Playing or Praying?

Col 4:2-6 shows us today the importance of our prayer life and our public life, or as I put it on Sunday, our private life and public life. One of the most neglected areas today is prayer. Col 4:2 shows we should have persistence, passion, and the right position in our prayers. We are to “continue in prayer” or be persistent. Our prayer life should not be on Monday, then on Thursday and then again Saturday, if we have time. It should be on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It should be persistent. It should be one of the most important parts of your day, every day! Continue in prayer!

The verse also said to “watch in the same”, or have passion in our prayers. If the devil cannot hinder you from being persistent in your prayer time, he will switch tactics. He will then attack how you pray. Many times we get the mechanical side down pat and we are persistent, but our hearts are not in it. During the “prayer time” our mind wanders from item to item. We spend 30 minutes to an hour with many vain thoughts during our “prayer time”. This is why we need to “watch in the same”. The Jews of old believed when you prayed, if your heart was not in it, then you never really prayed. I believe this to be true. When we pray we should pray with passion, with our heart staying focused on the Almighty God! We should leave the world we are in and go before His throne seeking Him! If we have the persistence without the passion we are wasting our time.

Next, verse 2 teaches the importance of having the right position when we pray. No I am not talking about kneeling or standing, eyes open or shut. I am talking about an attitude. The verse teaches we need the attitude of thankfulness when we pray. Thankfulness will produce at least two results that are keys to getting your prayers answered. First, it will produce humbleness. An attitude of thankfulness shows we do not come before God, demanding He answer us because of how great we are. God does not work for us, and just wait around for us to command Him. Some teaching on prayer almost treats God like He is some genie in a bottle, just waiting for us to rub it the right way and poof, He gives us three wishes. We come before Him humbly, ever so thankful he actually hears us! Secondly, it shows our faith in God. When we are thankful to Him, we recognize it is God who WILL hear our prayers and answer them. We also know the prayers He has answered already, were not answered because of some external circumstance, but because of God. Without faith we cannot please God (Heb 11:6), so this component is very important as we come to God in prayer.

Once we get our private life strong, it will greatly aid in our public life, which perhaps I will write about later.

I am still preaching through the book of Colossians. The first two chapters deal with important doctrinally truths: 1) Christ is to be preeminent 2) we are complete in Christ; we do not legalism, rituals, etc... because, for the Christian, He has forgiven all our sin. (So many today do not understand we are complete in Christ. I need no other remedy for my sin.)

The next two chapters show us how the truths in the first two chapters should change our life. Lets just look at the first couple from Col 3:1-4:

1) It should change what we are seeking (“Seek those which are above”)
2) It should change what we are thinking (“Set your affections on things above”)
3) It should change what we are hoping for (we shall “appear with Him in glory”)

Christians today seem to show such little change after their “conversion”. It seems many still desire things of this world, and dwell on this life. We should be seeking those things which are above and truly living for God, and not just in word but in deed. Many do not want the change, then in truth they do not want Christ.


What are you seeking for this year Christian? What are you thinking of even now for this New Year? May Christ be what we seek, think and hope for in this New Year!

Divine Appointment

My wife and I decided to travel out for our anniversary. It was our 20th wedding anniversary! (I met her in high school and we have been together ever since. I am thankful for the wife God has given me. I look forward to the next 20 years with her.) We were going to go to Kavieng for three days, but that did not work out. I decided to head to Kokopo on the island of New Britain. Kokopo is about a 2 ½ hour boat ride away. Kokopo has a few nice places to stay there that are very western. As we were getting on the small banana boat, a Chinese man also got on the boat. This man works in Kavieng, and missed his plane, so he had to drive five hours south to get on this boat and head to Kokopo. His English was very good. We began talking about differences between America and China. (How thankful we Americans should be for the country God has given us!) I turned the conversation to the gospel. I learned this man had never attended any church of any sort. I asked him how he believed the world came into existence. He believed in atheistic evolution. He said he had heard of the Bible and that some were available in China. He had heard about some stories from it, but what he had heard had been portrayed in a fanciful light, as if it could not possibly be true. He asked me to explain some of them. I did and he listened very intently with great interest. I then started in Genesis and went through the Bible explaining the need for a Savior. As I began to teach him of Jesus Christ, I was hoping he would see his need for the Son of God. He was still listening intently and asking searching questions. I covered the gospel with him, explaining what it meant for him, that this man who died 2,000 years ago was his only hope. (Most church going people today do not have a clue and how the death of Christ actually helps them. This is evident by all the false doctrines. For example, salvation is in the church, or in good works, or in the waters of baptism, etc.) This man did not make a profession of faith during our two hour conversation, but the seed was planted on what appeared to be good ground.

We have agreed to meet again in a few weeks to talk and play basketball. (I will probably be beat by a shorter Chinese man, at my country’s own sport! He plays every day, and I have not played in years!) I explained to him how the fact he missed his plane was not a coincidence, but of the Lord, a divine appointment! I knew when he told me his missed his plane, the Lord had arranged this time. I truly found it amazing when I thought about the two different worlds both of us call home, and yet here we were in this ever so remote place, which neither of us grew up in, and God put us together. I found it no less amazing than Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch. This, too, was put together by the Holy Spirit of God! Be prepared every day, Christian, as you never know who the Lord will put in your path. Do not think those you meet are just by chance. There is an Almighty God at work, and we need to trust Him!

