"Good" Christians: Do We Give What We Take?

"Good" Christians give until it hurts. They give when they can't afford to. They give when they don't want to. They give when they aren't rewarded, when they aren't thanked, and when their efforts aren't reciprocated.

"Good" Christians give as a way to express the love of the Lord. It's not because it's fun or easy, and it's not because they don't have anything else better to do.

When I consider the Lord, I notice how He consistently gives to his children who don't even ask for the gifts he gives. He provides every basic need and every luxury. He provides people and pets in our lives who can comfort us when we need it. He provides every aspect of the perfectly balanced world we live in.

And all this we take from the Lord.

Usually without gratitude.

And this evening, the question hit me: "Do we give what we take?" Do we even begin to give to others as much as we ourselves take from our Lord?

Too often, even Christians, are too selfish with their love, time, and money to extend it to other believers.

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

Galatians 6:2

Can the Ten Commandments be summed up any more concisely than this?

"So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith."

Galatians 6:10

We will not always have an opportunity to serve our brothers and sisters in Christ. Everyday life does not normally require outside help. But when a need arises in the body of Christ, it is a Christian's privilege to deny self and be the hands and feet of the Lord during that time of need.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together."

1 Corinthians 12:26

And yet here is the harsh reality: Too often Christians do not show up during any hour of crisis. Bar buddies show up and sports teams comes together. Strangers will completely fund a GoFundMe account... But the church maintains her distance and ruins her witness in the process.

During a crisis, the church masquerades righteousness with unfulfilled promises that they'll pray while the person in distress is tempted to quit religion all together. A promise to pray is not a tangible act of love that the person in need can see, hear, and touch.

The American church today rarely goes much deeper than offering a word of compassion during a crisis. A word of compassion makes the self-centered Christian feel good without having to sacrifice any of their time, energy, or money.

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him,

"Go and do likewise."

Luke 10:30-37

Count the tangible ways that the Samaritan helped the man in distress.

Now consider the self-centered lies the priest told himself that excused his behavior of passing his neighbor by without offering assistance, and let me remind you that his excuses did not matter to the Lord.

I ask myself the same question our Lord asked himself,

"When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

Luke 18:8

How is one supposed to have faith in a loving God when His love is never expressed in tangible acts of kindness? I don't know how it's possible.

The Runaway Slave

I had a dream last night that woke me up with a startling call to join the ranks of the Lord's Army.

In the dream I saw a very large black man (think John Coffee in the Green Mile). In my spirit I knew he was a slave. It was the middle of the night and the middle of a severe storm. The runaway slave ran with all of his might. Cold rain beat down on him. Lightening pierced the sky to light his way, and the thunder seemed almost constant.  As he ran he got hit in the face by branches, his arms and legs became bloody from the cuts they received, and the unstable mud caused him to fall several times. The burden to pick himself back up was so great that I often wondered if he would be able to rise again, but the fight to freedom within him grew with every fall, and he continued.

He ran in this condition for what I understood to be 100 miles before he finally reached a land of freedom. When he finally stopped he was beyond exhausted, wet, and weak, but he was free... and he had carried his two children with him to freedom.

"For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first."

2 Peter 2:19b-20

As Christians I think we often accept that Jesus willingly took our punishment for us, and then we become passive with a belief that the battle has already been won, so there is no longer any fighting that needs to be done. God loves us so much that he died for us and now he fights our fights for us. Our only job is to show up in Heaven and receive our reward...

Our reward for WHAT??

After we accept The Way that Jesus provides for us to be saved, it is then up to us to fight the good fight and run the race set before us. In my dream, the race was to freedom, and the race was against time. The enslavement was the sin and bondage of our old life. The captors were the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers and spiritual forces of evil who desire to keep us in our sin. They were represented by all of the elements (darkness, rain, trees, thorns, mud, etc) trying to stop the slave from reaching freedom. (Ephesians 6:12).

There are many evil things in this world who are on mission to kill, steal, and destroy the freedom that we have in Christ. They desire to place us back in the bondage of our sin so that our new state of defeated Christian will be worse than our original state of mere sinner.

We must persevere through the spiritual war. As Satan and his followers beat us down to get us discouraged, and whisper condemning lies into our ear we must use the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20) to fight our way back to freedom, (and in order to use the full armor of God, it is implied that we have already put it on...)

In the dream I was not able to perceive that the man running carried two children (one boy and one girl).. He seemed to be running his race to freedom alone. It was only after he reached freedom that the freedom of his children was also revealed.

And this is our promise from the Lord. If we do accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and if we do fight to free ourselves from our sinful nature and choose to allow the Spirit to guide and change us, then our children will inherit freedom with us.

"They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity, for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants with them."

Isaiah 65:23

The Ma'di Bible

About a year ago I wrote a post called The Spanish Bible. I would encourage you to read that post before continuing with this post if you have not already done so.

God gave me an opportunity in 2013 to share the Good News with a man from South America. The man was eager to learn about "this Jesus" of mine. I told him what I could in a broken language, but I missed the chance to give him a Bible in his own language.

It's been almost five years since I had that opportunity, and about a month ago, I was given another chance to practice my obedience and offer another man access to The Word of God.

On Superbowl Sunday (February 5, 2017) Josh took our four children to a Superbowl party and I stayed home. I set about deleting all of my Facebook friends before deactivating my account, but I decided after deleting all my friends that I would keep the account open because Perry Stone has a special Facebook group for his "Partner Strike Force" members. I didn't want to miss the special video updates and monthly giveaways he did to this exclusive group, so I kept the account open.

