Sunday, February 27, 2011

Hidden In Plain Sight: Hope

www.Eastview.org
Delbert Enns
This is a relationship series. You are not alone.
God created us...
To LOVE me
To ENJOY a relationship with God
To MANAGE God's creation

Evil seeks to destroy you with guilt and self doubt and self loathing.

I make choices sad happy grumpy
5 destroyers:
Criticizing
Complaining
Comparing
Competing
Contenting
Do you believe the vast majority of people you know have more potential?

Life of substandard performance happens because, living to please others, laziness, lack of hope

When we have lack of hope we fail.
Hope is to to cherish with anticipation.
Mark 5:22 the woman had hope that Jesus would heal her. She touched Jesus. She was healed. Just trust Jesus. The 12 year old was raised.
Mark connected 2 incidents into one story. He loved to tie teaching moments into his story. Through the reading and teaching on Sundays your faith will grow.
Both stories tie together. Woman with 12 years of bleeding and a 12 year old girl. Both marginalized in Jewish society. Jesus came to bring hope. To reinstate those with no hope.
Do you want it be part of a pity party or a game changer? An agent of hope? Exercise faith. Push through the crowd to touch Jesus. The bleeding woman had the faith. Jesus honoured that. Jesus re-instated her publicly. Jarius had just seen a miracle before he was told his daughter had died. He now believed Jesus could help. It was not easy to come out in public with his faith. He was on educated leader.
Jews words raise people from death
The Lord's supper is going public with our faith. Utter words of hope. Wherever you are listen to Jesus' words: "GET UP"
I do not have to live in despair no matter what has come my way. No matter how I have been mistreated. "GET UP" Jesus says.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Alchemy of Air

I just finished reading a very riveting book, "The Alchemy of Air" while I was down with the flu Friday and Saturday.

It's the pivotal story of the invention of the machine that extracts nitrogen from the air and makes it possible for farmers to raise enough grain to feed billions of people. Without that German invention, the estimated number of people the world could feed today would be less than 2 billion people.

Of course, nitrogen is also what Germany needed for the production of bombs. What a read!

Church is Theatre?

Do we expect church to be our weekly entertainment? Are we the audience? Or is God the audience for our worship? Was God pleased with my worship today? The cattle on a thousand hills are his. Do we praise Him for that? Philip Yancey.

Gypsy Movie

Have you seen "Gypsy Caravan with Johnny Depp"? It's a dazzling display of the musical world of the Roma juxtaposed to the real world they live in. Filmed on tour in U.S. and Canada and in India Macedonia Romania and Spain.
We'd love to share this with you.

Love One Another

www.wefc.net E Free Church
Songs: (with well balanced musical accompaniment)
1. At Calvary I Found Liberty
2. How Can I keep From Singing?
3. Special Music: "Mercy Refused" Choir
4. Mighty to Save Everyone Needs Compassion
5. In the Name of the Father we will rise with you - Our God Saves.
6. You are my King - Amazing Love! How can it be that you my King would die for me?
7. Who is there like You? Suffering in my place. Your love has come to me and set me free.
Mission Report: Bolivia Bound, Jason & Shannon Hiebert and 4 kids going with EFCCM. Agua: Yaku Well Drilling Ministry & School for Girls.

John 13: Love One Another
8. They'll Know We Are Christians by Our Love - we will work with each other and we will praise God.
9. Beloved Let us Love One Another.

Message by Pastor Ron Koleba

We find it difficult to do, yet Jesus strongly tells us to Love one another.
This comes to life when we actually do it.
''Ministering to 21st Century Families" comes to life when people love one another.
1. Heavy statements carry weight if attached to a person of substance.
The command makes sense only because of who said it.
We'd like to think that when God speaks, we listen. How responsive are you? Love can be told what to do without getting its nose out of joint.
2. Our love for one another is always tethered to Jesus Christ. Jesus was talking to 11 young guys: Love one another! As I have loved you. He did not say we are going out to fight till the last man is down.
Jesus the debt releasor says - Love trumps sin. Passes over my friends failure. Love is Love when it is tethered to Jesus' cross. Like a tether-ball. Love not tethered to the cross is not Love.
3. An internal love makes an excellent external point. Why are we reaching out to our community? Because we are tethered to the cross. 3 times Jesus said love one another. This is our identifying trait.
Love must come from the heart. It cannot be feigned.
When we break down our protective walls of selfishness we can love. We will be betrayed and rejected.
Do love. For Christ's sake. If you have 700 Facebook friends, you'll still drink alone. May that never be said of us.

