Lecrae - Liberty University Convocation
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Exposing Internet Frauds FEBRUARY 22 2011 0
This has been a very busy week for gay news, so much so that all the news that is fit to print can’t fit in this paper.
Every week we have to make decisions on what to actually lay out on the printed page, and with a thriving LGBT community locally and nationwide, the decisions become tougher and tougher.
We search the Internet for news, and with Google search engines capturing gay news worldwide, there are ample and diverse choices. But with any blogger that has a computer and publishing his own writing, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff carefully.
We try to fill our Gayvine section with cute entertainment news that is not too deep but nevertheless appealing. Last week, our new managing editor, Jason Parsley, read that Britney Spears won a poll conducted by the Orange County Equality Project as America’s greatest gay icon. He saw it on a gay news Google search in the Washington Post.
My first reaction was ‘What the hell is a gay human rights organization doing spending its limited resources doing a poll on the Lady Gagas of the world?’ Anyway, you figure if it is in the Washington Post it has got to be real. But Parsley went ahead and tried to speak to the people who conducted the poll. What he found was that there was no there there. Yet here was this poll that had now been referenced in fourteen publications worldwide, including the Times of India, the Toronto Sun, the Orange County Weekly, as well as the Washington Post.
We did a little investigating and not to our surprise, the poll was the fictional creation of a singular blogger on a free WordPress blog, which was then picked up by an unemployed blogger writing on Examiner.com — best described by Broward New Times as a ‘tawdry site’ with no credibility. But this is how the world gets its news today — instantly, half-ass, and often, not credible.
Just yesterday, a release came across our desk announcing that a same-sex couple in Kentucky was told at the Creation Museum they could not attend a ‘date night’ which was reserved for heterosexual couples. Purportedly, they were refused a refund for tickets they had paid for. The story is on the front page of Advocate.com. But I was not buying into it. I have a hard time believing that a 70,000 square foot museum would empower a security guard to summarily remove two people from entering solely because they were gay. So I checked out the story, and sure enough, the news that has gone viral has a tad bit of a virus.
Were these two men a same sex couple? No. These were two men that had pre-publicized and orchestrated a visual protest on a specifically planned ‘Date Night’ at the museum. Blogger Joe Sonka had stated in advance he wanted to send the ‘most flamboyantly gay couple possible’ to the event. When he appeared, his name was known to museum officials, who had in advance determined they were not going to let him in on that night.
Mark Looy, the communications director for the museum, stated that based on his blogging posts, “We feared Sonka might be purposely disruptive. We do not summarily remove same-sex couples.” Accordingly, the Museum was forewarned and knew Sonka’s name and they chose to deny him entry.
It was probably a bad and foolish choice, because if the creationists can handle dinosaurs, it can handle a flamboyantly gay couple. Still, that issue we can address at another time.
What is clear is that the story going viral now in many media sources has not disclosed all the facts available to journalists. The impression some stories are creating — forgive the word — is that a couple of gay men showed up at the door of the Creation Museum, paid their money and were told to go home because they were a same-sex couple. That is not the way it went down at all.
The moral of both stories is that in this day and age of Internet and instant journalism, where CNN could report a month ago that a Congresswoman was killed, while she was still alive and in an ambulance on her way to a hospital, we have to be more cautious than ever. We should not be in such a hurry to tell the news that we sacrifice the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth.
The Internet has the ability to spread a lie half way around the world before the truth can catch up with it. We all owe a duty to ourselves and others to be the kind of journalists who record the truth before we are saddled with words we can’t ever take back. An unemployed gay blogger in Orange County, California may have learned that lesson this week thanks to a real journalist doing his job the way it is supposed to be done.
Help Thy Neighbor and Go Straight to Prison
By Nicholas D. Kristof, NY Times, August 10, 2013
IF you want to understand all that is wrong with America’s criminal justice system, take a look at the nightmare experienced by Edward Young.
Young, now 43, was convicted of several burglaries as a young man but then resolved that he would turn his life around. Released from prison in 1996, he married, worked six days a week, and raised four children in Hixson, Tenn.
Then a neighbor died, and his widow, Neva Mumpower, asked Young to help sell her husband’s belongings. He later found, mixed in among them, seven shotgun shells, and he put them aside so that his children wouldn’t find them.
"He was trying to help me out," Mumpower told me. "My husband was a pack rat, and I was trying to clear things out."
Then Young became a suspect in burglaries at storage facilities and vehicles in the area, and the police searched his home and found the forgotten shotgun shells as well as some stolen goods. The United States attorney in Chattanooga prosecuted Young under a federal law that bars ex-felons from possessing guns or ammunition. In this case, under the Armed Career Criminal Act, that meant a 15-year minimum sentence.
The United States attorney, William Killian, went after Young—even though none of Young’s past crimes involved a gun, even though Young had no shotgun or other weapon to go with the seven shells, and even though, by all accounts, he had no idea that he was violating the law when he helped Mrs. Mumpower sell her husband’s belongings.
