A Giant and the son of a Mullah

My father in law just came back from Iraq and he happened to spend a night with a missionary there.  This missionary had a great story that happened to him recently and I wanted to share it.

This missionary used to live in one of the most dangerous towns in Iraq and while he has since moved to a much safer area, he still must be extremely secretive about what he does.  He is actually an engineer, and I believe he is hired by the Iraqi government to do work for them.  He rarely tells anyone he is a Christian just for the sake of the safety of his family and other Believers he knows.  This secretive lifestyle makes the story even more remarkable, since virtually no one knows he is a Christian.

It goes like this.  The son of a Mullah (which is a Muslims religious leader for a region) came up to this missionary and said he needed to talk to him.  The missionary kind of blew him off or forgot but after a while the son came to him again and said he really needed to talk to him about a dream he had.  The missionary agreed and had him over for supper.

The son explained that he wasn’t sure if it was a dream or a vision or what, but that one day a giant man appeared to him.  He was actually much larger than any giant, and he had lighting coming out of his eyes, he wore a white robe and power resonated from his entire body.  The giant man picked up the son, and placed him on his knee like a little baby.  The son was so nervous and didn’t know what to say, but blurted out, “Do you want me to make some kabobs to eat?”  The giant man didn’t say anything, and instead pulled out some bread to eat.  The son said it was the best bread he’s ever tasted.   After this, the giant man pulled out a sword that wasn’t made out of metal, but from light.  He took the sword and he stabbed the son in the heart and plunged it deep into his chest.  The son said it hurt at first, but then he became filled with light and was overwhelmed with peace.  Finally, the giant man said something to the effect of, “You are my son.  I have chosen you.”

After he told the story, the missionary showed him Revelation 1, and explained to him that he had met Jesus.  The son believed and was baptized that night.  When his father found out, he took away his son’s wife and children as punishment, but they were eventually allowed to come back together.

While this is an amazing story to us, this is pretty typical for the missionary in Iraq.  He doesn’t even do much of anything because he would be kicked out or killed right away.  But he doesn’t have to.  God keeps appearing to these people and they come and somehow find the missionary to ask what they need to do.

I really like this story for so many reasons.  First of all, because it seems so much like Jesus.  He is obviously extremely powerful and terrifying, and He is at the same time gentle and meek.  How cool is it that He brought some bread to eat with this guy?!  It fits so perfectly with how the gospels describe His time with the disciples.  Over and over again after the resurrection when Jesus appeared to them, He sat and had a meal with them, or made breakfast, or had some bread for a snack.  It makes me really want to be with Jesus…and not just because of the food.  It is also a great story because of the son’s perception of what Christianity was.  The only “Christians” he knew were Americans that come and set up bars or strip clubs on the other side of town, or other ethnic christians that know nothing about Jesus.  But then this Giant appears to him and he has no idea what’s going on or that the Man is the center of the Christian faith.  After it was over, there was nothing else he could do but to believe and follow the Man that had chosen him.

There is no Blueprint

What is it about human nature that wants to always have some kind of order or plan for something?  Is it just Western Culture, or do most people want to know what might happen to them in the future?  For many people, it’s almost a given that they think their lives would be easier if they could map it all out and take care of every detail.  I typically live like this.  I want things to run as efficiently as possible, so I try to prepare for every variable and never be caught off guard.  We want a system we can control and as long as it keeps working, we don’t want it to change.  It’s like a figurative security blanket, that as long as we keep a controlled plan, some kind of system that we know what will happen, we can feel safe in the world.

Doesn’t it seem like we also try and plan out our spiritual lives, our relationship with God, the same way we try to plan out everything else?  If we have a week where we read the Bible every day and prayed 3 times a day and felt close to God, we assume that this is the “magic formula” so we decide to plan on doing the same thing forever so we can always feel close to God.  While the intentions are good, it’s ultimately a misunderstanding of how God likes to work and be worshipped.

Unfortunately, for those that are like me, God doesn’t like to pan everything out for us.  Dependance on a controlled system can stifle creativity and imagination, and I think our God has a great imagination and He loves being creative.   Who can predict how God will work, or what He wants to do next?  I sometimes think that He enjoys the thrill of surprising us when He shatters our narrow views and redefines our perception of Himself.

