Lynn Green

Tag: Middle East

  • Message to YWAM During the Covid-19 Crisis

    Message to YWAM During the Covid-19 Crisis

    Photo by T Steele 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.**

    (I read this teaching message from Martha during my last Facebook live-stream and several people wanted the written version, so here it is!)

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    What strange times we are living in. As the corona-virus crisis started, our YWAM community was confused on how to pray. The crisis brought up a lot of questions: Is this a judgment from God on the earth? Is this the devil’s schemes to destroy all of our “God Plans” this year? Do we repent for God’s wrath to be averted? Do we rebuke the Enemy and the virus in Jesus Name? More importantly, where is God in the midst of this, what is He doing and how do we respond?

    As we prayed for clarity, we realized that this virus started as a result of man’s rebellion to authority and ultimately to God’s laws. It most likely started in what they call a “wet market” in the city of Wuhan where there was illegal buying and selling of live wild animals to be used in traditional Chinese medicine practices. There are two animals in particular who carry forms of this virus; the bat and the pangolin (an almost extinct reptile like animal) – both bought and sold for their supposed “healing powers”. There are strict laws against this behavior in China – but this market was operating illegally. Many of the pandemics that we have experienced over the last half of a century have come out of Asia and from these illegal practices.

    As this virus has been unleashed on the earth – of course the Enemy is loving it! Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy and he is always attacking God’s agenda! But in the midst of this God is still on the throne! Psalm 93:3-4, “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted their voice; The floods have lifted up their pounding waves. More than the sounds of many waters, Than the mighty breakers of the sea, The Lord on high is mighty!” He is not caught unaware. He is EVER PRESENT and He is using this time for His purposes.

    So, what is GOD doing? And what is our response? I believe there is not just ONE thing, I think there are multiple things He is doing.  But, I wanted to submit to you FOUR THINGS that I believe He is doing and how we can respond in this time.

    1. A CALL TO REPENTANCE. It’s a time to repent as a human race for ignoring the laws of God and bringing destruction upon ourselves. Yes, the virus, but also in other areas where our nations have strayed from God and His Law: In my own country, the USA, since abortion was legalized in 1973, we have killed over 60 million babies. Globally we have experienced the war against the sanctity of marriage. In the West particularly, the homosexual agenda has succeeded in legalizing same sex marriage and pushed for the acceptance of transgender rights and gender fluidity. We have globally walked away from God and his Truths. This time is a wake-up call! And what about our own lives? This is a time to ask God: what is it in my own life that you want to put your finger on in this time? Where are the areas where I have personally strayed from your ways? It’s a time of heart searching and examination. A time of evaluation and pruning. He is cutting away the old ways and the diseased areas of our lives that new growth can come.

    As our YWAM Community began to take our position in repentance, the Lord used several Scriptures to guide us: Numbers 16:41-48 and 2 Chronicles 7:14.

    2. A CALL TO REST. A few years ago, I was reading in Matthew 24:38-39 where Jesus is teaching about the End Times and he says, “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away.” As I read this, a huge banner appeared in my mind stretching over this verse that said: The Power of Distraction! They were so busy with eating, drinking, getting married – the things of this life, that they missed the Kairos Moment of God!

    We get so busy, our lives are filled with meetings, schools, conferences, traveling… and even though we are doing all of these things for God, we can become so tired and lose the passion for which we started all those things. I think one thing God is doing in this time is saying, come away with me. Come to a time of rest. A time of quiet. A time of solitude.

    Solitude is one of the Spiritual Disciplines. We have been reading the Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. In the chapter on solitude he says, “Don’t you feel a tug, a yearning to sink down into the silence and solitude of God? Don’t you long for something more? Doesn’t every breath crave a deeper, fuller exposure to his Presence? It is the discipline of solitude that will open the door.”

    This time is an invitation to solitude, to rest, to re-calibrate of the rhythms of our lives.

    3. A CALL TO RESTORATION. I’m sure you’ve all read the articles about how this time is giving the earth a chance to heal. I’ve seen pictures of the Himalayan Mountains on Facebook. Apparently, they haven’t been seen this clearly in over 50 years. The canals in Venice are clear. The quality of air over our cities has improved drastically – our environment is healing.

    Restoration is happening in families. I read a testimony of a believing family in Wuhan. Their lives had become so busy, they hardly spent time together. The parents hardly knew their children. Then they were locked down for months together in the home and they got to know one another again. They had time to share deeply. They began to grow in love again – she said it was the best time their family had ever had.

    We are re-connecting with loved ones. FaceTime calls and Zoom have helped us connect with parents, friends and relatives. Marriages are being worked on! Being in quarantine brings up a lot of our weaknesses and deficits. We are face to face with all of our “stuff”! It’s a time to take a raw look at our relationships and to reconcile, to heal. God is using this time to heal relationships all over the world.

