James and Jessica with the boys
There is some confusion in my spirit right now as I begin to write this entry. I have been meaning to sit down and prepare a blog for some time. Two weekends ago we had a wonderful men’s retreat where there was a powerful move of God. Just the weekend previous, there was a women’s retreat where the Holy Spirit also moved powerfully among the fifty some women present. I want to speak some about that. I also want to write a bit about the ministry that is progressing in Las Pitas, and request your prayer for that little work, but that may need to wait for another blog. However, what lies heavy on my heart is a pressing need for our son and daughter-in-law, James and Jessica Frey.
With James and Jessica’s indulgence I will direct you to their personal blog site which you will find at www.mainlandmessage.blogspot.com. This is a wonderfully poignant, sensitive, insightful, and oft times hilarious look into their lives as missionaries in Beijing, China. We love Jessica and James and their two young sons dearly, and are intensely proud of them.
Their last entries, and the heart wrenching news which we have recently received as parents and grandparents, is that Jessica has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Today, Wednesday, the boys will be flying back to Winnipeg, Manitoba with Jessica’s sister and her husband. Tomorrow, Thursday, James and Jessica will follow. It is somewhat unclear exactly when surgery will occur, however, it will be as soon as possible, and both MCC, the organization with which they have been working in China, and the hospital system of Manitoba, have been very sensitive and cooperative.
Jessica with Ari and Jude
With this burden on our hearts it is difficult to be either witty or creative. What a blessing it is to be able to rest in our Lord and Savior. We are so blessed to know that James and Jessica have a secure hope and faith in the God of their salvation. Theresa and I are so blessed to be able to talk to them openly about our mutual faith and hope in our Jesus. We are praying for God’s complete healing and favor in this very serious matter. And, as James said when we spoke to them last, we are praying that God’s will be done, what ever that is. We/they are not hiding our heads in the sand and pretending that this does not exist, but we also know that our hope rests in the God of the universe, the Lord of lords, and the King of all kings.
We covet your prayers for Jessica and James, as well as for their two wonderful boys, Ariel and Jude.
I will keep you informed as news progresses. Also, please look up their blog site and you can get the news straight from the source.
As I have already mentioned, the Cd. Valles church has very recently concluded a three-day women’s retreat, and the following weekend, a men’s “apocento”. You may recall (scroll back to the May 27th blog entry), that Theresa and I took a rather long, bone-jarring trip down to Villahermosa, Tabasco with pastor Ezequiel and several of the other leaders from the local church in order for them to be able to participate in a three-day “encounter” there. As I mentioned at that time, there has been a tremendous out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, and an ongoing revival in that city, directly associated to the “encounter retreats” which have been happening there for the past several years. As I mentioned, at the time that we went down, I really did not know the importance of the visit, but I began to realize that somehow we were linking into God’s power and purposes for the work in Cd. Valles.
The Cd. Valles “Encounters” (or Apocentos) were lead by a team from Villahermosa and a pastoral couple who came in from Guatemala. Space was rented about 45 miles south of town in a little missionary hospital facility at a place called Xolol. The three days led us through teaching on inner healing, forgiveness, our place in God, sonship, and our place as princes – heads rather than tails – sons, and not broken and rejected slaves. Many were healed from rejection and brokenness from past hurts and sins. Many were set free from unforgiveness, and were finally brought to the realization that their sins and past failures have been thrown into bottomless ocean of God’s forgiveness and mercy – never, ever to be remembered against them again. The Holy Spirit powerfully moved, and his liberating presence was very real. Several of the men who had never received Christ as their personal Savior did so, and there was powerful evidence of God’s presence over the weekend.
There were two things which happened for me which I would like to mention specifically – for others, no doubt, it would have been something different which God used to touch them deeply. The first thing was an exercise which we were asked to do. At the end of the first evening, after a session of powerful teaching, we were given a “spiritual clinic” check list. On this sheet were listed three pages of sins. Our exercise was to check off any sins which we have committed in to past, or are actively entangled with at the present. Then in a very moving, symbolic time we nailed these lists to a wooden cross. We worshiped and sang as we watched a series of clips from “The Passion of the Christ” which were set to the song. This was, needless to say, a powerful ending to the first day.
The session the following morning was on forgiveness, and how God, in Jesus, has removed our sins from us – past, present, and future – through Jesus’ death on the cross. Through Jesus’ finished work on the cross they have been thrown into the deepest ocean of God’s forgetfulness. The price, as terrible and incomprehendible as it is, was paid in full by Jesus, and we can be set free if we accept this gift. It was a powerful teaching, and many were moved deeply and wept openly in gratitude, finally set free from guilt and condemnation. Then, at the end of the session, the same wooden cross was brought in, with each “spiritual clinic” sin-list at exactly the spot where we had nailed them the previous night.
We were each asked to come forward and while in worship, remove our sheets, but not open them. We each did so as we continued in prayer and worship. After everyone returned to their places we were told to open the folded sin-lists which we had filled in the previous night, and look at them. Inside, to my astonishment, was not a list of my sins – past and present – but rather the words “You Have Been Forgiven. You are Free”. On the back page was the text of Isaiah 53: 4-6.
“Yet it was our weakness he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all”.
How incredible is God’s mercy and unmerited favor in our lives. I especially like the wording of the New Living Translation in this text. Somehow there is new freshness in the statement “…it was our weakness he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down…he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed”. The very wounds which crushed him, the very blows with which he was beaten, and from the selfsame tearing of his flesh which resulted from the whips which disfigured his body, my healing and my forgiveness was won. Oh, the incredible gift to me, the unfathomable price to him! God forgive me if I ever demean and devalue the price that you paid.
The second thing which I want to mention about the Encounter Weekend was something which is very personal in nature – a word picture and prayer which God kept bringing back to me over the weekend. It has been years since I have read the book “The Secret Garden”, but there was a part of the story which became my prayer as God was working in my life. In the story, if I remember correctly from the very distant past, is a little girl who is staying with an uncle or something, and a young, and sickly cousin. These are unimportant characters in the word picture which God gave to me. Rather, the key part is a young friend, a local boy, who knows of the secret garden which is hidden within the walls of the large mansion in which the children are trapped by the overbearing uncle. This boy, I have long since forgotten his name, was constantly looking at the tips of the vines and branches for what I believe he called “wick”. He would bend and manipulate the dead-looking branches and confidently declare that there would be ample green growth in the hidden garden because the branches were “wick” – in other words, there was life in them. This part of the story was brought to my mind along with a second picture. I don’t know if you are familiar with cork trees, but the bark and outer layer of these trees are what we know as cork. This impenetrable and thick outer covering is useless for the sap of life of the tree. The prayer in my heart was that God would cut deeply through the cork which has formed in my life, and down into the very “wick”. Lord, I want to know the freshness of your Spirit and your life in me.
The plans are to continue with the Apocento Weekend encounters here in Cd. Valles on a regular basis. The harvest fields are white, the laborers are few…Pray to the Lord of the harvest so that he will continue to send laborers.
