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?

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.”

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.

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.

This is a picture of the source of the White Nile.  It flows here, out of Lake Victoria at Jinja, Uganda down into Lake Albert, then down into Sudan to Khartoum where it meets the Blue Nile from Ethiopia and then flows down to Egypt, eventually into the Mediterranean Sea.
As I sit here with in a stone throw of that river, I started to think about its course.  The Nile is not unlike a lot of rivers in that it does almost all of its major falling near its source.  However, I believe the Nile is quite extreme in that sense.  Jinja is not much more than 3700 feet above sea level, and yet I sit well over 3000 miles upriver from the Mediterranean.  Even more in the extreme, it does the majority of its fall here in Uganda.  Once a few hundred miles into Sudan, the river is less than 1500 feet above sea level and still has over 2000 miles to go!  There is no way an engineer could design, nor man construct, a water management project with that little fall.
What does all that mean?  Why does it matter?  To me, as I contemplate that, it brought to mind the process God takes us through in different times in our lives.
In the beginning of God calling us to something, we are just sitting there.  Much like the waters of Lake Victoria, we can become diseased, mosquito, hippo, and croc infested waters waiting for something to happen.  Then we hear the call of God.  It comes like the rush of the river as it flees the lake.  In thunderous falls we are catapulted into the work God has called us.  We move with rapid speed and through many tumultuous times.  We have a strong passion and feel gravity pulling us toward the goal.  There are times of quite, like Lake Kyoga, or Lake Albert, but these are short respites from the rush as we follow the passion instilled in us.
Then things begin to slow.  The passion is not as strong, and the geography changes.  We can run into a time like the “Sudd.”  The Sudd is a huge swamp in Sudan.  It is a huge flat area where the White Nile has no course.  There is no channel, no route the river follows.  When explorers were trying to establish the source of the Nile just about 100 years ago, none of them could get through the Sudd.  No one could traverse the Sudd to prove it was the Nile from above or below.  Even today, it is a very dangerous place (the Sudanese civil war not withstanding).  This is always a tough time when God calls.  You knew before He had called you to something, and He had provide the passion to thrust you forward.  But now that call seems so distant.  You are not going anywhere and there is nothing but mud and tall grass on every side.
This is a trying time, but necessary.  Often times, this is the place where we quit.  We decide that we must have misunderstood God’s call.  Maybe He meant something else.  Surely this is the closed door we were praying about.  However, this is a time of great learning.  When we slow down and are able to see what God is doing in the quit of our hearts.  We pick up a lot of sediment when we rush down with passion, and God needs to settle that out of us, to prepare us to move on.
If we make it through the Sudd time, God might bring along someone to help.  He does this at different times, but sometimes it is a huge moment, like when the Blue Nile joins at Khartoum.  God knows that it will be only as we work together that we will be able to accomplish His goal.  So bolstered by that help, we push on, into the desert.
The Nile passes right through one of the largest deserts on the earth.  A seemingly never ending stip of dryness that crosses the whole of northern Africa.  The desert time is also trying.  No one else is going to come and help.  There seems to be no end in sight, and the fall in the river, the passion, is so little, it is nearly immeasurable.  From Khartoum to the sea is over 2000 miles with 1000 feet of fall.  The path is not even straight, at times it wanders away from its goal.  This time requires patience and consistent dedication to His will.  God is testing you.  Do you have what it takes to cross the desert sands?  Will you stick it out, or dry up and quit?
Eventually, if we perservere, we reach the goal.  The thing God wanted in us is accomplished and we see the glory in it as the fertile delta spreads out into the sea.  God’s work, manifest in us, has brought about great change.  Change, not only in us, but in the world around us that we touch and influence.  He can provide waters in the desert through us, if we are willing, committed to His purpose.  And having accomplished the goal, He gives a time of closeness to Him before we are plunged back to earth to begin another long journey He has set before us.

