How do non American Christians feel when they come to American church?

This is how one felt. This is how the founder of Gospel for Asia felt when he came to America from India.
"As I changed planes for Dallas at JFK International in New York, I was overcome at he sights & sounds around me. Those who grew up in Europe and Asia hear stories about the affluence and prosperity of America, but until you see it with your own eyes, the stories seem like fairy tales.
Americans are more than just unaware of their affluence-they almost seem to despise it at times. Finding a lounge chair, I stared in amazement at how they treated their beautiful clothes and shoes. The richness of the fabrics and colors was beyond anything I'd ever seen. As I would discover again & again, this nation routinely takes it's astonishing wealth for granted.
As I would do many times-almost daily-in the weeks ahead, I compared their clothing to that of the native missionary evangelists whom I had left only a few weeks before. Many of them walk barefoot between villages or work in flimsy sandals. Their threadbare cotton garments would not be acceptable as cleaning rags in the United States. Then I discovered most Americans have closets full of clothing they wear only occasionally-and I remembered the years I traveled and worked with only the clothes on my back. And I had lived the normal lifestyle of most village evangelists.....
From the moment I touched foot on American soil, I walked in an unbelieving daze. How can two so different economies co-exist simultaneously on earth? Everything was so overpowering & so confusing to me at first. Not only did I have to learn the simplest procedures-like using the pay telephones and making change-but as a sensitive Christian, I found myself constantly making spiritual evaluations of everything I saw.
As the days passed into weeks, I began with alarm to understand how misplaced are the spiritual values of most Western believers. Sad to say, it appeared to me that for the most part they had absorbed the same humanist and material values that dominated the secular culture. Almost immediately I sensed an awesome judgement was hanging over the United States-and that I had to warn God's people that He was not going to lavish this abundance on them forever. But the message was still not formed in my heart, and it would be many years before I would feel the anointing & courage to speak out against such sin.
Meanwhile in Texas, a land that in many ways epitomizes America, I reeled with shock at the most common things. My hosts eagerly pointed out what they considered their greatest achievements. I nodded with politeness as they showed me their huge churches, high-rise building, and universities. But these didn't impress me very much. After all I had seen the Golden Temple in Amritsar, The Taj Mahal, the Palaces of Jhans, and the University of Baroda in Gujarat.
What impresses visitors the most from the Third World are the simple things Americans take for granted: fresh water available 24 hours a day, unlimited electrical power, telephones that work, and a most remarkable network of paved roads. In India, the water, electricity, telephones, and transportation operate erratically-if at all. Communication is a nightmare. We must wait days for long-distance calls to go through. At the time, we still had no television in India, but my American hosts seemed to have TV sets in every room-and operating day and night. This ever present blast of media disturbed me. For some reason, Americans seem to have a need to surround themselves with noise all the time. Even in their cars, I noticed the radios ran when no one was listening.
Why do they always have to be either entertained or entertaining? I wondered. It was as if they were trying to escape from a guilt they had not yet defined or even identified.
I was constantly aware of how large-and overweight-most Americans seemed to be. Americans need big cars, big homes, and large furniture, because they are big people.
I was amazed at how important eating, drinking, smoking, and even drug use were in the Western lifestyle. Even among Christians, food was a major part of fellowship events.
This, of course, is not bad in itself. "Love feasts" were an important part of the New Testament church life. But eating can be taken to extremes. One of the ironies of this is the relatively small price North Americans pay for food. One study showed that in the United States only 17% of disposable income is spent on food. In India, it is 67%. When you have $10,000 to spend, that 17% works out to be a comfortable $1700. For the Indian family earning $200, 67% is $134. I had lived with this reality every day, but Americans have real trouble thinking in these terms.
Often when I spoke at a church, the people would appear moved as I told of the suffering and needs of the native evangelists. They usually took up an offering and presented me with a check for what seemed like a great amount of money. Then with their usual hospitality, they invited me to eat with the leaders following the meeting. To my horror the food and "fellowship" frequently cost more than the money they had just given to missions! And I was amazed to find that American families routinely eat enough meat at one meal to feed an Asian family for a week. No one ever seemed to notice this but me, and slowly I realized they just had not heard the meaning of my message. The were simply incapable of understanding the enormous needs overseas.
part 1 to be cont.

