By Pastor Terry Gee

Am I wasting my life? Many will ask this given enough time for reflection. Humans were built for a purpose and to miss it would be a waste. This is why a life full of work, progress, and doing good for others is held in honor, and a life lost to drug overdose or suicide is a tragedy. The wasted life does not fulfill its purpose. 

A song we recently sang in service, The Cause of Christ, begins as follows:

The only thing I want in life

Is to be known for loving Christ

To build his church, to love his bride

And make his name known far and wide

In this verse, the goal for the Christian is laid out as threefold:

•     To love Christ

•     To build up His church

•     To make His name known

These are indispensable elements of the unwasted Christian life. Encompassing the foundational calls to love God and love one’s neighbor while living for the spread of the gospel to the glory of God, this verse provides a focused declaration of purpose for all Christians who want their lives to be useful to the Master.

Not every ambition in life will be counted equal in the final account. Not every goal is a worthy one. Certain pursuits will be counted as a waste of time in the end. Let us then free ourselves from any of these things that lead us to live for anything less than the cause of Christ - with all of our strength, while we still have breath, and until He comes. 

For this cause I live

For this cause I’d die

I surrender all

For the cause of Christ

All I once held dear

I will leave behind

For my joy is this

O the cause of Christ

Lyrics from The Cause of Christ - written by Kari Jobe, Bryan Fowler, and Benjamin Hastings

by Ross Carey

Whenever I go to Costa Rica, quite a bunch of former students come back and visit the course I am teaching. I always ask them to give a word of greeting and encouragement to the current class. This January was no exception. I think there were more than ten who visited. I would like you to meet a few of them who were with me and my students. Some audit the course again to refresh their thinking.

One of the auditors this January is Miriam Coto. Miriam took my leadership course in 2009 and the next year was my teaching assistant. She and her husband are members of a Costa Rican mega-church where they are in leadership. She wrote me an email today, using my middle name (which I use in Latin America): “Hi don Allen. I am asking your prayers for the workshop that I will be giving in church with the topic of Finishing Well and Giftedness. Already 300 leaders are signed up. It will be an all-day workshop this Saturday. Thanks for your help and support. You are part of such a beautiful thing that the Lord is going to do in our congregation. I bless you.”

Noemi Escobar, also from the same 2009 class as Miriam, came and visited my course this January as well. She wanted the material from the leadership and spiritual formation course to implement a discipleship program in her local church. She says, “You lead out of who you are. The growth of “Who you are” depends on the growth of your relation with God.”

Ana Cecilia Segura, who took my leadership course in 2005 and was my teaching assistant in 2012 dropped in on the January course also. She is now teaching my mentoring course in ESEPA Seminary as well as teaching my leadership and spiritual formation course in a satellite campus.

Marielos Vargas was in the first leadership/ spiritual formation class I taught in ESEPA Seminary in 1996. Marielos came to class this time with a woman she has been mentoring, using material she had learned over 20 years ago. Both greeted the class and inspired us all.

Eduardo Villalobos visits my class each time I teach in San José. Eduardo was my teaching assistant in 2004. He had first taken the class from one of my mentees who was a teaching assistant from the class of 1997. He has taught the course in the past. Today he heads up a Costa Rican missions agency.

As you can see, the Lord´s work is going on. Thanks to all of you, for the support and prayers you have invested in Kay and me and in these Latin leaders over the years.

Psalm 71:12–14 (ESV)  “O God, be not far from me; O my God, make haste to help me!  May my accusers be put to shame and consumed; with scorn and disgrace may they be covered who seek my hurt.  But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more.”

In his commentary on the Psalms, Walter Brueggeman writes concerning Psalm 71, “The psalm is clear that there is trouble in life and that trouble is pressing, but the context of the petition is still hope and faith, crafted over a long life and including at its center an honest dialogue strikingly absent from most contemporary modes of worship.”

So true, eh? In this life, there is pressing tribulations and troubles but in the troubles there is still hope and faith in God’s goodness. Bruggemann’s summary of Psalm 71 reminds me of John 16:33 where Jesus says, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” However, what I love most about his comment is his observation that at the center of an enduring hope and faith in God’s goodness is honest dialogue with God.

There are many things that I cherish about the Psalms but the one thing that resonates so deeply in my soul is the honest dialogue that freely flows throughout all the prayers and songs to God. The Psalms are filled with real life, honest dialogue that’s overflowing with unfiltered emotions and unfettered fears. And yet, in all of the gut wrenching discourses with God, the psalmist is not being driven away from the Lord but rather he’s being drawn closer and closer to Him. I love it.

However, it’s the last few words of Bruggemann’s commentary that I appreciate the most. He simply writes that this honest dialogue with God is “strikingly absent from most contemporary modes of worship (and prayer)”. I totally agree with him and it causes me to ask myself, “Self, why is that true? Why are the emotionally raw and unfiltered prayers of the Psalms strikingly absent from my prayers to the Lord? Could my prayers be emotionally flat because I don’t truly believe that God is listening to me? Could the lack of real and honest dialogue be an indicator that I’m NOT trusting God with anything significant in my life?  Could it be because I'm even in touch with what's going on inside of me?”

