Category Archives: Gifts of the Spirit

July 19, 2013 · 1:28 pm

Larry the Lizard Slayer

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I had no intention of causing the little lizard problems, but it’s hard to convince him now because he’s dead.

It all began with me looking out the window and seeing a six-inch fence lizard resting on the patio. I opened the door and watched him scamper toward the BBQ grill. I followed him with my finger poised on the camera button of my i-Phone.  He dove into a hole in the butane tank which proved to be his downfall.

Although his head and front legs fit through the hole, his larger back legs could not. He was stuck. I tried helping, but his fear proved too great. I walked away and prayed, asking the Lord to free him.

The next day, I checked again. He was still stuck.

On my walk around the neighborhood, I decided the lizard was in desperate straits and needed help now. I prayed and asked the Lord to relax the lizard, maybe even put him into a deep sleep.

I softly crept up behind the lizard. I reached down and gave him a quick jerk, hoping to surprise him and free him at the same time.

Let’s just say, it did not work out quite like I planned. He died in my hand.

I felt terrible and asked forgiveness of the Lord for killing the lizard. An empty feeling hung on me for hours like a funeral shroud. If only I wouldn’t have bothered the lizard, he’d still be alive.

Now think about it, okay?

There are probably 500, 000 of these fence lizards in my neighborhood alone, ranging in size from itsy-bitsy to six inches, measuring from head to tail. Cars, lawn mowers, cats, birds, snakes, and dogs remove thousands of them every week from my area. So, what’s the big deal, right?

He lived in my yard, under my care. I let him die for no good reason at all.

Do you know what made me feel better?

I received a letter in the mail from a child we sponsor in India. Her words warmed my heart, knowing she thinks I’m someone special, but in reality, I’m not. She’s the special one who God laid on our hearts to love and help.

If you’re interested in knowing how to sponsor a child in Gospel For Asia’s Bridge of Hope program, click here.

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July 15, 2013 · 3:53 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Hard To Do (Part 7)

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When J. Hudson Taylor was born in 1832, his mother and father prayed, “Lord, grant that he may work in China.”

The parents saw little evidence their prayer had any effect on their son’s life as he grew up in Yorkshire, England. In fact, he became a skeptic and wandered far from his Methodist upbringing. But when Taylor reached his teenage years, God grabbed his heart while he read a Christian tract in his father’s apothecary shop. A short time later, Taylor felt God had called him to be a missionary to China.

Then, Hudson Taylor’s training began in earnest.

Taylor read George Mueller’s newsletter and believed he needed strong faith and a prayer life like Mueller’s to succeed in China. To accomplish this, Taylor moved miles away from home to live in a poor area. He vowed to never ask people for help, but instead, like Mueller, he prayed, asking God to meet his needs. An absent-minded employer and sickness brought him close to starvation and death, yet God proved Himself faithful, delivering and healing him.

In 1853, Taylor sailed as a missionary for a new missionary society to Shanghai, China. The society seldom sent funds and Taylor refused to ask for help. “Depend upon it. God’s work, done in God’s way, will never lack for supplies,” he proclaimed.

After seven years of hard work, he built a church of only 21 believers in an inland city. But because of illness, he and his wife returned to England. It was during his stay in England, when he felt defeated and depressed, that God gave him a vision for a new missionary society for China. Struggling with the vision and his lack of faith for it,  Hudson Taylor eventually told God: “All responsibility as to the issues and consequences must rest with You. I am Your servant and I will obey and follow You.”

From this point forward, Hudson Taylor began praying for missionaries to join his missionary society: China Inland Mission. By 1895, 641 missionaries and 462 Chinese helpers at 260 missionary stations were the results of his prayers, more than half of all Protestant missionaries in the nation.

Missiologists and historians refer to Taylor as ‘one of the profoundest Christian thinkers of all time’, ‘a visionary pioneer’ and ‘one of the four or five most influential foreigners in 19th century China’.

Taylor’s own assessment was somewhat different: ‘I often think that God must have been looking for someone small enough and weak enough for Him to use, and that He found me.’

