"Highest Place" by Desperation Band

Clay Dyer- Inspirational Fisherman

Explosion of China's Underground Church and what it means for the West

"Chinese Protestants and the West since 1949"
Written by ChinaSource
Wednesday, 30 September 2009 17:24

This article should be encouraging to all. Please read or read the article in its entirety at the link at the bottom!!!

"What has been the nature of the relationship between Christians inside and outside of China over the last 60 years?

From the dark years of the Cultural Revolution, the Protestant church has more than recovered its vigor and has see an explosion in numbers, particularly in the house church movement. Few unbiased observers would suggest that China has fewer than 50 million Protestants, and some estimates easily double this figure. Christianity has also enjoyed something of an image make-over. Once condemned as a feudal superstition, destined for the rubbish heap of history, even Christianity’s cultured despisers admit that it is associated with much that is good about Western progress. The Economist newspaper recently noted the contrast with attitudes towards the faith in Europe: “In much of Christianity’s former heartland, religion is associated with tradition and ritual. In China, it is associated with modernity, business and science.”1 In looking once again to the West for direction, many Chinese see Christianity as one of the secrets of success. Some scholars see interest in Christianity as tied closely to the popularity of Western culture more broadly or to the phenomenon of globalization generally.

Chinese Christians are participating as never before in the global Protestant movement. Many Chinese Christians no longer view the faith as Western, but as a world-wide movement—one that is gaining momentum. Nor do they reflexively look to the West for all of their insights. The old teacher-student relationship between Western and Chinese Christians is slowly breaking down. Though the faith is not unique to China, there may be a uniquely Chinese contribution to be made. Poised to dispatch legions of missionaries to the world, some to take on the re-evangelization of the West, the Christians are asking: “What can China do for Christianity?” Even in a country so steeped in the Confucian tradition, it is still possible for the student to become the teacher."

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.chsource.org/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=226&Itemid=80&lang=en

Louie Giglio- Laminin

More than 1 billion going hungry, U.N. says

(CNN) -- "The global economic crisis has caused a spike in world hunger that has left more than a billion undernourished, United Nations agencies said in a new report. "It is unacceptable in the 21st century that almost one in six of the world's population is now going hungry," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme. "At a time when there are more hungry people in the world than ever before, there is less food aid than we have seen in living memory."

The report by the WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization was released Wednesday, ahead of World Food Day on Friday.

Nearly all the world's undernourished live in developing countries, according to the report.

An estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger in Asia and the Pacific. An additional 265 million live in sub-Saharan Africa while 95 million come from Latin America, the Caribbean, the Near East and North Africa. The final 15 million live in developed nations. The number of hungry spiked as the global economic crisis took hold and governments pumped resources into stabilizing financial markets. The move meant smaller investments in agriculture and food distribution.

"World leaders have reacted forcefully to the financial and economic crisis, and succeeded in mobilizing billions of dollars in a short time period. The same strong action is needed now to combat hunger and poverty," said Jacques Diouf, director-general of the FAO.

"The rising number of hungry people is intolerable."

The report calls for greater investment in agriculture to tackle long and short-term hunger by making farmers productive and more resilient to crises.

"We know what is needed to meet urgent hunger needs -- we just need the resources and the international commitment to do the job," Sheeran said."


As Christians, what should our response to something like this be?

GETTING INTO GOD'S STRIDE

"Enoch walked with God." Genesis 5:24 "The test of a man's religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting on. The worth of a man is revealed in his attitude to ordinary things when he is not before the footlights (cf. John 1:36). It is a painful business to get through into the stride of God, it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God there is always the difficulty of getting into His stride; but when we have got into it, the only characteristic that manifests itself is the life of God. The individual man is lost sight of in his personal union with God, and the stride and the power of God alone are manifested. It is difficult to get into stride with God, because when we start walking with Him we find He has outstripped us before we have taken three steps. He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined into His ways. It was said of Jesus - "He shall not fail nor be discouraged," because He never worked from His own individual standpoint but always from the standpoint of His Father, and we have to learn to do the same. Spiritual truth is learned by atmosphere, not by intellectual reasoning. God's Spirit alters the atmosphere of our way of looking at things, and things begin to be possible which never were possible before. Getting into the stride of God means nothing less than union with Himself. It takes a long time to get there, but keep at it. Don't give in because the pain is bad just now, get on with it, and before long you will find you have a new vision and a new purpose." -Oswald Chambers "My Upmost for His Highest" http://www.myutmost.org

The Challenge