2 months into the roller coaster that is SBS

Wow....it's hard to believe it's already been 2 months since I've been in Taiwan. It's been a great 2 months, but it's also been interesting at times and just plain hard at other times, but God is faithful and He's been with me the whole way!

Like I said in my last post, God has been smacking me around a little and teaching and humbling and correcting and directing me over the last couple months. Acts was a really hard book for me, but not so much because of the book, but more because of what was happening in my life and because of what I realized was my pride.

On April 19, I received some really tough news that my good friend Anna Booth, who was on my DTS passed away because of some lesions she had on her brain and the complications from her surgery. This was some hard news to get cause she was such an awesome person to be around and was a good friend that I joked around with all the time during DTS, and also because it was so sudden.

Then during Acts, we had been talking about sharing the gospel again and as I had been praying and spending time with God, He put a friend of mine on my heart, who had deleted me off of facebook and had completely cut off communication from me without any reason. I felt God was telling me to message him, so I did and I found out that the reason that he had deleted me wasn't because of something I did, but because of how I had changed and how I was living for God and he had been hurt by the church before so he decided he didn't want to be my friend anymore. This was really hard on me and was a huge blow because this was a really good friend that had been there for me during some tough times, and although I knew that he had cut off contact with me, I had never really had time to process it and hadn't thought about it.

So these two things together combined really hit me hard and made focusing so difficult and I was feeling overwhelmed and hurting and everything all together, but through this God was speaking to me. He helped me understand that I have to swallow my pride and share with other's when I'm going through difficult times and struggling. He helped me realize that by not sharing I'm actually preventing people from being able to pray for Anna's family and for my friend and I'm not just hurting myself, but others too. This was really big for me because I've always been one to keep things inside and to be "strong" and not want to burden others with my problems, but I never ever thought that could possibly be pride until now. God had been talking to me through others about being vulnerable, but I had never made the connection until all of this happened.

I ended sharing with my class what was happening, and I've started a Monday morning guy's prayer time to give people a chance to share with each other what they're struggling with and be vulnerable with each other and to support each other. So far I've only been there for 1 morning because I was in Hong Kong the next week, but I'm really hoping this will be a blessing to me and all the guys in our SBS.

This lesson also helped with my pride in another way, because I ended up doing horribly on my charts that week and I really felt God telling me to remember that it's not about marks or about how awesome of charts I have, but it's about hearing Him and learning from Him.

These lessons continued this week. We were doing Romans this week, and because of my trip to Hong Kong I was behind from the beginning, and it was a huge struggle to make up any ground. I was having such a hard time concentrating and could just feel a horrible weight and depression on me, and I just felt like I wanted to quit and give up and go home. I had no idea what was causing it, and I tried everything from repentance to making amends with someone from many many years ago to just crying out to God. This gave me an opportunity to put into practice what God taught me during Acts, and I sent out a message to my fellow SBS students and to my friends from DTS and to my church asking them to pray for me, and it was encouraging the response I got from people.

Things got better; it was still a struggle to get through the book, but through it God showed me how I am in a completely different world over here and it is a much different spiritual atmosphere that I'm used to. Here there are only a small percentage of Christians, and the majority of people worship their ancestors, which creates a very heavy and difficult spiritual atmosphere. Because of this, God showed me that I need to be taking care of my body mind and spirit better by making sure I get enough sleep, making sure I'm taking time to just relax and enjoy myself, as well as spending time with Him everyday in prayer. It was kinda surprising to me that I never realized or thought of how different things are here compared to Canada or New Zealand, but now that I do, I know how to prepare, and I know that God will help me and will protect me from anything the devil throws at me.

So now that you've heard all about the struggles I've been having, it's time to tell a little about the awesome things that have been happening. First and foremost, God has put some awesome people around me here at SBS, and we are forging some great relationships that will last forever. It has been awesome getting to know everybody, and although we are all different and come from all edges of the world, we are all so similar in different way and we have an amazing atmosphere in our class.

An exciting thing for me has been that God has been giving me a bit of a vision for the future recently, which is something that He hadn't given me until now. During 1 Timothy, I was really meditating on the passage where Paul tells him not to let anyone disregard him because of his age, and it made me realize that I had disregarded myself because of different things throughout my life, whether it be because of age or inexperience or whatever. While I was thinking and praying about this God gave me an amazing vision of pioneering a rock climbing DTS and using one of my passions to bring people into His kingdom! It was amazing to hear God so clearly again and it was a message that went straight to my heart and lifted me up completely, especially since pioneering was an area that I had been disregarding myself in. Also, I had been seeking God and praying for more a vision lately because it was a little disheartening to be constantly telling people that I didn't know what the big picture was when they were asking what my plan was, so this was an answer to prayer.

