I had a few pictures in my phone I thought I would share.

Car in the ditch

Bystanders said driver was drunk

The day we left for California for Christmas, we heard a lot of comotion right behind our wall.  Somehow the driver managed to get the car in the ditch directly perpendicular to the flow of traffic.  I talked to some calmer people outside the “mob” who said the car was from a nearby “garage” where they fix vehicles, and the mechanic was doing a test drive… drunk.  I doubt there is any insurance to cover that one.

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In this post, I would like to further my ideas on “What is Evil?” as a part of this longer series.

Love requires a choice. Someone cannot be forced to love, they must choose it of their own will. Otherwise, it is not love.

God is omnipotent, the creator of everything.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  He is invincible.  What is there that He did not speak into being, and cannot speak out of being?  The idea that God is at war is ridiculous.

God desires that all men would choose to love Him (1 Tim 2:4), but He cannot force them, because of the nature of love.

That means that the battle for a soul takes place inside a man’s own heart, the only place that God has willfully restricted His omnipotence.  A man’s heart, therefore, is the only place evil can exist, because it is outside the presence of God, by His own choice.  It is the evil we choose in our hearts that forces our separation from God.  But God is sovereign, and when that evil leaves our heart and enters the world, we see that evil cannot be in God’s presence (Gen 50:20, Rom 8:28).  There are some good connections with my posts on “Free Will and Special Relativity” that I would like to explore at later time.

God has made the effort to orchestrate all of history to influence men in their hearts.  He knew man would fall, He designed it so that He would have to make the ultimate sacrifice of His Son, to demonstrate His love for us.  He even manages the minutia of your life, so that you can see Him for who He is, a loving Father, interested in only the best for His children, even when it hurts.

The battle is in your heart, and it is you that is fighting, not God (Eph 6:12).  He desires to see us fight, win, and return the love He has so generously poured on us. He desires you to invite His Spirit into your heart to free you from your own evil.

God is working for you, right now.  He has given you all the tools you need.  Are you fighting for Him? Are you returning His love? Are you becoming His child, by being made into the image of His Son (Rom 8:29)? Or have you continued to choose to have a heart full of evil, absent from God?

During our time here our water has been turned off Tues thru Thurs. It has never been a big problem because we have storage tanks. However, there are times when it gets frustrating. Well, for the first time in a year and a half our water wasn’t turned off! Oh the blessings of flowing water! Especially because our pump to our front tank is broken so we have to bucket water into our back pump which can then pump water up to the tank in the house. It has been nice this week to not have to do it. However, it always gives you perspective. Many people have to walk miles to get their water, I just have to walk to the front of my house (and only once a week).

I have been sitting on this post for a long time, in the back of my mind, knowing I was going to write it.  It is probably the toughest one of this series, so I have been putting it off.

If you read the previous posts, you should no doubt believe God is able, and God loves you.  Those are simple but profound statements.  Putting them together brings a very difficult to accept conclusion.  It goes to the root of “what is evil,” but I want to leave most of that to the following post in this series.

God is not delinquent in bringing about His will.  He is not surprised.  He does not forget to act, He does not forget about you.  He is a purposeful God, with intentions that run the full length of history.  God is in control, He is able to take care of everything.  He loves us, beyond what we can comprehend.  He directs our lives in such a way as to get us to grow and to change into the men He wants us to be.  All the while we have a freewill, yet are unable to surprise Him by our choices.  He knows what lies before us.  He knows how hard it will be, and yet, He wants us to go through it.  I know there is a lot of nasty stuff going on in the world, I live close to a lot of it.  But that does not negate the reality of those two answers.  Doubting that takes us down the road of Job, and I do not want to have the “smack” brought down on me like that.

I started out the series by using the phrase “heart know.”  Living like we know that God is able, and that God loves us completely changes the way we approach life. God is not concerned with the same things you or I are.  We are motivated by self, He is love.  God is concerned about us, not our stuff, not our bodies, not our health.  He cares about the eternal you, not the now you. God wants us to grow up.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.  2 Corinthians 4:7-10 NKJV

God is not afraid to do what it takes to bring Himself glory through us.  More often than not that means tough stuff.  The stripping of the desires of the flesh is a difficult process, and one that is not done completely before death.

So why does a loving God do it?  Why would He allow such atrocities, even to His own children?

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.  For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NKJV

Atrocities are a human measure of what is happening. We are looking at temporary things.  This is but for a moment.  God is concerned about the “eternal weight of glory” and so should we.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.  Romans 8:18 NKJV

What are the worst thing believers go through?  Because even those cannot be compared to the glory God is working for eternity.

That is a story worth writing about, and He did.  He wrote it all for us, because of His love.

Edit: The next in the series is “The Battlefield.”

We were way past due to unload the pictures on the camera. I finally got around to it.  There is a whole smattering of pictures, so it might be best to look at the updates dyn24amic album.  I think Cammy is going to post on some of the different sets of pictures.

My brother-in-law is here visiting with us.  We are having a great time and I think since he is spending so much time here he is really getting a feel for what our lives are like.  You really cannot plan a month and a half or more, so he is getting a feel for the daily grind as well as all the sites to see.

More and more time is passing, so there are now some people who are actually “from” Nairobi.  However, at least 90% of the people you ask, “Where are you from?”  They will answer somewhere outside Nairobi.  Nairobi is not their home, they just work here.  Outside Nairobi is almost completely agrarian, so there is a lot of attachment to land, and land inside the territory of one’s tribe.