Paul is back in Africa while I stayed a little longer in the States to be with family and to see some doctors.  I am very thankful to not have been traveling because I came down with a case of shingles the next day.  I am missing my husband and it got me thinking about how thankful I am that he is in my life…

November was a hard month for us.  I mentioned that we had another miscarriage that ended up with me being admitted to the hospital for two nights.  However, I did not mentioned that the time I was admitted was Paul’s birthday.  I was rushed to the hospital at 6:30pm the night before his birthday and was admitted to the hospital room just after midnight.  Not the start I wanted for my husband’s birthday.  I had planned on making his favorite breakfast, french toast.  At noon I was going to surprise him at the office with a picnic lunch.   And when he returned home I was going to make one of his favorite dinners, nachos.  I was even planning on making a pumpkin pie! (another favorite)  Instead, Paul had to go to the hospital cafe and eat alone.  Oh, how much I hated that! My wonderful husband had to spend his birthday looking after me.   He never complained.  He stayed by my side and only left when he was sure I was ok.  He slept two nights on a very uncomfortable window seat bench so that I wouldn’t be alone.  It was not a glamorous birthday.  But we were together and I am thankful for that.  Here are some things about my husband that I am thankful for  in pictures for your viewing.

I am thankful for my husband of 9 1/2 years

. . .for the way he loves me

. . .for the way he makes me laugh

…for asking permission the first time he wanted to hold my hand

…for his commitment to his family, supporting with his strength

. . .for his daddy heart and his hugs

. . .for his sense of adventure

…for his passion for the word of God

Thankful for who he is and what he stands for…a family man, a Godly man.

Back in “There is no spoon” I wrote about how it does not matter what you want.  You have to realize what you want is not important.  You have to realize, there is no you.  You must deny yourself  (desires, interests etc.) completely.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  – Matthew 16:24 NKJV

However, if you can get to the point where you realize that you are not important.  If you can realize only God is important, that His will for your life is paramount.  If you can do that, bring yourself to that point, it is only then you can begin to learn about the true love of God.  Because when you come to the place of abandoning yourself, you will find that God, because of His love, His nature, has all the time been all about you.

He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. – Matthew 10:39 NKJV

A lot has been said and written about the incarnation and what an incomprehensable concept that the greatness of God became a man.  However, that is, as I said, incomprehensable.  We have no idea what it actually means to be God.  But we do have some practice being human.  As I began to think about the meaning of Christmas, a new biblical figure came to mind.

There was a time when God needed to send a man to save His people.  That man was Moses.  He was born in difficult circumstances, but then, interestingly, he was raised in Pharoah’s palace.  He grew up in the lap of luxury.  We can see from his example, that God can use many ways to save His people.

We know from scripture that the real Church, the saints who believe, are the bride of Christ.  God could have come down in His heavenly Mercedes-Benz, rolled into town with thousands of cows, and purchased a bride for His Son with a flourish and in style.  That would have demonstrated a great love for us.  However, God wanted to demostrate even more love than that.

To purchase us, the bride, God saw fit to send His only son to earth.  And to demonstrate that love, He sent Him as a baby. He could have come on the scene as a man, but He did not.  To fulfill prophecy He had to be born in Bethlehem.  But that was too good of a place to be from, for God to really demonstrate His love for us.  Jesus came from Nazareth.  I do not know much about the reputation of places back then, but surely the City of David was a better place to be from than Nazareth.

And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”  John 1:46 NKJV

In that place, and at that time, hospitality was a huge part of the culture.  The bible is full of instances of people staying for long times in other people homes, being fed and accommodated.  Bethlehem was no different.  And yet, we see that they did not have a home to stay in.  The place where the foreigners or other undesirables stayed was at an inn.  This would not have been the Hilton or the Hyatt, this was a dumpy place to stay.  But not even the inn was enough for God to demonstrate His love for us.  Jesus, God’s own son, was born, as a frail baby, in a stable, in a strange town, and laid in a food trough. 

Today we celebrate the anniversary of Jesus’ first date with His future bride.

That is how much God loves you.

Petr’s school offered soccer on Saturdays.  Paul and his dad, Danny, got roped into coaching.

Andrej was able to join too! (they needed an extra player)  He was overjoyed to be with the big kids.

Sherry, Paul’s mom, and I got to be cheerleaders!   So, girlfriends, I think I’m officially a soccer mom!

Here are some shots of the boys practicing for the big game