There's Something Crouching at Your Door!!!!!

Last Sunday I heard a sermon from Genesis 4, the story of Cain and Abel bringing their sacrifices to God.  When I got home from church, I re-read the passage. I was struck by a portion that I think I have rarely heard preachers preach about.  The usual message is something along the lines of ‘be sure you bring a good sacrifice to the Lord’ and then tie it in with Romans 12:1-2 which talks about presenting yourself as a living sacrifice.  Great sermon but not what struck me.
 
What struck me was the latter part of Genesis 4:7 that says “…sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (NIV)
I happen to be looking through some of my game park pictures and it struck me.  The apostle Peter writes in his epistle (1 Peter 5:8) that Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us, and that we need to be self controlled and alert.  He likely had some experience with that, as the ‘sport’ of feeding Christians to the lions was a favorite pastime of the Romans.
 
I don’t know about you, but I get a mental picture of what the writer of Genesis and Peter are saying.  It is like the lion pictures above.  Crouching, awaiting to leap, crush with their powerful jaws, and tear apart its victim.  Not a pretty site.
 
The Genesis passage says ‘it desires to have you.’  Satan wants to destroy you. Why? I have heard it said that he desires that because we are made in the image of God, and so anything that might possibly praise God, or reflect God’s glory, Satan wants to destroy.  He is a glory-stealer because he is so into himself.  He wants the praise.  He is crouching, waiting for the opportune time to pounce!  
 
The amazing thing to me is that small word “but” in the latter part of Gen. 4:7.  My pastor, Dr. Creech, always said that whenever you see the word ‘but’ in the Bible, pay attention.  It’s usually followed by something very important.  In this case, God says to Cain (and to us) that ‘you must master it.’  Master your choices, and master the crouching lion.
 
I think the key is in the beginning of that verse, as well as in the awesome promises of the New Testament writers.  First of all, it says “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?”   Pretty simple.  Not a difficult passage that needs expert seminary training to figure out. Do the right thing!  If you are really honest, most times it is not too difficult to decide between them.  The problem is that we like so much to do the ‘other’ things. That is like inviting a lion to crouch at your door.  I’ve seen them up close in game parks, and believe me, you don’t want one at your door.
 
The New Testament writers tell us of God’s promise of the empowering of the Holy Spirit who lives in believers.  On our own power, we are not very good at overcoming and fighting lions.  But Romans 8 (especially verses 10-11) reminds us that the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead (three days stinking, decomposing, rotten dead) is living in you, if you belong to Christ. That is amazing power! Resurrection power, availed to us to enable us to choose to do right.  The result is no lions crouching at our door.  I like that.  
 
I thank God that he cares.  He doesn’t leave us powerless – left to the lions.  He graciously gives us resurrection power to follow his life-giving way.
    Choose Self – get a lion at your door.      Choose Jesus – get real life, God designed life.

Our prayer is that you keep yourself from the lions.

Daily by His grace...

Small, but dangerous things...

It's called the Paederus beetle, or Rove beetle, commonly known in E. Africa as the 'Nairobi Eye.'  It doesn't sting or bite humans, but when you injure it, or crush it, it's insect 'blood' contains a dangerous substance that burns you.  I won't bore you with the chemical name or structure, just to say that it is a powerful substance packed in a tiny insect.  So much so that the burn can have blisters and even secondary infection. In severe cases it can cause scarring, long term skin discoloration, and can even cause systemic symptoms like fever, nausea, etc. I saw someone just this week that had gotten 'burnt' on the nose where her glasses normally sit.  It made me go and look on the back porch ceiling and sure enough, we have them!

Agriculturally they are an important part of the way God designed our ecosystem.  But from a human perspective they are a problem.  They appear during the rainy seasons and are attracted to moisture and light, especially florescent light.  They are so small (3-7mm) that they find their way into homes through cracks and screens, and are often on the ceilings.  I was told they got the name 'Nairobi Eye' because they are found in Nairobi and when a person is sleeping and feels something on their face they brush it off, injuring the beetle in the process.  They wake the next morning with burning in the eye and a red, swollen, sometimes severely damaged eye.  There are even outbreaks of so called epidemics of patients suffering from skin burns.  The rove beetle is actually found all over the world, but this one especially in tropical climates.

They are small, seemingly innocuous, but dangerous.  It reminds me of something else in life like that.  So called 'small sins' are like that.  They work their ways into our lives, often because of some attraction.  They don't make much noise, don't seem to cause any problem, but they are dangerous.  If you let them remain, they will 'burn' you.  Perhaps in a way that causes secondary issues and can even leave you with permanent scars.  I probably don’t need to make a list of those ‘small sins’ as you know what they are.  Small, but dangerous.

They great thing about the Nairobi eye beetle is you can prevent them from coming in your home, and there are means to destroy them when they come in.  For most things in health, prevention is the best method.  In the same way, for our spiritual health, preventing so called ‘small sins’ from entering our homes is the best method of staying healthy.  Making sure we know what they look like, when their ‘season’ is, and how to prevent them is key.  And then, if we discover that they have entered, we take measures to get rid of them.  Neither Sally or I have any plans to live together with Nairobi Eye beetles in our house.  They are too dangerous.  

