Wednesday 12, 2005

“Can You Hear Me Now?”

Yesterday, I started my day at 5am in order to have some time to write and
think before a van picked me up at 6:20am. I was to travel on the Sri
Lankan coastal road in order to see what the Tsunami had done and to get a
picture of how God could use me most while here. It was not strange what He was saying to my heart but it was funny and sobering how he said it. I have seen a commercial on T.V. that I really liked and I even used it’s little catch phrase several times cutting up but never the way the Holy Spirit used it, to drive home a point with me. A fellow is on the cell phone and he asks someone somewhere, “Can you hear me now?” He takes a few steps and asks again, “Can you hear me now?” A few steps more, the same. 
“Can you hear me now?” Commercial fades and the sponsor makes his pitch.

As time has gone by the commercial was a hit and we have seen the same fellow in the back of trucks, in caves, and even hiding behind bushes, asking the vital questions, “Can you hear me now?” “Can you hear me now?” In the same way the Lord God is asking his people, “Can you hear me now?” 
I think we stand at a crossroad. It is no less a cross road where we as God’s people will finally hear our God as he pleads with us, “Can you hear me now?” As I stood and looked out over the destruction that cannot be captured fully on film or video, I kept wondering what would I do? Where would I go? How would I begin again? As we passed the spot where the news showed parents holding on to their children as long as they could and then they were swept away, I cringed and tried to shake the image out of my head of me holding my own, and what would I do, what could I do? As I turned and surveyed the landscape I noticed a statue. It was ornately decorated and clean to a tee except for some broken glass that protected it. I looked at it and my Sri Lankan friend told me, “The Buddhists say that they have the strongest god because nowhere on the island were the Buddhist Temple’s statues of gods destroyed.” I watched people lining up and giving gifts to their god. That is when my God said to me, “Can you hear me now?” I understood instantly. But He kept asking me, “Can you hear me now?”

I watched other people step up to a monk dressed in beautiful colors and he threw his holy water on them and the Lord asked me again, “Wick, can you hear me now?” That was only six hours into what would be a 21-hour trip. During the entire trip as I shook hands, smiled at some folks and cried with others as we stood where their homes used to stand, I could not get that phrase out of my mind. We have passed several crossroads. To spark a more recent memory, when the World Trade Centers were hit, the nation seemed to try to come together in a collective effort. Other nations sent condolences to ours. While people were still in mourning there was a prayer meeting in a huge stadium in New York. All denominations were welcome. Anyone could take the stand and pray…to a god, but which one? Churches had record numbers in them. 
Everywhere god was being spoken about openly, but which god? I want to be careful here but I also want to be honest. Watching as a missionary living in Bolivia, I was devastated and scared as I saw everyone crying and holding hands together and praying together. Not because I am prejudice but because our God does not want to be taken lightly. He also says that He will not have any other gods before him. I wondered how long it would be before we share the one true gospel with those that we held hands with in that huge stadium. That there is only one God and He is a jealous God. How do we share a gospel that we have diluted when emotions ran high and people needed reassuring?

We have become a nation of cultural Christians that want and demand a grandfather god. He won’t be too rough, he can’t watch everything I’m up to because he can’t keep up, and he will give me what I want, when I want it, and at the drop of a hat because I come to visit him every now and then. “Can you hear me now?” There was another time when God told folks what He wanted them to do. In Acts 1:8. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” Then for the next seven chapters the church is growing in leaps and bounds, people are fellowshipping and sharing everything…even their money. They have killer music and fun picnics. The community even looks up to them…wow! But look what happens in Acts 8:1

“On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.” 
Something terrible happened that shook the Christians so bad that they scattered. Stephen was stoned. It shook his friends and loved ones into a panic, so much so that they heard God ask, “Can you hear me now?” You see back in Acts 1:8 God told his workers what he expected of each of them. They chose to stay close to home and grow the church. It may have been a good thing, and even an impressive thing as people came to know the Lord by the thousands, but that was not what he asked them to do. It was a good thing but it was not a God thing. “Can you hear me now?” We are on the most important temporary assignment of all time. We are to spread the gospel to as many as we possibly can. God got the attention of the Christians when he allowed Stephen to be stoned. God got our attention to the Muslim world through the events of 9-11! He has gotten our focus on the Asian world through the events of a tsunami. Christians around the world should be uniting a front to move out in love and come to these parts of the world that for so long have been held captive by lesser gods. If we truly believe that we serve the Lord of Lord and King of Kings and that no man cometh to the father except through a relationship with Jesus Christ, then what are we waiting on? 
1 John 3:18… “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth.” can you hear me now? 



In Sri Lanka,

Wick