Greece 2012: Summary
[Romanian Class Group Shot]
Thank you once again for your prayers and financial support. I wanted to encourage your faithfulness to God’s mission by sharing with you what God did in Athens this January.
Unfortunately, many mission trips are short-sighted. My two years in Moldova taught me that missions is hard, slow work. I was excited to work with Training Leaders International (TLI) in Athens because they have a long term vision.
TLI has designed a multi-year curriculum that will train church leaders to faithfully preach God’s word. Ryan, a faithful IMB missionary, coordinates the program in Athens in partnership with TLI. Our team began this work among six language groups—Romanian (which I taught), Albanian, Farsi, Arabic, and English (for Africans). For the next several years, the men we taught will continue their training as other TLI teams go to Athens.
God blessed my time with the Romanian-speaking group. Every night we covered two of God’s attributes. The Romanians and Moldovans were eager to study and asked challenging questions. However, their interest was not merely intellectual. We concluded each night with earnest times of prayer and song as we praised God for who he is.
The Romanian-speaking churches are possibly the strongest evangelical churches in Athens and are actively involved in evangelism and church planting throughout Greece. It is my conviction that these classes will make their work more effective and more God-honoring.
God used my knowledge of the Romanian language and culture to solidify the confidence and trust of the Romanian believers in TLI’s program. My time along with your prayers and money were an investment in these men and in the ministries of TLI and IMB missionary Ryan. I am confident that we will receive a good return on our investment by God’s grace. Again, thank you.
Greece Trip Journal
Tomorrow morning I leave for Minneapolis and then for Athens on Friday. One way you can keep up with the happenings of this trip and pray for our team is by reading our trip journal on the Training Leaders International website. I will do my best to also keep my website, Facebook, and Twitter up to date, but, even if I am not able, you can keep track from this site.
Thank You: Goal Met for Greece Trip 2012
Thank you to everyone who contributed to my upcoming trip to Greece. My goal has been met, and now I am working to pack everything for when that plane takes off on Wednesday, January 5th.
I also want to say a special thank you to everyone from Hardin Baptist Church for you generous gift.
Whether now or while in Moldova, it has always been amazing to witness God providing for his mission through his people. Please continue to pray that God will be glorified through this trip.
Christmas Means Theological Training Is Important
At Christmas, we take the time to remember the amazing truth about the person of Jesus. “Remaining what he was, he became what he was not.” When he was born in Bethlehem, Jesus remained fully God, but he also, in a mysterious way, became fully man.
By becoming fully man, the eternal Son of God gained the ability to experience every temptation and trial that we face while also gaining the ability to suffer and die. If Jesus was not fully human then he could not have been the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins. By remaining fully God, Jesus was able to bear the penalty for the sins of the whole world and able to be the mediator between God and man.
To misunderstand who Jesus is is to misunderstand the Gospel of salvation. Jesus could not be our Savior if he was only half God and half man. He could not be our Savior if he was created, as some heretical groups teach. Our salvation depends on this important yet difficult Gospel truth.
Please lift me up to the throne of grace in preparation for my trip to Athens, Greece from January 5-14. I will be partnering with Training Leaders International to teach the leaders of the Romanian-speaking churches there. Although some of the older pastors have received training in Romania, many of the younger leaders are unable to receive training in their own language.
It is vitally important for these churches to have men who know how to study and proclaim the Bible. Without training, churches easily fall into errors that can keep them from reaching people for Jesus. As we are reminded every Christmas, what we believe that the Bible teaches has eternal significance!
Please partner with me in prayer as I prepare for this trip. I have raised about half of the $2500 that I need for my portion of the trip. Please pray that God will provide the remaining amount. Also, pray that God will provide a skillful translator for the teaching time. Pray that God will prepare all of our hearts as we study about God’s attributes, and pray that God will strengthen the Romanian-speaking churches in Athens and that many people will meet Jesus through their ministry.
If God impresses on your heart a desire to support my trip financially, then you can do so online by following this link.
I hope that all who read this have merry Christmas that draws you closer to your family, to your church, and most importantly to the God-man we worship! What a privilege it is to proclaim the same good news that angels sang about to those bewildered shepherds all those years ago!
Teaching the Perfections of God’s Beauty
In the midst of a psalm that emphasizes God’s judgment and his desire for genuine worship, Asaph sings this beautiful line—“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Ps 50:2). He imagines the glory of God shining forth into the world from Zion, the holy hill where God is worshiped. I am unsure whether Asaph intended the phrase “the perfection of beauty” to describe Zion or to describe God directly, but perhaps the issue is meaningless because, whatever beauty Zion possesses, it is obviously derived from God’s shining forth from it. In The Treasury of David, Spurgeon makes this point: “She [Zion] is made perfect in beauty by his indwelling.”
So, clearly God is the source of perfect beauty. Beauty is emotional, intoxicating, and exhilarating. Beauty is not something to be coldly studied. We must experience beauty. Whether it is the beauty of a breathtaking natural wonder or the beauty of your spouse, beauty is wasted if it is not enjoyed.
When I go to Greece in a couple of months, I will be teaching a course on the attributes of God. I think our traditional term “attributes” tends to be too scientific. In the past, when learning the attributes of God, I have approached them somewhat coldly. I treated God’s attributes as specimens to be categorized, defined, and examined. Perhaps the older theological term, the perfections of God, or a term derived from this psalm, the beauties of God, would more accurately prepare us for the task. We study the perfection of God’s beauty in order to enjoy God, in order to marvel at him, in order to be speechless before him.
As I teach in January, I pray the God will shine forth from me in the perfection of his beauty. Will you pray with me? Will you pray that God will let us glimpse his glory as the Romanian-speaking leaders and I study God’s word in Athens?
