason Jesus came, died on the cross and rose from the dead was to restore our access to the Father, through Himself.

But just like my tiny son, you don’t really have to understand it. It’s ok to try to understand it and as we get older, our minds often come to the fore much more. But prayer is a thing of the heart. So if you don’t understand it all, don’t worry, you don’t have to.

Prayer is what God wants. He loves us and wants us to love Him. And the same way we love our parents or our wife or husband or children, and want to spend time with them and talk to them and hear from them, God in the same way wants that with us. That’s prayer. King David said we should “pour out our hearts before Him” (Psalm 62:8). What a great word picture, to pour out our hearts. And that’s how it should be. Just talking to God, telling Him what’s on your heart, your joys, your fears, your thanks, your needs, your observations, God can take it all and wants to.

And the same way it’s not work or a burden or labor to communicate with your children or your dearest friend, prayer should not be some laborious work. It should be the high point of your day, something you just wouldn’t want to miss for anything.

But maybe this is pretty new to you and you’re not too sure about the whole thing. Well, just remember, “God is love” (I John 4:8). He loves you. Jesus said that “God is a spirit” (John 4:23) and then the apostle John said that “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). So the invisible, loving God of the Universe longs to have contact and a relationship with you.

Speaking of “contact”, there’s a movie by that name and there’s a scene in it where Jody Foster is trying to see if she can get some signal back from some alien civilization by means of radio telescopes. Here’s the clip from the movie where she first gets signals back that she knows are from a distant civilization.

That’s always reminded me of the first time I really knew and understood that there is a real God, a supreme power of the spiritual world who is signaling us and wants to be in contact with us. The same utter, unimaginable wonder, amazement and joy unspeakable that Jody Foster had when hearing those signals for the first time, that was how I was when I first knew for sure that there is a real God that the Bible has told us about.

So what follows next in the movie is that she and her team, and then the whole world, begin building on that initial contact and ultimately have “close encounters of the third kind” with the aliens. But for us who know that God is real, this doesn’t have to be a movie that we walk out of. This is the reality we can live in when we have contact with the God of Eternity.

So I hope you are trying to have daily “contact” with God, pouring out your heart before Him, and even receiving His “signals” back. Because prayer isn’t a one way street. God longs to communicate back to us.

It may not be in an immediate audible voice. But I can more than guarantee you that if you are talking to Him, He’s going to be communicating with you. He said one time, “Call unto me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things which you know not” (Jeremiah 33:3). And there are just oodles of promises in the Bible like that. In fact the Bible is just full of communication and interaction between God and His people.

And he wants to have the same relationship with you. He wants you to love Him and be helped by him and instructed and protected and strengthened and enlightened and blessed beyond your wildest dreams. That’s what God wants to do for you through your prayers and your time with Him.

It’s impossible to cover every aspect of prayer in such a short post here. Maybe I can write some more later or tell you about some special answers I’ve had to my prayers. But when it comes to spiritual habits, making prayer a habit and a primary part of your life is right at the top of the list.

Far Country Photos –from Borneo!

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Mark McMillion

[This is another of the newsletters that I sent to friends when I was living in Indonesia between 2003 and 2008.]

In November, 2004, 21 friends of mine took a 12 day trip into the interior of Kalimantan. This is the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo, 80% the size of Texas and home to over 10 million people. Some of those who went on this trip were young Indonesians that I have Bible classes with here in Jakarta. Others are children of social workers who grew up here in Indonesia. And there were a few adults around my age and of a similar background, heading up the team. Their primary goal was to bring aid and God’s love to 12 villages they would visit, through personal visitation, skits, songs and classes, as well as to distribute several tons of goods which had been donated for this project.

This “Far Country Photos #3” will give you a pictorial glimpse of some of what went on during that time. These pictures will begin from the time after the team had left the capital of the province, Pontianak (population: 390,000 and situated directly on the Equator), and had driven into the interior to a training camp deep in the jungle.

