Light of Togo

In the past couple months I have been quite a terrible blogger.  There has been so much happening every day, and I have not done a very good job with keeping you up to date.  While I can’t promise anything, I do plan on updating the blog more frequently.  In fact, in the next few weeks I plan on doing one very large post with photos, and maybe video, of lots of the things I’ve written about on our blog.  Many of you have been asking about photos, but up to this point I honestly have had no time to respond to those requests, so I figured that I’ll just do it all at once when I get some time.

So, to catch up on the last couple weeks:

The Huffs arrived in Accra safely, we crossed back over the border into Togo with no problems, spent a couple days in Lomé, then drove back up to Kara on the 4th.  That wasn’t necessarily how we wanted to spend Independence Day, but it was great to “celebrate” our return home to Kara.

Speaking of Kara, we’ve been busy trying to find a house in Kara for the Huffs.  We’ve seen around 15 already, and they’ve narrowed it down to one so far.  We’re going to see a couple more, but more than likely they’ll be starting negotiations on that house very soon.  In the mean time they are staying with us, and we’re having a great time together.

Speaking of houses, we are finally getting around to many of the little repairs and improvements that have needed to be done since moving in but haven’t had the time to do.  It’s great to be getting more and more settled in the house so we can spend more time focusing on the more important things.

Speaking of more important things, we had a great Sunday a few days ago.  There were quite a bit more people at church than normal, and as I preached on Colossians 3:1-4 it sparked a good discussion/question session after the message.  The passage deals with seeking the eternal things which are of infinite importance instead of being consumed with the passing, temporary things that attract our attention every day.  We do this because our old sinful nature was put to death in Christ, and we now have a new life and new nature because Christ is our life.  Please pray for me as I’m teaching/preaching through the book of Colossians.  I work hard at trying to effectively communicate these truths to the people, but sometimes it’s difficult with my limited understading of their culture.

Speaking of prayer, please also pray for this church we’re working at.  We have made a temporary commitment to help out there, and of course the goal is to see this church become independent (autonomous) of missionary help, so please pray that God gives wisdom and direction to the pastor, the members, and the missionaries involved so we can see this church reach that goal in the near future.

Speaking of the near future, I’m sure that you have many other things to do in the near future other than reading a very long update by a belated blogging missionary!  So, as they say in French, “À la prochaine!” (See you next time!)

In the last post, I mentioned that I’d be preaching a couple times this week.  Thanks to all of you who were praying for this.  I really believe that God worked in a great way through both of these opportunities.  I, of course, can take zero credit for anything that God does.  He simply used His Word like He has promised to do, and He just happened to use me in the process.  It’s incredibly humbling that God would ever use somebody like me, and I give Him all the praise and glory for it.

I’ll hopefully be able to post the audio from Wednesday night’s sermon if I can get it from the sound ministry at church tomorrow.

Only 3 days to go!  We’ll be writing one last blog post before leaving Tuesday, and we’ll give you some details about the trip.

Several weeks ago I was asked to speak at our church’s Men’s Prayer Breakfast on the 31st of this month.  Then a couple days ago our pastor asked me to take the entire service this Wednesday night to preach and share some details about our move to Togo and our soon-to-be ministry there.

So, needless to say, that put me in to “study mode” this week.  I really enjoy times like this when I can dig deeply into a passage of Scripture in order to discover the main, over-arching idea of the passage and then the individual truths that support that idea.  I tend to be a more introverted and studious person, so figuring out how to effectively communicate those truths to other people is usually where I struggle, but I thank God for showing me that I can never rely or depend on my own strength or abilities, but on His grace and Spirit.

On Wednesday, I’ll be speaking from a text that’s very familiar to me, 2 Corinthians 5, mostly verses 11-21.  It’s one that I preached from often during deputation, but I’ll be coming at it from a different angle.  That’s the beauty of the Bible; it can be preached over and over again and never get old.  There is no way in a lifetime - in ten lifetimes - that we could exhaust every truth and every application of every passage in the Bible.

