Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Me Again

I am starting to feel like our cat. If you've seen my picture lately you know I'm not talking about the fuzzy part, rather I speak of his infrequent visits with our family. If you actually stop by here now and again you know what I mean. Like our cat though, please understand that there is a deep and underlying love for any of you who come here looking for a morsel of my attention. PURRRRRR.

Anyway, I will be late for work now so I will say what I came to say.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
My honest resolution is to frequent this blog (your collective laps so to speak) more often in the new year and help my wife with pertinent posts on our other blog. Look for a new post on one of them by the weekend. I have so much drivel to driv it is almost insane.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Back In K-Town

So after a week back in the lala land of the north I feel like I have ruefully re-acclimatised to the spiritual atmosphere here. Like globs of mayo on the sandwich of life this town saturates my spiritual arteries with its insipid life messages and self promoting ad slogans. The familiarity bred over the years has formed a conduit that means I must constantly be on guard or slip down the slope into a generally cynical point of view. This is not to say that Hong Kong is a spiritual oasis, far from it. Kelowna is only a microcosm of Hong Kong's insanity. The familiarity is the key. You know what they say about familiarity.
I am filled with an anticipation for what lies ahead though, daunting as it is. We have a lot of money to put together in a short time to cover the costs of getting our family over to HK and set up in an apartment. Having done this before we are thankfully aware of some of the pitfalls and hidden costs. We also have friends living there who moved out over a year ago and know full well what is necessary. They found the rental market to be astronomically different from here. In fact to rent their 750 square foot apartment cost them $56000 HKD for the first month due to all the common fees charged by landlords and agents. They will recoup a substantial portion of that when they move, but ouch, what a welcome.
There are also the hurdles of getting some extra schooling while still working so that the government will be satisfied that we are not there to steal their jobs. I will be doing Tuesday evenings and two Saturdays a month from November until March to get my TESOL certification. On top of this education we will tackle, once again, the task of learning Mandarin Chinese and teaching our kids until we can get a tutor in the spring.
Some folks do this kind of thing naturally and may see this as a pretty easy schedule, but we are fairly laid back people so this is quite a change for us.
In my next post I will go more into what the Zheng Sheng school is about and what role we will lay there. There is also a video that I will try to embed which gives an excellent and brief account of the school in its current state. I may even get this done before the weekend....will wonders never cease?
Oh yeah there should be pictures of my trip up very soon on our Flickr site.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Hello From HK

Hey all, this is me from Hong Kong. It has been a crazy 10 days here being with friends and checking out the Christian Zheng Sheng school on Lantau Island where I will be working in a year or so. I flew out here on Wednesday afternoon Kelowna time and arrived Thursday evening HK time after a 2 hour layover in Vancouver. First thing the next morning Mr. Chan whisked me away to go to Cheung Chau Island where we would catch a sampan to the school. We toured around and met a lot of the students and some of the staff members for about three or four hours and then returned to Cheung Chau to see the area where we may end up living when we come here. 
After that day I also have gone to the church my friends attend on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbour and had a great time worshipping there. They have a great pastor, Sam Song, who is Korean and schooled extensively in the US. If you want to check their website it is at Solomon's Porch HK.
I have has a chance to see many sights here and I will post a link when I get back to a Flickr set from my trip. 
One of the cooler things (not according to the thermometer though) was staying for three days and two nights at the school. I had a great time connecting with the kids and meeting the staff. The facilities are very spartan so it added a new dimension to roughing it and I finally feel like I have tasted a small slice of the missionary life. I will give some more details in two separate posts to come, one on HK and one on the school. I need to go now though as I am meeting one last time with Mr. Chan and his boss Mr. Lam.
See you again soon.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Days Like These

I used to sing the tagline from a John Lennon song quite often just because it fit so well into my life. The line goes 'Nobody told me there be days like these/Most peculiar momma, whoa'. Most of the time I feel adrift in the waves of days going by wondering if the tethering line will ever tug me back and hold me in place for a season. Doesn't seem to happen that often though. It's not that I don't have aims or dreams, but it doesn't seem that I'm the one that shot the arrow at the target, rather I am the arrow. I rocket along through a life that passes quicker each day looking around to see what on earth I am supposed to hit. This shouldn't come as a surprise to me since I long ago left my life at the mercy of a God who is notorious for leaving out what I deem to be pertinent details and schedules. My wife and I both chose to submit our lives to the Father and let Him lead us rather than living our lives as we saw fit and hoping God would stamp His Okee Dokee on it all at the end. This has left us with a constant meandering as we try to descern His leading in the midst of all the flotsam and jetsam of our days. I know He will work it all out, it's just a little disconcerting at times.
Just a quick post to let you peek inside. I gotta get back to work.
(More later)

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

One Day At A Time

Sometimes it is so hard to just keep it simple. With all the stuff that comes at us every day it doesn't take much to set everything off balance. It may just be a case of taking on one more thing than is necessary or perhaps reaching too far in one direction. The reaching usually happens in one of three directions, forward, backward or up (down usually results in a seated or fetal posture so I won't include that here). From the off balance position things usually proceed to a full on falling position because if the situation is not rectified it is impossible to stay off balance for any length of time. Most of the time, for me, I feel as though I am falling forward. I reach out to try and take hold of the future and end up flat on my face. Lately it has been the whole dream of returning to China that has me unravelled. My boss even asked me how I would handle it if the teaching job falls through. I told him I would probably go into some kind of withdrawal for awhile.
Thing about grabbing for the future is that there is nothing of any substance there until it becomes today. There are things in the realm of faith that we can grab, but they are rarely to do with our schedules and expectations.
That is where I am at right now. If you hear a loud thud, that was just me again.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Can't Wait

Well, the time is drawing near for my trip to Hong Kong and I am finding that my mind is easily wandering off to all sorts of interesting places. It seems to show up a lot at work where I have to try and guard against mental meanderings all the time. It gets really bad when I am going to a job that is a 45 minute drive on the other side of the lake. It never seems to happen just before the last exit but rather just as I am pulling up to the customer's house. I am getting better at making myself busy and tying up loose ends I never thought of before, so perhaps there is an upside.
We just went to the airport today to say farewell to my buddy's wife as she was heading back home to Athens while he stays here to visit a few more days and that obviously got my brain going again. It is hard to keep it here.
We ponder quite often what it will be like to live on Cheung Chau island and walk a path so different from where we are now. There have been dreams, words and signs that God has given aplenty and yet it all seems so hard to believe.
I will write soon about some of the cool things that are pointing this out as the right direction and let you weigh them for yourselves.
Gotta run. Friends from Indonesia are arriving soon. So cool being part of the missions community.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

New News

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Alman Chan

Hey All, long time no blog. There has been some very cool rumblings happening in our lives lately so I thought I would blog them down.

As some of you may know we have had a strong desire to return to China since we left there in '04 to come back to Canada. We believe more than ever now that this desire is actually the call God has on us. The time to see it fulfilled seems to be drawing very nigh, and our excitement may finally surface from under the weight of caution.

In October of last year our friends who moved to Hong Kong met a gentleman who appears to be connected to both our destinies. His name is Alman Chan and he is the principal of the Christian Zheng Sheng school in Hong Kong. This school was founded 20 years ago by a man named Jacob Lam who followed the Lord by faith into a ministry of helping those ravaged by life on the streets and in gangs. There are many God stories surrounding this ministry and the faithfulness of our Father has been displayed daily. After hearing of this from our friends they also said that they had told Alman about our desire to return to China to work with the people there. He was excited about the possibility of having me teach carpentry skills to the boys at the school. He also thought my skills would be useful in helping to build and renovate the school and the orphanages they have on the mainland. With this vision in mind he was able to meet with us in Vancouver on the May long weekend during a promotional tour he was on with a group of his students. The meeting was absolutely wonderful and I was convinced that we had met a dear friend and most sincere man of God.

Since then we have awaited news from Alman regarding the possibility of us coming to work there in the near future. As we stayed in touch it became clear that we should arrange for a trip to Hong Kong for me to meet again with Alman as well as his boss, Mr. Lam. Alman agreed this would be best and so we set out to raise funds for the trip. The overall cost would be about $1800 with flight and food, etc. We sent out a support letter to friends and family to try to raise awareness, finances and especially prayer. This began the process of getting the funds in place to book the flight, but there was still a substantial amout we would need to cover ourselves.....or so we thought. God had other ideas. A couple I know from outside my normal relational circles got wind of our desire to get to Hong Kong and asked me if they could help. They suggested that if I did what amounted to an hour's work in their garage they would pay for my flights. After getting my mandible off the floor I enthusiastically agreed that this would be doable. Their generousity has continued to blow me away as they even offered to drive me to Vancouver if this would help keep the costs down for the trip. Now that the funding is in place and God has so clearly shown His enthusiasm for this undertaking I will be heading to HK in the early part of September for about 11 days. This trip will also include a trip to the mainland to see (and possibly assess) one of the orphanges there. This part of the trip will be with my buddy Steve who is very excited to have me out there. He said he would cover my costs for the flight to Fujian province so how could I say no.
So there it is in a nutshell. I will try to keep this blog a little more current and give some updates on what is happening with us so you don't all of a sudden find out I'm blogging from China again.
Cheers

