Counting The Cost

Random thoughts on walking with Jesus in this turvy-topsy world

Counting the Cost in China

As I'm sure you all know by now  , I am involved in learning about and praying for persecuted Christians around the world. This is not in any way because I am "super-spiritual" - in fact, it is just the opposite. Sometimes I feel as if my faith is so small and weak. When I feel that way, I look to my suffering brothers and sisters in Christ as encouragement because they have learned through the darkest times that Jesus will sustain His children. Another of my interests is writing, especially journalism, and that is why this news report from China caught my eye. It reminds me how fortunate I am to be able to declare my faith in Jesus openly, even on the job, and without fear of violence or imprisonment. Please pray for Brother Zan this week, and I hope that his testimony of faith will inspire you as much as it did me!

 

“I am born for God only. Christ is nearer to me than father, or mother, or sister - a near relation, a more affectionate Friend; and I rejoice to follow Him, and to love Him. Blessed Jesus! Thou art all I want - a forerunner to me in all I ever shall go through as a Christian, a minister, or a missionary. “

Henry Martyn
Biography

 

 

 

 China - Monday August 21, 2006

JOURNALIST RELEASED FROM CUSTODY, BUT LOSES JOB

 

Zan Aizong had reported demolition of church, beating of hundreds of Christians.

 

 

August 21 (Compass Direct News) – Chinese authorities last Thursday (August 17) released Zan Aizong, a journalist who reported the Hangzhou City police using force to demolish an unregistered church building and beating of hundreds of believers on July 29.

 

Zan, 37, the former China Ocean News Zhejiang Province bureau chief, was arrested on Aug. 11 for “spreading rumors and disturbing social order.”

 

Two days before his arrest, Zan received a notice from his employer that he was “no more suitable for the job.”

 

“As a journalist, my responsibility is to report the truth, even though it means losing my job,” Zan said in a phone interview on Sunday.

 

Authorities initially issued a warning to Zan on Aug. 1, immediately after he published an article on a Chinese Internet website demanding the government thoroughly investigate the July 29 incident.

 

On Aug. 4, as he was planning a field trip to visit the demolished church, he was summoned by the Hangzhou City Police Bureau Internet Monitoring Branch. On the same day, authorities searched his office and confiscated his computer.

 

On Aug. 8, Zan made a phone call to the chief of police of Hangzhou City, expressing his concern about police abuse of power.

 

On Aug. 11, Hangzhou police summoned Zan again and notified him that he would receive seven days “administrative punishment” in Hangzhou City custody.

 

 

A New Christian

After Zan’s arrest, Reporters without Borders launched an appeal for his release. His Chinese friends also showed solidarity with him by writing articles and calling for international attention.

 

One of them, Yu Jie, is a famous Chinese writer who became a Christian about three years ago. Yu and his wife are the founders of the Beijing Church of Ark, where quite a few high profile dissidents found their hope in Christ.

 

According to Yu, Zan also visited his church several times and was recently baptized in a house church in Hangzhou.

 

“As a one-month long baptized Christian,” Yu recently wrote, “Zan Aizong is practicing what [is] taught in the Bible, ‘Mourn with those who are mourning, to be chained with those who are being chained.’”

 

Yu believes Zan’s experience in jail will only make him identify more with the plight of believers’ in the Xiaoshan Church, several of whom are still in prison.

 

Zan agreed. “I had a sense of joy when I was in custody, because I knew it was for the glory of God,” he told Compass. “We shall overcome the evil with good.”

 

Zan is not the only newly converted Christian among influential Chinese giving voice to social concerns. According to a recent report by Newsweek (July 24), growing numbers of lawyers, journalists, and other civic activists in China are converting to Christianity, finding support for their causes as well as personal strength in the teachings of Jesus.

 

“As a journalist, I report the truth; as a Christian, I spread God’s love,” Zan said.

 

 

For more information on Christians in China and the persecution they face for their faith, please visit The Voice of the Martyr's page by clicking HERE.

 

 

posted by: Jrobbins at 15:15 | link | comments (5) |
counting the cost in china

This Beautiful Mystery

Embracing Mystery

By Tracy Pursel

 

From Radiant Magazine

 

 

 

Life happens. Change is inevitable. Joy and pain coexist. How do we live an authentic faith when we find ourselves at a crossroads? What is it about the train wrecks of life, those pressure cookers that expose our deepest fears and reduce us to panic-stricken control freaks? When choked by fear, a moment of truth reveals just how easy it is to forget the faithfulness of God.

