John M. David: Diligent Self-examination

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:31

“God has called me to this holy retreat to give me an opportunity to reform my conduct by being enlightened in my relations and duties towards Him, and comparing these with my own conduct towards Him and comparing these in the past as unfolded to me through diligent self-examination. To accomplish this, I must look to myself alone, not to others; and I must propose to myself as my rule for making this retreat, the following motto: INGREDI TOTUS; MANERE SOLUS; EXIRE ALIUS—TO ENTER WHOLLY, TO REMAIN ALONE, AND TO COME OUT ANOTHER PERSON.”

John M. David in A Spiritual Retreat of Eight Days (Louisville: Webb and Levering; 1864) 84

It’s an unforgettable experience to do a 3-country, 16-day trip during COVID. I return home feeling both encouraged from seeing how God is at work and overwhelmed by the needs of those I served. I am grateful for the experience, yet absolutely exhausted.

For example, while same-day PCR tests don’t cost much in places like El Salvador or Bolivia, it felt like they extracted my sinus cavity rather than swabbing it. And having worn a mask nearly nonstop on the trip, I am happy to be home to remove it.

Speaking of masks, it was harder than I expected to teach to groups when you cannot see their facial expressions. The saving grace was meals with people. Even during COVID, people take the masks off for meals, and the fellowship was sweet. For most, these were their first meetings and meals out in over a year.

Now I plan to rest, largely speaking, at home and hope to come out another person. What will change? I am not sure really. I just know that I feel weary and reflective. Through self-examination, my hope is to come out transformed.

David suggests eight days. It’s that long until Easter. So, here’s the journey summarized (though I hope to emerge from quarantine with another COVID test before the celebration of the resurrection). Perhaps join me?

Day 1 – Reflect on my attachments. Day 2 – Confess sins. Day 3 – Think about death, judgment, and the prodigal son. Day 4 – Focus on Christ and following Him. Day 5 – Consider the life and teachings of Jesus, especially those related to money. Day 6 – Ponder passion week and Christ’s sacrifice. Day 7 – Contemplate the Crucifixion. Day 8 – Celebrate the Resurrection.

What does this have to do with generosity? Everything. Only when we identify our attachments, surrender them to God with humility, turn to Jesus, and sow His teachings afresh in our hearts, will Christian generosity be born anew in our lives after Easter.

God, make my journey to the cross and the empty tomb be a holy retreat of dilifent self-examination. Amen.

But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 1 Timothy 6:8

“Do not so much regard the fancies of other men, as what indeed you feel yourselves. For the reason of our discontentment many times is rather from the fancies of other men than from what we find we lack ourselves.

We think poverty to be such a great evil—Why? because it is so esteemed by others, rather than that people feel it so themselves, unless they are in an extremity of poverty. I will give you a clear demonstration that almost all the discontent in the world is rather from the fancies of others than from the evil that is on themselves.

You may think your wealth to be small and you are thereupon discontented, and it is a grievous affliction to you; but if all men in the world were poorer than you, then you would not be discontented, then you would rejoice in your estates though you had not a penny more than you have.

Take a man who can get but his twelve pence a day, and you will say, ‘This is but a poor thing to maintain a family.’ But suppose there were no man in the world that had more than this, yea, that all other men but yourselves had somewhat less wages than you, then you would think your condition pretty good.

You would have no more then than you have now; therefore it appears by this that it is rather from the fancies of other men than what you feel that makes you think your condition to be so grievous, for if all the men in the world looked upon you as happy, more happy than themselves, then you would be contented.”

Jeremiah Burroughs in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment 138.

The hardest part about international travel—especially places that face extreme poverty—is returning to the USA to see how materially blessed I am as compared to people who live in other places. I cannot help but compare situations or be tempted to want the best the world has to offer.

So this experience leads me to a healthy place, I must pause and give thanks for what I have and not what I don’t have, and I must resolve to focus on my stewardship of what I have with my contentment in Christ alone. That’s is my responsibility (and yours too).

Sorry the meditation is posting so late. I’ve been traveling for more than 24 hours with little or no WiFi. I am in Houston. I make it to Denver tonight. I am admittedly weary but I am also more than happy. I am contented because I have experienced the faithfulness of Christ in a profound way.

Generosity depends on that. We can only let go of resources when we know in the depths of our being that God has everything sorted for us, and that he’s positioned us to serve and help sort things for others. Every people group has to realize this and champion the message.

Let me know by way of reply if you’d like a copy of the trip reports from the GTP work in El Salvador, Panama, and/or Bolivia. And say a prayer for a meeting I have this next week seeking grant funding to help Latin Americans develop generosity materials for their own people.

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14

“When any significant change takes place in the moral standards of a community, it is immediately reflected in a general shifting of the meanings of common words.”

Owen Barfield in History in English Words (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967) 147.

Our discussions have wrapped up in Cochabamba, Bolivia, pictured above from our meeting room at the Fundación APOYO Bolivia office. One thing we discussed, and I hear this in the USA as well, is how Bolivians need to reclaim the meaning of the word “stewardship” which refers to our responsibility before God, not a giving campaign at church.

