OCTOBER 2007
More Encouragement In Praying
Air is no more necessary to the lungs than prayer is to the preacher. It
is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray.
It is an absolute necessity
that the preacher be prayed for. It will take all the praying he can do, and
all the praying he can get done, to meet the fearful responsibilities and gain
the largest, truest success in his great work.
The true preacher greatly
covets the prayers of God's people.
selected
Are You Praying For Missionaries?
· Pray for
their continued good health
· Pray that they would be spiritual
· Pray that they would depend on God
for guidance
· Pray for their protection
· Pray that they would be bold
· Pray for their finances
· Pray for the relationship between
missionaries
· Pray for more helpers
· Pray that young folk would get a
zeal for missions
· Pray that they may keep the proper
balance between their family life and the ministry
WELS Prayer Institute Conference
Sessions:
Where:
When:
Saturday,
Cost:
$55.00 per person - $50.00 before
Special Pre-event Prayer Gathering:
Pilgrim Lutheran Church, W156N5436 Bette Drive, Menomonee Falls,
Send pre-registration information
to:
WELS Prayer Institute
Phone: 920-497-1000
www.welsprayerinstitute.com
Being Understood
By God
21 When my heart was grieved and my spirit
embittered,
22 I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute
beast before You.
23 Yet I am always with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with Your
counsel, and afterward You will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but You?
And earth has nothing I desire besides You. Ps
73:21-25
In Psalm 73, Asaph is a bitterly
confused man. He looks around and sees that the wicked are prospering while he,
a righteous man, suffers, (“They have no
struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong,” Ps 73:4.) In this he is
not unlike Job. The old equation of "works righteousness" no longer
makes sense to him. And he is bitter and angry.
Everything changes
for him the instant he enters the sanctuary of the Lord in verse 17. This
experience of renewed Presence seems to make the confusion vanish like a mist.
In verse 21 he apologizes for his outburst. (Though take note his angry words
are now a part of Holy Scripture!)
The act of taking
his eyes off his enemies and looking once more toward the Father causes him to
remember all a person need remember; He is always "with us," holding
our right hand, guiding us and promising us a place.
Michael Card
Mas Muertos Como Vivos
(More Dead Ones than Living Ones)
Missionary Terry Schultz,
[Heard on the Streets of Pisco]
“Adversity
introduces a man to himself,” someone said a long time ago. It would be
hard to imagine adversity much greater than the 8.2 earthquake that rocked the
southern coast of
Whether rich or poor, young or old,
the quake indiscriminately battered everyone in its wake. As you will see
below, we can learn something from how the people, in their courage, their
frailty, their renewed selves and their sinful selves, responded to the
terrible disaster.
We’ll start with the example of one
wealthy
Footage that quickly made the local
rounds was provided by someone who had been video-taping a private party in an
upper-class home. The party was incredible: A formal birthday party
filled with swanky, well-dressed adults and youths. As the earthquake
started and then surprisingly intensified, (it lasted for over two minutes!)
the jumping camera caught the partygoers bolting for the door. Adults and
youths, male and female, pushed past each other in a mad dash to get outside.
Everyone rushed out except…
…the wide-eyed, terrified, maids
and servants who were left standing at attention in the hallway and doorway.
They looked up pleadingly as the master fled by, looking for permission to
leave with everyone else. Permission was not granted. It was all
excruciatingly obvious: The “second class” people (shades of the
Titanic!) were to be the last to leave! Among the many men who rushed
by, not a hint of bravery, humility, or kindness towards a petrified young maid
or a distraught elderly maid; no hint that the lives of the servants were just
as important. If the ship went down, the hired help were going with it.
Clear on the other end of the
spectrum, we find the response of Pastor Andres to the earthquake. Pastor
Andres leads small house churches in Canete and
Now “what,” you may ask, “is so
courageous about a road trip to a disaster site?” Answer: Andres
had never in his life driven on a highway!! All Andres had ever done was
drive his old car down small, sandy, back roads, from one end of his barrio to
the other to serve his congregations. I doubt Andres had ever driven over
45 mph! He’d only obtained his driver’s license a couple months ago!
