Some of you are already aware that Ginger and I are looking into going to South Korea for 1 year. I wanted to give everyone the background on that. This is the first installment when we were asking people to pray. I will post later what happened a week ago in this process. Here is the orgional email I sent out.
Ginger and I are making plans to spend 1 year in South Korea. We wanted to give you a heads up and a rough idea of what is happening. There are two major aspects to what we will be doing there, work and ministry.
The work consist of teaching English as a Second Language to Koreans, ranging anywhere from Kindergartners to University Students or business people. This will be worked out in the contract. It is something I have been considering since 2002. However, the timing was never right and I would have not been prepared for the ministry component.
The ministry portion will be similar to what we do here, in that we will be sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with a lost and dying world. How this will happen will depend on the location we settle in. It will be a mixture of 1-on-1 evangelism, open air preaching (if people speak English, or God gives me a translator to work with), and sharing the gospel as part of service such as volunteering to teach English at an Orphanage, local church, or in our apartment using the Bible, worship and praise songs, etc. Part of this is also in equipping Christians in Korea to share their faith Biblically using the Law to prepare the hearts for Grace.
You may be asking how can we pray, I am glad you asked. Here are some bullets of what is happening and what needs to happen.
1) Employment offer from a reputable school, preferably,
a. Public School
b. 3rd-grade and older
c. In an area that God has chosen for us to work.
2) Transportation – The cost of my plane ticket will be reimbursed within a month of arriving, but Ginger and James will not.
3) Accommodations – We will either be provided housing or will receive housing allotment
4) Salary – Salary is between 2 and 3 million won. Preferably 3 million won would be great. However, with no experience, 2 million is more likely.
5) Paperwork – Need passports (Ginger and James) and visa for all of us to not have any hiccups.
6) We need the house to sale at a good fair price.
7) We need to sell the cars.
8) We need to wisely decide what to take, store, sell, give away, and throw away.
9) Furniture and appliances – Some contracts will have furniture, since we need a bigger place than a single person does, ours may not be.
Is this a move that is in God’s will for us?
1) In March of 2005 a general command to every Christian was made personal to me when I heard from my Radio, listening to a teaching called How to Find God’s Will for You Life, these words, “Frank, go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” Since Korea is in the world, and creatures are there it seems to be a good place..
2) I have been longing to do this for a few years, in other words a desire in my heart.
3) I want to move into teaching field, and the practical experience will help cover the requirements in getting certified to teach here in America.
4) When talking to Mick, of Mick and Rick fame, about being a missionary, he looked at me and said you aught to become a teacher since that is a vast mission field.
5) Thursday while at work the Lord gave me this scripture Gen. 12:1
I have lots of passwords at work and have to chg them constantly. So a few months ago I started using scripture. I needed a new password about a month or so ago that had to have three letter one special character and three numbers. I decided to use he abbreviation for Genesis but could not think of a verse so I just choose 121 as an easy to remember number. Today as I was using it, I felt like I should go and read it. Since I had already read Gen. 1:21 after I picked that number, I went to Gen. 12:1 instead and this is what I read.
Genesis 12
1Now the Lord had said to Abram:
“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
Wrong Time to Preach the Gospel.
Wrong Time to Preach the Gospel?
One question that invariable comes up when encouraging others to preach (proclaim, speak, share) the gospel is, “when is a good time to bring up the things of God?” Or another way of putting is, “when is the right time or wrong time to witness to someone?” Believe it or not there is a wrong time to preach or proclaim God’s word in general and the Gospel in particular. Some of my friends will be balking now because they believe there is no bad time, that every chance you get is a good time. Well I do have a scripture reference that makes it clear there are situations or times were preaching the word would not be as fruitful as other times. At the conclusion of this article, I will give those people the verse.
I have been giving this some thought and before we can look at situations wherein wisdom dictates we withhold the Gospel from those sinking into hell, we need to understand what affect preaching the Gospel or Word of God has on sinners. We know from examples in scripture that there are three responses, 1) the sinners gets saved, 2) the sinners become angry, hateful, full of wrath even to the point of violence,(Stephen in the book of Acts) 3) the sinner is apathetic( no response at all) to the Word preached. From those three options you appear to have two safe options for your well being when you share the gospel. But on further study of those who are saved, I realized that in some situations even if the person is saved it could bring you the preacher great pain and suffering. While I admit on the surface it seems impossible that one who has just been saved from the wrath of God, through the mercy that Jesus purchased, would want to hurt the bearer of the good news, it is possible they might do so anyway.