This long term vision gives me more of an idea of what I need to do in the short term, which is to learn the language. Unfortunately learning languages is another area that I struggle in and disregard myself in, but I think God is trying to teach me that the bible wasn't lying when it says thatI can do all things through Christ (Phil. 4:13). I have a strong feeling that this vision is to be based in Taiwan, and since I am here for a while, I'm starting to try to learn more of the language and to set aside a couple hours a week to learn it, but what I really believe God is calling me to do is to spend 2 years here after this school is done learning the language. This is exciting and scary for me at the same time, but I am trusting God that He will lead me and provide everything that I need to do this. I'm also starting to talk with some people around the base that have learned the language and ask them about the schooling and what kind of ministry they did during school and things like that. I've heard from one of the guys on our base that he's gonna be studying Chinese and while helping get a surfing ministry started, which is what kinda started my thinking about using passions to spread the gospel, so I'm also gonna meet with him and see if I could possibly get involved in that ministry too.

So it's been an exciting last couple weeks, and I'm still seeking God for confirmation about what is next, but there's still a long way to go in SBS, so God has some time to confirm what He wants me to do. If you could all be praying that God would be leading and guiding me and that I wouldn't let my own desires get in the way of hearing what He wants me to do.

I could go on and on about what's been happening over here, but this has been a long enough post already. A quick note though - I had an amazing trip to Hong Kong and had an awesome time meeting with an old friend of my parents' Gerry Denbok who lives with his wife and son in Hong Kong. It was really uplifting to hear from a fellow Canadian who has been living in Asia for about 15 years or so and to hear stories about what God's been doing in Hong Kong and China.

I'm going to leave you with some prayer requests because I've felt God telling me that I need to keep you all updated on how you can be praying for me, and I know that you probably want to know what to pray for as well. Also, I'm going to try to write an update every week so that it's not such of a novel for you guys and to keep you up to date better.

Hope you're all doing great, love you all.

God bless,

Matt


Prayer requests:

• That God will continue to show me His vision for my life and will confirm the next step He wants me to take
• That God will help me to focus on Him and not forget why I'm doing this school
• That God will continue to provide me with wisdom, revelation, close friendships, as well as financially
• That God will continue to empower me to be the man that He created me to be
• That God will help me be able to learn some Chinese
• That God will help me manage my time effectively
• That I will be diligent with all the resources that God has given me

Time to get serious about sharing the gospel

Well, it's been a few weeks since I've posted, and they've been some interesting ones. We've been studying Luke, Acts, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, 1 Timothy 1 Thessalonians and we just started 2 Thessalonians, and God's been smacking me around here and there throughout them, which is always good, but difficult. I was going to only write about the last few weeks all in one post, but while I was writing about what God was speaking to me through Luke I realized that it had to be a post of it's own, so I will write again soon to give the rest of my update.

Throughout Luke, there was a big focus on sharing the gospel and how we all are called to share the gospel, and not only through our actions. This really convicted me and made me realize how I am willing to sell all my possessions, give up my career, leave my entire family and all my friends and move to the other side of the world, but I'm afraid to go next door and tell my neighbour about Jesus. This is a big problem to me. I was amazed to hear that of all the Christians that live in this world, only 5% will lead a person to Christ. That's a shocking statistic, and it helped me realize that I have to be a part of that 5%, and I have to do all that I can to encourage others to change that 5% to 6, 7, 8 or 20%.

It got me thinking about why I and others have a difficult time sharing the gospel. We live in a world where people hate absolutes and your are even looked down upon by some if you do believe in absolutes. We like to believe more in relativism and in finding your own truth and what is right to you is right and nobody should ever tell you otherwise. Unfortunately that in itself is WRONG. Truth is not relative and what is right for you is not right. Those arguments are contradictory and do not hold any water. You want to argue with me whether right and wrong are relative to what you believe? Well how about I punch you in the face because it seemed right to me, do you still believe that?? No way you would. There is definite right and wrong and truth in this world no matter how much people like to think otherwise. It is because of these beliefs that many Christians never share the gospel because they are afraid to tell somebody the truth. To me, it seems ridiculous when I think about it, yet it is still something that prevents me from sharing. We are so afraid of offending someone because we are right and know we are right, but unfortunately because we don't have a scientific or mathematical proof, we are scared to tell people. That's the problem with the age we live in is that we've completely lost faith in everything and always want a complete and undeniable scientific proof, but you won't get that with God because that would make faith absolutely useless. We do however have historical proof.

