(HT: Justin Taylor)

Your success, your reputation, your retirement account?

How would you know?  By looking at how you spend your time?  Your money?  Your influence?

If your treasure is anything other than Jesus, you’re wasting your time, your money, your influence… your life!  So, please, if your life is wrapped up in the pursuit of anything other than Jesus, lose your life!

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.  For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:34-36

The video below speaks to this upside down thinking (lose your life to save it).  Caution: some of you will be offended by this video.  Don’t let this offense be a stumbling block, but a starting off point to re-thinking where your treasure lies!

This video really stirs me up!  We’re thankful to be supported by the sacrificial giving of gospel-driven retired peoples!  We’re thankful to be a part of a ministry team that includes several “second career” missionaries, who have abandoned the empty pursuit of a self-focused retirement in order to be a part of God’s work among the nations here.

God, please keep stirring up “gospel-driven” people!  65 is not the finish line!

What led to that bin Ladenism and 9/11—the post-Soviet fighting between Mujahideen, the rise of the Taliban, and terrorist camps—resulted in thousands of Afghans fleeing to Pakistan, where they were put in refugee camps. In one of these camps outside Peshawar, conditions were dismal. Since refugee children ran around barefoot in intense heat and cold, a Christian organization brought in hundreds of sandals. The group decided it would not just distribute the sandals but wash the children’s feet first. To do this, they enlisted as many Christians as possible, including our daughter-in-law, who carefully washed the children’s filthy feet, put medication on their sores, and prayed silently for them before giving them the sandals.

Some months later, a primary-school teacher in the area asked her children who the best Muslims were. A girl put up her hand and said, “The kafirs” (“disbelievers”).

After the teacher recovered from cardiac arrest, she asked, “Why?”

The girl replied, “The Mujahideen killed my father, but the kafirs washed my feet.”

Ultimately, the future of missions to Muslims will be affected less by the flames of 9/11, or even the flames that started the Arab Spring, than by the inner flames that are ignited if we so follow our Lord, who modeled the basin and the towel, that our Muslim friends may echo the words of the disciples in Emmaus: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Thanks for being a part of our ministry.  Your prayers and encouragement are priceless to us!

As you might imagine, Muslims seek God with particular earnestness during Ramadan.  It is our prayer that during this season of prayer and fasting and seeking, many Muslims would see that their prayers have already been answered in Jesus!   In Jesus alone, the throne of God has been made approachable.  In Jesus alone, our hearts (the true source of sin) can be made clean.  In Jesus alone, we can be reconciled to God!

Would you join us in praying for Muslims during the month of Ramadan (which runs from August 1-30 this year)?  Please pray that their eyes would be open to Jesus!  Pray that many Muslims would put their trust in Jesus during this time.  There is a Christian groundswell in many areas of the “Muslim world.”  Pray that God’s grace would transform this groundswell into a movement for Christ – one that would transform millions of lives and the entire region!

To help guide your prayers, check out Arab World Media’s daily prayer feed or download a guidebook from 30-Days Prayer Network.

I find it interesting that one of the most common questions asked today among Christians is “What is God’s will for my life?” or “How do I find God’s will for my life?”  Many Christians have almost assumed the attitude that they would obey God if he would just show them what he wanted them to do.

In the middle of a Christian culture asking, “How do I find God’s will for my life?” I bring good news.  He will is not lost.  With 1.4 million Bedouins in Algeria [just 1 among 1000 examples] who have never even heard the gospel, it makes little sense for us to sit over here asking, “What do you want me to do, God?”  The answer is clear.  The will of God is for you and me to give our lives urgently and recklessly to making the gospel and the glory of God known among all peoples, particularly those who have never even heard of Jesus.

The question, therefore, is not “Can we find God’s will?”  The question is “Will we obey God’s will?”

Will we refuse to sit back and wait for some tingly feeling to go down our spines before we rise up and do what we have already been commanded to do?

Will we risk everything – our comfort, our possessions, our safety, our security, our lives – to make the gospel known among unreached peoples?

Such rising up and such risk taking are the unavoidable, urgent results of a life that is radically abandoned to Jesus.

Embrace the risk.  Do something epic… better yet, do something eternal!  Go… for His glory!

First, I believe that many, many Muslims are hungry to know about the hope that we have in Jesus.  Yet unless Christians and Muslims get to know one another on a personal level – life on life – how will a Muslim be able to ask about your hope in Christ?  Sadly, most of us will never get to know a Muslim personally, if we aren’t intentional about developing these relationships.

Second, in order to make our hope comprehensible, we must offer an answer that “speaks the language” of those who ask.  This isn’t about changing the content of our response; it’s about making the content of our response understandable to the one asking.  Your Muslim friend will most likely come from a different culture than your own, with a different way of looking at the world and a different vocabulary for describing and explaining it.  Giving the reason for our hope in Christ means doing so in a way that this Muslim friend (with a different culture, worldview, and vocabulary) can comprehend.  We can call this contextualization.  Tim Keller puts it well: “Contextualization is not about giving people what they want.  It is giving God’s answers (which they probably do not want) to the questions they are asking and in forms they can comprehend.”