Trucks pull in to Tikalong training camp, 4 hours drive into the jungle.

Rolling out to the first village. “Do you think those planks will hold that truck?” “They should, they’re teak wood.”

Continue reading →

Spiritual habits (Part 2) The Word of God

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Perhaps the second spiritual habit to talk about, which is so utterly essential, is just our relationship and interaction with God’s Word, the Bible. If you are a child of God, then just like a child of this world when you are newborn, there’s nothing more important than your nourishment. A baby doesn’t have to be taught to suck the milk from its mother; it does it instinctively and desperately. That’s why the apostle Peter admonished, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby.” (I Peter 2:2)

It’s actually not really an option. If you’ve come to have faith in God and in Jesus, it’s a matter of spiritual life and death that your faith is fed the nourishment it needs. And this doesn’t just mean going to church on Sunday or listening to Christian radio in your car. The same way a baby eats several times each day, the newborn soul into the Kingdom of God needs spiritual nourishment to grow and become what God wants it to be.

Of course some folks think the Bible is just some book, written 2000 years ago, that’s full of strange stories and perhaps good morals. Hopefully you are not someone who thinks that. The Bible is unlike any other book ever written. The truths in the Bible have the power to give life and light, healing and understanding in a way no normal book can ever do.

Here’s what Jesus told some of the people who were just coming to realize that He was the Son of God. From John 8:31 and 32, “If you continue in my Word, then are you my disciples in deed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The truth shall make you free. He wasn’t talking about some secular knowledge you might get in university. He was talking about the very truth of God that He spoke and that the prophets and men of God had spoken and recorded in what we call the Old Testament, as well as the truth that was being recorded at His time and became the New Testament.

It’s almost difficult for me to talk about this because it would be difficult to overstate how important the Bible became for me after I came to faith in God and in Jesus. As I’ve written in other places, I was always looking for the truth. But I never expected to find such a pure and perfect essence of truth that I found the Bible to be. Really soaking yourself in the Bible, just reading it for pleasure and for edification is one of the very most important things you can do. And what you’ll find, as I have, is that it somehow reaches down and into your deepest depths, exposing and clarifying some dark area of your life that needs attention, or that it speaks to you on some issue that you desperately needed to have strengthened. In short, the Bible really is what they say it is, God’s Word. It clarifies our minds, purifies our hearts, brings us joy and truth, gives us courage and wisdom and works as the presence and companionship of God and Jesus in our lives. Here’s something the prophet Jeremiah said in prayer to God about His Word. “Your words were found, and I did eat them. And your word to me was the joy and rejoicing of my heart.” (Jeremiah 15:16.)

So I could say to you what Paul said to some of his dearest friends the last night he was going to be able to see them, “I commend you to God and the word of his grace which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance.” (Acts 20:36) Among spiritual habits, the habit of continually going to the Bible for study, for comfort, for knowledge, for a place to find God’s presence, and much more, that habit is perhaps one of the very most important habits you can nurture in order to grow in the Lord and to stay rooted and built up in Him through the years.

In practical terms, it can mean that you cultivate and maintain the habit of reading the Bible and even really studying it. And don’t do like I did, don’t start at the beginning like you do with most books. If you are new to faith, the best book in the Bible to read is the Gospel of John, in the New Testament. In fact, the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the best place to get your grounding in what Jesus said and did. Jesus told His disciples, “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.” (John 6:63)

If you have time for nothing else, just really studying the life and words of Jesus in those four books will lead you to truth and love and depth that are unmatched by any other use of your time. Make it a habit.

Spiritual habits (Part 1) The heavenly vision

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’d just finished my time of personal devotions this morning when I got one of those nudges from the Lord that I should write a blog post on spiritual habits. What a huge subject. Here in America so many people are very aware of maintaining healthy physical habits. But I wonder how many are equally diligent with their spiritual habits?

