A peek into Jesus at work in our hearts
Greetings friends and family,
Normally we would write and display things that we have been up to for the last couple of months. However, this month we’re switching things up a bit. God has been at work in our lives, meeting us in our hearts and touching us there. We’d like to let you peek into the work of the Spirit in our hearts during this time.
I, Rob, have been keeping a prayer journal regularly and I’m opening it up to an entry that I recorded just a few days ago:
This past weekend we attended a retreat led by Steve and Evy Klassen from the MARK Center in Abbotsford, BC. The retreat was held at the Sheraton Hotel in Keauhou Bay, Hawaii (just a few minutes down the road from YWAM Kona). Everything was provided for by someone who wanted to bless YWAM Kona staff (Thank you, whoever you are!), including room and board, so we were able to get away from the YWAM base for a couple of nights and enjoy the hotel. Elias enjoyed the pool, which had a waterslide in it.
It was at this retreat that I was eager to hear the voice of God again. I desired to meet with him and receive whatever he would want to speak to me. The expectation was a fresh experience with Jesus. Steve Klassen led us through some meditations and encouraged us to discover Jesus through the Scriptures. He used stories from the book of Mark. On one particular night we were meditating on Mark 14:1-11:
Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
Then Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 They were delighted to hear this and promised to give him money. So he watched for an opportunity to hand him over.
As I meditated on this Scripture and listened to what the Holy Spirit might highlight for me, I began to discover the scene a little more. As I put myself into the context and watched the men gathering and the woman pouring the perfume and the response of the men, I could feel the indignation of the people. And I could completely understand the way they were thinking. It was a “waste” of something very valuable.
My heart was exposed in my own context. I was struggling with the this same kind of thinking in my own life.
We had been serving the Lord in Thailand for the last 10 and a half years. We went on the word of the Lord and we were finally experiencing some very fruitful ministry. Things were coming into place to lead a potential movement through the nation. Then one day Jesus spoke to our hearts and we knew that we had to move to YWAM in Kona, Hawaii. The direction of the Lord wasn’t confusing. It was clear and confirmed again and again. So we made the move based on his leading. There was joy in obedience.
The struggle in my mind began when I started to communicate the drastic change in our lives. When I consider where we were and what we were doing, I consider so much of that “valuable.” We were living in a country where the population is 99% unreached and many people have never even heard about Jesus before. We were leading a ministry that was focused on getting the word of God into every home in that nation. And we were seeing some big momentum in that vision moving forward. The unreached were getting reached and people were coming to the Lord and becoming his disciples. The church was uniting through the vision and the potential for a movement to grow was so great. Everything was at its peak in terms of kingdom “value.” The body of Christ around the world would consider who we are and what we were doing as “valuable” and worth a great investment of resources. And we were seeing that those investments of resources and relationships were increasing rapidly. Again, it was the most valuable place and role for us to be in at that moment.
When God spoke to move to Kona, we were a little confused as to the timing and the context, but we have learned the truth that following God, even when it doesn’t make sense to our human minds, is always the best and works out so much better in the end than our own plans. We decided to move by faith. And it was (and still is) exciting to see how everything will play out.
But how do I communicate this? How do I present this to the staff in Thailand, our supporters and our community around the world? What will they think about this?
I remember one conversation we had with someone. We were explaining the leading of the Lord and the decision that we were going to move to Hawaii from Thailand (it still sounds illogical as I write this). Through a series of different pieces of advice we received I left that conversation thinking: “I’m going to have to prove to people that this change is and will be worth it.” I already had the beginnings of this thought pattern in my mind and to receive a similar message from someone I respected, it became lodged into my heart.
Sometimes I would share what was going on in our lives, and I would try to highlight Jesus in the center of it all, but in my heart I was fearful of what people would think about me and my family. In some ways I was ashamed of the direction that we were going simply because of the way that I expected the people around me to respond: with indignation.
I identified myself and my family with this woman in Mark 14 in many ways. We had something of great value in the eyes of Christians, something that others had been a part of building through years of support, and now I was breaking it and pouring it out because the Holy Spirit was leading us to. With the broken jar of our lives and ministry in Thailand poured out, leaving everything behind and moving to Hawaii, the indignation of man (mostly my own thoughts of indignation) glares at me, rebuking me harshly, “Why this waste?”
Moving to Hawaii by such a drastic leading of the Holy Spirit, we expected something great to happen because of it, something that would “prove” to the world that it was the best decision. I so longed to see how things would develop into a greater role for us or greater fruitfulness or whatever would be valuable in the world’s eyes. Our arrival was met with nothing of great worth. We simply arrived. Our family wasn’t involved in some great ministry activity or anything that I could report that would display the value of our move. And my own frustration with this regard increased and increased. And in my heart I was crying out to God, asking, “How can I prove that following you to Hawaii was the best investment in your kingdom?” Even in the retreat I had the expectation that the Lord would reveal something of that sort.
However, it was this story of this woman who broke and poured out a valuable perfume on Jesus that highlighted my false perception of what is of greatest value in the kingdom. What the King values most is what is of most value in His kingdom. Jesus valued what that woman had done for him. And Jesus valued what we had done for him. And Jesus stepped into the context of indignation and harsh rebuking through his spoken words: “Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me.” He defended her decision to invest something of great value in her world to bless Jesus and he counted it as more valuable than if she would have sold it and given all the proceeds to the poor (which was a really good, valuable work in the ministry of Jesus. He even asked someone to do that for him: Matthew 19:21). He counted her action so valuable that he made a point of causing her story to be a part of the good news that would travel the world over.
The words that Jesus spoke to those men were the words that I heard Jesus speaking to the voices indignation in my heart. He silenced them and honored what we had done by placing great value on it. The freedom and the peace that it brought to my heart allowed me to receive the pleasure of God without hindrance regarding our obedience. And it doesn’t matter if I ever have human “proof” that this decision was the best or not in human eyes. Jesus counted it valuable in his eyes. And what the King values most is what is of most value in His kingdom.
My journey with God has often led me into unique situations that challenge my own worldly ways of thinking. I know that this journey of leaving Thailand to come to Hawaii has exposed something that I didn’t know was there. But praise God that he meets us in our struggles and speaks words of life, transforming our lives by the renewal of our minds through His word.
Our expectations of being fruitful in all seasons remain (“By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” John 15:8), no longer because we feel the need to “prove our worth” to others in Jesus’ kingdom, but because the King has a place for us in His kingdom and when we are led by His Spirit to do anything, we can expect God to move in one way or another. Abiding in Jesus in our lives is expressed through regular acts of obedience to what we believe He speaks to us (“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.” John 8:31).