Do you know what it is to be rejected? Have you ever had that feeling that you just are not good enough for your family, for your friends, especially for God? I have known many people like that over the years I have spent in ministry.
One young woman had dropped out of school and her single Mom had gotten very angry with her. She felt that she had so disappointed her mother that all she could do was run away from home. I met her a few years later. She had been living on the streets of New York City with no hope and without God in her life. God gave me the opportunity to help her get her life back on track. While she did not reconcile with her mother at the time that I knew her, she had that as a goal to be achieved in a year or two. First she had to get herself out of the gutter of her mistakes, she told herself, or her mother would still not accept her. She wasn’t good enough even for her mother.
A man who had a bad temper had, some 20 years before I met him, gotten into a fight and his opponent had ended up mortally wounded. He then spent his next 20 years in a prison to pay his debt to society because he had lost his temper one night. When he was due for release from his prison, he was afraid that his family and friends would not take him back after all he had done. His friends had “learned” from his mistake and had straightened out their lives. Now they were husbands and fathers with kids of their own. He doubted that any of them would want to introduce him to the kids for fear his might “infect” them with his temper. He wasn’t good enough for those with whom he had gone to school and with whom he had enjoyed friendship. He was sure he would be rejected as soon as they saw his face.
A group of friends gathered regularly in a little coffee shop to talk about faith and their own personal approaches to faith. They were what one might call the underclass of the city in which I lived at the time. They had found each other somewhat by accident. It was the love of a great cup of low priced coffee that brought them together. They would intentionally get together with each other at least weekly to discuss Wiccan, Native American Spirituality, Buddhism, and agnosticism (each one’s faith perspective). It was somewhat by accident that I came to know one of them and was invited to join the group as the one who would take the Christian perspective with them. So each Wednesday afternoon, I made my way over to the little café to share a cup of coffee and my perspective on faith. What I discovered as I talked with them was that each had decided to pursue the faith they were because they were convinced that they did not fit into the Christian faith. They knew they were not good enough for God. They told themselves that they, if they showed up in a congregation of Christians, would not be happily received. Quite the contrary, they were sure they would be ushered out if only because of their poor dress. They were not worthy of being in the company of Christians as they knew them and they knew they were not worthy of Jesus as they had heard of him. They were not even good enough for the people who looked at our motley little group with a look of scorn each Wednesday.
Good Enough for God – Because of Christ
My heart breaks for people like this. They all have a very special characteristic that they find it very difficult to accept: each one is made in the image of God and God calls each one to come home from the far country to which they have gone. In the Bible we find a story which is called the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It tells us about a young man who takes his inheritance while his father is still alive, goes off to a ”far country” and loses everything in wild living. After a while he “comes to himself” and decides to go back to his father with this thought, “I will say that I am not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your servants.” He discovers that his father will have none of that idea. He is welcomed as the long lost son that he is.
One of our students at Christian Leaders Institute, as she reflects on growing up in the church in her homeland of South Africa writes the following,
“I didn’t really understand what I was being told. I was just going through the motions. Then I fell pregnant before I was married. Even though I was engaged to the father of my baby and had never been promiscuous, the church turned its back on me and I was ‘condemned to burn in hell’. I left the church and for many years just drifted in and out of faith. In 2009, God answered a very big prayer!! Since then I have grown and grown.”
She goes on to tell us about a talk she had with God.
“The talk-with-God wasn’t the proverbial whisper, it was more like a hit to the solar plexus. I now know that the Almighty Father wants me to use the talents He has given me, to spread the word, to show others the way to reaching Heaven. There are many people who think they are rejected by God, all because someone else told them so, and all because they fail to reach what they think is the “mark to reach” before God will accept them as they are. Mostly, I wish to help the youth of my country who are so lost.”
Our own perceptions are often so wrong. We need to come to our right mind and discover the awesome truth that God will welcome us when we humbly come in the name of Jesus. That is the message we are training people all over the earth to carry to others on behalf of God, the Great King of Heaven. It’s a message for you too!
Check out Betche Tabilid’s blog at http://heart-livingbyfaith.blogspot.com/
Christian Leaders Institute offers a high quality Thailand Bible School online. Called leaders from Thailand can access over 22 Bible Training classes.
Betche Tabilid, One of the First Students in the Thailand Bible School
I was raised up to a Christian family since my mom is a Born Again Christian. I knew the LORD even I was still young. I usually talked to God in prayers and I started to read the Bible everyday.After a couple of years after, I began to understand the importance of having an intimate relationship with God.I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. Right after the baptism of water, I had such joy! I was on fire in gathering the children and telling them the word of God. It was really a wonderful experience that I won’t ever forget in my entire life!
