August 30th, 2010 by Kristi Stephens

You probably know by now that I love the ministry of Women at Risk, International. They were the focus of our Redeemed series about human trafficking, and several months ago we banded together to help them drill wells for widows in Bangladesh!

Today Becky MacDonald, the president of WAR, sent out another email plea for a little boy named Peter – I asked for permission to share this with you if any of you should feel led to pray specifically for Peter and, if God should so lead you, consider how you might help. Stories from around the world of families like Peter’s are sobering reminders of how truly blessed we are… and also of the responsibility that blessing carries with it.

Dear Ladies and A Few Good Men (that were once little boys):

Praise God our mailing list has grown to 12,000 people, a growth of 3,000% since we started.  This is great until I have a small request and do not want to use 12,000 stamps to get the word out.  This is one of those times. I’m writing you on faith.  I really need to help a little guy, and if you feel this is something you can wrap your heart around, please let me know.  If for some bizarre (read: God ordained) reason you respond to this like you did to my 5 wells (we drilled 60!!!!), and there is extra money…I will just help another child.  Or maybe I’ll drill a well at this boy’s house.  I will report back to you.

Imagine growing up in a land where only the rich and scrappiest get ahead.  Imagine poverty that is so crippling it holds generations of bright children in its grip never able to go to school, make a living or dream.  One little boy is growing up in that world.  Fortunately he is a boy not a girl.  Boys get sent to school before girls where money is scarce and “tips” requested in the “free” public school system.  Unfortunately for him, he has a special need.  He is bright, but one eye is crossed, lazy and needs a simple surgery.  In our country this surgery would be automatic.  The poorest could have this done.  Not so in one of the poorest countries in the world.

“Peter” (not the real name) is a little 5 year old whose father works hard at pulling a rickshaw to feed him, his sister and mom.  He cannot go to school.  Even if they scrapped together the money to bribe the teacher to let him sit in the back of the class room, the teacher would refuse.  A child with a flaw is not allowed. He cannot play with other kids because of his eye, read a book or grow up to even drive his dad’s rickshaw.

I saw him sitting in the back of the class we hold for children in a poor village where we drill wells for orphans and widows.  I grew up in this land.  I knew instantly how he would be treated.  He will be forced to beg for life, mocked and ridiculed.  The children in the room ignored him.  As a child, my father, a surgeon would have scooped him up instantly and changed his life forever with two simple procedures.  I remember watching a family after their daughter’s hair lip was repaired by my father. They sobbed their thanks that they could now let her grow up and find a marriage.  With a hair lip no marriage would have happened.  I learned early what it means to a family, a child to have a simple procedure that changes their life forever.

I want to help this little boy so full of life to grow up with options.  Two of his needed surgeries, transportation, and a new outfit total $628.  I want him by me in the front row of the Sewing Academy Dedication I will be attending in January and treated like a prince for one day in his little life to know the God of the Bible cares for even the sparrows, much more a child.  I want his Hindu family to know my God is no respecter of persons.  The least of these are seen by his tender eye.  It is my privilege to be an extension of you, Christ with skin on, the arms of God as I wrap a little boy with a bright future into my arms and help him dream.

I am appealing to you my circle of protection to help me be “Peter’s” circle of protection.  Would you help me lift this little boy to dignity?  My precious partners are already building into his life. Thank you for trusting me to make wise choices each month to lift those in need.  Know that your gifts are making eternal and immediate impact in the lives of women and children and yes…a few “little” men.  Having raised little boys, I love these little bundles of potential.  You parents know what I am talking about!

Lifting a few good men:
Rebecca McDonald

If you would like to be added to WAR’s email list, visit their homepage and sign up on the lower left side of the page.

If Peter’s story has touched your heart and you believe God is calling you to give, click here to donate securely online through the WAR website.

August 27th, 2010 by Kristi Stephens

Missed any of our Revelation series? You can catch up here!

Here’s a first for the blog – take a minute to click here and listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine.” I want you humming it to yourself as we “imagine” what this idyllic world he describes would really be like. It is simply Babel reborn… and what he describes is a lie.

So, let’s imagine. Someday all the people of the earth will be living for today – all those “fools” who believe in heaven and hell removed, allowing everyone else to live in “peace.”

I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

Revelation 6:1-2

“Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try.
No hell below us above us only sky…
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”

As Christ opens the first seal, the first of four “horses” appears on the scene. [These are sometimes referred to as "the four horsemen of the apocalypse."] It seems most consistent with the descriptions of these horsemen to see them not as people, but as personifications of forces and events. This first horse and rider don’t appear terribly threatening.

This rider is holding a bow, but has no arrows. He has a crown of authority given to him. His battles at this point are peaceful ones fought on the battle grounds of politics and philosophy, as authority is given to him rather than claimed and he rides out victoriously with no arrows being shot. It appears that this first seal demonstrates a worldwide peace, fragile and temporary under seemingly peaceful leadership.

It will not last. As 1 Thessalonians 5:3 describes, “While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.

Revelation 6:3-4

“Imagine no possessions- I wonder if you can?…
Imagine all the people sharing all the world…”

The fragile peace is broken as sinful men greedily turn on one another and the earth is engulfed in war, assassinations, conflicts, rebellions, and large-scale massacres. As Jesus describes in Matthew 24:7, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The result will be devastating.