And it’s incredibly important. Here in the US there’s a term, “morbidly obese”. In my travels abroad I almost never saw anyone like this, but here it’s not unusual to see people who weigh between 300 and 600 pounds (136 to 272 kilos). Not to be critical or judgmental, but their physical habits are killing them. You can’t see as easily the results of spiritual habits but they do affect you, for good or for evil.

When I was 23, recently “delivered from the power of darkness.”

It was my bad spiritual habits that very nearly killed me when I was in university. How I was “delivered from the power of darkness, and translated into the Kingdom of His dear son” (Colossians 1:13) is a story in itself that I can share another time. But, early on in my spiritual walk, the Lord helped me establish spiritual habits that have stuck with me and have been a major factor in my staying alive for Him for the last 43 years in countries all over the world as I’ve lived to bring His love to the people of many nations.

There are so many aspects to having healthy spiritual habits. But I wanted to put one first that’s not so often even mentioned or realized. That’s what could be called “the heavenly vision”. And it’s not just the devil that fights this because, like Paul said in the Bible, we have two natures, “the old man” and “the new man” (Ephesians 4:22-24). Perhaps more often it’s your own carnal fleshly nature constantly battling to get you distracted, discouraged, disillusioned, disenchanted and just plane dissed.

Condemnation-flattened If you are a believer, if you are a Christian and trying to hold on to your crown and your faith, the devil will fight you. But this is where the Spirit of God will help us to overcome that and the way He does it is through the majesty of choice. You can choose to fight and resist those negative fleshly impulses and that nature. And one of the easiest and strongest ways He can help us do that is simply through our mind’s eye.

There are many verses in the Bible where God’s greats told of the importance of this. David said, “I have set the Lord always before me, because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” (Psalm 16:8) King David had, in his mind’s eye, in his vision, the Lord ever before Him. In Hebrews, in that stirring 12^th chapter, it tells us to “run with patience the race before us”. And then it goes on the in the next verse to tell us how to do that: “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith”. (Hebrews 12:2)

Looking unto Jesus. Setting Him before our face. It’s that heavenly vision, that setting our mind on the things above, above the daily distractions and death of this world, keeping the heavenly vision. Paul said, “I have not been disobedient to the heavenly vision.” (Acts 26:19) He’d kept the faith by keeping the vision. Solomon said, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

miley And here’s one more that has always spoken to me, again from King David. “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes, I hate the work of them that turn aside, it shall not cleave to me.” (Psalms 101:3). That is a significant verse from God’s Word. If your mind’s eye is filled with doubts, discouragement, worldly distractions, earthly values and prejudices, those things are “wicked things before your eyes”. Some of the filth and foolishness that’s so visible nowadays is like some loathsome, viral disease for which there’s almost no antidote, except for God. And if you don’t watch out, it will “cleave to you”, like some kind of dirty chewing gum that you can’t get off.

The solution is to keep the heavenly vision. Fill your mind and heart with positive, encouraging, faith building thoughts from God’s Word, or the refreshing uplift you get from being in God’s nature, or the strengthen you receive from deep Christian fellowship with others, or the renewing that comes from sharing His love and truth with those in need.

the vision flat So one of the simplest but most important habits you can have to keep yourself alive spiritually is something that happens within you, when your mind and heart are stayed on Him and Him alone. As Isaiah said in a prayer to God, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because they trust in You.” (Isaiah 26:3)

So you had to go home

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I heard a good talk about old age and going home. It spoke to me, since I did that recently. The talk was about Naomi and Ruth, taken from the Bible. But it made me think about myself, about other former missionaries who’ve had to go home, and about what is actually “home” anyway.

It doesn’t start out a happy story. Naomi, an Israelite, left Israel with her husband and their two sons when there was a famine in the land. They went to Moab, now an area of Jordan, east of the Dead Sea.