Andres tightly gripped the steering
wheel, I gripped the dash, and Jaime in the back seat, well
he just held his head in his hands and looked down. It was worse than
High School Driver’s Ed! Andres didn’t know how to handle a highway, but he
knew he couldn’t get to his members unless he drove there himself. He was
scared stiff but he was doing it. My occasional, panicky comments didn’t
help, which included yelling “are you falling asleep?” as Andres drifted all
over the road! Then it occurred to me: The front end was out of
alignment and Andres had never driven fast, so he didn’t realize that the car
was constantly drifting from one lane into the other! Talk about
dangerous. Jaime kept muttering to himself under his breath. Three
times I asked Andres to let me drive, (even though I didn’t have my license
with me!), but Andres just smiled nervously and said no, the car was too
quirky. That was an understatement. The manual transmission was so bad, Andres rarely seemed to find the gear he was looking
for. He often settled into driving in his favorite, familiar groove, second
gear, for miles down the superhighway!
The trip was taking hours longer
than it should have. At our first gas stop, Jaime pulled me aside and
sternly told me to quit making conversation with Andres: “The pastor
needs to just focus on driving!” So we got the gas, got back in the car
and went on in silence. That gave me time to reflect.
We drove past the exit to
Paracas. I had been there nearly a dozen times, taking friends to see the
famous Wildlife Preserve along the ocean coast. The area boasts of
extraordinary rock formations and over 50 sea lions. Not any more. After the quake hit, the
rock formations, including amazing natural rock arches all collapsed. The
50 sea lions took off. (Two were found dead in the water.) No one
knows where the rest of the sea lions have gone.
(I have since received numerous phone calls
from my favorite taxi driver / tourist guide from Paracas, Jose. (He was
supposed to call me when the famous once-a-year Paracas wind storms hit.)
He told me his only means of income, the tourist trade, had completely
evaporated overnight. There is no reason to expect the tourists to ever
come back: There is nothing left in Paracas to see. Jose is utterly
devastated. We will bring him food to feed his family. But there is
not apparent long-term solution to his plight.)
Nearly five hours later, we reach
Canete. We quickly enter the village, see little damage, and find the
family of Andre’s niece, Macod, along with 5 little girls. Andres is
greatly relieved that the family and other members are all right.
However, everyone in the village has a traumatized look about them.
Mattresses and piles of blankets and sheets have been dragged outdoors and
arranged on the ground in front of all the houses. There have been
countless (literally hundreds!) of aftershocks, and no one wants to sleep
indoors for fear of the house collapsing on them. Sleeping outside is
risky business due to the bone-chilling cold winds at night. A week after
the quake, a little baby from a neighboring village would die of, (of all
things) exposure! The anguish of the mother (who had tried to protect
her baby by sleeping outdoors) I cannot imagine. Grief
upon grief.
We talked and tried to encourage
the Canete faithful. We gave out several blankets, filled a giant
container with well water, and said our good-byes. However, Sister Macod
with her baby, a cousin, and two of the young girls all decided to go with us
to look for Macod’s mom and Andres' sister, Placida, in
We were getting closer and closer
to what had been the epicenter of the quake. Without warning, there were
huge cracks in the middle of the highway. Further up, the traffic was
reduced to one lane. Police guided the traffic in taking turns to pass
through. Now the cracks were huge. Andres’ car was taking a
terrible beating, as the asphalt was simply torn apart, leaving the car to
often drop several inches without warning. With each bone-jarring hole,
Andre’s just shook his head. There was obviously no turning back, but his
car’s undercarriage would never be the same!
