What made it OK for God to kill women and children in the Old Testament?

Abortion & Evolution

The key problem with the abortion debates today seems to be that we are arguing from different worldviews.

From a purely evolutionary standpoint, "Since man is just a more highly evolved life form, human life is nothing special. A person does not have any more inherent value than the life of his alleged ape-like ancestor. Therefore, abortion is just a fact of life regardless of the consequences for the developing life inside... If humans evolved from [other] animals, their existence is derived from the survival of the fittest. From an evolutionary perspective, abortion seems to be a brilliant method to aid natural selection. Why not end the lives of those with genetic defects or disabilities before they can be a drain on society? Might abortion even be saving these weak ones from lives of suffering?" (Abortion & The Origins Debate)

In contrast, biblical creationists believe mankind is distinct from the animal kingdom. Our belief is based on the Creator’s testimony in the Bible. After creating the universe and filling the earth with plant and animal life, God created human life on Day Six of the Creation Week. God personally formed man after His image (Genesis 1:27). He gave people unique linguistic, aesthetic, rational, moral, and spiritual faculties not given to animals.

Download this excellent free video Fearfully & Wonderfully Made by Dr. David Menton to find out more.

The Sufficiency of Scripture vs. The Insufficiency of Nature
If you don't have much time, just watch the first half of this video. You won't be sorry.

John Piper @ GELF Breakfast - Lausanne 2010 from Crossway on Vimeo.

(HT:JT)

Moving Story of the Day

Denny Burk:
This homeless guy has a voice like butter, and he’s getting a second chance because of this viral YouTube video (see above). He has already received offers from the NFL and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Just today he appeared on “The Today Show” (see below), and it’s a fascinating interview. I share the concerns of Meredith and Matt, but I wish him all the best.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Happy New Year &
I'm Getting Older This Week!
This made me feel better about getting old.

If I Had to Do it Again

John MacArthur:

One father said, “My family’s all grown, and the kids are all gone. But if I had to do it all over again, this is what I’d do.

1. I would love my wife more in front of my children.

2. I would laugh with my children more—at our mistakes and our joys.

3. I would listen more, even to the littlest child.

4. I would be more honest about my own weaknesses, never pretending perfection.

5. I would pray differently for my family—instead of focusing on them, I’d focus on me.

6. I would do more things together with my children.

7. I would encourage them more and bestow more praise.

8. I would pay more attention to little things, like deeds and words of thoughtfulness.

9. And then, finally, if I had to do it all over again, I would share God more intimately with my family; every ordinary thing that happened in every ordinary day I would use to direct them to God.”

Passion2011 Live Stream
You can watch the conference live (Jan 1-4) here.
(HT: JT)

Bible Reading Plans for 2011

Great stuff from Justin Taylor:

There are lots of ways to read the Bible in a year, and I won’t try to capture all of them. But here are numerous options, in no particular order. You may want to look through it and see what you think would work best for you.

First off, if you’re not persuaded that having a plan is necessary and biblical in some sense, then here’s a helpful piece from John Piper, written in 1984.

Stephen Witmer has a helpful introduction—on the weaknesses of typical plans and some advice on reading the Bible together with others—as well as offering his own new two-year plan.

George Guthrie has a very helpful Read the Bible for Life Chronological Bible Reading Plan. (I’ll have more to say later about Guthrie’s new book, Read the Bible for Life, and the church-wide campaign to promote biblical literacy. It’s really worth picking up.)

The Gospel Coalition’s For the Love of God Blog takes you through the M’Cheyne reading plan, with a meditation each day by D. A. Carson related to one of the readings.

The Bible Reading Plan for Shirkers and Slackers (Pastor Andy Perry explains the plan and why he recommends it.)

Before I mention some of the ESV plans, here are a few other options that aren’t one-year-plans per se:

Don Whitney has a simple but surprisingly effective tool: A Bible Reading Record. It’s a list of every chapter in the Bible, and you can check them off as you read them at whatever pace you want.

For the highly motivated and disciplined, Grant Horner’s plan has you reading each day a chapter from ten different places in the Bible. (Bob Kauflin read the whole Bible this way in five and a half months and explains why he likes this system a lot.)

