Dear Friends and family,
The Scripture has it that the Lord lovingly commanded us to “go into the world and make disciples of the nations …”(Matthew 28:19-20). It is a fact that committed missionaries have responded sacrificially taking the gospel into the world, and some of them have willingly laid down their lives. Millions of people have been reached by those who have crossed cultural, linguistic, and geographical barriers. They have successfully preached the gospel by words and deeds and multiplied responsible and reproductive Assemblies. The challenge still remains that we should go and tell in obedience to His command.
Today the reached have caught the vision and are reaching the unreached. They are crossing borders and embracing the terms of the Lord’s Great Commission. The gospel is a spreading flame that is engulfing the world, but the job is not done. We cannot rest, and we cannot give up. Our hearts still need to be ignited with God’s love for lost people. Prevailing human needs should engender in our hearts the compassion to make a difference wherever it is found. We still need to go and tell in obedience to His command.
Currently, reports on the religious scene in Nigeria call for concern and point to the destructive activities of Muslim extremists in the Country. Recently, even conflict among Muslim groups has spilled over to the burning of Christian churches. Many believers were killed and some pastors beheaded for refusing to accept Islam and recant Christ. The Boko Haram Islamic movement in Kano, Bauchi, Taraba, and Borno states in Northern Nigeria is a challenge for Christians to present Christ as the answer.
In spite of these challenges, we are amazed at what happens when we allow God to consume us with a gospel passion. No barrier, no cost, and no excuse will put the fire out. By the grace of God Cyprian will be in Nigeria and visit the work in the next few months.
Please pray for us:
1. that the door of utterance would be set before us by the sovereign Lord,
2. that the hand of the Lord would be heavy upon us for good,
3. that we will experience a daily walk and a passionate devotion to the Lord Himself,
4. and that the Lord will supply all our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ.
All because He lives,
Joy and Cyprian
Monday, August 17, 2009
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Purpose for Living
"Who raised up one from the east [and] in righteousness called him to his feet...made him rule over kings? Who has performed and done it calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, am the first, and with the last, I am He" (Isaiah 41:1-4).
Clearly we are not on earth by accident and without an assignment to perform, and that constitutes our purpose for living. To be consumed with the erroneous notion that you become just as you choose and succeed as hard as you struggle is to miss the answer to the question most central to our existence: Why am I alive and where do I fit in?
From the passage above it is clear that our path has already been set before we were born (Jeremiah 1:5) and our purpose for living drawn out in every detail. It may be also worth knowing that "the battle is not to the strong and the race is not for the swift, nor riches to men of understanding nor favor to men of skill. But time and chance happen to them all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
The Truth of the matter is that we are assigned to an era to play one little part, and that is what counts. John Wycliffe could be called the beginning of an era. It was through the efforts of this dedicated Christian scholar, preacher and Bible translator that the Reformation got its start.
Recalling the life of Wycliffe, Charles R. Swindoll in his biography on David showed how he fit in to his era. Sometime before Wycliffe died in 1384 he was standing alone against verbal and physical attacks. He stayed at the task of translating both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible into the English vernacular…a project so unpopular it led to his martyrdom. Until Wycliffe's heroic work, the Scriptures were chained to ornate pulpits, written in Latin, a language only the clergy could read. While threats were being hurled against him for his defiance, Wycliffe finished his monumental task, then wrote these words in the flyleaf of his own translation of the Bible: "This Bible is translated and shall make possible a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Little did Wycliffe realize that almost 500 years later his words would be lifted from the pages of his Bible and immortalized by a president in the New World who would promise "a new birth of freedom" based on "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Less than a year and a half later, President Lincoln was killed. Among the hundreds who reported his death, one put his finger on the truth when he wrote, "The death of Lincoln marks the end of an era."
Some lives are so significant in courageous accomplishment, they form the beginning of an era. Others with their deaths, the end of an era. Their thinking, their creative ideas, their magnificent models, leave a veritable chasm across life's landscape. This person's shoes are so big that after his or her death nobody can fill them.
Every individual has a purpose for living - every one of us. Not many have as great a purpose as Wycliffe or Lincoln, but no one God brings to life on this earth is insignificant. The tragedy of all tragedies is that we should live and die having never found that purpose, that special, God-ordained reason for serving our generation.
