Goodbye Dear Friend!

On Sunday (my first Sunday back from my trip to Tallinn, Berlin, and Moscow) Jerry, the head of the church’s missions organization, made an announcement at church that my friend, Francesca, is dying of cancer.  It had apparently been in her body for many years.  He smiled and said that Francesca told him: “I don’t think I’m going to make it to church this week.”  Her last words to the church were: “Tell them that God is good.”

When I asked about her after church Jerry told me not to try and go see her because she’s not really able to communicate, being truly at the end of her life, and not conscious very much at all.  Well, I thought, that may be true, but I want to go to her anyway.

Francesca is very dear to me.  She is the very first missionary I encouraged in my ministry of missionary encouragement—before I even knew that this was my ministry.  Francesca heard the Good News of Jesus Christ about 8 years ago, and responded immediately by going on short-term mission trips, eventually being called to long-term ministry starting orphanages in Cambodia.  She spent the rest of her life in Cambodia sharing the love of Jesus with His little ones.

Two years ago (when she was 70), Francesca told me that God had told her that when she turns 72 He would bring her back home.  So with the end of her ministry approaching, the focus of her visits home (here in Milan) became a search for someone younger who could take over the ministry.  She wanted the transition to be smooth, and did everything she could to make that happen.  Neither she nor I had any idea that the home He was talking about would be her forever home.  But that’s probably just as well.

When she returned to Milan at the end of the summer she admitted to me that she was beginning to feel her age.  She said that she was sleeping a lot, and that perhaps she just needed to catch up on her sleep.  But she continued to weaken, and began to seek medical help.  The last time I saw her was in church just before my trip.  She looked very thin and pale, but as always, she had a smile on her face.

So when I heard about her on Sunday, I knew that I had to go see her, so I found out where she was.  Yesterday morning was my first opportunity, and I went to the hospital.  The doctors very gently told me that she had died Sunday night.  They said that she was in the hospital morgue, and said that I could go visit her there.

Now, I am not a morbid person by any means, but as I was leaving the hospital, I thought that maybe I should go visit her in the morgue.  There might be family members there who I could sympathize with.  So I followed the signs down to a basement hall with several small rooms.   There was no one there.  A sign on the wall said: “Brief visits only, please.”

I found Francesca’s name on one of the doors and entered.  There was no one there with her.  Her body was laid out on a gurney, covered in a sheet.  They had tied a cloth around her head to keep her mouth shut, but had not closed her eyes.  I came closer, knowing that what I was seeing was not Francesca, but the cocoon from which she has emerged like a glorious butterfly.

I told her:  “I love you, Francesca!  Please give Jesus a big hug for me!”  Then I thanked God for her life, and that she has life in abundance.  And you might think that this is fanciful imagination on my part, but I saw a certain glimmer of light in her eyes for just a brief moment.  I know that she heard me.

As I was leaving the hospital, I imagined Francesca meeting my dad, and telling him all about my life in Italy, and my ministry to her and to other missionaries.  He would love that!  Daddy always loved real-life adventure stories, and I know that he would have loved all my European adventures.  Just think of the friendships in Heaven that were never possible here on Earth!  I can almost hear the two of them laughing together.

You’re right, Francesca, God is good!  I will keep telling people that for you!  God is good!

The Nasty-Tasting Medicine of Truth

Stop and discern.  Can you see that the enemy has released an attack to bring division among My people?  You, My faithful ones, must stand against this attack.  Do not entertain the temptation to be offended or to point the finger in accusation.  You must deal with your own heart and be righteous.  This is a time to refocus your attention away from yourself and look to Me, says the Lord.  For, I will extricate you from offense if you will allow it.

Proverbs 18:19 A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle.

The quote above was taken from today’s Spirit of Prophecy Bulletin (http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=yymmtrbab&v=001gZhKK2h2Be_D6yGxuKPSManqENpntnNJlJ2b6XiUDhnVJYpfDdKCpc92c-vJDRui5GH_DexOGdk7VBoAUQ5Ey2tvETSInK3oPxpu_KPRRw-b1LRmHF895LlJ8Wb2q6EC6wc3hl8gy8g%3D), which I subscribe to.   Frequently, these prophecies are not only right on target, but speak personally to my current situation.  Today’s prophecy is a perfect example.

