Itsara

I’ve seen a couple of recent posts online (here’s an example) about Christian persecution around the world. I’ve posted on this before too. Today I thought I’d present a slightly different perspective.

To be sure, stories of persecution must be spread far and wide, if only so that comfortable Christians can know that our faith, and the struggle against it, is alive and well - if only so we can know that the Bible speaks the truth for today, and not just for Christians under Roman persecution 2,000 years ago.

I recently finished reading a book called The Heavenly Man by a Chinese pastor named Brother Yun. This is an amazing story of the underground church in China over the last thirty or forty years, and one man’s incredible testimony and persecutions.

Now ordinarily the Western response to international Christian persecution is a call for it to stop. It makes sense, after all people are hurting and we should do something about it, right? Brother Yun has a different perspective - a more Biblical one - and considering that he’s gone through more than any of us are ever likely to go through, his words are worth listening to. (more…)

We got to hang out with some of the Im Jai kids a bit this week. Dave and Shirley are the volunteer coordinators at Im Jai, and it turns out they live in the same neighborhood as we do. So we’ve been going to church with them at Chiangmai Fellowship Church (a Thai church with headphones for us farangs). On Sunday they had a handful of the Im Jai girls over at their house to watch Cinderella Story, and we got to hang out with them.

Also on Monday we went with them to “English camp”. Right now, the Thai schools are on vacation, so Im Jai is teaching them English and Bible stories in the mornings. It was a lot of fun hanging out with the kids, and I took some pictures. Afterwards, we went with Dave and Shirley and two of the Im Jai boys (Jack and Boy) to get some ice cream. Jack of course speaks Thai (and a little English) and Boy is deaf, so he only signs. I’m used to not being understood, but usually I can get by with the few Thai words I know plus some hand signals. With Boy I realized that I couldn’t speak with him at all, nor understand what he was saying. The only words I know in sign language are “relax”, “weird”, and a few Christian words (like “Jesus loves me”). It was an unexpected language barrier, but we had fun at least.

Our schedule for the near future looks like this. We have a friend from Hong Kong visiting us probably tomorrow, and Ray and Kaoru are coming up here sometime in the next few days. We should be starting language school next week (I’m anxious to get moving on this), and we’ll hopefully start working with Im Jai on a more scheduled basis when they get back to school around May 15th.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to memorize the Thai letters (44 consonants and 32 vowels, sheesh) and have discovered that I still can’t read because there are rules I don’t know about. That’s not even counting the rules for what tone each syllable is. Sean is in Burma with some missionary team he hooked up with and will hopefully be back tomorrow or Friday. Cindy’s been doing her own Thai studies and keeping in touch with folks back home (among other things).

God’s been doing stuff too. For me, I realized that everytime I’ve worshipped here, I’ve had an itch to take my guitar and go worship outside somewhere. I can’t go far with my guitar on my scooter, but I hope to do that around the neighborhood somewhere. You can pray for that. I also have an itch to study the Word again, and I have visions of studying it with random people we meet too. I don’t know how that will work, especially with the language, but pray for that too.

On a completely unrelated note, I read this from Dano’s blog this morning and I thought it was hilarious - definitely the loudest laugh for at least a week:

I feel that I need to hand people this disclaimer when I meet them:

The person you are about to meet wishes to be kind, respectful and courteous. Yet, he is terrible with names and has extreme difficulty recognizing individuals of Asian descent. Therefore, he will likely introduce himself to you at least three times and he accepts no responsibility for name or face recollection for conversations less than a minute in duration.

The only problem is there’d be a lot of people telling me that I already gave them one.

In the last two posts on this topic, I have tried to express that true worship is when a person’s heart is focused on the beauty, majesty, faithfulness, and glory of God alone, and that all of our external acts, including the act of musical worship, should be expressions of what is already in our hearts. I also talked about how leading worship should be an expression of our life’s worship and an act of service and love to those we are leading, and I talked about specific ways we can serve them as they worship God.

In this post I want to talk about something I learned recently about worshipping in a different setting. Often we get used to worshipping in one setting - with a certain leader and certain songs sung in a certain way, etc. We become comfortable with whatever form of musical worship we have been involved in.

