I’m into the seventh week of the class, “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement” and to say that it has been messing with a lot of my preconceptions and ideas is putting it mildly. Previous to this course I was comfortable (or as I heard tonight, “settled” into complacency) in my walk with Christ. Now…
In many ways part of what is happening has to do with my priorities as well as what “I” want to do with what remains of my life. Kathy (my wife) is planning on retiring in a few months and while our income will be adequate for some of our plans (travel to Israel is one dream), a lot of what we’ve discussed seems selfish when looking at it with an eternal perspective. Damn it, I was happy just floating along as I had been previously. Now…
Before taking this class I ‘knew’ much of what was happening worldwide in missions and the need for missionaries to go as well as others to support them. Yeah, putting my share in the kitty at The Bridge Church was a part of all that, but the idea of my going somewhere seemed ludicrous and unnecessary. Who would want a nearly 70-year-old man with a capital felony record as a missionary? So, sitting in our comfortable home and doing odd things about the community seemed to be ‘my part’ in reaching the world for Christ. Now…
Every week God shows me new insights into what He has done and is now doing around the world and even here in Wilmington. Ideas of how I can help here and now seem to abound lately as well as my emotions being closer to the surface than ever before. My heart breaks for the homeless in the area as we prepared for yet another hurricane; how will they survive or what can be done to support them? I’d never really thought like that before (when Florence hit us last year, such thoughts never entered my mind). Now…
My life before this course has been wrapped up in computer games, occasional study in the Word (not much, actually), just the usual nonsense that kept my focus on me, myself and I (as much an unholy trinity if ever there was one!). I battled depression and often had no desire to do anything other than watch television, play computer games and just vegetate. I’d fooled myself into thinking that the chores, doing other ‘stuff’ could wait for tomorrow; that after all I’d been through, as the commercial once put it, “you deserve a break today.” My ‘break’ seemed to extend to one day, one week, one month after another. Now…
Speaking with Barbara Yandell tonight after class I did ask if there was a future or use for me as a missionary to the Muslims. What she said kind of rattled me; that with training God could use me here and now in the city of Wilmington reaching out to Muslim men who were suffering from PTSD from the experiences they’d suffered in their native lands that drove them to America. Me, speak to those whose culture was so antithetical to mine, who screamed, “Death to America!” on television and celebrated on 9/11. I could never do anything to such other than maybe a half-hearted prayer they be saved. Never would I actually reach out to them. It was never even a consideration. Now…
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