 

Why? Because the mystery of God—especially in times of trouble—chaffs against our human understanding. Steeped in a life of externals and immediacy, the uncertainty inherent in the mystery of God and His redemptive purposes transcends our finite comprehension, demanding that we push past our preconceived ideas and press on to new heights of trust in the unseen. And it isn’t easy.

 

While God never promised life would be fair, He did promise His presence—an assurance that gives us the breathing room to be real when life falls apart. The catch: learning how to hold this honesty in delicate tension with the temptation to conform God to our own images and expectations. This is no small feat considering the mistaken ethnocentric Western assumption that everyone, including God, is entitled to our opinions.

 

Embracing the mystery of God sustains us as we muster up the guts necessary to let go of our agendas and untangle ourselves from the web of our expectations. We are then free to surrender our hopes and heartaches to God. This release requires that we take our hands off the wheel and relax, even when it seems like nothing is happening and we feel hopelessly out of control.

 

Faith, rather than understanding, is required for this kind of trust. And if left unchecked, endless analysis in the attempt to put together all the pieces of life will paralyze us in our pursuit of God. Yes, healthy self-examination is an essential tool used to navigate through life’s storms; but at some point, we must choose to hold loosely to our own understanding so God’s character—rather than a desired outcome—will become the object of our faith.

 

Sure, the idea of surrender is scary. But authenticity with God, and each other, requires that we do not allow God’s faithfulness to be predicated upon a narrowly defined set of expectations. Too often, the result of such conditionality is a contingency-based faith that falters at the first signs of trouble. A faith rooted solely in our perceived promises of, rather than  the person of, God is doomed to fail, wasting the present moment and destroying the future by drowning in past disappointments and failures.

 

A life of faith is also one that refuses to settle for easy answers, willing to wrestle with life’s tough questions, especially that of God’s goodness. Do we, in an era marked by terrorism, poverty, depravity, greed and indifference, believe that God, by definition, is still on our team—and that He is still good?

 

That question has been answered unequivocally in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. God, clothed in Christ, chose to reveal Himself as the suffering servant, “a man of sorrows, and familiar with pain” (Isaiah 53:3, TNIV), responsive to cries of the broken and aware of life’s injustices. Christ’s ministry was one of solidarity and identification with the plight of the human condition. He met people at their point of need by feeding the hungry, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, healing the sick and embracing the broken.

 

Therefore, God’s goodness is not dependent upon a particular situation, culture or our finite understanding. Rather, it has been displayed through His covenant with Israel, testified by the prophets and fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ. By definition, God is good—even when He seems absent.

 

Even in His hiddenness, God promised to the nation of Israel, as seen in Deuteronomy 31:6 and later echoed through the writer of Hebrews, that He will never leave or forsake us—a promise that is steeped in His unchanging nature. So, despite His hiddenness and our spiritual tunnel vision, God will not let us go.

 

In trust, we can endure the battles of life. By confronting our hurts and speaking with unflinching honesty to the only who knows us better than we know ourselves, we acknowledge His sovereignty over our lives and allow the space necessary if true spiritual transformation is to take place. By inviting God into our struggles, we cease shaking our fists long enough to open our hands and accept His help in our time of need.

 

As a matter of fact, if we sit in the uncertainty and silence long enough, we will enjoy the sweet intimacy of a God who, in Christ, suffered the shame of the cross that He may enter into our struggles and meet us in our pain.

 

posted by: Jrobbins at 14:21 | link | comments |
embracing mystery

Music Matters

This is one of the (many) reasons I love Plugged In Online - a six part series on heavy metal! I was so excited to read about the roots of metal from a fellow music lover - and a fellow Christian. I will be posting each part of this series as it comes out, but also feel free to check out Plugged In's website for movie, music, t.v., and video game reviews, updated weekly. Rock on!

Metal Roots Reach Deep

 

Written By Adam R. Holz

 

Plugged In Online

 

 

Metal in the Mainstream (Part 1 of 6): An in-depth series on heavy metal music, its history, its subgenres, its performers, its fans, its messages and its influence on us all.

 

 

The summer of 1986 was a pivotal one for me.

 

 

Several years earlier I'd discovered what was then considered "heavy metal." In '83, I'd been one of 10 million people who purchased Def Leppard's Pyromania. And as I entered the awkward awfulness of what was to be my adolescence, other metal albums soon followed, such as the Scorpions' Love at First Sting and Van Halen's 1984. My first concert: Quiet Riot. I'm still not sure what my parents were thinking dropping me and my best friend off at the show—unsupervised—and barely 14.

