Hear young ladies, Hannah Farver and Lindsey Wagstaffe, speak about beauty. Beauty that is pleasing to no man's eye but to God.
Why did God create women?
What is true beauty?
What's the point of purity?
Modesty? Femininity?
We've wondered too.
Ask the world what womanhood is about, and you'll get a blank stare in return. No one knows. Young women are devoid of any vision beyond popularity, fortune, fame, a cute guy, and a dream career. From the glorified feminist ideals promoted on theater screens to the hurting, provocatively dressed twelve-year-old girl at school, it's unavoidably clear: our culture's idea of "womanhood" is a miserable, twisted version of the truth.
God had something greater in mind. From the start of creation, women were designed to live beautifully. But God's idea of beauty isn't about physical characteristics or the approval of others. It's about loving the God who created us for His glory, and enjoying the unique design He's given us.
Inner beauty is distinct. It's not intrinsic. It doesn't come naturally or easily; this beauty develops slowly in the heart, as a believer learns to love Christ more deeply. The more passionate for the Gospel we become, the more our hearts grow to reflect His image.
The goal of Beauty from the Heart is to nurture this growing beauty, and counter our culture's ideal for womanhood with God's breathtaking vision. Our one day conferences are designed to refresh young women (and their moms) with a renewed desire to live solely for Christ.
If you are interested in attending the UNASHAMED conference, please get in touch with Christin A. of SIBFK-AAFC through her mobile no. +639283247664 or you can email her at christin.alvarez@gmail.com.
Many young people don't like reading. And for sure they'll loathe history reading. Just like the history maker, Ulrich Zwingli, below--and most likely (though we hope not) his story will be ignored.
As Christians, we should know how God has blessed our faith and how it survived the persecutions throughout the centuries. This we can only know if we take time to read history. Gilbert Blythe once said in the Anne of Green Gables books,
"The folks who lived before me have done so much for me that I want to show my gratitude by doing something for the folks who will live after me. It seems to me that is the only way a fellow can get square with his obligations to the race."
What he said has so much profound truth in it. Our forefathers have gone through so much to keep the faith. They were kept in dungeons, chained, burned in stakes so they can hand down their faith to the next generation. On and on to the next generation. To our generation. The faith they fought for is the faith that we have now.
Let their stories be an inspiration as we keep on with the fight.
ULRICH ZWINGLI
Militant Swiss Reformer
"For God's sake, do not put yourself at odds with the Word of God. For truly it will persist as surely as the Rhine follows its course. One can perhaps dam it up for awhile, but it is impossible to stop it."
Ulrich Zwingli, the city chaplain, stood before the Zurich City Council in January 1523. The winds of reform had made their way over the Alps from Luther's Germany, and Zwingli was arguing 67 theses, beginning with "All who say that the gospel is invalid without the confirmation of the church err and slander God." Though 28 shy of Luther's 95 Theses, published some six years earlier, Zwingli's arguments were more persuasive: authorities gave him permission to continue his preaching, which emphasized Christ first and the church second ("Christ is the only mediator between God and ourselves," said another of Zwingli's theses). The Reformation in Switzerland was now well on its way, and Zwingli would play the key role in the early years.
Anxious For His Charge
Zwingli was born to a successful farmer in the Toggaburg Valley of the eastern lower Alps. Here Zwingli developed a deep love for his homeland. Later he translated one line of , "In the beautiful Alps, he tends me," and he used the Rhine River as an illustration of a key theme of his preaching: "For God's sake, do not put yourself at odds with the Word of God. For truly it will persist as surely as the Rhine follows its course. One can perhaps dam it up for awhile, but it is impossible to stop it."
But it took Zwingli years to discover the power of this Word. After graduating from the University of Basel in 1506, he became a parish priest in Glarus. From the beginning, he took his priestly duties seriously. He later wrote, "Though I was young, ecclesiastical duties inspired in me more fear than joy, because I knew, and remain convinced that I would give an account of the blood of the sheep which would perish as a consequence of my carelessness."
The feeling of responsibility for his charge (rather than, like Luther, a personal search for salvation) motivated Zwingli's increasing interest in the Bible. In an age when priests were often unfamiliar with the Scriptures, Zwingli became enamored with it, first after purchasing a copy of Erasmus's New Testament Latin translation. He began teaching himself Greek, bought a copy of Erasmus's Greek New Testament, and started memorizing long passages. In 1519 he began preaching from the New Testament regularly.
Privately Zwingli also started challenging the customs of medieval Christendom he thought unbiblical. He had struggled with clerical celibacy for some time (and even admitted that as a young priest, he'd had an affair). In 1522 he secretly married. That same year, he broke the traditional Lenten fast (by eating sausages in public) and wrote against fasting.
By 1523 he was ready to take his ideas to a larger audience, and in January he did just that before the Zurich City Council at what is now called the First Disputation. The Second Disputation came in October, and with further approval from the council, more reforms were carried out: images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints were removed from the churches; the Bible was to have preeminence.
Arguments Over Supper
Things moved rapidly after that. In 1524 he wedded his wife publicly, insisting that pastors had the right to marry. In 1525 he and others convinced the city to abolish the Mass, with its emphasis on the miracle of transubstantiation, and replace it with a simple service that included the Lord's Supper but only as a symbolic memorial.
As it turned out, it was the Lord's Supper that prevented the uniting of the German and Swiss reform movements. At a 1529 meeting at Marburg, called to unite the two movements, Luther and Zwingli met. Though they agreed on 14 points of doctrine, they stumbled on the fifteenth: the Lord's Supper. Against Zwingli's view, Luther insisted on Christ's literal presence. Zwingli balked. Luther said Zwingli was of the devil and that he was nothing but a wormy nut. Zwingli resented Luther's treating him "like an ass." It was evident no reconciliation was possible.
