HAVE YOU EVER BEEN EMBARRASSED to hear yourself laughing exactly like a good friend laughs? Our voices often imitate someone we love and admire. This is because God has created us, his image bearers, to adopt the mannerisms of the objects of our worship. The Creator designed us to be worshiping beings. We simply can’t
Read MoreMY NAME IS RUTH. I am in the 11th grade and will graduate next year. I want to share with you my story, and describe how our challenges shape our character and fill us with the strength to persevere. I am convinced that in Jesus there is always hope. With God, nothing is impossible.
Read MoreIn 1985, hundreds of parents in the remote Borneo village of Kaladan longed for a junior high school for their children. At the time, there were three Christian families living in this village of approximately 10,000 people. One of these individuals had heard of an organization named Mustard Seed International, which builds Christian schools, youth ministries and orphanages, and trains national teachers to serve in impoverished and unreached communities. Mustard Seed leaders were sent to visit Kaladan. At the time, Kaladan was dominated by two religions; Islam and Keharingan. Keharingan is a mixture of Animism and Hinduism. Many of the people in Kaladan worshipped the bones of their ancestors, and paid homage to monkey spirits who controlled their village.
Read More“Were you scared moving here?” we ask Jonas. “Yeah, a little,” the smiling young man answers, and then relates the story of his transition from his predominantly Christian island in East Indonesia to this hard-core, widely-feared Islamic island of Madura. I’m on Madura today with a short term team from a church in Boston, and we’re being introduced to the staff of an English center which is led by my friend Charles from California. A few years ago he and his family formed a team from the church they served in nearby Surabaya and moved across the Madura Strait to reach Muslim people with the good news of Jesus and to help serve them practically by teaching English. Jonas was one of the first to volunteer for the team and now works in the English center.
Read MoreIn the year 1700, a wealthy family in Germany gave birth to Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Though raised in a Christian stream of pietism, little Ludwig adopted the standards of the noble class he grew up with, becoming a spoiled nobleman unconcerned by the plight of his poor countrymen who served his estate. But once when he was 16 and visiting an art museum, he saw a painting of the
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