You never know when God will give the increase

I received a short email a few weeks back that was amazing. The person who emailed me, I have not heard from in over 20 years. We went to High School together. Here is the email:

Subject: Awesome God

You were right. Saved at age 31. Thought you'd like to know. Sorry for being belligerent to you in High School. Will you forgive me?


Wow! Amen!
Our responsibility is to plant the seed faithfully. You never know when God will give the increase! I have since emailed this person and he informed me that he was given the book, The Case for Christ and that shortly after reading that book he made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

We all need to stay faithful witnessing and living for the Lord. You never know who is watching and listening, but rest assured people are watching!!

The Face of Missions

The man, on the left, in this photo represents millions across the world. I first met him just a few weeks ago, on Sunday, February 22, 2009. I had just finished preaching two services in the village of Kabanut. Kabanut village was the only village on the island with an organized Baptist church, until 2007. It then was also the only one with an ordained national pastor, Pastor Wilson. The village sits on the west coast of our island, and the church has about 35 members. The village itself, I estimate, has around 400 in population. Pastor Wilson asked to me come and preach for them on February 22. We had a very good meeting with many visitors from the village. I did not count how many people were there, but it must have been close to 100, so 20% to 25% of the village. After the services, I was going around talking to different people. I noticed this man sitting off to the side and I went over and began talking with him. I am not sure if he even attended the service. I know his wife did, as he told me she did. During the course of our conversation, I asked him, “Wanem samting i pasim yu long putim bilip bilong yu long Jisas Kraist?” I basically asked him, what is hindering you from putting your faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour? He told, “mi no gat wanpela man i bin soim mi dispel rot . Mi no save wanem samting mi gat nid long mekim. “ He told me, No one has ever showed me what I need to do. I do not know what to do. This was a man who had never heard the gospel before. Yes, he had heard the name Jesus Christ, but he had never been shown God’s plan for man’s redemption from the Bible.

I then went into the gospel with this man. As I talked with him, he seemed to believe God could not help him. He believed his sin was too great. You see, this man killed his little sister. His sister at the time was around three years old. He said he was drunk, (Isn’t alcohol wonderful!) and he threw a bottle of beer. The bottle hit his sister’s head and she died from her injury. He spent four years and six months in a New Guinea prison for manslaughter. I explained to him how the death of Christ did, in fact, reach all of his sins. We talked for a while and when I was finished, he told me he now wanted to put his faith in Christ. He bowed his head, called on the Lord, and put his faith in Christ! The man looked up with a great smile. This was the first time during our conversation I had seen him smile!

Here was a man who was about 35 years old, and never heard the gospel. This was a man who, because of the magnitude of his sin, did not think God could even help him. There are millions just like him across this world, waiting for some one to come and tell them the truth of God’s redemption for mankind. It is true in New Guinea, in America, in China, in Korea, India, in Germany, in Poland, in Mexico, in France, etc…. This is the reason for missions!

What are you willing to pay?

In my reading a few days ago, I read this verse, (2 Samuel 24:24) “And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.”

Is not the opposite of David’s attitude true in so many of us today? We do not want our service to God to cost us anything. If we were in David’s position, I wonder how many of us would say, “Boy, did the Lord bless, I did not have to pay anything for the oxen for the sacrifice, I did not have to pay for the instruments, or the threshing floor! God is so good!” We do not want our service to cost us anything! We want the path of least resistance. Many today find it to much to attend church faithfully, and yet that is nothing more than a baby step. We want to be counted as servants of God, but not at any cost, or very little cost. After all, we need to be culturally relevant.
Too often when the Lord begins to change our life, we put the brakes on. We decide this is costing us too much. We fail to see how much it cost God to purchase us! How selfish we are today. If you do not want your service to cost you anything, there are many churches out there where you will fit right in. They cater to every need you have. They are “seeker friendly.” For them is not about God, it is about you. However, as I study the churches of the New Testament, I have failed to find a “seeker friendly” church. I see churches which heeded the teaching of Jesus concerning the high cost of discipleship, (Matthew 16:24, Luke 14:26, 27). A life where Christ is preeminent and not you! (Phil 3:1-8) Oh, how we need to get over ourselves and focus on God. Life is not about us it is about God!



(This is a double post on the blog. I am making changes and testing formats.)

What are you willing to pay?

In my reading a few days ago, I read this verse, (2 Samuel 24:24) “And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.”

Is not the opposite of David’s attitude true in so many of us today? We do not want our service to God to cost us anything. If we were in David’s position, I wonder how many of us would say, “Boy, did the Lord bless, I did not have to pay anything for the oxen for the sacrifice, I did not have to pay for the instruments, or the threshing floor! God is so good!” We do not want our service to cost us anything! We want the path of least resistance. Many today find it to much to attend church faithfully, and yet that is nothing more than a baby step. We want to be counted as servants of God, but not at any cost, or very little cost. After all, we need to be culturally relevant.
Too often when the Lord begins to change our life, we put the brakes on. We decide this is costing us too much. We fail to see how much it cost God to purchase us! How selfish we are today. If you do not want your service to cost you anything, there are many churches out there where you will fit right in. They cater to every need you have. They are “seeker friendly.” For them is not about God, it is about you. However, as I study the churches of the New Testament, I have failed to find a “seeker friendly” church. I see churches which heeded the teaching of Jesus concerning the high cost of discipleship, (Matthew 16:24, Luke 14:26, 27). A life where Christ is preeminent and not you! (Phil 3:1-8) Oh, how we need to get over ourselves and focus on God. Life is not about us it is about God!