Zwingli died two years later in battle, defending Zurich against Catholic forces, and plans for spreading the Reformation into German Switzerland were ended. Still Zurich remained Protestant, and under the leadership of Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli's successor, this unique branch of the Reformation continued to blossom.
Suppose you are a soldier on the front line. The war was on. You load your arms with ammunition. You fired. One dead on the enemy’s front line. Two. Three. Four and until your bullets are gone. But the enemies kept coming. Their number seems to have not diminished despite all your firearm’s effort to hit them. You look beside you. Your fellow soldiers are still firing but some have the same problem that you have: lack of ammunition. You look behind and you see your troop’s lines thinning. You look back to the front. Amidst the thick smoke and dust your enemies are still firing and they’re killing your fellow soldiers.
The enemy’s front lines are closing in. They’re near. There isn’t much time. You flung yourself to the ground, reached for the radio in your pocket and called out, “Private Johnson here. Do you hear me?! Send more troops and extra ammunition! Get it fast! They’re closing in!”
Bullets whiz just inches above your head. Nobody answers. Three hills away in your barracks, your fellow soldiers are playing cards with others as spectators. Some are polishing their rifles. Some are in firing practice. Some are in deep argument of tactics for attacks. They were there but none heard you call. You frantically call out again as thick black smoke blinded you. Your call rang out but all that heard you was a room full of maps and defense and attack plans. And none of the soldiers you need. You cried out. Again, no answer. You coughed and breathed heavily as you cried out again wondering where they are. A bullet finally found its way and whizzed through your head. You’re dead. And nobody heard you.
That’s a picture I’ve drawn of how I see missions today. It’s so sad and heartbreaking that missionaries sent to far flung places toil hard and even get killed for His kingdom yet very few at home cares. On Sundays, we hear a lot about on how the Gospel should be proclaimed to the ends of the earth and every after Sunday, we forget and get on with our daily routines, hardly giving thought to the perishing.
I love what John Piper wrote in Don’t Waste Your Life about his “wartime” lifestyle based on 2 Corinthians 10:3-5:
“It tells us that there is a war going on in the world between Christ and Satan, truth and falsehood, belief and unbelief. It tells me that there are weapons to be funded and used, but that these weapons are not swords or guns or bombs but the Gospel and prayer and self-sacrificing love.”
As teens, we need to hear the message of wartime again and again. We need to gear ourselves for war. Easily do we get blinded and drawn with what the world has to offer. Fashion, technology, music, socializing, fun things (cute little things for us girls), and school can easily make us forget the work of the Gospel and our part in it. We forget that billions have no notion yet of who Christ is and that people die everyday. How many of them have heard the gospel?
I have been reading Global: Vision, Passion, Action by L.E. Maxwell. In it is a story Maxwell shared of a missionary’s view of today's missions. It broke my heart and was ashamed of how many times I’ve let the thought of the perishing slip from my mind.
One of the hardest things a front-line soldier has to endure, whether in military world or in the missionary world, are the unknowing, unfeeling, unresponsive folk at home. Let me give you a page from a missionary's experience. He left his station and went exploring in a new needy area in the Far East. He said,
I spent some day finding out roads and details, sleeping in dirty longhouses, people about as wild as they could be, stark-naked men and women... running from me for fear... What were my reactions to this trip? Sadness, impatience, bordering on disgust.
Here's a vast new mission field, ready to be entered, waiting for many years because we have no missionaries to place there. Rich America, with its thousands of young people trained and ready for service, yet not one for these tribal areas. Over the radio, on my return to my station, I heard a music from America, young people singing, "We've a story to tell to the nations;" but it all seemed a mockery. I switched it off.
What more can we do to get these people evangelized? Do the people take us seriously, or are we just miserable enthusiasts? We write books, make movies, send thousands of newsletters, spend furloughs pleading for help, trying to get some to go as missionaries, and the people go out into eternity without Christ, while the church at home glibly sings missionary hymns.
How long are we going to ignore the calls they send from the front? I know, not all of us are called to be in the frontier but as far as missions is concerned, each of us have a part to play in bringing the Gospel to the ends of the earth. We are supposed to be soldiers marching to war. But what have we become? We have become soldiers in the barracks. Complacent. We are content in the safety of our homes, locked in the Christian lifestyle of peace. Never attempting to war with the world. Obliviously, our lives have quietly slipped back in agreement to the world. Our ears have tuned in to our iPods listening to the latest best-selling album, shutting the call on the front. The call that we must heed but chooses to heed not.
OM Philippines is organizing a summer mission challenge to young people like you!
Here are some details for the upcoming GLOBAL CHALLENGE PHILIPPINES:
Dates: Training - April 6-11, 2009; Outreach - April 12-22, 2009
Venue: Camp Jabez, Dasmarinas, Cavite Cost: P5,000.00 (inclusive of food, accommodation, travel during outreach, training materials but excluding travel to and from Venue)
Requirements: Application form & Pastor's Recommendation
While P5,000 maybe an expensive fee for a Filipino youth, please give this Global Challenge a thought. It is not camping but a short mission training program. It is not for recreation but for service.
Pray about this Global Challenge. Talk about it with your pastor. Tell your church about it.
Remember that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. God can use you to reap the harvest even in that short span of time of April 12-22, 2009. Make your summer worthwhile. Make it useful for His glory.
Now, is there enough reason for you to be discouraged? If there is, then always go back to the story of this man whom God used to lead America. His trust in God strengthened him to overcome failures and for that he became America's most loved president.