Saturday, June 07, 2008

It's A Small World

The sound of the neighborhood kids playing filled the air this afternoon as our new friends across the street entertained a small mob to commemorate their daughter's first birthday. The alley and the street were filled with cars and kids on bikes, a combination only so fluid on a day like this. There was so much fluidity about the afternoon there, and indeed our day as a whole.
This morning was spent with a dear friend as he said his last goodbyes to his mother at her funeral. He stands now as the last of his family since the passing of his mother, father and brother has occurred all in the last two and a half years. There was a gentle peace about the proceedings as the Lord had reassured our friend in several ways that his mother was safely home. At her internment, as they lowered the coffin into the ground there was a subtle scattering of sunlight, like a kiss, on an otherwise cloudy morning. It passed as quickly as it came, but it's memory will remain.
The funeral was read in German as well as English, and brought a few memories for me of my grandmother and grandfather and the community I knew so little of. It was nice to hear another language being spoken.
At the birthday party it was the same thing except the family there is from the Philippines. I was very touched by their hospitality and genuine enjoyment of each other and their kids. Normally these occasions are ones where the parents drop off their kids and enjoy a little free time on their own, not so here. Whole families were represented in this little back yard and everything moved and danced with life. So many smiles and so much laughter it was healing. I laughed the first public belly laugh I can remember in some time and it felt good.
I look forward every day to the time when we will return to a culture that is not our own, but for now I celebrate the fact that there is so much cultural diversity all around us and especially our kids. These days we cannot give our kids much materially, but there is such wealth seeded in them in their openness to others and their cultures. This makes me glad.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Fireplaces and Old Time Radio

My wife burned some Cd's for our trip to my Mom's place which takes about 3.5 hours. She chose some old time radio shows like a Family Home Theater production of Tom Sawyer. If you are familiar at all with these shows you know that most of them have been re-recorded off the old vinyl recordings from long ago. As we listened to the closing of the second story my 6 year old son piped up from the back seat with a question. He asked us why all these old shows had to have a fireplace in them and I immediately started to laugh because I knew exactly what he was talking about. Being a child of the new millennium he has never heard a CD that has those old pops and hisses from the days of vinyl. I love how his ears heard all that 'noise'.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Is It Today Already??

Sorry about yesterday. I was going to do a quick post before our Interloc meeting, but there were emails regarding the meeting that needed to be read first. Oh well, still not bad for a first effort.
It may be for the best anyway because I had the morning from hell yesterday. I just could not get my head into what I was doing and kept making silly errors. At least most of them were silly and only required a 45 minute round trip to rectify. Those were things like forgetting simple supplies which even now I cannot recall. I had to run all the way from McKinley Landing to Home Hardware in town and then I think the next trip was to the shop out near the airport. I finally went to put in the very last thing which was a toilet paper holder and instead of finding a stud and anchoring the thing solidly I used the toggle bolt that came with it. That was a seriously dumb move because as I went to attach the paper holder to the fitting on the wall, which required a diagonal push down and towards the wall, I pushed a little too hard and ripped the thing right out of the wall; toggle bolt and all.
Today I returned to the scene and did the appropriate patching and painting so that I could reattach the holder on the stud which was literally 1" away from where I attached it the first time. The patch looked awesome and my confidence in my abilities as a renovator where restored. Maybe I am a professional after all.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Choices

