Lynn Green

Category: Religion / Church

  • Keep on Growing

    Keep on Growing

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    A few years ago, I had the opportunity to have a quiet retreat in a very special place:  The Western Desert of Egypt.  You might have heard some places described as a “thin place”.  It might be a particular church or property or even a region.  There is no doubt that the Western Desert is a thin place.

    That is, it is a place where the “veil” that separates us from the spiritual realm is very thin.  Another way to say it is that the Western Desert is a great place to seek God’s presence because He seems to be particularly near.

    That is because women and men have sought God in this region, sometimes in isolation and often in monasteries, for centuries.  They have lived lives totally dedicated to God and many have been martyred over the centuries as a result of the ebb and flow of anti-Christian sentiment.

    During my short retreat, I wrote three brief devotionals which will be posted over the next few days.

    DAY ONE

    From time to time I meet someone whose Christ-like character shines like a lighthouse from deep within.  Perhaps you also have met such a person.  I have found that I am drawn like a magnet to their presence that seems to exude love and warmth and sometimes, in spite of most difficult circumstances, a deep sense of contentment and shalom.  Along with being drawn to them, I feel a paradoxical sense of discomfort.  I fear that they can see right through my relatively shallow character and that I am in constant danger of being unmasked.

    More often than not, these godly individuals are not from our Western world, but are from a part of the world that is thought of as undeveloped.   They often come from a nation or region where the Church has been persecuted and they have suffered their share of pain.

    I think of a little Korean woman I met in China.  Jesus himself seemed to shine from her face and everything she said and did was flavored with godliness and grace.  She had spent about one third of her life in prison in both China and North Korea and yet she continued to fearlessly preach Christ in all circumstances.  In her presence, I felt like a spiritual pigmy.    

    Such an experience—and I’ve had several—provokes fundamental questions: is great spiritual maturity reserved only for those whose circumstances produce suffering?  Is it possible to experience sustained spiritual growth in a comfortable Western environment?  Is persecution and privation required for spiritual maturity? 

    Surely God does not discriminate between races or nationalities and has not abandoned us to a spiritual fate that is determined by where we happened to be born.  Rather, the scriptures are clear that he shows himself and draws near to those who seek him whole-heartedly.

    (Jer 29:13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.) 

    So, there must be hope for those of us who were born into a more comfortable life-style.  There must be a way for us to grow in Christ continuously.  That is my desire and I hope it is yours.

    Take some time to pray and tell God that you want spiritual growth and maturity.  Tell him that you long to have more intimate fellowship with him and that you will not shrink back, even if the price is very high.

    Lynn Green.

  • The Middle East: More Encouragement!

    The Middle East: More Encouragement!

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

     

    I try to stay in touch regularly with several friends in the Middle East.  Over recent years, and contrary to the usual news from the region, we have heard one good story after another.  These have strengthened my faith, so I want to share this one more widely:

    It was a cold wintry Monday morning in the church. 9 Syrians, 2 Palestinians, 1 Egyptian and a handful of YWAMers. We were gathered for our last class of the Shine Women’s Program. Shine is a biblically based women’s empowerment program produced by Hillsong Australia. For the last eight weeks we have been meeting together, looking at our value as women, our strength and our purpose in life. Rania, Nermin, Suhayr, Hayat, Muna, Martha, Lama, Tamara, Abiir, Sabriyya and Sabriin. Names and faces known by God, created by Him and loved by Him.

    Every week we were challenged by Truth and we saw change in the ladies lives. Today, at the final class, they shared what this program had meant to them. What we had meant to them. Hayat said that every week she would go back home after our class and share with her neighbor who was anxiously waiting for the next lesson. Hayat would share with her and she would cry, beginning to understand her worth in the eyes of God. Martha, shared that the course had changed the way she related to her children and her husband, that their whole household had changed. Sabriin shared that her husband was shocked at the change in her when she did not respond in anger anymore in the house, but waited and tried to understand him when they had a disagreement.

    Another lady said that she felt that she had been created a second time – that the revelations of who she was had changed the way she saw herself. Tamara who never left the house before this course said that she had courage now to go out and help her husband in their coffee shop, covering shifts when he could not work in order to bring in more income for her family. Two of the ladies said the course changed their world.