Joe Carter and Fred Sanders explain James Gray’s method of “How to Master the English Bible.” My pastor, David Sunday, told me that “the plan they recommend is, from my vantage point, the most productive way to read and to master the Bible’s contents (or more importantly, to let the Bible master you!).”

There are 10 Reading Plans for ESV Editions, and the nice things is the way in which Crossway has made them accessible in multiple formats:

• web (a new reading each day appears online at the same link)
• RSS (subscribe to receive by RSS)
• podcast (subscribe to get your daily reading in audio)
• iCal (download an iCalendar file)
• mobile (view a new reading each day on your mobile device)
• print (download a PDF of the whole plan)

Reading Plan	Format
Daily Reading Bible Daily Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Outreach Bible Daily Old Testament, Psalms, and New Testament	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Outreach Bible New Testament Daily New Testament. Read through the New Testament in 6 months	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
M’Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan Daily Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms or Gospels	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
ESV Study Bible Daily Psalms or Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch or the History of Israel; Chronicles or Prophets; and Gospels or Epistles	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Literary Study Bible Daily Psalms or Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch or the History of Israel; Chronicles or Prophets; and Gospels or Epistles	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Every Day in the Word Daily Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Through the Bible Daily Old Testament and New Testament	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Chronological Through the Bible chronologically (from Back to the Bible)	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print
Book of Common Prayer Daily Office Daily Psalms, Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospels	Web	RSS	iCal	Mobile	Print

You can also access each of these Reading Plans as podcasts:

• Right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) the “RSS” link of the feed you want from the above list.
• Choose “Copy Link Location” or “Copy Shortcut.”
• Start iTunes.
• Choose Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast.
• Paste the URL from step three into the box.
• Click OK.

The entire Bible on audio is usually about 75 hours (or 4500 minutes). If you commute to work 5 days a week, that’s about 260 days a year. And if it takes you, say, 17 minutes to commute each way to work—and if you listen to the Bible on audio during your drive each way—you’ll get through the entire Bible twice in a year. This probably isn’t the only way to do Bible intake—but it’s one most of us should take advantage of more.

Here’s some more detail on these plans (some from Crossway, some from elsewhere).

---

ESV Study Bible (The ESV Literary Study Bible contains the same plan)

With this plan there are four readings each day, divided into four main sections:

• Psalms and Wisdom Literature
• Pentateuch and the History of Israel
• Chronicles and Prophets
• Gospels and Epistles

The introduction explains:

In order to make the readings come out evenly, four major books of the Bible are included twice in the schedule: the Psalms (the Bible’s hymnal), Isaiah (the grandest of the OT prophets), Luke (one of the four biblical Gospels), and Romans (the heart of the Bible’s theology of salvation).The list of readings from the Psalms and the Wisdom Literature begins and ends with special readings that are especially appropriate for the opening and closing of the year. The list of readings from the Pentateuch and the History of Israel proceeds canonically through the five books of Moses and then chronologically through the history of the OT, before closing the year with the sufferings of Job. The list of readings from the Chronicles and the Prophets begins with the Chronicler’s history of the people of God from Adam through the exile, followed by the Major and Minor Prophets, which are organized chronologically rather than canonically.

You can print out this PDF, which is designed to be cut into four bookmarks that can be placed at the appropriate place in your Bible reading. There are boxes to check off each reading as you complete it.

---

M’Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan

With this plan you read through:

• the NT twice
• the Psalms twice
• the rest of the OT once

The plan begins with the four great beginnings or “births” of Scripture: Genesis 1 (beginning of the world), Ezra 1 (rebirth of Israel after her return from Babylonian exile), Matthew 1 (birth of the Messiah), Acts 1 (birth of the body of Christ). John Stott says of this reading schedule: “Nothing has helped me more to gain an overview of the Bible, and so of God’s redemptive plan.”

If you go with this route, I’d recommend D.A. Carson’s For the Love of God (vol. 1 and vol. 2 are available–vols. 3 and 4 are forthcoming). Carson’s introduction and preface—which includes a layout of the calendar—are available for free online.

Since there are four readings each day, it’s easy to modify this one so that you read through the Bible once in two years, by reading just the first two readings each day for the first year and the second two readings each day for the second year.

---

Here’s a plan from NavPress, which is used each year at Bethlehem Baptist Church:

The Discipleship Journal Reading Plan

With this plan you read through the entire Bible once.