When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

Revelation 6:5-6

“No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.”

Following this worldwide outbreak of war and chaos, severe famine follows. A “quart of wheat” was enough food to feed one person for one day, while “three quarts of barley” could provide lower-quality nutrition for up to three people. In other words, one man would barely be able to sustain himself with food (not to mention other necessities), and those with families to support will find themselves severely lacking.

John Phillips describes the scene with vivid sobriety:

“It has happened before. It is with us today… More than half the world goes hungry to bed. Even the magnificent bounty of the United States cannot stave off forever the mass starvation of the world. Malnutrition stalks the globe. It claims ten thousand lives every day…

It has happened before. It is with us today. It will happen again. For this dread rider is not yet abroad; it is only his shadow we see. But when he comes, he will act as secretary of state for starving mankind, will wipe them out by the million, and will dispose the survivors to listen to the buttered lies of the Beast.” (115)

Hunger and starvation is not the end of the suffering, but only the beginning.

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

Revelation 6:7-8

“I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will live as one…”

Inevitably, war and famine are followed by disease and death. This judgment is the first of many that are hard to wrap your mind around as the text says that a fourth of the earth’s population will be killed. War and resulting famine will kill many, followed by rampant disease and “wild beasts of the earth.” Some commentators theorize that these “beasts” are rats with increasing populations, wiping out mankind with the diseases they carry and by further decimating and contaminating food supplies. Phillips notes that the rat has “killed more people than all the wars of history, and it makes its home wherever man is found. Rats carry as many as thirty-five different diseases. Their fleas carry bubonic plague… [and also] typhus, which in four centuries has killed an estimated two hundred million people.” (117)

With God’s people and the restraint of the Holy Spirit removed, mankind is spiraling into the worst version of itself. Greed, violence, depravity of all kinds, and their natural consequences are allowed to increase unchecked.

John Lennon’s dream of “all the people living for today” will be realized, but it will not result in “no greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man… all the people sharing all the world.” The world engulfed in an unrestrained spirit of Babel will not be a pleasant place to be.

Mankind seeking their own good in rebellion against God. Babel reborn.

And God’s judgment will be poured out.

August 26th, 2010 by Kristi Stephens

Missed any of our Revelation series? You can catch up here!

In Revelation 5 we found that Jesus Christ was the only one worthy to take the scroll and reclaim ownership of the earth. Through the following chapters of Revelation we find several series of judgments against sinful and rebellious humankind; each of these judgments is detailed in the scroll and comes about as the seals are broken and the scroll is unrolled.

It seems that the best way to understand the sequence of these events is that all of these judgments “telescope” out from one another.

• The scroll is described as having seven seals.
• The seventh seal contains a series of seven trumpet judgments.
• The seventh trumpet judgment contains a series of seven bowl judgments.

All of the judgments are found within the scroll, detailed in the seven seals; these judgments form the main outline of the remainder of the book.

John Phillips summarizes this well:

“For two breathtaking, soul-inspiring chapters, we have been in heaven. The scroll has changed hands, and the right to judge and rule the world has been placed upon Jesus. Now we must come down fromt he mount and out of the ivory palaces. Down here, on the rebel planet of earth, the tempo is increasing, passions are rising. Evil men and seducers are waxing worse and worse. Disobedience to parents has grown up into brawling maturity, defying all authority. Men have become inventors of evil things, and their fearful inventions have become Frankenstein monsters, threatening to destroy the globe. The time has come for God to intervene in human affairs, so judgment is given to the Son. The seals on the scroll are to be broken.

There are three principal series of judgments in Revelation – the seal judgments, the trumpet judgments, and the vial [bowl] judgments. The action of the book is carried forward, for the most part, by these series. The rest of the book is mainly parenthetical, either anticipating or reviewing a phase of that action.” (110)

These judgments are hard to read. They describe conditions on this earth that are nearly unthinkable. Before we plunge into studying these judgments you must settle in your own mind the fact that our God is loving and gracious, but He is also holy and full of righteous wrath against man’s sin and rebellion.

I urge you to take some time to look through these two posts which dealt with this topic in the past.

• Is God Loving, or is He Angry? Can He Be Both?
• The Wrath of God and Extravagant Grace

The wrath and judgment of God in these coming chapters stand in stark contrast of the grace and forgiveness we have been offered through Jesus Christ. They stand as sobering reminders that we all deserve that judgment… the only dividing line is being covered by the righteousness of Christ and saved from God’s holy anger.

August 25th, 2010 by Kristi Stephens

We serve a holy God.

In our day, so far removed from bloody sacrifices and curtains and priests, we sometimes overlook the true weight of our sin and its consequences. Our God is holy, holy, holy – and we are oh, so very sinful. God, in His incomprehensible grace, has offered us spiritual restoration through Jesus Christ – but sin still has consequences.

I am often burdened by the glib way we approach our holy God in prayer. We have been taught that we can have intimacy, access, friendship with God – and these things are true. However, our God is still holy, and sin is serious.

Read the rest of this post over at Scripture Dig today: