Sermon—Soul Strong Ambassador
Eph 6:19,20. Pray also for me, that the message may be given to me when I open my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. For this I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I might be bold enough to speak about it as I should.
Jon asked me to share a bit of insight into this brief portion of scripture. I think it is not too challenging to understand what the Apostle says in this passage . . .
As Paul was writing this letter his history included the following events:
--He had personally encountered the crucified and living Christ.
--He had faced angry mobs, been stoned, imprisoned, publicly whipped and beaten, been subjected to assassination attempts, and a few other unpleasantries.
--He had preached the gospel to Jews, Gentiles, religious leaders, philosophers, military leaders, and those in high political power.
In all these situations he spoke boldly and without fear, yet his request for prayer here suggests that he was not claiming credit but deferring to the power of the Holy Spirit in him. And he requests that readers pray that he may continue to be emboldened and encouraged.
Here is my summary of the Apostle’s plea: Please pray for me, that I may boldly and without fear speak the truth of the Gospel. I suggest that we all dare to pray that prayer.
I’ve been encouraged to share some testimony about how I have seen this play out before my eyes—
First a disclaimer: I am not impressed by my spiritual history. No one will ever mistake me for the Apostle Paul. I do not have the unique calling, nor the persistent obedience that he exhibited. But I think I have the same God. There have been life moments when I have encountered challenges and received an affirmation of God’s Spirit at work that left me in awe!
Let me describe some incidents for you.
First Episode—My Dad in the Wilderness
Twenty-five years ago, with a group of about 10 men, I was fishing with my father on an isolated lake in the wilds of Northwestern Ontario, Canada. That was not unusual. We had made that long trek together many times since I was 13 years old. In my early adolescent trips, dad was constantly rescuing me from my youthful exuberance. On this trip the roles were reversed. I was in charge and dad, nearly 90 years old, was on his last wilderness fishing trip. Dad was a brilliant man, a preacher and professor who had memorized great blocs of Scripture. But now, he was well into Alzheimer’s and dementia. Every action required coaching and supervision. One particular day lives in my memory:
Our fishing group has a tradition of each fisherman leading cabin devotions one of the nights. Thursday night was dad’s turn. I talked to him about it at breakfast, and he assured me he would do it. But the day was confusing. Fishing where he had fished for 50 years, he was continuously lost, bewildered. He had to be reminded to cast his lure into the water. If he hooked a fish, he did not know what to do with it. Several times I brought up the devotion topic and his response was always, “Is it my turn? I’ll do it.”
After a very long day we were finally settling in. We’d cleaned up after a feast of fresh, fried Walleye. All the guys were in their bunks. I turned out the Coleman lantern and it gave its lingering glow. Through the window we witnessed the soft glimmer of the aurora borealis, and I said to dad, “Are you ready for your devotion?” His response, “Oh, is it my turn? I’ll give it some thought.” Awkward silence reined in the darkness for about 30 seconds, while I feared for Dad’s pain in tapping into his mangled memory. Then he spoke, “I think this is how the Ephesian letter starts, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ ...” and he continued in the darkness, quoting from memory all the way through the Ephesians 1…then the second chapter, and most of the way through the third chapter, pausing then to say, “I think I’ll let Paul’s prayer be our closing prayer: ‘For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen’
In the darkness there was silence except for sniffling sounds from overwhelmed fishermen.
Dad appeared to be forgetting everything, but somehow God granted him the ability to remember the most important things. And he spoke boldly.
Pray for me, that I may boldly speak the truth of the Gospel.
Second Episode— Facing an evil tribal custom
Six years ago, shortly after the death of my first wife, Mary, I made a trip to the Pokot region of Kenya, Africa. The purpose of my journey was to visit a mission that had begun partly as a result of our sensing the moving of the Spirit when we briefly visited the area 25 years earlier. The mission had grown from a small pre-school to a K-thru-8 Christian school of 600 students. There were churches in the area, mostly led by pastors with no formal ministry education, and strongly influenced by tribal folkways. At the request of the mission, I agreed to lead a 3-day Pastor’s Seminar. The event was publicized mainly by word-of-mouth. We prayed that God would lead us, …and lead pastors to us. We hoped for at least 8 to 10 pastors to attend. On the day appointed, we had 68 pastors present! Our first meeting was an interactive session to discern where the pastors’ needs were greatest. They raised a variety of issues for me to address: Bible study resources, preaching methods, dealing with drug and alcohol addiction, and polygamy. But one issue stirred stentorian debate: Gently called female circumcision, more accurately identified as female genital mutilation. Discretely, this is a surgery performed publicly by fathers on adolescent girls as a rite of passage, leaving the girl with frequent infection, and scar tissue that may make child-bearing very difficult, and too-often deadly. It is intended to enhance the girl’s bride price, from a few goats to a few cows. The girl is presumed unlikely to commit adultery, since all sexual activity would hereafter be painful. It strikes us as a heinous custom, but it is deep in the tribal tradition, and some pastors treated it almost like baptism.