In May, a federal judge, acknowledging that the case was Dickensian but saying that he had no leeway under the law, sentenced Young to serve a minimum of 15 years in federal prison. It didn’t matter that the local authorities eventually dismissed the burglary charges.
So the federal government, at a time when it is cutting education spending, is preparing to spend $415,000 over the next 15 years to imprison a man for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells while trying to help a widow in the neighborhood. And, under the law, there is no early release: Young will spend the full 15 years in prison.
This case captures what is wrong with our “justice” system: We have invested in mass incarceration in ways that are crushingly expensive, break up families and are often simply cruel. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has almost one-quarter of the world’s prisoners.
This hasn’t always been the case, but it is the result of policies such as mandatory minimum sentences since the 1970s.
In 1978, the United States had 307,000 inmates in state and federal prisons. That soared to a peak of more than 1.6 million in 2009. Since then, the number of inmates has declined for three consecutive years to 1.57 million in 2012. The number of juveniles detained has also begun to drop since peaking in 2000, although the U.S. still detains children at a rate five times that of the next highest country.
In short, there’s some hope that this American experiment in mass incarceration has been recognized as a failure and will be gradually unwound. Among the leaders in moving away from the old policies are blue states and red states alike, including New York and Texas. But America still has twice as many prisoners today as under President Ronald Reagan.
Almost everyone seems to acknowledge that locking up vast numbers of nonviolent offenders is a waste of money. California devotes $179,400 to keep a juvenile in detention for a year, and spends less than $10,000 per student in its schools.
Granted, mass incarceration may have been one factor in reduced crime in the last couple of decades; there’s mixed evidence. But, if so, the economic and social cost has been enormous—including the breakup of families and the increased risk that children of those families will become criminals a generation later.
There’s also contrary evidence that incarceration, especially of young people, doesn’t work well in preventing crime, especially for young people. One careful study of 35,000 young offenders by Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle Jr. reached the startling conclusion that jailing juveniles leads them to be more likely to commit crimes as adults. Milder sentences, such as electronic monitoring and home detention, were actually more effective at preventing adult crime.
Alternatives to incarceration are both cheaper and more efficient. Youth Villages has an excellent record of working with troubled youngsters and their families, and of keeping them from committing crimes. So do some job-training and education programs. Mass incarceration has been particularly devastating for blacks and members of other minority groups, as well as for the poor generally.
We also have a serious problem with the irresponsibility of mass incarceration. When almost 1 percent of Americans are imprisoned (and a far higher percentage of men of color in low-income neighborhoods), our criminal justice system becomes a cause of family breakdown and contributes to the delinquency of a generation of children. And mass incarceration interacts with other government policies, such as the way the drug war is implemented, to have a disproportionate effect on African-Americans. Black men use marijuana at roughly the same rate as white men but are more than three times as likely to be arrested over it.
Young is particularly close to his children, ages 6 to 16. After back problems and rheumatoid arthritis left him disabled, he was a stay-at-home dad while his wife worked in a doctor’s office. When the judge announced the sentence, the children all burst into tears.
"I can’t believe my kids lose their daddy for the next 15 years," his wife, Stacy, told me. "He never tried to get a firearm in the 16 years I was with him. It’s crazy. He’s getting a longer sentence than people who’ve killed or raped."
Young’s lawyer, Christopher Varner, of Chattanooga, is appealing the sentence and says he is shaken by the outcome. “It’s shocking,” he says. “That’s not what we do in this country.”
I asked Killian, the United States attorney, why on earth he would want to send a man to prison for 15 years for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells. “The case raised serious public safety concerns,” Killian said.
Oh.
The classic caricature of justice run amok is Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Misérables,” pursuing Jean Valjean for stealing bread for hungry children. In that case, Valjean knew that he was breaking the law; Edward Young had no idea.
Some day, Americans will look back and wonder at how we as a society could be much more willing to invest in prisons than in schools. They will be astonished that we sent a man to federal prison for 15 years for trying to help a widow.
IF you want to understand all that is wrong with America’s criminal justice system, take a look at the nightmare experienced by Edward Young.
Young, now 43, was convicted of several burglaries as a young man but then resolved that he would turn his life around. Released from prison in 1996, he married, worked six days a week, and raised four children in Hixson, Tenn.
Then a neighbor died, and his widow, Neva Mumpower, asked Young to help sell her husband’s belongings. He later found, mixed in among them, seven shotgun shells, and he put them aside so that his children wouldn’t find them.
"He was trying to help me out," Mumpower told me. "My husband was a pack rat, and I was trying to clear things out."
Then Young became a suspect in burglaries at storage facilities and vehicles in the area, and the police searched his home and found the forgotten shotgun shells as well as some stolen goods. The United States attorney in Chattanooga prosecuted Young under a federal law that bars ex-felons from possessing guns or ammunition. In this case, under the Armed Career Criminal Act, that meant a 15-year minimum sentence.