A picture is worth a thousand words

In last week's Bible study on Romans 3 by Martin Lloyd Jones we learned the world doesn't like to deal with the blood of our Christ. What better way to keep the attention off of His bloody sacrifice to us than to keep before our eyes the sweet, little Lamb of God. All good Christians keep a nativity scene in their yard this time of year. I really believe the church does more harm than good because the only Jesus we're pushing isn't who He is now, but who He was & I don't know how He feels about that.
There is this thing called the Regulatory Principle of the Puritans that talk about worshiping Him in spirit & in TRUTH.....


He is " in the middle of the lamp stands I saw one like ^[j]a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. ¹⁴ His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. ¹⁵ His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. ¹⁶ In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun ^[k]shining in its strength.

Revelation 5:⁶ And I saw ^[g]between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain"

This is who we give the world....

Isn't this so cute & sweet?
They go together like white on rice.
'Thanks' to the Catholics for bringing the Christ's Mass holiday to the world.


I wonder if it is idolatrous to think of Him the way we Christians present Him this time of year?
Certainly the world isn't thinking of Him as He will be coming next,

"The Coming of Christ

Rev 19:¹¹ And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. ¹² His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. ¹³ He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. ¹⁴ And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. ¹⁵ From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will ^[d]rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the ^[e]wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. ¹⁶ And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” ¹⁷ Then I saw ^[f]an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying to all the birds which fly in mid-heaven, “Come, assemble for the great supper of God.."

That is the way I like to think of My Beloved, the one my soul loves & longs to see come. I've said a lot in times past about this holiday, so I'll just be brief this year.

Oh, & happy b-day to me. I'm 23 in the *new birth* this Dec. 25th. Not celebrating, just remembering His kindness to adopt a lost sinner & give her a new heart that cried, "Abba!"

Deep calls to deep in the roar of Your waterfall

Re-arranging is very fun to me, and I like to do it. My husband however, hates re-arranging, so our furniture stays the same year after year. I have to get out those urges in different outlets. I have a few favored knick knacks around the house & I can swap them out, move them around & that gets me by.

I have a new favored knick-knack I really like I was going to sell on ebay, but I decided I liked it too much, so I decided to kept it. (I still have a pile of other stuff to sell) It is a bundle of aged, yellowed, vintage letters wrapped in red raffia like the bundle of letters that were Lady Deadlock's in Charles Dicken's Bleakhouse. When my grandmother died my sister & I made a mad dash to FL to r escue my Grandma's stuff from my step-mother who said she would just throw everything of Grandma's out. One of the deepest regrets I have is not going through her old letters. We went through the pictures & Dad let us have a few of those, but why, oh, why did I not think of her letters?! We did get our letters we'd sent to her, as they were on the bar, so I am thankful for that. My sister even found letters my mom wrote Grandma when my sister was a baby; what a find! But all those correspondences from my religious aunt in Pennsylvania escaped my notice. My favorites would have been the vintage cards, especially Valentines & Thanksgiving. Grandma would have saved all that & my step-mom who stayed much longer than we did, just threw it all out. Oh anyway, getting off that rabbit trail.

That is a one cent stamp! Dated 1948.

I realized this morning one of my favorite things to do is a 'key word search' on the Bible on line site. If you live in the word, & the Word lives in you, some verses are very special, like favored knick knacks that can be taken out & admired individually, moved around, put together here with this or that because it matches. Or it could just be moved to a different spot, say a window sill.

I think that is why I so love this site. It is the little devotional book (now turned website) Amy Carmichael read morning & evenings as a missionary who rescued little girls in India from being 'married to the gods.' It takes Bible verses from the 'house' of scripture & sets out a few 'pieces' that look good together & can be admired when coupled with other similar themed verses.