    4. A CALL TO READINESS. God spoke so many things over the year 2020 globally. It was to be a year of breakthrough, a year of acceleration for the Kingdom of God. And now, seemingly, this has come to a halt. I believe that God’s word is still true. This will be a year of Acceleration and a year of Breakthrough, but it looks different to what we thought… he is giving us time to get ready for a great harvest! In Darlene Cunningham’s message to us, she relayed the story of when they had to send all of the students home from the Kona Campus. She said as they sent the students home she was thinking, wait, this isn’t what’s supposed to happen, the waves are receding. But then she remembered that often as waves recede, they come back even stronger! A greater wave is coming after this!

    The Scripture that God has given our YWAM community in this time is the parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-10. The essence of the story is that the bridegroom WAS coming. It was a time of expectancy and waiting. It was a pause, a rest, an invitation to wait! Five did not bring enough oil, five did. Then the time of breakthrough happened, the bridegroom came! They got up to trim their lamps but five did not have enough oil – they weren’t ready. This time is an invitation to readiness. Trim your lamps, renew your resource of oil, tend to your inner life, let your roots go deeper, draw into the Lord, rid yourselves of all that keeps you away from Him. Call out those little foxes that are ruining the vineyard – get your lamps ready for the breakthrough that is coming.

    There is an invitation from the Lord in this hour. An invitation to repentance, rest, restoration and readiness. Take time to embrace the invitations. Make room in your schedules to respond. Let’s not miss this moment.

    Martha (working in the Middle East)

  • LIVE – Pruning Message and a Letter from the Middle East

    LIVE – Pruning Message and a Letter from the Middle East

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

  • An Egyptian Treasure

    An Egyptian Treasure

     

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

    As you probably know, Egypt is full of hidden treasure and archaeologists continue to make new finds.  Egypt has also held much treasure for me. What an unexpected discovery!  My fellowship with Egyptian Christians has enriched me so much.  One of those treasures was particularly well-disguised.

    It began with unwelcome news.

    I had convened a group of international leaders from Europe, the Middle East and Africa and we had decided to meet in Cairo initially and then make the 90 minute drive to a part of the Western Desert known as Wadi El Natrun.  We were being hosted by an Egyptian, who brought me unwelcome news on the first evening in Cairo.  Without asking me, he had invited a Coptic Orthodox monk (more accurately, a celibate priest), to deliver us a lecture on The History of Monasticism.  We had a full agenda for our few days together and I did not want to lose a couple of hours listening to a boring lecture.  But I couldn’t see a way to get out of it.

    Later that evening I saw a very slight man in a long black cassock entering the house and our host whispered to me; “That’s the man who will be speaking to us tomorrow.  He will need a couple of hours.”  My heart sank, even as I managed a weak smile.

    The next day we made the drive into the desert and found Dr. Atef, the man in the cassock, waiting for us.  The moment he began to speak God spoke to me and said; “This man will be a very important friend to you.”  As he spoke to us, it became like “water in a desert land” to my soul and spirit.

    In the years that followed he completed a Discipleship Training School in YWAM and became a faithful and faith-filled and perceptive intercessor for YWAM, for me and for my family.

    In the years that have followed, I have met him in a number of places around the world.  A couple of weeks ago I went to Phoenix, Arizona where he has lived for a few years and also where a growing number of people have gathered round him in a new monastic order.  I made the trip to Arizona just to spend a couple of hours a day for a few days with Dr. Atef.

    As usual, I came away challenged to grow more in Christ and encouraged by God’s love for me.  He gave me three primary teachings and the first one accompanies this article.  I hope and pray that you will also be challenged and encouraged.  Do take the time to dig for the treasure!

    Click on the link below to read the Dr. Atef notes Prayer Life.

    Prayer Life (Different Features)

  • Congregating in the Egyptian Desert

    Congregating in the Egyptian Desert

     

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

    CONGREGATING IN THE EGYPTIAN DESERT

    Why would two to three thousand people from dozens of nations gather in the Western desert of Egypt (between Cairo and Alexandria) just to worship and pray?  There were no guest speakers, and the very long sessions were mostly prayer and worship.  In fact at one point the whole group simply sang the name of Jesus (sounds like “Yassu” in Arabic) for nearly an hour.  Why would over 300 Chinese risk coming to the event, knowing they are likely to be questioned by the Police and possibly punished on their return?  Why would people pay their own way, then sit on buses travelling under armed guard from Cairo to the desert and back each day – a journey that took at least three hours?

    Described that way, it sounds like torture to me — especially the idea of being in a tent in the desert with the temperature approaching 40 degrees C.  But it wasn’t!  Something very powerful happened, of which I can only give you a glimpse.  In fact trying to describe this event reminds me of the Apostle Paul’s phrase that we “see through a glass darkly”. 