With this plan there are “catch-up” days:

• To prevent the frustration of falling behind, which most of us tend to do when following a Bible reading plan, each month of this plan gives you only 25 readings. Since you’ll have several “free days” each month, you could set aside Sunday to either not read at all or to catch up on any readings you may have missed in the past week.
• If you finish the month’s readings by the twenty-fifth, you could use the final days of the month to study passages that challenged or intrigued you.

Bethlehem makes available bookmarks that you can place in the relevant parts of your Bible:

• Bookmarks for 1st half of the year
• Bookmarks for 2nd half of the year

---

The Journey Engage Scripture Reading Plan

The Journey, an Acts 29 church in St. Louis pastored by Darrin Patrick, is doing a church-wide reading plan this year.

This plan has you read whole chapters (a feature I like):

• one New Testament chapter
• two Old Testament chapters

They also have a couple of features designed to help those of us who have trouble persevering through a schedule like this: (1) there are lots of reflection/catch-up days; (2) they have pulled from the daily plan some of the slower-paced, harder-to-understand books. These then become “Monthly Scripture Snapshots” that are to be speed-read, along with online videos and overviews to put these books in context. See their website for more resources related to this plan.

Irrational Rationalism Apart From Scripture
If you are a reader of this blog, you know that I believe that in these days scientism (a.k.a. the belief in the sufficiency of autonomous human reasoning) has a power over a majority of minds, including many Christian minds, in a number of unhealthy ways.

Reasoning power alone is a wonderful God-given blessing. Christians are called to administer this gift in a number of ways, especially to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in them. God also gives us logical reasons why we should listen to and follow Him throughout the Bible, in order to minister to our minds. He gives us many details in the Bible in order to help us know things truly and sufficiently, though because our minds are tainted by sin, never completely or fully in this life.

That is why I found these quotes from Dr. John Frame to be so wonderfully helpful in explaining some key facets of the problem of rational thinking apart from the certain guidance provided by God in Scripture.

Frame writes in his book, The Doctrine of the Word of God:

"irrationalism (is) the view that there is no ultimate meaning in the universe." (Basically the oxymornoic belief that we can hold to the "rational" in a universe devoid of any overarching meaning, purpose or order.)

"rationalism (is) the view that a godlike knowledge can be obtained from the creation alone." (Basically the oxymoronic belief that we can have true and sufficient rational knowledge through simply observing a creation we are also a part of.)

This last quote is the most revealing: "Of course, Satan and his followers embrace rationalism irrationally, for they have no right to insist that their minds are the ultimate criterion of truth. Similarly they embrace irrationalism rationalistically, assuming the ultimate authority of their own minds... That irrationality permeates the whole fabric of human knowledge. So we can understand how the assumption of intellectual autonomy destroys knowledge." (p.16 - Emphasis mine)

I urge us all to seek true and sufficient knowledge from the only One who truly knows.

Note: J.I. Packer, in his forward of this book, claims that it is the most indispensable book of our day on the nature of Scripture.

"O Man of the Sea, Hearken To Me!"

Do you want to increase your child's vocabulary and creativity?

My three-year-old son looked at me and said these words this morning, "O Man of the Sea, hearken to me! My wife Isabelle will have her own will and has sent me to beg a boon of thee."

Why?!

If you have young children, I really recommend this site.
My sons have really enjoyed listening to the Brothers Grimm as well as Alice in Wonderland being read aloud. You can download hundreds of books, put to MP3 files FOR FREE. We burn them to CDs and let the boys listen to these when we have had enough of reading our own books to the boys. It has amazed me how fast Noah memorizes words and ideas (I don't think that is unusual for three-year olds!), and this is a wonderful way to immerse them in language! He has asked us many questions as a result of these CDs.

Please Consider Donating to Haiti Again
Most of us have forgotten that needs continue in Haiti. For God's glory, we have a chance to help these people. Watch what Samaritan's Purse is doing there and please consider getting on board.

The Christmas Story
This is a wonderfully sweet video from a friend's church in New Zealand.

Shall We Forfeit to Popular Thought?