The closer we got to Pisco, the
stranger the destruction to the
A littler further on, and the
opposite lane of the highway had simply folded up, (yes “up” like the aileron
on an airplane wing. Imagine driving along, with the opposite lane of the
highway standing up at a 45 degree angle! It took over 6 hours to go 140
kilometers, but we finally reached
As we entered
Before even entering town, the
bizarre scenes started coming in. There was a steady stream of “refugees”
on foot on both sides of the road, coming out of Pisco. Rickety old
pickups and badly damaged cars, packed to the hilt with dirt-covered people and
damaged goods, were slowly creaking out of town. One car, amazingly still
operable, had its side entirely, literally sheared off from front to
back. The exposed driver (no side doors!) was crazily steering a twisted,
oval shaped steering wheel. In fact, people were leaving town dead and
alive: A car with a wife and children passed, a white casket strapped to the
car roof. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet, other than the
intermittent sound of the
The town was engulfed in one giant,
grayish-tan (the color of old adobe brick) cloud of heavy dust.
Immediately we began passing row upon row upon row of leveled-to-pure-rubble
homes. The quake hit so hard, that many adobe homes instantly imploded
into neat little piles of bricks. It was mind boggling. One waded
through a veritable sea of rubble on commercial streets. No wonder, as it
was widely reported, life-long residents of Pisco could not find their way from
one end of town to the other. It was all a huge field of rubble
mounds. People were walking around in a daze, too stunned to say a
word. It was like a surreal
We passed a (rare) standing
building, badly damaged, whose parking lot contained
countless caskets stacked 4 high. You would have thought it was a casket
factory. It was the public hospital. Many of the dead and
soon-to-be-dead were being attended to there. A block of hearses were
queuing up in the street in front of the hospital, ready to ferry the dead
across town to the cemetery. Jaime and I got out and began walking
around. Andres decided not to.
We came to the cemetery, which was
packed with people. The big stone pillars and the brick wall around the
cemetery had been badly damaged. Bulldozers had come and knocked the
stone pillars completely over so they wouldn’t be a hazard to the
mourners. The cemetery was such a wreck, it simply added to the massive
depression of the city. The dearly departed had barely been pulled from
the rubble of a home only to be buried amidst the rubble of the
graveyard. Station wagon taxis were pressed into service: Each
queued up at the entrance with a casket sticking out the back end. Each
taxi driver reverently waited his turn to unload. The mourners would jump
out of the taxi in their dirty, ripped clothes, (no suits and ties), each male
family member, including the kids, helping to quickly haul the casket out the
back of the car. No time for funeral etiquette or nice clean pall bearers
today. It was all done quickly, in numbness, shock, and silence.
The casket-carrying taxis just kept rolling in.
Jaime and I headed down the
street. People with vacant eyes sat in the street directly in front of
their house lot, literally in front of the hill of rubble that used to be their
home. They huddled in strange clothes; a bath robe, a dusty suit coat
over a dirty shirt… Their few worldly possessions were heaped around them, the way children sit and try to push all their toys in
close to them. Except all most people had were a metal chair or two, torn
towels, a dirty plastic doll, a wood box, a dish or two, little more.
Hardly anyone spoke a word. It was beyond surreal.
A two-story high massive mound of
rubble that had been a large house spilled out into the street. It looked
like a macabre, modern art installation: Mixed into the rubble and
evenly spaced in the collage were the artifacts of the people’s life:
There were twisted bikes, a smashed wheelchair, a sofa, clothes dryer,
curtains, a doll, etc. Apparently no one had the desire or strength yet
to dig these few things out. There were more than a few such lots with
nobody around.
Unexplainably, a couple houses on
one block had lost their roofs and walls, but the interiors appeared
undamaged. Talk about a bizarre sight: One home looked like the
walls and roof had simply been removed as cleanly as a giant cake cover.
You could see the people inside acting normal, as if oblivious to the fact that
the roof and walls were gone: Mom was arranging dishes on a dusty table, Dad
was in a stuffed chair reading a magazine from a dusty stack on an end table, Aunt and Uncle were on a dusty couch. All were apparently
willing themselves to have normal time. They all waved at us as we walked
by.
