Psalm 21. For the director of music. A Psalm of David.

[This Psalm has a triple message. First it speaks of David’s relationship with the Lord; secondarily it is a Messianic prophecy, predicting the victory of Jesus over death and the devil; third, it speaks truth about the life of each believer.]

“O LORD, the king rejoices in your strength.”

[In realizing how helpless we are, Lord, it is wonderful to know that your strength is at work in our weakness, that our weakness actually makes your power perfect (2 Cor. 12:9).

David struggled with his own weakness in dealing with danger on the inside from his own men (his general, Joab and David’s son, Absalom, and when his followers wanted to stone him at Ziklag), as well as those enemies who attacked from the outside.

In like manner, Jesus made himself vulnerable and weak as a human being, having to rely on prayer, the help of the Spirit in His ministry and the Father’s power to rise Him from the dead.

We, also, on an everyday basis, face enemies who are too strong for us, both human and spiritual, but we have your strength to rely on.]

“How great is his joy in the victories you give!”

[The victories in our lives are gifts from you, Lord, and we can rejoice as you help us move ahead, defeat our inner evil (the flesh), and the outer evil (the devil and the corruption of this fallen world), just as Jesus did.

To know you, Lord Jesus, to intentionally live in your Truth is to experience your power, and to receive your joy. Help us to be consistent in that for today.]

What a change you are bringing in my being through memorizing and meditating on your Word, Lord, especially Psalms 18, 34, 37, 62 and 86. This is certainly a foretaste of heaven as you bring me out into an ever more spacious place, into growing freedom, into a greater joy. Glory be to you for these changes that carry me forward in every area of my life.

I praise you for what you are going to do today, Lord, as you orchestrate the flow of events, protecting me from evil and exposing me to the challenges as you know are best for me.

I praise you for the negative feelings that may come: frustration, a sense of uselessness, failure in my plans, anger, impatience and a feeling of worthlessness. Each of these is an opportunity to replace these feelings with Truth, to surrender to you, to get up the shield of faith and quench the fiery darts of the evil one, a chance to use negatives as a stimulus to respond with a positive that I’ve memorized from your Word, to be a glory-giver rather than a glory-stealer.

Before anything happens today, I give you glory for it now, Lord Jesus, trusting in your Great, Good, Glorious and Gracious character to bring what is best.

I praise you, Lord God, for the way you are using Scripture to transform me, bringing change in my thinking, my will, my emotions, my responses, my values and my motives.

To memorize your Word and meditate on it is powerful. It is pouring your perspective down into my soul, into secret areas where it brings cleansing, transformation and a greater grasp of your glory.

It also brings a wider picture of your power, purposes and plans, which results in a greater trust of you. And this leads me to praise you all the time, knowing that you have a design to use each event for good, especially those that, humanly speaking, are unwanted, uncomfortable and distressing.

It is clear that this trust and the resulting praise are the way to trigger the flow of your patience in my life. When I see the big picture of you having absolute control over where the events of the world are going, I am reminded that my times are in your hands. You are molding every event to fit your overall plans, so that whatever comes to me comes with your permission and purpose–then I can lay aside my natural impatience and take up your Patience so I can move through each event with calmness, trusting you to work it out.

This is the outcome of drawing my security from you, Lord Jesus. You who are my Rock, my Fortress, my Deliverer, my Shield, my Strength and my Stronghold. (Psalm 18:1,2). In you I can rest, sure that you will shield my head in the battles of today, that in you is all I need and that my soul can find complete contentment in you.

As it says in Psalm 62:5-7, “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.”

 Praise you, O God, my Three-in-One Lord: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Within your Trinity is a great demonstration of unity and diversity, of submission in equality, of humility in cooperation, of perfection beyond comprehension. I praise you that in you there is no lack, that you are totally self-sufficient, that there is nothing in all of creation that is necessary to you.

You are the One who exists outside of time, outside of space, outside of all other relationships, outside of need. All that you give, all that you do flows from a self-sufficient heart of love, for the good of others, out of perfect motives and pure desires.

