new birth

Over the last few months I've come home discouraged every week from English corner. I kept telling Chris, "I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall." During Christmas and Easter and the weeks before and after those holidays we had been having so many deep discussions, and I had been sharing and sharing, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. The conversations were so frustrating. Literally I feel sometimes like I'm in the desert holding a bottle of cool clean water to the cracked and parched lips of a dying friend. But my friend refuses to drink. My friend looks at me with eyes yellow and shining from dehydration and says, "That water may be good for you, but it's not the right kind for me." It doesn't matter to my friend that this water wasn't created in my home town or even my own country. It comes from a cool spring that runs all over the world. But my friend is content to lay down and die, not willing to even try a taste. Then last week I finished reading John Piper's "Finally Alive." This is an amazing book. It deeply impacted me and helped me understand the new birth much more clearly. I cannot even begin to break down the book. Just read it for yourself. In the last chapter Piper confirms what I already knew, that salvation is the work of the holy spirit, but God uses us to do this. There are many influences on one person's individual journey of coming to know Christ. I may not know what role I play, but God is using me. Piper talks about how just mentioning the name of Jesus Christ is powerful. I want to share this quote, "So if your heartache is for your own personal change, or for change in your marriage, or change in your prodigal children, or in your church, or in the systemic structures of injustice, or in the political system, or in the hostilities among nations, or in the human degradation of the environment, or in the raunchiness of our entertainment culture, or in the miseries of the poor, or in the callous opulence of the rich, or in the inequities of educational opportunity, or in arrogant attitudes of ethnocentrism, or in a hundred other areas of human need caused b some form of human greed-if your heart aches for any of these, then you should care supremely about the new birth. There are other ways of shaping culture and guiding behavior. But none so deep. None so far-reaching. None so universally relevant. None so eternally significant." My answer to this is yes, yes yes!!

I went into English corner last week with a fresh perspective more secure in the power of Jesus Chris and his power through me. We talked about real joy and happiness. I had many opportunities to share, but I trusted that God would use his truths in his timing and his way. Then right after we finished, a sweet high school girl who has been attending for quite some time asked me to share more deeply with her about where my peace comes from, and she really listened. Thank you Jesus! Thank you for the new birth! Thank you that you use this broken jar of clay for your eternal kingdom!