The Jenkins Journal

Happy Friday! We, and you, made it through another week. It’s been one of those just plain work weeks. Yes, missionaries have those weeks. It was broken up by some guest, the Bryants. They are a beautiful young couple. They have been married for over 60 years. Yes, you read that right, 60 years. She was a trustee of the IMB for about 10 years. She has a great heart for missions and prayer.  When we were at North Point, we prayed together about the beauty and power that the Lord had created there. 

This weekend, I am going over to St. Vincent to look at a project setup for next summer. It will be a “God thing” in it being done. I love “God things”. They are too big for us to do and only the Lord gets credit. Hannibal on the “A-Team” TV series, would say, “I love it when a plan comes together.” I do too, especially when I see the Lord in it all.

I have two feel good videos for this Firday.

I feel like it has been a tough week for the U.S. Politics, economy, moral issues… You name it, it’s been a tough week.

When I was much younger, my father told me that when they played the National Anthem for baseball games on the radio or TV, I would stand at attention and salute. I saw this video this morning:

Once again, I stood at attention. We are blessed to live in a country that values freedom.

Then to make you laugh. Right before you leave work today, turn up the volume and lean back and have a laugh.

God bless and have a great weekend!

Yes, I am working on getting back in the swing of blogging. Here are some things I learned this week:

1. Life isn’t fair (you would have thought I knew that by now.) Sometimes people who don’t play fair, win. (This has nothing to do with the presidential election.) I know it, but I keep having to remember it. C. S. Lewis gave me some insight on this one. In such a cruel and negative world, how could we make up a god that is loving and wants the best for his children if there wasn’t a god like that. Secondly, why do we have this image of a fair and good world if there isn’t one out there somewhere (heaven). It’s one of those thoughts that you have to mull over. Nothing deep, but gives me confidence in a loving Father who has a place called heaven for me.

2. Going on with that, as Randy Acorn said in his book, “Heaven”, “As a Christian, this is as close to hell as you will ever be.”

3. We need to pray for our new president. God has put him in this position. I have read some hateful and dark blogs this week on Obama’s election. I don’t want to be identified with that type of person.

4. Billy Graham celebrated his 90th birthday. What a great man of God who stuck with the central message: Jesus Christ came to earth so save me. What a testimony.

5. I had a strange call this past week. A CEO of a yacht supply company called. I had never met him. I’m not buying that yacht yet. He said that he was a Christian and one of his salesmen had met me on a flight from St. Lucia to Antigua. We had talked briefly. You can’t talk too much in a prop plane. I don’t remember all that we talked about. I did tell him that I was a Christian and shared a little of my testimony and witness. I really thought that I had done too little in witnessing to him. I do remember just for convesation sake, asking him what size boat I should start with in learning how to sail. He calmly said, “the best to start with is a 35 footer.” I was thinking more in the range of 6 to 9 feet. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my whole house is not a 35 footer. Back to the story… His boss siad that he has been praying for this salesman and that I had been put there for a reason to share with him also. It was a good affirmation that the Lord will use our willingness. The CEO then told me that he would be up in Antigua at a boating thing and would like to meet him there. I probably won’t be there. I don’t do boating things.

One more thing about him. I dropped him an e-mail and asked what were the possibilities of taking a team of young people sailing around the Caribbean as part of an evangelism and discipleship team. You know I have big vision sometimes. He said that the Lord had been putting that on his heart also. Who knows what the Lord may be up to with this.

6. I had a great conversation with a new friend this week. In brief, he told me how he became a Christian when a guy told him that he didn’t have to do drugs and booze every day. In that one statement, my friend had to know how this could happen. To make a long story short, he gave his life to Christ and has been clean ever since. God is still in the business of changing lives.

7. God is good. I am blessed. That’s the truth.

I’m back in circulation. It really has been a while. Hopefully it will be shorter. The problem with the internet is that it can sink you. Between e-mail, facebook, reading news and blogs, it can eat up your time. I have had a ton of good stuff going on and put the Jenkins Journal on as low priority. Another problem that I have is that I want it all to be outstanding, signifigant and perfect. It can easly eat up a couple of hours.

With all of that said, I am not going to try and be “practically perfect in every way”. It may or may not be signifigant. I’m just going to get it going again.

Now for the moment you have been waiting for, or maybe not.

First, I want you to be honest, did you miss the moon walking bear? I did. I even thought they had spliced him in there on the rerun. How could I miss a moon walking bear? You don’t see those every day. I was focused on those people passing (or as the speaker says, “possing”) the ball. Sometimes we miss the whole picture.

The same goes with those two verses. I had some people who went the extra miles and looked up the verse references and spotted that extra that we miss.

In Mark 11:17, the entire verse says: And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

Psalm 46:10 says: “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

Did you catch it that time? The nations are very important in both of those verses. Now I have been a good Sunday School kid, raised in church and even went to seminary, but I missed important aspects of both those verses. I was studying a series of verses about how the Lord has a heart for the nations. Not only that, but he blesses those who have the same vision.

Over the past three years, I visited and helped churches who have a heart for the nations. Big, little, in metro cities, small towns, out in the country; the difference in churches is not their size or location, but their heart. This is not a cure all, but the churches that had a heart for the nations were blessed beyond belief.

I visited one in Mississippi that asked for some “fine tuning” of their mission vision. They have a heart for reaching the nations. As I went around a newly constructed campus on 150 acres, I kept asking, “What are you guys doing right? What happened? This is unbelievable.” I visited one of their Sunday Morning services. They have been in their new building which seats about two thousand and already they are busting at the seams. Their service was incredible. They have the same heart that the Lord has, as pointed to in the Scripture. I finally asked one of their members, “tell me the whole story.” He walked with me out to the corner stone of the main auditorium and told me that this was the difference. On it, it didn’t have any names of influential members, or committees, etc. It said in essence, “To the glory of God, to reach the nations with the Gospel.” That’s what made the difference. It took a small country church to being an incredible growing and healthy church that they can’t help but to be “busting at the seams” with people who want to be in on what the Lord has a heart for.

Don’t miss the obvious. It makes a difference. 

These three things have something in common. Can you guess what they are?

Mark 11:17

And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: “‘My house will be called a house of prayer…”

Psalm 46:10

“Be still, and know that I am God…”

And this:

If you can find what they all have in common, leave a comment! Also, I would be interested to hear what you think about the video….

I will give my answer on Wednesday, so everyone can have a chance, without me giving it away. Also, feel free to share this with your friends.