When Your Son Asks

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:15:12 -0500

When your son asks you in time to come, “What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?” then you shall say to your son, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”

Charles Spurgeon:

Fathers and mothers are the most natural agents for God to use in the salvation of their children. I am sure that, in my early youth, no teaching ever had such an impression upon my mind as the instruction of my mother; neither can I conceive that, to any child, there can be one who will have such influence over the young heart as the mother who has so tenderly cared for her offspring.

We should especially tell our children our own experience… Perhaps, my friend, there is no testimony that you can bear which will be so useful, so interesting and so striking, as the testimony of what you have, yourself, seen and handled of the Word of Life.

Tell the gospel as you find it in the Bible, but set it in the frame of your own experience of its preciousness! Tell your son how you sinned and how the Lord had mercy upon you. Tell him how he met with you, how you were brought to seek his face, how you were born again, how you received a new heart and a right spirit. He will think the more of this great change because it happened to his father, or to his mother, or to some kind friend. And, perhaps, if he is not himself converted as a child, in his later life he may think of what you told him or the remembrance of his mother’s God may rise before him when he is far away from the scenes of his youth and has spent many years in foolish vanities — and he may even then turn to God, beckoned back to the great Father’s House above by the memory of his godly father and mother here below.

Charles Spurgeon, “Brought Out to be Brought In.”

This is a tremendous responsibility for my life as I am about to be a father to a beautiful son or daughter. I pray all Dad’s and Mom’s out there would see the calling that God has for them as parents.

Redeeming Isa

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:30:00 -0500

A week ago I visited a Mosque in Winnipeg. Here is the one big idea I took away from there. As the church we need to redeem Isa.

Isa is Arabic for Jesus. The Islam faith views Jesus very different than Christians do.

Here is a quick breakdown on some of the differences:

MUSLIM: I obey-therefore I’m accepted

CHRISTIAN: I’m accepted-therefore I obey.

MUSLIM: Motivation is based on fear, guilt, shame and insecurity

CHRISTIAN: Motivation is based on grateful joy.

Do you see the difference? One is performance based, the other is grace based. We have a tremendous responsibility and privilege living under the grace of God to be His hands and feet to a broken and dying world. I pray as we go throughout our daily routine that we would take this call seriously and that God would be glorified in our lives.

1 Corinthians 10:31 - So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Face to Face with Muslims | A Christian Perspective of my visit to a Mosque

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:01:00 -0500

First off, before I get into my visit to the Winnipeg Grand Mosque, I feel the need to clarify a couple of things. I purchased this domain several months ago with the intention of blogging as I learn how to be a godly and loving Dad. However, we are still a few weeks away from being introduced to our son or daughter…

I will be using this blog to post experiences I have with my child, my wife, and most importantly with my God. So, if it is alright with you, I will cheat a bit and have my first post a couple weeks early.

Preface (I encourage you read this so you have an understanding of the background. If you just want to read the story of what happened, you can skip to “Story”)

Ever since I went to England through OM (Operation Mobilization) to learn about Islam and to engage in conversations with Muslims, I have felt called to tell them about the true Jesus of the Bible. I have read several articles and books on Islam and how they are the fastest growing religion in the world. I have watched videos and listened to audio lectures from Muslims on Islam to develop a deeper understanding of their beliefs. I can’t really explain it but since God has revealed all of this to me he has put a deep passion in my heart to love these people.

Luke 6:27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”

These past weeks I have been doing some more listening to audio lectures on Islam, continuing to deepen my understanding. What happened next caught me off guard. God put a thought in my head that went something like this, “You do realize Muslims are in Manitoba too.. not just England.” I knew this yet I was blind to the call that was right in front of me.

Story

On Thursday afternoon I did a Google search for Mosques in the Winnipeg area. From living in Winnipeg I knew there was one on Waverley so I was drawn to that one (since I knew how to get there). “Winnipeg Grand Mosque”, I read. It was the newest and largest Mosque in Winnipeg. I found the phone number and gave it a call. A man answered, he said I was more than welcome to come and that he would be happy to answer any questions I had.

Friday came around and I was nervous, yet overly excited. I left Portage at 10am and headed towards the Winnipeg Grand Mosque. The way in I listened to a sermon from one of my favorite Bible preachers, Matt Chandler. I knew I was going to be introduced to a lot of doctrines that are twisting the scripture and my beliefs so I wanted to keep myself sharp.

I arrived at the Mosque at 11:00am. I had almost 2 full hours before the service even started! I walked in and quickly noticed everything was turned off, there was no office at the front or anywhere near. I remembered I had to take off my shoes before walking anywhere in the Mosque (specifically the prayer carpet). I removed my shoes and placed them on the rack and started walking through the Mosque. The first thing I noticed was an enormous gym, with basketball nets and everything. Then I saw the prayer room, all carpeted, a few chairs on the edge but nothing else. It was shaped in a rectangle and above it was a balcony.