I'm back after a long absence from the blogger realm, but since I have been playing a lot of Scrabbulous I hope that I will be somewhat wordier. I have also touched on someone else's blog realm which is a chronicle of many journeys and is aptly titled Journeymama. This also sparked a desire to renter this place and hope that the few fans I have will forgive me.
The main reason that I have avoided this has been the time it takes and the effort to blow on the last dying embers of thought at the end of my day. I typically spend a large portion of this time in what Mark Gungor refers to as the nothing box, a place of male tranquility and the birthplace of things like "D'oh". Mmmmm, nothing box. From there it is hard to even access someone else's blog so I apologize for my lack of readership.
I am finding that much of my online and relational energy is spent talking about and discussing God stuff, not a bad thing in itself, and very little is given to day to day personal details or windows into my world. I'm not sure why I avoid this. I used to think that it was all just pointless, shallow drivel that people participated in to avoid the really deep stuff. This is where some of you may be seeing just how thick I can be. It has eluded me that these are curtainless windows into people's lives. Just like windows on a house they don't show everything inside the home because that is not what they are designed to do. They allow light to penetrate from without and give glimpses to those outside, not full access. In fact full access windows are usually on the more private ares of the home where only those who are invited will be able to see in; and they are usually looking back in after having stepped out.
This crashed in on me when I recently recieved an email from a friend overseas who just rambled on about the day to day stuff and I found it to be such a pleasant and pleasing experience. There was no real new information or big news that she was sharing and yet it all felt so important for the simple reason that it was real; real thoughts, real feelings and real experiences. It tapped me into what I have been missing for so long. It helped me realize that I have been peering out of my curtained windows into everyone else's homes like some cerebral peeping tom and not allowing anyone to see into me. That's sad. That's yesterday. That's gonna change.
I titled this post "Choices" because of what I was going to write and I think I will leave it that way even though I didn't write what I was going to because this is still all about choices. I choose to allow you in. I choose to let you know you are important to me. I choose to let you look past the adornment of intellectualism and see into the mundanity of who I am. You may choose to walk on by and look into some other house, but at least I give you the choice.
See you tomorrow.
P.S. Happy Mother's day

Friday, March 14, 2008

A Word From Thomas


This is very lengthy I know, but this has been a source of much comfort for my soul and so I thought I would shsre it with you. Hope you find it uplifting as well.

Taken from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis as posted on Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER IX
Of the lack of all comfort
It is no hard thing to despise human comfort when divine is present. It is a great thing, yea very great, to be able to bear the loss both of human and divine comfort; and for the love of God willingly to bear exile of heart, and in nought to seek oneself, nor to look to one's own merit. What great matter is it, if thou be cheerful of heart and devout when favour cometh to thee? That is an hour wherein all rejoice. Pleasantly enough doth he ride whom the grace of God carrieth. And what marvel, if he feeleth no burden who is carried by the Almighty, and is led onwards by the Guide from on high?
2. We are willing to accept anything for comfort, and it is difficult for a man to be freed from himself. The holy martyr Laurence overcame the love of the world and even of his priestly master, because he
-62-despised everything in the world which seemed to be pleasant; and for the love of Christ he calmly suffered even God's chief priest, Sixtus, whom he dearly loved, to be taken from him. Thus by the love of the Creator he overcame the love of man, and instead of human comfort he chose rather God's good pleasure. So also learn thou to resign any near and beloved friend for the love of God. Nor take it amiss when thou hast been deserted by a friend, knowing that we must all be parted from one another at last.
3. Mightily and long must a man strive within himself before he learn altogether to overcome himself, and to draw his whole affection towards God. When a man resteth upon himself, he easily slippeth away unto human comforts. But a true lover of Christ, and a diligent seeker after virtue, falleth not back upon those comforts, nor seeketh such sweetness as may be tasted and handled, but desireth rather hard exercises, and to undertake severe labours for Christ.
4. When, therefore, spiritual comfort is given by God, receive it with giving of thanks, and know that it is the gift of God, not thy desert. Be not lifted up, rejoice not overmuch nor foolishly presume, but rather be more humble for the gift, more wary and more careful in all thy doings; for that hour will pass away, and temptation will follow. When comfort is taken from thee, do not straightway despair, but wait for the heavenly visitation with humility and patience, for God is able to give thee back greater favour and consolation. This is not new nor strange to those who have made trial of the way of God, for with the great saints and the ancient prophets there was often this manner of change.
5. Wherefore one said when the favour of God
-63-was present with him, I said in my prosperity I shall never be moved,n26 but he goeth on to say what he felt within himself when the favour departed: Thou didst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled. In spite whereof he in no wise despaireth, but the more instantly entreateth God, and saith, Unto Thee, O Lord, will I cry, and will pray unto my God; and then he receiveth the fruit of his prayer, and testifieth how he hath been heard, saying, The Lord heard me and had mercy upon me, the Lord was my helper. But wherein? Thou hast turned my heaviness into joy, Thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness. If it was thus with the great saints, we who are poor and needy ought not to despair if we are sometimes in the warmth and sometimes in the cold, for the Spirit cometh and goeth according to the good pleasure of His will. Wherefore holy Job saith, Thou dost visit him in the morning, and suddenly Thou dost prove him.n27
6. Whereupon then can I hope, or wherein may I trust, save only in the great mercy of God, and the hope of heavenly grace? For whether good men are with me, godly brethren or faithful friends, whether holy books or beautiful discourses, whether sweet hymns and songs, all these help but little, and have but little savour when I am deserted by God's favour and left to mine own poverty. There is no better remedy, then, than patience and denial of self, and an abiding in the will of God.
7. I have never found any man so religious and godly, but that he felt sometimes a withdrawal of the divine favour, and lack of fervour. No saint was ever so filled with rapture, so enlightened, but that sooner or later he was tempted. For he is not worthy of the
-64-great vision of God, who, for God's sake, hath not been exercised by some temptation. For temptation is wont to go before as a sign of the comfort which shall follow, and heavenly comfort is promised to those who are proved by temptation. As it is written, To him that overcometh I will give to eat of the tree of life.n28
8. Divine comfort is given that a man may be stronger to bear adversities. And temptation followeth, lest he be lifted up because of the benefit. The devil sleepeth not; thy flesh is not yet dead; therefore, cease thou not to make thyself ready unto the battle, for enemies stand on thy right hand and on thy left, and they are never at rest. Psalm xxx. 6. Job vii. 18. Revelation ii. 7.