I’d greatly appreciate your prayer for me as I prepare and then as I preach.  I have preached many times, but do not even remotely feel that I have mastered it.  And to tell you the truth, I hope that I never do because that will probably be the day that I stop relying on Christ alone in order to do it.  So, above all, please pray that I will be completely reliant and dependent on the Holy Spirit, and that I will communicate effectively the message of the passage and not my own opinions.  And pray as always that God will be glorified!

One week ago I had a great opportunity to preach at the Portland Rescue Mission, which provides overnight stays to the homeless in downtown Portland. It was an exceptionally busy night because of the unusually cold temperature. As I began to preach, the crowd was slightly hostile and I found myself having to talk over them because of the constant comments and noise. However, when I got to the heart of the message, which was the gospel plain and simple, they seemed to significantly quiet down and listen intently. I explained the gospel as it is presented in Romans chapter 3, where Paul explains the sinfulness of man and his inability to save himself. We have absolutely no righteousness, which is what God requires for man to be reconciled to Him, but God gives the perfect righteousness of Christ to those who believe on Him by faith. I am humbled and amazed that God would use me to glorify Himself by giving the gospel of Christ to those men.

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.

This is the culmination of all that Jesus has been talking about up to this point.  When a true follower of Jesus abides in Him, walks in Him, and depends upon Him, he will also seek to obey Him.  It is only natural to do so.  But, the question that inevitably comes up is, “What if we don’t keep Him commandments?  Does this verse teach that God won’t love us anymore?”

It must be understood that Jesus is not trying to make a point of God’s love being conditional towards His children.  What He is saying is that in this abiding relationship, we are expected to obey Him, and that when we do we fully experience His love manifested in our lives.  Jesus gives us the example of His own life.  He fully experienced the love of the Father because of His obedience to Him.  As Warren Wiersbe says, “Because we love Him, we keep His commandments; and, as we keep His commandments, we abide in His love and experience it in a deeper way.” (The Bible Exposition Commentary)

Usually when we think of keeping the commandments we automatically think of the “Big 10,” right?  We might have the mental image of a Pharisee in ancient Jerusalem whose life is consumed with following each and every law, commandment, and ordinance in a precise and detailed fashion.  The problem with the Pharisees, both ancient and modern, is that they lack one very important thing: love.  Without a genuine love for the Savior, which is developed from an abiding relationship with Him, one can only merely obey commandments on the outside like a lifeless robot while having a love-lacking heart of hypocrisy on the inside.

What is very interesting is to clarify what Jesus is talking about when He speaks of His commandments. Is He saying that we should be like a Pharisee, one who “just obeys” and nothing more?  Well, let’s think about what Jesus’ response was to the question that was asked of Him about the commandments.  In Matthew 22, He was asked what the greatest commandment is.  Jesus’ response was simple, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Then notice that in John 14:15 Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  This to me is one of the great paradoxes of Christianity.  In all other religions, followers are expected to obey mostly out of fear of what will happen to them if they don’t.  Christians, however, are told by Jesus to obey Him not because of what horrible thing He will do to us if we don’t, but because of the great and glorious things He has done for us already!  We love Him because of who He is and what He has done for us, and because of that we should want to and seek to obey Him.  And what commandment does He most want us to obey?  To love Him with all of our being! And this, as we will see in the coming verses, is the foundation on which God can develop a love within us for other people.

Here it is at last.  Sorry that it took so long, but there was a little trouble getting the audio file off of the church computer.  I know that you were all anxiously waiting to listen to me speak in French for 25 minutes!  Try not to fall asleep!