We’re told that Naomi’s husband died there and that her two sons married women from Moab. Then over some years her two sons died. Naomi had heard that the famine was over in Isreal and she decided to return. One of her daughters-in-law decided to stay on in Moab, her home country. But the other daughter-in-law, Ruth, made a stirring plea to Naomi to allow her to come with her, saying she wanted to stay with her always, and that “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” [1]

Returning home to Bethlehem was a sad time. Naomi’s former friends were told by her, “Do not call me Naomi [which meant ‘pleasant’]; call me Mara [which meant ‘bitter’].” [2] It was a sad homecoming. She was old, she had nothing but her daughter-in-law with her, and her life had seemingly almost been cursed—nothing to show for her life and her family.

I know a pretty good number of friends right now who just might feel similar; people who left home to go abroad when they were younger. They spent their lives in service to God and didn’t use their “best earning years” to lay up treasures on earth [3] but rather to preach the Gospel in all the world [4] and to do whatever they could to reach the ends of the earth with the good news of Jesus and God’s kingdom to come.

Now they’ve come back to North America or Western Europe from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America, approaching retirement age with little to show in the physical in the way of wealth or material things. They are like Naomi: now “home” but not “at home.”

But if you look at the Bible, there are a surprising number of people who left home for one reason or the other. Abraham was commanded by God to leave home [5] and there’s no record he ever went back. Moses fled from his country when he was 40 and stayed away till he was an old man. Then one day God told him it was time to go home. And it turned out the main thing God had been preparing Moses for all his life didn’t start till he was up into his 80s and had to go home.[6]

Or Jacob. Jacob fled from home because of his treachery and deceit and never saw his beloved mother Rebecca again. But after decades abroad, the word of God came to him one day, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your family, and I will be with you.” [7] In Jacob’s case he left home with nothing but came back with a huge family and some wealth as well. The only thing was that Jacob’s hulking paramilitary twin brother had every reason to finally really get even with Jacob for all the despair that he had brought on him and their family before he fled abroad. So Jacob had quite a lot to reasonably fear in any return home.

How about Jesus? It doesn’t seem like He really had a home during His ministry years, or at least we can read where one time He said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” [8] Someone said to Him one time, “Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, seeking to speak with You.” [9] To which He replied, “‘Who is My mother and who are My brothers?’ And He stretched out His hand toward His disciples and said, ‘Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.’” [10] Seems like His relation to what we call “home” was not what we nowadays would call traditional.

And what about the apostle Paul? He told some people one time about himself and his traveling companions, “To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless.” [11] Paul seems like another famous great from the Bible who didn’t have what is usually considered a comfortable, normal worldly home.

But what about Naomi? As so often happens, God gets some of His greatest victories out of seeming defeat . And it takes an impossible situation for God to do a miracle. It’s all in that short book, Ruth, only four chapters.

It turns out that Naomi had a relative named Boaz. Making a short story shorter, Boaz and Ruth met up and, in modern terminology, took a liking to each other. Fulfilling Jewish customs and law, Boaz went through the process of those times to take responsibility for the inheritance Naomi’s husband had left, which would include the responsibility of marriage to Ruth.

This all worked out, and it ended up that Boaz and Ruth had a son together, Obed. And as the Bible says, “Obed begot Jesse and Jesse begot David.” [12] That was King David, the one who was Israel’s greatest king. And Jesus, some 900 years later, was called in His day, “the son of David,” [13] as it had been prophesied that the Messiah to come would be of the house and lineage of David.

So Naomi and Ruth didn’t wither and die in despair when they returned to Naomi’s homeland. God had something planned and prepared, something greater than either of them could ever imagine. Even if Naomi for a while “believed not,” yet God abided faithful.

So if you are “home alone,” remember Naomi. “Do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of patience, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.” [14] The best may yet be ahead, as it has been for so many people of faith down through the ages. In Isaiah 46:4 the Lord said, “Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you!”

[1] Ruth 1:16.

[2] Ruth 1:20.

