One Life

Friends,

Yesterday in our team prayer meeting (which occurs every Monday morning at 10 am) we were talking about the Gospel. And I remembered one thing that I believe Mark Dever mentioned in one of his Desiring God talks which is that no matter how loving and kind and Jesus-like you try to be in your witness to non-Christian friends and family members and strangers at the end of the day until you verbally share the Gospel message with them, they have NOT heard the Gospel. Whether you are a missionary or a Christian in the US, it behooves us to not just in our lives live out a Gospel witness but to actually share the Gospel with those we love and those who are lost without Christ. It’s a good reminder even on the mission field as we can become scared of losing relationships with people (and scared of losing face) in sharing the Gospel. But the Gospel really is tremendously good news. I think once we get over ourselves it becomes a much less fearful thing.

Here’s a quick youtube video that illustrates the point well I think. It’s a “testimony” from Penn who is a famous magician (and atheist) talking about a genuinely “good guy” who gifted him with a Bible.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3…

Another youtube moment to share with you. I ran across many many youtube videos of young people opening their “mission call” letters to see where in the world they will be serving as missionaries. There is excitement and celebration surrounded by friends and family members. There is willingness to do anything and go anywhere. The only problem is that these videos are young people going as Mormon missionaries. Mormons are required to give 2 years of missionary service. All young men without exception. I wonder why the Gospel alone is not motivation enough for those of us who truly know Christ to move a whole generation of young people to serve Christ to the ends of the world? And to move all Christians to take up the call to be mission senders?

Here’s one example of a Mormon call:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uweITtX-L…

Finally I wanted to give you an update on our finances. THANK YOU to all of you who have increased your support and/or sent in one-time gifts! THANK YOU!!! We had a great December and January of giving which makes it much less likely that we’ll be pulled back to the US. We still have to see though how giving goes in the next few months and also in particular how the dollar/yen rate progresses. We’re thankful to a friend who recently left Japan and gave us his car. That allowed us to give our car to the Kim family who in turn after selling their car in the US before coming to serve in Japan donated the proceeds of that sale to our family account which was a huge help. God is good!

Related to finances I wanted to share one more alarming youtube video with you from Joel Osteen. He’s been quite a popular preacher globally, but he represents a very dangerous threat to the faith in the “Prosperity Gospel” message that he preaches. Essentially it teaches that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy. If so then Jesus was a total failure.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di9-PebV6…

Thanks for your continued prayers and support. It’s been a precious few weeks for Pearl and me to enjoy no travels and LOTS of family time. I’m not planning to going much of anywhere for a long while….

Michael

PS – in case you haven’t yet seen pictures from the DG conference or the video my talk, here are the links:

 http://www.facebook.com/photos/?ref=sb#/…

 http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibra…