Tag: Jesus

Why Jesus Is More Than Just a Good Idea

On By jillmhollingsworthLeave a comment

Why would a woman throw her beloved 6-month-old firstborn son into the river?

“Every three years, hundreds of thousands of people come to bathe in the Ganges River. They come believing that this Hindi ritual will wash away their sins.

Missionary Varghese often witnessed for Christ among the crowds that gathered at the Ganges. One day, he came upon Alila kneeling in the sand, crying uncontrollably and beating her chest. With much compassion, he knelt down next to her and asked what was wrong.

‘The problems in my home are too great, and my sins are many. So I offered the best I have to the goddess Ganges- my firstborn son,’ she told him through her sobs.

The woman had just thrown her 6-month-old baby boy into the river.

Brother Varghese’s heart ached for the desperate woman. As she wept, he gently began to tell her about the love of Jesus, who could forgive her sins. ‘God is not mad at you,’ he said. ‘He sent His Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for your sins.’

Alila was puzzled.

‘I have never heard that before,’ she replied through her tears. ‘That is wonderful.’ Then she asked, ‘Why couldn’t you have come 30 minutes earlier? My child would not have had to die.’”

This is just one heart-breaking story from the Gospel for Asia headquarters. Unfortunately there are millions like Alila, desperate to know Jesus, aching to break free of the bondage that their false gods have created. This bondage forces them to continually strive to make peace with God through better behavior and sacrifice.

This striving leads people like Alila, when faced with the depth of their own sin, to take desperate measures to try and earn a relationship with God. No one has ever told them that Christ came to for this very reason, and that His gift is free.

If your heart is moved to help, you can. And it will only take about 5 minutes of your time.

Every Christmas, many Christian organizations give gifts of compassion to the world’s neediest people. Proverbs 18:16 says that a gift opens the way for the giver, and these gifts ultimately give missionaries favor with the people so that they can share the Gospel. These gifts include anything from food to water purifiers to Bibles to blankets. They range in price, so most anyone can be involved.

If you’re interested in donating a gift, click here to browse through the Compassion International’s Christmas gift catalog. This is one of many organizations who offer a gift catalog during the holidays. It’s a very easy check-out process. For those of you with children, they’ll love to surf the website with you, look at the pictures, and hear how they can meet a simple need across the world.

Also, Highpoint Church (my amazing church) is collecting funds to install a water filtration system at a school for handicapped children in Peru. If you’re interested in giving towards this, click here.

In honor of Christmas, I’ll leave you with this verse. It’s been ringing in my mind as I’ve typed this blog, and it’s the reason that people like us and Alila have hope despite our failures.

“In those days you were living apart from Christ. You were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel [God’s people], and you did not know the covenant promises God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ. He brought this Good News of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.” Ephesians 2:12-13, 17-18 NLT

Merry Christmas!

One Thought for an Age-Old Question

On By jillmhollingsworth6 Comments

Today I’ll give one thought for an age-old question: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? This is definitely not the only answer, but it is possibly one of many.

A few weeks ago a girlfriend and I got together over coffee. This was a real treat; between both of us we have a handful of toddlers/preschoolers, so uninterrupted time is hard to come by. I’m sure you stay-at-home moms can relate. You may even be hiding in a bathroom right now trying to catch a five-minute breather from the little crazy people that have taken over your home, who knows?

But I digress.

Anyway, most of our time was spent catching up on life, but something that she said as we were leaving struck me. While discussing some of the more painful times in her life, she made this statement: “Before I faced the wave of hardship, I thought I knew God. I thought I had faith, thought I believed Him. But my trials showed me that I really didn’t know Him at all. I knew of Him, but my trials brought me to a place of seeing Him for who He truly is.”

Wow. To see Him. Immediately my mind went to the verse that Job spoke to God after his affliction. Let’s first recap what happened to Job: all of his livestock were either stolen or destroyed by fire, all of his children were killed at the same time in a storm, he was covered with painful sores from head to toe, his own wife and closest friends turned on him, and the people in his community mocked him relentlessly.

