Notes from Sunday Morning talk

Good morning Grace Church, wow what a short journey it has already been. I am proud to announce that God is alive and strong in Honduras. Many many great things have happened this past year, two name a couple, Mercy International established our first church building in Agua Caliente, not only is it our first church in the mountains, it will be our staging area to send teams further into the mountains to reach the unreached. No one else has such an incredible in to the territory we call Opalaca Mountains. We want to take you on a journey with us to the Opalaca Mountains.

“When you sit back with a good cup of coffee you are engulfed in the aroma, the taste, the acidity, and body of the brew. You take in all the dimensions of the cup – yet this is only the surface. Swirling beneath are worlds within worlds of culture, custom, ecology, and politics. All of the major issues of the twenty-first century – globalization, immigration, women’s rights, pollution, indigenous rights, and self-determination – are being played out through this cup of coffee in villages and remote areas around the world. The coffee trade is immense, second only to that of oil in its value. It is also complex, with several levels of middlemen removing the 28 million growers in fifty distant countries far from the ultimate consumers, far from this cup.”

“Not all coffee growers look like Juan Valdez, a Latin male with a big moustache and a smile, dressed in clean white linen. Coffee farmers come in all shapes and sizes, colors, and genders. There are coffee growers from all Christian persuasions and from an abundance of indigenous religions, as well as Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. There is even a coffee-growing community of Black Jews in Uganda. Underlying the various coffee cultures are profoundly different understanding of the dance of good and evil, of communal responsibility and personal freedom –Yet what they all share are the common dreams of good health, love, food on their table an education for their kids and a great sense of humor.” – from The book JavaTrekker

That is where we come into play. In the Opalaca Mountains is a very unique simple minded group of people called the Lenca Indians. Mercy International was the first group to reach out and go to them, now we have three pastors living among them. And that is only the beginning. We have a dream that one day we will not have to hike 5 hours to get to the first village in the mountains. There is already a road being cut into the mountains, this road will help us get to our base camp faster and help assist in getting food and materials to the villagers we work with. We have a dream that we will never have to hike a near starved family out of the mountains to get them nutrition and medical care. We dream that one day we will have a church run by local pastors in every village in the mountains. We dream that one day the Lenca women will be educated and will not have to rely on a drunken man, and we dream that the boys will grow up to be Godly men, not cowards who abuse there women and children, and finial we have a dream that one day we will not be needed in the Opalaca Mountains, and we will be able to set our sights on the next location in need of God’s blessing and love. All of this can take place because of this one cup of coffee .

How are we going to achieve these goals? First off, I would like to invite you to our Friday night celebration, we will be celebrating Opalaca Gold Coffee in style. During this celebration we will be sharing with you more information about Opalaca Gold coffee and the people who grow this unique coffee. For this event we have partnered with World Garden a new restaurant opening this week in Bentonville. 20% of the evenings profits will go directly back to Mercy International for future investments with the Lenca Farmers of Opalaca Gold.

Secondly we understand what is laid out before us and we know that it is not a plan designed for one or two people to be involved in. We need you, we need your skills, your creativity, your willingness, your prayers and your financial support for the long haul.

To start with, we want you to know we take our biblical commandments seriously, we are commanded to tithe just like everyone else, so we take and budget out our first fruits and tithe regularly, we support a church in Honduras as well as here, we also are in the market and praying about supporting another missionary. Next we want to give you a breakdown of our financial donors, YTD we have had 52 people give donations directly to our ministry. Of that we have 6 people pledge to support us on a monthly basis. We are running short $700 a month. We are in need of additional monthly supporters. One additional note, most of the farmers that we work with in Honduras speak Spanish, my Spanish is very poor and I am in need of going to Language school for a very long time as Ellen our Spanish tutor can contest, which costs a lot of money, however, I am lucky my wife is learning Spanish much faster than me and will not require near the training that I need. All of that to say, Language School is not part of our monthly operating budget and will require additional capital for us to attend. If you would like to know more about Mercy International, our Friday night celebration or would like to discuss our budget in detail please contact me or Corbett.

Bitterness is a poison

Bitterness is a poison! Unfortunately it runs ramped and is fueled by pride. By the way Pride is the root of all evil and sin in my book. I have recently been down and out and dealing with a lot of pride type issues. I just haven’t been myself lately and couldn’t quite put my finger on the pulse of what was actually going on.