Currently, I am in the country that God allowed me to be in. Thailand is now my second mission field. Honestly, I was in Cambodia for 2 years yet God closed it and allowed me to be here. Just like in Cambodia, Thailand needs spiritual awakening! As His servant, I simply do the task that He wants me to do here. I am actually teaching the Thai kids at the Thai church voluntarily. Teaching ministry is just one of the ways to reach people for Christ. Since I am a teacher by profession, I would like to use it for His glory.
Well, we only have to stay for two years in the mission field before we could go back to our beloved country. I have 1 year and 8 months left. I believed that God prepared everything for me already. Let’s see if God wants me to be back home after my two years mission term here or if he wants me to go the extra mile. Whatever it is, His will be done. My desire is to really share the good news with everyone all over the world. After my mission term here in Thailand, I don’t know what the next step will be. However, I believe that God will bring me to the place where He would like me to be.
Now, getting to know more about God in my life is indeed vital as I continue to live by faith. It was almost two weeks ago that I searched for a Christian online course for free so I could further enhance my personal walk with God through studying His word. Then, I came across with this Christian Leaders Institute. I found this institute relevant to my daily walk with God here in the mission field. Availing the CLI scholarship will be a great help in reaching my ministry dream.
Please help me pray for God’s wisdom and guidance as well as for the boldness in sharing the word of God to everyone here!
Thank you so much for your prayers and concerns!
God bless you!
I am a teacher by profession and a servant of God at heart. I was working as an ESL teacher before but I quit just to follow the call. I don’t have anything except for one thing. This makes me have everything. This is having Jesus into my life! What I have now is all by God’s grace. I remember that I did long to be a missionary when I was young. I am raised up into a Christian home since my mom is a Born Again Christian but my dad was not. My mom brought me to the church, where I learned to memorize the Scripture verses. The first memory verse was, Ephesians 6:1″Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.” I was 3 years old when I memorized it. But I did not understand clearly of how important to stand firm in the word of God. I am the eldest daughter and I have 5 younger sisters. I have one older brother and one younger brother. For almost 25 years, my mom did not have a job. She is just a plain housewife while my dad died on December 16, 1997. My mom wanted me to stop studying, yet I did not want to. So, I asked God to help me with my study. The fact is, we are such a big family without a dad and our mom didn’t have any work. Who will be there for us? My mom was thinking of sending us to Department of Social Welfare and Development so the government would take care of us, yet we would have been taken away from my mom. Finally, she failed to do such. Furthermore, we were separated. My sister was living with my authority in Mindanao, that’s other island in Philippines. My older brother has to stop from studying just to work for us. On the other hand, I asked God’s help regarding my study. While I may not blessed financially, He blessed me intellectually! With His help, I was able to finish Bachelor of Elementary Education. For 2 years I was in my first mission field, Cambodia. Furthermore, God changed my mission field. I am currently here in Bangkok, Thailand. I still have to stay here for 2 years before I will be back in Philippines. But I actually promise God that I will be in the mission field for 5 years as I used my profession for His glory. Long before, I really would like to be in the Bible School yet my mom did not want me to. So, I asked God what course He would like me to have. Preaching is like teaching, Jesus is also a teacher. Then, I asked God to allow me to pass the interview and exam. God did it for me. So, I became a scholar and successfully finished my profession. God is indeed awesome!
One of my dreams is to really be in the mission field. When I was in the missionary training center and we had to decide what country we would like to be with. The countries I would like to be with were China, India and Africa. Unfortunately, the doors were closed that time. One night in the missionary training center, I talked to God. I told Him that if He would like me to be in Cambodia then He will tell my co-missionary in a dream since I don’t want to tell her that I would like to be in Cambodia. So, in the morning my co-missionary asked me if I would like to be in Cambodia with her. Honestly, when she said I already had an idea that God told her something yet she didn’t tell me about it. Then, the time has come that I had to leave my beloved country for the mission field. Prior to that I asked lots of things from God and He gave each one of them. One of the things I asked from Him was getting to Thailand before going to the mission field. I didn’t know that time that there is no direct flight from Philippines to Cambodia. It was just so amazing the my flight was from Philippines to Thailand. I was really wondering about it, then God reminded me of the prayer I had. I just told Him that I would like to be in Thailand even just in the airport yet God will always give more than we ask for. I did stay in Thailand for 3 nights and 2 days. One of those times, I talked to God and said that I will be back in Thailand to work for His glory. Indeed, before I went back to Philippines, the missionary director told me that I have to close every connection I had since I am not coming back to Cambodia as soon as I will be back in the mission field. I will be in Thailand. I didn’t argue with it since I already knew that it’s a part of God’s plan for me to be here in Thailand. Well, I got a year left then after my 2 years mission term. I asked God that I would like to work with others in the mission field. I hope I will be given the chance to be in China, India or Africa to work for God’s glory! I am just so thankful to God for allowing me to know this Christian Leaders Institute! I believed God has a great plan for me ahead! It’s indeed a blessing to be a part of CLI family!