[3] Matthew 6:19.

[4] Mark 16:15.

[5] Genesis 12:1, Hebrews 11:8.

[6] See Exodus chapters 2–4:18.

[7] Genesis 31:3.

[8] Matthew 8:20, Luke 9:58.

[9] Matthew 12:47.

[10] Matthew 12:48–50.

[11] 1 Corinthians 4:11.

[12] Ruth 4:22.

[13] Matthew 1:1.

[14] Hebrews 10:36.

Hawks and doves Part 3 – Proud to be an American

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Having lived outside America for 36 years in Christian service, my relationship to my country has been affected by that time abroad. Part of it is identity. It is very common, if not completely normal, for individuals everywhere to identify themselves, in more than any other way, as being of their nationality. They’ll say “I’m Chinese” or “I’m German” or “I’m Brazilian”. And certainly for Americans their sense of identity is strongly fixed around being Americans.

For me, it’s not totally the same. I am American; my relatives came here in 1650. But my years abroad brought me to where I think of myself more than anything else as a person of faith in the God of Abraham, and specifically as a Christian.

I suppose most people want to be proud of their country. For Germans, their attitude to things like that has been altered by two world wars. Still, they have a lot to feel proud about. Even people from small countries feel proud of their country. But for Americans, to be proud of America is a major element of the national culture. I haven’t always totally felt the same. But I’ll tell you two times while I was abroad on the mission field that I really did.

The first was around 1996 or 1997 when I had returned to Budapest, Hungary after living a year in Moscow. What happened was that a former President of the United States came to Budapest. There was no 21 gun salute, no military parade, no fly-over of fighter aircraft.

Former President Jimmy Carter, working with Habitat for Humanity to help provide housing for the poor

This former US president and his small team traveled north of Budapest to an area near the town of Vac, not far from where I’d lived before. They were there to start building low cost housing for the many “Romani”, the Gypsy population which make up a large minority of Hungary. Almost all live in deep poverty. He had his hammer, he was working on building houses, this former US President. He was Jimmy Carter. That was one time when I really felt, “Well, son of a gun, there’s an American and some Americans I can feel proud of”.

The other time was a little more than 8 years later. I’d been living in Indonesia for around 18 months when the Asian Tsunami of December 2004 struck. The worst hit city of all was Banda Aceh, the capital of the province of Aceh, at the northern tip of the island of Sumatra.

As it turned out, 3 friends and I were able to make it to that city 8 days after the tsunami struck, when aid workers were only just beginning to arrive in the isolated, war torn area. Within a day we were in a large refugee camp to the north of the city, assisting some Korean doctors who needed translators and trauma councilors to work with them. There were thousands of people in the makeshift camp, the weather was very hot and there was nothing there that wasn’t brought there by trucks, no water, no food, nothing.

Suddenly an unmarked helicopter circled overhead. Everyone noticed and watched. After it looked over the camp, it landed a few hundred yards away and began throwing out aid before taking off again.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, a US Navy aircraft carrier that provided critically essential services to Aceh province, Indonesia, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami that devastated the area

The USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that provided critically essential services to Aceh, Indonesia, in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Tsunami

It was a US navy helicopter, coming from the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that had steamed to the area to see how they could help. Refuges from the camp brought the boxes back to the camp. They were marked “US AID”.

“Doggone”, I said. “There’s something I’m glad to see: using my country’s vast resources to genuinely and freely help people in their desperate time of need, even people who are Muslims.” In the next weeks the US navy became one of the only ways that my friends and I could travel south of Banda Aceh to the even more seriously destroyed towns and villages down the south coast where the destruction was the worst. Every single bridge was washed out and the only way to reach people was by helicopter. The US forces worked eagerly and tirelessly with aid groups to help people in that time and to do medical emergencies on the ships off shore as well. It was a great time to feel good about my country.