Last Saturday we had a wonderful trip down to Wamunyu, the “up country” home of a coworker, neighbor, and great friend of mine, Charles Nzioki Mungaithi.  We actually drove through a good portion of Ukambani (inside the Kamba place).  We had a great time roasting some steak under a tree.  Charles purchased it, and Cammy marinated it, and I helped cook it.  Charles loves steak, and he is also alergic to mushrooms, we may be related   We watched his mother make sour milk and remove the butterfat from the milk she milked that morning.  We got a tour of the shamba (farm).  The boys got really dirty playing in the granaries.  We had a wonderful time.

We then drove up to Elizabeth’s parent’s place.  Elizabeth is Charles wife, Cammy’s good friend, and our neighbor.  They have a large egg business and we got a tour of the place there and had some chai and fried eggs.

On the way back to Nairobi we were listening music on our GPS, a Garmin Nuvi 855 (Thank you very much Pastor B!)  The song, “Kingdom of Comfort” by Delirious played.  Here are the lyrics:

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
From my unhealthy lust of material things

I built myself a happy home
In my palace on my own
My castle falling in the sand
Pull me out, please grab my hand
I just forgot where I came from

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
From my unhealthy lust of material things

I rob myself of innocence
With the poison of indifference
I buy my stuff at any cost
A couple of clicks and I pay the price
Coz what I gain is someone else’s loss

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
From my unhealthy lust of material things

Save me save me
From the kingdom of comfort where I am king
To this kingdom of heaven where you are king

It reminded me of a previous post.

When you hear the phrase “Jesus Loves You” it will bring to mind many different things to different people.  To some it might bring a song, to others it is a signal that they need to leave.

One of the things I really appreciate about living here in Nairobi is that the constant conflict we find with culture is a reminder.  It is a reminder not only of why we are here, but of Whom we serve.  It helps me remember that my view of everything is limited, especially of God.  It brings me to a deeper understanding of who He is, and what He wants.

I was talking to a Kenyan from Nairobi today about ministering cross-culturally.  He recounted some work he did down in Masai land.  He said when you tell them, “Jesus loves you, He wants you to know Him.”  They would respond, “Well why did you not bring him with you?”

A couple of years ago I was trying to explain to a Sunday school class in Nairobi about how God disciplines us for our own good.  So I told them of how, as a child, I would play in my parents front yard.  Often the slope of their yard would cause our ball to roll out into the street.  As a young child the impulse is to run out to get the ball.  My parents taught me that was not good.  They disciplined me to teach me that.  How does a loving parent do things which seem painful?  It is out of their desire to protect us that they inflict pain, a most effective teacher.  When I asked the children why it would be bad to run out in the street after a ball, one girl raised her hand rather vigorously.  I called on her, and she said, “Because the street boys might get you.”  She was right, from her perspective.

Living, learning, loving, they are all affected by our perspective.  If we want to do more of those things, we have to be challenged, we have to learn to see things differently.  Often that can be painful, but it is better than being hit by a truck, or letting the street boys get you, and God knows that.

This is the first time since Petr was born, almost 7 years ago, that I have been alone at home for such a long time.  I have been trying to fill the time getting things fixed around the house and with the car and those types of things.  I have been playing with some of the younger boys I see at Kenyatta Market.  Yesterday to fill the time, I went on a motocycle ride to a place just outside Nairobi.  It is so nice to be outside the haraka haraka (hurry hurry) of Nairobi sometimes.  I mapped it.

I have a little comment about the title of this post for those of you who know the boys.  On the flight from London to Los Angeles, our boys saw the movie Home Alone for the first time.   Petr was so concerned about how the boy got left by his whole family and what a horrible thing it was.  He was frightened by many of the antics of the bad guys.  Andrej, on the other hand, was really enjoying it.  It was the perfect story for him.  Here you have a small boy beating up two adults all by himself.   We had to quiet down all the cheering so the other passengers could sleep.

I got around to adding my tracks from Uganda to Openstreetmap.  The diary entry is up on their site.

I wanted to follow up on “The You Paradox” as I was travelling from California to Kenya.  In the interim I spent some time in Uganda.

The title pretty much says what I want to say, Comfort breeds confusion.  When we seek our own comfort, it confuses our purpose.  God wants the best for us, and most of the time, that is not for us to be comfortable.  So when we seek our own comfort, we are turning away from where God wants us to go.

I am able to see that with a little contrast here in Africa.  There are less of the “comforts of home” and therefore, if I give up seeking them, my direction, my purpose becomes so much clearer.  It is not about me, it is not about how I feel, it is all about Him.

That is not to say there are no comforts, or especially that I have given up seeking them.  I struggle with them on an hourly basis.  But the less access I have to them, the less I see them as a distraction.  We spend our whole lives building up the comfort level we live in, not to enable us to serve God better, but to be more comfortable.  That is counter productive.  It puts the focus on self and not where it should be.

If you want to hear about someone with clarity of purpose, read about Richard Wurmbrand.  He lived a tortured life in Romanian prisons as a pastor under the communist regime.  Once in prison, Wurmbrand and the other pastors saw it as an opportunity to preach to the guards.  However, the guards told them if they preached, they would be beaten.  Wurmbrand writes in his book Tortured for Christ, “We were happy preaching; they were happy beating us – so everyone was happy.”

That is the kind of focus, the clarity, the drive, one can have when one abandons self and one’s own comfort for eternal glory.  This is a focus Paul also knew well.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.  For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.  2 Corinthians 4:7-11, 16-18 NKJV

God is looking for warriors.  We do not coddle soldiers, we beat them into submission.  They are trained to do a job, and to do it well.  They are taught to obey authority regardless of the self-sacrifice required.  Are we willing to be painfully molded into the sons and daughters He wants us to be?  The adopted sons and daughters that resemble His Son.  In the end, it is the sons and daughters we all ought to be, and that is what is best for us.