The United States attorney, William Killian, went after Young—even though none of Young’s past crimes involved a gun, even though Young had no shotgun or other weapon to go with the seven shells, and even though, by all accounts, he had no idea that he was violating the law when he helped Mrs. Mumpower sell her husband’s belongings.
In May, a federal judge, acknowledging that the case was Dickensian but saying that he had no leeway under the law, sentenced Young to serve a minimum of 15 years in federal prison. It didn’t matter that the local authorities eventually dismissed the burglary charges.
So the federal government, at a time when it is cutting education spending, is preparing to spend $415,000 over the next 15 years to imprison a man for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells while trying to help a widow in the neighborhood. And, under the law, there is no early release: Young will spend the full 15 years in prison.
This case captures what is wrong with our “justice” system: We have invested in mass incarceration in ways that are crushingly expensive, break up families and are often simply cruel. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has almost one-quarter of the world’s prisoners.
This hasn’t always been the case, but it is the result of policies such as mandatory minimum sentences since the 1970s.
In 1978, the United States had 307,000 inmates in state and federal prisons. That soared to a peak of more than 1.6 million in 2009. Since then, the number of inmates has declined for three consecutive years to 1.57 million in 2012. The number of juveniles detained has also begun to drop since peaking in 2000, although the U.S. still detains children at a rate five times that of the next highest country.
In short, there’s some hope that this American experiment in mass incarceration has been recognized as a failure and will be gradually unwound. Among the leaders in moving away from the old policies are blue states and red states alike, including New York and Texas. But America still has twice as many prisoners today as under President Ronald Reagan.
Almost everyone seems to acknowledge that locking up vast numbers of nonviolent offenders is a waste of money. California devotes $179,400 to keep a juvenile in detention for a year, and spends less than $10,000 per student in its schools.
Granted, mass incarceration may have been one factor in reduced crime in the last couple of decades; there’s mixed evidence. But, if so, the economic and social cost has been enormous—including the breakup of families and the increased risk that children of those families will become criminals a generation later.
There’s also contrary evidence that incarceration, especially of young people, doesn’t work well in preventing crime, especially for young people. One careful study of 35,000 young offenders by Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle Jr. reached the startling conclusion that jailing juveniles leads them to be more likely to commit crimes as adults. Milder sentences, such as electronic monitoring and home detention, were actually more effective at preventing adult crime.
Alternatives to incarceration are both cheaper and more efficient. Youth Villages has an excellent record of working with troubled youngsters and their families, and of keeping them from committing crimes. So do some job-training and education programs. Mass incarceration has been particularly devastating for blacks and members of other minority groups, as well as for the poor generally.
We also have a serious problem with the irresponsibility of mass incarceration. When almost 1 percent of Americans are imprisoned (and a far higher percentage of men of color in low-income neighborhoods), our criminal justice system becomes a cause of family breakdown and contributes to the delinquency of a generation of children. And mass incarceration interacts with other government policies, such as the way the drug war is implemented, to have a disproportionate effect on African-Americans. Black men use marijuana at roughly the same rate as white men but are more than three times as likely to be arrested over it.
Young is particularly close to his children, ages 6 to 16. After back problems and rheumatoid arthritis left him disabled, he was a stay-at-home dad while his wife worked in a doctor’s office. When the judge announced the sentence, the children all burst into tears.
"I can’t believe my kids lose their daddy for the next 15 years," his wife, Stacy, told me. "He never tried to get a firearm in the 16 years I was with him. It’s crazy. He’s getting a longer sentence than people who’ve killed or raped."
Young’s lawyer, Christopher Varner, of Chattanooga, is appealing the sentence and says he is shaken by the outcome. “It’s shocking,” he says. “That’s not what we do in this country.”
I asked Killian, the United States attorney, why on earth he would want to send a man to prison for 15 years for innocently possessing seven shotgun shells. “The case raised serious public safety concerns,” Killian said.
Oh.
The classic caricature of justice run amok is Inspector Javert in Victor Hugo’s novel “Les Misérables,” pursuing Jean Valjean for stealing bread for hungry children. In that case, Valjean knew that he was breaking the law; Edward Young had no idea.
Some day, Americans will look back and wonder at how we as a society could be much more willing to invest in prisons than in schools. They will be astonished that we sent a man to federal prison for 15 years for trying to help a widow.
Study: Children's Poor Motor, Social Skills Linked To Too Much Television Watching
CBS News, August 10, 2013
ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS Atlanta)—The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children aged two and older watch no more than two hours of television per day. They also recommend that children under two watch no television at all.
According to a new study, even one hour more a day can diminish a preschooler’s vocabulary and math skills as well as classroom attention.
"Every hourly increase in daily television watching from two and a half years old is also associated with bullying by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten," Professor Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children’s hospital said in the study.
At that young age, a child’s brain is wired to play. “These kids are watching too much television at a time when they should be out there in the environment exploring and interacting, especially with other humans,” Pagani added in the study.