While going through Perry Stone's Facebook page answering people's random questions about a new New Testament commentary Stone had just released... How much did it cost? Where could it be ordered?... I saw a question in the middle of all the raves of Perry's Bible that said, "I'm in uganda, east africa. How can i get a copy of holy bible?"

I sent a public reply directing the man to Bibles to Africa, but I also sent him a private message telling him that I would be happy to send him a Bible if he told me his address and what language he would prefer his Bible in.

Well, he was excited. He told me his language was Ma'di. When I looked this up, only 0.004324% of the world's population spoke this language, and I worried I had gotten myself into a pickle.

The research began to find a Ma'di Bible. I found out that the New Testament had been translated in 1977, but that the only print copy that I could find was in a library. One website literally read, "The Bible is translated into this language, but we do not know where you can obtain it."

The Lord directed me to www.Bible.is. This website had an online version of the Ma'di Bible! I agonized about what verse I should send a man who may never have seen a verse of scripture before, and I decided on 1 John 4:7-8, and I asked him if the following was written in the Ma'di language.

1 Yoana 4:7-8
"7Ma adrunzi ma lelendro ri, kole olekiru ndro, a’dusi le enga Rubanga dri. Ma’di ’ba cidru le’di ndro rii ani ’bara Rubanga dri ’i, vua oni Rubanga ote. 8Ma’di ’ba le’di ku rii ka Rubanga ni kpe, a’dusi Rubanga ni le."
His reply almost brought tears to my eyes.

"Wow! Exactly manzo okpwosi Alicia that is my language."

After doing a little more research, I found out that only 0.0025% of the world's population actually speaks the Ma'di Manzo Okpwosi language. The Lord had led me to this man's EXACT language... not the Ma'di variation of it that is spoken across the river. God be praised.

I asked permission to get the digital copy printed and then got to work on copying and pasting the online version chapter by chapter into a Word document that could be edited and formatted for print.

Because of the hours involved in formatting the Bible I went ahead and asked Steve, the man from Uganda, how many copies he would like to have. He asked for 30, and I was thrilled!

But I didn't want to stop there. I found a Facebook group called  Ma'di OO, and I sent the coordinator a private message explaining that I was printing Bibles in the Ma'di language and asked her to see if there would be an interest within her private group for these. After a week she placed an order for 110. The orders came from all over the world.

Today I received the printed proof of this Bible. I think I still have some work to do on the margins, because they are just too close to the center fold on the inside, but, other than that, it looks really good.

I contacted a man that I did mission work in Africa with when I was 17. I know that the mission organization he works with just started operating in Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda at the end of 2016, the very area this language is spoken. I haven't heard back from him yet, but I really hope that I will be able to serve his team by providing New Testament Bibles for that mission too.

Oh, and let me finish this story by telling you about two prayers I prayed. One was about a decade ago, and the second was about six years ago.

During the first prayer, I expressed to God my desire to work in the mission field of translating Bibles. I wanted to take an active role in spreading the gospel so that every nation, tribe, and language could hear the good news, so that Jesus would be closer to establishing his kingdom on earth. I did not see any way to be used in this area at that time as I just didn't know any obscure language, and I really didn't even know how to become part of a ministry like this.

The second prayer came after watching the Invisible Children movie. I was ready to up and move to Uganda to help these children who were being forced into such violence, but really, what good would that do? That would have just gotten me killed. My prayer was simply, let me help at least one child who has become a victim of the LRA's demonic agenda; let me share with them the only thing that will set them free- the Bible. Like my first prayer, I didn't see how this prayer could ever be answered.

But, thank God, through his grace, mercy, and kindness, he saw fit to answer the prayers of a housewife in middle America, even after I had determined there was no way for them to be answered.

I trust God to deliver one of "my Bibles" into the hands of one of the precious men or women who was a child ten years ago serving in or running from the LRA.

All praise goes to the Lord for orchestrating this beautiful story. I thank God for the lesson he taught me through the Spanish Bible so that he would be able to use me five years later to provide, not one, but 140 Bibles to his waiting children. I am humbled to be used in this way.

Translation:
HOLY BIBLE
New Testament

Table of Contents

Mark 15 & 16
Margins are too close in the center

"Be careful, she's better than you."

Good morning!

I love when the Lord wakes me up at 3:00 in the morning. This is a post I wanted to write before going to bed a few hours ago, but I've had a quick prayer and am ready to write now.

Ladies love to talk bad about other ladies. Okay, SOME ladies like to talk bad about other ladies. We don't think of it as gossiping; it's not. It's simply telling about something that happened- factually (or not). It's explaining the reason why we were made to feel the way we feel- honestly (or not).

A few days ago this week, I had a good reason to be spouting off some "truths" about another sister in Christ.

My husband listened quietly in the car.

Our children were within earshot, and if my oldest son is within earshot, he is straining his ears to hear every word. Now, the boy is completely deaf if you tell him to do ANYTHING, but a conversation that is not had with him in a car... now that's remembered in detail.

After I finished my first relieving round of information, my husband kept right on driving, and without even looking at me he said, "Be careful, she's better than you." He had a spirit of kindness, gentleness, and love in his voice, and not a tone of anger, judgment, or ridicule.

That's it.

He's right.

And my precious son got to hear it all.

I knew immediately what Bible verse he was referring to: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interest of others." Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV)

It was hard at that moment to consider this woman as better than myself. My mounting anger was justified, but I choose to remain quiet.

I am grateful that the Lord saw fit to complete me with a man of few words who is able and willing to speak truth into my life.

This week my husband answered the call of Galatians 6:1, "Brothers, if a person is caught doing something wrong, those of you who are spiritual should restore that person gently. Watch out for yourself so that you are not tempted as well." (ISV)

I am grateful for my husband's humility and willingness to bring me closer to the Lord.