Consider this fact, that fear and trembling quite often accompany salvation and also those who are on the verge of salvation when they hear the Word of God. God, speaking through the Prophet Isaiah, advised He will only look to those who have a poor and contrite spirit and who trembles at His word. (Isaiah 66:2) Through the Prophet Jeremiah, God says that when he cleanses the citizen of Israel and Judah from all their sins that they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and prosperity He is going to provide.” (Jer. 33:4-9)
So when you witness to some one it is possible that they will have fear and trembling that God has saved them, anger that you have showed them they are not good before God, or they will not care at all.
Consider these possible reactions as you decide you have enough love in your heart to warn your dentist to flee the wrath to come, to throw himself at the foot of a bloodstained cross because he is so evil only the blood of Jesus is sufficient to cleanse him. Do you talk to the dentist after he is done working or before he start filling that cavity or performs a root canal? Does he get so angry with you that he can’t see straight, or does tears start streaming down his face and his hand trembles as he relishes the love of Jesus that is now shed abroad in his heart?
Can you visualize that your dentist is holding the drill trembling in anger or love as it approaches your somewhat numb but stills sensitive tooth. Or you could have talked to him about his lying, thieving, adulterous heart before his gave you the Novocain injection. That needle could be the instrument that is held in his trembling hand, and if he is angry with you, he may choose to not give you as much Novocain before the trembling hand brings the drill.
Imagine you give into the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and in love, you decide to share the Gospel with the nurse that is putting in your I.V. You asked them “If you were to die today and stand before God, and He asked you why should I allow you into my Heaven? What would you tell Him?” The nurse tells you that she tried to do good, and she is basically a good person. As she is prepping the I.V. you explain to her that if she has ever told one lie she is a liar and all liars have their part in the lake of fire which is the second death. You tell her the if she has ever stolen she is a thief an no thief will inherit the kingdom of Heaven. She stops preparation and asks what must I do to be saved. You explain to her that Jesus Christ lived a perfect sinless life, always obeying the Father, that He died on a cross becoming a curse, taking the full wrath of God upon himself so that she could be saved. That God gave a sign that He accepted Jesus payment by raising Him from the dead. That all she has to do according to Jesus is repent (turn from) of her sins, and believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and died to cleanse her of her sins. With tears streaming down her face, she prays to God thanking Him for His gift and asking Jesus to cleanse her. Now she turns back to doing her job, and with trembling hands, and vision blinded by tears puts the I.V. in your arm.
You could also imagine a barber using scissors to trim around your ears as you witness to him, the brain surgeon that comes to visit you right before you go under, your partner in the bomb squad as he diffusing a bomb, and many other instances were you would pay a personal price for speaking up at the wrong time.
I am sure that there are still a few die hards that would say that there is no wrong time; even in these instances the eternal fate of those people is far more important to a needle going in wrong, or a drill running around the mouth drilling holes in teeth that are not numbed. Well for those people let me give the verse that proves Biblically that there are wrong times. 2 Tim. 4:2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. (NKJV) See the Bible does says there is an out of season for preaching the Word. However, on closer look it does appear we are still to do it even if it is out of season.
I guess the dentist, nurses, and barbers will not be the only ones trembling as we share the Gospel with them from now on, but perfect love will cast out fear of what might happen. We know it is far worse for them to fall into the hand of the living God, who is a consuming fire, if they die in their sins than anything that could happen to us now.
By Franklin L. Reeves
One question that invariable comes up when encouraging others to preach (proclaim, speak, share) the gospel is, “when is a good time to bring up the things of God?” Or another way of putting is, “when is the right time or wrong time to witness to someone?” Believe it or not there is a wrong time to preach or proclaim God’s word in general and the Gospel in particular. Some of my friends will be balking now because they believe there is no bad time, that every chance you get is a good time. Well I do have a scripture reference that makes it clear there are situations or times were preaching the word would not be as fruitful as other times. At the conclusion of this article, I will give those people the verse.