Praise you for your engaged, committed, consistent, unwavering and intimate love for your twisted creatures and creation, demonstrated clearly in not destroying all evil immediately after the fall. Despite your great grief at this terrible failure of mankind, you press on with the creation story because you have higher and deeper, longer and wider purposes than your and our own comfort and ease.

Help us to join you today in your plan for us, for the world, for history, for eternity.

New  Installment of my autobio:  more ministry in Germany

At times I was asked to speak in different churches. This was far more demanding than everyday chats.  My German was understandable in a personal conversation, but I was a grammatical cripple. The complexity of German was beyond me.

First, there are thirty-two forms of “the” (der, die, das and variants) and you have to choose the correct form depending on the role of the noun in the sentence.

Second, every noun has a gender:  masculine, feminine or neuter, but I could see little logic behind this. For instance, skirt is masculine, wall is feminine and girl is neuter!  You have to memorize what each one is, then figure out what case the noun is in and use the corresponding form of “the.”

Well, I just basically ignored this whole minefield of complexity and threw in whichever form came to mind. The people I conversed with understood this and readily grasped what I was trying to say, even if it did not fit exactly correctly. However, such an approach was not adequate for public speaking, so Barbara would translate for me.

She is a marvelous translator. She does it so easily, quickly, fluidly moving my words and thoughts from English to German. And she doesn’t just do a grammatical translation, but “Germanized” the concepts in the process.  Really amazing.

At times we would speak in a small Turkish fellowship in a nearby city. The older folks spoke Turkish, while their children, who had grown up in Germany, did not. So I would speak in Turkish and Barbara would translate into German, again doing a wonderful job. Near the end of our time in Germany, this group asked me just to preach in German. Since most of the attenders spoke German as their third, fourth or fifth language, my inexact grammar wasn’t a problem and we all shared a narrowness of vocabulary that kept us focused. They had no trouble grasping what I was saying.

Another role the Lord had for us was in the Baptist church where we had met Dr. Christian and Melanie. There had been problems brewing there for many years, and they boiled over shortly after we came.

As a result of these conflicts, there was need for a total change in leadership and I volunteered to be part of the new leadership council. This meant I had to function entirely in German! Since the business was confidential Barbara was not allowed to translate for me. If I could catch the gist of the discussion, then I could usually follow it, but it was a struggle, especially when the meetings went so late at night.

At one point I was asked to mediate a conflict, totally in German! While praying about this, the Lord gave me an idea for a framework, and as the discussion roiled and boiled, I was able to keep it within these guidelines with the Lord bringing a positive outcome. I was impressed what the Lord can do through such a weak vessel!

During the three and a half years we were in Germany I kept up visits to our “focus groups” in the Balkans, our former country, Northern Iraq, Germany and our Iranian work. In addition, every January and June I would go to the States to train new workers for our organization. When she could, Barbara came with me. This kept us in touch with all aspects of our work.

One unexpected benefit to being in Germany was having time to write. In our former country I had so many relationships that my days were often spent entirely in interaction with fellow workers, believing Turks and seekers.  Here in Germany I had fewer direct demands on a daily basis, so could dedicate an hour or two a day to working on the several books that I’d sketched out.

The first one grew out of classes I’d given for years on spiritual warfare. After about twenty revisions, it emerged as Knowing Jesus Is Enough For Joy, Period!  Later I changed the title to Equipped! Ready for Every Day Spiritual Warfare. This and my other books are available on Amazon.com.   I was thankful to be able to pass on in this book the many lessons God gave us in the years of meditating on Scripture in the midst of the pressures of life in the Middle East.

Personally, I continue to use a good number of these lessons every day: praying through the steps of “putting on” the armor of God; memorizing, meditating and praying Scripture; confessing in layers to get to the root my sins; forgiving in obedience; praising in and for all things; letting go of what is temporal, holding on to what is eternal and rising above circumstances.

Above all is choosing, moment by moment, to live in the truth that knowing Jesus is enough for joy in any circumstance.

I continued to write daily an hour or so, working on the next three books simultaneously: a devotional book (EDIFIED!), a book on leadership (EFFECTIVE: Learning to Lead Yourself Well), and this autobiography.

Picture: in our last weeks in Germany, 2011