Watching television does not teach a child social or motor skills. “If you don’t learn those skills, you get to kindergarten and cry every time someone takes your toy,” Pagani said in the study.
ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS Atlanta)—The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children aged two and older watch no more than two hours of television per day. They also recommend that children under two watch no television at all.
According to a new study, even one hour more a day can diminish a preschooler’s vocabulary and math skills as well as classroom attention.
"Every hourly increase in daily television watching from two and a half years old is also associated with bullying by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten," Professor Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children’s hospital said in the study.
At that young age, a child’s brain is wired to play. “These kids are watching too much television at a time when they should be out there in the environment exploring and interacting, especially with other humans,” Pagani added in the study.
Watching television does not teach a child social or motor skills. “If you don’t learn those skills, you get to kindergarten and cry every time someone takes your toy,” Pagani said in the study.
The Promise
By Philip Martin
“I have put before you a task that is so great and so monumental that it will force you to your knees to call upon Me and to lean and depend upon Me, that you might realize in your hearts and minds that without Me, you can do nothing. In that moment, in realizing your own lacks and weaknesses and inability, My strength and power will come through for you.”—Jesus, speaking in prophecy
About a year ago I wrote a small article in response to the request on the Good News Blog for articles with the theme of “This Year…” which I filled in with “This year… I had my world fall apart.” In it I briefly told the story of how the Lord closed the door on us being in India after 38 years on that mission field and was leading us back to North America. Here’s a bit from that article:
“Since 1974 my wife, Hannah, and I have lived on the mission field. We met in Goa, India, in 1974. Were married in New Delhi in 1975 and then spent the next 36 years serving the Lord in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Greece, and Sri Lanka.
“I must say that although the initial thought of leaving India and moving to North America, where I have absolutely no job experience, credentials, nor credit history, etc., was overwhelming, the Lord has led me very gently step by step and has been there right beside me each step of the way whenever the waves and billows threatened to overflow me.”
Before I start this article I want to apologize for not writing this testimony sooner. I hope this is a case of better late than never and that it can still be an encouragement and faith builder to any of those who may find themselves in similar circumstances. I know I’ve shared it with nearly everyone I’ve come in contact with, whom I’ve talked to about the Lord, and it’s always been an encouragement to them and a testimony to the Lord’s remarkable ability to answer our deepest heartcries in our times of deepest distress and anguish of spirit.
Rereading what I wrote back then, I now see how much I “toned down” what I was going through at that time. When I said “the waves and billows threatened to overflow me,” I can honestly say that it was one of the biggest upheavals I had ever weathered in my entire 40+ years of serving the Lord. Like the disciples of old, in Matthew 8:24–26, I found my inward self in the “midst of a very great tempest, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves,” and my spirit was crying, “Lord, save me, I perish.”1
As King David expressed in Psalm 42, my spirit was “panting as a hart after a water brook,” thirsting for God’s answer and presence in the situation I was in. I needed an answer. I needed faith. My life and my future depended on it. To project my thoughts into the future was overwhelming; inside my being it was like I was constantly seasick with emotion, apprehension, uncertainty, and fear of the future. “[As] with a sword in my bones”2 I was desperately seeking the water brook of God’s leading and will in my life.
In the testimony I wrote, I said: “For three months I closed up our work and turned over our contacts for good and shifted to Canada.” That closing up consisted of closing two houses, selling three cars, and closing up our work in a city in which we had lived for 16 years. (Note: Our daughter and two grandchildren had moved to Chennai, and I sent her ahead to Canada to prepare a place for her and children, while I stayed back with my 18-year-old son, 21-year-old daughter, two grandchildren, and two dogs, and took care of the closing up.)
After I had closed our house, I moved to my daughter’s house and started the clean-up work there. I was already pretty much exhausted, so before I started the second phase of the closing up I went to a nearby beach town and took three days just to read and relax and get strengthened for the battle ahead. When I returned the battles didn’t stop, but I felt a bit more buoyant. But the waves kept coming in the form of overwhelming thoughts of fear of the uncertain future. I was trying to find something to hang my faith on, some twig of hope that I could grab ahold of, but there was nothing.
On top of all of the spiritual and emotional tension, there was also the physical strain. The constant heat and humidity of the summer months in Chennai, plus the daily 3- or 4-hour power cuts were so debilitating that they left me feeling wrung out like an old Indian floor cloth.
One day, while everyone else was out, I was going through an old briefcase my wife and I have had for over 20 years. It was so old that the synthetic rubber handle had melted years back and we had fixed it with electrical tape. This briefcase was the collect-all for all our important papers and mementos; the bag we would grab in case of an emergency. In it were birth certificates, home schooling records, report cards, achievement certificates, medical papers, new and old passports, etc. I’ll add here that we have 11 children. That day I had decided I was going to purge that case. I wasn’t taking it with me.
Sitting on the floor in a small room under a slowly turning fan with only a pair of shorts and a singlet on, I started the purge. Paper by paper, note by note, document by document, I placed the contents in three piles: things to keep, things to scan and then destroy, things to get rid of.