As always when I get down and out I find myself wanting to go walking in the woods. I have done this type of self therapy off and on for years. Any time my cosmic waves were not in line, which seems like daily, I would find myself wanting to go off into the wilderness to think, and pray and get right with God. Usually during these adventures which are what they usually end up being, I would find myself near water. Of course living in the Ozarks this is not too difficult to do. Not too long ago while studying the bible, I had a revelation. God wants us to get away from the hustle bustle of our everyday lives. Throughout the bible God sent people into the wilderness, when they were gone, God would talk to them and reveal to them things that were important. Jesus went into the Wilderness for 40 days, when he came back he started his ministry. The wilderness is a special place in my heart that I do not take lightly. I am not saying that God will not talk to you unless you go out into the wilderness where all the bugs and snakes are, I am sure God will talk to you on the concrete floors of inner city wherever. I think the main point is to remove yourself from your comfortable surroundings and remove distractions. I have found when I do this; I can hear God more clearly. He is always there and always guiding, I just do not always hear, I am too busy doing and not busy listening. That is why I have found it such an important time for me to go get lost in the wilderness. I remove all distractions and get busy with God.

So here lately, I have been very busy with ministry, doing ministry stuff that I have not been getting busy with God. I have been busy trying to do God stuff without God in the mix. When this happens, the gateway for demonic stuff floods in. This is why I have been in a funk lately. The flood gates have been open, and I have not looked for God to shut the gates. My biggest sin that has crept in lately is bitterness. I have always been the one who works my tail off to get things done, and feel like I am just getting buy as well as meeting my family’s needs. Lately I have witnessed others getting things done with little visible work. This of course frustrates the fire out of me, and makes me want to cry out why Lord, why do I do the things I do to get a little when I see others doing little and get a lot. Of course this is selfishness and bitterness. Yea go ahead and throw pride into the mix as well. To be filling like this I am defiantly not walking with the Lord nor is that Honoring God.

So I decided I was going to study bitterness, it was consuming me and I needed it to stop. After spending a couple of days in quite time I was able to piece it together. Once I knew why I was bitter, I needed to understand bitterness better and needed to know how to get over it. In Hebrews I learned that love keeps no record of wrong but bitterness will only dwell from within and fester up and magnify itself until it controls our thoughts and starts controlling our actions. In Hebrews we are told that bitterness is a dangerous root and further more it is poisonous. It is like a disease, like a cancer that can spread throughout the body. One bitter person can take down an entire room full of happy people. It is part of the demonic effects the disease has on humans. In my studies I came across 5 qualities of a bitter person. 1. A bitter person tends to justify their bitterness. 2. They tend to be overly critical of self and or of others. 3. They secretly hope for miss-fortunes of others and when miss-fortunes happen they celebrate them. 4. If one person of a group of people offend, the bitter person can write off the entire group of people that person belongs to. Lets say you are Republican and you do not like the way Bush ran things. So you become bitter and you tend to want to write off the entire Republican Party. Another example would be for a woman to be hurt by one man and to say all men are evil because of the one. 5. Bitter people tend to struggle to see bitterness in the mirror. Lucky for myself, I was able to detect the bitterness that I was dealing with and was able to ask myself the questions needed to fix the problem “With whom and or what am I bitter about? Once I found out the underlying bitterness, I am able to get down to work on resolving my issues. So how do I fix my bitterness? I looked to Ephesians 4:31 there I was told what to do: 31”Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice”. And when you read on to verse 32”Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you”. I am told to forgive the same way Christ forgave us. So sure that sounds easy, to sum it up with two words we can kill the root of bitterness “With Forgiveness” So the question to really ask is, are we carrying around empty baggage that we needed to get rid of long ago. Once the incident happened we need to let it go. If an abuser lays a hand on me, at that moment even though I do not want to I need to forgive him. If I do not release the incident to God, I will allow him to continue to lay a hand on me and continue to violate me in my mind. Out of that grows resentment that turns into hatred that turns into sin that makes us as bad as the one who sins against us.

To remove bitterness is a process, that has to take time. Even if you don’t want to do it, to start, try saying I forgive during your prayer time. Continue to do this over and over. Build on your forgiveness just as we are commanded to do in the bible. To totally end our bitterness we need a deep spiritual cleansing of God. And if that is not enough I then pulled out Mathew 6:14-15 “For if you forgive others 1 their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 6:15 But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.” That pretty much summed it up for me, “if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.” I do not want to go down that way. One last quote from the bible on bitterness comes from Proverbs 14:10 “Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.” This last one was for me, I was suffering from bitterness from within, no one else shared my bitterness, it is mine only mine, I am to blame and only I can fix with Gods help. Welcome to the road to healing wellness. The long journey that is settled between myself and God. I am so glad that God is slow to anger. I would be in a lot of trouble.