I went redecorating in my heart this morning because I couldn't sleep & my soul was brightened & refreshed at the re-arranging & re-decorating of these favored key-word-search verses. Maybe you won't enjoy them as much as I because the Bible is the Living Word & it meets you right where you're at. You're probably in a different place, but these verses can still be admired for their beauty.


Psalm 102:17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea.
Psalm 51:17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
Job 42:6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
Psalm 51:17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.
Psalm 102:17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea.
Psalm 119:141 Though I am lowly and despised, I do not forget your precepts.
Jeremiah 14:21 For the sake of your name do not despise us; do not dishonor your glorious throne. Remember your covenant with us and do not break it.
Jeremiah 23:17 They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The LORD says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’
Lamentations 1:11 All her people groan as they search for bread; they barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. “Look, LORD, and consider, for I am despised.”
Matthew 18:10 See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.
Luke 16:13 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
1 Corinthians 1:28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,
1 Samuel 2:8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
Isaiah 25:4 You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.
Matthew 6:19 Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
James 2:5 Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?

Just think of a word, any word on your mind, or in your troubles & do a key word search. I'll bet you'll find solace & re-freshment in your soul as you find little treasures in His word.

What can we give Him?

Excerpt from
A REQUIEM FOR LOVE an extended poetic depiction of the Creation narrative.
In this excerpt we have a "worship dialogue" between Regis (Adam) and
Earthmaker (God).

REGIS:
"Father, I receive Your gift of being, but
You have made me TOO rich
To name my wealth
And yet too poor
To give you anything of meaning.
I love you with only giftless love."

EARTHMAKER:
"Regis, there is no such thing as 'giftless' love.
The very words accuse each other.
My gift to you is love, but
Worship is your gift to Me.
And Oh, most glorious it is!
Worship always calls me 'Father' and
Makes us both rich with a common joy.
Worship Me, for only this great gift
Can set you free from the killing love of self,
And prick your fear with valliant courage
To fly in hope through moments of despair.
Worship will remind you
That no man knows completeness in himself.
Worship will teach you to speak your name,
When you've forgotten who you are.
Worship is duty and privilege,
Debt and grand inheritance at once.
Worship, therefore, at those midnights
When the stars hide.
Worship in the storms till love
Makes thunder whimper and grow quiet
And listen to your whispered hymns.
Worship and be free."

-Calvin Miller in A REQUIEM FOR LOVE, one of my all time favorites. I read it to my husband before we married.

Walking on Cloud 9

Knowing the way I truly enjoy farm stuff (blessings that sometimes happen in the midst of the chaotic head aches) one might think it is one of the awesome things that have happened around here on the farm lately that makes me walk on cloud 9. There would be plenty of reason. First of all a couple weeks ago, the first night of Mr. Roberts coming, Neo informed me we had a feral bee colony in my bedroom eaves! Wild bees! We find them three weeks before our package bees come in. If we fail with the domestic ones, we have the real McCoy's in my bedroom eaves. I feel so blessed! :-D :-D :-D

Another small blessing I'm excited about is that same week on Thurs., our cows decided that grass was greener on the other side of the channel. On another man's land. Ron decides he'll deal with it later & goes on to kick boxing. We get an out of the blue email from the man who owns the land (whom we don't know & I guess he found us on the net) that our cows are laying in his farmer's wheat that is ready for harvest. The next day it rains. Just about all the mommas have calves on their sides, so they're not coming back across that full rushing channel. It all becomes a big head ache as Ron has to disassemble the corral & move it to the other man's land, re-assemble, & try to coax them into it. Of course only a few fall for it. So Sunday morning he & Cory are up at 5am before church trying to load them up to bring them home, but they can't be found anywhere. They search for 2 hours. Finally after walking all over the back 40, they give up & come home to be greeted by our dear cows who are lazily enjoying their neglected pastures. On the trip to gather the corrals, Ron discovers a semi-rare herb we had in abundance in our pastures a couple years ago, but it all died. When Macrae was a baby he had croup that Hannah cured in 3 days with an herb poultice mainly made of this herb. It was sorely missed this past winter. So we were able to dig up a few plants to transplant over here. Oh, I do love seeing these. It's called mullein and it is tall & fuzzy. Yeah, that was a real blessing. I have a new appreciation for botany because of Hannah's herbal interests. Road side 'weeds' are not the same anymore & I might look like a drunk driver scanning the sides for some rare treasure of a find.
So here is my, to borrow an expression from another culture of people, 'shot in the arm.' (In my case I guess it would be a B12 shot.)