Both me, personally and this ministry have been attacked by people I had thought were my friends.  And it is no surprise that these attacks were prompted by an offense that I didn’t even know that I had committed.  Instead of coming to me to find out the truth of things, these people took offense and talked about me behind my back.  Hidden in the dark, fed by supposition and goaded on by the enemy things fester and grow and rage is the result.

Over the course of this year I’ve seen other people, ministries, and churches attacked in similar manner.  Things that could easily have been resolved by honest and loving confrontation instead blew completely out of proportion and into all-out vindictive war.

The thing that shocked me most of all was to find myself being the offended person.  I thought that this person had damaged this ministry.  And so I launched all-out vindictive war on somebody who is flawed, but no more so than myself.  I tried to “save” this person from the worst of my anger by avoidance.  And in explaining my position to a mutual friend, I pointed out how much I have sacrificed to be here: “I sold my house and gave away virtually all of my belongings.  I have left behind my family—my grandson!—and friends.  This ministry has cost me a lot, and not just in terms of money.”  I continued to explain my all-consuming passion for seeing Europe come back to Christ.  Obviously, there was only one right way to look at this thing.  The person who had offended me knew that I was angry, so there was two-way avoidance going on, and my outrage grew.

Then, when I could no longer contain my anger, we finally had a confrontation yesterday.  I didn’t listen at the time, but this person’s words rang inside my head after we parted.  They got through to me, and suddenly I felt horrible about the way I had treated this person.  On top of that, God showed me that my problem was not this person, but my own pride.  Then my eyes were opened to see that I was calling it my ministry, and that I had promoted myself as being so righteous because of all the things I had sacrificed for the ministry.  I had taken my eyes off Jesus and was focused instead on the ministry and on myself.

I saw that this person had offended me, just as I had offended the others, without knowing it, and without meaning to do so.  I was finally seeing myself as the angry, unreasoning aggressor, and I didn’t like what I saw.  But I confessed my sin to God, and then to this person.  Both graciously forgave me without hesitation.

I want to reiterate: where I had gone wrong was in taking my eyes off Jesus.  So often we get caught up in Christian service that we forget that the point is not the service, but Who we serve.

And this enlightenment has helped me to have more understanding and compassion for those who I had unwittingly offended.  I forgive them and hope someday for the restoration of those relationships.  That’s not an empty hope because Jesus is all about restoration.  He is God of a Second Chance.  We all need a second chance!

Holy Power from On High – Why Not?

Lately God has been speaking to me about two important issues: the first is His supernatural power that is made available to us, His children.  Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in Me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father,” (John 14:12).  In fact, open your Bible and read that whole chapter because from there He promises to give us the Holy Spirit—the Source of that supernatural power.  Notice that there is no exception made, it’s “whoever believes” in Jesus.  And Jesus says that we will do “greater things” than He did.

The other thing that God has been impressing on me is the need for us to live a holy life.  Of course, when we are born again the holiness of Jesus becomes our, too.  But again and again God encourages us to be holy because He is holy, to put to death the old man, to run the race in such a way as to win the prize, and to bear fruit for the Kingdom.

I had a strange experience when I was in Texas this summer.  I was driving through Dallas from west to east in the fastest way possible: on the President George W. Bush Toll road.  Then I felt the Holy Spirit urge me to get off the toll road, so I got off, and it was an industrial looking area with a big church.  So I drove to the church, which looked closed, but then I drove around to the back, and there was a bookstore that was open.  So entered and looked around.  Immediately, I found The Pursuit of Holiness with Study Guide by Jerry Bridges, and it was on sale for only $2.  So I bought it.  God has really been talking to me through this book.

Then I began to realize that there is a connection between accessing God’s supernatural power and living a holy life.  Consider this: we cannot truly live a holy life without the Holy Spirit’s help; and we cannot live in God’s supernatural power unless we are living a holy life.  Of course, I cannot claim perfection in this, but more and more I am understanding that God wants us to live in our full inheritance as well as in holiness.  Why not?