Speaking of pride, someone has said that, of the 31,000+ verse in the Bible, there’s not one that speaks well of pride. While in this world, pride is extolled and honored, in God’s eyes it’s not. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (I Peter 5:5) So I don’t think too often about feeling proud of my country. But I’m sharing here some times when I felt really good about my nation and how they were “going everywhere, doing good,” (Acts 10:38) like Jesus did.

“So who is Armageddon, anyway?”

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Mark McMillion

This the fourth in what was originally intended to be a series on “Jesus coming back? No way!”

Some of you may laugh. “Ha, ha,” you say, “everyone knows that Armageddon is not a ‘who’”. But the joke may be on you.

If you look at the broad picture, how many people in the world know who, or what Armageddon is? Five percent? One percent? And how many have heard the word “Armageddon” somewhere, but have no idea what it is? (Just that we’re supposed to be afraid of it.) I dare say that the ones who don’t know anything about what “Armageddon” means is a far larger group than the ones who do understand that word.

If you’ve heard of Armageddon but don’t know what it’s about, what’s written here is for you. In short, “Armageddon” means “hill of Megiddo”. So it’s not a “who”; it’s a “what”. It’s a rather small hill that’s in the plains of Megiddo in the north of modern Israel.

“Why is everyone talking about that and trying to get everyone afraid?” you ask. Here’s why. In the book of Revelations in the Bible, it says the final cataclysmic event before the return of Jesus to the earth will take place at that location in Israel, the hill of Megiddo, “Armageddon”.

So that word has come to signify the final events before the return of Jesus to the earth. And sadly, it’s often referred to as “the end of the world”. Even in the dictionary I just looked in, when looking up Armageddon, it used the phrase “the end of the world”.

My friends, that phrase, “the end of the world”, is not really helpful or accurate. I grew up during the nuclear arms race in the 1960’s and we’d regularly have drills in school to prepare for a full nuclear attack on our country. “The end of the world” was very real then and that’s not the kind of thing the Bible predicts, the utter destruction and end of our planet and humanity.

A better way to describe what the Bible predicts would be to say, “the end of the age.” It will certainly be that. But this “end of the world” phrase is just another thing that scoffers and mockers use to exaggerate and ridicule Bible prophecy.

So then you could ask, “If Armageddon is the catchall term for the return of Jesus and the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth, if it’s not the end of the world, what is it?” Well, like I was saying, it will be the end of the age, and the biggest change humanity has seen in thousands of years. And it wasn’t just Jesus that told about this.

To me, one of the best and simplest explanations of all this is found in chapter 2 of the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. I’ve made a 27 minute video on this chapter and you can view it by clicking here. God gave a dream to the leader of the emerging world power at that time, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. But then God made it so that Nebuchadnezzar couldn’t remember it.

As it turned out, a young Hebrew captive of Babylon, Daniel, was able to tell Nebuchadnezzar both what he dreamed and what it meant. Nebuchadnezzar had seen a strange statue of different kinds of metal, gold, silver, brass and iron. Then in his dream he saw a stone which struck the statue and turned it to dust. And the stone itself turned into a great mountain that filled the whole earth.

Young Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that the statue and the various metals represented his kingdom of Babylon and the kingdoms that would come after his. But the stone that struck the statue, destroying it and then filling the whole earth represented the coming Kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom that God Himself would ultimately bring and cause to take root right here in our world. The climax of Daniel’s explanation to Nebuchadnezzar is found in Daniel 2:44. It says there, In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom shall not be left to other people. But it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms. And it shall stand forever.

This basically sums up in a beautiful, hopeful way what’s eventually going to happened in our world, and what God has been foretelling for many centuries. Armageddon is just going to be a major physical location in the very final physical events of the end of this age and the beginning of the next. The big picture is that the nations of earth will eventually be overcome and brought into subjection by the kingdom of God Himself in the person of His son, Jesus.

