¡Hola!
I know that it has been a Little over a month since the last update, and for that I am sorry. There has been so much going on here as will be expounded upon below. I do want to start this update by saying thank all of you so much for your prayers and support. The Lord continues to reveal to me the importance of the church, and the prayers of the saints in the church. There have been days when I have really struggled, or that my heart is just broken because of a conversation I may have had on the street, and when I get to my room and check my e-mail or facebook and there will be a word from a saint, and that night I rest with ease knowing that there are ones who are on their knees in the battle front fighting the war for me. Thank you so much for struggling with me. Please do not grow weary in that work that the Lord has called you too.
I will try to make this as brief as I can without excluding the works that the Lord has called me to share. My parents arrived here on December 17th, and began to labor beside me as we planned for the group to arrive the following week. It was a great reuniting with the folks that the Lord used to enter me into this world, and truly a blessing that the door for them to come was opened. We worked in the streets of Tepito and La Merced for a few days, and they got to meet the treasure of a family that the Lord has permitted me to live with. The girls (Karen and Lizet) fell in love quickly as their Grandparents from the States spoiled them with “muchos dulces” or a lot of candy! The group arrived on the night of the 21st, and I was so encouraged to see the faces of my brothers and sisters! It was encouraging to hear of the works of the Father in their lives! It is amazing this institution of called the Bride of Christ! For a week the group absolutely labored with all they had. I think it was a different experience for us all, partly because we had all been a part of those mission trips that tried to see how many people we could get to raise their hand and repeat a mantra that did absolutely nothing to their lives but give them a falsehood of the true gospel, and a false hope of eternity. Because our work here is different, in that we are about preaching the truths of the Great Text, and the full council of God to people who don’t know for the sake of His great name among the nations, and not to report a bunch of numbers, as we discussed the work of the week we all had a sense of contentment that we had labored for His name and not for our own story. I think the day that stirred my affections for His name most was on Christmas day we went to La Merced to talk with prostitutes on the street, and had really great conversations! I think one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life was Katelyn and Vasti (a daughter of an Imb family here) standing on the street and talking to a girl named Karen for probably an hour or so. It warmed my heart such godly women truly investing themselves in the good works of the Father! I don’t say that to elevate their work over any other person here, it was just one of those moments. I say this with all sincerity; this was the greatest mission team that I have worked with. I hope that as you all that came read this you hear the genuineness of my heart and know that I welcome each of you back and long for the day that our eyes meet again. The airport was just as hard as the day that I left. We are trying to put together a trip for a group to come spring break, and need more people to come. Please commit to praying about if the Lord has called you to be a part of that group.
New Works:
There have been so many opened doors to share the holiness of the great God. Briefly I will share of the new things happening here.
1. We started when the group was here we started going to La Merced to talk to the prostitutes, and it has been an amazing ministry. One day while we were there a guy approached and seemed a little strange, like he wanted to talk or something. I asked him what the deal was, and found out that he is a worshiper of the santa muerte, and was the guy that is over the girls there. After much discourse he asked “What do I need to do to be saved?” So we shared the truths of God, and although God has not saved him yet he was open to talking again. His name is Mark, but I call him Nicodemus J.
2. I am also starting two Bible studies on the attributes of God. One will be with the men of our church, and the other will be with a couple of young guys in college that the Lord really has His hand on. Please pray that these would be fruitful.
3. I have started teaching an American History class twice a week to a high school group of missionary kids. I am really happy to have the opportunity to pour my life into the lives of young men and women.
Food for thought:
The Kindness of the Lord
“Do you suppose O man- you who judge those who do such things and do them yourself-that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance?”
