Lynn Green

Category: Spirituality

  • Whose Body?

    Whose Body?

     

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

    Women’s rights and abortion are in the news every day again.  Women have fought hard to gain equal rights and authority over their bodies without being restricted by unreasonable laws–laws that have been made by legislators who are predominately male.

    The line between government responsibilities and individual rights will be argued over as long as their are people on this earth.  It is a VERY important subject with almost infinite complexities and consequences.  Let the heated debates continue; but let’s not argue from unsustainable assumptions.

    As you might have seen, President Trump (are you used to that yet?) signed  an executive order – known as the global gag rule – which takes US foreign aid policy a large step away from any association with resourcing abortions, prohibiting organisations that receive US family planning assistance from using non-US funding to provide abortion services, information, counselling or referrals.

    The government of the Netherlands moved immediately to neutralize the impact of the new US policy.  Lilianne Ploumen, a Dutch minister, said it would set up “a well-financed fund” to allow other governments, businesses and charities to donate.  The Netherlands would do everything in its power to help women “remain in control of their own bodies”, she said.

    Absolutely!  We should all have the right to be in control of our own bodies.  Sometimes, though what we decide to do with our bodies endangers others.  We have laws against driving while under the influence of alcohol because when we use our authority over own bodies to drink and then drive, we threaten the well being of others.  So, the DUI laws have to be there to protect others from our poor judgment.

    If the contents of a woman’s womb is just tissue, then there should be no laws pertaining to abortion.  On the other hand, if the “tissue” is actually a person, then the law should protect that person from the choices of another person.  One of the main aims of good law and law enforcement is the protection of the weak from the choices of the more powerful.

    So, let’s stop debating whether or not a woman should have control over her own body.  Rather, let’s think more deeply about whether or not she is carrying another person who could have their lives destroyed when they are at their most vulnerable.

    Is it a person in the womb when he or she could theoretically survive outside the womb?  If so, when is that?  With advances in the care of premature babies, that number keeps dropping.  So does that mean they used to be a person at 30 or 32 weeks after fertilization and now they are a person at 20 or 21 weeks?

    But isn’t that test of “viability” just random?  We know enough of what goes on during the period of gestation to understand that he or she responds to stimuli and can feel pain much earlier than 20 weeks.  So, where do we draw the line and say that the product of fertilization is a person?

    Geneticists are now clear that all the DNA of the “person to come” is in place within hours of a sperm piercing an egg.  Height, color of hair, structure of intellect, major factors of personality are all there.  So is it not true that a person comes into being very shortly after fertilization?  Is it not true that if we attempt to identify any other point, is will just be arbitrary?  Laws based upon arbitrary decisions are not good laws.

    Some speakers at the women’s gathering in DC recently referred to very touching stories of women whose lives were at risk if they carried their baby to full term.  These cases occur, but they are rare.  Surely laws, blunt as they are, can be drawn up in such a way that they do not requires a woman to sacrifice her own life to bring a baby into the world–though some do.  Law cannot dictate that kind of sacrifice, but neither can law be based upon unusual exceptions, rather it has to be constructed so that it makes room for the exceptions but does not permit the strong to destroy the weak for the sake of economics or convenience or emotional grounds.

    It used to be widely accepted that the tissue in the womb was a person.  The facts continue to support that perception.  But rapid cultural values shifts have taken place and we have begun to believe, against the mounting evidence, that the only person with any rights in this matter is the woman and that she is just hosting impersonal tissue.

    So let’s quit debating this subject on unsupportable assumptions.  If we want to eliminate another person for the sake of the more powerful person, let’s just say that.  Then let’s see if we can live with it.

  • Praying for Growth

    Praying for Growth

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

     

    YWAM leader Lynn Green tells about prophetic messages YWAM has received about growth and explains how viewers can pray for growth during YWAM’s monthly prayer focus, which is called The Invitation. To receive the prayer info by email, please go to http://ywam.org, find the “Stay Connected” box, and sign up.

  • THE PARTYING MESSIAH

    THE PARTYING MESSIAH

     

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

    So, I am fasting for a few days.

    I want to see some breakthroughs in my personal life and in some ministries I am responsible for, so I am fasting.  Coincidentally, my New Testament reading today was in Matthew 11 where Jesus refers to the reputation of John the Baptist contrasted that with what people were saying about him.  I like the way it is stated in The Message.  Jesus said,

    “John came fasting and they called him crazy.  I came feasting and they called me a lush, a friend of the riffraff.”

    What if Jesus had lived like John?  I think the world would be a different place.  If he had been an ascetic, like John, Christianity would be focussed on seeking God’s approval via self-denial and hardship.  Of course, there have been those Christians who pursued lives of great sacrifice and self-denial.  One of my favourite sites during the Reconciliation Walk was the ruins of the monastery of St Simeon the Stylite in Syria.  (I wonder if it has been destroyed by ISIS.)  He denied himself to an extreme; he lived on top of a fifty-foot-high pillar for 36 years and was reported to have stood on the top of the pillar, without eating or drinking or sitting down, for the entire duration of lent every year.  But if we all focussed on such extreme austerity and hardship, there would be few, if any followers of Jesus today.

    Self –denial was not a significant part of my church background, but when I first joined YWAM, several of our teachers at the School of Evangelism recommended fasting as one of the means of grace towards spiritual growth.  One of those, Arthur Wallis, wrote a classic on fasting entitled, “God’s Chosen Fast”, taken from Isaiah 58.  I was inspired to begin to fast from time to time.  At one point, a friend and I decided to go on a fasting retreat for ten days.  In all of human history, no period of ten days has passed so slowly!  We would rise early, read our Bibles and have our personal prayer times, then get together for worship, then go for a prayer walk, then talk for a while then look at the clock—we had just managed to get to mid-morning!  Time crawled.