On the rocky hillside of Mars Hill in Athens is a bronze plaque on which is written, in hard to decipher Greek, the message of Paul to the members of the Areopagus. The Areopagus was the great international university of the day. If one wanted to study with the greatest minds in the world, one would make his way to Athens. There he would be able to join in the pursuit of truth which stands as the goal of all academic efforts even to this day.
A few years ago, I and some others with me had gone to visit Athens. After seeking, alas in vain, to read the Greek on the Hill of the Areopagus and so to figure out what it was saying, a couple of us finally broke down and asked the tour guide what the words on this plaque mean. She told us to take out our Bible and read Acts 17 and to understand that inscribed on the bronze were the words of the Apostle Paul which he had spoken on this spot.
It was on this spot that Paul had addressed the cultured despisers of all the things Paul believed in. He was invited there so that the philosophers of the day could listen for a while to Paul’s, as they called it, “babbling.” What is fascinating to me is that there is a marker that remembers Paul’s words from 2000 years ago. No one who was there that day can be named today except for two people. Paul was one of them. The other was a man named Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, who became a follower of Jesus through Paul’s preaching. Paul is remembered as the man who brought the message of salvation to the city and Dionysius is the one who listened. In Dionysius, the church of Athens took root. Today one of the main thoroughfares of the city is named in his honor.
In the Old Testament there is mention of the setting up of markers that would memorialize an event. For example, the crossing of the Jordan River by Israel as it entered the Promised Land. (Joshua 4) It makes me wonder what sort of monuments I have established so that children, my own or others generations hence, would even ask, ‘What does this mean?” And can I explain to them that, on this spot, God invaded some new territory to claim it as his own? Or what new territory have I been involved in taking for the Lord? So much of what I have done over the years is in the realm of intangibles. How does one show that God has laid claim to this heart and that soul? How does one mark with a monument the preaching that invaded a person’s heart and their business was never the same after that?
Equipping New Leaders to Ascend Mars Hill
At Christian Leaders Institute we are equipping people who will be the invaders of the spiritual kingdom of the evil one. They will be the ones who give evidence of the word of God who “calls all people everywhere to repent.” (from Pauls’ words recorded on that plaque in Athens) A student from a remote area in Australia writes, “God shares each and every day with me, He fills my life with His love. These feelings I have lead me to want to minister for God, to get to know Him better. This beautiful place where I live, has no church, the closest is 25 km away, transport isn’t easy from here either, so I would like to, maybe one day, open a church in my small sea side, country town.” Anna hears God calling the people of her town to repent and she is training to be his spokesperson in her beautiful town of 20,000 people which has no church at all. Yet she knows God is calling all people everywhere to repent. Another of our students from Denver, Colorado in the USA, writes, “My walk with the Lord started at an earlier age between the ages of 10 and 12 even though I really did not understand who he was. It wasn’t until I was incarcerated the last time I really felt a connection with the Lord and He became real to me.” He heard God calling him to repent and to come to faith in Jesus. Now he is in training to “preach, teach the Word of God to family, friends and everyone with whom I make my acquaintance.” He has caught the Holy Spirit as did St. Paul who found that he needed to speak to every group, no matter if they were eager to hear or not. He, too, will leave his memorial of who God is in the lives of those who hear the Word of God through him.
A few years ago, I had the privilege of speaking the word of God to a woman, Yvonne, and her husband, Leroy, and seeing God take hold of them just moments before Yvonne herself went to be with the Lord. Hanging on our living room wall is a gift from Leroy who died a few months later. “So Dad, why do you have that hanging there?” I think my kids know the story of God’s invasive love that laid claim to a woman in last hours of her life. Even if that isn’t remembered by anyone living after I have left the scene and the gift from Leroy that hangs on the wall is discarded as some old junk Dad kept, the Lord remembers and I give thanks for his invasive love every time I see it.