Archives by: Gary Hoag

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. Luke 14:25-33

“A young missionary woman was killed a few years ago in a foreign country. I don’t know all the details but I know she followed her Saviour into a very dangerous place to touch broken and oppressed people in the Name of Jesus. She knew very well that she would not be coming home. Her final letter to her pastor and home church is beautifully moving and includes the prose from Jim Gentil. “The missionary heart: Care more than some think is wise. Risk more than some think is safe. Dream more than some think is practical. Forget more than some think is possible. I was called not to comfort or success but to obedience.”

Simon Rattray of Project 114, my Aussie mate in his Facebook post dated 13 December 2021.

When I planned this trip to South Africa in the heart of the Covid Omichron variant outbreak, people told me I was crazy, insensible, and unwise. But I felt strongly that Jesus wanted me to go.

The ministry that has unfolded and relationships that have formed have far exceeded our expectations. The highs have been high, and the lows have also been low. Listen to this testimony from Malawi:

“Thank you so much for your coming you have add more knowledge to my ministry. I have been challenged that its good to use what we have, and we should not look down ourselves.”

We have celebrated spiritual victories and gotten a clear unified vision for growing local giving, but like Paul and Silas, we have endured hardship and abuse. The experience has stretched me to my limit.

So why do it? Obedience. Generous service to our Lord Jesus Christ counts the cost and always pays the price. What is the price? Give up everything to follow Jesus.

Only on the way as a disciple do you discover that in surrendering what you cannot keep, you gain what you can never lose. And you never gain anything in the Kingdom until you risk everything.

Please pray for me and Chris Maphosa tomorrow as we co-facilitate a seminar tomorrow, “Stengthening Churches and Ministries for Sustainability,” in Maputo, Mozambique (pictured above on the Indian Ocean).

Thank you so much. Remember to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus wherever He leads, no matter the cost. This following is the doorway to generous living, giving, serving, and loving.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

“If we are willing, the experience of grief can deepen and widen our ability to participate in life. We can become more grateful for the gifts we have been given, more open-handed in our handling of the events of life, more sensitive to the whole mysterious process of life, and more trusting in our adventure with God.”

John R. Claypool in Tracks of a Fellow Struggler (New Orleans: Insight, 1974) 88.

We are living in a time when we interact with people who have experienced loss, suffering, grief, and pain. It can cause us to live close-fisted and insensitive lives. Alternatively, God desires that we appear as open-handed and sensitive conduits of comfort. But how is it possible?

As I pause from work in Maputo, Mozambique (pictured above on the India ocean) today to catch up on emails and rest, I am reflecting on the moments on this trip when I have heard hard news. Or when I have seen with my eyes, unimaginable poverty and brokenness. In real-time I find I need to receive comfort to give it.

While we cannot solve the world’s problems, we can serve those God puts in front of us. Often, the best reply comes into view as comforting the hurting by listening, loving, and praying for them, and aiding them as we are able with what we have and with the comfort we have received from God.

For each person, as Claypool rightly notes, it becomes a trust journey or an adventure with God. Though we have different capacities, we all have the same responsibility: to participate in the highs and lows of life with one another with a grateful and generous, open-handed and sensitive posture. God help us all.

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

“Suffering is a gift of God. A gift that makes us most Christlike. People must not accept suffering as a punishment.’

Mother Teresa in No Greater Love (Novato: New World Library, 2001).

I have never heard anyone say that suffering was a gift from God, a form of generosity toward me, but I am learning in real-time that it is true.

Today’s my birthday. 54 years old. I am thankful for the gift of suffering.

After an amazing time in Malawi, yesterday was long and hard day, I had a sense we may face challenges in Mozambique along with meeting wonderful people. But good news, the Lord delivered us from our troubles.

God has safely led us through them all. I give thanks for His unfailing love.

Today we fly to Maputo, Mozambique to meet the GTP Country Representative, Pastor Nelson Pereira, and his team. Pray for safe travel.

And as you think of your own suffering, consider how it is a gift from God?

The Apostle Paul writes that it produces something in us that outweighs the trials, and it shifts our perspective to eternal things. What a gift!

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. John 15:9

“Our journey toward abundant living is like walk a spiritual labyrinth repeatedly, from an ever-deepening inner space. We walk toward the center to be transformed by God’s love, then we walk outward to transform our small space in the world by reflecting God’s love. There is no intention to trick us or get us lost along the journey. But there is mystery. Always mystery. And awe. And amazing grace.”