    THE COMPLEMENTARY BODY

    Perhaps it helps to think firstly about who we are.  We are all created as individuals, and we differ immensely.  Some of us are very logical and concrete and linear in the way we think and live – I am one of those.  Others are deeply moved by symbolic gestures, visions and dreams or connections that remind them of scripture passages.  This kind of gathering tends to attract more of the people who get visions and dreams and see great significance in what sometimes looks like coincidences to me.  I need these people, and they need me.  Together we represent body, as Paul writes in I Corinthians 12, and we can safely discern what God is saying and doing – at least as much as He wants us to .  But, there will always be mysteries.

    ANCIENT “GODS” IN MODERN TIMES

    Let me back up a bit, though.  It didn’t start in the Western desert.  About ninety of us started in Aswan, in the region of Egypt where there were the most temples, obelisks and symbols of the ancient Egyptian gods.  These “gods” manifest themselves right through human history, and those who seek spiritual power often gravitate back to the symbols that appeared in Egypt about 5000 years ago.  I think especially of the sun god Ra.  Here are some obvious illustrations:  As I understand it, the family of the Japanese Emperor make a covenant with the sun god and that has a direct connection to their flag and national symbol of the rising sun. 

    That symbol appears in many other nations too, including Korea.  Freemasons and others have recognised the power in the symbols of ancient Egypt, so a couple of centuries ago they exported the obelisks from the Luxor region to the financial capitals of the world at that time.  These obelisks still stand in London, Rome (which has eight), Paris and New York; in fact about 25 nations have obelisks in their capital cities. These were all very important symbols of prosperity in the eyes of Freemasons, and so a huge amount of effort was put into dismantling, transporting and reassembling them all across the world.

    A SIGN TO US?

    To the modern mind symbols like that often don’t make immediate sense, and yet we see the significance of symbols throughout the Scriptures.  A central command of the Ten Commandments that God gave is that we should have no idols, and when you stop and think about the Biblical stories they are full of physical objects and acts that seemed to have direct spiritual power.  I am deeply convinced that some material objects represent a direct connection to spiritual power.  Interestingly, on the first day we began to worship in Aswan, with a number of Japanese believers present, a recently-erected 40 ton golden statue fell face downward in Okinawa.  It was exactly like the story of Dagon in Judges 16.  If you do a google search you can see a picture of it.  The statue was 38 metres high (125 feet).

    Here is what I think was going on both in Aswan and in the Western desert.  Firstly, Egypt is a spiritual “mother” nation, and is the source of historical spiritual power, but can also be a mother of nations for blessing.  We gathered in Egypt because we were convinced that God had said to do so, but gathering in Egypt alone does not give you power.  What gives power is when people come together across the usual social divides:  those can be national, racial, cultural, linguistic, economic or gender.  The list could go on and on, and has to include age.  I have been in many of these prayer and worship gatherings now, and the most notable characteristic of them is family affection.  When God’s people come together and bridge all the usual divides which cause conflict, then we fulfill the condition for exercising the authority that Paul describes in Ephesians 1 and elsewhere, when he says “we are seated with Christ … far above all principalities and powers”. 

    ARE WE UNDER OR OVER?

    We can get used to operating under the spiritual powers, and the divisions, suspicion, fear and even violence that they foster between different groups.  But the Body of Christ is called to oneness and interdependence across all these divides.  From that place we have the authority that the Bible describes. Sadly, we too rarely rise to that high calling of authority.

    So that is what we did in Egypt.  We let the Holy Spirit lead without a pre-planned agenda, and we ended up with a sense of God speaking into various nations, including China, Japan and Korea, but also with a day-long emphasis on the entire continent of Africa.

    I have to add one thing, otherwise these events could appear to have no direct application.  The Lord did bring a lot of encouragement to the Egyptians, who have experienced great discouragement and despondency, especially in the last decade or so. The Christians there are discriminated against, and the nation itself has experienced one huge setback after another. 

    So there were many words of encouragement to the Egyptians, but it was not only that.  On the second to last day, a soft-spoken Sudanese pastor stood to describe how much racial discrimination he had experienced at the hands of Egyptians, including the Christians.  It exposed another divide that God wanted us to close.  The Egyptian response was deep humility, worship, repentance, and asking forgiveness, not only of the Sudanese who were there but all the Africans, as they realised that they had discriminated on the basis of skin colour.

    Throughout the four days, we did not seek to address any of the spiritual forces, but we focussed on worshipping Jesus. As we did so some of these issues of division were dealt with indirectly and, I believe, the kingdom of darkness were dealt a mighty blow.

    The principalities and powers are forces of division, fear, hatred, and violence—all towards the end that the image of God would be eradicated from the earth.  However during a few days in the deserts of Egypt under a burning sun, we bridged  many of the divisions, and it seemed that God smiled—then He achieved some of His purposes all over the earth because a group of His people really did act as His body with Jesus as the Head.

    Lynn Green.