Membership acceptance and Communion:
A table for those who are part of the family of God.
10. Thank You for Loving me, choosing me, your love lifted me.
Eat this bread in remembrance.
11. Here is love - on the mount of crucifixion fountains opened deep and wide.
12. Make us one, Lord, make us one, Let Your Love flow so the world will know we are one in You.
Drink in remembrance.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Ken Blanchard Proverb

Many Problems in Life stem NOT from making mistakes but from not LEARNING from them.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Hidden in Plain Sight: Reaction

Wonderful music today! Good worship leading (Thanks, Steve) and choir music:
There is nothing that's too hard for you Lord. Lord, I run to you.
I will rise.

Drama:
What would it be like to be showing what God is like all through the day? How would we drive? Has God ever worked for the boss? What would that be like?

www.EastView.org
Pastor Delbert Enns

Individualism has become so real in our society. If you want to follow Jesus you need to be transparent open and honest.

90/10 principle. 9o% of life is under your control. 10% is not under your control.

If your young daughter accidentally spills coffee on your shirt and you fly off the handle, things get worse from there. Same story - different (caring) response, and you have a good day.

Mark 3:35 those who do God's will are Jesus' family. Jesus could set them free from the Romans.
Jesus chose 12 men to teach. Friendship based on what I can get does not work.
Jesus introduced an upside down kingdom. He taught in parables. The religious leaders got Very upset.
The Burmese pastor who suffered indescribably becomes a mirror and a window on our own experiences.

Listen carefully to what Jesus is saying. He says ''hear me" 13 times in this chapter.

Mark 4:10 Seeds and thorns. Yield up to 100× what was planted in good soil. Soil = heart. Some are hard. Preoccupied. Or shallow. Or crowded.

How do we react to things that come our way?

Next Sunday - Hidden in Plain Sight: Failure.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Fundamentally at Odds with Reality


What a nice blog title - don't you think? "We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect. They come away with perceptions fundamentally at odds with reality." By DAVID BROOKS

The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also known as the Communist Broadcast Centre) is such a cocoon. They recently did a story on "Factory Farms" as they call people who do a wonderful job of providing us with food in the most humane manner possible.

What these cocooners don't know is reality. They hide in their own corners and spew pontifications galore about how terrible it is that caring farmers take care of chickens and pigs in a clean environment that help these animals live their short lives happy and carefree. They don't know that a contented animal is a happy animal. An animal that does not have to freeze their ears and tails off in the great wonderful harsh outdoors is much happier than the one that wallows in its own excrement. And gets every disease, and loses its feet due to frost in the wonderful free range hell of the great Canadian winter. Free range animals get worms and parasites and when people eat that meat they get parasites. What a wonderful thought!

Check it out at here at CBC

Why isn't there a rule about fair and honest reporting? They need to give voice to the people that know what they are talking about. The pictures on the web have no connection with modern farming methods. I have seen pigs and chickens in the wild. If we wanted to raise all of them free range, there would not be a blade of green anywhere in the world. The pigs and chickens would have destroyed it all with their rooting and scratching. We and the pigs would all be starving to death. That would be better somehow?

Read the comments that are posted after their story. Clearly this one-sided drivel is serving the propaganda needs of cocooners that hide their heads in the sands of reality.

Where is balanced reporting?

Those of you that are in the know need to try to straighten out some of these ignoramuses. Clearly there are many people who are more eloquent than I.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Breakfast

We had the Irish Breakfast at Fionn MacCool's at Toronto Pearson. www.PrimePubs.com the potatoe pancakes seemed to be 1/2 cooked.

Made it from downtown to the airport in 28 minutes. Very heavy traffic by Manitoba standards. Last night it took 90 minutes from the airport to the hotel. We stayed at Choice Selby on Sherbourne

The new mayor Ford is trying to change City hall to be a fiscally responsible government. (is that an oxymoron?) He is privatizing garbage collection. Will he quit hauling all the garbage to the US for incineration?

My biggest beef - when will governments recognize the cost of using highway #401 as a parking lot for 6 hrs a day? Do the calculation - 300 vehicles per mile ×60 miles ×$100 per hour ×6 hours per day= $10,800,000 per day for 250 days per year = $2,700,000,000 per year cost to the economy. 1/2 of that is tax revenue loss.

How could we get the politicians to sit up and notice? A class action lawsuit? What is your advice?

Sunday, February 06, 2011

1,000 years in Cambodian Killing Fields

April 17, 1975 was a day of celebration in Cambodia. It was New Year's day and they were having a good day. Then Child soldiers came and shot and killed Setan's friend. They rounded up all the educated people, shipped them out of town and shot them.
Setan put on rags and claimed to be a farm kid. He was taken to a youth Concentration Camp with 1,000 others.

They had 3 rules
1. You are slaves
2. Show no emotion
3. If you break one of the rules you are dead
They torture killed 3 girls at the 1st meeting to show they meant business.
Of the 1,000 kids only 87 survived.