After the Friday night young people's meeting with Mr. Roberts,
I am greeted by Ruth loudly singing this song Saturday morning.

Yeah, that was a real cloud 9 experience for a mom. Hope.
Maybe God will save the seeds of His servant's womb.
At our church we don't believe in what I call the 'magic formula prayer.' You know, say these 4 lines & you got your 'fire insurance' from hell, no matter how you live.


My eldest Hannah, in a ripe wheat field.

(Is she 'ripe?')

Dear Ruth & Neo

Macrae has a new haircut!!

My 'little me', Hallel

That 'tweet baby!! Ivy Colleen

That is Ruth's hand on the side of her head, not her ear ;)
Oh, PRECIOUS gummy grins!!

TOO TWEET

Some more of my favorite tweets, mostly from Spurgeon. I wonder is my pastor one who will be as great as Spurgeon if most his sayings are original. He gleans for us from the barley fields..

Submission to Christ without submission to the Scriptures is submission to a self-made Christ, not submission to Christ.

As soon as a man has found Christ, he begins to find others. -

Satan can make men dance upon the brink of hell as though they were on the verge of heaven. -

There is no alternative. If you do not die to sin, you shall die for sin. If you do not slay sin, sin will slay you

You and your sins must separate or you and your God will never come together.

If I had a brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I...daily consorted with the assassin -

"Sin is so much more than a slip-up. It is a clear statement that we value the satisfaction of our desires more than God."

Sanctification is the great open separator of Christians from the world!

If grace does not make you to differ from your own surroundings, is it really grace at all?


Sin is the pleasure of the false Christian; it is the grief of the real lover of Christ.

If your life is unholy, then your heart is unchanged, and you are an unsaved person.

Have you no wish for others to be saved? Then you are not saved yourself. Be sure of that. -

In seasons of severe trial, the hypocrite flies to the world and finds a sort of comfort there. -

In seasons of severe trial, the child of God runs to his Father and expects consolation only from the Lord's hand -


"Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before. " John Owen


A wise man does at first what a fool does at last

"If you're not a member of a local church, you're like a brick being kicked down the street screaming 'I'm a house!"


Pride is a thing which should be unnatural to us, for we have nothing to be proud of

Tweet, Tweet!

These are some of my favorite twitter tweets I have been chewing on at lunch for encouragement.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones: “When the church is absolutely different from the world she invariably attracts it.”

"Submit yourselves to the circumstances of God's choosing, for he purposes a crop of beauty." Samuel Rutherford

The real moral person denies himself things; the real Christian denies himself.

"Jesus + Nothing = Everything"

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

IT IS A BENEFIT that the wicked are God's fan to purge you; I hope they shall blow away no corn or spiritual grace but only your chaff. - SR

Some Christians try to go to heaven alone,in solitude.But believers are not compared to bears or lions or other animals that wander alone.
Those who belong to Christ are sheep in this respect, that they love to get together.
Sheep go in flocks, and so do God's people.CH Spurgeon

The Lord sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves. -Dwight L. Moody

Believe the Gospel? Then you believe it changes the environment into which it comes, and you don't adjust the message to the setting.