So when something changes - when a new leader comes in or we visit another church, for example - there is a strong temptation to criticize the worship. “This isn’t the way the song goes.” “She’s playing it too fast.” “Look at him showing off - he’s not worshipping.” “Those aren’t the right words.” Feel free to interject your own critical thoughts here. We’ve all had them. (more…)

Just wanted to share what’s going on with me personally…

God’s been doing lots of amazing things as usual. Specifically, He has been exposing a LOT of issues in me that really need healing and love. For those who are interested and/or want to pray, some of these issues include 1) serving people for the wrong reasons (i.e. not for Jesus), 2) unhealthy comparisons of people to others (judging people by some made-up standard in my mind), and 3) feeling the need to have responsibilities and do things (not knowing how to rest).

It’s strange how going through this is so hard and yet soooo good. When I’m first faced with the exposure of my shortcomings, I immediately get defensive and angry, usually with the person who brought it up (these days it’s God, Adam, or Sean). I just want to deny it and be done with it. But that doesn’t happen. God doesn’t let me go like that. He keeps digging deeper until I am really sick of myself and feeling pretty depressed. It could end like that, but it doesn’t. He’s too good! He then shows me over and over again of how much He loves me, not despite my shortcomings, but before my shortcomings ever existed, before the creation of the world, because He just does. And it’s because He loves me so much that I want to change, not to gain His love, but as a result of it.

The process of healing is painful, but entirely worth it. It reminds me of my “fights” with Adam. Some of those times are incredibly difficult and make me want to give up on everything. Those are the lowest and most depressing times. But when we get through it (because of God we always do), we’ve learned so much about ourselves and the other, and grow closer and become better.

I used to be scared of fighting with Adam, because it was just plain hard to deal with. But now, I don’t mind so much. I know that in the end, we’ll know each other better, we’ll love each other still, and everything will be “okay”. I think it’s the same with God. When He exposes hard issues in my life that He wants to heal, I used to be scared because it was too hard to deal with. Now, I know that in the end, I’ll know Him better, we’ll still love each other, and everything will be okay, and not just okay but WAY better.

In my last post on the topic, I talked about what worship means in a larger sense, and why musical worship is so important to us. I also mentioned how musical worship should be an overflow of the general worship we give to God all the time. Today I’ll talk about how this applies to leading worship. (more…)

Focusing on what to see.
Tunning in to what to be.
Having love and being free.
Life abundant can be reality.
Experiancing the Father through what Jesus see’s.
What He was, what He is, and what He’s always going to be.
He was, and is, and is always for you and me to be with the Three.

Two separate topics combined into one, and neither of these thoughts were written by me. The first is a link to something James wrote yesterday. He writes against what he sees as a devotion to doctrine over love. I have to admit that I’m tired of the same sorts of things. He has a good word way down in the comments thread too: “It is good to seek understanding and pursue correct doctrine, but to hold onto a rabidly entrenched view of secondary concepts just shows a lack of love.”

And on a more encouraging note, the quote below is what Emmet sent to us after we left. These are really good words, especially for anybody who intends to follow God’s call over and above their own comfort or community. They were encouraging to us:

When I was in Africa I was out on a run and some kids started to run along with me. We were smiling at each other and laughing. Eventually they started to drop off a few at a time until I was on my own again. At that moment God told me something cool. He said that we are each on our own run (I’d like to think that we are each running after God), and on that run we sometimes come along side others and we get to run together for a while. As much fun as it is to run with another person or people, it would be wrong to adjust your pace or change you path in order to stick with them. You have to be at peace with your own run and be grateful for the time that you do get to share a path with others that you like or are like. Adam & Cindy, you have your own path, the same as Sean has his and I have mine. I am so happy that our paths connected up the way that they did and for as long as they did. I hope and have prayed that they would link up again in a deeper way and for a longer time. But if they don’t (aside from visits), it’s good to know that we will always be connected.

Today is Songkran, the Thai New Year, also known as the Water Festival. It is essentially the world’s biggest water fight, when the entire nation spends three days throwing water at each other (and some of them start early and throw water all week long).

