Feeding North Koreans from Comox

My daughter is part of what she calls "girls group" who hang out after church.  They giggle, build friendships, and talk about the Bible.  Lately they've been wanting to send food money for North Koreans through an organization we know that helps out there.  Acacia decided she wanted to sell something.  One night in our living room we were chatting about it, and she settled on making jewelry with the do-it-yourself kit her sewing teacher had given her.

Who would have known how keen our neighbors would be to help send rice to North Korea by buying pink bead necklaces!  Her first night on the beat, she raised $15.  Tonight, another $35.   Her goal is $100.  She is getting a real kick out of it Elijah's having fun being her sidekick on the doors.  He's been racking his brain for what he could sell!

Here is a note from Acacia to my readers.  If you're in the market for a bead necklace... or just want to help some of the loneliest and hungriest people in the world, respond to this post and she'll see what she can do.

Hi, I am Acacia Mitchell and I am selling necklaces and earrings for $5.00 each.  The money will go to people who are helping north korea with food and love.  sale is only from Nov 30th - Dec 6th.

A Grade 11 Student's Journey from Despair to Hope

How do we respond to suicide?  Especially when it is teens in our own Valley?  One of the most important tasks is to offer hope to the struggling.  I find myself most inspired when it is not simply abstract, but when I hear from a real person who, in the valley of despair, has found hope.

This week I am honored to share a guest post from a Highland student who has battled with destructive behavior and suicidal thoughts and come out the other side with incredible hope and confidence.  

Her story was distributed by Youth Unlimited at the SD-71 Suicide Awareness event this month.  Her name is not mentioned but her story is known to many and she is boldly living out a new hope today in her school and home.

In compassionate memory of those we love who lost the battle for hope, and in prayer for those battling for hope today, I share her words.

A Grade 11 Student's Journey from Despair to Hope

November, 2011

            Hello, I’m a sixteen year old girl, in grade eleven, attending Highland secondary. I’m active in my school, youth groups and church activities. I get good grades and have lots of friends, my life growing up had been normal; two loving parents and two sisters, one older and one younger, we attended church every Sunday and had family meals. I've always tried to make decisions that appeared to be in my best interest.

            In grade eight I was transferred from a private school to Public school; Highland Secondary. During this time I was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. Through grade eight I slowly pulled away from my parents and kept my thoughts and emotions distant from them. Eventually I realized that I felt so alone in life and it felt as if I couldn’t share my emotions and the conflict of thoughts with anyone around me. In grade nine I had a hard time at home and used every chance given to me to stay out later or not go home at all. I didn’t want to see my parents or siblings at all. I stuffed every negative thought and fears inside of myself and pretended that everything was okay. I was believing more and more lies about myself and life. In the process I was losing my way.

             Early in that year I found myself cutting my arms as a way to escape the huge amount of pain in my heart. I was living a double life, Good little Christian girl at home and around my church friends, and the rebel child with my school friends. I hid my cutting from everyone and kept it as a secret. Not long after I started self mutilating myself I was involved with smoking pot and sneaking out of the house at night just so I could be “free” from my house. I don’t call it a home because it wasn’t. My parents and I didn’t connect on a heart level and my sisters were constantly bashing me on how I looked, or what I said. From the outside we looked like a fully functional family, happy and healthy, but if you take a deeper look, we were a mess.... I was off smoking pot, cutting myself and letting my grades slip, and had lost myself, and didn’t know what I was doing with my life, or what was important. The thoughts of suicide had crossed my mind multiple times, but before I had time to take action on those thoughts, some of my friends had noticed my cutting problem, they dragged me to the school counselor who helped me take my first step on the road to healing my broken heart and a broken hope. She called my Mom-with my permission-and told her about the problems I was facing with cutting. Through this my parents were able to sit down with me and talk to me about these issues. It was hard at first, everyone in the house was awkward and didn’t know how to talk to me, or what to do when I was around, but it was an important first step.

