by MIMADMIN | May 8, 2015 | Testimonies
A lot of men lead busy lives in today’s fast-paced society. How often do you get the chance to sit down one on one with a guy and talk with him about a topic without him being pulled in a different direction, or distracted, let alone share the Gospel with Him? I’m not aware of many situations where that happens commonly in today’s “go-go-go” society. However, one thing I’ve found is a car ride with an individual can be a great time to get a good one on one conversation going. Even if he has his phone with him, he likely isn’t going to be on it for the entirety of a car ride that lasts more than an hour. There’ll likely be a time where it’s just you and him, sitting there, looking down the road. The radio may be on, but if you start talking with him, asking questions, putting feelers out, you can easily turn the volume down a bit to make sure can you hear each other. On longer car rides, you and he may listen to the radio for an extended period of time, but after a while maybe you say something like, “We’ve been listening to the radio quite a while, let’s talk a bit. How are things going for you?” Or, you could lead with any number of other questions to get the conversation rolling. But, determine to have a plan, and/or an objective, from the outset. The questions you’re prepared to ask should fall in line with that plan/objective. You and he may not end up hitting all the points you’d...
by MIMADMIN | May 8, 2015 | Testimonies
I received a call last week, from a brother in CHRIST who was driving to a burn center in Ft. Worth to visit a young man and his mother. The boy had recently suffered third degree burns over 80% of his body in a tragic incident. Howard, who had been a Tuesday morning regular at a “Ministry in the Marketplace” study I led for a couple of years, had seen the story of this young man on the local news the previous evening and felt GOD urging him to meet him. When I asked him if he knew the boy, he said he did not. When I asked him if the young fellow was a believer, he said he didn’t know. He didn’t even know if he would be allowed into the burn unit to see the mother, much less the boy. All he knew was that GOD was urging him to go meet the boy and his mother and that he was to minister “E²” to them. Howard went on to relate that he had won a trip to a ReMax conference in San Antonio, a couple weeks prior. He had taken his wife, who is his business partner in a ReMax office. Together they had listened to a motivational speaker at the meeting, a CHRISTian man who had been badly burned over most of his body. As Howard listened, he appreciated the guy’s unflappable attitude and his encouraging story, but wondered to himself, why he had taken the time out of a very busy schedule, to make the drive down south. Watching the news a couple of...
by MIMADMIN | May 7, 2015 | Testimonies
I never served in the military, but have had the privilege of meeting many current and former active duty soldiers at different stages of my life. I often feel like a “thank you for your service” is not nearly enough to express how grateful I am for their commitment to keeping our country safe. In many cases, you hear stories about long deployments that kept them away from their families, assignments that placed them in harms-way where they were permanently injured; or even times where they were constantly threatened in a foreign land where they were sent to protect the local residents. The life of an active soldier seems to be filled with opposition. The life of a disciple of Jesus often follows a similar pattern. In 2 Timothy 2:3-4, right after Paul reminds Timothy that he wants him to share what he has learned with others, he points out the fact that Timothy will “suffer hardship with as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. He follows it up with, “No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.” For the follower of Christ, avoiding entanglement is critical to fully and completely letting Jesus be Lord of our lives. But what entangles men? What are some of the daily battles we fight and how can we gain victory over these areas of our life that can derail our “active service” for the Lord? Different parts of the world provide their own unique challenges for followers of Jesus who are engaged in active ministry. In first world...
by MIMADMIN | May 7, 2015 | Articles, Testimonies
Several years ago, I moved my young family from Colorado Springs to Salida. I had taken a new position with a company that wanted to establish an outpost there, along the upper Arkansas River valley. My wife and I finally found a home we felt was affordable, just outside of town and we put it under contract. The process went smoothly and in a few weeks, we were closing in on our new place and packing to move. I had started with the new company while living in the Springs and things were going well. We had a plan and it looked, for all intents and purposes, that GOD was directing us to make the move. We shuttled our belongings to a storage facility in our new town and took up residence in a dingy little motel that agreed to let us rent a room for a few weeks, just until we closed on our new place. It was cramped and less than ideal, but the four of us endured it. We avoided any major conflict, opting to walk across the highway to a small city park and “get some air,” rather than arguing with one another. I must admit, the last three weeks of our six week stay entailed many park visits. Then came the day that I received a phone call from the headquarters of my new employer, back in New England. I had crossed swords with the secretary of the owner of the company, in defending one of my support staff from an unprovoked attack. When the smoke cleared, the woman at the home office had...
by MIMADMIN | May 7, 2015 | Articles, Testimonies
A good friend of mine shared a story with me that has stuck with me ever since. He lived many years under the influence of alcohol, and indicated that even as a non-believer, he had a conversation with God every day. It was a simple conversation, but a profound one nonetheless. It went like this: each day, God would quietly ask him in the depths of his heart “Today, John?” To which he would reply solemnly, “No God, not today…” This conversation continued for years as this man’s life self-destructed around him. God, ever faithful, kept asking the question, and he kept answering in the same manner until the one day when God took him down to rock bottom and asked the question “Today, John?” And John answered “Yes, God, today.” Twenty seven years of sobriety later, my friend looks back on that time and reflects on two thoughts. The first is what a waste of precious life that yielded nothing but heartache, pain, despair, and damage to him and those around him that he loved. He drank fully of the deceptions the world offered up to him and received nothing of value in return. The second thought is how thankful he is that God kept asking him the question. At any time, God might have said “Fine, I will no longer ask – you are on your own.” As I reflect on what I’m going to tell my accountability partners on our next call a week from now, my friend’s two thoughts hit home for me. I have committed to certain things and have routinely reported to my...
by MIMADMIN | Jan 27, 2015 | Articles, Testimonies
Street ministries, under such umbrella titles as ‘Street Pastors’ or ‘Street Angels’ have been around a few decades in England, owing much to the work of the Salvation Army. These Christian ministries take a middle way between evangelism and social action. There is a book to yet be written echoing the famous ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’, which could be entitled, ‘The Cross and Lollipop’. Because armed with lollies, chocolate bars and hot soup, street pastors are out in cities and towns, when there hundreds of (mostly) young folk ‘clubbing and pubbing’, that is going to nightclubs and public houses (bars). There are other people to be encountered such as the street homeless; men and women, some little older than children forced to sleep rough; and there are others making money from the night economy, prostitutes and drug dealers. Alton is a small, market town in rural Hampshire, we do not have clubs, nor street prostitution, nor open drug dealing; yet we have people sleeping in doorways and drugs are prevalent and ubiquitous – but come Friday and Saturday night, many people go to the pubs to drink and socialise. Since November 2014, the local churches of Alton, Hampshire, have combined to send a team of four or five people to mingle with Saturday night revellers. We are identifiable by our hi-vis vests, that have ‘ALTON TOWN PASTORS’ across the back and ATP (with the T written as the Cross) emblazoned on the front. We call ourselves pastors because we administer pastoral care, not because we need to be ‘Pastors’, ordained church ministers or priests. We readily identify ourselves...
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