A Beautiful Masterpiece

We’ve all been there. That painful moment when you realize – publically – that you’re wrong. Your cheeks flush. Your pride gets wounded. You have to decide whether to admit or ignore your blunder (and pray no one calls you on it). Thankfully, God can transform humiliating experiences into humbling ones.

Humiliation and humility differ in that the former is a negative emotion and the latter a godly attribute. Humility accepts our imperfection, allowing and relying on Christ to make up the difference (II Corinthians 12:9). God can take our natural fallible reaction of humiliation, which stems from pride, and mold it into a beautiful masterpiece.

In some situations, we are prideful and don’t even recognize it. In Leviticus 4:2-3, God holds the Israelites accountable for such things: “…If a soul shall sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord…then let him bring for his sin…a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering.” Christ is our sin offering, graciously paid once and for all, the balance never outstanding.

Humility becomes a question of motives. Are we glorifying God, or ourselves? Are we treating people with the sacrificial love to which God calls us? Are we seeking to understand, or do we inwardly believe that we know best? Matthew 7:5 says, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

When we enter into humility, we affirm and encourage those around us. Philippians 2:3 says, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.” Let’s not forget Christ’s commands to “…love thy neighbour as thyself” (Mark 12:31) and “…as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31).

Humility is an act of holiness – being set apart for God by choosing His ways over our instinctive responses. It doesn’t come naturally to most, but by prayer and practice. Ephesians 4:23-24 say, “be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”

Let’s take a moment to check our hearts throughout the day. How can we allow God to transform our selfish motivations into His beautiful masterpiece?

Jessie Chamberlain
Family Radio Staff

The Great Balaning Act

Life is a balancing act. So many things constantly demand our time. Work. Eat. Sleep. Exercise. Devotions. Family. Friends. Commitments. Hobbies. By the time we fit everything into our schedule, we’re in the red either in sleep or sanity. And God cares about everything we do – which should be done all to His glory – so if life gets out of balance, we aren’t living as we should, right?

Maybe. But we can’t always get everything done. Life happens. Things come up. Inevitably, we will fall short eventually. So how do we prioritize?

Matthew 22 comes to my mind, the story of the lawyer asking Jesus what the greatest commandment in the law is. Jesus’ response is: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

If loving God is the greatest commandment, then that should be my single most important priority, not just playing out in my daily life, but throughout each and every day. But what does it look like to love God “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind?”

I think it means we are consumed by thoughts of Him, that He is our motivation for decision-making and our strength to accomplish what He calls us to, that He’s the first Person we go to for help or direction.

Even so, how do we get to the place where God is that central figure in our lives? Both priorities and relationships require time for development. So spending quality time with God through the reading of His Word, prayer, and reflection becomes of utmost importance.

When God is our first priority, I’ve noticed that everything else falls into place. Only each individual knows how God has laid on his or her heart how to spend his or her time. Then it’s certain we’re glorifying God because we’re operating within His agenda instead of our own by following the leading of the Holy Spirit.

If you find that the scales are tipping in your “great balancing act,” ask yourself if you’ve sought God like Luke 11:9 says, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

Jessie Chamberlain
Family Radio Staff

Brotherly Love

Two little boys were the best of friends. They played and laughed together for three years. It didn’t make any difference to them that one had darker skin than the other. All that mattered was that they enjoyed each other’s friendship. But – they lived in Atlanta in 1935. Soon their friendship was forced to terminate when they went off to separate public schools based on their skin color. They were no longer allowed to be friends.

 One of those little boys was Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite living under the Jim Crow laws, his parents taught him not to hate, but that his Christian duty was to love. His mother tried to instill in her son a sense of “somebodiness” – that we are all persons of importance – a lesson that was contradicted every time he exited the front door of their southern home.

 During his youth, King witnessed terrible by-products of the Jim Crow laws including police brutality, judicial injustice, and Ku Klux Klan beatings. These atrocities led to a growing resentment toward segregation. The very idea of separation attacked his dignity and self-respect. At the age of fourteen, King won an oratorical contest in which he stated, “We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.”

King understood that all people were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). He urged Americans to view each other the same way. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

As a reverend, King’s motivation was the Gospel, which he interweaved throughout his sermons at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and public speeches. Inspired by evangelist Billy Graham’s crusades, King, along with several other civil rights activists, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the purpose of conducting nonviolent protests to achieve civil rights reform. He loved the Sermon on the Mount, and took seriously Jesus’ commands to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44) and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39).

 King’s prolific oratory and leadership skills projected him to the front of the desegregation movement. He had a dream, and through immense effort and the blessing of God, he got to see that dream realized in some measure. In a public address the day before he was assassinated, King stated:

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter to me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

May we also live lives so devoted to the Gospel that we accept God’s challenge in Matthew 5:44 to “…Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” in the same spirit of brotherly love as Martin Luther King, Jr.

Operation Auca

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Jim Elliot

January 8, 2017, marked the sixty-first anniversary of “Operation Auca,” an expedition by five American missionaries into the jungles of Ecuador. Nate Saint’s yellow Piper plane carried him and his four companions to “Palm Beach” on the Curaray River. Their goal: to reach the murderous, secluded Auca* tribe with the Gospel.

Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully knew they were putting their lives at risk by venturing into Waorani territory. Few who did lived to tell the tale. But these men felt the Holy Spirit tugging at their hearts to bring the light of Christ into the darkness of the Amazon rainforest.

After the missionaries landed on Palm Beach, they shouted Wao-tededo phrases into the jungle, taught to them by a woman named Dayuma who had escaped the Waorani tribe as a child. Three days passed before the Waorani made contact. A man and two women emerged from the trees. Nate took the man, nicknamed “George,” for a plane ride in his “wood bee,” as the Waorani called it, over his tribe’s village. Although communication was limited, things seemed to be going well.

After visiting Palm Beach, George returned to the tribe with the younger of the two women unchaperoned, which was against the tribe’s morals. Caught, George told the tribe that the missionaries attacked them, and that while they were escaping, he and his girlfriend got separated from their chaperone. The tribesmen became angry.

The next day, the Waorani attacked the five men, killing them with handmade spears.

Their story doesn’t end there. Jim’s wife, Elisabeth, and Nate’s sister, Rachel, returned to the tribe as missionaries. Without the men’s sacrifice, that door would not have been open to the women. They began to see huge changes within the Waorani. The tribe’s cycle of violence dramatically decreased. The Gospel began to take root in their lives. The Holy Spirit moved in them, causing them to grow in their personal walks with Christ. Years later, Nate’s son, Steve, also returned to the tribe as a missionary.

During the past sixty-one years, word about “Operation Auca” spread throughout the world. Books, articles, Time magazine, movies – all have recounted the story of the five missionary martyrs. Through their story, many have been encouraged to listen to the call of the Holy Spirit, just like the five men did.

As Steve Saint would say, “Let God write your story.” What is the Holy Spirit calling you to do?

*From this point forward, the Auca will be referred to as “Waorani,” since “Auca” is a derogatory term meaning “savage” or “naked one.”

Jessie Chamberlain
Family Radio Staff

Compasion

Her heart sank. She felt as though she was going to be sick. First her husband, and now her only son. They were both gone. She had no one to take care of, or to care for her in return. She trembled, feeling as though she would collapse from the weight of her grief as they placed her son’s body on the bier. All preparations had been made for his burial outside the city. Most of the town had shown up for the funeral procession, but she couldn’t seem to put one foot in front of the other.

As they neared the cemetery, she broke down into sobs, her grief too heavy to bear on her own. A man approached, and had compassion on her.

“Don’t cry,” He comforted her. He walked over to the bier. While touching it, He said, “Young man, get up.” The woman’s son sat up and began talking. The man brought him over to his mother. Fear and disbelief filled her, but passed quickly as she processed the miracle she had just witnessed.

“God Himself has visited us!” she rejoiced.

While it’s easy to imagine how the reality of this Bible story from the Gospel of Luke must have felt to the mother, my favorite verse from the biblical account is, “And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not” (Luke 7:13). When Jesus saw the woman broken and hurting from her circumstances, He had compassion. Jesus wasn’t distant from her pain and sorrow. He reached out and touched her specific situation, mending it as only He could.

After experiencing my own loss recently, a friend reached out and showed compassion to me. She had faced a far more significant loss within the previous month, one that made mine trivial by comparison. But she didn’t tell me to get over it; instead she used her own experiences to empathize with me. Her words and actions validated my pain and helped my heart to heal. She showed up to be Jesus’ hands and feet for me.

In John 13:15, Jesus says, “For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” We all face different challenges in life, but when we demonstrate compassion to others, we let God work through us. And just like Christ, we should allow others to come just as they are.

How can you show compassion to those in your own life?

I Peter 3:8-9 “Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.”

Jessie Chamberlain
Family Radio Staff