I believe that I’m the only one that can answer those questions and so it is with you. I urge you to pray through the Psalms and take in the honest dialogue and listen to the raw emotions within the prayers. They are prayers of authentic believers and so when you pray them they teach you what to pray for and how to pray. And if you struggle to relate to the Psalms honest dialogue, ask the Spirit to reveal to you why that is. I am confident that he will give you insight into your heart for he desires to draw near to you.

by Pastor Paul Moy

My sons often ask me to share the story of John the Baptist. They say, "Dad, can you tell us the story about the man who wears camel hair and eats locust and honey?" I love taking this opportunity to share who Jesus claims to be, one of the greatest men who ever lived. Matthew 11:11 states, "Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

What made John the Baptizer so great that Christ singles him out as the greatest human being born up to that point? Why did he stand out amongst the rest? John was definitely a unique man. He had an unusual diet. He did not dress like everyone else. He did not fit into the religious system of his day. He began a baptismal ministry. When they questioned him, he would use those opportunities to share about the coming Messiah. He shared the message of repentance and the coming of the kingdom.

There are many things that made John the Baptizer uniquely great. Specifically, John was humble. His humility was amazing! John had this tremendous understanding of his own humility in light of Jesus. John was not arrogant or self-righteous. John was very simple and straightforward about things. “I’m nobody. I’m a voice who’s not good enough to be a janitor for Jesus Christ.” The most common and menial job for a slave was to untie his master’s sandals. John humbled himself and shared that even he was not worthy to untie the sandals of Jesus.

 It is so difficult to be humble. Pride is arguably the deadliest and most evil of all sins because it’s at the root of all other sins. Pride was the bait Satan used to tempt Eve when he set aside what God had said and assured her that if she ate of the forbidden fruit, she would be like God (Gen. 3:1-6).

Satan even tried to use pride on Jesus while he was fasting in the wilderness for 40 days. I struggle with the area of pride. It is a constant battle. My pride shows up in a lot of different ways through my stubbornness, criticism and competition.

Proverbs 16:18 says, Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Here we see that pride destroys relationships, but humility is the solution to pride. How are you going to grow in humility? It all begins by allowing Jesus to take control of our thoughts, heart, attitudes and reactions.

I need God’s grace to grow in humility. As Christians, we must constantly battle pride and grow in humility. John said this about Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease” John 3:30. John’s purpose was to point people to Jesus Christ. He was a vessel. If we want to be great in the kingdom of God, it begins with us being humble.

by Paul Lu

The story began when I attended a conference and stayed at a hotel that had a small Keurig coffee maker in the room. Since not all hotels had these nifty machines, I immediately tested it out by making myself a cup of coffee as soon as I came into the room. I like my coffee with a lot of cream and some sugar. When I realized that there was not enough cream and sugar provided, I asked for some more. A few hours later, I came back to the room and noticed that not only did they provide me with cream and sugar, they also gave me about 10 to 15 Keurig coffee pods. “What was I going to do with all these?” I thought.

My wife had been saying that our coffee maker was acting up, and was thinking about buying a new one. When I came back from the conference, I told her the story of how the hotel gave me a lot of Keurig coffee pods, but that we had no machine to use these pods.

The next day we were out running errands and had to buy some supplies at the store. I noticed that there was a large, top-of-the-line Keurig coffee maker sitting in the clearance section. It immediately caught my attention. The box was open, and it seemed to have been tampered with. Upon a closer look I noticed that the price tag was only $3.00. I could not believe it! I asked the clerk at the register and confirmed that the price was indeed correct. I asked if the machine was broken, and he could not say one way or another.

I quickly ran over to find Prudence and asked her to take a look. We agreed that the price was too good to pass, even if the machine did not work. We took it to the register and again asked the clerk if the price was correct. Then, Prudence noticed that the price tag indicated that the product was for iced tea mix, not for the coffee maker. At this point we thought that the store probably made a mistake and we would have to forfeit the deal. However, the clerk simply said, “Well, the label was ON the box, wasn’t it? I’ll sell it to you for $3.00 if you still want it.” We were delighted at his answer and took it home.

Since the box was open, I did not expect the coffee maker to work. As I opened the box and took out the parts, I saw that everything was brand new, still in the wrapper and even the stickers were still sealed in their proper places. The assembly was a piece of cake, and soon we were celebrating by making our first cup of fresh coffee.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9. Granted, this was not a person who has cancer getting healed, or someone who narrowly escaped a tragedy; yet it is a reminder of the goodness of God to a need that we had. He graciously provided a $140 coffee maker to us practically for free. A few weeks later, we were able to share not only our incredible story to the East Asia Team, but also to use the coffee maker at our team retreat. God is good. He cares and provides for our needs no matter how big or small.