You have, like no other person on this planet, particular contributions that you are to make to this generation. They may not be as great as your dreams or they might be far beyond your expectations; but whatever they are, you are to find them and carry them out. Then, when your twilight years come and your life is ended, you can be satisfied that you have served God's purpose with your life.
Written by Dr. T. Cyprian Kia on the 27th day of June, 1999 in Room 21, Makurdi Midway Hotel, Benue State, Nigeria
Clearly we are not on earth by accident and without an assignment to perform, and that constitutes our purpose for living. To be consumed with the erroneous notion that you become just as you choose and succeed as hard as you struggle is to miss the answer to the question most central to our existence: Why am I alive and where do I fit in?
From the passage above it is clear that our path has already been set before we were born (Jeremiah 1:5) and our purpose for living drawn out in every detail. It may be also worth knowing that "the battle is not to the strong and the race is not for the swift, nor riches to men of understanding nor favor to men of skill. But time and chance happen to them all" (Ecclesiastes 9:11).
The Truth of the matter is that we are assigned to an era to play one little part, and that is what counts. John Wycliffe could be called the beginning of an era. It was through the efforts of this dedicated Christian scholar, preacher and Bible translator that the Reformation got its start.
Recalling the life of Wycliffe, Charles R. Swindoll in his biography on David showed how he fit in to his era. Sometime before Wycliffe died in 1384 he was standing alone against verbal and physical attacks. He stayed at the task of translating both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible into the English vernacular…a project so unpopular it led to his martyrdom. Until Wycliffe's heroic work, the Scriptures were chained to ornate pulpits, written in Latin, a language only the clergy could read. While threats were being hurled against him for his defiance, Wycliffe finished his monumental task, then wrote these words in the flyleaf of his own translation of the Bible: "This Bible is translated and shall make possible a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Little did Wycliffe realize that almost 500 years later his words would be lifted from the pages of his Bible and immortalized by a president in the New World who would promise "a new birth of freedom" based on "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Less than a year and a half later, President Lincoln was killed. Among the hundreds who reported his death, one put his finger on the truth when he wrote, "The death of Lincoln marks the end of an era."
Some lives are so significant in courageous accomplishment, they form the beginning of an era. Others with their deaths, the end of an era. Their thinking, their creative ideas, their magnificent models, leave a veritable chasm across life's landscape. This person's shoes are so big that after his or her death nobody can fill them.
Every individual has a purpose for living - every one of us. Not many have as great a purpose as Wycliffe or Lincoln, but no one God brings to life on this earth is insignificant. The tragedy of all tragedies is that we should live and die having never found that purpose, that special, God-ordained reason for serving our generation.
You have, like no other person on this planet, particular contributions that you are to make to this generation. They may not be as great as your dreams or they might be far beyond your expectations; but whatever they are, you are to find them and carry them out. Then, when your twilight years come and your life is ended, you can be satisfied that you have served God's purpose with your life.
Written by Dr. T. Cyprian Kia on the 27th day of June, 1999 in Room 21, Makurdi Midway Hotel, Benue State, Nigeria
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Paul: Prisoner to the Will of the Spirit
An effective and disciplined soldier is a product of disciplined training which includes the proper use of weapons, submission to authority and obedience to command. Then after training he is entrusted with weapons. God always had the power necessary to defeat the enemy we face, and He is not weak. He has not, however, had a people ready for His power.
As the consummation of all things draws near, God in His great mercy is doing a work with an ordained and predestined people. He is bringing them into complete submission, digging out every bit of rebellion, every spirit that opposes God and exalts itself. He makes us prisoners of Jesus Christ. Let us stop fretting about the confinement, the wilderness testing, and submit to the dealings of God for the hour (Hebrews 12:1-6). We cannot be the tool God will work with to bring the world to submission if we are not first broken, perfected and matured for use.
The Apostle Paul sat in his prison cell working carefully on the scroll as he penned a letter to his friend Philemon. This was a special letter for it was being written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and would eventually find its place in the Scriptures as part of God’s inspired written Word. The first few words of greeting from this Apostle of God were simply: “Paul a prisoner of Jesus Christ”. These words, coming from Paul himself, had a great significance. Paul had learned what it was to be a prisoner of Jesus.