I love John Piper. What he says about the Bible is almost always what the Bible in fact says. This little video reminds me though to beware of accepting everything any one man says, or quickly accepting as fact what I read in books, or what is seen to be as acceptable by the majority of the "reputable". One man never holds all truth, only God does, and truth is never determined by popular vote (unfortunately). The more I base my thinking on the Bible (just as John Piper usually does), the better off I will be.

Piper says, "Whatever science says it is, it is." Come on, John, really? What does science tell you about miracles? That they are not possible. What does science tell you about a virgin birth? Better get rid of your Christmas beliefs. The bigger issue is this: Science cannot tell us even one fact about the past, since by very definition, science concerns itself with what is testable and repeatable. Science does not give us all the answers, especially "historical science" based on the popular thoughts of men.

Case Study: The Big Mac

My friend Mark Rood highlights the growing financial problem for missionaries in Japan:

The price of a Big Mac in Tokyo is 680 yen. (complete with fries and a coke!) This has increased in the past several years by a few yen. No problem. The problem comes when in the same period the value of the dollar has dropped from from $1 = 120 yen in 2007 to this month’s rate of $1 = 82 yen. Ouch. That 680 yen burger at McDonalds which did cost $5.67 now costs $8.29! For the Japanese the change in the past few years has been a percent or two, but to us whose income is from the states, there is over a 30% increase.

Of course the same is true of our rent, gasoline, food, water, electricity, and everything else. It has all basically has increased by about a 30% in the past few years.

Please pray for us and for the many others who are in the same situation.

Adoniram Judson
I was greatly encouraged by this.

My brother Doug writes:
Dr. Tom Nettles, (is) widely regarded as one of the foremost Baptist historians in America.

Watch as Nettles unleashes this giant of a role model, trapped in the pages of history, for us all to spend a few minutes with, and thereafter long to follow.

What is an Unreached People Group? Why Japan?

Matthew 24:14 says, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Matthew 28:19 says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,"

It is clear, if you read the Bible, that God loves all nations! We, as followers of Jesus, should presumably love all nations as well!

What then, is a "nation" or "ethne" in the way Jesus used the word? (These days, in order to clarify the matter, we often hear the words, "people group".)

Ralph Winter writes:

"In March 1982 a group of mission leaders came together in Chicago for a meeting sponsored by the Lausanne Strategy Working Group. It was designed to help bring clarity and definition to the remaining missionary task. At no time before or since this meeting has as large or as representative a group gathered for two days to focus specifically upon the necessary definitions for strategy to reach the unreached peoples. Two basic definitions came from this meeting;

1. A People Group is 'a significantly large grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have common affinity for one another because of their shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or caste, situation, etc., or a combination of these.'

2. An Unreached People Group is 'a group within which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians able to evangelize this people group.'"

Now maybe some are thinking, "Well, if these groups have two or three Christians, then aren't they reached?" But let's step back to consider this more deeply. Without greater numbers of Christian support, these Christians themselves are in danger of losing their faith and or dying out.

More than this, let us consider:

Because Jesus loves all nations, we should love Muslim peoples. We should love communist-controlled peoples, we should love people groups that hate us! Because Jesus loves all nations, we should give ourselves to the task of REALLY reaching all nations, just as Jesus has promised they would be.

Well, where does Japan fit in? Japan is currently the second largest unreached people group in the world. For most this comes as a shock. Less than .5% of Japanese are evangelical Christians, and therefore Japanese do not have the numbers to effectively evangelize their own people group without significant outside help.

How could such an advanced country be so missed in the commission that God gave to all of his disciples, not to mention all of his disciples living today? If you would like more information on how you can pray for or help Japan, please leave your e-mail address in the comment section below and I will contact you.

The Insufficiency of Reason to Guide Morality

One News Now:
But suggesting that reason alone is sufficient to direct behavior is intellectually dishonest. Human reason will always be guided by presuppositions. That is why civilizations like ancient Rome found it reasonable to murder handicapped children while we in the Western world find that to be abominable.

Jacoby noted that Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger wrote, "'We drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal,'...stressing that 'it is not anger but reason'" that provides justification for such an act. This horrific practice is the result of reason built upon a Godless foundation.

Read the whole thing.

This Christmas I am thankful for the Christian sub-culture, influenced by the Bible, that has directly and indirectly influenced both America and Japan in many ways.