As we neared the town square, we
came upon army trucks, fire trucks, caterpillars, dump trucks, all manner of
emergency workers, and an NBC News correspondent doing a live report. A
fireman’s two beautiful golden retrievers with sunny faces were a startling,
welcome sight against the backdrop of dust, rubble, and unrelenting
depression. In fact there weren’t enough emergency dogs in Pisco to help
search for the many buried victims. The Spanish government was sending a
plane-full of dogs to fill the need.
Not enough dogs indeed. We
came upon four firemen who had been working round the clock without
sleep. They were valiantly, respectfully, digging for a body in a hill of
rubble that once was a home. I say respectfully: A fireman removed
small pieces of brick with his hand before directing another fireman with a
shovel. There was a horrendous odor in the air, which led the firemen to
think they were close to someone. However, they could not find a
body. One of the firemen, in exasperation put his shovel down, left the
other three men, and strode over to the manhole cover in the middle of the
street. The fireman lied down on his stomach in the street and sniffed
around the manhole, trying to ascertain if the horrendous smell was coming from
underground. But a dust-covered, haggard-looking man quietly walked over
to the fireman and said, “Friend, that smell is a dead
body. It’s unmistakable.” The fireman nodded, got up, wearily
picked up his shovel, and started digging again.
Rubble and
caskets.
There was no getting away from them. A casket maker had set stacks of his
wares right out on the street. He was having a sidewalk sale. The
army had brought in a shipment of caskets and young soldiers were passing them
out for free.
Everything had to be done in a
hasty manner. No time for the usual niceties. One elderly lady had
lost her husband. She also lost her home, - all except the front wall,
which strangely, was left standing. If you looked behind the wall, there
was nothing there. The lady had decided to host her own wake. Grandpa
had been lovingly placed in a casket which sat there on the sidewalk in front
of the front door-with-no-house-behind-it. Passersby were welcome to stop
and view the body. The widow stood beside, intermittently wiping dust off
the casket. We walked up, she smiled, and we offered words of
condolence.
We met up with Andres at the other
side of town, as it was time for our improvised blanket handout. There
was no shortage of people in need. We cruised for a block or two till we
found a group of very elderly people huddled in front of a destroyed
home. That was good enough for us. Jaime and I jumped out and
quickly ran over to them with our arms full of blankets and water
bottles. Talk about a thrill: The grandmas and grandpas were elated
with their unexpected gifts. We offered words of spiritual encouragement
and then headed back to the car. However, big mistake: We should
have told Andres to keep the car running!
A couple dozen adults and youths
had spotted us and immediately swooped in. “Por mi abuelita, por mi abuelita,”
(For my dear grandmother) nearly everyone was yelling! (They either saw
who got our blankets or already knew that aid workers have a weakness for
seniors!) Either way, we were suddenly in a tight spot. It was
gut-wrenching to have to turn anyone down. They could see that we still
had blankets and water in the car. We said our supplies were reserved for
church members back in
We mostly sat in silence as we
crawled along with the other traffic back down the road out of Pisco. On
both sides of the road, families and individuals were trudging out of town, many
trying to get close to the army helicopter pads where food and water were being
distributed. But as we neared the bridge to cross back over to
About eight youths came up to my
side of the car and asked for blankets. I quietly told them the last ones
were for friends and relatives in
We reunited with Macod and the gals
in
We spent time with the two siblings
and others, trying to encourage and comfort them with God’s promises to always
stand with us in this broken world. We quickly distributed the rest of
our blankets and water in the neighborhood where Andres worked, along with
donations for Placida and Serilo to buy food or get some housing
materials. God willing, we will get back to them soon.
[The Spiritual Disaster That Is
Pisco]
It is not surprising that there
would be many stories from Pisco about how people reacted when the carnage of
the earthquake commenced. Below are the stories from the disaster that
matter the most. As any Christian will tell you, this world is passing.
We should be prepared to leave this world at any time. Nothing in this
journal puts such a sick feeling in my stomach as the following stories about
the spiritual side of this event. We are talking about the eternal
consequences beyond this earthly tragedy.