What is the kindness of God? So many people in the world equate the Lord’s kindness with His provisions, but the truth of His kindness often times denies us of the things we think we need as provisions. In this passage Paul is addressing the church in Rome to prepare them to be the church that sends him on his journey to Spain (Romans 15:28). The book of Romans is the greatest theological treaties in the world, and he spends the first three chapters explaining the total depravity of humanity. The fault we find him addressing in this particular passage is that there are people in the church approaching the sin in others lives, but committing themselves to those same sins. Many of the Jews in the church thought just because they were part of the nation of Israel that they could do as they pleased because they saw themselves as foreknown. So he writes” do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance” because the people thought they being chosen would receive their idea of kindness from God, but like most today they had a graven image of what the kindness of the Lord truly is. We need to understand that everything God does is for Him and His name. Humanity is not at the center of His kindness He is. Jonathan Edwards said it like this “The great end of God’s works, which is so variously expressed in scripture, is indeed but one, and this one end is most properly and comprehensively called THE GLORY OF GOD!”. His kindness is no exclusion. Today we have gotten so far from the doctrine of forbearance the we do not even presume on it, but that just because a person has read a prayer on that back of a card that the love of God will outweigh His justice. That is heresy! God cannot leave one attribute to elevate or display another. “Not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance…” This last year I have learned, now please understand when I say learned I am not speaking that I fully know but have small understanding, of the kindness of the Lord. To expound on the previous statement; the brilliant Puritan John Owen said “We know Him by what He does than by what He is-by His doing us good than by His essential goodness; and how little a portion of Him, as Job speaks, is hereby discovered.” He is saying that we don’t know the essentialness of the attributes of God, but merely their essence. This is not a bad thing; it is the result of God being Holy, or as literally translated in the Hebrew “cut” or “separated”. There is nothing like Him! Nothing! Therefore, I have learned of the essence of His kindness. It was His kindness this last year that did not permit me to get married, His kindness that made me leave friends and family. For those things have brought repentance in my life. It was the kindness of the Lord that called for Polycarp to dance in the fire of his death, His kindness that called for the life of Ambrose. It was the kindness of God that called for two Moravian boys to sell themselves as slaves to tell of His name among the slaves. The kindness of the Lord lead Nathan to approach David in his sin, and Paul to exhort the church at Corinth to give a man to satan. Truly He is kind! Often times when a man who is called by God to exhort a congregation through the Word of God about sin they call him mean-spirited, but the man who tells you the most truth is the most kind-loving man in your life. Oh, church be so careful not to try to conform God to who we think He should be, but conform your life to the text of Scripture, to the image of Jesus, by the renewing of your mind daily working through the text striving for godliness. When the Lord does an act of kindness in your life do not fall into the superstition of calling it a work of satan, but rather welcome it and repent. His kindness is not meant for our pleasure, but that when He sees the life of one of His elect He would see the great reflection of Himself and delight in His sovereign work. Truly He is kind!
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Hola! From Mexico!
¡Bueno!
What an amazing month it has been! I have finished my Spanish class, and will start with a tutor soon. I have preached several times in Spanish, and although my Spanish is not good it is improving. It has been very strange times that I have thoughts in Spanish! I have finally gotten to layout a weekly schedule and it has been nice to have some order in a world of chaos here. We go to the park in La Merced on Thursdays where we feed the homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes. It is such a difficult ministry because you don’t see much fruit, but we are seeing some. There is a guy named Josué that I talk to each week, and we have really become friends. I was really encouraged one week when we walked up and he yelled at me wanting me to come where he was. I looked at Kristy and said “you know you have status when a homeless guy knows your name”. =) Every week when we go to the park he is high from sniffing glue, but the last two weeks he has stopped using it in the afternoons, so we have been able to have a reasonable conversation. I know that doesn’t sound like a big thing, but it is a start. There is also a lady Kristy has been talking with on Thursdays, and a few weeks ago Kristy gave her a bible, not knowing whether she would read it or not, but the next week she came up really excited and said “Did you know that the bible is the sword of God”. She had been reading in Ephesians, but this last week she was high and didn’t look so well. This last week they asked me to preach so I did, and I preached on biblical regeneration, and how salvation is not about praying a prayer, but Jesus radically changing your life. There were a lot of people who mocked me and told me to shut up, but the gospel will accomplish its purpose. This past Saturday we went to the santa muerte church in Tepito, and were given an opportunity to share the gospel with the lady who erected the first idol in 1985. The muerte cult is going hugely, and has now reached the United States. This lady got angry with us and told me I was not to preach there that it is her territory and I had the whole world to preach in , but not there. She also said that those were her people and that I am not to talk with them. I told her that because of my faith I have to preach to these people, and that they are not hers, or that it is not her land but Gods. I also go once a week and reason with the priest of the muerte church about three blocks down the street that I live on. I have reasoned with him that there is no basis anywhere for the muerte, and that it really is ignorant to worship such vileness. They have just erected a new idol in their church and they are calling it “angeló de muerte” which means “angel of death”. He has written a book trying to prove that she is in the bible; he pulls verses out that talk about the angel of death. Before the muerte church had no logic, but now they are trying to establish some, and I believe this new idol will be the next big thing here. I ask that you begin to pray that the Lord will crush this idol quickly, and that it will not be given validity here. It is so sad to see two and three year old babies wearing a santa muerte around their neck. I am so excited that in a few days the group from Grace will be here, and that I will once again get to serve alongside my brothers and sisters.
