All Posts (Page 25)
People Need the Lord: Ministry Reports from Indonesia
Below are four reports Jim sent while on a two-week trip to Indonesia. Please pray now for CCW workers Steve Burchett and Selamab Assefa who have arrived in Ethiopia for ministry in several locations over the next couple of weeks. Report 1 It’s 4:30 a.m. and we just heard the Muslim call to prayer from the minarets across this part of Bandung, where the people live in darkness. We thought of the demons hovering over the city as we listened…
Ready to Rejoice; Ready to Mourn
If you are having a great day today, someone else is living in new or continuing tragedy. If you can do nothing but cry, someone else cannot stop laughing. If you are experiencing freedom, someone else is enslaved. If your marriage is in shambles, someone else is enjoying the wife of their youth. If you are in a season of triumph, someone else is suffering another defeat. If you are beaten down, someone else is lifted up. And because this…
What Does God Have To Do with It?
If people are converted to Christ it’s because God stooped to use inadequate people like you and me to confront them with the gospel. Like preaching to a corpse, however, we cannot cause life to invade dead souls, even if we have eloquent, logical, and emotive words. I heard of a preaching professor who took his students to a graveyard to make this very point. He stood them around the burial spot of a man and commanded them to preach…
Until We Die
Poem written for Jeannie Elliff just before her death on 7/20/15 UNTIL WE DIE Jim Elliff We don’t know how to live until we die– die to trust in living as that which keeps a life, die to fear of dying as that which ends a life. And if we die to living, And live by dying, We live the truest life by Him whose life we’re given, Who came as life And lived to die And rose to life…
Less Lecture, More Learning: Ideas for a Better Sunday School Hour
My wife and I recently spoke with a woman from a church in town. “I don’t have any idea how to study the Bible,” she complained. “It’s so difficult to understand.” What’s worse, she concluded by saying, “So I don’t really read the Bible much.” I’m fairly familiar with this church and know it to be one that cares about the Bible. I also know for a fact that, for the last three years, this woman has been sitting in…
Christians and No Work Sundays
Believers haven’t always had Sundays free from work. Though our culture is changing in this regard, it still is largely expected that most of our members will be exempt from Sunday work to give attention to our worship. The earliest Christians did not have such a privilege. Though surely some believed that it should be so prior to this, it appears that “work free Sundays” were imposed upon the Roman society through an A.D. 321 decree of the Roman Emperor…
Making God a Liar
Mankind has exchanged the truth of God for a lie and seems happy about it. Singing foolish songs like, “Cheers all around and love and smiles too, because we all make it to Heaven no matter what we do!” Worse than this, if possible, is that he calls God a liar even though He tells us the truth about sin—that it exists from birth (Psalm 51:5), that it has separated you from God (Isaiah 52:9), that it brings the wrath…
We Thought We Were Going to Die on the Way to Goha Tsion
We never should have been passing that big truck. Our driver knows that, now. We were traveling north of Addis Ababa, on an incline, and a sharp right curve was ahead. As we approached the curve, our driver moved out into the passing lane (far too common in Ethiopia). Selamab and I were so deep in conversation that we barely noticed, though I recall mumbling, “Hold on, I hope we’re okay on this curve”—or something like that. I should have been yelling,…
Unexpected Occurrences in Mehal Meda
“For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from His storehouses.” (Psalm 135:5-7) Selamab and I thought we (along with Betty and Jonathan) would be leaving America on Tuesday, but…
“So Much Better Now” Are you Sure?
The pain has been excruciating, the hours and weeks arduous. The cost to the spouse and family who love her has been gladly expended, but jobs and daily responsibilities will necessarily decrease the hours for the daily vigil now. Added to it all of this is the treatment cost itself, sending up in smoke years of saving. “Mother is so ill,” they say to concerned friends. “We know it will be such a relief for her when she dies.” What?…
Monthly Letter | September 2014
Dear CCW Family, Years ago in what was then called a “Colored Township” in Capetown, South Africa, I wondered at the hatred that caused that circular black burn mark on the street close to the front door of the gentle believers who had opened their hearts and home to me. What causes a person to “necklace” another with a flaming tire? In those days of Apartheid, nerves were strained. Many mornings in that enchanting country we awoke to read of…
Monthly Letter | August 2014
Dear CCW Family, When I was ten, I wore the proud uniform of the Bethany Tigers, representing Bethany Baptist Church on Kansas City’s church league . . . black top, white shorts, white legs, skinny hairless arms. We contested in pseudo-basketball at the Bales Avenue Baptist Church gym. I saw the photo the other day. Deacon Jay Jones was the coach, a sign-painter not known as an athlete anytime during his life. I wasn’t the best of the players either,…
Update from Rome | July 2014
This month, God gave us the incredible opportunity of spending a month in Rome in order to take a 3-week intensive (and by intensive we mean very intensive!) spoken biblical Greek class. Everyone gives us funny looks when we say we came to Italy to learn Greek, but there happens to be an institute here that we took a class with in Jerusalem which teaches ancient Greek as a living language. It was a lot of work, but we could…
God Can’t Save My Child
The bumbling toddler that used to cling to your leg constantly has become a teen who would rather text than speak to you. What happened? Where did your once over-talkative little girl go? What has this lanky boy who grunts with downturned eyes during conversation done with my son! Maybe your scenario is different, but what holds true is that parents carry heavy heart-burdens for their unconverted children to know the Lord. And, by God’s good design, many children born…
Monthly Letter | July 2014
Dear CCW Family, I was in seminary during the days of the flower children. We wore tattered bell-bottom jeans and blue work shirts with embroidered flowers and sewn-in messages about peace. On mine, those messages were also about Christ. My boots were full leather with lots of lacing. My medallion was a fish, or a cross on a leather string, way larger than you might think. We held up two fingers to symbolize peace. Our hair was long. We were…
Reject
“The stone which the builders rejected, this became the very corner stone,” and, “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (1 Peter 2:7-8). This is the One everyone else rejected, even when they saw Him in person and were sometimes two feet from His face. They looked the stone over and marked it unusable, not valuable, replaceable and inadequate. How could they stumble over the magnificent stone that means everything to us? How could someone like Christ be…