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July 8, 2013 · 3:51 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Hard To Do (Part 6)

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One morning the plates and cups and bowls on the table were empty.  There was no food in the larder, and no money to buy food.  The thirty children were standing, waiting for their morning meal, when George Mueller said, “Children, you know we must be in time for school.”

Lifting his hand he said, “Dear Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat.”

There was a knock on the door.  The baker stood there, and said, “Mr. Mueller, I couldn’t sleep last night.  Somehow I felt you didn’t have bread for breakfast and the Lord wanted me to send you some.  So I got up at 2 a.m. and baked some fresh bread, and have brought it.”

Mueller thanked the man.

No sooner had this transpired than there was a second knock at the door.  It was the milkman.  He announced that his milk cart had broken down right in front of the Orphanage, and he would like to give the children his cans of fresh milk so he could empty his wagon and repair it.

(Life and Ministry of George Mueller by Ed Reese, Reese Publictions, Christian Hall of Fame Series)

George Mueller (1805 – 1898) pastored the same Baptist church in Bristol, England, for over sixty-six years. Yet, he is best known for his orphan ministry, with stories like the above being common in his life. His orphanages cared for over 10,000 orphans at a time when destitute children were locked up in prisons to keep them off the streets.

Armed only with prayer and faith, he went through daily spiritual battles to provide for the increasing number of orphans under his care. He admitted his faith was nothing special and any believer could do it. What he did was simple enough in that he meditated in scriptures and then prayed the promises before God’s throne. He continued praying until He had peace about his prayers being answered by God.

God never failed him.

Near the end of his life, Mueller stated he had received over 50,000 answers to specific prayers from God. The amazing thing is that George Mueller never once asked people for money. Never once. Every prayer request was made alone before God.

Thousands of believers have been encouraged by the many books on George Mueller’s life. We’ll talk about one of them next time.

(Continued in Part 7)

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July 3, 2013 · 10:19 am

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet so Tough To Do (Part 5)

 

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Successful prayer depends on our relationship with the Father and little else. The following story, as related by Rev. Kenneth Hagin on one of his radio programs, demonstrates well this principle:

In the 1850’s, a slave woman watched in agony as her husband was led to the auction block. She knew her husband would be sold to another plantation and they would never see each other again. Life without him would be horrible, she thought.

As she stood there, in her hopelessness, wondering what she could do, she looked up toward heaven. “Lord, if I could help You right now as easily as You can help me, I would,” she prayed in a soft whisper.

As the slave husband slowly trudged up to the auctioneer, a young boy in the audience turned to his father. “Dad, could I have ten dollars to buy a slave?” he asked.

“Sure, son,” said his father,  knowing that each slave would sell for hundreds of dollars. He handed his son the money.

“Let’s begin the bidding on this young, strong slave,” said the auctioneer. “Who’ll start it off?”

The young boy raised his hand. “I’ll bid ten dollars,” he said in a loud voice.

The crowd turned to look at the young boy and laughed in unison at the ridiculousness of the boy’s bid. Each shook his head, and yet, there were no other bids. The boy purchased the slave husband for ten dollars

Afterward, the young boy walked to the cashier, paid his money, signed the papers, and took possession of his slave.

Then, he took the slave husband over to the wife. “Here, you can have him. He’s yours,” he said to her.

…For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17:20)

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June 26, 2013 · 4:05 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 4)

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I was so hungry for a Bible. Seeing my desperation, my mother remembered an old man in another village. This man had been a pastor before the Cultural Revolution.

Together we started out on the long walk to his home. When we found him, we told him our desire, “We long to see a Bible. Do you have one?”

The old pastor simply told me, “The Bible is a heavenly book. If you want one, you’ll need to pray to the God of heaven. Only He can provide a heavenly book…”

When I returned home, I brought a stone into my room and knelt on it every evening for prayer. I just had one simple prayer, “Lord, please give me a Bible. Amen.”

Nothing happened. A Bible didn’t appear.