For us it began yesterday when, like an ominous portent, a woman and her daughter hit us with a couple buckets of water as we sped past them on our scooter - our soggy clothes a foreshadowing of what the next day would bring. Last night people were setting off fireworks and we heard people partying nearby until late at night. God even sent a thunderstorm last night as if to say, “You want a water fight and fireworks? Let me show you how it’s done!” Then today, as we drove to our friend Stefan’s house and then to the old city, we were hit every few hundred meters by anyone with a bucket and a hose, and around the city walls the streets were as soaked as if it had been raining - all of this making it… exciting to be on a scooter.

We spent most of the day with our friends Stefan and Tina, whom we met on our trip last summer. We spent some time at the house of Stefan’s old neighbor drenching, and being drenched by, the neighborhood kids and also being sure to get anyone who passed by. Then we walked to the moat where the real celebration was happening.

People were packed all along the moat. On the inside, people had barrels filled with water from their homes and stores for anyone to use. On the outside, people drew water from the moat itself (which is not the cleanest water, but it does provide an unlimited supply). At the same time, groups of people drove by on pick-up trucks with barrels in the back soaking anyone they could find.

This went on all day, and it’s going to continue for the next two days as well. It was a lot of fun, and lucky for you I got some pictures (I was wary about bringing my camera, considering what happened to the last one, but it turned out okay). From what little I’ve learned, this holiday is religious (as most things are here, I guess). Sprinkling water on others is meant to bless them, like a baptism - I guess it got a little out of hand over the years, cuz we got blessed to the bone! Also, every so often somebody will have loaded their gun or bucket with ice water. You could never really know when it was coming - you’d get a few blasts in a row of mild water, then suddenly your back would go numb as somebody with ice water hit you from behind!

Here are the pictures of Songkran we took today. I also added some more pictures of our neighborhood. And finally, I played with the movie mode of our new camera. It doesn’t have sound, and it will only take a 16 second movie, but here’s one of a pedestrian and another of a woman on a scooter getting “blessed”. Downloads of those movies will probably be really slow - sorry about that, but there’s nothing I can do.

I have some more thoughts on worship that will probably take up a couple of posts, though I don’t expect these to be consecutive. This first one is from some thoughts I wrote down a while ago while I was still worship pastor at Coast.

What is worship? Technically, it is the love, honor, adoration, devotion, and esteem that we apply to something. And it is the physical acts that prove these feelings towards that focus.

But what does that mean practically? For example, when someone worships a celebrity, what do they do? They watch everything the celebrity does. They learn as much as they can about them. If the celebrity actually asked them to do something, they would do it gratefully and without question.

A better example is how I worship my wife. I will follow her wherever she goes. I will learn as much as I can about her by spending time with her and talking with her. I will try to be with her as much as possible. I will serve her when she asks, and I will serve her when she doesn’t ask. I will constantly tell her how beautiful she is and how much I love her. (more…)

I know some of you want to know just what’s going on out here in Thailand, so I’ll tell you how these last couple of days have been.

We’re staying with an engaged couple, Phil and Pook (American and Thai, respectively), and all of us are renting rooms from another married couple (also foreigners) that’s on vacation right now. Phil and Pook have been really cool and we feel comfortable here. We’ve made each other dinner, watched a couple of movies together, and even played a little Ticket to Ride.

We’ve also met Norbert and his family. Norbert is the pastor of an international church here in Chiang Mai (Chiang Mai Christian Fellowship, I believe). He, his wife, and four of his seven children live close by and made us chili and cornbread last night (and it was Good).

We’re staying in a place called Kullaphan Village, which is the Thai equivalent of a middle-class gated community (although as far as I can tell, the guards are just there for the look of the thing). Dave and Sheila, the couple we are renting from (and haven’t actually met yet), have a lot more amenities than we were expecting to have on our arrival here - even a washer and wireless internet. We’ve even had Western food every once in a while (usually through someone else treating us), so we haven’t had a chance to crave American food yet. So we’re not exactly living like Thais at the moment, but it’s cheap and we’re nothing if not practical.

We haven’t started working with Im Jai yet, but Cindy is trying to contact them and we plan on starting with them in May. Our priority right now, though, is to learn Thai, so we’re signing up for Thai language classes and hope to start that as soon as possible. Oh, and we also bought a couple of bikes yesterday - those are fun.

Click on any of the pictures to see more, or follow this link. We haven’t taken very many yet, but there will be more coming to be sure.