During this process I was battling in my conscious and subconscious with those overwhelming fearful thoughts. It’s funny to me now that King David referred to them as “waves,” because I often felt as if I were seasick. I remember as a child being out in our small boat. Sometimes we’d get caught in bad weather and our small boat would start rocking just a bit too much, and that slight tinge of nausea would come over me. Well, that was the feeling I had in my gut nearly all the time—a deep, sunken, sickening feeling.
So there I was, sweating, sitting on the floor surrounded by these piles of papers. When I was done I decided to hold up the briefcase and give it a good shake just to be sure everything was out of it, when a piece of paper, 8 x 4.5 cm, came fluttering out and landed on the floor directly in front of me. I looked at it but didn’t remember ever having seen it before. It was old and worn, a pale green color, with text on one side covered with a thin sheet of contact paper. It looked like one of those old Promise Box quotes we used to have. I picked it up and began to read:
“I've got your back covered. I'm watching out for your interests, as you are watching out for Mine. Thank you for so cheerfully doing My work, taking care of the things I have committed to your trust, and trusting Me to take care of the personal situations you have committed to My trust. I won't let you down! I'll be a good business manager for you. I'll work things out the way I know they should be. Just leave it all in My hands and I'll make you happy. Wait and see.”3
I crumbled. I just lay on the floor and cried and cried and felt so loved I can’t explain it. Like Thomas of old, my spirit cried out “My Lord and my God.”4 This time I was overwhelmed not with fear, uncertainty, and apprehension, but rather with joy, love, and light. I was washed. I was cleansed. Faith replaced fear. Light drove out the darkness and my future suddenly became as bright as this promise of God.
I don’t know how long I lay there crying and thanking Him. Time just no longer seemed to exist. I felt as if the Lord literally had His arms around me and was holding me, telling me not to fear and how much He loved me, encouraging me that everything was going to be okay. After some time I rose from the floor and I was a different person. All I can compare it to is when I was born again. I now knew that everything was going to be okay and there was no need to fear. The Son of God was at the helm of my ship, and with Him at the helm my small unworthy vessel could weather any storm or tempest the Enemy might blow across my path.
It’s been nearly two years now since this experience, and they have been rewarding and adventure-filled years. I feel like I have grown so much in the Lord and that my relationship with Him has been transformed. I know this would not have been possible without that major upheaval. The waves have mounted pretty big but His promise has proven true. I’ve learned not to try to take the wheel from Him but just to let Him work things out the way He knows they should be. He hasn’t let me down. He has been a good business manager for me. He has made me happy. And I face each day with anticipation as I wait and seewhat He has for me.
As for where the paper came from and how it got there, we don’t really know. All I know is that the Lord kept it for just such a time as this to get the desired effect, that only He may be glorified.
1 The word translated as “tempest” here was seismos, the same word we get the words seismic andseismology from, having to do with earthquakes, or in my case a major shakeup.
2 Psalm 42:10.
3 By Jesus, speaking in prophecy.
4 John 20:28.
“I have put before you a task that is so great and so monumental that it will force you to your knees to call upon Me and to lean and depend upon Me, that you might realize in your hearts and minds that without Me, you can do nothing. In that moment, in realizing your own lacks and weaknesses and inability, My strength and power will come through for you.”—Jesus, speaking in prophecy
About a year ago I wrote a small article in response to the request on the Good News Blog for articles with the theme of “This Year…” which I filled in with “This year… I had my world fall apart.” In it I briefly told the story of how the Lord closed the door on us being in India after 38 years on that mission field and was leading us back to North America. Here’s a bit from that article:
“Since 1974 my wife, Hannah, and I have lived on the mission field. We met in Goa, India, in 1974. Were married in New Delhi in 1975 and then spent the next 36 years serving the Lord in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Greece, and Sri Lanka.
“I must say that although the initial thought of leaving India and moving to North America, where I have absolutely no job experience, credentials, nor credit history, etc., was overwhelming, the Lord has led me very gently step by step and has been there right beside me each step of the way whenever the waves and billows threatened to overflow me.”
Before I start this article I want to apologize for not writing this testimony sooner. I hope this is a case of better late than never and that it can still be an encouragement and faith builder to any of those who may find themselves in similar circumstances. I know I’ve shared it with nearly everyone I’ve come in contact with, whom I’ve talked to about the Lord, and it’s always been an encouragement to them and a testimony to the Lord’s remarkable ability to answer our deepest heartcries in our times of deepest distress and anguish of spirit.
Rereading what I wrote back then, I now see how much I “toned down” what I was going through at that time. When I said “the waves and billows threatened to overflow me,” I can honestly say that it was one of the biggest upheavals I had ever weathered in my entire 40+ years of serving the Lord. Like the disciples of old, in Matthew 8:24–26, I found my inward self in the “midst of a very great tempest, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves,” and my spirit was crying, “Lord, save me, I perish.”1
As King David expressed in Psalm 42, my spirit was “panting as a hart after a water brook,” thirsting for God’s answer and presence in the situation I was in. I needed an answer. I needed faith. My life and my future depended on it. To project my thoughts into the future was overwhelming; inside my being it was like I was constantly seasick with emotion, apprehension, uncertainty, and fear of the future. “[As] with a sword in my bones”2 I was desperately seeking the water brook of God’s leading and will in my life.