    If you feel that the pace of life is too hectic and the days, weeks, months and years are whizzing by, try taking a fasting retreat.  You will feel you have all the time in the world!

    They called Jesus a lush, a party man, a heavy drinker and eater.  Don’t you find that amazing?  John the Baptist lived in the desert and wore rough uncomfortable clothes and existed on locusts and honey.  (I could do the honey, but haven’t tried locusts yet and have no plans to.)   AND he was powerfully anointed.  So we might expect Jesus to adopt the same life-style, but he didn’t.  Time and again, we read in the gospels that Jesus was at a feast or a party.

    That is not to say he was a stranger to fasting.  He prepared the way for his ministry by first being baptized and then the Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness where he fasted for 40 days and nights.  Then he first began to demonstrate who he was by attending a wedding reception and helping out the host by transforming drinking water into the finest wine.  So what can we conclude from these contrasts?  That God blesses a life lived in obedience and that He has unique purposes for each life and, when it comes to sacrifice and hardship, there is a wide spectrum of callings and grace.

    So why fast, and what do we mean when we use the term?  When I first learned about fasting, I understood it to mean that I should stop eating any food, but I could drink water.  Later I learned that there are different kinds of fasts with varying degrees of sacrifice.  Some people fast sugar, or other treats.  Sometimes we speak of the “Daniel fast”, which means eating only vegetables and drinking water.

    I think fasting has a few purposes and benefits. Firstly, it strengthens our own will and self-discipline.  To many modern people that seems a strange idea, but the ability to deny ourselves is a vital part of becoming all that we can be.  Fasting is also about sacrifice and it has often been said that “sacrifice precedes the Glory.”  If we want more of God in our lives, then sacrifice is one of the paths to more.  We also fast to promote the growth of our spiritual capacity and abilities.  The scriptures speak of “crucifying ourselves” so that Christ can live in us and that means, in part, supressing physical desires to increase spiritual desire.

    I have a friend who fasts all food and water until 5 p.m. each day for five days a week. Before I met him,  I would have considered that to be too extreme, but this man’s life demonstrates that it is his calling and he has grace for it.  He has an intimacy with God that is amazing and I have no doubt that the fasting has been an essential part of developing that closeness with his Father in heaven.

    But not many of us are called to that kind of life.  However, all of us should be acquainted with the benefits of sacrifice and fasting is an important way of choosing to embrace sacrifice.

    In another place in the gospels, people were questioning Jesus and the life-style he and his disciples were leading.  They pointed out that John’s disciples fasted but his followers didn’t.  This was his reply,  “Do wedding guests mourn while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

    He has been taken—for the time being—so we fast.

  • A Surprising Introduction in Cairo

    A Surprising Introduction in Cairo

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

    About 15 years ago I convened a meeting of missionary leaders from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  Cairo seemed a good place to meet and a friend there offered to take care of the logistics.  When I arrived everything seemed to be in order; we gathered at a flat in Cairo and from there were due to travel to the Western Desert area where there was a prayer centre awaiting our arrival. Then there was a knock on the door and our host hastily explained that he had invited a Coptic Orthodox Monk to speak to us on the history of monasticism.  I was so irritated!!  This was my meeting and I had not asked for a guest speaker!  We had many issues to discuss and to pray about; how dare he take precious time from us without asking!

    I think I managed to conceal my irritation, although my wife, who knows me best could see through my façade.

    I said hello to the “monk”, actually a Coptic Celibate Priest, though I am still not sure I understand the difference.  He was a very slight man—probably not more than five feet tall and very thin.  His black cassock, which reached to the floor, made him look even smaller; his voice was quiet and rather high pitched.  In addition, his accent was pronounced so I had to strain to understand him.  I did not look forward to listening to this man who seemed to be from another world.  My host explained that he had spent many years of his life in seclusion and that he ate and slept very little because he gave himself to prayer.  My private thoughts were that we had only one thing in common—we were both human beings.

    The next day we made the trip to the Western Desert and got settled into our very basic accommodation, then gathered for this man to speak to us.  When he opened his mouth the Holy Spirit spoke to me, even before he finished his first few sentences.  Deep in my spirit, I knew that this man would become very important in my life; it felt as though God had joined my spirit to his at some deep level.  Amazingly I later learned that he felt the same.

    So it has proven to be.  Most of us who know him call him Dr. Atef.  His life and his life-message is about continually growing closer to Jesus and becoming more like him.

    I need that message more and more.  It seems to me that spiritual growth, at every stage of life, is the foundation upon which all else rests.  I am currently reading another set of teaching notes by Dr. Atef; Spiritual Growth is the title and he has urged me to focus more of my own teaching on the subject, so the articles that will follow will draw on some of what he has taught me in recent years and also will draw from the rich heritage I have been privileged to have.  Some of the articles will be about subjects the earliest days in ministry, when I attended a School of Evangelism in Switzerland in 1969-70.  My life was transformed through the outstanding teaching and example of men and women of God during that year.  Others will arise from experiences in this much later phase of life.  Whether we are new Christians or living in our sixth or seventh decade of following Jesus, we need constant reminders about the essentials of spiritual growth.

    The next post will be about an overused word.  Integrity.  Perhaps you can think about that subject with the help of a great quote I read recently,

    “Persons have integrity when their inner being is transfused by harmony; when their decisions and actions flow from their honest judgment; when they faithfully pursue the values that they comprehend as means to their perfection.”