Marilyn Brown Oden in Abundance (Upper Room, 2002).

In a labryinth we walk an unexpected set of twists and turns to get to the center. It is a picture of growing closer to God and abiding in His love.

Then the journey of dispensing His love becomes also a winding pathway of spreading love and blessing, and each step of the way we grow deeper.

This trip to Malawi has stretched me and produced fruits I never dreamed. I will work on my trip report whilst riding from Lilongwe, Malawi to Tete, Mozambique.

Stay tuned for that. I plan to just do one report that journals and recounts the Malawi, Mozambique, Eswatini, and South Africa trek.

It will be a long journey with time for reflection. Along the way, I also need to be fllled with more love from God to minister in Mozambique. Do the same where you are.

Spend time with Jesus to be filled with abundance so that you can make the grace-filled journey of growing in generosity and spreading God’s love wherever you go.

Our people must learn to devote themselves to doing what is good, in order to provide for urgent needs and not live unproductive lives. Titus 3:14

“For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.”

David Livingstone (1813-1873), Scottish physician and pioneer Christian missionary to Malawi, where I am serving this week. His name is honored across Malawi. May we all see sacrifice as a privilege, and in so doing, make an impact that has a ripple effect for generations!

Yesterday I had some very strategic meetings with John Msowoya, Levton Nyirenda, and Chris Maphosa by Lake Malawi. It went better than expected. We got a vision for next steps for how to spread generosity in Malawi and Southern Africa. I can’t share the details now, but I will in the coming weeks.

When this Daily Meditation posts I’ll be with a tent full of people talking about “Strengthening Churches and Ministries for Sustainability.” Tomorrow, Chris and I will travel by car to Mozambique. Please pray for safe passage from Lilongwe, Malawi by road to Tete, Mozambique, and then by air to Maputo.

In the meantime read this quote again. Think about what God may be asking you to sacrifice, which really when you think about it, is just a privilege when you think in terms of all God has done for you. Resolve what changes you will make, and what giving you can do as a result.

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Luke 16:1-2

“I’ve squandered more money and time on toys and diversions that I would like to tell. We are allotted only a few years to labor in this vineyard. Are we squandering or investing the precious resources of time, talent, and treasure which have been entrusted to us by our heavenly Master?

Ken Boa in That I May Know God: The Pathways of Spiritual Formation (Multnomah, 1998).

As Christmas season is a gift giving season, rather than squander God’s money on toys and diversions, invest it on mission somewhere. To support the work of GTP in Africa, click here.

Good news today from Malawi. We had to move from a hotel to a big tent to accommodate the group they anticipate. It’s exciting that 150+ pastors and ministry workers plan to attend.

Chris Maphosa and I will do a seminar on Saturday from 8am-2pm on “Strengthening Churches and Ministries for Sustainability” as many cry out for help and counsel. Please pray for us.

Malawi is a very poor country. We are helping pastors from remote areas by aiding them with their bus fares of $3 to return home. That shows how gifts of even small sizes make a big difference.

Perhaps I will stay with you for a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. 1 Corinthians 17:6-7

“Perhaps our most hidden sin is that we have so little time for one another. We need so much more than television [and other forms of technology] have to offer. We need to relearn how to relate eye to eye, hand to hand, heart to heart. We have to encourage one another to keep walking toward Jesus, toward joy, toward truth.”

Edward Farrell in Free to Be Nothing (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1991).

When I started traveling internationally, each of my trips looked like a “missions” of a special forces group: in and out. Over time, I have come to realize that my role needed to move beyond dispensing information to giving myself to God and others. That requires an investment of time.

Now my trips appear as “deployments” because I have learned that time together, face to face, fosters discipleship. It happens outside the program activities. Jesus taught the masses and then spent unstructured time with a small group. How does this relate to generosity?

It’s the “how” of giving ourselves to God and others freely and fully. We block the greatest gift we can give others: time. This Advent season, as you celebrate Immanuel, who is “God with us,” go give someone your time. And you do not need to do anything big or costly in doing this.

For example, I shot this header photo from Tambalale area 23, a mountain outside Lilongwe, Malawi, on which people go to pray. Chris Maphosa, GTP regional facilitator, and I invited others to join us. Four brothers did. It was a rich time together. Better than a tourist attraction!