 

 

But in August 1986, Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet hit the airwaves and MTV—and went supernova. I still remember the first time I saw the video for "You Give Love a Bad Name." For a 16-year-old who'd already spent a few too many years pining for unavailable (and often mean) popular girls, it was like a new national anthem. Yeah, I thought. They are to blame. They do give love a bad name. Soon after came the desperate tale of Tommy and Gina "Livin' on a Prayer," with Richie Sambora's famous talk-box guitar rhythm paving the way for Jon's storytelling. I was well and truly hooked.

 

 

I share that history to let you know that I know something of the appeal of screaming guitars, black leather and long hair. I spent many hours of my adolescence secluded in my bedroom, wailing these songs. I understand how music provides what seems like a tonic for tumultuous emotions. And before I surrendered my life to Christ later in my teens, those songs expressed my deepest feelings.

 

 

In some ways, little has changed since then. The genre's most recognizable element—driving, distorted guitars—still attracts new fans (and still prompts parents everywhere to yell, "Turn it down!"). In other ways, however, things have changed. Anger and aggression are longstanding metal themes; but many of today's acts also proffer an increasingly nihilistic message—a worldview bereft of hope and meaning. In such an existential vacuum, alienation reigns.

 

 

Occasionally, a socially conscious song or band veers from this trajectory. But too often, metal's main message is a bleak one. And since, clearly, music shapes our identities, especially in our formative years, it's important to pay attention to the messages certain songs or styles send. And if sales figures are any indicator, the styles and songs of heavy metal are connecting with a mainstream audience every bit as much and more than they connected with me 20 years ago.

 

 

The Molten River of Metal—A Brief History
The term heavy metal entered the vernacular in the early '70s as journalists and musicians appropriated it to describe the brooding sounds of seminal rock bands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, Deep Purple and Blue Öyster Cult. These bands (and later followers, such as Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Van Halen) blended blues-based rock with classical music influences—all amplified and distorted, of course.

 

 

By the early '80s, heavy metal began to fragment into subgenres. The variety that dominated the airwaves from the mid-'80s through the end of that decade would eventually be known as glam or pop metal. And the summer of '83 marked the beginning of its ascendancy. Driven by the single "Cum on Feel the Noize," Quiet Riot's Metal Health bumped The Police's Synchronicity out of the top spot on Billboard's mainstream album chart—the first metal album ever to hit No. 1. And in the years that followed, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Poison, Whitesnake, Ratt, Dokken and Mötley Crüe led a brigade of spandex-clad bands whose pretty-boy singers lamented lost love and celebrated hard livin'.

 

 

It's almost impossible to overstate these bands' cultural saturation. Def Leppard's 1987 album, Hysteria, is one of only a handful of albums ever to spawn seven Hot 100 singles; Hysteria anchored itself on the album chart for three years and moved 12 million copies in the United States alone. Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet also sold 12 million copies. Guns 'N Roses' harder-edged offering, Appetite for Destruction, topped them both, moving an astounding 15 million units. To put those figures in perspective, only one album in 2005, Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi, sold even 5 million units.

 

 

While glam ruled, however, an underground metal scene dominated by heavier, darker, faster bands also took root. Thrash metal's frenetic rhythms separated it from the more melodic and accessible stylings of glam. None of the "Big Four" among '80s thrash pioneers—Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax—initially enjoyed the mainstream success of their metal brothers. But thrash, arguably more than glam, paved the way for bands that would emerge in the 1990s and 2000s.

 

 

Winds of Change
Given pop-metal's prominence, few would have predicted its dramatic implosion. But with the emergence of Nirvana and Pearl Jam in the early '90s, fishnet stockings, Aquanet and self-indulgent guitar solos suddenly seemed, well, ridiculous. The good times of the '80s gave way to the angst-drenched '90s. The culture embraced the anxious, questioning and cynical attitudes supplied by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Cobain's desperate anthems skewered '80s superficiality, and those messages resonated with fans hungry for the substantive—if depressing—societal critique he provided. Overnight, grunge displaced glam. Goodbye leather, hello flannel.

 

 

That transition broke the big-hair stranglehold on rock radio. It also coincided with the emergence of a wider variety of metal practitioners, as grunge gave way to nu metal acts Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Slipknot later in the '90s. Simultaneously, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails marched at the vanguard of the industrial metal battalion, followed by Rob Zombie and theatrical shock rocker Marilyn Manson. Meanwhile, thrash finally began to thrive as Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer—now joined by Pantera—powered on.