As Barfield notes, change linked to “the moral standards of a community” which is what we at GTP are promoting with CONFIABLE America Latina, will require people to “shift the meanings of common words.”

This made me think of Jesus who was the Word and who revealed the Father to us. Without His presence, we would not understand the Father or know the meaning of grace and truth. Jesus changed our view of the Father with His visit. Pray with us that our visit to Bolivia changes how influential workers think about stewardship and standards.

Hear our prayer in your mercy, Lord Jesus, and grant negative COVID tests today and safe travel to Paula Mendoza, Ereny Monir, and me, as we have multiple flights over 28+ hours starting this evening.

For those who want to track with us. Paula flies Cochabamba to Santa Cruz (Bolivia) to Panama to Guatemala City. Ereny goes Cochabamba to Santa Cruz to Panama to San Jose (Costa Rica) to Los Angeles. I fly Cochabamba to Santa Cruz to Panama to Houston to Denver. That’s a long time with masks on. God help us.

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Luke 9:58

“True understanding is unattainable without both love and detachment, and we can only learn to view anything with detachment by comparing it with other things which are both like and unlike it. We cannot understand the present without a knowledge of the past, our native land without having spent some time in a foreign country, our mother-tongue without a working knowledge of at least two other languages. Without such knowledge, our love of ourselves at the present moment, of our country, of our language, remains an ignorant idolatry.”

W. H. Auden in the Foreword to History in English Words by Owen Barfield (Barrington: Lindisfarne, 1967) 8. After reading Chesterton and Lewis, I turned to Barfield, one of Jack’s mates and a keen British philosopher. This statement in the foreword to Barfield’s book caught my attention.

“True understanding is unattainable without both love and detachment.” Sit with that idea for a while.

What came into view for me was our Lord Jesus Christ, traveling light through life. Nothing encumbered him. Love drove him. He left heaven behind and came to earth. He was here on mission empowered by love and exhibiting detachment.

For the rest of us, this beckons us to get out of our comfort zone, travel to a foreign place (or country), lest we remain stuck in ignorant idolatry. The world wants to trap us into thinking we need things to sustain us. Travel does this for me. It reveals my idols.

Strip yourself of earthly security, comfort, pleasures, and possessions. Go to a foreign plance. Arm yourself with love. See what happens. This GTP trip has exceeded my hopes. Until Christ is all you have, you don’t realize He’s all you’ve ever needed all along.

The only way to gain true understanding about anything is love and detachment. It frees you from ignorant idolatry and positions you to live, give, and serve generously. Don’t take my word for it. See for yourself. You don’t figure it out until you live it out.

But now, this is what the Lord says—He who created you, Jacob, He who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1

“Our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory (New York: Harper Collins, 1980) 46.

While speaking to groups on trips, like this one in Bolivia, I aim to learn everyone’s name as they arrive for a seminar or training. Then, during the session, I call on them each by name. People really appreciate this as a gift. They notice the effort.

I love how Lewis puts it, people are the “holiest object presented” to our senses. Ironically, the most generous gift we can give them, often, is to call them by name in a group. It sends a message: you matter. How can you add this to your generosity?

As my word for the year is ‘remember’ and as this is my first trip of 2021, I am reminded that to remember a person’s name is to treat them as holy and special. How cool is it that we serve a God who summons us and who knows our name!

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. James 5:2-3

“Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. Further, she has maintained that if we come to talk of a dangerous environment, the most dangerous environment of all is the commodious environment. I know that the most modern manufacture has been really occupied in trying to produce an abnormally large needle. I know that the most recent biologists have been chiefly anxious to discover a very small camel. But if we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open the eye of the needle to its largest — if, in short, we assume the words of Christ to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at the very least mean this — that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy.

Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man.

The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor.”

G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995) 125. I’ve shifted my reading from ancient to modern voices for the near future.

Today’s Scripture is an authoritative statement from James, the half-brother of Jesus, and G.K. Chesterton offers a similarly bold comment for us to think about.

People are no more morally safe or trustworthy when rich or poor. Christ is what every person needs to be fruitful in God’s kingdom. Christ makes us trustworthy agents of justice.

Rather than holding on to riches which make us corrupt, Christian saints have “a sort of savage monotony” because they show a consistent trust in God rather than money.

As we teach in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, today and then head to Cochabamba, I pray that the pastors and ministry workers are receptive to biblical teaching.

We will talk about the importance of being faithful stewards and following standards in ministries. Central to these ideas is having a right relationship with riches.

Bribery is a common phenomenon in much of the majority world, but what Chesterton keenly does here is spell out that the rich person in the developed world is no different.

Let’s be different. Rather than be defined by corruption and bribery, let our savage monotony reveal our commitment to Christ and biblical practices. Find us faithful, LORD.

Don’t hoard treasure in the last days. Put it to work. God is watching.

Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and He will reward them for what they have done. Proverbs 19:17

Someone may say: “If I do all these things, I’ll have no possessions. What if a large number of people are in want, suffer cold, have been taken captive, or should die? If anyone thinks this way, he will deprive himself of his property in a single day! Shall I throw away the estate acquired by my own labor or by that of my ancestors? Must then I myself live by the pity of others?”