In the same way, we take both preventive and other measures, sometimes severe if necessary, to rid ourselves of sin.  As I read God’s word there are no ‘small sins’ that we can let hang around and live with.  God’s desire is that we ‘be holy, as I am holy.’  That means prevention and active measures to deal with sin in our lives.  The awesome thing is that God has dealt with all the sin of humans on the cross of Calvary.  Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection provide the only means of atoning for our sin penalty.  His sacrifice was a perfect one that once and for all took care of the sin and death problem. We can rest assure of that.  I love reading and re-reading Romans and the Gospels as they clearly spell that out. And when we place our faith in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice, God re-births us with a new spirit that can respond to Him, that has a desire to follow His perfect path of life, and finds satisfaction in Him.  I would encourage you to read in the Bible in John 3 and Ezekiel 36:24-32 about this re-birth and new spirit that God wants to give you.

Just as Sally and I have taken all measures to protect ourselves from this small, but dangerous insect, our prayer is that you will take any measure necessary to deal with any small, but dangerous sins in your own lives.  We’re doing all we can to prevent and aggressively deal with both bugs, and sins.  Keep safe, and enjoy life.

Daily by His grace...

A great day at church

A great day at church.
We had a great day Sunday at Ipogolo Baptist Church. Although Sally and I
don't understand all that is taught, we are able to get a lot of words and
of course knowing what portion of the Bible they are reading from helps.
The church uses a Baptist Kiswahili song book that has lots of old hymns
that have been translated to Kiswahili. The nice thing about the language
is that it is really easy to pronounce so we are able to sing along. Oh
yeah, the children's choir is so enthusiastic in their singing and dancing -
you just can't help but smile and thank God for the joy of children. Many
of them are orphans and live at the church through a program that started
some time ago.

It was great to be together with other brothers and sisters in Christ
worshipping the One True God.

For the glory of His name!

Tunaendelea kujifunza Kiswahili

Nope, nothing to do with eating tuna, but means "We are continuing to learn Kiswahili."

Another week of language study.  Class from 8:30-1:30 then putting it into practice.  Sally and I are finding that most days we are doing reasonably well with our teacher, but then when we go to town, it all changes.  He knows us, and he knows what speed and types of words to use when we converse in Swahili.  But in town, the whole game changes.  Words that seem to float of the tongue (OK, maybe not float, but roll) seem to be stuck in my head.  The good thing is that Tanzanians are very patient and kind, and there are a fair number of Wazungu (Caucasians) living here and people are used to our attempts at speaking Kiswahili.  Even so, when we converse, there are different accents, different speeds (haraka haraka – very fast), and lots of new vocabulary.  But that is good too, as we realize that we don’t know that word, write it down, look it up when we get home, and then begin to use it.  Boy, this is hard work.  You wouldn’t think that language and cultural learning would be tiring but it is both mentally and physically exhausting.  (please don’t take that as whining, just sharing what’s happening).

It has been exciting to realize that my brain is beginning to translate things without thinking about it exclusively.  Albeit little things, but at least there is hope.   Even as I have been typing this I have been dual tasking, thinking how I would write it in Kiswahili.

Found it interesting that there is now software for your iPhone camera to take a live pic of a sign and it will on-the-spot recognize the language and translate it.  Don’t think they have an audio version of that…

We’ve been trying two different internet service providers – one expensive and at times quite fast (VodoCom), one cheaper but slow (airTel).  Both are quite good at dropping the connection.  Skyping with our family then becomes an exercise of connecting, dropping, connecting again, dropping, etc. 

Trying to pray… I desperately want to pray in Kiswahili, and I find myself saying things like, “Mungu, ninakuomba unanisikia.” (God, I ask you, that you hear me.)  And “Baba, unasamahe dhambi zangu zote.” (Father, you forgive all my sins.)  I feel like a child, but then again, didn’t Jesus say that we need to come to him with the simple faith of a child.   I am really enjoying reading through the Psalms every morning in both English and Kiswahili and finding phrases and sentences that help me to express my prayers better.  We have three versions of Kiswahili Bibles; one that follows like the NIV, one like the NASB, and a Good News NT/Psalms/Proverbs.  We’ve been using all three to learn various words and phrases.

portion of Romans 3

Finally, I was directed to a great article on how our own worldview and culture affects the way we read the Bible and how we interpret it. That has an impact on how we share the Good News of Jesus Christ. Even if you are not living in a foreign land, it is applicable.  I encourage you to download it and let me know what you think.  (http://www.neednotfret.com/content/view/213/30/)

Please keep praying for our language and culture learning.  Also pray for safety on the roads.  It is a challenge to drive here and we are thankful every time we go/come safely.

We are thankful to our Lord for the daily grace he has been showing us.  Praise Him!