    God’s truth is TRUTH. All of these precious women were changed. They began to understand their worth in the eyes of God. Now we will do part two and meet them in their homes sharing the full Gospel message of their worth – that the God of the universe gave His only begotten Son to die for them, that they would know their eternal worth in His Kingdom. What an honor to partner with God and bring His truth to the marginalized and poor of this world. Thanks for being a part of all of this through your prayers and partnership,

    Lynn Green.

  • Pharaoh’s Scribe and Pope Benedict

    Pharaoh’s Scribe and Pope Benedict

    Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash.

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    Recently I had a visit with two of the co-founders of Compedia.  Compedia is the Israeli company that won the contract for the augmented reality and virtual reality presentations at the astounding Museum of the Bible in Washington DC.  Marti and I, along with our friend, John Peachey got to don the virtual reality headsets and experience a VR summary of the six days of creation.  I was impressed with the technology and hoped that, one day, every pupil and student in the world would get to experience the Bible in this way.

    Then they opened one of four Bible workbooks, three for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament.  These are “augmented reality” tools. They have pictures of significant objects, maps and other details from Bible times.  My eye fell on a photograph of a small Egyptian figurine that is held by the Louvre in Paris.  When I looked at it through my smartphone camera, via the Compedia app, the figure seemed to rise from the page and take on three dimensions.  It was captivating! 

    As the 3D figure “floated above the page” I could see digital icons surrounding it and by clicking on the icons I could find out more about the figure.  The text that was accessed via the icons explained that this figure was a representation of a scribe from the time of Moses.  He held a stylus in his hand; it was the sort of tool that was used to write on clay tablets, or perhaps on papyrus.

    HOW DOES THE POPE FIT INTO THIS STORY?

    As I examined the figure and learned more about it, I thought of Pope Benedict the 16th.  He was the Pope who immediately preceded the current Pope, Francis, and was the leading theologian for the Catholic Church for decades before he became Pope. 

    “So,” you might ask, “what was the connection?”  Stick with me here!

    In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars who came to be known as Higher Critics subjected the Bible to literary scrutiny that had been unacceptable in earlier centuries.  One of the conclusions they reached was that the first five books of the Bible, commonly known as the Books of Moses, could not have been written at the time of Moses, because literacy, as we know it today, did not exist at the time.  The Higher Critics advocated the idea that those first five books were written centuries after Moses but ascribed to him for the sake of greater authority.  But here I was in November of 2019 looking at the figure of a scribe writing, and that small, seated statue is dated to the time of Moses.

    Here’s where the Pope fits.  On the 12th of September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a scholarly paper at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and made a plea for holding faith and reason together.  He was deeply concerned about the idea that there is incompatibility between religious faith and reason and he lamented the tendency to  “exclude the question of God from reason”.

    FAITH DOES NOT SET ASIDE OUR ABILITY TO THINK

    In those decades when the Bible was under an onslaught of academics who were determined to disprove the reliability of scripture, many Christians responded by divorcing faith and reason.  I remember, rather painfully, asking my mother about how a loving and all-powerful God could co-exist with a world where there is so much suffering.  Her response was, “There are some things we should not think about.”  In other words, “Stop thinking and just have faith!”  That was not helpful!

    When the Pope made his famous speech, there was an uproar from Muslim scholars.  One of the reasons why they were so outraged is that their view of God, Allah, is that he is so transcendent that he is not bound to reason.  He can contradict himself and we must simply accept it.  Of course, that means that ordinary people can never find their way to him by the pathway of their own thinking; the “professionals” tell them what he demands.  When their words are irrational, we must not question; their view of faith is that we must simply accept how they interpret their scriptures. 

    HISTORICALLY, THE CHURCH AS ALSO BEEN GUILTY

    Of course, there was time when the Church (or, more accurately, the institution that claimed to be the legitimate Church) also advocated that only professional clergy could understand what God demands from human beings.  Those days are gone, thank God!  I have been so grateful to watch how the Roman Catholic Church has increasingly emphasized the reliability of scripture and the importance of every believer reading the Bible.