If you get a chance to watch the video on Daniel Chapter 2, you can see there how what took place is like God’s explanation Himself to Nebuchadnezzar, someone for whom this was all really new. Maybe like you. I hope this is some help. I look forward to sharing more with you about all this.

Your friend, Mark

“Did he really say that?”

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Mark McMillion

This is the third in what was originally intended to be a series on the subject of “Jesus coming back? No way!”

I hope you are still with me. Probably some aren’t. It’s just the sad truth that, when you start talking about the possibility of a spiritual world, life after death, and prophecies fulfilled, some people just have a sudden shut down of their mind or emotions. It’s a real wrench because it just goes counter to almost everything they’ve generally held to be true.

I know this because I went through that exact experience and it was not easy. It was really difficult. But also it was a real liberation. I wanted the truth, no matter what, even if it meant there actually was a real God, just like I’d always been told, ha!

And if you’re here, reading part 3 of this series, then maybe you’re willing to “give this an ear”, as they say in English. Maybe there have been a few true prophets, right? Maybe there is some kind of world other than the one we can see and feel and move around in daily. Maybe Jesus of Nazareth was more than just some carpenter from Israel that the Romans killed 2000 years ago.

So you might wonder, “Did he really say that? Did Jesus say he was going to come back to this world?”

Yes, he did. The night before he was arrested, he was in Jerusalem with his most trusted followers, privately celebrating with them the Jewish Passover.

Here’s one of the things Jesus is recorded as telling his closest friends that night.

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. ¹

Jesus was telling them that he was about to leave them and go “somewhere else.” But he told them he would come back again so that they could be where he was.

And it wasn’t like all of them totally understood what he was telling them. Far from it. In fact, he’d already told them repeatedly some months earlier that

The Son of Man [this is how Jesus referred to himself] will be delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him. And after He is killed, He shall rise the third day.²

Did his followers understand that when he told them? No. The next thing the Bible says is

But they did not understand that saying and were afraid to ask Him. ³

Even the closest followers of Jesus during his life on earth often just didn’t totally get what he was saying. It was not until after his death and resurrection, when he appeared to them again, repeatedly, that they began to get the full picture of what he truly was and what he taught.

But after he began to appear to them, after he rose from the dead… (Yes, I know, I’m asking you to believe another preposterous thing: Jesus rising from the dead!) Well, that’s what he told his followers would happen, that he’d be crucified and rise again, even though they didn’t understand it.

So after he rose from the dead, the followers were asking him if he was at that time going to establish his kingdom on earth⁴. It’s clear they were aware that something was still left to happen.

Jesus was with them for 40 days after his resurrection. Then the Bible says

He was taken up. And a cloud received Him out of their sight. ⁵

His followers were there and saw this happen. It goes on to say

And while they were looking intently into the heaven after Jesus had gone up, two men in white clothing [angels!] stood beside them, who said, “Why do you stand gazing up into the heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up into Heaven, will come in the way you have seen Him going into Heaven.” ⁶

So there it is again. He is going to come again. He was “taken up into Heaven”. But he is destined to return again to this world.

Maybe that’s a lot to swallow. Or at least a lot to think about. I know when I first read all this, or was taught it by someone who knew the Bible, it radically changed my whole outlook of life, reality and the world I lived in. Either this is all just completely crazy or it’s true. And I just didn’t feel inside of me that it was crazy. There was too much that I’d already experienced or seen that pointed towards these things being the actual experiences of people who saw all this and recorded it for everyone then and from then on.

And I guess it wasn’t just one time only when my viewpoints and earlier views of life were fundamentally challenged. There were a number of times when I was just left in shock and awe at what I read in the Bible. It took some time to digest it all, to ponder the significance of it for myself personally and for what it also meant to every person living in this world.

In the next post in this series, we’re going to look further at this whole concept of Jesus returning to this world. What would it mean to all of us? What will the conditions be like when it happens? How would it change things? When will it happen? Our next class is called “Who is Armageddon anyway?”

Mark McMillion