The most concentrated number of
deaths from the
Now you may wonder if I am being
way too harsh on the departed from the Wednesday night Celebration-of-Mary
service. Perhaps their allegiance to Mary wasn’t really as deep as I make
it sound. You be the judge: The following story was told in Pisco,
reported on the
When the roof fell in on the
As I asked Lima friends about this
story, everyone had heard it, and many chimed in with the story of Ica:
In the town of Ica, the same phenomena, only a different statue: A large
wood image of “El Senor de Luren,” (a statue of the crucified Christ thought to
be able to work miracles) was also buried in rubble, along with several people.
Also in
Such is the unimaginable spiritual
state of many in Pisco as revealed in the events after the quake. It
shows us how much gospel work needs to be done in this country where
Catholicism is the official religion. All this Mariolatry, idol worship,
and superstition, has put much of
Well actually things could be even
more twisted: A final tale of sadness, of spirituality-gone-mad, if you
will:
It was widely reported in
As the residents of Pisco saw the
brilliant light, and the tremors of the earthquake began to build, many were
convinced that the Second Coming had commenced! Jesus had begun His
return! And the response of many who thought Jesus was coming? They
fled to their homes in panic, as if to hide from His presence! They feared Jesus and ran inside their
adobe homes. Because they had run inside to hide, when their homes
collapsed they were killed.
I have never written such a
collection of dismal, heart-wrenching stories as these. It all leaves me
shocked and saddened. How lost is the understanding of salvation by grace
alone through faith in Jesus without works.
I remember my sister Cindy
describing a special night she had while a student at
Jesus gave his very life to save
us. He has promised eternal life through faith. When Jesus comes
again, God’s children with uncontainable joy and assurance may “go out and leap
like calves released from the stall” Malachi 4:2b. Our prayers go out for
all the Peruvians who are suffering, but especially for those who are
spiritually lost and in desperate need of the Savior. May the Holy Spirit
open their eyes!
En Cristo, Terry
Have
You Patronized Blasphemy Lately?
Did you know that there was a time
when the entertainment industry was bound by a code that forbade them from
using any blasphemy in a movie? The "Hays Code" stated:
Pointed profanity--this includes the words
"God," "Lord," "Jesus," "Christ"
(unless used reverently), "Hell," "S.O.B.,"
"damn," or every other profane or vulgar expression, however used--is
forbidden.
So, how can you (as one person), make a difference and
influence the powerful Goliath of the entertainment industry? The answer is in
your own hands. In 2005, roughly $8.8 billion was spent on movie tickets in the
With more than 170 million professing Christians in
Take
action! Make a personal commitment
from this point forward, to not watch movies that blaspheme God. If it happens
in the theater, walk out. If it happens at home, change the channel.
Everybody has a good excuse for not
attending church. If you take those excuses and apply them to other things we
do (or don't do), like eating, they might look like this list:
1. I was forced to eat as a child.
2. People who eat all the time are
hypocrites; they aren't really hungry.
3. There are so many different kinds
of food, I can't decide what to eat.
4. I used to eat, but I got bored and
stopped.
5. I only eat on special occasions,
like Christmas and Easter.
6. None of my friends will eat with
me.
7. I'll start eating when I get older.
8. I don't really have time to eat.
9. I don't believe that eating does
anybody any good. It's just a crutch.
10. Restaurants and grocery stores are
only after your money.
There was a barber that thought that
he should share his faith with his customers more than he had been doing
lately. So the next morning when the sun came up and the barber got up out of
bed he said, "Today I am going to witness to the first man that walks
through my door."
Soon after he opened his shop the first man came in and
said, "I want a shave!" The barber said, "Sure, just sit in the
seat and I'll be with you in a moment." The barber went in the back and
prayed a quick desperate prayer saying, "God, the first customer came in
and I'm going to witness to him. So please give me the wisdom to know just the
right thing to say to him. Amen."
