experiences and musings

I can't decide if I love that warm-climate cultural aspect where one must argue for a solid five minutes with one's friend about who is going to out-hospitality-ize the other. But either way, I experience it pretty much every week now, which has been glorious. Kristi and I had to take turns bickering with our dear Turkish friend who flat out insisted that we were destitute, struggling, poor college students who could not afford to have her over to our homes and provide the culturally-mandated refreshments and tea that must be present when entertaining. Therefore it only was right that she treat US to all the goodies at HER house.
Our come back was that we were her cultural informants and Americans who can darn well afford a few cookies and a spot of tea once every couple of weeks when she concedes to coming onto our turf.
However, it IS a little tricky to get to Kristi's place. I agreed to meet our friends on campus - where they knew how to get - and guide them to the house. It is a few blocks away down a rather curvaceous route in which Kentuckian drivers are often encountered and I didn't want to risk throwing my friends into flashbacks of their host country's insane driving laws (or lack thereof) distracting them from the route and getting them thoroughly lost.

So they called and I ran across campus, saw them waving out their window in the parking lot, let myself into the back seat and collapsed into a heap panting heavily. They chirped their hello's and then lapsed into their native tongue. Eventually they admitted that they were commenting on their discovery as to why I am so thin: they clucked in admonition when they pointed out that I apparently run everywhere.

(room mate, friend, and me playing dress up with my scarf)

I tried to balance small talk with guiding them through traffic and we finally parked. Sema got out of the passenger side of the car and spread her arms out in preparation for a big bear hug.
"Nice girl, I want to say hello to you. I have missed you, nice girl. Come give me a hug!"
I laughed and gave her a big hug and Fatmah came up behind me clucking her indignation that I hadn't given her the traditional peck on both cheeks accompanied by a hug first.
Sema has only been Stateside for about six months and so is far more timid in speaking English, but when she does makes it very very clear that she feels at home with me and Kristi and Colleen, and likes us a lot! Its encouraging and humbling and flattering and convicting, all rolled into one. These dear ladies aren't going to stay here, but will return to Turkey when their husbands complete the schooling they initially came here for. While I value them as friends in their own right, I am constantly reminded that I am one of the few witnesses to Christ they have ever met, and they will take these memories of me and my testimony back with them. However, so far it seems to be a generally good experience, which is good. :-)

(room mate sharing pictures of family on Facebook via an Iphone
I love how internationals usually own
better technology than I do.)

Today's sermon in Church was all about the difference between a 'Carnal Christian' and a person who is claiming to be a Christian but isn't. The point of the sermon wasn't to instruct Church Members on how to run around judging fellow members in the Church, but how to determine if I myself truly am a believer who is walking my talk. I have full assurance of my salvation, so the Sermon was generally encouraging, although I jotted down in my notes some areas of improvement. A funny quote from the sermon had to do with the Stainless Steel cookware someone had given my pastor and his family. He was jokingly complaining about how he now owns bizarre and strange cleaning products that had never graced his cupboards before, and how he was learning how to cook on lower heat temperatures. The reason being that the steel grabbed onto whatever substance he was trying to heat, sucked it into the grooves of the metal, and apparently then screamed "MINE!"
"You are supposed to grab onto Spiritual Truth like a stainless steel pan grabs onto a burnt egg! But what happens is that some Christians are like Teflon pans, and let the egg just slide right off. Yes, non-stick is BAD in this analogy!"
After laughing with the rest of the congregation, I thought about the different ways I've been trying to allow Spiritual Truth sink into the details of my life. Meeting with these Turkish Muslims regularly has really been a good sounding board. They ask hard questions that cause me to ask myself, my professors and my Lord questions that I had never thought to do before. I am constantly reminded of my inadequacies as a Christian and forced to turn to the Holy Spirit for help and guidance.
One of the application questions at the end of the sermon was 'What victories have you won lately? No victory is perfect, but what Spiritual Victories have you just WON, albeit imperfectly, in your life?'
I won't take the time to list all of them as this is getting long enough, but it was encouraging to have to mentally go through the list of areas the Holy Spirit is working in my life.
A big part of the sermon, though, was TIME.
A dear friend of mine who has been really struggling with being a Christian for the last year called the other night and we had a really good conversation. I hung up a little frustrated, though, at how much TIME it is taking him to grow into the strong man of God I know he could be.
The sermon reminded me that while sometimes God does work in quick, visible, miraculous ways, sometimes we are called to throw seed out into a field. Whether that field has good soil and just needs a good rain shower to make those seeds start to germinate... or instead get eaten up by birds when the cracked dry land does nothing with them, is in God's control. I'm called to continue casting seed whenever the opportunity arises.