            Even though my one problem had been brought into the light, I still had others hidden away in the dark and emotions still stored away in my heart. One night when I was sneaking out, my neighbor saw me, and after I left, told my parents (it was about 2:00 Am). My mom and dad stayed up worrying about me while I was off running around with my friends getting high. I came home two hours later to my parents waiting for my return. We went and sat in our dining room and talked about what I had done and how I was hurting, we talked till about 5:00 Am and then went to bed only to get up for church at 8:00 Am. I still didn’t care about what my parents had talked to me about or how I was affecting my family, I kept doing my own thing, getting high, cutting myself and sneaking out.

             In grade ten I had cut back on the pot and my cutting wasn’t much of an issue that year, I had stopped sneaking out, but that year I found myself into drinking alcohol and getting drunk. I had bought into the lie that my life didn’t matter and I couldn’t do anything to impact it so why even try? I threw caution into the wind and went with the flow of what everyone was doing. Lies abound in youth culture and my mind was getting filled with them.

            Near the end of the school year I had gone to a party so stupid drunk I couldn’t stand let alone hold a bottle of water to hydrate myself, the people running the party wouldn’t let me in and ended up calling my parents who had no idea I was at a party and instead thought I was at a sleepover with my friend. That night was the night I understood that everything I was doing wasn’t fun and that it was too much for me to take emotionally. I gave up on the pot, parties, drinking, and cutting was long gone from the picture. I picked up my life and tried to put it together again. But no matter what I did or how hard I tried my life still felt empty. Something deeper needed to change.

            It wasn’t until this past summer that I found what I was truly looking for. I realized that I can’t do anything real with my life unless I had Jesus Christ leading it, and to be honest, I think my heart knew all this time that He was the only thing that could truly fill that hole in my heart. Only through a loving relationship with Jesus and a growing understanding of the Bible could I begin to exchange the lies in my mind with the truth and become filled with peace and hope. My parents, Christian friends, youth groups, and church helped me come to this place but Jesus did the healing in my heart. God is slowly healing my family and helping us grow together in ways we couldn’t have dreamed of. We sit down and talk to each other and share what’s on our hearts, spend time together and enjoy the time spent together in the Bible. I used to resent morning, family devotions but now I miss them when I'm absent. I'm very thankful to Jesus for rescuing my life and to my family's love for me.

Ideas for parents from a teen's perspective

after reflecting on My Journey from Despair to Hope

-         You need to be open to your children, LEARN how to interact with you child in a healthy way.

-         Spent lots of quality time with you children, they need to know that you are someone they can come to with their problems, and how can you build that trust with your kid unless you spend daily time with them and build a friendship.

-         Expect your child to not want to spend time with you if this is something that you haven’t done before; it’s an awkward process from not communicating to suddenly spending time together; but it has to happen! Press through the struggle, it’s so worth it

-         Try and get to a point where you have heart-to-heart conversations with your child and share your emotions with each other.

-         If your child is struggling with issues that are huge, don’t baby them through it. What they need is a parent who is willing to help them out and be a shoulder to lean and cry on when things get hard. They need to learn how to deal with these things, not have them taken away. They deal with adult issues; treat them with the respect an adult would appreciate.

-         Assert your authority, and make it understood that you have rules that need to be respected, there may be anger from your child, but in the end all a kid needs is a parent who’s going to remain constant in what they say and who they are, and to love through everything that’s going on, authority is key to building a healthy relationship with your son or daughter.

-         Communicate your feelings and thoughts to your child, but be mature and adult like when you express these things (without getting angry or frustrated).

-         Its okay to ask what your kid is doing with their time and who they’re spending their time with. Better to know then have them running around getting into dangerous stuff that can be avoided.

-         Understand the culture your child is living in. It’s a lot different from when you were our age.    

                  “Seek first to understand before being understood”

                                                      -Steven Covey.

On Long Lost Uncles

I got home from a family visit to Port MacNeill to an answering machine message from an uncle I had not seen in over twenty years.  Uncle David was going to be on the Island and, could we visit sometime?  Each of our schedules were tight but we squeezed out a few hours that Saturday to share lunch and catch up.  He drove two hours each way to meet us.

