Tag: A Word for Wednesday

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Welcome! Please come in.

It was on our way home from an open house when Peggy and I decided to become involved in International Friendships (IFI), for we had just celebrated its fruit—the baptism of a student, a PhD candidate from China now attending Ohio State. His humble happiness was infectious, and his joy in Jesus stirred our souls to action. Over the eight years since then, we have hosted 20 students in our home for two or three nights while they navigate a culture shock half way around the world from home, and we’ve treasured these relationships as they’ve matured into friendships.

IFI was started in 1979 by a Columbus, Ohio pastor who noticed the increasing number of OSU students here from other lands—the world was coming to our doorstep. With great foresight, he realized that reaching these young men and women with the gospel would not only birth new spiritual life in them, it would also, in turn, ripple through their communities and countries when they returned home with great news of full and forever life in Christ Jesus. IFI now operates in 30 U.S. colleges and universities, and Rich Mendola, its executive director since 1994, estimates that, over the years, students from 50 countries have received Christ as their Savior and/or grown in their Christian faith here.

But there’s another blessing, somewhat hidden in this ministry: IFI provides ample opportunities for believers who want to reach out and connect with others for Jesus but just don’t know how. Are you are called to small but significant act of service? Then you can share the love of Christ by picking up students from the airport and taking them to where they will be staying or even take them shopping for student-essentials. Is teaching your gift? Then come and participate in Friday night IFI Bible studies. Are you the helping or encouraging kind? Being an English-speaking partner is an easy way to form new friendships over coffee and conversation.

The world has come to America, friends; all we have to do is show up and welcome it with giving hearts. God takes it from there.

Father, thank you for the joy of life in Christ. Please use me to share His love with the people I will encounter today, no matter who they are or where they come from. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Christ in me is life.

[Read today’s Scripture in Romans 15:15-21.]

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He Remembered

Several decades ago, I was told the man had a small sawmill operation behind his house, so I stopped by. “Can you mill some shipwreck wood into boards for me?” I inquired. “I can’t cut that,” he grumbled, “It’d be full of nails. It would tear up my blades.” I nodded in understanding, but as I turned to leave, he asked, “What is your name?” I told him. He paused. “Did your mother run a hospital, years ago, down on Duncan Avenue?” he wondered, now in a reflective tone. “That would have been my grandmother, my father’s mother,” I replied. We stood together in the moment, but the far-off look in his eyes told me memories had returned him, his heart in tow, to an earlier place and time. “I was in that hospital for weeks, and she took care of me,” he recalled softly with a deep gratitude not weathered by time, “Why don’t you bring your wood here tomorrow?”

To the nation of Israel, Moses scribed, “It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out [from all peoples] with a mighty hand and redeemed you …”1 In faithfulness to generations past, God declared these to be “his people, his treasured possession.”2 How true to His promises, then, He would be, for as the apostle Paul would one day write of Israel, “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.”3 All of this because God loved, God promised, and God remembered.

Yet God’s blessings beget further blessings, and so He ultimately claimed for Himself all who will believe in Jesus, this “God over all.” Then how does God view us? “You are a chosen people,” wrote Peter to the early church, “a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”4

I will never forget the kindness of the man who, gratefully recalling a grandmother I had never known, was willing to sacrifice for her grandson whom he had never met. His mercy was a surface reflection of our God whose faithfulness springs from depths we cannot fathom. He will never forget us, His people, for He has made us His own, just as He promised.

Father, your promises are completely trustworthy, for you make them in love and keep them in power. Thank you for making us your own. Use us today, in big ways or small, to reflect your goodness and glory. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Christ in me is redemption.

1 Deuteronomy 7:7, 8
2 Deuteronomy 7:6
3 Romans 9:4, 5
4 1 Peter 2:9, 10

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Our Hope of Glory

My father was a good dad. As a young boy, I loved him, admired him, and trusted him. At age seven, I also lost him—he died of a heart attack one summer Sunday morning. Though there were plenty of happy moments in the growing-up years that followed, they emerged against a backdrop of emptiness and loss. My father was gone, and a great deal of my childlike trust in God might as well have been buried with him.

Years later when I was a young man, I had a dream. In my dream, my father was with me again, and I was bringing him up to date on what had happened in my life—that I had gone to college, graduated, and launched my career. His attention was undivided as he listened with interest, pride, and affirmation. So when I went on to tell him also about my brother’s and sister’s lives, he said in warmth and kindness, “I know. You don’t have to tell me.” A bit confused, I paused and said, “I just wanted you to know what else has happened in our family since you died.” Then with an assuring grin and his peaceful blue eyes, he replied simply, “I never died.” I immediately awoke with tears as warm as my father’s love and a heart daring to hope again in our God and His promise of eternal life.

There’s a whole lot we won’t know about the next life until we get there. No eye has seen it, no ear has heard it, and no mind has conceived it.1 But we do know this—life will be as we know down deep it is supposed to be. There will be no more mourning, for there will be no more death. There will be no more crying, for there will be no more pain. There will be no more heartache, for God will wipe every tear from our eyes. 2

We will finally realize just how much God loves us and how highly He treasures us. We will discover the magnificence in which He created us and to which He has already begun to restore us. For though we fall far short of his splendor, He is already at work, transforming us “into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 3 Yes, we will again know the glory our loving God intended for us from the beginning, and in this hope we rejoice. For our hope is not the human notion of mere possibility or even optimism; our hope is the certainty of Christ. He who has fulfilled the promises of ages past lives today as our hope for an eternity of glorious tomorrows. He is our hope. He is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 4

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:4)

1 1 Corinthians 2:9
2 Revelation 21:4
3 2 Corinthians 3:18
4Colossians 1:27

[Read today’s Scripture in John 11:38-44.]

Today’s post is an excerpt from Christ in Me. Copyright  2016 Paul Nordman. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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