Just to give you some idea of what I’m talking about, I preached from Colossians 2:1-10, focusing mostly on verses 6-10.  The basic idea was that Paul instructed us to walk in Christ in the same manner in which we received Christ.  He then goes on to warn of those who would add unnecessary things to the Christian life, such as religious traditions, laws, and human philosophies.  So, just as we were saved by faith, in grace, in receiving the life of Christ, so we are to walk in faith, by grace, fully dependent on the life of Christ which dwells in us.  Because, as Paul points out, we are complete in Him.  We need not search elsewhere for finding out how to live the Christian life.

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

The love of God is unfathomable.  There is no sin, no error, no mistakes in God.  He is entirely perfect and therefore so is His love.  Jesus brought directly to this earth the perfect love of God.  The love between He and His Father was unselfish, untainted, and perfect in every way.  It is with this love that Jesus loves us.  Jesus was reminding His discples here that His relationship of abiding in the love of the Father was being shared with them, and that they could be partakers of the perfect love of Christ.

He exhorts them to “continue in His love.”  This is not to say, “Make sure that you behave yourselves so that I will continue to love you.”  His love doesn’t work this way.  Romans 5:8 tells us that, “…God commendeth (demontrated) his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  If His love for us was based upon our performance or something special within us, we would never receive His love!  He loves us even though we are completely unworthy of love. Continuing in His love is more like saying, “Keep walking in my love; keep partaking of my love; keep enjoying and sharing my love with others.”  In the following few verses, we will see how Jesus explains what continuing in His love looks like.

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

We exist to glorify God. Period.

If you have not come to the point yet where you realize that the sole purpose for your existence on this planet is to glorify God, you must not have ever read the Bible. There are countless ways in which a follower of Christ can bring glory to God, but here in this passage Jesus tells us that one way is in bearing fruit.  Again, let’s not forget what Jesus is referring to when He talks about fruit.  God is glorified when we show His love through our lives, when we express the joy of knowing Christ, when we exercise faith in the unfailing nature of God.  As John Piper says in his excellent book on missions, Let the Nations Be Glad, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  When He is everything to us, He is most glorified.

As the branch abides in the vine, the fruit producing process is simply a natural outflow of the life of the vine.  Imagine yourself at a local farm, where you are strolling through the rows of trees and plants, taking in all the sights and smells of non-city life.  Suddenly, as you pass by the grape vines, you hear a familiar but out-of-place sound.  It is the sound of struggle.  You bend your ear to distinguish the source, but you see no one.  Then something catches your eye.  It is a vine, to which is attached a small branch, on which is no fruit.  This comes as no surprise to you since it is not yet the season for grapes.  However, you see and hear that this little branch is grunting and groaning, struggling and squirming with all it’s might, trying to push out some fruit.  You say to the branch, “Hey buddy, what are you doing?”  He stops his efforts briefly and responds, “I’m making fruit!”  You try explaining to him that he can’t do it by all that struggling, and that it’s not even the season for it, but he turns a deaf ear and continues his travail.

As silly as this illustration is, it is a mirror of many Christians who have their focus on the wrong things.  Here is a question: is bearing fruit a good thing?  Yes, of course.  But does it mean that it should be the focus of all our attention?  We must realize that fruit in the Christian life is the result of our attention being fully on our abiding in Jesus and on the glorifying of God.  It is much like the sinner who tries to “be saved” by living a pseudo Christian life, without first going to the source of this life which is Jesus.

The last part of this verse can be a bit tricky.  At first glance, it appears to be telling us that discipleship is conditional and based upon the fruit that we produce.  If this is the case, how much is “much fruit?”  How can we ever be sure if we are disciples of Christ or not?  This dangerous thinking leads to many errors, such as putting all kinds of external stipulations on determining whether or not somebody is “right with God” or not.  I have seen and experimented this kind of Christianity, and in it there are many extra-biblical man-made rules that many times take priority over simple Bible truth.