I went back to that pastor’s house again. I told him, “I’ve prayed to God according to your instructions, but I still haven’t received the Bible I want so much. Please, please show me your Bible. Just a glance and I will be satisfied. I don’t need to touch it. You hold it and I will be content to just look at it…”

The pastor saw the anxiety in my heart. He spoke to me again, “If you’re serious, you should not only kneel down and pray to the Lord, you should also fast and weep. The more you weep, the sooner you get your Bible.”

I went home, and every morning and afternoon I ate and drank nothing. Every evening I ate just one small bowl of steamed rice. I cried like a hungry child to his heavenly Father, wanting to be filled with His word. For the next one hundred days,  I prayed for a Bible, until I could bear it no more. My parents were sure I was losing my mind.

Looking back years later, I would say this whole experience was the most difficult thing I’ve ever endured.

Then, suddenly one morning at 4 AM, after months of begging God to answer my prayers, I received a vision from the Lord while kneeling beside my bed.

Later…

I quickly opened the door and there standing before were the same two servants I had seen in my vision. One man held a red bag in his hand. My heart raced as I opened the bag and held in my hands my very own Bible. (The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun, by Brother Yun and Paul Hattaway, 2003, Piquant Publishing, pages 27 – 30)

The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. (James 5:16)

(Continued in Part 5)

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June 21, 2013 · 11:07 am

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 3)

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We arrived at her apartment by night in order to escape detection. We were in Russia (in the region of Lithuania, on the Baltic Sea). Ellen and I had climbed the steep stairs, coming through a small back door into the one-room apartment. It was jammed with furniture, evidence that the old couple had once lived in a much larger and much finer house.

The old woman was lying on a small sofa, propped up by pillows. Her body was bent and twisted almost beyond recognition by the dread disease of multiple sclerosis. Her aged husband spent all his time caring for her since she was unable to move off the sofa.

I walked across the room and kissed her wrinkled cheek. She tried to look up but the muscles in her neck were atrophied so she could only roll her eyes upward and smile. She raised her right hand, slowly, in jerks. It was the only part of her body she could control and with her gnarled and deformed knuckles she caressed my face. I reached over and kissed the index finger of that hand, for it was with this one finger that she had so long glorified God.

Beside her couch was a vintage typewriter. Each morning her faithful husband would rise, praising the Lord. After caring for his wife’s needs and feeding her a simple breakfast, he would prop her into a sitting position on the couch, placing pillows all around her so she wouldn’t topple over. Then he would move that ancient black typewriter in front of her on a small table. From an old cupboard he would remove a stack of cheap yellow paper. Then, with that blessed one finger, she would begin to type.

All day and far into the night she would type. She translated Christian books into Russian, Latvian, and the language of her people. Always using just that one finger—peck… peck… peck—she typed out the pages. Portions of the Bible, the books of Billy Graham, Watchman Nee, and Corrie ten Boom—all came from her typewriter. That was why I was there—to thank her.

“Not only does she translate their books,” her husband said as he hovered close by during our conversation, “but she prays for these men every day while she types. Sometimes it takes a long time for her finger to hit the key, or for her to get the paper in the machine, but all the time she is praying for those whose books she is working on.”

I looked at her wasted form on the sofa, her head pulled down and her feet curled back under her body. “Oh, Lord, why don’t You heal her?” I cried inwardly.

Her husband, sensing my anguish of soul, gave the answer. “God has a purpose in her sickness. Every other Christian in the city is watched by the secret police. But because she has been sick so long, no one ever looks in on her. They leave us alone and she is the only person in all the city who can type quietly, undetected by the police.”

I looked around at the tiny room, so jammed full of furniture from better days. In one corner was the kitchen. Beside the cupboard was her husband’s “office,” a battered desk where he sorted the pages that came from her typewriter to pass them on to the Christians. I thought of Jesus sitting over against the treasury, and my heart leaped for joy as I heard Jesus bless this sick old woman who, like the widow, had given all she had.  (Tramp for the Lord by Corrie ten boom, ©1975, 2008, Christian Literature Crusade, excerpt from Chapter 31, “One Finger for His Glory.”)

Corrie ten boom did not mention the name of this sick old woman who prayed all day long as she pecked away on a typewriter. So, we don’t know her name, but I guarantee you this: all of heaven knows her name.