When we began the seminar, we had prayed for challenges, but on no other occasion in sixty years of ministry have I ever been asked to address this issue. We scheduled the discussion for the third day of the gathering. And we prayed for clarity and boldness. It is not a simple matter of looking up scriptural teaching: The specific issue apparently never occurred in the Bible. But there are teachings against mutilating the flesh, and numerous human value and relationship teachings which speak to the issue. The discussion was lively, with strident voices raised. But as we came to time to conclude, the tribal chief, who was quietly observing the debate, stepped forward and announced, “I will never again practice or support this ritual.”
I could not accomplish that,…but apparently God can.
Pray for me, that I may boldly speak the truth of the Gospel.
Third episode—Blessing the Inca Shaman
A bit over a year ago, Sunny and I on relatively short notice made a trip to Peru. A major part of the tour was a visit to Machu Pichu and to numerous sites of the Inca heritage. Through a strange development, our tour group of up to 16 people, became a group of . . . Paul and Sunny and the tour host. Machu Pichu was beautiful! The Inca culture was an amazing society, with advanced engineering skills to accomplish great feats. But they also had a religion which included submission to the god, Mother Earth, and various other treacherous gods. One feature, well established by archeological research, was human sacrifice.
On our last day in the Cloud Forest we were taken to a village 14,000 feet up in the mountains. There we were met by a small group of villagers some with traditional instruments along with dancers, and also a Shaman…the head man of the village and religious leader—some might call him the witch doctor. The villagers were very receptive to us, showing us their traditional crafts and tools with which they live out life in the high-Andes.
But at one point we were taken to a little shrine arbor where the Shaman was attending to glowing coals. We were seated on small wooden stools, and a ceremony began. An acolyte took bits of paper with messages, mixed them with glowing embers of herbs, and handed them to the Shaman, who blew on the embers, inhaled the fumes and began incantations. Our translator enabled us to understand that we were the focus of a special ceremony of blessing from “Mother Earth.” Sunny and I glanced nervously back and forth. We did not feel comfortable discussing it at this point with everybody watching the two Gringos. But this was not a Lakeside Worship service under Jon’s leadership. In fact, this was the most pagan religious event we had been in lately. We had been having our devotions recently in the Old Testament prophets. The prophets don’t look very favorably on pagan worship. Sunny, as usual ahead of me in praying, had visions of fire and brimstone raining down on us. But she was praying in a more positive direction. Perhaps God was responding to her as I suddenly reflected on the Apostle Paul in Acts 17, encountering the pagan philosophers on Mars Hill. Through the translator, I asked if I could pray for OUR God to bless these Inca people. The Shaman reflected just a moment, then eagerly nodded his head, “Yes”. Without a plan in mind, I began a prayer like this:
O Lord God, Creator of the Universe and of the Earth and all who live in it…we praise you for all the blessings you pour out on us. We thank you for enabling these people to live and work and grow their crops in this high valley. We thank you for the warmth and friendship that has been offered to us strangers as we travel here in their land. We ask now that you will pour further blessing on them, that you would be revealed to them, and help them to know the good news that you love them and want them to be your people. Bless them with the knowledge of all you have done for them. I pray for these blessings in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
As the translator finished interpreting my prayer, the Shaman came to me, grabbed me by both arms, saying in the Inca tongue, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Pray for me, that I may boldly speak the truth of the Gospel.
Is there anything today in YOUR life that would keep you from praying that prayer for yourselves and each other? I’m sure you could equivocate, but we are called to love each other and trust God completely. Glance around the room, attach names and faces to your prayers, and know that others are praying this prayer for you:
Lord God of Heaven and Earth, Please grant your grace to us that we may boldly speak and live the truth of the Gospel.