Daniel Fast - Day 3

Proverbs 18:12 "Before a downfall the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor."

I wish I could've had all of you who have helped in our N. Asia missions effort there with me yesterday as our church was recognized for opening the door into a country closed for sixty years. The Yushu project presentation was a rousing, Spirit-filled time, where we got to hear from David Plymire himself. A giant among men, he has endured so much pain to bring the Gospel into that region of the world. His father first led the way in the early 1900's and, between the two, God's word has created a beachhead in enemy territory.

David spoke a truth we would all do well to heed in this season. He stated that most in that auditorium had no idea what it was like to fight Satan on his own home turf, as he and his father had done, and as Paul and Stephanie are about to do. Truly, we do not. Safe in one of the most churched areas in the world, we take for granted the level of functionality of America. It is a land living on the blessings of yesteryear, even as it turns slowly from God. Ironically, N. Asia is at the same time turning toward God. In this free country, people are turning toward their pleasures, unable to stop their drunken spending even as they see impending bankruptcy and ruin. This is sheer haughtiness, borne in a spoiled people who did not know the humility of their forefathers that preceded the blessings in which their children now live.

David and his father, Victor, endured tremendously humbling circumstances to come to the place of honor they have both attained. Victor was 16 years in the mission field before he gained his first convert. By all modern accounts, this is a failure and a mission not worthy of support. However, he endured the humility of it, staying true to the vision God gave him and ultimately starting the first church ever in that region. It even cost him his first wife and son, both of whom died of smallpox in 1927 and were buried in that foreign land. Victor and David together endured the humility and sorrow of expulsion from that country as the Communists took over, ultimately imprisoning the indigenous pastor of that church they had built. He would soon die in that hard labor camp. They knew humility, and the feeling that the very thing for which they had poured out their lives had come to nothing in the end.

But God seems to insist that we endure humiliation before we come to a place of honor - and sometimes that honor does not come in this life. Victor Plymire died before seeing how his work had endured Communism - even how God would build upon it. But it is to his honor we must confess that a church endures there today. The great Church Father Tertullian said, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." The blood of that first indigenous pastor has also laid a foundation of honor for the growth of that church. Seeing some of that honor play out on the stage of yesterday's auditorium, knowing that we had played a small part in it, was overwhelming. Knowing the honor God has waiting for those who did not see it in this life, who endured torture, severe living conditions, scorn and even death, is more than enough to rekindle the flame in me.

Whatever obscure, diminished or undistinguished place in life you currently find yourself in, know this...that your labors in the Lord are not in vain. Our church has hid in the quiet corner of Bonney Lake for over five years now, just doing what God told us to do. Yesterday was one of those rare days of honor for us, to be linked to so great a mission. What are your labors for God? What are you doing for his Kingdom? Are you pouring yourself out to bring one person to the Lord? Are you a mom raising kids, seeing no end to diapers, carpools and meals to be made, wondering when it's going to be your turn? Have you been struggling in the workplace just to keep your family afloat, trying to be a light in a dark place? Have you been striving in your school, hoping you're somehow living the life of Christ in a place where you're just as insecure as the students around you - and maybe even more so? Are you in that in-between place in life where you've done the education thing and you now just seem to be awaiting His purpose for your life?

Wait on the Lord. This time of obscurity is not overlooked by the Lord. In fact, it is His will...for now. If you continue to run the race He has laid out before you, and persist in the work He has given you, a crown of righteousness awaits you on the other side of this period in your life. May we say with Paul...

2 Timothy 4:7-8
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."