When I was in college, a preacher from a local church came to a class to speak on spiritual disciplines.  I highly respect this man, and almost always agree with everything he says, but the one thing I remember from this lesson is that he told us we needed to be so moved by God that we should cry at least once a week when we thought about our sin and how great God is.  It sounds so ridiculous to me as I write it, but at the time it really made me reconsider my time with God.  Here was a man of God telling me what my relationship with God should be like, and yet it was nothing close to his requirements!  Afterwards, I thought about it some more and soon realized how wrong he was to make that sort of stipulation for every person he was speaking to.  It would be fine if he gave it as some sort of principle, or a recommendation based on a positive experience he had.  But to tell everyone they should be like that?!  That’s trying to force everyone into a mold that he should not be deciding.  God is far too creative to make all of us relate to Him in the same exact way.

The same thing can be said about church too.  It doesn’t matter what kind of church you go to, when you meet or what you do.  Every church has a certain pattern and system they like to stick to.  I’m not saying that’s bad, because it is necessary for a large group of people to have something consistent for everyone to agree on.  The problem enters when the group becomes slaves to that system rather than slaves to the God they are gathering to worship.  There doesn’t always have to be a sermon on Sundays, or “worship service”, or Sunday school, or whatever the norm is.  There needs to be a fine balance between using the system as a tool to serve everyone’s needs while still being open to God’s leading if He wants to take things in a different direction.

So, I’m not trying to say that Christians should do this or shouldn’t do that, I’m simply trying to say that we should keep our eyes and minds open to whatever God has planned, to expect the unexpected.  If we start to feel comfortable in our spiritual walk, whether personal or in the church, we might soon find that God wants something different.  Not because God is cruel and wants to play tricks on us, but because He is so intimately vast that He wants us to know as much about Him as possible.  And once we learn how to let loose of our “spiritual blueprint” we will greatly benefit as we relate to God and listen to the Spirit in so many more ways.

A cool story

I don’t often think about it, but there is a spiritual battle going on around us.  I normally only think of my role in the battle, but I never think of how God uses His angels to fight as well.

The other day, a friend of mine was by himself in his apartment and he was struggling with some sin.  He heard a strange shuffling noise down the hallway so he went and checked it out but he didn’t find anything.  He continued in his sin, but then he heard a large shuffling noise right behind him.  When he turned and looked, he saw 2 angels fighting a demon.  As he watched, the 2 angels turned from their fight and looked him in the eye.  They threw down their swords and went away, leaving him with the demon! My friend immediately fell down on his face and repented for what he had done.

So, I just thought this story was interesting because the angels were basically telling him that the battle they were fighting were somehow woven together.  I don’t understand it, but it is encouraging that we need to stay focused on the unseen things.

Some thoughts about faith

Today I was reading a blog that I follow and their church had recently had a study about the church in Acts.  The blog had some of the usual questions of why do our churches look so much different, and basically, why is our faith not as powerful as those first Christians.  Many Christians tend to think that the church in Acts had so many miracles because of the believers explosive faith.  I tend to take a different view, and since I commented on the other blog, I will just copy what I wrote so I don’t repeat it again.

“Since faith is being certain of what we do not see, do you think it could be that the church in Acts were given so many physical signs because of their lack of faith? We usually assume that because the church was growing so fast and the first century christians faith was so powerful that it somehow caused all of these things to happen. What if it’s the other way around? I think miracles tend to be used by God to bring those without faith, into faith.
Even in Acts 2, the Apostles were probably a little scared and possibly still did not understand Jesus’ message. They just heard the Great Commission and yet they went into a room by themselves? Perhaps God performed a miracle then to get them on their way, not as a reward for being so spiritual and all praying together. And all the other instances of miracles…what if it was a result of the unbelievers lack of faith, rather than the believer’s/Apostles abundance of faith? Those that have faith do not need a physical sign since they can see the unseen, but without faith, we need something to see so we can believe….”

Basically, I used to worry about having faith like the people in Acts.  I would desire miracles almost as a self-assurance that my faith was good.  Not necessarily crazy things like healing people, but just cool stuff to happen like the wind and fire in Acts 2.  But then I realized I didn’t have that much faith if I still needed to physically see acts of God.  Instead, I needed to open my eyes to how God was working in people’s lives, and look for opportunities to serve people.  Walking by faith isn’t asking for God to confirm what you are doing, but knowing that God is working and using what you do without seeing it.

A few of Adara this month