Saturday, November 25, 2017

November 25, 2017


The last day of building, Michael and his father are killing a goat for the construction workers to have for lunch.

Last week, on one of our regular trips to Torit for shopping and business, I had another great talk with Paul.  We were listening to worship music in the pickup and the song “Great I Am” came on the radio.  I was singing along with it, and then thought “I wonder if this is confusing?”  We often talk about what the words to our Christian music are saying and how they lead us to see God in a certain light, so I asked Paul if he knew what “Great I Am” meant.  That’s something we really take for granted isn’t it?  Hearing things like the names of God in so many different contexts, but Paul had no idea.  It really is confusing that a state of being verb is used as a proper name isn’t it?

I asked Paul if he knew the story of the burning bush.  He told me that he had read the story a few times, but it wasn’t one of the stories he had told and taught in the church, so he was only somewhat familiar with it.  I probed him through retelling me the story (Where was Moses?  Why wasn’t he a slave?  What did he see?  What did the voice say to him?  Etc.) until we got to the last part where Moses asked “When they ask who sent me, what should I tell them?”  Here Paul couldn’t remember God’s response.  How could he?  It doesn’t make any sense…”I Am” isn’t something that stands out as someone’s name, especially when he’s reading English which is not his first/heart language.  I started talking to Paul about what it means that God answered “Who are you?” with “I Am that I Am.”  Sure, God has tons of other names in the Bible that focus on one or a few of his specific attributes, but any name or word used to describe God effectively limits our description of him.  God isn’t defined by a name, or a certain personality type, or a race, or anything else, he is “I Am that I Am.”  He defines Himself.  He defines everything else.  He is the self-sufficient, selfexistent, all-authoritative and powerful creator of reality.

Then we moved on.  Something I’ve strongly believed since I started doing this, and that has been reinforced by a few key co-workers and teachers, is that any lesson/story/ sermon/discussion about the things of God can and should end with the gospel.  So I asked Paul if knowing this “Name for God” made him think of anything in the New Testament.  He couldn’t think of anything, so I handed him my phone and told him to read John chapter 8.  Again, as we talk about walking alongside pastors in discipleship and the day-to-day teaching relationship we want to have with these leaders whom God has put in our lives, think about how much of Jesus’ statement in John 8:58 is just lost in translation! 

In John 8, Jesus is arguing with the Pharisees about Abraham.  Jesus is greater than Abraham.  In fact, Abraham died, but those who repent and believe in Jesus will never taste death, Ever!  Actually, Abraham rejoiced when he saw Jesus’ day!  The Pharisees couldn’t take it, they said “Jesus, you’re not even 50 years old yet!  You’ve seen Abraham?”  And then we have Jesus’ climactic response, “I assure you: Before Abraham was, I am.”

The Pharisees knew what Jesus meant, they tried to kill him.  As I drove the pickup and Paul read John 8 out loud to me, his face lit up as well.  I said “Paul, what is Jesus saying about himself in that story?”  The remaining 2 hours of the trip home was packed.  Was Jesus claiming to be God?  Yes he was.  Was Jesus claiming to be eternal?  Yes he was.  But it’s even more than that.  God appeared to Moses in the bush and named Himself, and Jesus said “That was me.  That IS me.”  He didn’t say “I was,”  He said “I Am.”  There’s lots of good speculation about God’s relationship to time, but if the way we’ve put it all together is true, when God was talking to Moses in the bush, He was also present with Jesus hanging on the cross.  When God told Abraham that his descendant would be a blessing to all nations, the very descendant about whom God was talking was there, present, pronouncing the promise that He Himself would fulfill in His broken body on the cross.  The cross wasn’t an accident, it was God’s perfect redemptive plan from the very beginning.  He’s the one who would crush the serpent’s head, and He was there from the beginning orchestrating it all so that “The one who hears my word and keeps it will never taste death – ever!”

Paul had a new appreciation for the vastness of God’s plan in the gospel on Tuesday and, as happens with lots of preachers and teachers, so did I.  Talking through the little, well-known, taken for granted fact that Great I Am goes back to Moses, I learned a lot about just how deeply God, Jesus, the Great I Am, cares about our souls and has planned for our deliverance.

Donatello (Ezekiel) wielding a broomstick with one of his birthday presents from grandparents.  Caleb really wanted to be swinging a weapon too, so he got out the backhoe…


Construction Update

 The house is done.  I am writing this newsletter from Uganda, I got here yesterday to get some pretty major repairs done on the pickup, pack up Amy and the kids, drive them to Arua where they can get a flight back to the village, drive myself (and their luggage) back to South Sudan and be there to meet them when they arrive.  We should all be back home by the middle of December and this year we will have our first Christmas all together in our finished house!  Thank you to everyone who has prayed, encouraged, written and given during this trying time of separation.  I’m thrilled for it to be over, and I know the kids are too.  This morning I was snuggling with Caleb on the couch after he woke up and Amy walked by.  He sat up and said “Momma!”  She looked over and said “Yes sweetie?”  and he just smiled and pointed his finger at me like “Look what I found!”

Pray 

- Pray that All of the packing and final travels will go well and that we won’t forget anything! - Pray that, as we’ve just finished all of the construction on the house, that God would provide for some recent major repairs that have come up on our pickup. - Pray for our reunion as a family as we all re-adjust to being together again.  I’m not a “bachelor” anymore, there are two parents at home, two people who need space, etc.

Thanks!

Justin, Amy, Ezekiel and Caleb