Work. Family. Health. Relationships. Reputation. All attacked and destroyed. If you’ve been there with any one of these areas, you know the pain and trauma that can result.  Maybe you, like Job, have even experienced all or several of them at once. What could God possibly hope to accomplish through this?

I believe, for Job, the answer lies in Job 42:5. This is the statement Job made at the end of the book after all of his distress: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”

Job was a righteous man. He sought to honor God in every decision. He wasn’t being punished for disobedience or sin. But God longed for Job to have more: to see Him.

If you can relate to Job and know what it’s like for hardship to bring a newfound intimacy with God, then you are confident that these trials are the greatest gift He could ever give. To see Him, to experience Him, is better than any earthly possession.

For those that are currently facing what may feel like excruciating circumstances, may I encourage you with this? First, God knows how to rescue godly men from trials (2 Peter 2:9), and He will do it in His perfect time. Nothing is too difficult for Him. Second, just like He did in Job’s life, God sometimes allows hardship for our good so that we may know Him, not just know of Him (Hebrews 12:10, 14).

How has hardship brought you to a place of knowing God more intimately? I’d love to hear your experiences.

 

 

 

Thoughts Following the Paris Attacks

On By jillmhollingsworth12 Comments

Yesterday morning I didn’t post my usual weekly blog- I just had an unsettled feeling about it. Something in particular has weighed heavy on my mind since the Paris terrorist attacks. My fear in sharing it is that I could forever be thrust into the “crazy” category; however, if what I share could somehow make even one small contribution to strengthening us in the face of this extraordinary evil, it is worth it.

This “one thing” is a dream that I had back in February of this year. Before you throw up a red flag and begin to discount what I’m about to write, please know that I’m probably just as skeptical as you are when people say they have dreams, visions, or prophetic words to share. There is so much hype in the charismatic movement that it’s easy to throw the baby out with the bath water. But it is scriptural that in the last days the Lord will give dreams and visions (Acts 2:17), so although it’s healthy to be cautious, we can’t discount these things altogether.

I am going to share the dream, not because I know or believe that these things will take place specifically, but because I believe God may use it to show us something on a broader scale.

In my dream, I was on an airplane flying to an unknown location. The plane had to emergency land, and the pilot wouldn’t tell us why until the very last minute. He also continuously tried to divert our attention from what was going on by asking us to look out our side windows at an old lady building a fence. As he was talking about this over the intercom, the Statue of Liberty appeared in front of the plane and suddenly blew up into millions of tiny pieces. As the shrapnel came towards the airplane’s windshield, everyone ducked down tightly in their seats. Nothing from the explosion was able to penetrate the plane’s windows, but there was a sense of panic and fear among the passengers. As I was hunched down, I began to sing these lyrics from Israel Houghton’s song, “We Worship You”:

“Lord You are good and Your mercy endureth forever.
Lord You are good and Your mercy endureth forever.

People from every nation and tongue
From generation to generation

We worship You, hallelujah! Hallelujah!
We worship You for who You are
You are good!”

Here is what I make of the dream: I believe the pilot represents the leaders of our nation; as the pilot tried to distract the passengers by drawing their attention to division (the fence), there is an attempt on our leaders’ behalf to deceive and distract us from a very dangerous reality.

I believe that the Statue of Liberty represents our freedom, a freedom that is under attack. This attack will create fear, just like it did in the dream as all of the terrified passengers ducked down in their seats.

Just as the distress and ultimate protection of the passengers led to praise and worship for the one true God, I pray and firmly believe that God will use any and all plans for evil against us to bring revival and spiritual awakening to our nation.

This is my burden for the American Church: We are in a spiritual stupor. Our comfort has drugged us into oblivion, and I’m as guilty as the rest. In 100 years, it’s not going to matter what name-brand clothes we or our children wore, the house we lived in, the car we drove, or who we hung out with on Saturday night. What will matter is that we lived fully “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).

 “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.” (Joel 2:13)

“Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh—the people He has chosen to be His own possession.” (Psalm 33:12)

Fortunately we know how this all will end- people from every nation and tongue will bow and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.