Jesus' Love Shines in Tokyo

Sometimes in places where Believers are few, they bear a stronger resemblance to Jesus.  Japan is one of those places and Midori is one of those Believers.  She leads the singing in a church of 25 souls and cleans the rooms in a Christian guesthouse.  But a particularly Christ-like act of love by Midori happened in a Tokyo coffee shop.

The “Sonrise Café’” is a new ministry recently opened by TEAM missionaries in Tokyo.  The café’ exists to bring Japanese into genuine relationships with Jesus through those whom He has redeemed.  There, Midori’s humble, loving service has found her favor in the eyes of a patron...

Midori works part-time at the cafe, and one customer frequently asks "She will be here on Saturday, right?"  One Saturday, Midori extended kindness by massaging this woman's deformed hand.  The next week, a missionary co-worker at the cafe noticed a strange clicking sound and looked up to see Midori clipping the woman's fingernails for her.  Hmmm... strange.  A few minutes later, Midori was on her knees on the hardwood floor and spent a long time clipping the woman's toenails.  As it turns out, the woman's toenails are also deformed and very difficult to care for.  The woman has no family and had not found anyone willing to trim her ugly toenails – until she met Midori.  The missionary co-worker watched in amazement.  She saw the grace and the glory of God in that act of selfless love.  Perhaps the Lord will draw this woman’s heart to Himself through the love of Jesus in Midori.

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. – John 13:12-14

Stories of survivors of domestic violence who killed their husbands.

October 11, 2010

Domestic Abuse: Coming to a Church Near You

Christian filmmaker Olivia Klaus goes inside California prisons to hear the stories of survivors of domestic violence who killed their husbands.

Christine A. Scheller

“How long am I to remain in this relationship?” This is the haunting question 65-year-old Glenda Crosley asks in a documentary, Sin by Silence, about the abusive husband she killed in 1986. She has been in prison for as long as she was married — 24 years — and wonders when her ordeal will be over.

In the film, shot almost entirely inside the California Institution for Women, Crosley says the first time her husband, Sam, “truly got physical” was when she was eight months pregnant with their second child. He shoved her into a wall. Eventually she came to believe that the violence wouldn’t end until one of them was dead. According to The Bakersfield Californian, at the time of Sam’s murder, the couple was separated and having an argument in a parking lot. When Sam walked away from her car to the trunk of his, she believed he was going to get the tire iron he had threatened her with the week before. She rammed him once, drove away, then turned her car and hit him again. He died at the scene.

Elizabeth Leonard, author of Convicted Survivors and professor at Vanguard University, a Christian college in Costa Mesa, California, says in the film that women who leave abusive relationships are often subject to “separation assault” and are 75 percent more likely to be murdered than before they left. So the answer to the question: Why didn’t she just leave? is not a simple one. In the same 2009 Bakersfield Californian article, Crosley’s daughter Stacy is quoted as saying she remembers her mother trying to leave several times and each of them ending with her father’s rage. She even blames herself for her father’s death because one of the times her mother returned was because a judge wouldn’t release her from a group home unless her parents were living together.

“We are offenders, but we’re victims,” says Brenda Clubine in another Sin by Silence scene. Clubine is founder of Convicted Women Against Abuse (CWAA), the support group at the heart of the film. Brenda’s tireless work helped change California law in 1992 to allow expert testimony on Battered Women’s Syndrome into court rooms and again in 2002 to allow women whose convictions predated the 1992 ruling the same right on appeal. Clubine tells viewers, “This group is not about staying in the victim role.” It starts there, helping women to recognize the process that led them to murder their spouses, but then its goals move to education about and eradication of domestic violence.

Dr. George Wood discusses Domestic Violence

Twenty CWAA members have been released from prison in the nine years since director-producer and Vanguard professor Olivia Klaus first began attending its meetings. A desperate phone call from a friend started her on a journey to find out why abuse happens, why the one-in-four American women who experience it once in their lifetime stay, and how they can get out. Klaus says, “Being from a Christian family, I never thought domestic violence would come into my circle. . . . It completely shattered my world.” Klaus turned to Leonard, a colleague at Vanguard. Leonard told her that if she really wanted to understand domestic violence and help her friend, she needed to go with her to prison to “learn from the experts.”

Klaus says, “From that first day, these women completely changed my life. . . . What society has labeled as murderers, I see as mothers, as grandmothers, or even myself. Domestic violence has no boundaries and it can happen to anyone, and it can happen to the point where you have to defend yourself.” The 32-year-old filmmaker adds, “Spiritually, this film has been the glue for my beliefs. Once my friend opened up to me about her relationship and once I met these women, I could no longer see the world with rose-colored glasses. . . . Domestic violence is something that we’ve overlooked for far too long. We have women in our churches who are in pain and need help.”

