**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**
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Guidance, Suffering and Death
**This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**
On a recent global day of prayer, I had to get a visa from the Consulate for India in London. I was so sorry to miss prayer with our community at Highfield Oval but found a quiet garden along the bank of the River Thames in central London.
As I walked and prayed, I thought about those YWAMers who have died over the years and the fact that more will lay down their lives in days to come. I also began to grapple with thoughts that are hard to put into words, but I suspect others have similar thoughts.
How should we view suffering and death in YWAM? Is there a basis for thinking this is the price we pay for taking the gospel to the nations? Are those who have died martyrs for the gospel? Or are some of them just tragic accidents?
Many of our deaths have been due to traffic accidents and others have been from the most common fatal illnesses. As I walked and prayed in the garden, I came upon a memorial to William Tyndale and this is what it says:
WILLIAM TYNDALE
FIRST TRANSLATER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT INTO ENGLISH FROM THE GREEK. BORN A.D. 1484, DIED A MARTYR AT VILVORDE IN BELGIUM A.D. 1536.
“THY WORD IS A LAMP UNTO MY FEET AND A LIGHT TO MY PATH” – “THE ENTRANCE OF THY WORDS GIVETH LIFE” PSALM CXIX 105,130
“AND THIS IS THE REWARD THAT GOD HATH GIVEN TO US, ETERNAL LIFE.” I JOHN V 11.
THE LAST WORDS OF WILLIAM TYNDALE WERE, “LORD OPEN THE KING OF ENGLAND’S EYES.” WITHIN A YEAR AFTERWARDS A BIBLE WAS PLACED IN EVERY PARISH CHURCH BY THE KING’S COMMAND.
Tyndale is reconised as one of the great martyrs in Christian history, but I wondered if his contemporaries thought that way? How did his family feel? The idea of having the scriptures available in the common language was scandalous at that time and heavily apposed by the clergy throughout Europe. In 1536 he was convicted of heresy, strangled and his body burned.
With 500 years of hindsight, we have no doubt that he was a martyr. But what about the so-called accident or the fatal illness contracted on the mission field? After grappling with this in prayer and thought, I am convinced that all whose lives comes to a premature end while they are in the course of obeying Jesus as missionaries can be considered to have given their lives for the sake of the gospel.
As YWAM leaders we need to dig into this question still further. What do we think about those who might have taken unnecessary risks? For example, the person who ventures into the surf knowing they can’t swim very well, or the one who takes a mode of transportation that is known to be extremely dangerous, or the one who is habitually a dangerous driver. When a YWAMer or any Christian worker loses their life under that sort of circumstance it is particularly difficult. We have a responsibility to do all we can to protect our workers from unnecessary risk and yet it is so easy to become fearful and over controlling in our efforts to protect our staff and especially our students.
Many years ago, I was in Cyprus when I received a phone call saying that a newly married Swedish couple who were students on our DTS had been kidnapped in Dagestan. When I heard that news, I was both fearful and angry. To me, it was indefensible that any YWAM leader would allow DTS students to go on outreach in a country about which it was said, “the largest single source of foreign currency is ransoms from kidnappings”.
When I phoned leaders who were nearer the situation I began to learn a remarkable story about a young couple who had been interceding for Dagestan for many years, and whose parents and home Church had sent them to the DTS with the expectation that they would go to Dagestan, and were themselves convinced that whatever happened to them in that country, they had gone there in direct obedience to God.
As it turned out they spent several months in captivity but were remarkably strengthen by the power of the Holy Spirit and have a powerful testimony to tell. What I felt was an unacceptable risk was, in reality, detailed obedience to God’s leading.
That story illustrates the only solution to our dilemma. We must be obedient servants. As we go into all the world to preach the gospel there will be more illness and more lives will be laid down. We are praying for more protective cover from heaven and we are not encouraging anyone to take risks just for the sake of adventure. But we will not shrink back from the challenging parts of the world. Those who are walking in obedience and lay down their lives are following in the steps of the generations of martyrs.
As we consider this subject it provokes us not only to pray for more protective cover from heaven, but also that we might become more sensitive to God’s voice. One of YWAM’s cornerstone teachings is that God speaks, and His people hear His voice. It was no accident that the Lord led Loren to write the first YWAM book on that subject, “Is that really you, God?”. Sometimes, though, we get so focused on strategies, travel advisories from various embassies and foreign offices, the cost of tickets and other practical issues that we squeeze out God’s voice and replace it with our own thinking. God has deeply convicted me of that over the past couple of years and I am on a journey to increase my sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
It has been like retracing my first couple of years with YWAM except I have to do it at a deeper level with more repentance and brokenness. I realize that I have let my experience and wisdom replace God’s voice in far too many of my decisions. Of course, it is obvious that no matter how much I learn or how much I study the word of God and understand His ways I will never have a fraction of God’s insight and knowledge. So, it always makes sense to listen to Him and “lean not to my own understanding”.
I was much more determined to hear from God when I was just starting in service overseas because I constantly felt out of my depth, had no experience and often no one else to turn to for counsel, but with experienced wise counselors and an increasing knowledge of God’s word I became more self-reliant. Now I have to repent of that pride very regularly and break old habits that are deeply entrenched.
There is another reason why I have strayed away from the simple path of hearing and obeying. All of us know that the word of the Lord is not nearly as clear to us as it seems to be to some of the Biblical characters, who recorded extensive dialog with God. It is easy to make mistakes about what God is saying and that forces us to walk in deep humility. Of course, our pride doesn’t like that, so soon we stop asking God and begin to believe that He does not speak as clearly as He used to speak to His people. Or perhaps we think for some reason that He doesn’t speak clearly to me.
I used to have all kinds of reasons why I thought God did not speak as clearly to me as He does to some people. In the end I see all those as a system of unbelief, so I have found myself repenting almost daily of unbelief as well as pride.
I am happy to report that I am hearing God more clearly then I’ve heard for many years and our various leadership gathering are increasingly dependant upon listening to God together and taking seriously each person’s understanding of what God is saying.
I am convinced that throughout YWAM we need to return to this cornerstone of God’s ways. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me”.
So, to sum up I believe we will see more protection and authority in the battle to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. As we have prayed and continue to increase our prayer cover, we will become more effective and less vulnerable. But there will still be suffering and there will still be martyrs in the course of the gospel. However, as we return to our deep commitment to listen and obey, we can share in the comfort as the apostle Peter wrote to the early Church in the midst of its suffering,
“Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right”. 1 Peter 4:19 (NASB)
Lynn Green.
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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.
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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.
Lynn Green 