He knew what it was to sit on the backside of the Arabian desert for years with the light of the Truth burning in his heart like the noon day sun, while a lost world perished in darkness. He learned to be disciplined under the ministry of a local church in Antioch until the Spirit gave the word through them for him to “Go”. He had felt the harness of the Spirit about him to the extent that he was “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). He had been through the training of being bound to the will of God to the extent that when “they assayed to go into Bithynia; …the Spirit suffered them not” (Acts 16:7).
He had become so disciplined to speaking only the word of the Lord that, when in Acts 16 a young demon-possessed girl followed them day after day crying out after them, Paul answered not a word until the Spirit moved upon him to speak and deliver the girl. On his way to Jerusalem in Acts 20:19 he tells how prophecy came to him from prophets in every city telling of the bonds and afflictions that were awaiting him in Jerusalem. In response he said, “None of these things move me” for he was committed to the will of God. He was a prisoner of Jesus Christ and could no longer make his own decision or choose his own course or run his own life. He was disciplined to the will of the Spirit.
Each hour of the day we must choose to obey God. When we submit to God, we shall have to submit to those around us who are in authority over us. Only in this way will we show that we are really submitting to God. What people do to us to hurt us are things God uses to break us. In this way He will make us even deeper channels for the life of Christ to flow out to others.
As the consummation of all things draws near, God in His great mercy is doing a work with an ordained and predestined people. He is bringing them into complete submission, digging out every bit of rebellion, every spirit that opposes God and exalts itself. He makes us prisoners of Jesus Christ. Let us stop fretting about the confinement, the wilderness testing, and submit to the dealings of God for the hour (Hebrews 12:1-6). We cannot be the tool God will work with to bring the world to submission if we are not first broken, perfected and matured for use.
The Apostle Paul sat in his prison cell working carefully on the scroll as he penned a letter to his friend Philemon. This was a special letter for it was being written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and would eventually find its place in the Scriptures as part of God’s inspired written Word. The first few words of greeting from this Apostle of God were simply: “Paul a prisoner of Jesus Christ”. These words, coming from Paul himself, had a great significance. Paul had learned what it was to be a prisoner of Jesus.
He knew what it was to sit on the backside of the Arabian desert for years with the light of the Truth burning in his heart like the noon day sun, while a lost world perished in darkness. He learned to be disciplined under the ministry of a local church in Antioch until the Spirit gave the word through them for him to “Go”. He had felt the harness of the Spirit about him to the extent that he was “forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). He had been through the training of being bound to the will of God to the extent that when “they assayed to go into Bithynia; …the Spirit suffered them not” (Acts 16:7).
He had become so disciplined to speaking only the word of the Lord that, when in Acts 16 a young demon-possessed girl followed them day after day crying out after them, Paul answered not a word until the Spirit moved upon him to speak and deliver the girl. On his way to Jerusalem in Acts 20:19 he tells how prophecy came to him from prophets in every city telling of the bonds and afflictions that were awaiting him in Jerusalem. In response he said, “None of these things move me” for he was committed to the will of God. He was a prisoner of Jesus Christ and could no longer make his own decision or choose his own course or run his own life. He was disciplined to the will of the Spirit.
Each hour of the day we must choose to obey God. When we submit to God, we shall have to submit to those around us who are in authority over us. Only in this way will we show that we are really submitting to God. What people do to us to hurt us are things God uses to break us. In this way He will make us even deeper channels for the life of Christ to flow out to others.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Moses: Prisoner to the Will of the Spirit
The New Testament shows us clearly that the Lord Jesus wants us to take the low place of slaves. We have no choice in the matter. We cannot decide not to be slaves if we really want to be disciples of Jesus. Slavery is a self-emptying and humbling position. This is what it takes to be a prisoner of Jesus and of being imprisoned to the will of the Spirit.
“Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds” (Acts 7:22). This man Moses, ordained and predestined by God to deliver His people from Egypt’s bondage, was laid in an ark or basket of bulrushes and carried by the current of the river right close to Pharoah’s palace. There he was taken in and raised as Pharoah’s own grandson, taught in their finest school, trained to lead the armies of Egypt, and his name went abroad throughout the land as a great orator and a great warrior. None of the children of Israel in Goshen had the ability, nor the background, nor the knowledge to do the job as well as Moses to deliver the Israelites from bondage.