The nature of Christ's salvation is woefully misrepresented by thepresent-day evangelist.He announces a Savior from Hell rather than a Savior from sin.
And that is why so many are fatally deceived,for there are multitudes who wish to escape the Lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.”AWPink

A sign you're growing in grace: You think about fixing people less and loving them more

We should concentrate inward & deepen...our own spiritual life, until men...get to the place where God can use them...MLJ

One thief was saved that no sinner might despair, but only one, that no sinner might presume. — Ryle

The more we grow, the more we see our need of Him. The righteousness of God makes demands that only Christ can meet.

"Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself." - Leonard Ravenhill

"Do not have your concert first andthen tune your instrument afterward.Begin the day with the Wordof God &prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him." - Hudson Taylor

"A sinning man stops praying, a praying man stops sinning...If weak in prayer, we are weak everywhere." - Leonard Ravenhill

“If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends,
rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him,
then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence?You'd be bored to tears in heaven,if you're not ecstatic about God now!”K.Green

It is the greatest praise of God's wisdom that He can turn the sins of man to His own glory. - Bishop Hall quoted by JC Ryle

Be ware of no one more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us - Spurgeon

The only way to avoid cannon-shot is to fall down. No such way to be freed from temptation as to keep low - Thomas Brooks

Anxiety is the result of the perspective that something is happening that God did not design for His glory & your good.

Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns,
and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns.Oswald Chambers

Our lives will have a sense of the supernatural only to the degree that we tarry before the Word of God and live a life of prayer.

An unforgiving and quarrelsome spirit is the surest mark of an unregenerate heart. - J C Ryle

"It matters not how many 'decisions' a man has taken, if there is no change in his life he is just not a Christian."

Resolved: never to do anything which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life--Jonathan Edwards

If you want to look impressive in this world's eyes, then you stand in severe danger of being unimpressive in God's eyes.

There are preachers, teachers, and bloggers beyond number,
but the great need of the church is men and women who spend time alone with God.

paulwasher Paul Washer
I am greatly burdened for the young who claim to be radical for Christ, but are conformed to their godless culture - especially in clothing.

When you say,“I don’t think I could ever doubt God’s goodness again!” Is it after He has just
given you something you thought you could never have, or after He has just taken away something you thought you could never lose?

To cease to do evil is a small matter if we do not learn to do well.

Never be satisfied with religious reformation without heart conversion

~Sweet~

What God does

I love this picture. I empathize.
I've been here. In a dry gutter, He can bring beauty, my Dearest Daddy.

The Brandon happenings

The youngest with the eldest. You can't tell she is adored, can you?

Oh.... I wonder if she'll be spoiled? ;-)

She's growing & very adorable

So fun to dress a *girl* !

Historic winter weather here, we've NEVER had over 6 inches of snow here
& it stayed on the ground a WEEK!We've stayed cozy with our wood stash. Ron likes to keep it at 80 in the living room & it has awakened the children when it got up to around 95 a couple nights!

The ducks had perfect shoes shoes, but the chickens were immobilized in the deep snow.
They hung around non-snow areas & walked in tracks whenever possible.Our ram is very paternal, not leaving his little flock of lambs. They had difficulty walking (or hoping rather) through the deep snow.

Neo & Ruth with our Great Pyrenees. He is now the proud
pappa of 8 boys & one girl.No matter the weather, the laundry goes on.
Here is a few of Ivy's diapers drying.This is the backyard & pasture. What a view!!
Hannah, my monkey, took it from the roof eave.Ahhh, my playful, silly pastor.
Maybe he wishes he were taller. ;-)
(The Sermonator!)
He insight-fully slices mid-south religion off Christianity with the precision & skill of a brain surgeon. He takes the dentist drill to our moral, hard- hearted decay & separates wheat from chaff. He is very challenging, but The Great Shepherd uses him to lead us beside still waters & lie down in green pastures. My soul was restored under this blessed ministry & I do not take it for granted. The Lord is very kind.
I really can't wait for the yard to look like this again.
Spring will come again one day!