    Over the past 70 years, archaeologists have made huge progress in Israel, and Compedia have contractual agreement for access to over 5000 artefacts that have been uncovered during my lifetime.  Like the pharaonic scribe, those artefacts consistently strengthen the trustworthiness of the Biblical view of history and the Bible time-line.

    OUR INTELLECT IS SET FREE, AND THE RESULT IS A BETTER WORLD

    It is this marriage of reason and faith that makes Biblical Christianity unique.  We are commanded by Jesus to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength.”

    This way of thinking, unique to the Protestant Christian world has developed a way of living that is far from perfect, and yet it offers the most attractive way of living in the history of the world.  The flow of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers is from the Muslim world and other poorer parts of the world to the nations with Protestant Christian roots.  These nations have never been thoroughly Christian nations, but Protestant thought, which is informed by the Bible, and the marriage of reason and faith have resulted in a way of life that is freer, more respectful of all human beings, more innovative, more prosperous and offering greater opportunity than any society ever.

    That marriage of faith and reason starts with the rational acceptance that there is a God and we are created in His image.  We glean from reading the Bible, and we accept by faith, that the Bible is God’s inspired Word; but, that is not an irrational leap of faith.  It is a presupposition that is demonstrably true when we live by the truths we find in the Bible—starting with Jesus at the centre.  He is the perfect image of God and is “the way, the truth and the life”.

    THE POST-MODERN LEAP OF FAITH

    Much of the world where Protestant Christianity was in the ascendency for centuries has now turned to another way of thinking.  Most of our places of higher education start with the assumption that there is no God, or that if there is, he is irrelevant. From there they adopt some version of post-modern philosophy.   One outcome is that each person then decides for themselves what is true.  That is completely irrational, and no one can live a consistent life with that philosophy, but there are few other options once God is evicted from our thinking.  In fact, the only other options are other religions and they are not very attractive to the highly individualistic people of today.  Each post-modern person would like to tailor a set of beliefs for themselves.

    POST-MODERN THINKING ERODES THE MOST DESIRABLE SOCIETIES

    But we have a problem.  As we pursue that Godless path, life becomes less liveable.  Our set of values clashes with the values of other individuals and we resent any laws or cultural norms because they restrict our pursuit of being our own God.  The result is depression, self-harm, a rising suicide rate, identity problems including sexual dysphoria, and many forms of self-hatred.  At the level of society as a whole, any minority group can impose their views on all others provided that they shout loud and long, then accuse anyone who does not accept their values of having some of the many varieties of phobia.

    That little figurine of a scribe from the time of Moses is just one of countless confirmations of the veracity of the Bible and is one of the many finds that refute the Higher Critics of previous centuries. And that means that we really can “love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength”.  Thank God for that!

    I’m also grateful that Pope Benedict XVI had the courage to make a plea for more reason and rational thought in religion.  Thank God for that too!  

    We live in a world where each of us can discover truth for ourselves because it is there to be discovered, and the confirmation that something is true, is that it works for us and for others as we live it.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Believe Him and it will work!

    Lynn Green.

  • Christians Prayed and Now the Harvest is Ripe!

    Christians Prayed and Now the Harvest is Ripe!

    Photo by Kaboompics .com from Pexels

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    I was recently in Greece, on the island of Lesvos for a few days.  I wrote this on the flight home after a very encouraging visit, but first want to give some background.

    Afghanistan’s pain

    I went to Afghanistan during my first summer with YWAM and again the next year with Marti, just after we had married.  That was 1970 and 1971.  At the time, there was just one missionary family there, the saintly Dr. Christy Wilson and his wife Betty.  They were working quite freely with the blind, but no one was allowed to speak about the Christian faith to other Afghans.  As a result of their labours and their unceasing prayers, there were a few blind Afghan believers.

    Since then, the tribal conflicts in Afghanistan and the ruthlessness of the Taliban have been steadily driving millions of people out of the nation.  As a result, the majority of refugees in the Moira Camp, on Lesvos, are young men and boys from Afghanistan.  Our YWAM team and other missionaries are working amongst the refugees, so I joined them at a community centre adjacent to the camp, where 15000+ people are jammed into a camp designed for 2,500.

