Commissioning...

It is a humbling circumstance to stand before a church family who loves and supports you in every way and be commissioned for specific service to the Lord. Pastor Max, our missions pastor, introduced me and gave a brief explanation of the ministry the Lord has led me to in Chuuk. Then Pastor Jones, our pastor emeritus and on the Micronesia ministry committee, led in prayer. The entire pastoral staff and the board of elders laid hands on me while the congregation stood. Pastor Jones told of how it was a "great moment" in the "life of a church" to send out "one of our own" that has grown up in this church, that God would use this church to help form my heart and mind. He prayed for safety of travel and physical health as well as a quick adaptation to the climate and culture. But he also prayed for the students the Lord will give me and that God would use me to change their lives for all eternity.

Pastor Charlie, our senior pastor, included in his preaching today on taming the tongue how teachers will be "judged with greater strictness" (James 3).

Pray for me, please.

Somehow, I thought that God would/could just "magically" change my heart and sanctify me without sacrifice, suffering, or complete surrender. On one hand, I feel like a retard thinking that I'm sacrificing anything at all... I think of Jim Elliot and the ten Boom family and James Frasier... they lived lives of sacrifice. And I want to be like them in order to please the Lord who saved my soul from eternal punishment but I want Him to do everything and me to sit here... and do nothing. And I plead and beg for the easy way out, "Kill me now, Lord! Wouldn't it be easier for both of us?" And then I get mad and frustrated at my selfishness and sin and claim I hate it. But if I really did hate it so much wouldn't I stop sinning? Why can't I just stop? I say I want to stop but that can't be, because you do what you ultimately want to do, right? And I realize all over again that I am in desperate need of a Savior. I'm in desperate need of grace... and grace alone! If His love and grace were dependant on my works... I would die. So then it is based on faith. Do I believe that His grace is sufficient even when I actively participate in sin? How am I to know I'm being sanctified? I am prideful enough to say that I am a "better" person than the years before. But I say that it is all the work of the Holy Spirit so that is truthful boasting, right? But then I compare myself to Christ instead of to what I've been and, as I told my mom the other day, "That makes me depressed!" I am wicked. But is even that wrong thinking because the Holy Spirit is at work within me and the blood of Jesus Christ covers my sin even as He is intercedeing for me? ...And I compare myself to other people. If I just acted like so-and-so my life would be better and I wouldn't sin as much and I would have better relationships and I wouldn't make a fool out of myself as much I do and on and on and on... So it all goes back to grace. God is holy, holy, holy. How can I even pray to Him? How can I even ask to be cleansed? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that who ever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no man can boast" (Ephesian 2:8-9). So I must have faith that the blood of Jesus Christ covers all sin and that His promised Holy Spirit is at work and that He will finish that which He started and He will come in the end as King, just as He said. I believe this. And as Dr. Wong so wonderfully reminds me, "Faith is a gift of God... a means of enjoying grace..."

Do you ever think like this?