My last strongest memory of Uncle David was of my family attending the church where he was a Pentecostal pastor, and I accidentally put $20 in the offering (I thought it was $1!  I was about 10 years old).  I didn't know what to expect.

It was one of those visits you don't want to end.  We clicked in a lot of ways that I think could only be God.  On the surface level, we both have buddies in the Faith Mission, each of our families are nutty enough to homeschool.

More than that, the guy really oozed with a heart for God that convicted me and whetted my own hunger for the Lord.  I could see that prayer is more than an occasional pastime for him.  They have been involved for the last twelve years in the birth and follow up of one of the least known but most profound revivals in recent Canadian history - among the Hutterites of Manitoba.  (You can read about it in this .doc file.)  There are lots of people saved and eleven new churches as a result.

All their four kids are radically committed to mission.  One of their sons is a missionary in Bolivia with his new wife and expected first child.

Half way through our visit I remembered David has a niece in town!  I phoned up my sister and she joined the little reunion.

It was a rare treat to soak up the stories, the family history, the sayings, and the seasoned wisdom of a humble sage. When I'm with someone like that, I ask the best questions I can think up.  There's nothing like learning from a road-tested man of God.  I hope we see him again sooner.  And if we're lucky he'll preach at Bay next time.

Thank God for those long lost uncles that turn up on your answering machine.

The Alpha Course: Gotta Love It

Tonight I snuck in on the first night of our 2011 Alpha Course.  It was way too cool.

This is a class developed at a church in London, UK to introduce people to the Christian faith in a fun, low-key environment over dinner, a video and discussion.

Alpha is very organic, and this one was no disappointment - we met in a great little PMQ (Permanent Married Quarters I think?) townhouse on the Comox Military Base.  About ten of us (plus a baby and two kids) got to know each other better over some great cooking, and then we watched the video teaching.  While the group discussed what they saw, I volunteered for baby duty and paced the kitchen till she slept.  What I heard from the kitchen is what gets my heart pumping - "Why are you here tonight?  What are you hoping to get from the Alpha course?"  To hear all the different places people are in their spiritual journey, to sense a hunger for God, that absolutely gets me excited.  To hear past Alpha grads talk about how they have grown, and how they want to serve and keep growing, how cool is that.

I was just there for this one night so I told the group - "I'm jealous!  You're going to have an awesome journey."

I will just make an unapologetic plug here - if you have spiritual questions, or if you have a friend trying to figure out that part of life, I am sure the Alpha Course would be an amazing experience.  Check campusalpha.ca or alphacanada.org for a course in your area.  If you are a Christian and want to be part of others spiritual quest you would find it so rewarding taking a role in a Alpha class.

Alpha is one tool that helps people discover Jesus and I believe there is nothing in this world more exciting than that.  Like a guy named Peter said in a conversation with Jesus himself, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life."

"The Bible Can Mean Anything You Want."

I was downtown Comox to do a survey on what people believe about the Bible.  I ran into the mother of one of my former music students.  We got talking and I asked her my survey question – “Christians believe the Bible is true – what do you think?”     She gave an answer that many Canadians would identify with to some degree: “I believe it’s true, there are just so many interpretations.”  That's what we've been told, right?

Many people sincerely think the Bible is rather unusual among pieces of literature in that it is open to a variety of conflicting interpretations.  Is that really true?  Is that what you believe?  The Bible is rather unusual in literature – there is no other book like it, in fact, in that it makes the claim to be “God-breathed”, and through fulfilled prophecy, unity of content (with 40 authors collaborating over 1500 years!), and life changing authority, gives stellar reasons to accept its claim.  But it is not a book that can mean whatever you want it to mean.  

You say, “But what about all the different denominations of the church?  Don’t they represent different interpretations?”  Yes, and no.  Yes, they differ – on minor points (unless it’s a cult – Bible plus some other religious book like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons).  And no, they don’t differ – when it comes to the major doctrines of the faith – the Trinity, the authority of Scripture, salvation by grace through faith in Christ, the church, future judgement, stuff like that.