    An evening at the community centre

    We arrived in the early evening and worked to set up tables and chairs and make tea.  When we were ready and opened the doors, 80-100 men and boys poured through the doors. (The women are not usually allowed out of their tents and immediate surrounds.  That’s the nature of their oppressive culture.)  I greeted a few of them and was silently asking the Lord to whom I should speak, when a man I guessed to be in his late 20s came through the door with a younger girl.  I asked for an interpreter and Ali, an Iranian who gave his life to Jesus two years ago, volunteered to help me.  He spoke very good English and most of the Afghans spoke Farsi, the same language as Ali and most Iranians.

    We briefly introduced ourselves to one another and the man, Aref, confirmed what I had guessed, that the younger girl was his sister.  As I was wondering how to start a meaningful conversation, Aref explained, and Ali translated, that he had not come to debate or find out more about Christianity; he had worked next to an American military base for some time and a soldier had given him a Farsi Bible.  Aref had been reading it for two years and became convinced that Jesus is who he says he is in the Bible. He had come to find out what he had to do to become a Christian.

    A supernatural sign

    He went on to say that he had experienced God in a very unusual way the night before.  He had been reading his Bible, then finished and closed it, but “someone” opened it again.  After a short time, he closed it again, but it was opened again in the same way.  That happened three times and he knew God was speaking to him.  It is not unusual for the refugees to report supernatural signs.  As I asked him questions, it was clear that he had good understanding and was deeply convinced that he must make it official:  he was ready to make Jesus Lord, identify with him publicly and boldly witness to others.

    I led him in a prayer of repentance and faith, then prayed for him to be filled with the Spirit.  He was clearly deeply touched by the Holy Spirit and I knew that God had done what He wanted to in that moment.  Ali then told him where he could find fellowship and ongoing discipleship.

    You might wonder about his sister.  When it was obvious that Aref was ready to surrender to Jesus I turned and asked her, “what about you?”  She shyly answered that she was not ready yet but wanted to find out more.

    More new arrivals

    Aref and his sister left right after we finished praying for him, so Ali and I looked for others to talk to.  While we were looking over the crowd, two men saw us looking and waved us over to talk to them.  They were also Afghans and had just arrived a few days before.  Everyone there had made the long trek across part of Afghanistan, all of Iran and Turkey and then had paid people traffickers to get them across the few miles of Aegean Sea between Turkey and Mytilene, the main city on Lesvos.  (You may remember reading in Acts 20 that the ship the Apostle Paul was on docked at Mytilene nearly 2000 years ago.)  As we sat down with the two new arrivals, several other young men joined us.  They had been reading the New Testaments, Bibles and other Christian literature that were made available at the community centre and they had questions.  For another hour we answered questions from sincere and intelligent inquirers.  Afterwards we prayed for them and moved on to others, including an Iranian in his late teens who said, “I want to make it clear that I am no longer a Muslim and I want to know more about Christianity.”  Another rich conversation followed.

    Prayer ripens the harvest

    In 1991, I was with 17 YWAM leaders in the Sinai desert when the Holy Spirit challenged us to make ourselves available to His leading to reach the Muslim world.  At that time, it was very rare for a Muslim to become a Christian, but we held hands around a pyramid of stones we had built as a witness and committed ourselves to God’s purposes.  From the covenant we made, we initiated the 30 days of prayer during Ramadan; that is now a season of concerted prayer for Muslims with millions of Christians participating.  We also went on to make the Reconciliation Walk from Germany to Jerusalem and spoke to hundreds of thousands of Muslims, Jews and Eastern Christians, whose forefathers suffered at the hands of the Crusaders.

    So much has changed since then!  “The harvest is ripe”, and I would urge all Christians everywhere to ask the Lord if there is some way they can engage with the millions of refugees who have come to historically Christian nations.  There is also a great need and opportunity for believers to go to Lesvos, or Northern Iraq, or Jordan where there are of millions of refugees.  They are intensely aware that Muslims have been killing and displacing millions of other Muslims over recent years and doing so in the conviction that they are serving “pure Islam”.  It’s no wonder that such a very large number are looking for a better way of believing.

    More labourers needed!

    More could be said to explain the sins of the “Christian” world, our own wars and the differences between that and what Muslims are experiencing now, but that will have to be another time.  For now, I will finish by repeating the words of Jesus, “Pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send forth labourers…!”