In the testimony I wrote, I said: “For three months I closed up our work and turned over our contacts for good and shifted to Canada.” That closing up consisted of closing two houses, selling three cars, and closing up our work in a city in which we had lived for 16 years. (Note: Our daughter and two grandchildren had moved to Chennai, and I sent her ahead to Canada to prepare a place for her and children, while I stayed back with my 18-year-old son, 21-year-old daughter, two grandchildren, and two dogs, and took care of the closing up.)
After I had closed our house, I moved to my daughter’s house and started the clean-up work there. I was already pretty much exhausted, so before I started the second phase of the closing up I went to a nearby beach town and took three days just to read and relax and get strengthened for the battle ahead. When I returned the battles didn’t stop, but I felt a bit more buoyant. But the waves kept coming in the form of overwhelming thoughts of fear of the uncertain future. I was trying to find something to hang my faith on, some twig of hope that I could grab ahold of, but there was nothing.
On top of all of the spiritual and emotional tension, there was also the physical strain. The constant heat and humidity of the summer months in Chennai, plus the daily 3- or 4-hour power cuts were so debilitating that they left me feeling wrung out like an old Indian floor cloth.
One day, while everyone else was out, I was going through an old briefcase my wife and I have had for over 20 years. It was so old that the synthetic rubber handle had melted years back and we had fixed it with electrical tape. This briefcase was the collect-all for all our important papers and mementos; the bag we would grab in case of an emergency. In it were birth certificates, home schooling records, report cards, achievement certificates, medical papers, new and old passports, etc. I’ll add here that we have 11 children. That day I had decided I was going to purge that case. I wasn’t taking it with me.
Sitting on the floor in a small room under a slowly turning fan with only a pair of shorts and a singlet on, I started the purge. Paper by paper, note by note, document by document, I placed the contents in three piles: things to keep, things to scan and then destroy, things to get rid of.
During this process I was battling in my conscious and subconscious with those overwhelming fearful thoughts. It’s funny to me now that King David referred to them as “waves,” because I often felt as if I were seasick. I remember as a child being out in our small boat. Sometimes we’d get caught in bad weather and our small boat would start rocking just a bit too much, and that slight tinge of nausea would come over me. Well, that was the feeling I had in my gut nearly all the time—a deep, sunken, sickening feeling.
So there I was, sweating, sitting on the floor surrounded by these piles of papers. When I was done I decided to hold up the briefcase and give it a good shake just to be sure everything was out of it, when a piece of paper, 8 x 4.5 cm, came fluttering out and landed on the floor directly in front of me. I looked at it but didn’t remember ever having seen it before. It was old and worn, a pale green color, with text on one side covered with a thin sheet of contact paper. It looked like one of those old Promise Box quotes we used to have. I picked it up and began to read:
“I've got your back covered. I'm watching out for your interests, as you are watching out for Mine. Thank you for so cheerfully doing My work, taking care of the things I have committed to your trust, and trusting Me to take care of the personal situations you have committed to My trust. I won't let you down! I'll be a good business manager for you. I'll work things out the way I know they should be. Just leave it all in My hands and I'll make you happy. Wait and see.”3
I crumbled. I just lay on the floor and cried and cried and felt so loved I can’t explain it. Like Thomas of old, my spirit cried out “My Lord and my God.”4 This time I was overwhelmed not with fear, uncertainty, and apprehension, but rather with joy, love, and light. I was washed. I was cleansed. Faith replaced fear. Light drove out the darkness and my future suddenly became as bright as this promise of God.
I don’t know how long I lay there crying and thanking Him. Time just no longer seemed to exist. I felt as if the Lord literally had His arms around me and was holding me, telling me not to fear and how much He loved me, encouraging me that everything was going to be okay. After some time I rose from the floor and I was a different person. All I can compare it to is when I was born again. I now knew that everything was going to be okay and there was no need to fear. The Son of God was at the helm of my ship, and with Him at the helm my small unworthy vessel could weather any storm or tempest the Enemy might blow across my path.
It’s been nearly two years now since this experience, and they have been rewarding and adventure-filled years. I feel like I have grown so much in the Lord and that my relationship with Him has been transformed. I know this would not have been possible without that major upheaval. The waves have mounted pretty big but His promise has proven true. I’ve learned not to try to take the wheel from Him but just to let Him work things out the way He knows they should be. He hasn’t let me down. He has been a good business manager for me. He has made me happy. And I face each day with anticipation as I wait and seewhat He has for me.
As for where the paper came from and how it got there, we don’t really know. All I know is that the Lord kept it for just such a time as this to get the desired effect, that only He may be glorified.