 

 

Today, it could be said that thrash has given way to the metal's latest permutation: hardcore. Melding thrash with screamed—and grunted, growled and gargled—lyrics, metalcore bands such as In Flames, Underoath, Trivium, Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God are crawling out of what had been a niche market and onto the charts.

 

 

Metal's New Missionaries
Heavy metal, then, once a phrase describing a handful of groups, has morphed into an umbrella term that encompasses a huge spectrum of very popular subgenres. Power metal, hardcore, thrash, nu metal, black and death metal—even Viking metal—all vie for attention. As of this posting, the Web site Encyclopaedia Metallum identifies a staggering 39,811 metal bands worldwide.

 

 

In the last month alone, Slayer's latest, Christ Illusion, landed at No. 5 (in contrast, their 1986 album Reign in Blood peaked at No. 96). Breaking Benjamin came in at No. 2 and Stone Sour at No. 4. In the last two years, 10 other metal albums from bands such as Tool, Godsmack, Disturbed, Underoath and Mudvayne have debuted in the Top 10.

 

 

Next week, Adam peels back the first layer of the metal onion: alienation. And asks the question, "Why do so many loners have so much in common?"

  

Over the next few weeks, he'll look more closely at the worldview of the latest heralds of this bombastic genre—and at why their messages matter so much.

  

In the September issue of Plugged In magazine: "Christian Metal. Why parents and teens remain divided over hardcore music."

posted by: Jrobbins at 14:23 | link | comments |
heavy metal music

Promises, promises

God is Faithful

 

By Fern Horst

 

Weekly Devotional from Purposeful Singleness

 

 

"God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son

Jesus Christ our Lord." (I Corinthians 1:9)

 

 

 

I think that most of us have encountered unfaithful people in our lives. Unfaithfulness shows itself when someone fails to keep a promise made to us. The failed promise can be something as "little" as an agreement to meet for lunch, to vows from a spouse to love and cherish "till death do we part."

 

 

 

But no matter what it is, when unfaithfulness shows up it's always disappointing to us. We feel let down. Our trust has been betrayed. The truth of the matter is that we've all shown unfaithfulness of one degree or another, whether to God or to others. No matter what human relationship we enter into, or how much character and integrity a person

has, they will at some point disappoint us with their unfaithfulness. Knowing that this happens, and that we are guilty of unfaithfulness at times as well, can help us to forgive when someone we love fails us.

 

 

 

The wonderful thing is that there is Someone who is always faithful. There is Someone who always keeps His promises. And that of course is the Lord. Although there are times when we feel disappointed by Him it is always when we project our expectations onto Him or misinterpret His promises. It is at those times that we must reexamine our own interpretations of the promises He made in His Word, rather than become angry with Him for not meeting our expectations. There are times in my life when I've had to realize that what I thought God had promised me was really my wishful thinking.

 

 

 

His Word, the Bible, is where we need to focus our expectations. So often we go to the Lord for a "word" and we think we hear Him promise something to us, only to have that "promise" go unfulfilled. There are certainly times when God has promised things to individuals during special times of communication with Him. But there are also many times

when individuals project their desires onto what they think the Lord is promising them.

 

 

 

The true test of whether a promise is from the Lord is whether it comes to pass. If you think you've had a promise from the Lord for something specific in your life, hold it loosely with prayerfulness and a spirit of submission to whatever He has for you. Realize that the "promise" may be Satan's attempt to get you to think that God is unfaithful when it

goes unfulfilled. Our humanness can be so deceiving at times, even when we think we know our own hearts. If it comes to pass, we can praise Him. If it doesn't, we can still be confident of His goodness and love and faithfulness.

 

 

 

The promises that are written in God's Word are the promises that we can hold onto with confidence and boldness. They will always be true no matter what. God truly will never leave us or forsake us. He is faithful to forgive all our sins when we confess them to Him. His Word that we share with others will not return to Him void. He will supply all our needs according to His riches in glory. The Comforter will be with us always. God will direct our paths as we acknowledge Him. He will complete the good work He has begun in us. Not one of all the good promises of the Lord will fail.*

 

 

 

As we put our trust in the Lord we can be confident that the promises in His Word will never fail. No matter what circumstance in life He takes us through His promises will be real. We need to spend time reading and learning His Word, so that when we need His promises to encourage us and keep us going on the right path, they will be

just a thought away.