This post is, more or less, a journal entry acknowledging recent events, with some musings on their significance.
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We just returned from picking up a young friend at the Newark, NJ airport. She is back from a two week long mission trip to Uganda.
Elizabeth has a powerful interest in the advancement of the gospel across the world. It seems clear to me that she's gifted to be an apostle. Her life presents clear fruit of apostleship, more clearly, I think, than anyone I've ever met.
I'm certain she knows nothing about APEST and her gifting exists in a very primitive state. For that reason, the evidence of her apostolic calling is remarkably pure.
From the moment we first saw her upon her arrival, she talked at length about her experiences in Uganda, as you might imagine.
I formed a conclusion that gives me understanding of the fact that the Lord is blessing ministry in many places across the world, but not in the West.
As Elizabeth described the ministry she was involved in, the activities were very heavy in living out the Sheep and Goats teaching of Jesus in Matthew 25: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, and so on. There are six activities Jesus describes there.
Of course, Jesus turns those six upside down to explain why He rejects people: I was hungry and you didn't feed me, etc..
My sense that ministry in Uganda is centered in two activities.
1. Living out Matthew 25:34-40 with deadly seriousness. (As one example, she visited several prisons in her two weeks in Uganda.)
2. The preaching of the pure and simple gospel that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and that He appeared to many people.
The Matthew 25 stuff is done in an organized way by organized ministries and by churches but more importantly, I think, it's also done by followers of Jesus individually, as a lifestyle. That is, for those people, to be a Christian it a way of life.
It seems that, in the ministry Elizabeth was involved with, new converts are not instructed In discipleship. It is simply understood that a believer lives what, in our religious world, is considered to be a radical lifestyle.
As I say, that style of ministry is profoundly blessed.
That's not the way ministry is done in the West, particularly by the CGGC.
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Anyway,...
The title of this post is a quotation from part of Ephesians 2:10.
Those are words around which Evie and I center our walk in a very serious and intentional way.
I believe that Western Christians fail to realize that righteousness, i.e., right living, is crucial to the life Jesus commands. He told people listening to what we call The Sermon on the Mount that unless your righteousness surpasses that the scribes and Pharisees you will not see the kingdom of heaven. Ouch.
It is true that we are saved by grace through faith. We are not saved by works.
Yet, a faith that saves us is a living, active faith. Paul makes that clear, as does James. And, it seems to me, the whole body of the teaching of Jesus is all about a faith that is alive and active.
So, Evie and I take great care to live out our faith.
When a person believes what we believe they realize that there are so many good works to do. From our experience, a person cannot do all the good works that are possible. Much more is left undone than is done.
So, Evie and I take those words of Paul from Ephesians very seriously. We attempt to determine which acts of grace and mercy God has prepared in advance for us to do and, of course, which He hasn't.
At one point, some time ago, we wondered about taking Elizabeth to the airport. Doing so took more time and more money...and energy... than you might imagine. And, no one else was offering.
Having done it, we now know that taking Elizabeth to and from the Newark airport, clearly was a work God prepared for us to do.
Throughout the whole effort to meet Elizabeth at the airport, we were blessed and aided...by complete strangers...in a way that made a very difficult and nerve wracking task easier and, even, enjoyable.
The Lord paved the way amazingly!
It is the one time in my walk that the Lord made it most incredibly clear that this act is one that arranged ahead of time for us.
What a blessing.
In my work at the store as an ambassador of the Kingdom of God, one thing I am asked about...perhaps more than anything else...is how I decide if an action that involves sacrifice and the living out of grace or mercy is a good work God prepared in advance.
I always have a poor answer. I never know for certain until I've acted...and, even then...
But, I'm convinced that this one was.
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