Lactantius’s answer: “Why do you fear to turn a frail and perishable asset into one that is everlasting? Why do you fear to entrust your treasures to God as their preserver? For in that case you will not need to fear thief and robber—nor rust, nor tyrant. He who is rich towards God can never be poor. If you esteem justice so highly, lay aside the bur­dens that oppress you and follow justice. Free yourself from bondage and chains, so that you can run to God without any hindrance.”

Lactan­tius of Rome (c. 304-313) served as tutor to Emperor Constantine, in W. 7.177, 178.

God threw open the doors for ministry in Panama. GTP meetings with PAAM and Evangelical Alliance leaders have led to the planning of three webinars in April 2021. While a future trip is to be determined, this first visit could not have gone better. Today we are off to Bolivia.

When people are receptive to biblical teaching, at GTP we resolve to serve them. Sadly, most people rationalize disobedience to the teachings of Jesus on money. They come up with excuses not to obey. The “what if” situations of life hinder them from grasping abundance.

In response, Lactantius, unmasks the limiting factor: fear. He then shares one of the most profound truths in God’s economy. “He who is rich towards God can never be poor.” Sit with that idea for a while. Remember to give to the poor you are lending to the LORD.

That’s a loan that will never default and a reward that lasts forever. Holding on to wealth is remaining in bondage and chains. Giving generously is running to God and making assets everlasting. And, following justice is caring for others as you care for yourself.

Do these things and you will never ever be poor!

As Jesus looked up, He saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” He said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” Luke 21:1-4

“You are wealthy and rich. Do you think that you can celebrate the Lord’s Supper, not at all considering the offering? Can you come to the Lord’s Supper without a sacrifice and yet take part of the sacrifice that the poor man has offered? Consider in the Gospel the widow who remembered the heavenly teachings, doing good despite the difficulties and limitations of poverty. For she cast into the treasury two small coins, which were all that she had.”

Cyprian of Carthage (c. 200 – 258) 5.480, as recounted by David W. Bercot in A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1998) 10.

Our team had a remarkable day in Panama yesterday, pictured above.

We had a great teaching time with PAAM ministry workers and an historic lunch meeting with the Panama Evangelical Alliance leaders. Today I am speaking at a gathering of generous givers.

They asked me to speak on generosity in times of crisis. I will give six points from the Apostle Paul’s correspondence related to the Jerusalem Collection for the famine-striken Jews. It was not a pandemic but it was a crisis.

I also plan to celebrate the only kind of giving Jesus celebrates: sacrifice. Pray for me as I remind them man looks at how much we give, and God looks at how much we keep and what it says about our hearts.

And next time you approach the Lord’s Table, imitate His sacrifice. Don’t come empty handed. In keeping with my word for this year, “remember” the teachings of Jesus. Give sacrificially and see what happens.

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33

“Fasting, according to the signification of the word, is abstinence from food. Now food makes us neither more righteous nor less. But mystically it shows that, as life is maintained in individuals by sustenance, and want of sustenance is the token of death; so also ought we to fast from worldly things, that we may die to the world, and after that, by partaking of divine sustenance, live to God.”

Theodotus in Selections from the Prophetic Scriptures.

Paula Mendoza, Ereny Monir, and I arrived safely in Panama yesterday evening from El Salvador. If you want a copy of our GTP trip report from work in that country, reply to this email. Happy to share.

Upon arrival in hot and humid Panama, our hosts graciously collected us at the airport. After I finished an online meeting, our team got dinner just before the COVID curfew shut the city down.

Today, as requested by influential Christian ministry workers, we do a training on The Sower: Redefining the Ministry of Raising Kingdom Resources. Many people here have been studying it in Spanish.

Pray for fruitful discussions. To be a sower requires us to trust that God will care for us. This is what divine sustenance is all about: knowing that God will sustain us when we trust in Him.

The converse is also true: “want of sustanence is the token of death.” Or in plain terms, expecting things to sustain you will not position you to experience life according to God’s design. Choose to live to God.

Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. Deuteronomy 15:10

“Do not be ready to stretch forth your hands to receive, while you draw them back when it comes to giving… You shall not hesitate to give, nor murmur when you give.”

Epostle of Barnabas (c. 70-130) 1.148 as recounted in A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide edited by David W. Bercot (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1998) 8.

The aim of Lenten practices is to teach us not to hesitate. In our flesh, we flinch. Our default posture is not to serve as conduits of blessing. We must also not murmur.

To be able to give is a blessing in itself. To have more than enough is a place of privilege. What will we do from this place? Will we hesitate or murmur?

In one of the earliest Christian writings we learn the heart behind the giving of Barnabas. Remember he sold a tract of land to help mission get going in the early church.

What if he had hesitated? Might he have met the same fate as Ananias and Sapphira? Who knows? What we do know is that his giving launched the Christian movement.

Our giving can have similar impact today if we don’t hesitate!