Food for thought:
I have been preaching through Romans here at our church, and came to verse 5 in chapter 1 “through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of His name among the nations,”. My first thought is “What is grace?” Jonathan Edwards once said “Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God, by giving sinners the right and the power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.” God is at the center of grace! If He were not, and He displayed grace primarily for the sake of humanity it would be idolatry on His part, for He would be placing something above Himself, and He would no longer be God. The verse says “through whom”. Jesus is our propitiation, and did not merely give Himself as a ransom to make salvation available, but He accomplished the work of salvation on the cross. Jesus doesn’t bring people to a place where they can be saved, He saves them. Not only is it impossible for a dead man to take part in salvation, it is dangerous. If salvation is 99.99% God, and .01% man we die and go to hell. G. S. Bishop said “Grace is the provision for men who are so fallen that they cannot lift the axe of justice, so corrupt that they cannot change their own natures, so averse to God that they cannot turn to Him, so blind that they cannot see Him, so deaf they cannot hear Him, and so dead that He Himself must open their graves and lift them into resurrection.” So many times we have taken Gods sovereign work of grace and reduced it to a two minute presentation. The purpose of grace is not to get someone to heaven, but “for the sake of His name among the nations,”. As humans we are merely to reflect the attributes of God that He displays in our lives. The whole purpose in creation is that God would see His reflection and delight in Himself. When God created the tree and said “It is good” He was not saying that the tree itself is good, but His works being displayed. All creation is for the pleasure of God, and we as created beings, and some as created in Christ Jesus, are all for the pleasure of God. How is this truth practical…Some see this truth and say that God is unfair, but rest assured there is no injustice with God. As I walk up and down these streets sharing the gospel I know this; the gospel will accomplish its work. A missionary here asked me what my strategy is, and I told him that I preach the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation, and it will have its way with people. Like I said above, Jesus didn’t come to make salvation available, but to save people. He is good at what He does.
Prayer requests:
-We have a group arriving here on the 21st, and leaving the 28th. Pray that God would use them to accomplish His work.
-Pray for the work in the park La Merced.
-Pray for the people involved in the santa muerte.
-Pray for my sister in Guam. The Lord is using her in huge ways.
-Pray for our church here in our house. It is called Iglesia Manantial De Vida.
-Pray that the Lord would send more teams down here to work and catch a vision.
-We need a van, pray for the Lords provision if He wills it.
Thank you all for your prayers and support in the work of Sing for Joy here in Mexico City.