I Looked For Love in Your Eyes

Here is a must-read poem for men, especially young men, from a family nearly destroyed by porn:

I Looked For Love in Your Eyes

I saved my best for you.
Other girls may have given themselves away,
But I believed in the dream.
A husband, a wife, united as one forever.

Nervous, first time, needing assurance of your love,
I looked for it in your eyes
Mere inches from mine.
But what I saw made my soul run and hide.

Gone was the tenderness I’d come to know
I saw a stranger, cold and hard
Distant, evil, revolting.
I looked for love in your eyes
And my soul wept.

Who am I that you cannot make love to me?
Why do I feel as if I’m not even here?
I don’t matter.
I’m a prop in a filthy play.
Not an object of tender devotion.

Where are you?

Years pass
But the hardness in your eyes does not.
You think I’m cold
But how can I warm to eyes that are making hate to someone else
Instead of making love to me?

I know where you are.
I’ve seen the pictures.
I know now what it takes to turn you on.
Women…people like me
Tortured, humiliated, hated, used
Discarded.
Images burned into your brain.
How could you think they would not show in your eyes?

Did you ever imagine,
The first time you picked up a dirty picture
That you were dooming all intimacy between us
Shipwrecking your marriage
Breaking the heart of a wife you wouldn’t meet for many years?

If it stopped here, I could bear it.
But you brought the evil into our home
And our little boys found it.
Six and eight years old.
I heard them laughing, I found them ogling.

Hands bound, mouth gagged.
Fisheye photo, contorting reality
Distorting the woman into exaggerated breasts.
The haunted eyes, windows of a tormented soul
Warped by the lens into the background,
Because souls don’t matter, only bodies do
To men who consume them.

Little boys
My little boys
Laughing and ogling the sexual torture
Of a woman, a woman like me.
Someone like me.

An image burned into their brains.

Will their wives’ souls have to run and hide like mine does?
When does it end?

I can tell you this. It has not ended in your soul.
It has eaten you up. It is cancer.
Do you think you can feed on a diet of hatred
And come out of your locked room to love?

You say the words, but love has no meaning in your mouth
When hatred rules in your heart.
Your cruelty has eaten up every vestige of the man
I thought I was marrying.
Did you ever dream it would so consume you
That your wife and children would live in fear of your rage?

That is what you have become
Feeding your soul on poison.

I’ve never used porn.
But it has devastated my marriage, my family, my world.

Was it worth it?

(HT: Tim Challies)

Merry Christmas!
From Our Family to Yours

Christian Scientist not Wanted, Regardless of View on Evolution

One News Now:
"Even though Gaskell says he is not a creationist, he claims he was passed over for the job at UK's MacAdam Student Observatory three years ago because of his religion"

Many Christians are quick to accept evolution (and millions of years) so as not to appear foolish in the eyes of secular "science". The problem: Christians are already foolish in the eyes of most secular scientists, regardless of what they think about evolution.

This article showed me again that we must stick with the Bible despite unwarranted attacks on our science and on our credentials. The issue is not science, the issue is a spiritual one. This age is increasingly resembling the time of Noah, along with the slander and abuse that he endured. The most foolish thing would be to give in to popular opinion at a time like this.

Read the whole article.

The History of Redemption
Can you sum up the message of the entire Bible in 30 minutes using only Scripture?

You need to hear and watch this video!

By the way, the book would be an ideal last-minute gift for almost anyone. The artwork is simply stunning.
(HT: Z)

Ministry In Japan Video Renewed
This summary video of our ministry has been down for a bit, but is now back! - And it still summarizes our work quite nicely. We are thankful for your prayers.

Meet A Missionary - The Wolter Family In Japan from Rudy on Vimeo.

Taking Up the Cross

CNN recently interviewed Phillip Yancey.
CNN: How is the practice of Christianity different in China than in the U.S.?

Yancey: At my church, when something bad happens, people immediately ask God to fix it: get me a job, heal my aunt, whatever. I pray those same prayers, and I see nothing wrong with them. In China, though, I heard different prayers, not “God, take away this burden,” but “God, give me the strength to bear this burden.”

The Ark Encounter
UPDATE from ABC news.
Another wonderful learning tool for the whole family is coming from Answers in Genesis.