Then quickly the barber came out with his razor knife in
one hand and a Bible in the other while saying, "Good morning sir. I have
a question for you..........Are you ready to die?"
A young woman teacher with obvious liberal tendencies
explains to her class of small children that she is an atheist. She asks her
class if they are atheists too. Not really knowing what atheism is but wanting
to be like their teacher, their hands explode into the air like fleshy
fireworks.
There is, however, one exception. A beautiful girl named
Lucy has not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asks her why she has
decided to be different.
"Because I'm not an
atheist."
Then, asks the teacher, "What are you?"
"I'm a Christian."
The teacher is a little perturbed now, her face slightly
red. She asks Lucy why she is a Christian.
"Well, I was brought up knowing and loving Jesus. My
mom is a Christian, and my dad is a Christian, so I am a Christian."
The teacher is now angry. "That's no reason,"
she says loudly.
"What if your mom was a moron,
and your dad was a moron. What would you be then?"
She paused, and smiled. "Then,"
says Lucy, "I'd be an atheist."
A well-worn one-dollar bill and a similarly distressed
fifty-dollar bill arrived at a Federal Reserve Bank to be retired. As they
moved along the conveyor belt to be burned, they struck up a conversation.
The fifty-dollar bill reminisced about its travels all
over the country. "I've had a pretty good life," the $50 proclaimed.
"Why I've been to
"Wow!" said the one-dollar bill. "You've
really had an exciting life!"
"So tell me," says the fifty, "where have
you been throughout your lifetime?"
The one dollar bill replies, "Oh, I've been to the
The fifty-dollar bill interrupts, "What's a
church?"
A Dollar
For Sunday School
A little boy came home eating a big candy bar. Seeing
the candy bar, his mother remembered he had already spent all his allowance
money. Surprised, she asked him where he got it.
"I
bought it at the store with the dollar you gave me," he said. "But
that dollar was for Sunday School," his mother
replied.
Smiling,
the boy said, "I know, Mom, but the pastor met me at the door and got me
in for free!"
The sign on the cobbler shop read:
We treat shoes, heel them, attend to their dyeing and
save their soles.
A fellow who was down on his luck
knocked at the door in an affluent neighborhood and asked if there were any
chores he could do in exchange for food. He was given a meal, handed a brush
along with a can of paint and was asked to paint the porch in the rear. He came
back two hours later and said he was done, adding, "It was a Mercedes, not
a Porsche."
A minister decided that a visual demonstration would
add emphasis to his Sunday sermon.
Four worms were placed into four separate jars. The
first worm was put into a container of alcohol.
The second worm was
put into a container of cigarette smoke.
The third worm was put into a
container of chocolate syrup.
The fourth worm was put into a container of good
clean soil.
At the conclusion of the sermon, the minister
reported the following results:
The first worm in alcohol - Dead.
The second worm in cigarette smoke – Dead.
Third worm in chocolate syrup – Dead.
Fourth worm in good clean soil -
Alive.
So the minister asked the congregation, “What can
you learn from this demonstration?”
Maxine was sitting in the back, quickly raised her hand and said,
"As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won't have
worms!"
That pretty much ended the service.
An elderly
The lady, somewhat shaken, then proceeded to load
her shopping bags into the back of the car and got into the driver's seat. She
was so shaken that she could not get her key into the ignition.
She tried and tried, and then she realized why; it
was for the same reason she had wondered why there was a football, a Frisbee
and two 12 packs of beer in the front seat. A few minutes later, she found her
own car parked four or five spaces farther down. She loaded her bags into the
car and drove to the police station to report her mistake.
The sergeant to whom she told the story couldn't
stop laughing. He pointed to the other end of the counter, where four pale men
were reporting a carjacking by a mad, elderly woman described as white, less
than five feet tall, glasses, curly white hair, and carrying a large handgun.
No
charges were filed.
(Supposedly a
true account recorded in the Police Log of
I dialed a number and got the
following recording:
"I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes.