A Diagnosis of Self

It is incredible what we are willing to do to make others believe we are faithful followers of Christ – everything except actually following Him faithfully. We wrap ourselves up and boast in our “good” works while our secret sins devour our hearts. So you live by the rules, but what is your motive? If you stop at simply fleeing from sin, you are just religious. It’s fleeing to Jesus that makes a Christian.

“You can run from God either by breaking His rules, or by keeping them. The former says God doesn’t own me. The latter says God owes me.” – Tim Keller

We do nothing to earn the Gospel, but if we do nothing in response to the Gospel, then we never understood the Gospel. Just slapping the title of “Christian” on everything does not automatically make you, your organization, or your efforts righteous or useful to God and His kingdom. This can lead to a place of self-entitlement and self-righteousness whereby you behave and maybe even think to yourself that God is so grateful to have you on His team and at least you are not like all the other people around you.

 Take a moment to look at Luke 18:9-14. Jesus is giving an example to some people who were pretty self-righteous. Two men went to the temple to pray. The first was a Pharisee, the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee boldly approached the presence of God in the temple. His prayer went something along these lines (our paraphrase), ”God, I thank you that I am not like those other people – greedy, unrighteous, sinners, our even this tax-collector. I go above and beyond what everyone else does, I give more, I pray more, I am more righteous”. That’s a whole-lot of I’s .

The tax-collector, didn’t walk close to the presence of God in the temple, but hung his head, and began striking his chest, crying out to God, “God, turn your wrath from me, a sinner!”  Verse 14 reads, “I  [Jesus] tell you, this one [the tax-collector] went down to his house justified rather than the other [pharisee]; because everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Web MD style, lets look at our hearts and diagnose ourselves according to God’s word.

1.     Ask yourself honestly, what do I think about and talk about, positively or negatively, the most ?

a.     If its yourself- you are an idolater glorifying yourself

b.     If its others – you are an idolater glorifying other people (spouse, children, classmates, boss, etc)

c.      If its your work – you are an idolater glorifying your job, efforts, or your income and standard of living

d.     If it is the life, works, death, and resurrection of Jesus you are not an idolater but a worshiper of the true God

Matthew 12: 34b “ for the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart”.

You always talk about what you love. Check your heart.  Are you an idolator? Repent. Turn to Jesus.

2.     Ask yourself honestly, what kind of fruit am I producing?

The Bible explains in Matthew 7:17-19 that everyone is producing fruit. We are able to identify those who are of God and those who are not by their fruit. Good trees produce good fruit; bad trees produce bad fruit. The question is, how do you distinguish between what is good fruit and what is bad fruit?  You do so through:

a.     Spending time studying (not just reading) God’s word. As you read it, apply it to your own life, not just mentally diagnosing other people’s sin by the Word of God but looking for your own sin and seeking to put it to death daily. 

b.      Also, spend time in prayer, not just over things that seem overwhelming or because it’s what you are supposed to do, but do so because apart from constant communication with God you cannot possibly produce good fruit! Even fruit that to others looks good will not come from a place of worship to the Creator of the universe if it is not being covered in humble prayer.

c.      What are you doing for others? Are you slandering them, ignoring them, or devoting yourself to prayer with and for them? Are you providing for their physical and spiritual needs? Are you seeking Godly counsel to direct you to Christ, rebuke your sin, and pray regularly and fervently for you? Are you doing that for others? Husbands, are you leading your wives in God’s word and in prayer?  Are you loving them as Christ loves His bride, the church, and encouraging them to grow in Christ as well as in things they enjoy? Are you communicating with them face-to-face? It is not enough to simply provide financially.  Wives, are you submitting to your husbands? Are you being the helper that God made you to be, spurring him on toward Christ? Fathers, are you leading your Children? Are you praying with and for them? Are you opening God’s word with them daily? Are you being real about your struggles now and in the past with them? Do they see you as a loving and fun dad or a perfect model of what they will never be able to live up to? What does your life and relationship with your church, friends, co-workers, spouse, and kids communicate to them about Christ?

3.     Ask yourself honestly, what are my motives for the things I do? It’s fake Christians who give Christianity a bad reputation (2 Tim 2:19). 

a.     Do you do these things so that others will think you are a “good person” and a true believer? If so, you are an idolater. Merely professing faith is not enough and it will be revealed through your words and fruit. Are you seeking short-term fame or eternal glory with Christ? If the idea of eternity is not present, then it is unlikely that humility is present.

b.     Do you do these things out of guilt? You can’t guilt yourself into spiritual growth. Eventually it will burn you out and you will be a lifeless shell of a person seeking righteousness and justification through works and religion rather than Christ.  God lavishes us with grace.  It would be better to do things worshipfully and less often than more often and it be a religious job. That is exhausting!! There is no condemnation for those in Christ.  We have no need to do things out of guilt but we have all the reasons in the world to do things out of joy and grace knowing that He who is working in our lives is continuing the work until He returns! And then we get to spend eternity enjoying Him!! If that is not your motivation or that doesn’t excite you, check your heart!

Righteousness comes through Christ alone! You cannot inherit righteousness. You cannot earn righteousness.  It is a gift that comes only through accepting Christ as the Savior of the world, the author and perfector of your faith, and the only way to become righteous and gain salvation.

You won’t celebrate the righteousness you’ve been given through Christ’s perfect life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection if you are busy polishing the righteousness you think you independently have. Yes, God desires joyful obedience from us. Question is, are we obeying for the joy of it or so God will owe us for it?

Grace is Dangerous

I think that most of us know in our heads that God is self-sufficient; however, in our hearts we believe that He is dependent on us, our successes or failures, our joys or sorrows, or even our decisions. 

God’s glory depends on no man!

James 4:14 humbles my heart when it tells us that we are merely a vapor in the wind that will appear for a little while and then vanish! The entire Bible paints the perfect plan of the Father where He establishes all things and brings back to Himself all the glory and honor that He alone deserves. Since He has established all things, there is nothing we can bring to the table that He does not already possess. Everything we are given, each day and all that comes with it, are all a testament to the Lord’s grace.  Our very existence is His, we owe Him everything. He owes us nothing!

Acts 17:25 reads, “And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else”. He is lacking in nothing and although He doesn’t need us, the greatest mystery to me is that He loves and wants us to come to him in a sanctifying relationship. The Almighty cares about my mundane life! Who am I that the Creator of all things is mindful of me?  

We need to understand the point of Grace. God does not give us grace as a guilt trip. We don’t have to do “good things” for God. He recognizes that we are incapable of perfection. Hence, grace.  Therefore, as sinners saved by grace alone through faith alone, it is a joy to serve the Lord and be under His sovereign authority. It can also seem dangerous! If I were saved by my works then can there be a limit to what God asks of me because I would have put in half of the work. However, since I am a sinner saved simply by God’s grace, by no works of my own, there is nothing He cannot ask of me! This seems dangerous (and it is dangerous to our selfishness and pride), but it is where completeness of joy takes place!

When we come to the realization that God is unimpressed with us and unshaken by our attempts to dethrone Him in our own lives, we will recognize that our main concern should be to glorify His name rather than our own. Only then will we understand that He is self-sufficient. 
His Glory is top priority.

You Are Asking - We Are Finally Answering!

A lot of you have asked questions about our home, our food, the people we are here to serve, etc. 

This is our attempt to answer you all:

1. We are in Kisoro, Uganda. It borders Rwanda and the District of Congo. We are in the middle of the Virunga mountain chain and have the gorgeous view of an inactive (supposedly) volcano. We live in a quaint tourist town. This is one of the last places that people can come and see mountain gorillas. No,  we unfortunately have not seen any primates since we have been in Africa, although we are keeping our eyes open for them. 

2. We are renting a home! We had three to choose from in the entire area. Only the wealthy have spare homes to rent. Apparently everyone who took the time and effort to build a hut decided they wanted to keep it for themselves and not have a guest house for random missionary mzungus (white people).! Who'd a thunk it? Ha! 

Our home is inside of a compound, or a family's yard that is surrounded by a large wall made out of volcanic rock. It is a completely cement building with two bedrooms!  We do have a small kitchen- meaning a room with a sink- and two bathrooms - meaning two toilets. Yes, we do have water that comes through pipes into the house. A water retention tank that is held about 15 feet in the air outside our home uses gravity to feed the water through the pipes.  There are no showers and no hot water. We boil water and mix it with sink water in a bucket to bathe. We also wash our clothes in buckets and hang them to dry. It's pretty sweet!!  We bought the hardest pieces of foam ever created to use as a mattress. We put it inside of our tent, which is inside our room and functioning as our mosquito net bed! It is absolutely perfect! 