In light of the above, I appreciated this video – featuring J.D. Greear.  Very helpful.

HT: Church Planting for the Rest of Us

And yet, it’s been an opportunity for our ministry team to shine.  Their passion and love and commitment shined through brightly on Tuesday (as just one example).  There was no public transportation (which means that traffic is horrible), and yet several teammates commuted by car (2.5 hours, one way) just so that they wouldn’t miss out on what God might do.  Other teammates walked to work (up to 1.5 hours, one way) in order to love and serve refugees in the name of Jesus!  Even several of our volunteers braved the chaos so that they could be a part of God’s work among the nations!  Wow!  What an amazing team!

I didn’t hear any complaining because I think that we all know that God is up to something great!  Lives are being changed by the power of the Gospel.  Honestly, each day I come to work with high expectations – high expectations of God and His ability to change lives, and families, and cities! I honestly believe that God is changing the futures of entire nations through His work here.  The next generation of Iranians will not be the same because of the way Jesus has been revealed here.  Afghanistan will be a different country tomorrow because of the families that have confessed “Jesus is Lord” while in Athens.  And I pray that we’ll tell this same story of Iraq, and of Sudan, and of Egypt, and… only God knows what’s next.  I can’t think of a better way to invest my time, gifts, and energy!

I’m proud of our team, and so thankful to work shoulder-to-shoulder with such an amazing group of people.  Even more, I’m thankful to serve such an amazing Savior!

There are so many fears… so many unanswered questions.  Will he find other believers to help him grow?  Will she ever put her faith in Jesus?  What will happen to the kids?  Will he be reunited with his family? Will she ever get a chance to go to school?  I love working with refugees, but I hate the unanswered questions.  It can be difficult to trust God with the futures of my refugee friends!

In this light, I appreciated a recent article at The Resurgence, “People Belong to God: Ministering in Transient Populations.” Whether we’re working with students, singles, or refugees, I found the insights below a helpful reminder that, indeed, people belong to God.

In Colossians 2:6–7 Paul states, “Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” The words of stability in these verses are compelling and profound. Rooted, built up, established in faith, and abounding are terms of deep connection and commitment.

1. The importance of patience. Rushing people to a place in their lives they have never faced never works. Just because you hit a great home run in preaching and teaching a few times doesn’t mean people get it. People are becoming more process-oriented and need a place to work through worldview-transforming information with God’s people.
2. Commitment to community formation. Community formation is more than just throwing people into “small groups” or “missional communities”. It takes the Holy Spirit to knit people to other disciples. Being positionally connected to the body through the gospel does not make a person functionally connected to God’s people. It is the beginning and an empowering mechanism of true and practical knitting. People have to want to be with one another (2 Corinthians 6:11-13).
3. Help people face what they are running from. Stability is scary to many of us, although we know we need it. Slowing down helps us face places in our soul where Jesus’ functional rule has not yet conquered. Running only postpones the inevitable.
4. Dealing with natural and spiritual maturity equally. Although all things in our life should be viewed through a spiritual lens, it is helpful to work through some distinctions. Emotional, volitional, intellectual, geographical, financial, sexual, and relational health is a must to help people grow in Jesus. While not a comprehensive list, these are the greatest obstacles that impede people from stability. Ephesians 4:15 calls us to grow up in all respects—a phenomenal challenge for transient people. When they are challenged in a way that is compelling and gospel-centered, they feel encouraged to face what they are fighting.
5. Recognizing that people ultimately belong to God. Some people will remain for a season. Our goal must be to do as much as we can to love them and engage them in the season when Jesus has allowed them to cross our paths. God ultimately is sovereign over people’s life span and direction. Living by faith calls us to commit ourselves to see God use people’s instability to show us how fragile we are and our need to repent and believe the gospel in uncharted areas of our lives.

Partnering with both local and international churches, Helping Hands (a Greek NGO) and International Teams (an international missions organization) work together to share the love of Jesus with refugees in Greece.  The vision of our ministry is to see the lives of refugees transformed by Jesus: “to plant gospel seeds in the lives of refugees that take root and bear the fruit of life transformation in Jesus Christ.” We seek to share Christ through acts of gospel demonstration (e.g. feeding, clothing, and shelter ministries) and words of gospel proclamation (e.g. preaching, teaching, and discipleship ministries).

God is at work in Athens.  As many refugees in Greece come from nations with little or no Christian witness (e.g. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Somalia and Sudan), through our ministry hundreds of refugees each year hear the gospel and meet practicing Christians for the first time.  New disciples are being baptized.  Lives are being changed! And as these new believers leave Athens (whether they continue further into Europe or return to their homeland) they take the gospel with them – sharing Christ with others and starting fellowship groups throughout Europe and the Middle East. Indeed, God is reaching the nations through Athens!

What an opportunity to join God’s global work!  I love Athens!

Having some problems with the embedding: click here to watch on the Desiring God website.