praying with the man at midnight

Today, I had the joy of visiting Brian Chandler at the Union Gospel Mission in downtown Seattle. Brian is the New Creations Case Manager at 318 2nd Ave., Extension South. I was really impressed with the incredible work the Lord continues to do there.

Brian and I have set in place support of inmates who come from the Regional Justice Center in Kent. Part of the real story is the men we have prepared the way for have not followed through. They want to experience their freedom and often dig deeper holes for themselves.

New Creations is a residential recovery program for men located in the Men's Shelter in downtown Seattle. The program is designed to help men pursuing a path of recovery and growing in their faith, by working to heal the internal issues driving self-destructive choices.

New Creations is approximately nine months long, offering:
Quality one-on-one counseling from the New Creations ministry team A successful relapse-prevention curriculum
Daily responsibilities within the Mission to help men develop life-skills and successful work habits
Inclusive opportunites to grow in faith and in knowlege of the Bible
Special retreats and recreational activities
The Martin Career Education Center, a specialized mini-school, offering men the chance to improve their language and math skills and earn their GED or high school diploma.
Gradute programs to help men transition into independent living and into work, college, and/or local vocational training
A 12-month graduate intern program called CADRE gives New Creations graduates deeper Christian discipleship and the chance to work beside mission staff in key roles.
For more information about the Men's Shelter and its programs, please contact Mike at 206.622.5177. They may yet come, when they are ready. We need to pray...

how to pray
5 And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, 6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; 7 and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? 8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.
Luke 11:5-8

"See the man at midnight. Imitate that man. Act it all alone at midnight. Hear his loud cry, and cry it after him. He needed three loaves. What is your need? Name it. Name it out loud. Let your own ears hear it. . . . The shameful things you have to ask for. The disgraceful, the incredible things you have to admit and confess. The life you have lived. The way you have spent your days and nights. And what all that has brought you to. It kills you to have to say such things even with your door shut. Yes, but better say all these things in closets than have them all proclaimed from the housetops of the day of judgment.

Knock, man! Knock for the love of God! Knock as they knock to get into heaven after the door is shut! Knock, as they knock to get out of hell!"
Alexander Whyte, "The Man Who Knocked At Midnight," in "Lord, Teach Us To Pray, "
pages 174-176.

Sit still

The contented man holds still, likened to pouring a drink into a glass. “If we would be vessels to receive God’s mercy, and would have the Lord pour His mercy into us, we must have quiet, still hearts. We must not have hearts hurrying up and down in trouble, discontent and vexing, but still and quiet hearts, if we receive mercy from the Lord.”

Jeremiah Burroughs, "The rare jewel of Christian contentment"
Chapter 7, "The excellence of contentment," page 124

I was privileged to serve as the chaplain for the Bob Boscole memorial service at Tahoma just this past Monday for Robbi (Boscole) Baskin and her brothers Chris and Jeff. Here, Dan, Robbi and Dave's son, is playing with Chris during the reception at our church after the service. It was a short but extremely honoring service.

I attended an awesome missionary luncheon with Greg Von Tobel, Brent Hoiosen, John Ewell, and Derald Gall, this past Tuesday at the PFC office in Woodinville.

Greg shared about the Standing Stones clean and sober home ministry near Wapato where they just graduated a group and are looking forward to new men joining the work. It has been a very challenging year for Greg and Rhonda Von Tobel dealing with PFC issues. Greg continues to encourage me to participate in international mission trips with PFC.

Brent oversees the PFC Bible study correspondence courses that are distributed all over the country and even internationally and abouot how much he gained from the missions trips he has taken. He and his wife Carol are heading out in a couple of weeks.

Darold serves as a PFC chaplain at the juvenile institution at Maple Lane along with the staff chaplain Eric Pelz. He spoke about meeting the needs of teen-agers who are entering incarceration. I will be preaching in collaboration with a band from Olympia, "Just Five Old Men" on September 26 at Maple Lane.

John is exploring being a missionary with PFC and lives next door to Dick and Judy Rothlisberger in Maple Valley who have really encouraged him. He will be serving with a McNeil Island ministry team and perhaps at the Regional Justice Center in the near future.

I was greatly encouraged and challenged by each of the men. I am hoping to be able to go on at least one PFC international missions trip in 2010 and beyond that regularly as part of being a missionary with PFC. I was scheduled to return to Namibia (in Africa) in 2007 but I cancelled because the trip coincided with Peter's Kent Meridian High School graduation.

I was challenged at our fantastic August Faith Baptist Church missions conference to pursue cross cultural international short-term trips. Over the past several years, PFC has broadened focus to several countries in Africa, India, and Russia.

In the coming weeks I have scheduled:
Jerry Corelli concert, August 29
Family worship with John at Twin Rivers, September 6

Chaplaincy Advisory Group, RJC in Kent, September 14
Concert with Jim Dixon, Olympic CC at Forks, September 19
Concert and preaching with JFOM at Maple Lane, September 26

CAG appeciation dinner, Valley View Christian Church, September 28

Jerry Corelli

When I take PFC mission trips to eastern Washington and Oregon, I get the privilege of sharing the ministry time with awesome musicians who become precious co-workers and brothers in our service for the King of kings and Lord of lords. I have been so blessed!

The Lord Himself brought new musical friends to enrich my life in Jerry Corelli and his wife Liv. Jerry plans to come with our PFC trip in April of 2010.