From Russia with Love

From Russia with Love.

From Russia with Love

Greetings from Berlin!  I just got back from Moscow, which is an amazing city.  It was everything I had heard, and nothing I could ever have imagined.  Our hosts were very kind and welcoming, grateful to have people coming to pray for their city and country.  They love and hate Moscow, tending to see themselves through a very ugly and distorted mirror, no doubt a legacy of Communist rule there.  I think this is probably why it was important for us, as outsiders from across Europe (and the US!) to come pray for and with them.

The pace of life in Moscow is astonishingly fast.  New York City is slow by comparison!  Moscow is the 5^th largest city in the world, with a population of more than 11.8 million—far ahead of New York, at number 19.  And it covers 969.5 square miles.  The Moscow Metro has 12 lines and 172 stations, serving more than 7 million passengers a day.  The metro trains travel at breakneck speed, and the distance between stations outside the city center is easily double that of the metro stations in New York or Milan.  The Muscovites walk much faster than any group of people I have ever encountered.  Normally I have no trouble keeping up, and often have to moderate my speed to match that of my companions, but not in Moscow.  This led to difficulties in the crush of people in the metro stations, where often people stepped between me and my guide.  He finally grabbed my bag, apparently believing it to blame for my inability to keep up.  Later he commented on how little I had brought with me.

Our first day there, October 22, was warm at 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit).  The next day it dropped to 0 (32 F).  And there were snow flurries in the air throughout the day, but nothing on the ground.  Happily, I had come prepared for cold weather.

My hosts, Pasha and Lena, live on the outskirts of the city in a high-rise.  Near their building is a very modern looking glass building with many windows broken out.  Pasha told me that it had been built in 1990 as an office complex, but it was not built to code, and so it was never opened.  Perhaps the builders had hoped to bribe somebody into signing off on it, and lacked an amount sufficient to buy off the official.  That’s all my own speculation, however.  So the building has sat for over 20 years as a hulking eyesore to the neighborhood.  Despite the protective fencing, gangs of teens have entered and climbed up in it, using it as a place to party.  It staggers the imagination to think of the dangers that must exist inside:  open elevator shafts and crumbling stairs without banisters, for example.  And if you add alcohol and drugs you can get a very deadly combination indeed.  Pasha says that they have never demolished it because of lack of funds to do so, even though it sits on prime real estate near a metro station in a nice part of town.  It is all sadly typical of Eastern Europe.

And yet, all this contrasted with the grandeur of Red Square and the many beautiful cathedrals in the city.  Clearly Russians have an eye for beauty, be in architecture, such as St. Basil’s Cathedral and the many lavishly ornamented metro stations, or in arts like the nesting dolls or Faberge eggs, or in performing arts like the Bolshoi Ballet.  It is as if the Communists tried to tell the Russian people that they don’t need beauty.  Perhaps that a factor in the fall of Communism:  you can’t take beauty away from the people.

I love you, Russia!  I hope to return someday!  But in the meanwhile, never forget that God is good, and that He loves you!

Step into your Destiny

I believe that it’s with a false sense of humility that many of us excuse our inactivity as Christians.  We think that we’re being meek and humble, when what we’re actually doing is exhibiting is a staggering lack of faith.  We think, “God would never use me to bring revival to my city,” for example, when that’s exactly what He would do if you would only cooperate and obey.  The thing is that it’s not your personality, charisma, or strength.  Spiritual victory depends solely upon God’s ability worked through an obedient vessel.  God is giving you an opportunity to work alongside Him, like a mother baking cookies with a child or a father working on the car with a child.  Does the mother need the child’s help to bake cookies?  Does the father depend on the child’s help in fixing the car?  No, but it’s an opportunity for closeness, and it also gives the child the chance to learn and feel empowered.

Here’s the thing: God is preparing us to reign with Him, “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with Him, we will also live with Him; if we endure, we will also reign with him,” (2 Timothy 2:11-12, emphasis mine; see also Revelation 5:9-10).  This life is our training ground for reigning with Him.  But we won’t reign if we don’t endure.  To endure, we’ve got to bear fruit (see John 15:1-2), and we’ve got to overcome (see 1 John 5:4).  And that brings us back to faith.