Interpreting the Bible accurately is deeply important just because it speaks about matters as significant as God and eternity.  Do you know how to interpret it?

John Stott points out three keys to interpreting the Bible, and they are worth repeating.  Look for:

1. The Obvious Meaning.  Principle: most of Scripture is clear, not difficult to understand.  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” tells us several things plainly: all we see had a beginning, the first cause was God, and we live in a world that is a result of personal creation. Scripture is generally like that: plain.  If you, like one second century writer, see the Old Testament law that told Jews to “only eat cud-chewing cloven hoofed animals”, and read into that secret messages about only being friends with people who chew the cud of the Word and live a balanced life “cloven” between the earth and heaven, you have missed the obvious mea
2. The Original Meaning.  Principle: the Bible can only mean what it originally meant.  While the Bible is for all people in all times in all places, each book was first written to a specific people in a specific time, place, and circumstance.  If you want to know what it means to you, you should first think about, and investigate if needed, what it first meant to them.  To do that, reading through the book or comparing parallel passages will often give details of author, audience, occasion, and place that help you understand the message better.  Tools like a good study Bible or website can help too.
3. The Overall Meaning.   Principle: interpret Scripture with Scripture.  Since it all has one ultimate author (God), the Bible is an incredibly harmonious anthology.  So, don't read out of context.  John 8:11 has Jesus saying the words "Go and sin", but if you look at the context the meaning changes just a bit - "Go and sin no more".  You would not be so silly as to make the first interpretation, but we do this when we interpret out of context.  When you hit an obscure text, consider whether other verses within that book of the Bible help you understand it.  Look outside that book if needed and allow plainer texts to shed light on it.  Here is where something as simple as using a Bible with cross-references in the margin can help in the short term, and reading theology (yes, you should read theology!  There is some good stuff out there) can help in the long term.

Recommended resources:

Web:

The Obvious Meaning: Bible Gateway (Compare over 15 English versions + other languages)

The Original Meaning:  NET Bible (online study Bible with over 60,000 notes)

The Overall Meaning:  Bible.org (tons of resources including a free Theology curriculum)

Print:

The Obvious Meaning: The Bible

The Original Meaning: How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth (Gordon Fee, Douglas Stewart), ESV Study Bible (I use the iPod version. Also available online)

The Overall Meaning: Know the Truth (Bruce Milne), Bible Doctrine (Wayne Grudem)

Challenge: "You can't trust the Bible, it's been translated so many times."

Today, a lot of people are not sure Jesus was anything like what the Christian Scriptures describe, and some wonder whether this guy ever even put his feet on our planet at all.  The kicker is, it's not just general doubt - there's a whole breed of skeptical New Testament scholars fueling big questions about the truth of the Christian story, and their Jesus Seminars and the like make good news stories.  Popular media makes much of the radical theories certain academics postulate about Jesus, but seldom do you hear a story challenging the new wave of Jesus-story-making.

How can we trust the Bible?  How can we believe the New Testament Jesus story?  I've been looking into this, and if you'll humor me, I'd enjoy sharing a bit of what I've uncovered.  Maybe you're a skeptic - if so, thanks for your time, and I hope here you find some good food for thought, and I'd sincerely like to know how you feel about what I've written.  If you're a believer, I think this will bolster your faith.  It has been so refreshing to me to study these questions and make the observation that it is 1) not only reasonable to accept these words by faith because God is a living, present, faithful God who I have experienced over and over, but also 2) the Biblical Jesus story is shockingly skoocum from an intellectual standpoint.... see what you think.

Over the next few blogs I will post a few of my favorite discoveries.

For today, a few notes on the text of the New Testament, which was first written in Greek.  One of the things I hear people say a lot is, "The Bible has been translated so many times - how can we know we even have the original words?"  

The fact is, there is no other ancient book on our good planet that is better attested than the Bible.  Shocker, I know, but go ahead and check it out for yourself.