I saw a man on the other side of the building at another entrance who looked like he was posting up some event posters. I walked over to him and said, “my name is Stephen, I called yesterday…” and right away he remembered my call. We shook hands and he gave me a quick tour while he was putting up these posters. “I have to quickly go to another Mosque to put some of these posters up, you can either stay here or come with me”, he said. I replied, “Well, I might as well go with you so if I have any questions I can just ask you as we drive”.

We hopped in his Malibu and started driving towards the other mosque. This was one of the best parts of my experience. I got to ask him questions, share with him some of my views and how I grew up. We had a lot of the same interests, we are both marketers and love Social Media and how tangible online marketing is (yes, slightly nerdy). We had some great ground to work from and instantly there was respect and trust built.

I asked him questions such as why there seem to be different Muslims. Why some Muslims attack non Muslims in the name of Islam and then say they get a free ticket to heaven. He said they get that a lot, that is a very common question non Muslims have. He asked me, “do you have “Christians” who don’t follow Christianity?” I knew exactly where he was going. He went on to explain that he and the majority of Muslims would believe those “Muslims” who made the attacks during 9/11 were not even practicing Islam. He went as far as saying he believes they would be sent to Gehenna(Hell) for their actions, that Allah would not have mercy on them. I wanted to go a bit deeper and I asked him, “Is Islam a peaceful religion?” “Yes”, he replied without hesitation. He went on to explain the true Islam does not promote violence and that you cannot force your beliefs on others. He told me that one portion of his family was Christian and I went on to ask him how they would evangelize to the Christians in his family. He said the same way Christians would, by sharing their convictions that Allah is the one and only true God.. an so on. “Just like I can’t force my child to be a Muslim, I can just equip him to the best of my knowledge and pray that Allah would have mercy on him”, he concluded.

We arrived at the other mosque. He told me this was the first mosque built in Manitoba, in the 60/70’s.

We only stayed in this mosque for 20 minutes or so as we continued to talk about family and marriage. What I found interesting is that Muslim men are allowed to marry non-Muslim women. The Quran permits them to do such a thing where as in the Bible it would contradict that.

We headed back to the main Mosque and people were starting to fill up the building. On the main level all the men would do their praying, on the balcony all the women would be doing theirs. Because of this I only saw men, the whole time. I’m thinking there was a separate entrance for women.

What I noticed right away is that everyone was greeting me in Arabic. Thankfully I did a bit of research before hand so I could respond to them. They would make eye contact and come up to me and say “Salam”, which means peace be upon you and in response I said, “Wa Salam”, peace be upon you too.

I met a guy who was right around the same age as I and we got talking about our beliefs very fast. I asked him what his religion was before he converted to Islam, he told me Catholic. He said he grew up in a Catholic home his whole life, didn’t go to Church every Sunday but would go every Easter and Christmas with his family.

When he was finished with high school he wanted to do something adventurous with his life so he travelled to Australia with the intention of staying there for two months. Two weeks before coming home he met a Pakistani man and over those last two weeks they became very good friends. When he had to say goodbye to his friends he had made over this two month journey, the Pakistani friend gave him a Quran.

On the flight home he was thinking to himself that he didn’t even know that this guy was a Muslim and now he had this book. He started reading it and then he went on to say “one and a half months later I converted to Islam”. I asked him what was the one thing that sold you on Islam, what was the one thing that made you convert? He replied, “Brotherhood”. Wow, did that hit me hard. I think about how many times we have new people come through the church and we don’t even make the effort to connect. We think to ourselves that we have “dedicated greeters” for that. Perhaps we need to check our hearts to see if we have developed a callous towards unbelievers.

This is when the service was starting, by the end there was probably 300 men on the main level. The Imam had a camera on him the whole time. You can see he is projected on the wall for the Muslim women on the balcony.

The service started with a Muslim man at the front singing/chanting a prayer in Arabic. This went on for the first five minutes and ensuing the Imam(preacher) came out and started to deliver the message. The first little bit was all in Arabic and then the last 20 minutes or so were in English. One thing that he said that stuck out to me was this:

“Pray that on your last day here on Earth you are in an act of repentance and that if you are not that Allah would have mercy on you”

This is the fear the Muslim lives in. The Christian has Jesus who died as our substitute for our sin so we no longer have to try and earn God’s approval but rather in Jesus we already have been accepted and because of that we are changed. The Muslim lives in fear and seeks to earn God’s approval. The Christian lives by grace and because of Jesus is seen as righteous in God’s eyes.

“Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:17

I will have a follow up to this post explaining what I learned and what we can do as a community of believers to be a generation of change in this mission field desperately needing it.

Wired Daddy

When Your Son Asks

Redeeming Isa

Face to Face with Muslims | A Christian Perspective of my visit to a Mosque