When they discovered that Setan had an education they set out to kill him and 4 others. They killed the 4 in front of him. He prayed for the protection of the Lord of the Universe and at the last second his life was spared.

The Healing Fields article was a secular news paper story that proved that his story was true.

He escaped through the land mines. There he met a wild jungle man who told him about the Lord of the Universe. His name is Jesus! He surrendered his life and met Jesus in the jungle. The jungle man told him to preach. 32 people got saved on the 1st day and in 6 months they led 35,000 people to Jesus. That revival was documented by Jerry Falwell.

Jesus came to set me free. Gal 6:10 says do good to all. He thought God must have made a mistake. He can't mean that. Told God to change it. 30 days of questioning the pastor did not change that Scripture. The pastor's pregnant wife had been tortured to death in front of him. The paster remembered the verse Who can separate us from the Love of Christ? When Setan went to preach that verse he saw the killer that had killed his friends and relatives in the audience. Rom 8:35 he forgave her in the middle of the sermon. That's when he was set free.

He gave the invitation: Come to Jesus just as you are. The killer was one of the people that came forward and accepted Christ. That's when he went by faith to witness to the rest of the Khmer Rouge. Eventually the civil war ended. Now there are 1,000s of people have come to know the Lord. See TransformAsia or LinkedIn book Miracle in the Forgotten Land

This kind of violence is still going on in different parts of the world. Jesus can heal.

Church of the Living Hope brought some interracial music and led in singing

Friendship - Eastview

If we compiled a book of all the silly things we do to find friends it would be hilarious.
What is the criteria we use to choose our friends? God never asks us to be something else than what he created us to be. Ask Him to direct us to the right friends. Pray for His direction.
God will help you to find Proverbs 17:17 friends. Friends who are there for us.
Seek first the kingdom of heaven and all shall be added.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

MissionFest Saturday night

Joseph D'Souza OM Dalit freedom movement India president spoke.
This year Indians are commemorating 150 years since slaves were brought to South Africa. The first boat had a Dalit (untouchable) who had a Bible. Now there are millions of Indian Christians in SA.
200 years ago Wm. Carey brought Christianity to India.

Why does untouchability still exist in the church of India? Islam does not allow untouchability.

Intentionally intercultural interracial church is what Christ commanded.

250,000,000 Dalit slaves are the largest and longest slavery system in the world. Karma says 15% have all the rights. The majority 50% are classified slaves. 25% of the population is considered dung. The Dalit. Dalits make idols that are then purified by the priests and worshipped by the Brahman upper class. In 2003 one of the idol makers wanted to see the nice idol he had made, and went to the temple where the Brahman priest killed him.

All Christian churches practice caste separation. No one wants to touch or interact with the untouchables.

They want freedom from 2,500 years of caste slavery.
Jesus' first sermon was from Isaiah. I have come to set the captives free. The messianic authentication. To bring healing and sight. Deliverance for the oppressed.

The Dalits need freedom - Jesus said the outcasts are first.
They have 4 requests:
1. Free our children child labour in India 100,000,000 captives need freedom. Right Now. By the time a Dalit child is 12 their life is over because they are Captives to the thinking that they are slaves, not in the image of God. We must teach the children. Slum Dog Millionaire is a true story.

If we are Christ's ambassadors. In 10 years we will have 1,000,000 freed Dalit children. Those children now call themselves children of Jesus. Sexually protected they now have a future.

2. Free our women. 100,000,000 women are trafficked. Untouchable in every way except in prostitution. Every family is required to offer one girl child as a sexual slave to the Hindu temples.

Jesus brings deliverance to the oppressed. As an ambassador of Christ I must help. 10s Of thousands have been freed.

3. Bring us justice

4. Bring us Jesus. More people have come to Christ in the last 15 years then in the last 200 years.

What does God want the church of Winnipeg to do about this? Pray. Pray that the Dalit system will break.
That people will be free.

Join us.

Ron Pierce MissionFest

Missions is working. The church is growing around the world.

Empower Ministries goes to the hot spots around the world. Gave away 900,000 Bibles. 800 goats. Ethiopian church is being converted. 100,000 Ethiopian pastors have accepted Christ.

Hunger for God is all over the middle east.

The Far East- Acts 8 the good magician- why is the story in the Bible? Simon was constantly amazed. After a while the amazement factor goes away. A Chinese pastor said n-ow they expect a miracle every time they pray for one.
Simon wanted to pay for miracle power. Peter said you have no depth.

Believers in Burma are maturing in their faith quickly and walk with God in depth.

Burma

China has 150 Millions of believers. They expect to double in the next few years.

Vietnam has huge church growth. A pastor came to talk to Ron - every one in his region has become Christian. They find the sickest people in the village and pray and God heals them. A very crippled woman was healed in front of all the people of the community.

Burma - 6 months ago - leader of full gospel church - when the earthquake hit. The Christians fed the hungry. 1000's come to Christ. Insein Prison the worst in the world. There are 8 pastors imprisoned there. The military decided to build a church in the prison to thank the Christians. 100s of prisoners have accepted Christ there.

China - they need Bibles in China. There is a huge hunger for Bibles there.
Recently went to the earthquake area. A 23 year old woman started 30 churches. She is hoping to go to Bible School soon. There are 1,000 applicants ahead of her. He gave her 3 boxes of Bibles to distribute.

Pastor David talked to us. In the 9Os he started preaching. The police tied him and beat him every day for 48 days. He was full of pain. He was rearrested and tricked to sign a paper to put him in jail for 2 more years of torture. God healed him and he walked around smiling. He was promoted to the top job in prison. He was released and he and his wife each have 30 churches. She was imprisoned with 30 girls in an 8×8 cell when she was 3 months pregnant. They got beat every day. Other Christian girls protected her. Now they have a healthy son. They have too few people to minister. Doors are wide open. People are hungry for the gospel.

Another pastor was beat up in another prison and released after they broke most of his bones. The guards make sure no one helps him. He lives alone under a tree in excruciating pain. God will heal him. The Holy Spirit is ministering to him.

Friday, February 04, 2011

Missionfest Manitoba Friday Night

At The Church of the Rock Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday afternoon. This is a wonderful way to find out what God is doing around the world. The emphasis this year is on the far east. Speaker on Sunday is a survivor of the Cambodian Killing Fields. Don't want to miss that.

They have a wonderful mass choir singing all our favorite hymns.

Guest speaker from the garbage dump of Manila Philippines. Doug Nichols grew up in a violent setting and his brothers died violent deaths in prison. In a drunken stupor a praying fellow student led him to the Lord. The nerd kept helping him. Prairie Bible Institute tutored him. He was packing to leave when a retired professor knocked on the door. Applied to 30 different mission organizations and no one accepted him. Got married. OM OMF Action are his favorite missions. OMF wanted to send him to Japan. No one but the Philippines wanted him. Why are there not more missionaries there from Canada? 100,000,000 people 90% non- Christian. Wide open opportunities to share.

Luke 9 You Do Something - Feed the Hungry.
35,000 children die of malnutrition every day. Somebody should do Something. 1,000,000 refugees landed in Congo 70,000 people died of cholera in 3 days.
What are we going to do about this? Lord, what would you have me to do? Lord, send them away. We have nothing. God says - you give them something to eat. You have some loaves and fishes.

Jesus takes it, blesses and breaks it and gives it back to us. If we keep the bread and fish for ourselves it gets moldy and stinky.

A little 5 year old asked "do you use notes when you speak? Then you are not very smart"

1. the neglected - every one needs the gospel -there are 3,000,000,000 unreached people in this world.
A). The elderly -they wear funny clothes.
B). Teenagers -they wear funny clothes. They are neglected.
50% off coffee. Stopped to buy some. Teenager at the counter was being abusive to the oriental clerk. Talked to him and began to minister to him. Under chemo Doug almost fainted.
C.) Muslims are neglected. We think they are violent. Met a Muslim on a flight. We pray for Muslims. To go to heaven. I will go to heaven on Jesus' good works. Not mine. Jesus Christ the Son of God. Gave him "The Quest for Life" gospel booklet and read it aloud.
Most AIDS patients die without the gospel. Kenyan people want white missionaries. They are respected and accepted.

D.) the poor and needy. The nobodys are not strategic so we neglect them. What does a street child do in a typhoon? What does a 6 year old orphan do when she has the flue? 800,000 girls in Thailand have been sold into prostitution by their parents.

God, what would you do? They sent teams downtown to minister to the prostitutes. Linda was about to faint when Doug sent her to a little girl prostitute and she did a hammer witness. The girl began to cry because no one had ever cared for her before. She led the girl to the Lord.

E.) The Children - True religion is caring for orphans. 35,000 children died on 9/11 of malnutrition. 160,000,000 homeless children in the world. God judges people who sell children into slavery.

What are you doing to make it easy for children to find Jesus? In children's homes. A pastor in the Philippines had 265 kids in his home.

Send kids to Camp. Cost $6 per child. 5,600 kids showed up for camp. They had send 3000 home for lack of money and room. 30 grandmothers were taking care of 300 orphans in a Malawi Village. Help them. They need missionaries. Jesus holds the key to your life.

Went to visit a prison for kids. An 8 year old abused kid came to walk with him. Hugged him. Waved at him through the gates. That broke Doug up. And he prayed for him. Tell them the name that is above every name.

Savior like a shepherd lead us. Blessed Jesus you have bought us, yours we are.

Embrace the passion.