Back to that passage in 2 Timothy, notice that some will be saved, but not reign.  You might think, “Well, I don’t really want to reign, I’ll just be happy to be there.”  Not me!  I want to reign, but not to be a big shot.  See, I want to sit with Jesus, right by His side.  He will be in His glorified, resurrected body, and me in my resurrected body, and I want to get as much face time with Him as I can.  But that’s not a privilege that will be handed out to everybody.  Only those who endure, bear fruit, and overcome will be invited to sit with Him on His throne, right by His side.  I am running this race to win the prize (1 Corinthians 9:24).  Is there anything else that is worth living or dying for?

Say No to Negativity and Bad Moods

Say No to Negativity and Bad Moods.

Say No to Negativity and Bad Moods

Adam Dachis wrote that a single bad episode can negatively taint the memory of an otherwise pleasant event (“Your Brain Can Fool You Into Hating Something You Actually Like,” http://lifehacker.com/5948851, see also “How to Beat a Bad Day Before it Starts,” http://lifehacker.com/5754196/how-to-beat-a-bad-day-before-it-starts).  It is so easy to fall into a negativity trap, and it actually takes some self-awareness and creativity to short-circuit the negative process your mind would normally take.

I’m actually very fortunate to have had my goofy Dad as a silly, but wonderful example.  All his life, Daddy had the ability to see the humor in the kind of things that wreck other people’s whole day—and usually it was his own clumsiness, lack of planning, or just plain stupidity.  Take for example the time we were camping in Palo Duro Canyon when I was four years old.  It had rained overnight, and my three-year-old brother and I had left our sneakers outside the tent.  In the morning they were soaking wet when we woke up.  Daddy set fire to the trash in one of the 55 gallon drums that the park used as trash cans, put a grill from the barbecue on top and set our shoes on the grill to dry while we had breakfast.  Halfway through breakfast, Mom wrinkled her nose and said, “What is that smell?”  The rubber soles of our sneakers had melted.

Another man might have gotten upset, after all, this would mean cutting the weekend short.  Another man might have gotten angry at us for leaving our sneakers outside all night.  But Daddy was able to see the humor and his own fallible humanity in melting our sneakers, so he just began to laugh.  And when he began to laugh, we all began to laugh.  What could have been an ugly incident was turned into one of our funniest family stories—one that I immortalized in my book, “Hannard Productions,” a memoir of Daddy.

The other day I used that same skill to navigate the difficulties of trying to get to the airport in Wroclaw, Poland.  The desk clerk at my hotel in Kalisz helped me figure out how to get back to Wroclaw, recommending the bus, rather than the train because of some unexplained difficulties that would have me getting off the train at some point and taking a bus the rest of the way.  She called a taxi for me, and told him where to take me (it was too far to walk with a suitcase).  When I asked about how to get to the airport from the bus station, she recommended a taxi.

On the bus, about an hour after starting the trip, we were suddenly sitting at a dead halt in the woods somewhere.  In fact, the driver had turned off the engine.  A few cars passed us coming the other way, and those were the only times the driver turned on the engine and inched forward.  Finally a fire truck pulled up and exchanged words in Polish with the bus driver.  I asked the woman next to me what was going on.  She said that there was an accident blocking the road, and the fireman was advising us to turn around and go another way.  With admirable skill the driver turned the enormous bus around on the tiny two-lane road, and backtracked to the last town we had gone through.

He chose another route, and before long we had stopped again.  The road was completely shut down due to roadwork.  So he turned the bus around and headed back to town, choosing another route.  By the time we got to Wroclaw, the bus was about an hour late, and I still needed to get to the airport.

I followed the other passengers into the bus station, and found the information booth.  But the woman there didn’t speak English.  I pulled out my phrasebook, looking for the Polish phrase: “I need to go to the airport.”  The phrasebook has the following useful phrases:

Where’s the . . . ?

bus station

city center

road to . . .

train station

How do I get there?

Where can I buy a ticket?

I want to go to . . .

