Tag: gospel

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Bridging the Divide

Our cinema van slowed, rolling forward to the shoreline.

Africa’s vast body of water, Lake Victoria, lay directly ahead. If we should reach our destination, Rusinga Island, we must await the ferry here at Mbita Village.

We watched the ferry approach. Soon the Toyota, bearing us two missionaries, a diesel generator, a movie projector and gospel films departed the mainland. We and our cargo floated toward the water-encircled land before us.

Throughout it all the ferry was key. We had no other way to make it there. This was it, the ferry. Just this.

A religious group in the city where I now live set a sign in front of their meeting place. The organization promotes an idea that there are many equally valid “life paths”.

The sign reads, What is the true bible for you?

To the disciple of Jesus, such a question seems odd.

To his delight, the disciple has found that the book of the ages – the Holy Bible – holds in its pages the answers to life’s biggest questions. Foundational truths addressing the deepest concerns of every culture and people through every generation are preserved in the ancient Judeo-Christian texts.

Amazingly, the Bible leads anyone who responds to its invitation to the answer of all life’s primary needs. That answer does not lie in a philosophy or a principle or a creed. Rather, in a person. Jesus.

The earnest Christ-follower stands assured that each broken individual, every fractured, upside-down society can be healed, can be put right. Truths found in scripture supply hope for every soul who lives. What is needed is opening and reading and honestly considering the Book’s words. And responding to God, to his salvation offer of ongoing abundant living with him. In surrender to Jesus.

What Bible is for me?

The disciple has looked carefully at Jesus’ life in the scriptures and says, “I like what I see in the nature of this person, Jesus. I want that. I want it more than anything I have ever wanted, more than anything I could ever want.”

Terrific! It is at this place then, we must meet our challenge. Deep waters lie before us, our complete inability on our own of getting to the place we need to go. It is like gazing across Victoria’s waters to Rusinga Island but with no ferry to get us there.

Good news.

The disciple is not left stranded, the apprentice is given means. A land of the living beckons.

©2022 Jerry Lout

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Living Springs

What now should be done?

For quite a good while my Christian journey centered on “shoulds”.

I had believed on Christ  in my youth. I knew he had pardoned my sins through his sacrifice on a cross. When I turned to him, confessing my wrongs and trusting in him, I knew deep down that I was now his.  The Bible speaks of being born anew from above. That was me.

I also knew in those earliest years of grace that my life in Jesus was not meant to plateau. It was meant to keep changing. I was not meant to live my life any longer on my own. His salvation was to go deeper than just getting me into heaven after this life.

But there was a problem. I lacked some critical knowledge about how that might work.

Over time I came to think and live as though “pleasing God” was the central purpose of my being his child.  Some poor thinking took form, ironically, through things I often heard in church. My understanding of the gospel – God’s good news for all people – had gradually changed to something called  “performance-living”.

I was no longer fully living my faith from the inside out. Rather, becoming Jesus-like seemed to call for taking on the next God-pleasing task assigned me. Such tasks, I was reminded, were what I “should do” if I were indeed a true Christian.

It’s worth noting that none of the Christian performances I undertook were bad. Not at all. They were good, sometimes noble, acts of service.

Like many Christians, as I later realized, many of my “wants” were in the right place. Discovering this brought a measure of comfort. After all, I hungered to please God and longed to be a truly “good Christian”.  One thing that seemed lacking now was joy, the happy measure of joy I had tasted in those earlier God-companioned days.

And too, the sweet empowering love of earlier days began to wane. My good Savior’s springs of abundant living were being traded for an overburdening list of shoulds.

Only later would I recover the way of living Jesus had in mind for his disciples all along. More of a fruit-bearing kind of living. While not all things going forward would prove fun or easy, my way would become characterized more as a joyous, teamed-up partnership with him.

In the company of fellow disciples-in-training, I could move ahead under his accepting, empowering Spirit. The season was to become a very special period of training for me – especially in discovering how eager Jesus was about all this. His label for it, “life in abundance. . . in the easy yoke”.

(c)2022 Jerry Lout

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Aidini

“I go to the Coast to mock him. And to beat him when he shows the lie.”

The big man was strong, menacing. Anyone having experience with Alexander Aidini knew his threat was not small talk.

“He is no man of God, this foreigner!” the angry African went on. “He comes to our land a trickster. Come, we shall beat him together, all of us. We go to Mombasa!”

The object of Aidini’s contempt was an American preacher. T. L. Osborn had come with his evangelistic team from Oklahoma to Kenya’s coastal city on the Indian Ocean, “to preach the gospel, to proclaim Jesus Christ in power. . . to heal and deliver and bring salvation.” He labeled the open-air meetings “crusades”.

Osborn’s preaching campaigns had been many and were known to draw thousands,  with large numbers of sick and suffering among them. Aidini was sure all was a hoax to exploit the masses. He would show it up for what it was.

Among the half dozen toughs accompanying Aidini was a man whose mother was blind.

“Bring your mother with us, bring Mama Zaila. When the white man makes prayer for healing in the meeting, we will put her there. When her eyes remain dark and she is not well this will show the lie. And there we will move, we will break the mzungu just there!”  Three days travel brought them to their destination.

Leaving their Land Rover beneath a gnarled tree next to a kiosk, the group entered the stream of tribal people making their way by foot toward the blaring loudspeaker. Mombasa’s port-city-atmosphere with its salty aroma was heavy, humid.

“Take care, Mama Zaila, do not rush. Hold tight to my arm.” The woman clung to her son’s forearm, her useless eyes staring into blackness.

Africa is a vast place with pockets of equally dense populations swarming across sprawling cities. Still, the crowd flooding Mombasa’s big outdoor field, was bigger than any the Congolese visitors had known. It was clear the name Osborn evoked interest.

The band of half-dozen strangers from a thousand miles westward pushed their way deeper into the crowd, their goal the big wooden stage where the mzungu preacher and his wife, Daisy sat. At either side of the American couple were invited local dignitaries along with a number of Africa church and mission heads.

Poised at last before the stage, the Congolese gang – their sightless companion in tow – awaited their moment. For Aidini it could not come soon enough.

©2018 Jerry Lout