A Minor Retraction

I was reading and pondering the other day and some of the things I said in my last post came to mind. Specifically the part about the resurrection body of our Lord. I have to say that I am not sure about the part of His body which hung on the cross being completely consumed. There are hints and stuff both ways so at this point I will have to say that the jury is out, but I do believe that the rest of the post is pretty solid. What do you think???

Thursday, February 14, 2008

A Body of Truth

Here I am again. Once again there has been a lot on my mental plate so I will only include the freshest stuff for your consumption. Hope it satisfies.

The thought that has gathered me the most over the last two weeks has been centered around the bread of communion that we share every so often. At our gathering we do this in remembrance once a month, just like the gathering I grew up in. I guess it is often enough to not forget about it and seldom enough to keep it fresh. Maybe. I remember in the old days when we would actually stay home on communion Sundays for personal reasons, and it wasn't until I got older that I started to take part in these services and started to form some ideas that lasted in some form or another until just this last month.

You see, I carried with me the thought that if you had sinned, or were sinning, you should not take part in the bread and wine. I thought that this is what it meant when it said to eat and drink unworthily in 1 Cor 11:29. There were many times when I even passed on taking the bread and the cup because of this and I secretly felt very noble. I always felt inside , though, that there was something off about the whole thing, something missing or maybe just skewed. A number of years ago the Lord started to show me some stuff about communion that started to lift the mystery away from it. I am not saying that the cloud has lifted completely now, but I do see it a lot more clearly than I used to.

The first thing which God showed me that sustained me through much juice and crackers was the part about discerning the body of the Lord. He showed me that if I were to look at it in context it would make more sense (gotta write that book about fridge magnets!!!). The context is a gathering of people who were tripping over each other at the love feast instead of preferring each other. It is a mental trick to refer to this group of people as the body of Christ and then turn and exclude that notion from the next passage about discerning the body of Christ and make it some deep mystery veiled with peril. There is peril, but it is not so great a mystery as all that. The body of Christ is the person next to you. How are we discerning this? It is very important to our Lord that we treat each other as He said.

Now that revelation carried me few a few years, but it left a nagging residue of that past idea of unworthiness. It seemed that there was more that needed to be erased, but I did not know what or how. Of late the Lord tripped me up with another download. When the crackers were coming around He told me that as Jesus broke the bread He knew the symbolism of what He was doing, He was submitting to the will of the Father and yielding His flesh to be destroyed for us. His next move was to hand the bread to us. He didn't tear off pieces and hand them out one at a time, we have to rip them off ourselves. We have to take responsibility for the sacrifice of Christ for us. We have to partake of His body (John 6:53) and take it in ourselves. We then chew it and swallow it. We destroy and ingest His body as His physical body was destroyed by us and ingested into the earth to be completely consumed. Remember Jesus arose with a resurrected body not a repair of the one that died on the cross. Taking the bread is an act of admission on two counts. We admit to the destruction of Christ's body at our hands and we admit to the necessity of Christ's body to heal and cleanse us. This levels the playing field every time we commune together. This balances the equation between the least and the greatest, the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor and every other class distinction we can devise. We all eat, we all admit, we all rejoice.
So then to eat or drink unworthily is to come with the idea that we have that "clean slate" and therefore we can proceed without peril. It is precisely this thought that stirs the peril. The table of communion is a place of humility and rejoicing, and not one without the other. To show only humility is to only admit the responsibility, to rejoice without humility is to only receive the atonement apart from the admission of responsibility.
I am so thankful to God for His constant work in our lives to continuously draw us together in His Son Jesus Christ. After all the body of Christ is our inheritance.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Who Knew?

Well it has happened again. I have been blindsided by the word of God so many times that you would think I'd be ready for it by now. Not so. Just this evening I was off to do some reading and I heard the Spirit say, "Corinthians". It seemed pretty simple and I thought that I knew what it was going to be about because of the conversation we were having throughout the day. Again; not so.

As I started into 1 Corinthians I made it past the issues of unity which were causing problems in the church and went on to the part where Paul said that he was not sent by Christ to preach with great words and wisdom (1Cor 1:17) but rather with demonstrations of the Spirit and power (1 Cor 2:4). Now these two statements I am familiar with, but it is what is sandwiched in between that really set me off. I think that before today whenever I read verse 17 I took it, glued it to a magnet and put it on the fridge. It looked good there but seemed, in my mind, to have no connection to the verses that followed it. They go on with the theme of preaching, and as it says in verse 21 God choose the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. This is where the disconnect really happened for me. It seemed a contradiction to verse 17 and I think that in my head I just chalked it up to being something that I was not understanding so I never dug deeper. What I was not understanding then has now comforted and rocked me all at the same time.

The comforting part of this is that the preaching that Paul was talking about is the preaching to the body of Christ. From verse 18 on Paul is describing why preaching with words of Godly wisdom is not meant for reaching the lost but rather for the instruction of those who have the mind of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit (1 John 2:27, John 16:13). This is a wisdom that is beyond those that are perishing. The word says that they cannot understand it (1 Cor. 2:14), even if we dumb it down. We try to take it down a notch, but that still doesn't cut through. We try to take the Christianese out of it and it still falls flat. We preach in so many different ways to the lost when really this was meant to be used within the body for edification, encouragement, rebuke and strengthening. It is also no wonder that we are getting such watered down Christians populating our gatherings (me included). In our frantic efforts to be relevant, new or socially engaging we have forgotten that it is the power of God that saves (Rom 1:16) not our shiny faces and well meaning posturing. The really freaky thing is that we need to take us back out of the equation and allow the Spirit to put it together. Every time there is a great in gathering of souls into the kingdom it is not with a man at the helm, rather it is with a man/woman who has handed the helm to the Holy Spirit. When we work the equation with us in it, it is like doing advanced calculus by guess work. When we allow the Spirit to lead He takes us and puts us into the equation with power , direction and order, then the answer always comes out to be "God's glory".
This, I believe, is why it is so threatening to us to let this go. It so takes us out of what we can do and puts it squarely on God to accompish it. When you look at Paul's life statements you can see that he was not the impressive man of God he is so often pictured as. His life made it obvious who was at the helm. In fact he went so far as to say that any qualifications he may have had were counted by him as a pile of shit (see dung). He said it was the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ that put all his ministry together. He said it was the power of God working effectually in him that brought it about. Were we to look at his life chronologically all the arguements about ,"Well it was his submissiveness." or "He was a great man who was humble before God" and others would fall mute before the facts he declared of himself. His self declarations diminished over his life as his impact in the world grew.
The point is that we need to see the power of God engaged to see the reaping of God's glory. This all happens as we diminish. This all happens as we concede more and more that we cannot do it. Not even a little bit. Jesus said without Him we can do very little......oh..no...it says we can you nothing.
I am as threatened by this as anyone else and my life is scorched by this truth as well, but it is a truth that will not go away.