Klaus hopes that other women’s groups will do as the women of Newport Church in Newport Beach have done. The women not only gave generously to finance Sin By Silence, they also provide significant support and resources for CWAA women when they are released from prison.

Throughout October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Sin by Silence can be seen at Constellation.tv in virtual screenings that are hosted by key project participants. Among them is Brenda Clubine. Her heartbreaking and hope filled story provides this film with an ending so surprising that you will have to see it for yourself to believe it. I urge you to do so. But don’t stop there. How about turning your next church women’s social into an opportunity to respond to domestic violence?

Joni Eareckson Tada on Something Greater than Healing

Now facing breast cancer and chronic pain, the author, speaker, and advocate talks about the blessings of suffering.

Interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey | posted 10/08/2010 10:38AM

A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty by Joni Eareckson Tada David C. Cook, September 2010 224 pp., $15.99

Joni Eareckson Tada might be mistaken for a modern-day Job. The disabilities advocate was severely paralyzed in a diving accident at age 17. For the past ten years, she has endured chronic pain. Now, at age 60, she confronts breast cancer. Sounding upbeat and confident after surgery, she spoke with Christianity Today about her latest book, A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty (David C. Cook), where she outlines her theology of suffering.

How has your perspective on suffering and healing changed since your breast cancer diagnosis?

Thankfully, it hasn't changed at all. You examine Scripture again and follow every passage regarding healing. I did that with my quadriplegia, and I did that again 10 years ago, when I embarked on a whole new life of chronic pain. Just a month ago, getting diagnosed with breast cancer, I looked at those same Scriptures, and God's words do not change.

Even though it seems like a lot is being piled on, I keep thinking about 1 Peter 2:21: "To these hardships you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps." Those steps most often lead Christians not to miraculous, divine interventions but directly into the fellowship of suffering. In a way, I've been drawn closer to the Savior, even with this breast cancer. There are things about his character that I wasn't seeing a year ago or even six months ago. That tells me that I'm still growing and being transformed. First Peter 2:21 is a good rule of thumb for any Christian struggling to understand God's purposes in hardship.

Can you elaborate on new ways you think about God's character?

In John 14, Jesus says, "Anyone who has faith in me will do … even greater things than these." We tend to think Jesus was talking about miracles, as if Jesus were saying, "Hey guys, look at these miracles! One day, you'll do many more miracles than me!"

The thing that Jesus was doing wasn't necessarily the miracles. He was giving the gospel; he was advancing his kingdom; he was reclaiming the earth as rightfully his. When Jesus gave that promise, he was saying, "I'm giving you a job to do, my Father and I want the gospel to go forth, and I promise you'll have everything you need to get that job done, and you'll do an even better job than me." Jesus ministered for three years, and at the end, he had a handful of disciples who half-believed in him. After Jesus went to heaven and the Holy Spirit came down—my goodness, Peter preaches one sermon and thousands believe. That's the greater thing that God wants us to do.

That's what I have been seeing this past month. Every x-ray technician, every nurse, every doctor's secretary, every clinician, every person I meet in nuclear medicine and at the MRI—it's amazing how many opportunities I've been given to see people hungry and thirsty for Christ. I knew that was true before, but there seems to be something special that is accompanying this diagnosis. I'm just so amazed by people asking me, "How can you approach this breast cancer with such confidence in a God who allows it?" And I'm being given the chance to answer.

The greater thing is not the miracle; it's the advancement of the gospel, it's the giving of the kingdom, reclaiming what is rightfully Christ's.

You have hinted at a classic question: How can a good God allow such suffering in the world? How does your latest book, on God's sovereignty, address that?

When people ask that question—even I struggle with that question—we aren't accepting the fact that this earth is wired to be difficult. The rule of thumb is that we experience much suffering because we live in a fallen world, and it is groaning under the weight of a heavy curse. If God being good means he has to get rid of sin, it means he would have to get rid of sinners. God is a God of great generosity and great mercy, so he is keeping the execution of suffering. He's not closing the curtain on suffering until there is more time to gather more people into the fold of Christ's fellowship.

That answer suits me, and I think it would suit others if they stop and think: Suffering is connected to sin; if God were to get rid of suffering, he'd have to get rid of sin, and then he'd have to get rid of sinners—and God is too merciful to do that.

Is it different when the cause of suffering is natural? For instance, you might not have control over getting breast cancer. Do you cope differently from someone who has something done to her by another person?

Certainly I could have controlled this one; I should have gotten a mammogram five years ago. I have no one to blame but myself. I can't point the finger at secondhand smoke in restaurants. I should've gotten a mammogram, and I did not. I failed to do it, and I regret that. (If I were to tell your female readers anything, I'd say, "Get a mammogram.")