In a situation like this, it is helpful to consult the original language of the text.  From the study that I have done, it appears that the idea is this: Fruitfulness in the Christian life is not a condition which is required to become a disciple of Christ, but rather it is the proof that one already is a disciple.  Jesus once said that you can tell whether a tree is good or bad by its fruit.  A vibrant, healthy tree will produce good fruit, but a dead or dying tree will produce undesirable fruit or no fruit at all.  The point of this parable was to show that what the tree is, it will produce.  It would be silly to say that the good fruit on the limbs is what makes the tree good.  But it is perfectly acceptable to say that the fruit on the limbs is good because the tree is good.  We must be careful not to reverse this order.  We bear fruit because we are disciples of Christ.  All Christians bear fruit.  It’s not always the exact same kind or quantity of fruit for everyone, but all Christians bear fruit because all Christians are disciples of Jesus Christ.  There is no such thing as a “non-discipleship Christianity.”

So where are your priorities, your focus?  On struggling and straining to push out fruit on your own?  On the glory of God?  Maybe on neither of these things.  The Word of God challenges us to abide in Jesus, rest in His life as our sufficiency, and to do all things for the purpose of glorifying God.  And through this God will bring forth fruit in us, showing that we are followers of Christ.

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

Hmm, let’s see here, what do I really want?  A professional Canon or Nikon SLR camera would be nice.  Oh, and all the lenses too.  An iPhone could really come in handy.  A tennis racket that could make me play like Rafael Nadal would be awesome.  Let’s see, what else?  Oh yes, the biggest, fastest Mac computer on the market.  All the best, super lightweight backpacking gear and a high clearance 4WD vehicle to get to all the best hiking spots.  Well, I guess that’s enough for now.  So alright, Lord, I ask for all of these things, in your name of course.  Well, I’m waiting!

Do you ever feel like your prayers aren’t getting answered?  God gives us the promise that He will answer our prayers, but sometimes we are just ignorant to the fact that His answer may be a definite and certain “NO!”  Our problem most of the time is that we are praying for the wrong person, and I am just as guilty of this as anyone else, although not quite as bad as the exaggerated example above.  We pray most often for the one who we are most concerned about pleasing - ourselves.

James 4:3 tells us about praying for our needs, for our desires, for our “things” that we think make us happy.  It says, Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

The key to John 15:7 is the phrase and my words abide in you. I truly believe there is a great difference between knowing the Word of God, and the Word abiding in us.  The words of Christ abiding in us produces a change of mentality, a change of focus, and a change of our desires.  Instead of dwelling on what we need, want, and crave for, we begin to pray according to God’s plans, His purposes, and His desires.  God never intended prayer to be a service bell for our every whim in the cushy mansion of luxury that we like to call our life.  It is intended to be the line of communication between commander and soldier as He carries out His plans through you.

Perhaps you, like me, need to begin praying more biblically.  As Jesus did, we ought to pray, “I don’t seek my will, Father, but let yours be done through me.”  God desires to give us what we ask for, but are we asking for what God desires?  I encourage you to know Jesus more through His Word.  Let it abide and take root in you, that you might begin praying more for God and His desires and a lot less for ours.

Click here to download a printable PDF copy of this letter: June ‘08

I’m not sure that we’ve ever talked so much in all our lives.  In the past month, it seemed that every day was spent with friends, our tutor, conversation partners, or anyone else who speaks French.  This has been a great opportunity to put into practice what we have been learning for the past year.  If you’ve ever learned a foreign language, you know how much more difficult speaking is compared to “textbook learning.”  It is encouraging though to look back and see the progress we’ve made and to look forward to being relatively fluent one day in Africa as we evangelize, disciple, and encourage all in French!

Along those lines, I’d like to ask that you pray for me as I will be preaching my first sermon in French on July 20th.  I wrote it during my theological course, and have been meeting with our pastor here to smooth out the rough edges.  I am a bit nervous just because it will be my first time preaching in French, but I pray that God will work through it to deliver His Word despite my mispronunciations and backwards English sentence structure!

If you have not yet done so, I’d like to encourage you to visit our blog where I have begun a verse by verse study on John chapter 15.  This is a great way for me to dig a little deeper than normal into the Bible and I hope that you can follow along and do the same.