(Continued in Part 4)

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June 19, 2013 · 2:14 pm

Sponsor A Child – Save A Family

Let’s say your spouse dies, what would most likely happen next?

Your family, neighbors, and friends would show up at your home to comfort you. They would bring food. There would be an outpouring of love shown to you through many different ways in the days following the funeral and the months afterward.

But not so, if you are a wife in rural India, especially in Mula’s case.

Mula and her husband loved each other, but he died from cancer after seventeen years of marriage. When that happened, Mula was blamed for her husband’s death, forsaken by both families, shunned by her friends, and despised by her community. She and her four children faced a desperate future.

Fortunately, her oldest daughter attended a Bridge of Hope school. Through this connection with Gospel For Asia, Mula attended a seamstress school and eventually received a sewing machine. She now earns enough through sewing to feed and clothe her family.

The reasons all this happened:

1. Someone sponsored the daughter for $35/month.

2. Someone bought a sewing machine from GFA’s Christmas Catalog for $85.

What may seem like pocket change to the people who sponsored the daughter or who bought the sewing machine, made a life and death difference to Mula and her family. And oh yes! Mula gave her life to Jesus.

Do you have any spare pocket change? It may be enough to sponsor a child, which may end up saving a family.

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June 13, 2013 · 10:33 am

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 2)

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The vibrant sounds of Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number Seven swirled through the Beacon Hill mansion’s ballroom. The fifteen females seated around the grand piano, listening to the maestro, had proper Brahmin names like Cabot, Coolidge, Forbes, Lodge, and Shaw. Each traced her ancestry back to the earliest Puritan settlers of Boston. This blueblood lineage insured their invitation to the social tea, no nouveau riche Johnny-come-latelies were among the invitees.

When the pianist completed the piece, he stood and bowed. The women showed their appreciation with warm applause. One of the ladies put her white gloved hands to her mouth and said, “Oh, I would just do anything to be able to play the piano like that.”

The maestro turned and stared at her. His eyes exploded with fire.

“No you wouldn’t,” he said.

The crowd collectively gasped. All felt sorry for the woman who had been openly rebuked by the man’s insensitive words.

As for the lady, she sat stunned, paralyzed by his harsh eyes, tears rolled down her cheeks. Then, as if she remembered her privileged pedigree, she mouthed three defiant words at the pianist: “Yes, I would.”

“No you wouldn’t,” he said again, leaning over the piano toward the lady.

“Because if you really meant what you said, you would have been willing to give up your youth, your teenage years, and eight to ten hours every day practicing on the piano. You see there is a price to sit on this bench. I’ve been willing to pay it, and you have not!”

(Short story from my e-novel, Deceived Dead and Delivered by Larry Nevenhoven, ©2012, Amazon.com)

Like playing Mozart’s Piano Concerto Number Seven, prayer demands an all-effort on our parts if we really want to see God move through our petitions and supplications for our families, friends, neighbors, and cities. How costly will the price eventually be for each of us?

It will cost us everything!

(Continued in Part 3) 

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June 8, 2013 · 1:13 pm

Prayer: So Easy To Talk About, Yet So Tough To Do (Part 1)

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Almost twenty-five years ago, I read an interview of David Yongi Cho in Charisma Magazine which really bummed me out. It was a long interview which dealt with his life and founding of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, which then had 700,000 members.

What particularly bummed me out was when the interviewer asked: “Will America ever have a church as large as Yoido Full Gospel Church?”

“No,” replied Cho, “because Americans aren’t willing to pay the price in prayer that it takes to build a large church like Yoido.”

Slap! His words felt like a glove slap to my face, challenging me to a duel.

I readily admit to being full of myself at the time because I prayed 3 to 4 hours each day which is what Cho and his 400 elders averaged. So, I thought: “All I need to do is find a few believers like me who enjoy praying and voilà! America will have a large church.”

Well, after journeying over hundreds of miles of life’s back roads and through more than enough deep valleys, I have arrived at this conclusion: Cho was right. America will never have a church like Yoido Full Gospel, which now has over 1 million members.