Whether hardship is brought on by our own negligence or through the direct assault of the hand of a wicked person, or our own ignorance and misinformed decisions, or our lack of awareness or misdoings, or some catastrophe of nature—these things fall under the purview of God's overarching decree. A close look at the New Testament shows that God's sovereignty extends over all these things. God permits all sorts of things that he doesn't approve of. He doesn't approve of my spinal-cord injury or my cancer, but in his sovereign decree he has allowed them. I don't care if you use permit, allow, or ordained; it's all the same thing. Ultimately it goes back to God being in charge. I don't think there is a real difference.

The greater thing Jesus promises we can do is not the miracle, but the advancement of the gospel, reclaiming what is rightfully his.

Suffering is hardship and heartache. It's one package. Yes, God could have prevented it. He could prevent a thief from breaking in and stealing, he could prevent a wicked man with a gun from firing it, and he could have prevented my cancer. He could have put in my heart:Go get a mammogram. If he chooses to allow these things to occur, it doesn't mean he's any less caring or compassionate. His will, purpose, and sovereign design may be a bit more ob-scure and enigmatic on this side of eternity.

When you discovered you had breast cancer, was your reaction different from all your previous experiences of suffering?

I don't fall apart emotionally. There's a lump. Wow, okay, let's get this taken care of. I broke my neck. Yikes. What is this going to mean? Okay, let's buckle down and move forward. I'm the kind of person who cannot allow those emotions to go down the grim path of despair. It's too deep of a miry pit. I'd rather face life head-on and with full force and take things as they come, learn from those things, and move forward.

How should we respond to someone who is suffering?

It's important to follow injunctions from God's Word: Go to the elders, be anointed with oil, and confess sin. If you feel you need to go to a special prayer service, by all means attend it. Have a pastor anoint you with oil and lay hands on you. After you do, you have to keep on living. That's what happened to me when I was first injured. I confessed sin and was anointed with oil. Do I sit around for my hands and feet to get the message? I have to live in the meantime. If you feel led to, pray and seek healing, but keep living while you're looking for the healing.

Even if the focus is on living, shouldn't Christians prepare themselves for further suffering and death?

None of us, in our culture of comfort, know how to prepare ourselves for dying, but that's what we should do every day. Every single day, we die a thousand deaths. We don't just walk through the valley of the shadow of death when we get a medical report or when we survive a stroke. We go through the valley of the shadow of death every time we say no to our selfish desires. When we say yes to the grace of God, we are learning how to die.

This past weekend, I was singing hymns with friends. One of my favorites is "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah," but the words in the hymnal we were using had been changed. They took out the verse on death: (singing) "Death of death and hell's destruction, land me safe on Canaan's side." They exchanged the wonderfully rich, pithy, deep, hard words with something vague like, "Help me through until the other side." They extricated those words about death and hell's destruction. Why do that? We need to learn how to die every day. Suffering does that. It prepares us. Every time we go to sleep, it's a rehearsal of the day when our eyes will ultimately close and we wake up on the side of eternity.

What teachings of Jesus especially help you understand suffering?

There's the portion of Scripture in Matthew 18 where Jesus says, "If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out." Here Jesus, the one who delighted in healing hands that could not work, restoring feet that could not walk, giving sight to eyes that could not see—here he is, saying cut off your hand, gouge out your eyes, if these things are causing you to sin. Jesus underscores his priority that yes, the physical body counts, but it does not trump the health of the soul.

When people ask about healing, I'm less interested in the physical and more interested in healing in my heart. Pray that I get rid of my lazy attitude about God's Word and prayer, of brute pride—set me free from self-centeredness. Those are more important, because Jesus thought they were more important.

Go to ChristianBibleStudies.com for "Something Greater Than Healing," a Bible study based on this article.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today.

The Birth Control Pill Documentary

A Christian worker, his family and a nurse friend investigate throughout North America to uncover the truth about the birth control pill. The debate has been raging for a decade and yet so few people know about it. How could this be? How does the pill really work? Can everyday oral contraceptives really cause abortions? Why are so many people uninformed?
Discover how this could be a deadly silence.
Find out what has shocked doctors and nurses.
Be informed! Inform others!
Visit us at 28daysonthepill.com

- Independent Producer, TNL Productions

The Birth Control Pill Documentary from T Herbert on Vimeo.

Tullian Tchividjian: Surprised by Grace

The formerly rebellious, now faith-filled grandson of Billy Graham gives a fresh look at Jonah, one of Bible's most famous rebels.

CBN.com – In March 2009, Tullian became the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, FL, led by the late Dr. D. James Kennedy for 48 years. Thirty-five years earlier, Tullian’s grandfather Billy Graham preached the dedication sermon for the new church sanctuary back in 1974. Billy Graham was 55 years old, and Tullian was just 18 months old. Read more here….

Britain's War on Christianity: America's Future Fight?