With all of our Togo coworkers scattered all over the map, it is at times difficult to keep in touch with them, but lately we’ve had the opportunity to speak with them through the internet using Skype.  From talking with them about future plans and preparations for Togo, it makes us all the more excited to finish strong in our language learning and get to Togo.  We are looking forward to the day when all of the missionaries are working together, reaching the Togolese with the gospel of Christ for the glory of God.

Thank you so much for your prayers and support!

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Here we have probably the most controversial and misunderstood verse in this passage.  Some common interpretations are: 1. that these non-abiding branches are true Christians who somehow completely separate themselves from Christ, loose their salvation, and are sent to hell; 2. that these are Christians who stop abiding (what this means is debated), and are therefore relegateed to a state of complete uselessness; 3. that those who do not abide in Christ have never been a partaker of His life.  They may be attached to the vine in a purely physical sense, but they have never received the life of the vine and therefore have never produced any fruit.

In verse 2, Jesus referred to, “every branch in me that beareth not fruit.”  It is suggested by many experts who are much more “Greeky” than me that in the original language the reference to “in me” doesn’t convey the same idea as other places in the Bible, for instance when Paul uses the term “in Christ,” meaning all who are saved.  They say that it has a much broader scope here in John 15, likely referring to all people.

The Bible tells us that we are all products of Jesus Christ, whether we are followers of His or not.  He has created us and we all receive our life from Him and thus are physically “in Him,” but not all people are receiving His life and therefore are not bearing fruit.

This verse is serves as a simple reminder to believers in Christ, and as a warning to those who reject Him.  For Christians, it is impossible for us to disconnect ourselves from the vine.  We may struggle, we may not bear as much fruit as Jesus desires, but we can never loose that life of the vine which abides in us.  God will prune and clip our lives in His work of bearing fruit through us.  But for those who reject the life of the vine, there is a day coming when you will stand before the righteous and perfect judge of the world, and He will declare that you never received the forgiveness of sins and the life of Jesus Christ, which is the only thing that can save you from eternal judgment.  It is an eternity in hell that awaits those who do not believe on Jesus Christ by faith and receive His life.  If that describes you, don’t hesistate to come to Him to receive freely the forgiveness of sin, the life of Christ, and an assurance of spending eternity in Heaven.

Do you have any thoughts about this verse?  If so, feel free to post a comment.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

Jesus here lays down a very simple and unchanging truth: that all fruit, all success, all labor, all of our very being is completely dependent on one thing - Jesus!  Without Jesus we can do nothing of eternal importance, and have nothing of eternal value.

When we attempt to live our lives independent of Jesus Christ, we are like a branch which is connected to a vine but strenuously trying to grow a cluster of grapes.  We push and strain and exert all our effort in doing something that is impossible.  Physically it is impossible for a branch to make fruit without the vine, and spiritually it is impossible for us to live the Christian life without Christ.

Many people appear to have the idea that the ultimate goal in the Christian life is found in striving to “be like Jesus” in every area.  While the Bible does talk about  being conformed into His image, I would have to say that I disagree with this idea as the fundamental way of the Christian walk.  I believe that the Bible indicates that God is much more concerned with our depending upon Him than with our mimicking Him.  I do not mean to sound like I am criticizing anybody, but the problem I see (and that I have had many times) is that many Christians attempt to analyze and improve every compartment of their lives for the ultimate goal of being like Jesus.  But what happens many times is that we end up doing all of this in our own effort, independent from the one who we’re trying to be like!  When we are entirely reliant and dependent upon Him, however, He grows us and matures us as He desires and in His perfect timing.  He will produce fruit through us as His life flows through us.  We are simply the conduit through which the vine produces its fruit to the glory of the God.

Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 

After reading this verse several times in the context of the passage, and after reading several commentaries on it, I must admit that I’m really not entirely sure what this verse means.  Gasp!  Shock!  How can this be?!