Announced by the governor of KY:

Announcing the Winner of the Giveaway...
And the winner is... Brian Rock! - Congratulations.

Gibbons are Amazing
What an amazing design in this little creature.

Do Christians Love to Sneer at Others?

What an important message from Jerram Barrs:

When people spend time with us do they more often see us filled with love and joy, or do they more often see us disparaging situations and those we disagree with? As Christians, are we demonstrating the grace and love of God in our words about non-Christians, or does it feel better to poke fun at, look down on, or even sneer at those who do not yet get the gospel of grace? Have we forgotten that we are Christians because of God's sheer mercy and grace alone?

I encourage you to listen to Dr. Jerram Barrs speak on this crucial issue (Postmodernism and Culture Wars) here, for the sake of more effective witnessing in the future.

If You were Born Here Instead of There
Michael Oh:
If YOU were born into a fundamentalist Islamic family what would YOU want Christians in America to do? If YOU were born into a family of a Shinto priest, how would YOU want Christians in America to respond? Knowing what you know today, certainly you would want them to share with you about eternal life through the Savior of the world Jesus Christ. Certainly you would want them to bring the Gospel to their nation and teach them about salvation for their souls and about eternal life. Certainly you would want churches and Christians in other nations to sacrifice financially to send missionaries to teach you the Bible, God's Word to this world.

But again, by the grace of God, you WEREN'T born into those circumstances. You were born into your own. So you can ignore what COULD HAVE BEEN and just continue in the circumstances you have been given by God's grace. Or you can choose to recognize that you are who you are, that you are saved, that you are blessed, that you are undeservedly loved— only by the grace of God— and choose to do all that is in your power to help those in need. To invest the blessing of your education for those who have none. To invest the blessing of your finances to help those who have little or none. To invest your spiritually blessed life to help those around the world who are lost without Christ to hear the good news of Jesus Christ.

Takanori Oba is a young man who was born in Japan, the largest unreached nation of the world. He was born to a father who when he would get drunk took out his anger by beating his son and throwing golf balls at his head. In the evening when his father returned to their apartment Takanori would quickly turn out his light and pretend to be sleeping hoping to avoid a whipping by his father's belt. Perhaps you are thinking, "Thank God that I wasn't born into a life like his." Eventually Takanori and his mother escaped their father and home to start a new life. Years later the grace of God reached down to Takanori Oba and saved his soul. He later became the first graduate of Christ Bible Seminary in Nagoya, Japan where I serve as president. During the second year of his studies he was able to visit his abusive father, seeing him for the first time in over 15 years. When he saw his father, God gave Taka a logic-defying compassion for the man who had caused him such pain.

Why was Takanori born into his circumstances? Was it a curse? No, it was the grace of God. And today Takanori is seeking to share that same grace with the father who abused him. That's what Takanori would have wanted if he were born into his father's circumstances. That's the Golden Rule.

Read the whole thing.

Free Book Give-Away
Overcoming Spiritual Barriers in Japan
Do you want to know more about how you can effectively pray for Japan?

I want you to know! I will be giving away one free copy of this book to a random reader of this blog. If you want to be registered for the drawing, just include your first name and your physical and/or e-address in the comment section below.

Here is a blurb about the book:
"More workers, more money or better methods will not help a situation that is a result of spiritual strongholds. When Christianity landed on the shores of Japan 450 years ago, Japanese people were so attracted to the Gospel that they chose torture and death rather than renounce their faith. Today, Japanese people seem indifferent to the message of salvation. What changed?"

Note: The give-away will end on Dec. 3, Japan time.

A Missionary's Home
Occasionally I am asked by Japanese people, "Do you think you will go back home someday?" That is always a difficult question to answer. I know they mean, "Do you think you will go back home (to the states) someday?" But it never really comes into my heart in that way.

A fellow missionary friend sums up my own thoughts nicely:

There is a “home” that is very comfortable and that we can easily fit into and be “normal people.”
[Then] we have our “home” here in this land where 2 of our 3 kids were born and where much of our heart is now. This home isn’t always comfortable, and we don’t often easily fit in, but yet we are here now and this is what God has us for now.
Finally, there is a third “home” - and that is our true HOME (and the greatest home). Hebrews 13:14 speaks of it this way, “For here we have no lasting city (or HOME), but we seek the city that is to come.”