Grace and peace to you,
Jonathan Murdock
What an amazing month it has been! I have finished my Spanish class, and will start with a tutor soon. I have preached several times in Spanish, and although my Spanish is not good it is improving. It has been very strange times that I have thoughts in Spanish! I have finally gotten to layout a weekly schedule and it has been nice to have some order in a world of chaos here. We go to the park in La Merced on Thursdays where we feed the homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes. It is such a difficult ministry because you don’t see much fruit, but we are seeing some. There is a guy named Josué that I talk to each week, and we have really become friends. I was really encouraged one week when we walked up and he yelled at me wanting me to come where he was. I looked at Kristy and said “you know you have status when a homeless guy knows your name”. =) Every week when we go to the park he is high from sniffing glue, but the last two weeks he has stopped using it in the afternoons, so we have been able to have a reasonable conversation. I know that doesn’t sound like a big thing, but it is a start. There is also a lady Kristy has been talking with on Thursdays, and a few weeks ago Kristy gave her a bible, not knowing whether she would read it or not, but the next week she came up really excited and said “Did you know that the bible is the sword of God”. She had been reading in Ephesians, but this last week she was high and didn’t look so well. This last week they asked me to preach so I did, and I preached on biblical regeneration, and how salvation is not about praying a prayer, but Jesus radically changing your life. There were a lot of people who mocked me and told me to shut up, but the gospel will accomplish its purpose. This past Saturday we went to the santa muerte church in Tepito, and were given an opportunity to share the gospel with the lady who erected the first idol in 1985. The muerte cult is going hugely, and has now reached the United States. This lady got angry with us and told me I was not to preach there that it is her territory and I had the whole world to preach in , but not there. She also said that those were her people and that I am not to talk with them. I told her that because of my faith I have to preach to these people, and that they are not hers, or that it is not her land but Gods. I also go once a week and reason with the priest of the muerte church about three blocks down the street that I live on. I have reasoned with him that there is no basis anywhere for the muerte, and that it really is ignorant to worship such vileness. They have just erected a new idol in their church and they are calling it “angeló de muerte” which means “angel of death”. He has written a book trying to prove that she is in the bible; he pulls verses out that talk about the angel of death. Before the muerte church had no logic, but now they are trying to establish some, and I believe this new idol will be the next big thing here. I ask that you begin to pray that the Lord will crush this idol quickly, and that it will not be given validity here. It is so sad to see two and three year old babies wearing a santa muerte around their neck. I am so excited that in a few days the group from Grace will be here, and that I will once again get to serve alongside my brothers and sisters.
Food for thought:
I have been preaching through Romans here at our church, and came to verse 5 in chapter 1 “through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of His name among the nations,”. My first thought is “What is grace?” Jonathan Edwards once said “Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God, by giving sinners the right and the power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.” God is at the center of grace! If He were not, and He displayed grace primarily for the sake of humanity it would be idolatry on His part, for He would be placing something above Himself, and He would no longer be God. The verse says “through whom”. Jesus is our propitiation, and did not merely give Himself as a ransom to make salvation available, but He accomplished the work of salvation on the cross. Jesus doesn’t bring people to a place where they can be saved, He saves them. Not only is it impossible for a dead man to take part in salvation, it is dangerous. If salvation is 99.99% God, and .01% man we die and go to hell. G. S. Bishop said “Grace is the provision for men who are so fallen that they cannot lift the axe of justice, so corrupt that they cannot change their own natures, so averse to God that they cannot turn to Him, so blind that they cannot see Him, so deaf they cannot hear Him, and so dead that He Himself must open their graves and lift them into resurrection.” So many times we have taken Gods sovereign work of grace and reduced it to a two minute presentation. The purpose of grace is not to get someone to heaven, but “for the sake of His name among the nations,”. As humans we are merely to reflect the attributes of God that He displays in our lives. The whole purpose in creation is that God would see His reflection and delight in Himself. When God created the tree and said “It is good” He was not saying that the tree itself is good, but His works being displayed. All creation is for the pleasure of God, and we as created beings, and some as created in Christ Jesus, are all for the pleasure of God. How is this truth practical…Some see this truth and say that God is unfair, but rest assured there is no injustice with God. As I walk up and down these streets sharing the gospel I know this; the gospel will accomplish its work. A missionary here asked me what my strategy is, and I told him that I preach the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation, and it will have its way with people. Like I said above, Jesus didn’t come to make salvation available, but to save people. He is good at what He does.
Prayer requests:
-We have a group arriving here on the 21st, and leaving the 28th. Pray that God would use them to accomplish His work.
-Pray for the work in the park La Merced.
-Pray for the people involved in the santa muerte.
-Pray for my sister in Guam. The Lord is using her in huge ways.
-Pray for our church here in our house. It is called Iglesia Manantial De Vida.
-Pray that the Lord would send more teams down here to work and catch a vision.
-We need a van, pray for the Lords provision if He wills it.
Thank you all for your prayers and support in the work of Sing for Joy here in Mexico City.
Grace and peace to you,
Jonathan Murdock
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