7 Signs

SEVEN SIGNS YOU'RE AN ANNOYING AMERICAN TOURIST

8 Words

8 English Words You Shouldn't Use Abroad

Things to avoid in other countries.

10 Signs To Avoid In Other Countries

Suffering and Evil

Suffering and evil in the world is so prolific and horrendous that we instinctively avoid thinking about it to preserve our happiness. If Christianity is true, then all suffering and evil will one day be destroyed and healed. If atheism is true, suffering and evil are pointless and will never be rectified. So, paradoxically, a Christian gains the emotional resources to reflect honestly on suffering by reflecting on reality (as he perceives it) while an atheist gains the emotional resources to reflect honestly on suffering only by ignoring reality (as he perceives it).

The Learning Pyramid

The following diagram was obtained from Dr. David Sills' Facebook page. Dr. Sills is a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.  This diagram, The Learning Pyramid, shows what the average learning retention rates are among oral learners. As we can see from this presentation, the bottom four levels is where the bulk of retention takes place.  www.water.cc/orality. 

The Learning Pyramid shows us that the Greatest Methods of Learning Retention are at the Base of the Pyramid. This is achieved through Discussion Groups, Practice-By-Doing Activities, Sharing Ideas and Teaching Others. This is the method that Life Wisdom Institute uses in its Wisdom Teaching Outreach to the public. It’s wonderfully effective in achieving a deep understanding and transformational learning.

Simple * Unexpected * Concrete * Credible * Emotional * Story

Life Wisdom Institute also uses the SUCCES formula developed by Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the exciting book, Made To Stick. This formula helps us creates educational messages that are memorable and effective—they “stick.” They are Simple (core ideas), Unexpected (arouse curiosity), Concrete (practical), Credible(offering evidence), Emotional (a heart or caring factor), and usually contain a Story(everyone loves a good story!) They are remembered, attractive and enjoyable, and thus the Wisdom Teaching in them can reach a person, have a good effect, and Learning is increased!

How to Care for Our Missionaries

Author: Richard Brindley Category: General, Missions

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We tend to assign missionaries very extraordinary reputations—like “Varsity Christians” or “Gospel-centered Special Forces.” But, of course, they are just ordinary people. And while we may think of them solely as missionaries, they are not missionaries first. They are people first; ordinary believers who just happen to be missionaries.  

Their role in the Great Commission is to go and take the gospel to other nations. For the rest of us, our role is to send them. They go, we send. And as John the Apostle says in 3 John 6-8, we are to “send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.” John continues, “For they have gone out for the sake of the name…Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.”

As fellow workers, there are two key ways we can help send and sustain missionaries: by caring for the person and by supporting their work.

Caring for the Person

Because missionaries are ordinary people, we can care for them just like we do any other person. We can encourage them, love them, pray for them, spend time with them, contribute to their needs, celebrate with them and weep with them.

But, while their identity may be ordinary, the context of their life is not. The extraordinary call on their life to leave the comforts and close community of home and move to a spiritually neutral or even spiritually unwelcoming people for the sake of the gospel means their ordinary day is not like any ordinary day in the Metroplex. This means we’ll be extending very ordinary care to people in very extraordinary environments. We will constantly need to ask, “How do we love and support someone in a high-pressure environment 10,000 miles away?” 

Here are a few suggestions:

• Get acquainted. Use Skype or Google Hangouts to get to know them. If you’re caring for a missionary as a Home Group, have each member of your group make a short video introducing themselves, quickly sharing about their life and praying for the missionary. Share the videos with them through Dropbox or send them with the next care package.
• Ask. Ask them how you can best care for them. Sometimes what we think would be helpful may not fit their context.
• Communicate often. Typically, two or three quick texts or emails a week are much better than one long email each month. These can be a quick prayer or a quick hello. Consistent little gestures of care and love tend to be much better than one rare, big one.
• Respond to their newsletters. It’s tremendously encouraging. Your response doesn’t have to be long, just respond.
• Pray with them and encourage them. Pray for their strength, for their affections and for fearless love for those they’re ministering to. Pray for God to move mightily. If you’re among their closest community, give them the opportunity to join your group in grace-filled confession and repentance and then Spirit-filled worship. Encourage them in the Word. Remind them of God’s faithfulness.
• Remember security. Check with the missionary or church to be sure your communication doesn’t endanger missionaries working in countries actively opposed to Christianity.
• Send care packages. Send some encouragement and some fun. Send things that would bless them based on your interactions with them.
• Visit. Few things are more loving and encouraging than face-to-face. Consider a short-term mission trip to see and support their ministry firsthand.
• Get creative. Do you write? Scrapbook? Make videos? Consider collecting pictures, prayers and stories of God’s movement in their life and ministry and recording them. On key anniversaries or during difficult seasons for your missionary, pull out the stories and remember with them God’s faithfulness (Ps. 66).