There are 4 detailed records that Jesus exists, they're call the gospels, the only problem is that people have decided that because they're in a religious book that they're not reliable, when in fact they are the most reliable historical books that we have today from that time period. The gospels were written as a record of the events of Jesus, Luke even states his purpose of writing an orderly account at the beginning of his gospel, and have the most manuscripts of any historical writing available. Not to mention, they were written astronomically closer to the dates of the actual events than any other literature of that time, which means that when they were written there were still eyewitnesses to the events around, yet they were not called inaccurate at that time, but now we decide that they are??? Interesting that we know what is the truth better than people who were actually there at the time. To argue that the gospels aren't reliable is to say that any history we have from that time is unreliable, yet people will agree with the writings of Josephus and other historians even though they were written way after the events took place and have very few complete manuscripts compared to the gospels. Basically to call the gospels inaccurate is absolutely ridiculous, and if you disagree I challenge you to read the book A Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, who is the former legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, who used to be an atheist but became a Christian when he started investigating Christianity because his wife became a Christian. Heck, even if you don't disagree I would still recommend reading that book because it is fascinating, but I also like that kind of stuff.

So if we can prove that Jesus existed, then why do people doubt so much? Some say that sure He lived, but He was just a great teacher and wasn't the Son of God, but if that was the case, then why did all but two (Judas killed himself for betraying Jesus, and John appeared to die of natural causes, but they tried to kill him and weren't able to so they exiled him to Patmos) of His disciples die proclaiming Him to be the Messiah?? If He wasn't really who He said He was, then what would compel them and countless others to proclaim His name until they were eventually killed?? I can tell you, it wasn't for popularity, read how many cities Paul is driven out of in Acts. It couldn't have been for money, the apostles didn't have many possessions and a lot of them sold what they did own and gave the money to those who had need (Acts 3:42-47, 4:32-37). And it obviously wasn't for power because you don't have much power in this world when you're dead. So if it wasn't for any of those things that men strive for, then the only logical reason they would ever do what they did is that Jesus died and rose again and was the Son of God. The greatest example that shows that this must be the truth is the account of Paul, who was formerly a Pharisee who tortured and killed Christians relentlessly and approved of the first Christian martyr's death, Stephen. This man who was out for the blood of all Christians was miraculously converted on the road to Damascus and made a 180 degree turn and went from persecuting the Christians to being the greatest evangelist that ever lived. If that's not proof that Jesus was the Son of God, then I don't know what is. And you have to remember that all these guys either were with Jesus when He was alive or knew the people who were with Him while He was alive, and all of this happened within 40 years of His death.

What I'm getting at, is why are we so scared about offending people by telling them that we know the truth, when we do in fact actually KNOW THE TRUTH?!?!?!?!? Just because they don't want it to be the truth doesn't make it any less of the truth. That's like being scared to tell a sports fan that their team lost the game because they don't want to upset them. Just because it's not what they want to hear doesn't mean it's not the truth. Anybody that goes and looks into Christianity with an open mind and really looks at the information should not in their right and logical mind be able to believe anything other than the fact that it is the truth. I think Lee Strobel (who was a complete atheist remember) said it the best when he said that after he had researched the Christian faith he realized that it would take more faith to not believe than it did to believe. Remember this isn't some guy off of the street, this is a man who has a Masters from Yale Law and won Illinois' top honours for investigative reporting during his 14 years as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers.

I know that some people will disagree with me and some may call me some not nice things because I'm willing to follow God and am willing to tell people that they should follow Him too, but that's not my problem. I know that this is the truth, and now I'm finally learning to not be afraid to say it. If you think I must be off my rocker and that I've been so misled, send me an email and I'll tell you what God's done in my life and how I know from my own experiences in my own life that He is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords and Creator and Ruler of this universe. It probably still won't convince you one bit, but I always enjoy talking about God and I'm not afraid to discuss some hard questions and even admit that I don't know all the answers, and I'm fine with that.

No matter what, I hope you all still enjoy reading my blog, and I promise that my next post will not have such a serious tone, but when God convicts you about something, you gotta listen to Him, even if it may not win you any friends.

Until next time, I love you and miss you all, and I hope that you are all having a fabulous May!

God bless!!