sacred pathways

today was one of those days that you would be able to romanticize away.  it was so beautiful!!!!  there was so little to do at the house today with all the ladies in different jobs, different day jobs now.  it's quiet the adjustment!  i just finished a bowl of ice cream which is the perfect snack for an evening like this.  however, i didn't get to spend much time outside.  blah, blah, blah, enough about that, now for what i want to blog about.

i've been reading this book called "Sacred Pathway" discover your soul's path to God, by Gary Thomas.  it's really cool, and good. it talks about different Christan temperaments and what is your best way to commune/serve God.  i don't have mine figured out yet.  but last night i read this part in the book and i screamed "yes!!!" inside.  i'll type it out for you, this is the temperament of Ascetics, which is loving God in solitude and simplicity, here we go:

"When i was involved in street preaching on a college campuses, the soul-wrenching and gut-busting struggles came during the moments in prayer before i actually spoke.  once i had wrestled with my fears and my doubts, the act of obedience became almost anticlimactic.  even later in life, as i've struggled with God's will, the act of obedience always seems less difficult than the prior decision to be obedient.  'don't you know where God is leading on this?' i was asked once.  

'yes, i do,' i said.  'and that's the problem.  i'm waiting for my willingness to catch up with God's.'

that's why i identify so much with Christ, alone and in agony as he prayed in Gethsemane.  it is the ultimate picture of Christianity, the picture of us struggling spiritually as God aligns our will with His.  it's the picture that fuels the ascetic spiritual temperament."

when i read that i thought, wow, someone else knows how i feel.  so many times i go through this huge struggle in my head.  do i do what i know is right?  or do i skim the edges to try to get what i want?  by the time i make the right decision, i've argued with myself for 15-20 min!  oh the agony!  i go back and forth, back and forth, and then when i finally make the decision to do right, i almost yell out the answer forcefully because i'm scared if i wait a moment longer, then i will change my mind, so i have to say it fast and loud.  people look at me like i'm crazy, but what i'm the most concerned about is not what people think about me, but what God thinks about me.  even if i look crazy.

GOD IS SOOOOOOOOOO COOL!!!!!!

this post may be a little lengthy, but so be it.  i've been reading this book called "Eternity in Their Hearts" by Don Richardson.  it's a bit wordy in some places, but once you get into it, it's really really good.  i like it a lot, anyway, this part talks about how the Chinese in their very own writing system tells the Gospel story, and i'd like to share it with you, and so we begin:

early missionaries to China faced a formidable obstacle.  they had to learn the Chinese writing system.  as Westerners, accustomed to writing with European alphabets of approximately 26 letters, they gasped!  Chinese writing, they found, used a system based on 214 symbols called "radicals."

they gasped again when they learned that these 214 radicals-enigmatic enough in themselves-combine to form between 30,000 to 50,000 ideographs.

it was enough to make even the most patient saint gripe!  why on earth would the sovereign God permits any people to develop a writing system so "radical"?  didn't it matter to God that Chinese writing placed an almost impassable barrier in the way of communicating the gospel to one-quarter of mankind?

one day, however, one of the missionaries stopped complaining.  he was studying a particular Chinese ideograph, the one which means "righteous."  he noticed that it contained an upper and lower part.  the upper part was simply the Chinese symbol for a lamb.  Directly under the lamb was a second symbol, the first person pronoun I.  Suddenly her discerned an amazingly well-coded message hidden within the ideograph: i under the lam am righteous!

it was nothing less than the heart of the gospel he had crossed the ocean to preach!  Chinese were startled when he called their attention to the hidden message.  they had never noticed it, but once he pointed it out, they saw it clearly.  when he asked, "which Lamb must we be 'under' to be righteous?" they had no answer.  with consummate delight he told them of "the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world" (Rev 13:8), the same "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

he shared his discovery with fellow missionaries and soon they in turn began uncovering still other spiritual messages encoded within the 4,000 year old ideographs!  Chinese language study suddenly became the most exciting adventure they had ever experienced!

another example: the Chinese symbol for a boat embodies a vessel with eight people inside it.  eight people?  Noah's ark bore exactly eight people to safety.

the radical meaning "man" is a figure shaped like an upside down y.  the ideograph meaning tree is a cross with the symbol for man superimposed upon it!  and the symbol for come calls for two other smaller symbols for man to stand on either side of the tree with the greater man superimposed upon it.  some students of Chinese writing claim that the two smaller human figures collectively mean mankind.  if so, the ideograph meaning come seems to carry a code that says: "mankind come to the man on the tree."

for careful study of several other spiritually pregnant Chinese ideographs, i refer readers to C.H. Kang and E. R. Nelson's recent book on the subject, listed in our bibliography.  not all researches agree on the exact interpretation of each and every symbol.  nevertheless, Chinese people themselves (and many Japanese, for Japan uses virtually the same writing system) have been intrigued by interpretations which missionaries have suggested to them.  even when theories are non-conclusive, the mere discussion of them may be sufficient to communicate spiritual truth to unbelievers.

i have found in my research that many Chinese and Japaneses pastors themselves consider the use of these various symbols a valid entree to the minds of their own people.  

One missionary, returned from China, told of a Chinese solder who approached him, bristling with hostility.  the missionary sketched some of the aforementioned symbols on a pad and pointed out their "hidden" meanings.  the soldier's eyes opened wide.  "I was told," he exclaimed, "that Christianity was a foreign devil's religion!  now you show me that the wiring system of my own country preaches it!"

the book mentioned earlier about the ideographs by Kang and Nelso is called "the discovery of Genesis"

I Corthians 13

I've been reading another book. one that I've never heard of or read before. but it's well worth the read. it's by a Scottish writer, (so of course I'd like it)! some of the language is archaic, but it's pretty simple to understand. it's called "The Greatest thing in the world and other writings" by Henry Drummond. the greatest thing in the world is love, and he goes through and walks you through the passage of I Corthians 13. at the very end, he presents a challenge, asking "will you take this challenge with me for the next 3 months, and read 1 Corthians 13 with me everyday?" now i use to do this a few years back, not for 3 months at a time, but for a month at a time and it really did change me. it changed my heart and when i found myself in a "moment" where i needed to be thinking about something other than what i was thinking about, the chapter gave me something to think about, and it's a good way to memorize also. so I'm asking you, will YOU join with me reading the "love chapter" for 3 months everyday. not skipping one, maybe in the morning, or at night before you go to bed. a couple of my favorite translations (or versions) one is the J.B. Phillips I'll type it out, and then I'll cut and paste the other from the Message. hope you take a few min to read this:

J.B. Phillips translation:
if i speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, i become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. if i have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and i if also have that absolute faith which can move mountains , but have no love, i amount to nothing at all. if i dispose of all that i possess, yes, i even if i give my own body to be burned, but have no love, i achieve precisely nothing.
this love of which i speak is slow to lose patience-it looks for a way of being constructive. it is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.
love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. it is not touchy. it does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. on the contrary, It shares the joy of those who live by the truth.
love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. love never fails.
for if there are prophecies they will be fulfilled and done with, if there are "tongues" the need for them will disappear, if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth. for our knowledge is always incomplete and our prophecy is always incomplete, and when the complete comes, that is the end of or incomplete.
when i was a little child i talked and felt and thought like a little child. now that i am a man i have finished with childish things.
at present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. the time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! at present all i know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when i shall know it as fully as God has known me!
in this life we have three lasting qualities-faith, hope and love. but the greatest of them is love.






1 Corinthians 13 (The Message)
The Message (MSG)
Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson
1 Corinthians 13
The Way of Love 1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
11When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
12We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.