We prayed for God’s blessing on our training on 11 December with workers from across the country, worshiped in song, read Psalm 2:8, and asked God for Malawi in the name of Jesus.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever. Psalm 136:1

“So conscious was Jesus of the steadfast love of God enduring throughout the meandering course of human history that He could give Himself freely and fully the current events surrounding Him. Far from being swept along by time’s rush and tumble, Jesus lived life purposefully and therefore patiently.”

John Mogabgab in The Blue Book: A Devotional Guide for Every Season of Your Life, edited and compiled by Jim Branch (Middletown, Delaware, 2020) 262.

Mogabgab reveals a secret I needed to know for my journey to Africa and through all of life. The way to give myself freely and fully—quite possibly my greatest act of generosity—is to focus on the steadfast love of God. I am confident that this is how God desires to grow us.

This text, Psalm 136, will be my centering prayer for this trip. No matter what happens, I want to remind myself repeatedly that “His love endures forever.” This will help me stay on purpose and patient when I face uncertain situations or spiritual opposition.

In focusing on His unfailing love, it makes us into people of faith in the face of fear. He transforms us into conduits of generosity, not because we possess riches, but because we tap into His abundant supply. He causes us to live purposefully and unflappably when most wander lost and flapped.

This happens when we focus on His love. I don’t know where you are at today. What challenges rage around you? What “rush and tumble” circumstances exist in your context? But I know this. You can give yourself fully and freely because nothing is greater than God’s love for you.

I needed to read this upon my arrival in Malawi. It positions me to be fully present and aware of all that is going on around me. We can all do this: focus on the unfailing love of God and remain undistracted on our mission of service with spiritual discernment, purpose, and patience.

This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord. Jeremiah 9:23-24

“The man [or woman] who knows God hears His step in the tramp of daily events, discerns Him near at hand to help, and hears His answer to the appeal of prayer in a hundred happenings outwardly small and insignificant, where another man [or woman] can talk only of remarkable coincidence, amazing accident, or peculiar turn of events. That is why periods when the life of faith is strong and men [and women] have enthusiastically surrendered themselves to God, have also been times rich in miracles.”

Walter Eichrodt in The Blue Book: A Devotional Guide for Every Season of Your Life, edited and compiled by Jim Branch (Middletown, Delaware, 2020) 258.

On my long flight across the ocean from Newark to Johannesburg, I felt the Lord make something abundantly clear to me about my trip.

I am to ask questions about the challenges the local people face, listen to their answers, and then I am to ask more questions to help them see how God is at work, how He cares for them, and how He supplies what they need for enjoyment and sharing.

What does this have to do with generosity?

I believe that what hinders people from living, giving, serving, and loving generously is not a lack of resources but having the wrong perspective about God and about all they possess.

This insight applies in Africa and everywhere else. If you sense generosity lacking, ask questions, listen, and ask more questions to help those you serve find God in the “tramp of daily events.”

Once we find Him there, we realize He is everywhere. Helping people grow in generosity comes into view as helping them know and hear God. This gives us all courage to play our role which positions us for “times rich in miracles.”

I am typing this from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Around the time it posts, I will arrive in Lilongwe, Malawi, where I will serve for six days.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:5

“The work is God’s work, the poor are God’s poor. Put yourself completely under the influence of Jesus, so that He may think His thoughts in your mind, do His work through your hands, for you will be all-powerful with Him to strengthen you… Make sure that you let God’s grace work in your souls by accepting whatever He gives you, and giving Him whatever He takes from you. True holiness consists in doing God’s will with a smile.”

Mother Teresa in A Gift for God (New York: Harper Collins, 1996) 37. When this posts I will be somewhere over the Atlantic between Newark, New Jersey and Johannesburg, South Africa.

There may be no better person to approach for inspiration to serve the poor than Mother Teresa. I confess, in reading excerpts from her today, I was so humbled by her wisdom, learned from the poor.

As I venture to poor countries (Malawi, Mozambique, and Eswatini) serving two-by-two with Chris Maphosa from Zimbabwe, I am asking Jesus to give me His mind and pour out His grace to work in my life to learn.

I want to be “under the influence of Jesus.” Everyone sees me as the teacher, so I want Him to strengthen me to do my part. But I pray for grace to accept whatever He gives or takes from me and to do it with a smile.

God help me do this with grace and generosity in Africa over the next two weeks, and God help you do it wherever He has placed you for the good of those around you I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.