Which bus goes to . . . ?

Please take me to . . .

In fact, it has every useful word and phrase for getting around in Poland except the word “airport”!  And I couldn’t remember the name of the airport, so I couldn’t even ask it that way.  I went to look at the departures board, but that was as unintelligible as Sanskrit.  I felt panic rising in me as my check-in time approached, knowing that the taxi ride had taken almost an hour from the airport to the city center.

I wanted to chuck the phrasebook in the trash.  How can it have phrases like “What a great film!”, “Do you like horseback riding?”, and “Where can you go to hear folk music?” and not have the word airport?

I went back to the information window and tried again.  Upon hearing the word airport, she wrote 408 and a Polish word in indecipherable scratch.  What does that mean?  Do I need to look for bus number 408 to wherever this says?  I was as uninformed as ever.

I went to the ticket window for the bus and asked the woman there if she speaks English.  She shook her head no.  I asked her how to get to the airport, and instead of selling me a bus ticket, she wrote on a slip of paper 408 and a Polish word as illegible as the other.  What to do?

I saw a sign for bus tickets at the pharmacy, and seeing that the woman behind the counter was young, I decided that it couldn’t hurt to try and ask her.  Usually it is the younger people who speak English.  The woman ahead of me talked and talked, and I fought hard to contain the panic and wait patiently.  Finally after several false exits in which she turned and said something else as she stepped away from the counter, she finally left.  The young woman did speak some English, and she advised me that my best bet was to take a taxi to the airport.  I asked where I might find a taxi because I hadn’t seen a single taxi in this part of town.  She told me where to find the taxi stand.

I easily found the taxi stand, and when I said the word airport, he popped my bag into the trunk and whisked me away.  I made it on time, and with no further difficulties.  And I said all that to say that my scary moments at the bus station might have soured me on Wroclaw or even ruined my day.  But I started thinking of how the folks at Lonely Planet had overlooked something very simple, but essential to the traveler.  And I started laughing right there in the taxi as I thought, Well, at least I know how to ask people if they like horseback riding!

Bad News Comes, but Jesus is Still Good News!

Bad News Comes, but Jesus is Still Good News!.

Suicide is hard for those left behind.

Bad News Comes, but Jesus is Still Good News!

I got an e-mail the other day saying that my lifelong friend had committed suicide.  He was a believer, but clearly must have been in a terrible personal crisis.  Nobody had any idea, but now that I think of it, he probably never got over his big brother’s death 30 years ago.  Not that any of us have gotten over that, either, but I think it affected Jim more profoundly than any of us had realized.  Looking back, I realize that’s probably why he drank.  I don’t remember him drinking to excess before Nick died.  And I think he just always felt inferior to Nick because Nick was loved by everyone.

I loved Jim, and even if I had never thought this through before, I know that I did show him lots of love.  My whole family did.  He often called my parents just to talk.  But I think that some wounds are just too deep for ordinary human love to heal.  But he had turned to drink instead of to God for comfort.

One thing I was led to do was to forgive him this last sin—after all, suicide is the sin you can’t repent from.  So I forgave him because Jesus said that the sins we forgive will be forgiven (John 20:22-23).  I think that it doesn’t occur to most people to forgive suicides.  After all, it’s such a selfish act that leaves everyone you love feeling beaten and broken and confused.

I am reading “Pursuing Holiness” by Jerry Bridges © 2006, Navpress.  Jim’s suicide proves to me that we can’t afford to simply rest in the holiness Jesus gave us when we called to Him.  We’ve got to work on ourselves.  And it occurred to me today that even though Jesus did the work of salvation long ago, our personal salvation required our cooperation (i.e., confession, repentance, and baptism).  So it makes sense that our spiritual walk requires us to continue to surrender, cooperate, and yield to God as He molds us into the kind of vessels that He can use.   As with anything worthwhile in this life, you get out of it whatever you put into it.  Jesus said that troubles come to us all, but if we’re close to Him, He shields us from things that could potentially destroy us.

Thanks for letting me ramble.  This is just so hard!  But God is still good!  Please pray for Jim’s wife, children, mother, and sisters.