1 The word translated as “tempest” here was seismos, the same word we get the words seismic andseismology from, having to do with earthquakes, or in my case a major shakeup.
2 Psalm 42:10.
3 By Jesus, speaking in prophecy.
4 John 20:28.
Only God Can Make Things Grow
A compilation
Audio length: 8:04
Download Audio (7.3MB)
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.—1 Corinthians 3:71
*
Winning people to Jesus is like farming: We plant little seeds of truth in the earth of people’s hearts, and the great warm sunshine of His love and the water of His Word will cause some of those seeds to burst forth in the miracle of new life.
Of course, we hope to win many others to faith in Christ, but that’s really God’s job and the work of the Holy Spirit. We can only give people the truth and show them the Lord’s love; we can’t force results or make the decision for them. Whether or not they choose to believe and receive and follow that truth is between each individual and God.
One person sows the seed, another may water it, but it is God that gives the increase.2We can only try to prepare the ground, soften it with our prayers, and sow the seed. It’s up to the individual to receive it, and only God can make it take root and grow and produce fruit.
Our job is simply to go forth bearing precious seed and to plant it in fertile, fruitful, receptive hearts. We may not always see the harvest ourselves, but as long as we have faithfully done our part, we can leave the rest up to God.—David Brandt Berg3
*
When witnessing you need to remember that a lot of people who didn't receive Jesus with you will receive Him later—you've just planted some seeds. You can't expect to plant the seed and have the plant grow up to full bloom and be in blossom right then and there while you're talking to them. If the seed hasn't been planted before, it may need some time to be watered, to grow and then to be harvested. Maybe in some people the seed has already been planted, and when you come along, you water it, but it's still not quite ready yet. So who knows? It may be a while, but they may yet receive the Lord. So don’t jump to conclusions on what the result of your witnessing will be just because someone is not ready at that moment to be saved. Witnessing is never wasted!—Maria Fontaine4
*
A sermon is vain talk and dreary word-spinning unless the Holy Spirit enlivens it. … When the good Seed is sown, the whole success of it rests with God. If He withholds the dew and the rain, the Seed will never rise from the ground—and unless He shall shine upon it, the green ear will never ripen. … The human heart will remain barren, even though Paul himself should preach, unless God the Holy Spirit shall work with Paul and bless the Word to those who hear it.
Brothers, you know it is so in natural things—the most skillful farmer cannot make the wheat germinate, grow, and ripen. He cannot even preserve a single field till harvest time, for the farmer’s enemies are many and mighty. In farming there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, and when the farmer thinks he shall reap his crop, often there are blights and mildews lingering about to rob him of his gains. God must give the increase. If any man is dependent on God, it is the farmer, and as he, we are, all of us, dependent upon God from year to year for the food by which we live. Even the king must live by the increase of the field.
God gives the increase in the barn and the hayrack—and in the spiritual farm it is even more so, for what can man do in this business? If any of you think that it is an easy thing to win a soul, I would like you to try. Suppose that without Divine aid you should try to save a soul—you might as well attempt to make a world! Why, you cannot create a fly! How can you create a new heart and a right spirit? Regeneration is a great mystery—it is out of your reach. “The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell from where it comes, and where it goes: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”5
What can you and I do in this matter? It is out of our pale and beyond our line. We can tell out the Truth of God, but to apply that Truth to the heart and conscience is quite another thing. I have stood here and preached Jesus Christ—preached my whole heart out—and yet I know that I have never produced any saving effect upon a single unregenerate man unless the Spirit of God has taken the Truth of God and opened the heart and placed the living Seed within it!
“I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”6 Frequently brethren say in their prayers, “A Paul may plant, an Apollos may water, but it is all in vain unless God gives the increase.” This is quite true, but another Truth of God is too much overlooked, namely, that when Paul plants and Apollos waters, God does give the increase! We do not labor in vain! There would be no increase without God, but then we are not without God!—C. H. Spurgeon7
*
[A] shift that Jesus invites us to make is from producing to growing. A producer puts parts together and makes something new happen. You produce a veggie lasagna from cheese, asparagus, tomato sauce, and pasta. Throw in some eggplant if you like. You produce a BMW from auto parts. But everything you produce is already dead. It’s just a thing. One day it will get old and rot or rust and waste away.
Compare a producer to a grower. A grower stands in his garden. He leans over growing things to tend them with water and fertilizer and loving care. He watches with pleasure and expectation as his plants accomplish the one thing he can’t make happen. They grow.
The kingdom of Jesus is alive and growing, but not because we make it grow. We plant seeds of life. We water and weed. We sweat and hope and pray. But the dynamic of life in the garden is the kingdom at work. It is the life of God springing up around us.—Rick McKinley8
Published on Anchor August 2013. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso.
Music by Daniel Sozzi.
1 NIV.
2 1 Corinthians 3:6.
3 Daily Might (Aurora Production, 2004).
4 Originally given April 1992.
5 John 3:8.
6 1 Corinthians 3:6.