I’m very sorry to disappoint you, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: even people who go to Bible college and are in the ministry don’t have an answer to every verse in the Bible.  Shortly after becoming a Christian I was erroneously led to believe that Christians, and especially pastors, missionaries, etc., must have a response to every biblical question and an interpretation for every verse.  Therefore, I strived to acheive this mysterious omniscience which always seemed to avoid me.  I would adopt the answers of those around me and tenaciously defend them, even though I knew that they didn’t make sense.  Isn’t it sad how young Christians can be misled so easily?  «rabbit trail warning»  By the way, this is one reason why proper discipleship is so important and why we desire to have a large emphasis upon it in our ministry.

OK, I have now tracked down the rabbit, shot it, barbequed it, and served it to some dinner guests after telling them it was chicken.  So, back to the verse.

Here’s my best guess.  In chapter 13, when Jesus was washing the disciples’ feet, He told Peter in verse 10: Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.  Then the next verse says: For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean.

It’s extremely clear what Jesus meant here.  He was indicating that His group of disciples was not entirely clean because of Judas.  John 15:3 could be a reference to Jesus’ “cleansing” of the group by exposing Judas as the unclean one in 13:21-27.

Other than that interpretation, or in addition to it, the other possibility is that Jesus simply meant that He had already begun that purging and cleansing process through His word (teaching and instruction) which He had recently given them.

So what do you think?  Do you think that it means something different from what I’ve mentioned?  If so, I’d love to hear it and tell you why you are wrong.  I hope you know that I’m just kidding!  The good news is that it doesn’t appear to me that a perfect understanding of this verse really has a great effect on the entire passage.  So on to verse four we go!

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

Jesus here clearly classifies all people into two categories: those who abide in Him and produce fruit and those who don’t and have no fruit.  There have been many false doctrines which site this verse as a “proof text,” the most common of which being that Christians can loose their salvation if they do not produce fruit.  We’ll come across this thought again when we get to verse six, but for now I think it’s important to establish a vital truth from the very beginning of this passage: those who lack fruit do so because they do not have the life of the vine within them!  Fruit can only come from receiving the life of the vine.  A branch with no fruit is a dead branch!  The Bible is very clear on this: “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (I John 5:12)

Remember, Jesus was not speaking these words directly to all people of all time, although they certainly apply to all people.  He was speaking to his disciples, so it should be obvious that the immediate context and application refers to Judas, who of course was not bearing fruit because he was not receiving the life of the vine, because he was not abiding in Jesus.  The wider application is to all of those, who like Judas, appear to follow Christ; they hang out with His followers, talk like His followers, act like His followers, but never have the spiritual fruit of His followers.

But what about the branches which do have fruit?  It’s clear to see that God, for His own glory, desires to have a fruit-producing vine, and that He does what is necessary to acheive this.  The purging that is mentioned here is like the vital but sometimes painful pruning that God must do to our lives so that He may cause us to bear more fruit for His glory.  It really should make us stop and ponder the many “offshoots” that we follow in our lives which only serve to distract us from resting in the source of life that is in Jesus Christ.

Want to add something to this study? Leave a comment.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

Throughout the gospel of John, Jesus gives seven “I am” statements, this being the last of them.  What a statement it is!  Notice that He doesn’t say, “I am a true vine,” or “I am the vine,” but emphatically “I am the true vine.”  Such a declaration oozes with affirmation of His deity.  As we’ll see later in the chapter, His being the vine clearly means that He is the source of all life.  There may be many other places where men will unsuccessfully search for true life, but Jesus reminds us that He only is the true vine where it can be found.

“and my Father is the husbandman.” The husbandman is the farmer; the one who owns the land, who cultivates the ground, who plants the seeds, and grows his fruit.  God is in complete control of His work and He is doing it through the true vine, Jesus Christ.

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” (Colossians 1:16-17)