• When held up against other ancient documents, the NT is more or less light years ahead in the 
• quantity of manuscripts (5600+ in Greek)... did you know there are only 7 copies of Plato's writings?
• and the age of manuscripts (earliest is gospel of John from early 2nd century  - possibly 30 years after original document)... most copies of ancient documents are 1000+ years older than original document... the earliest copy of Plato is 1300 years older than the original
• Translations of the NT into Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and other languages in early centuries, rather than muddying the waters, provide further confirmation of the text of the NT
• Even if we had no NT at all, all of it apart from about 12 verses could be drawn from quotations in the writings of the Early Church Fathers
• long before any big church councils occurred - the canon of the NT (which books were recognized as having divine authority) was recognized among the early church, as evidenced in the Early Church Fathers
• the craft of textual criticism (where you compare one copy with another) demonstrates that the text of the New Testament is more reliable than that of any ancient text - 99.5% according to top NT scholar Bruce Metzger
• in all of those 5600 texts, most of the differences are the equivalent of typos, and none of the differences affect any major doctrine of Scripture
• while thousands of archaeological finds have confirmed the Bible, none have firmly contradicted it
• for example - Scholar William Mitchell Ramsay was convinced the book of Acts (a history of the early church from 30-60 AD) was a mid-second century creation (as per the liberal theology of his 19th century world).  When he did on-site research of Asia Minor, the places and person names he uncovered convinced him Acts was "an authority for the topography, antiquities and society of Asia Minor" specifically for first century history, and as such, it could only have been written in the first century.  He ended up experiencing a complete reversal of his beliefs about Acts.

If you've read this far, you probably are, like me, interested in the details and the facts... if you want to learn more, this article goes a bit more in depth - Greg Koukl on "Is the New Testament Text Reliable?"

In my next blog I'll share mind-blowing reasons that I find compelling for believe the stories we have about Jesus himself are reliable.

Got a thought?  Post your comments.

There's your glimpse of my bedtime reading for now...

David

"Why Believe" Resource List

Lots of people have questions and doubts about faith and God, and the Christian faith is one that is wide open to questions because it is a reasonable faith grounded in history and the faithfulness of God.  To explore this, at Bay Community Church we decided to do a series called "Why Believe".  Sermons are being posted bit by bit at www.baychurch.net.   We are having a little break for some time with the prophet Haggai helping us think through our commitment to God's work on our planet...   The" Why Believe" series starts back up Feb 20 with a look at questions about the trustworthiness of the Bible.

If you want to explore deeper, I'd like to recommend some resources to you.  Let me know if this is helpful to you!


Over and out,

David

Books
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
How Now Shall We Life, Charles Colson
The 10 Most Common Objections to Christianity, Alex McFarland
The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell
The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel
The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel
The Case for a Creator, Lee Strobel

Books Available at Vancouver Island Regional Library
The Reason For God, Tim Keller
Beyond Opinion, Ravi Zacharias
The Dawkins Delusion? Alister McGrath and Joana Collicutt McGrath
The Language of God, Francis Collins (of the Human Genome Project)
Lord or Legend? Wrestling With the Jesus Dilemma (Gregory Boyd / Paul Eddy)
God is Relevant, Luis Palau
Mind Siege (The Battle For Truth in the New Millenium) - Tim LaHaye

Websites
Lee Strobel - popular apologist- http://www.leestrobel.com/
William Lane Craig - philosopher and debater http://www.reasonablefaith.org
UCCF's site with varying depths of Q&A - http://www.bethinking.org/
700+ Scientist who have gone public with skepticism regarding Darwinian evolutionism http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org
Lists nearly every apologetics website and podcast known to man:  http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/


iTunes 
Podcasts
Timothy Keller Podcast (includes an 8 part series corresponding to The Reason For God)
Stand to Reason - an apologetics talk show
Let My People Think - with Ravi Zacharias


iTunes U
AGTS Apologetics Course (Assemblies of God Theological Seminary)