I am so blessed to be given the opportunity to learn how to sow seed with my brothers and sisters in the Lord... despite all our various obnoxious imperfections and irritating quirks. ;-)

(3 missions majors and 2 counseling majors)

Again, I'm sort of thinking and musing and rambling out loud and trying to get my thoughts in order. However, my mom claims that her blog is there strictly for self-therapeutic reasons. I'm gonna lay hold of that excuse, and at the same time hope you've been encouraged and convicted and entertained by mine. :-)

~Princess Ouch~

Spurgeon

"He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it."

This quote from Charles Spurgeon was hanging above my friend's sink and I jotted it down. Very convicting. I've been exposed to quite a bit of Spurgeon this semester and love it. Its very convicting. Rather wordy at times, but can't blame the man - he's from the 1800's and an intellectual ;-)

A.W. Tozer: Bible Taught or Spirit Taught

The campus bookstore was passing out coupons last month and this Saturday was the last day I could use it, so I scurried on over and found a book by A.W. Tozer who I have often heard quoted but never actually sat down and read. So I picked up that and "Morning and Evening" a devotional by C.H. Spurgeon. My Grandma and her friend visited last week and gave me some 'playing money' and being the theological student I am of course spent the cash on food for the stomach and soul ;-)
Anyway Spurgeon is full of 1800's language and wisdom which I love. Tozer is a bit more contemporary and each sentence is a jewel of wisdom and biblical profoundness. I can't wait till summer when I can devote more than five minutes here and there to pleasure reading, although its looking like this summer is going to be buuuusy :-) Anyway I thought I would post one of his chapters so you could share in the profoundness of it. I hope you enjoy.

"Bible Taught or Spirit Taught?
It may shock some readers to suggest that there is a difference between being Bible taught and being Spirit taught. Nevertheless it is so.
It is altogether possible to be instructed in the rudiments of the faith and still have no real understanding of the whole thing. And it is possible to go on to become expert in Bible doctrine and not have spiritual illumination, with the result that a veil remains over the mind, preventing it from apprehending the truth in its spiritual essence.
Most of us are acquainted with churches that teach the Bible to their children from their tenderest years, give them long instruction in the catechism, drill them further in pastor's classes and still never produce in them a living Christianity nor a virile godliness. Their members show no evidence of having passed from death unto life. None of the earmarks of salvation so plainly indicated in the Scriptures are found among them.
Their religious lives are correct and reasonably moral, but wholly mechanical and altogether lacking in radiance. They wear their faith as persons in mourning once wore black armbands to show their love and respect for the departed.
Such persons cannot be dismissed as hypocrites. Many of them are pathetically serious about it all. They are simply blind. From lack of the vital Spirit they are forced to get along with the outward shell of faith, while all the time their deep hearts are starving for spiritual reality and they do not know what is wrong with them.
This difference between the religion of creed and the religion of the Spirit is well set forth by the saintly Thomas in a tender little prayer to his Lord:
The Children of Israel in time past said unto Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die." Not so, Lord, not so, I beseech Thee; but rather with the prophet Samuel I humbly and earnestly entreat, "Speak Lord; for Thy servant heareth." Let not Moses speak unto me, nor any of the prophets, but rather do Thou speak, O Lord God, the inspirer, enlightener of all the prophets; for Thou alone without them canst perfectly instruct me, but they without Thee can profit nothing. They indeed may utter words, but they cannot give the Spirit. Most beautifully do they speak, but if Thou be silent, they inflame not the heart. They teach the letter,but Thou openest the sense; they bring forth mysteries, but Thou unlockest the heart.... They cry aloud with words, but Thou impartest understanding to the hearing.
It would be hard to wrap it up better than that. The same thing has been said variously by others; however, the most familiar saying probably is, "The Scriptures, to be understood, must be read with the same Spirit that originally inspired them." No one denies this, but even such a statement will go over the heads of those who hear it unless the Holy Spirit inflames the heart.
The charge often made against us by liberals, that we are 'bibliolaters,' is probably not true in the same sense as meant by our detractors; but candor and self-analysis will force us to admit that there is often too much truth in their charge. Among religious persons of unquestioned orthodoxy there is sometimes found a dull dependence upon the letter of the text without the faintest understanding of its spirit. That truth is in its essence spiritual must constantly be kept before our minds if we would know the truth indeed. Jesus Christ is Himself the Truth, and He cannot be confined to mere words even though, as we ardently believe, He has Himself inspired the words. That which is spiritual cannot be shut in by ink or fenced in by type and paper. The best a book can do is give us the letter of truth. If we ever receive more than this, it must be by the Holy Spirit who gives it.
The great need of the hour among persons spiritually hungry is twofold: first, to know the Scriptures, apart from which no saving truth will be vouchsafed by our Lord; the second, to be enlightened by the Spirit, apart from whom the Scriptures will not be understood. "
A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous, chapter 10, 'Bible Taught or Spirit Taught.' Christian Publications 1955.