Moses tried but failed miserably, the same way we all have failed to bear fruit and conquer sin. He found, just as we all do to our utter dismay, that his own strength was pitifully weak in comparison with the task that must be done. This was all in the plan of God, for after He had proved that the greatest of the great was insufficient for the job, then He sent His chosen servant into the wilderness to be stripped of his strength and ability, to die to his own will and knowledge and desires.
In his own efforts Moses had slain one of the enemy and had hidden his body in the sand. That decaying, stinking thing hidden in the earth was a testimony that it was not the deliverance God’ people were after and needed. Many ministries have cracked under the strain, and many of God’s people have become disillusioned at this high pressure type of thing, as men have tried to rise up and stay the enemy before they themselves had come under the wilderness stripping and discipline of the Spirit. With what rest and what ease Moses lifted up his rod and delivered God’s people and destroyed the might of Egypt, once God had brought Moses into submission. This is the work God is doing today with His true ministry.
The answer is not in the few sheep Moses fed in the wilderness or how fat and productive he could make them. The purpose of God during that forty years was in that man, that ordained and chosen one in the process of God’s dealings. He realized now that the answer is not in him, in his strength or ability. He must hear the voice of God, and he will not move until this comes. Forty years of discipline—all this time the weight of Israel’s burdens pressed down upon his heart, and their cries for deliverance were continually in his ears. There is travail in his soul that finally brought him to a face- to-face meeting with God at the burning bush.
When God finally spoke to this man to go forth and bring deliverance to His people, this Moses confessed his weakness and inability to God and declared that he could not even speak properly and needed someone to do his talking. What a stripping of his own strength! What a binding of his own freedom! At last God had a prisoner who could only move at His word. Then he was ready to bring deliverance to the nation. Now God was ready to entrust him with the greatest power and authority that had ever been possessed or used by man.: “that the excellency of the power may be of God not of him” (2 Corinthians 4:7-12).
“Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and in deeds” (Acts 7:22). This man Moses, ordained and predestined by God to deliver His people from Egypt’s bondage, was laid in an ark or basket of bulrushes and carried by the current of the river right close to Pharoah’s palace. There he was taken in and raised as Pharoah’s own grandson, taught in their finest school, trained to lead the armies of Egypt, and his name went abroad throughout the land as a great orator and a great warrior. None of the children of Israel in Goshen had the ability, nor the background, nor the knowledge to do the job as well as Moses to deliver the Israelites from bondage.
Moses tried but failed miserably, the same way we all have failed to bear fruit and conquer sin. He found, just as we all do to our utter dismay, that his own strength was pitifully weak in comparison with the task that must be done. This was all in the plan of God, for after He had proved that the greatest of the great was insufficient for the job, then He sent His chosen servant into the wilderness to be stripped of his strength and ability, to die to his own will and knowledge and desires.
In his own efforts Moses had slain one of the enemy and had hidden his body in the sand. That decaying, stinking thing hidden in the earth was a testimony that it was not the deliverance God’ people were after and needed. Many ministries have cracked under the strain, and many of God’s people have become disillusioned at this high pressure type of thing, as men have tried to rise up and stay the enemy before they themselves had come under the wilderness stripping and discipline of the Spirit. With what rest and what ease Moses lifted up his rod and delivered God’s people and destroyed the might of Egypt, once God had brought Moses into submission. This is the work God is doing today with His true ministry.
The answer is not in the few sheep Moses fed in the wilderness or how fat and productive he could make them. The purpose of God during that forty years was in that man, that ordained and chosen one in the process of God’s dealings. He realized now that the answer is not in him, in his strength or ability. He must hear the voice of God, and he will not move until this comes. Forty years of discipline—all this time the weight of Israel’s burdens pressed down upon his heart, and their cries for deliverance were continually in his ears. There is travail in his soul that finally brought him to a face- to-face meeting with God at the burning bush.
When God finally spoke to this man to go forth and bring deliverance to His people, this Moses confessed his weakness and inability to God and declared that he could not even speak properly and needed someone to do his talking. What a stripping of his own strength! What a binding of his own freedom! At last God had a prisoner who could only move at His word. Then he was ready to bring deliverance to the nation. Now God was ready to entrust him with the greatest power and authority that had ever been possessed or used by man.: “that the excellency of the power may be of God not of him” (2 Corinthians 4:7-12).
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