I have been giving this some thought and before we can look at situations wherein wisdom dictates we withhold the Gospel from those sinking into hell, we need to understand what affect preaching the Gospel or Word of God has on sinners. We know from examples in scripture that there are three responses, 1) the sinners gets saved, 2) the sinners become angry, hateful, full of wrath even to the point of violence,(Stephen in the book of Acts) 3) the sinner is apathetic( no response at all) to the Word preached. From those three options you appear to have two safe options for your well being when you share the gospel. But on further study of those who are saved, I realized that in some situations even if the person is saved it could bring you the preacher great pain and suffering. While I admit on the surface it seems impossible that one who has just been saved from the wrath of God, through the mercy that Jesus purchased, would want to hurt the bearer of the good news, it is possible they might do so anyway.
Consider this fact, that fear and trembling quite often accompany salvation and also those who are on the verge of salvation when they hear the Word of God. God, speaking through the Prophet Isaiah, advised He will only look to those who have a poor and contrite spirit and who trembles at His word. (Isaiah 66:2) Through the Prophet Jeremiah, God says that when he cleanses the citizen of Israel and Judah from all their sins that they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and prosperity He is going to provide.” (Jer. 33:4-9)
So when you witness to some one it is possible that they will have fear and trembling that God has saved them, anger that you have showed them they are not good before God, or they will not care at all.
Consider these possible reactions as you decide you have enough love in your heart to warn your dentist to flee the wrath to come, to throw himself at the foot of a bloodstained cross because he is so evil only the blood of Jesus is sufficient to cleanse him. Do you talk to the dentist after he is done working or before he start filling that cavity or performs a root canal? Does he get so angry with you that he can’t see straight, or does tears start streaming down his face and his hand trembles as he relishes the love of Jesus that is now shed abroad in his heart?
Can you visualize that your dentist is holding the drill trembling in anger or love as it approaches your somewhat numb but stills sensitive tooth. Or you could have talked to him about his lying, thieving, adulterous heart before his gave you the Novocain injection. That needle could be the instrument that is held in his trembling hand, and if he is angry with you, he may choose to not give you as much Novocain before the trembling hand brings the drill.
Imagine you give into the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and in love, you decide to share the Gospel with the nurse that is putting in your I.V. You asked them “If you were to die today and stand before God, and He asked you why should I allow you into my Heaven? What would you tell Him?” The nurse tells you that she tried to do good, and she is basically a good person. As she is prepping the I.V. you explain to her that if she has ever told one lie she is a liar and all liars have their part in the lake of fire which is the second death. You tell her the if she has ever stolen she is a thief an no thief will inherit the kingdom of Heaven. She stops preparation and asks what must I do to be saved. You explain to her that Jesus Christ lived a perfect sinless life, always obeying the Father, that He died on a cross becoming a curse, taking the full wrath of God upon himself so that she could be saved. That God gave a sign that He accepted Jesus payment by raising Him from the dead. That all she has to do according to Jesus is repent (turn from) of her sins, and believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and died to cleanse her of her sins. With tears streaming down her face, she prays to God thanking Him for His gift and asking Jesus to cleanse her. Now she turns back to doing her job, and with trembling hands, and vision blinded by tears puts the I.V. in your arm.
You could also imagine a barber using scissors to trim around your ears as you witness to him, the brain surgeon that comes to visit you right before you go under, your partner in the bomb squad as he diffusing a bomb, and many other instances were you would pay a personal price for speaking up at the wrong time.
I am sure that there are still a few die hards that would say that there is no wrong time; even in these instances the eternal fate of those people is far more important to a needle going in wrong, or a drill running around the mouth drilling holes in teeth that are not numbed. Well for those people let me give the verse that proves Biblically that there are wrong times. 2 Tim. 4:2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. (NKJV) See the Bible does says there is an out of season for preaching the Word. However, on closer look it does appear we are still to do it even if it is out of season.
I guess the dentist, nurses, and barbers will not be the only ones trembling as we share the Gospel with them from now on, but perfect love will cast out fear of what might happen. We know it is far worse for them to fall into the hand of the living God, who is a consuming fire, if they die in their sins than anything that could happen to us now.
By Franklin L. Reeves
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