7 From http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols25-27/chs1602.pdf.
8 This Beautiful Mess (Multnomah Books, 2006).
Audio length: 8:04
Download Audio (7.3MB)
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.—1 Corinthians 3:71
*
Winning people to Jesus is like farming: We plant little seeds of truth in the earth of people’s hearts, and the great warm sunshine of His love and the water of His Word will cause some of those seeds to burst forth in the miracle of new life.
Of course, we hope to win many others to faith in Christ, but that’s really God’s job and the work of the Holy Spirit. We can only give people the truth and show them the Lord’s love; we can’t force results or make the decision for them. Whether or not they choose to believe and receive and follow that truth is between each individual and God.
One person sows the seed, another may water it, but it is God that gives the increase.2We can only try to prepare the ground, soften it with our prayers, and sow the seed. It’s up to the individual to receive it, and only God can make it take root and grow and produce fruit.
Our job is simply to go forth bearing precious seed and to plant it in fertile, fruitful, receptive hearts. We may not always see the harvest ourselves, but as long as we have faithfully done our part, we can leave the rest up to God.—David Brandt Berg3
*
When witnessing you need to remember that a lot of people who didn't receive Jesus with you will receive Him later—you've just planted some seeds. You can't expect to plant the seed and have the plant grow up to full bloom and be in blossom right then and there while you're talking to them. If the seed hasn't been planted before, it may need some time to be watered, to grow and then to be harvested. Maybe in some people the seed has already been planted, and when you come along, you water it, but it's still not quite ready yet. So who knows? It may be a while, but they may yet receive the Lord. So don’t jump to conclusions on what the result of your witnessing will be just because someone is not ready at that moment to be saved. Witnessing is never wasted!—Maria Fontaine4
*
A sermon is vain talk and dreary word-spinning unless the Holy Spirit enlivens it. … When the good Seed is sown, the whole success of it rests with God. If He withholds the dew and the rain, the Seed will never rise from the ground—and unless He shall shine upon it, the green ear will never ripen. … The human heart will remain barren, even though Paul himself should preach, unless God the Holy Spirit shall work with Paul and bless the Word to those who hear it.
Brothers, you know it is so in natural things—the most skillful farmer cannot make the wheat germinate, grow, and ripen. He cannot even preserve a single field till harvest time, for the farmer’s enemies are many and mighty. In farming there’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, and when the farmer thinks he shall reap his crop, often there are blights and mildews lingering about to rob him of his gains. God must give the increase. If any man is dependent on God, it is the farmer, and as he, we are, all of us, dependent upon God from year to year for the food by which we live. Even the king must live by the increase of the field.
God gives the increase in the barn and the hayrack—and in the spiritual farm it is even more so, for what can man do in this business? If any of you think that it is an easy thing to win a soul, I would like you to try. Suppose that without Divine aid you should try to save a soul—you might as well attempt to make a world! Why, you cannot create a fly! How can you create a new heart and a right spirit? Regeneration is a great mystery—it is out of your reach. “The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell from where it comes, and where it goes: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.”5
What can you and I do in this matter? It is out of our pale and beyond our line. We can tell out the Truth of God, but to apply that Truth to the heart and conscience is quite another thing. I have stood here and preached Jesus Christ—preached my whole heart out—and yet I know that I have never produced any saving effect upon a single unregenerate man unless the Spirit of God has taken the Truth of God and opened the heart and placed the living Seed within it!
“I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”6 Frequently brethren say in their prayers, “A Paul may plant, an Apollos may water, but it is all in vain unless God gives the increase.” This is quite true, but another Truth of God is too much overlooked, namely, that when Paul plants and Apollos waters, God does give the increase! We do not labor in vain! There would be no increase without God, but then we are not without God!—C. H. Spurgeon7
*
[A] shift that Jesus invites us to make is from producing to growing. A producer puts parts together and makes something new happen. You produce a veggie lasagna from cheese, asparagus, tomato sauce, and pasta. Throw in some eggplant if you like. You produce a BMW from auto parts. But everything you produce is already dead. It’s just a thing. One day it will get old and rot or rust and waste away.
Compare a producer to a grower. A grower stands in his garden. He leans over growing things to tend them with water and fertilizer and loving care. He watches with pleasure and expectation as his plants accomplish the one thing he can’t make happen. They grow.
The kingdom of Jesus is alive and growing, but not because we make it grow. We plant seeds of life. We water and weed. We sweat and hope and pray. But the dynamic of life in the garden is the kingdom at work. It is the life of God springing up around us.—Rick McKinley8
Published on Anchor August 2013. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso.
Music by Daniel Sozzi.
1 NIV.
2 1 Corinthians 3:6.
3 Daily Might (Aurora Production, 2004).
4 Originally given April 1992.
5 John 3:8.
6 1 Corinthians 3:6.
7 From http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols25-27/chs1602.pdf.
8 This Beautiful Mess (Multnomah Books, 2006).