Supporting Their Work

We can support the work of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances by two essential practices: praying and giving. Prayer is essential, as only God can bring people from death to life (Ezek. 36:26-27). Finances are essential, as sending a missionary to live in another country and providing for their ministry costs money. And while both the provision for the work and fruit of it belong to God, God tells us to ask Him to provide it (John 15:16).

• Support them with prayer. Pray for the missionary. Pray for their people. Get to know the people they’re ministering to by name. Consider assigning each one to a member of your Home Group to intentionally pray for that person’s salvation and sanctification (John 15:16; Jas. 5:13-18).
• Support them with finances. Search your budget. Give monthly. Sacrifice. Give prayerfully. Ask God to use your money to make disciples. When bigger needs or projects arise for your missionary, consider fundraising for it as a group.

Final Thoughts

John the Apostle goes so far as to call missionary supporters “fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 6-8). The apostle Paul calls them, “partners in the gospel” (Phil. 1:5, 4:15-20). Be encouraged that your role among the nations as a missionary supporter is never second-class. Support your missionary well, in a manner worthy of God. Finally, remember that a happy, healthy missionary is not the only goal of missionary care. A well-cared for and fully supplied missionary is our hope, but our greater hope is that by partnering with our missionaries as fellow workers, we will make more disciples together than either of us could on our own. May God use our ordinary efforts to build an extraordinary partnership between those who send and those who go.

Recommended Resources

10 Ways to Encourage a Missionary

Stay-at-Home Moms with Missionary Hearts

Prayer: The Work of Missions

How Can I Discern the Specific Calling of God on My Life?

Posted on: Mar 24, 2014

How to pray by John Piper

Some have wondered: How do you spend a half-an-hour in prayer, not to mention two or three hours? Here is my three-fold answer:

1. Resolve to do it. Don’t purpose to pray until you run dry. Purpose to pray the full half-hour. Prayer is work. It is not always a “sweet hour.” Jesus did many works with ease, but he prayed with “loud crying and tears” (Hebrews 5:7).                                                                                                                            
2. Think about what you want to see change in your heart and life and family and neighborhood and church and world. Make a list if necessary. Then pray through it, giving God reasons from Scripture why this is something that he would surely do.                                                                                                                                                                              
3. Put the Bible in front of you and simply read a line and turn it into a prayer. Paraphrase it, expand on it, apply it to yourself and others. This works best with the ethical portions of Scripture like Matthew 5-7; Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5, 6; Ephesians 4-6; Colossians 3, 4; 1 Thessalonians 5; 1 John, etc. You can pray all day once you catch on. And you will be surprised how many insights come as you really take Scripture seriously and try to pray it into your life. If you run into theological or interpretational problems, tell the Lord you will work on that later and move on. If we seek hard to obey what we dounderstand, more light will come on the hard parts.

BE STRONG AND PLAY THE MAN

It is very unlikely that any of us here in the U.S. will ever face what the 33 Christians in North Korea are facing right now. It is highly unlikely that we will ever look down the end of a gun barrel waiting for it to be fired as many in China have had done to them in the last 60+ years. It is also highly unlikely that we will have acid thrown in our faces as many Muslim women have experienced for becoming Christians. And it is highly unlikely that we will be marched into gas chambers as many Christians were forced to do along side their Jewish friends and neighbors.

Martyrdom for Christ's sake is nothing new nor is it something that we should be surprised about. Jesus clearly stated that just as the Father had sent Him, He was sending us. It was among wolves that we were being sent. Jesus said, "'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also."

The following comes from an article written by Greg Laurie:

Polycarp, one of the first church fathers and the pastor of the church in Smyrna, was martyred on February 23 in A.D. 155. On that day, the public games were taking place, and the crowds were whipped into a real frenzy. Someone cried out, "Let Polycarp be searched for!"

The night before, Polycarp had a dream in which the pillow under his head was on fire. He woke up and told his fellow believers, "I must be burned alive." When Polycarp was arrested, he asked for the privilege of having a final hour to spend with the Lord in prayer.

As Polycarp entered the Roman arena, God spoke to his heart and said, "Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man." The Roman proconsul gave him the choice between cursing the name of Christ and making a sacrifice to Caesar, or dying. Polycarp said, "Eighty-six years I have served the Lord. He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who has saved me?"

When the proconsul threatened him with being burned at the stake, Polycarp replied, "You threaten me with the fire that burns for a time and is quickly quenched, but you do not know the fire that awaits the wicked and the judgment to come into everlasting punishment. Why are you waiting? Come and do what you will."

My prayer is that if I were ever faced with martyrdom, I too would "play the man". My prayer for those 33 in North Korea is the same. May they too "play the man".  Tertullian, a second century Christian author stated, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church". My prayer too is that the seed of the church be planted as a result of what those 33 will soon face.