I've learned it's great planning and just enriching to meet members of the team before the trip so Jerry, Liv, and I met Thursday at Borders in Tacoma.

We hope to take four or five members on these trips. We had a great time together. I am hoping to attend a worship concert at their church in Parkland on August 29.

Jerry informed me he has six musical CD's so I went online and listened to several on You-tube and was greatly encouraged. I am providing the sites for you as I expect the Lord will touch your heart with his music, as He touched me.

Below is a link to "The Rock". This version was on the "Seattle Praise the Lord show" www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjaXGlqrlak

"Kingdom of Grace"
www.imeem.com/people/Qs4YzVc/music/anZlVz4D/jerry-corelli-kingdom-of-grace/

"I can't believe I'm yours" It's a love song I wrote for my wife and is on my newest CD "Grandfather Moon"
www.imeem.com/people/Qs4YzVc/music/1LYEKM10/jerry-corelli-i-cant-believe-im-yours/

"Can you see through the sin"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9yifXDsjRI

dilluting or engaging in the gospel

This week at the Regional Justice Center has been productive and required faithful farm work, or seed planting and watering and then allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work.

I connected Jeff with Brian Chandler at the the Union Gospel Mission and after a couple of days he actually met with Brian. It's up to him to follow through, otherwise he lives with his freedom on the street as homeless.

He made great strides reconnecting with the Lord at the RJC but it's a challenge when the "fresh air hits his face." This is the obstacle of re-entry and transition.

My connection with Brian could be very helpful to any of the men who are willing to receive what the Union Gospel Mission one year program provides.

Jamie, my 16 year-old inmate, is struggling with many questions and a strong Muslim influence in his unit. I have given him a Bible study and a great book by Ray Pritchard, "An anchor for the soul."

Hans came to me really distressed and struggling with alcohol. Wow, he just grabbed ahold of the gospel and read through "Anchor" on his own. We are dealing with God's gracious healing over a breach in his relationship with his dad lasting years--the father wound and what he himself has done.

Joseph is waiting on the discovery process and his lawyer so he remains in D-unit at the RJC. You may recall his case was covered on TV and the newspapers and that he was convicted as guilty and faces 18 years in prison. However, more evidence has been uncovered and its unclear where that will all go.

I want to share these final paragraphs on the pivotal heart issue of keeping the message of coming to the Lord Jesus and repentance and proving our assurance with a life of bearing the cross He gives each of us.

Much needed wisdom from the pen of D.A. Carson

"At the moment, books are pouring off the presses telling us how to plan for success, how "vision" consists in clearly articulated "ministry goals," how the knowledge of detailed profiles of our communities constitutes the key to successful outreach.

I am not for a moment suggesting that there is nothing to be learned from such studies. But after a while one may perhaps be excused for marveling how many churches were planted by Paul and Whitefield and Wesley and Stanway and Judson without enjoying these advantages. Of course all of us need to understand the people to whom we minister, and all of us can benefit from small doses of such literature.

But massive doses sooner or later dilute the gospel. Ever so subtly, we start to think that success more critically depends on thoughtful sociological analysis than on the gospel; Barna becomes more important than the Bible. We depend on plans, programs, vision statements--but somewhere along the way we have succumbed to the temptation to displace the foolishness of the cross with the wisdom of strategic planning.

Again, I insist, my position is not a thinly veiled plea for obscurantism, for seat-of-the-pants ministry that plans nothing. Rather, I fear that the cross, without ever being disowned, is constantly in danger of being dismissed from the central place it must enjoy, by relatively peripheral insights that take on far too much weight. Whenever the periphery is in danger of displacing the center, we are not far removed from idolatry. (p. 26, The Cross and Christian Ministry by D.A. Carson, Baker Books)

hating sin

I am so very thankful our PFC giving was up to $1800 we received and this is a very, very special blessing. This weekend, I'll be going to visit John, my inmate friend, at Twin Rivers in Monroe and then attending our church missionary conference Friday night and Saturday morning and afternoon.

This week, the Lord used my reading in the Scriptures and events to show me the evil character of sin in my own life. There are layers of "garbage" all around us. As I was pondering the character of sin, I came upon this quote by Puritan Thomas Goodwin:

Hating sin

Work in your hearts a hatred of sin… If a man had killed your friend, or father, or mother, how you would hate him! You would not endure the sight of him, but follow the law upon him.

Send out the avenger of blood with a hue and cry after your sin; bring it before God’s judgment seat, arraign it, accuse it, spit on it, condemn it and yourself for it, take it to the cross, nail it there. If it cry “I thirst,” give it vinegar, stretch the body of sins upon his cross, stretch every vein of it, make the heart strings crack; and then when it hangs there, triumph over the dying of it, show it no pity; laugh at its destruction. Say, “You have been a bloody sin to me and my husband, hang there and rot.”

And when you are tempted to sin, and are very thirsty after the pleasure of it, say of that opportunity to enjoy it, “It is the price of Christ’s blood,” and pour it upon the ground. …

Shall I live upon that which was Christ’s death? Shall I please myself in that which was his pain? Shall I be so dishonest, so unkind, as to enjoy the pleasure for which he endured the smart?”

—Thomas Goodwin (1600—1679), Christ the Mediator in The Works of Thomas Goodwin (RHB), 5:294.