“What?” you proclaim, picking up your gloves, readying to slap my face. “Do you still believe that the Lord’s house is called to be a house of prayer?

“Yes, I do,” I reply, keeping my eyes on your hands.

“Then what’s your problem?” you say through clenched teeth, still ready to slap me.

I shrug. “It’s a long story. Do you really want to hear it?” I whisper.

So, over the next few weeks, I will write on prayer. Some of the articles will deal with my prayer heroes. Some will deal with the mistakes of different prayer movements. Some will deal with my mistakes and lessons I’ve learned about prayer.

But hopefully, we will all end up trusting and loving the Lord more than we do now.

(Continued in Part 2)

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May 26, 2013 · 6:34 am

Inside Israel – Pentecost (Part 2)

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As you have probably guessed by now,  I’m not Debbie, but since she’s taken a sabbatical, I will host Inside Israel where we will hear from our sister in Jerusalem about what she is witnessing there as a believer in Yeshua.  Put your prayer shawls on and pray for Israel and Sister J. Now here she is …

And, speaking of The Bread, the two challot (‘challa’ is the three twined braided shabat bread) that I am hoping to bring to our gathering tomorrow are rising on my stove.  Our fellowship plans to gather together to worship The Lord and bring our own thanksgivings to Him.

Shavuot is actually the 50th day following Passover (which is why it is called Pentecost in English) during which time the grain harvest is ripening and taking place.  We are told in scripture to ‘count the Omer’ (grains of wheat) for 7 weeks of 7 days (49 days) and there is a meditation for each day (again Leviticus 23) and when the time of the grain is full and the grain is full in it’s head, it is really a time to thank God for the new grain harvest – grain being the ‘staff of life’ – and the first fruits of the land as spring and the land is now literally covered with new life!

As the life of the next generation … the seeds… are already amazingly present in each generation…this is evident in all of His creation.

As I walk the several streets from the bus to my work in the morning I have been writing to you in my head.  Here it is… May…and yet what strikes me most is that the fall fruits are already alive in their bursting buds!  My head spins with this visual example of the ‘cycle of life’ that God has given; beautiful grape vines, clean from the rains, press their paths over gates and hedges and already there are evident miniscule clusters of what will become, Lord willing, lush grapes that won’t ripen until their fullness during the fall feasts of Sukkot.  Dazzling my eyes are the florescent pink orange ‘horn’, the dramatic buds of the pomegranate which will signify the fall feasts as well.  I see the fig leaves in full fan already being pulled downward by the heavy dates beginning to develop.  As if a colorful ‘frame’ around this activity, the bright yellow lemons beg to be picked and the air is permeated…full of the fragrance of more flowers then I could take note of … more colors then my eyes can define… all of this and so much more God has given even to us now in our disobedience!

What awaits us in the fulfillment…!  Overhead the swallows (as they are called in America) or swifts (as they are called in Europe) literally darken the morning sky as they feast of the little bugs.  I watch them darting around at a speed that boggles my mind and wonder at how they navigate around one another and buildings.  It is literally a display of nature that one need only to look up to see.  I have had to laugh because as I wait at my bus stop (after getting off the train…) in the morning, it is on a crowded narrow street.  The people crowd into the little ‘tachanat’ or ‘waiting station’ and sort of ‘tolerate’ the time.  One day the swallows (swifts) were just THICK and I was enraptured looking up and watching them.  I took a sudden look around and EVERYONE was gazing up instead of at the ground.  That brought a prayer to me ‘Lord!  Looking up may we see You!  May we FIND You!  Look, Lord!  We are looking UP!’  He is truly so good!

And as truly as the life of the fall fruits are already growing so wonderfully in the bud as the spring harvest takes place, perhaps…dare I say… that this is true in the Spirit as well as the natural?  As Shavuot was given through the hand of Moses…The Holy Spirit came on the self same day through Yeshua h’Meshiach…One God, one seed, one bud, one Fruit…In Him alone is life.  Maybe THIS year?  Even THIS day?

There is much more to share, but I think that in this letter I don’t want to mix the wonder of the seed of what He does and is doing with more words.

Lovingly, with blessing, your sis

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