Because of the high crime rates, nearly every home and business has metal bars on the windows and doors as well as high walls with either spikes, broken glass, or barbed wire on top. We do have the barred windows and doors! Our wall has nothing on top of it though because the people we are living with have two guard dogs (which, terrifyingly enough, had never seen white people and at night they circle our house). The guard dogs keep us much safer than anything on top of the walls ever could and we are thankful for them. No, we have never felt unsafe in Africa. Because we are white we are pretty bizarre, therefore, we are mostly just ogled at constantly. 

We have been cleaning, painting, and fixing up our rental home in the hope that when we leave, the family we are renting from will be blessed with a nice place that they can rent again for a higher price or use to give to others in the community. 

3. Yes, we are eating! Before we left the Kampala area we bought 2 enormous bags of rice that should last us months. We are buying our food from shops on the streets near our new home. For example: a few days ago we purchased 16 tomatoes, 5 onions, 16 bananas, 16 eggs, and a loaf of bread for just over $6 USA. (We actually kind of feel bad for you all not having access to these awesome, local, organic goodies at these prices.) No, we are not buying meat off of the side of the road. We actually don't have much access to protein. We have continued the Thursday night date tradition so we do go eat at a local tourist restaurant that is trustworthy. It has some pretty awesome hamburgers and cold colas. We drink a lot, A LOT of coffee! Their coffee is grown locally too and it is spectacular! We buy bottled water for drinking and brushing our teeth. We are also taking vitamins everyday to make sure we stay healthy. 

4. We are here to help serve the Batwa Pygmies. They have been relocated to Kisoro after being bullied in the District of Congo. They were given governmental housing inside the boarder of Uganda, however, they are a people group that were jungle natives. No one taught them not to have a fire inside a building so they burned down a lot of the housing. The other housing was fled because they were terrified of the sound of rain on the metal sheet roofs. They are also despised by the locals. There are some other details but the main point is that they are unreached and homeless. Our mission is to show them the redemptive grace that only comes from salvation through Christ. We hope to build disciples that build disciples. That is the point. Secondary to that, we want to partner with the Pygmies to help them build new homes for themselves and support one another as future brothers and sisters in Christ. We are also praying that from a transformation through Christ alone, the local community will see how incredible the change is in the Batwa Pygmies and desire a change toward Christ for themselves. 

5. No, we do not have a mailing address. They literally do not deliver any mail in this area. None. Our minds were blown too. 

6. What is it like? It's cold! Not what we really expected of Africa. The temperature is getting down to the mid 50's and it is rainy season. Sometimes it rains all day and all night. The area we are in is absolutely gorgeous; however, there is trash littering nearly every ounce of ground you can see. There are tons and tons of people and livestock everywhere you look! EVERYWHERE! A lot of tiny children just walk in the sides of the roads by themselves at all times of the day. The driving is as ridiculous as it is in other areas of Africa. It's terrifying to say the least. Unlike the areas near Kampala and Jinja, the people of Kisoro actually utilize the ground well to grow their own crops. On almost every hillside you can see lage squares from their agricultural pursuits! It is pretty neat! 

We know that many questions are probably still left unanswered but hopefully we put a dent in the amount!  If you have any questions that you just need answered that we did not cover - please ask! 

Why "I Die Daily"?

'I Die Daily' is a reminder to us to die to ourselves and to live for Christ.. EVERYDAY.
Often times people are told that upon coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit that they are given a new life... which is true! But at the same time your flesh must die. In fact, because we have been born into a broken and sinful world and still live in the flesh, this death to ourselves is a constant process. A daily choice.

Luke 9:23 reads:
And He said to all, "If anyone would come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me"

Straight talk. No run around.
2 things to note:

• Jesus makes an open offering by saying,"if anyone".  No one is excluded, all are given the invitation to follow.
• The cost is denying yourself daily. Not sometimes or when it is convenient. Every day. Continually. A never ceasing death to self. 

Our prayer is that our lives will be so transformed by the redemption and grace found in the life, death, and miraculous resurrection of Jesus that our daily dying to self will be a joy, not a burden. We wish to mirror Galatians 2:20- "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live,  but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

May we die daily to ourselves to the Glory of God.

We Are Giving In

After a plethora of emails, facebook messages, texts, etc. we are finally giving in and starting a blog (a bit begrudgingly though)! We love that everyone wants to know what we are up to and in the whirlwind of what our lives have been in the last few months...we would like to know what's going on just as badly as some of you! However, (*Disclaimer) we are not making any promises to keep this up to date. We will do our best to post often about what God is up to in our lives. 

Thank you all for your continued support! 

-Chase & Mere