India

Well, I am off to India for two weeks of ministry. I have the wonderful opportunity to teach Indian leaders from the great city of New Delhi, to the rural regions of Kachhwa, to the southern environs of Bangalore. I really do consider it a great honor to be given such an opportunity. In many ways these leaders are my heroes. The are willing to minister for Christ at great personal cost. I will be traveling with my dear friend and Paul Tripp Ministries colleague, Malcolm Osborn.

I was thinking this morning about the long journey that is ahead of us, landing us in a culture so fundamentally different from our own and I was filled with a sense of the power and glory of God. Why, you may ask? Because it hit me that I did not choose where I would be born on this planet on which we live. Yet, as I travel from the little spot on the globe where I live and arrive in India at the little spot on the globe where others live, I will still be in a spot that is ruled by the same God! And I will be ministering to people who are just as much his children as I am and who are just as aware of his presence as I am right here, right now!

This got me thinking of how many important things in our life, we didn't choose.

- You did not choose the family you were born into.
- You did not choose the period of history you would live in.
- You did not choose the world events that would take place around you.
- You did not control the progress of science and knowledge, but you have benefited from both.
- You did not create the technology that has made your life easier and more comfortable.
- You did not choose what street you would grow up on.
- You did not chose what childhood school you would attend.
- You did not choose how healthy your body would be.
- You did not choose who your parents and siblings would be.
- You did not chose who would be your neighbor, your mayor, your president.
- You did not choose what the economic conditions would be around you.
- You did not choose how safe your environment would be.
- You did not choose how early you would be exposed to truth.
- You did not choose whether you would live in the first world or the third world.
- You did not choose what language you would grow up speaking.
- You did not choose what culture would shape your view of life.

When you really begin to access the sum total of your life, you can only end up with one conclusion. Here it is - God is great! He is awesome in his wisdom, power, and glory. His magnificence reaches beyond the most descriptive and poetic ability of human language. His glory lives way beyond the boundaries of the human intellect to reason. But there is something else to be said. Pay careful attention here. He is great and we are not. We are all tempted to buy into the delusion of our own greatness and our own sovereignty. We really like to think that we are in more control of more things than we actually are. And why do we do this? Because we are terrified of the dependent danger of humble faith. We find it very hard to put ourselves in the hands of Another. So what do we do? It is an awful thing. We exaggerate our greatness and we minimize the Lord's. We take credit for what we did not produce and we fail to give him credit for what has come from his hands. All of this works to make us more comfortable with a dangerous and delusional self-reliance.

So, I am thankful for the trip to India. Not just because I get to minister and to serve, but also because it forces me to be reminded once again of how small I actually am and how glorious God continues to be. This trip invites me to recognize Glory and rest. How about resting with me?

As you leave the blog, don't forget to visit again our website, www.paultrippministries.org. When you go there you can:

1. Learn more about the ministry.
2. Check out the schedule of upcoming events.
3. Listen to the daily radio broadcast.
4. Purchase a resource that will put the transforming power of Jesus Christ
right next to where you live each day.
5. Subscribe to daily podcast and have the radio program delivered to your
computer daily.
6. Make a donation to support bringing the transforming power of Jesus Christ to
individuals, churches, and ministries around the world.
7. Fill out the form, requesting Paul to come to your area for a conference.
8. Read and reread the blog that is daily being updated.
9. Make direct contact with us through email.

May the Lord of it all be your Lord of rest!

Sad Celebrations

In normal life your celebrations don't usually intersect with your sad times and your sad times aren't typically your times of celebration. When you are sad, you don't really feel like celebrating anything much. The opposite is also true, when you are celebrating, you don't want your good spirits dampened by reasons to be sad. We try our best to keep our sadness and our celebration separate. It just makes life less complicated.

But Jesus has called us to be a sadly celebratory community or a celebratory sad community. Now why is this true? It is true because Jesus calls you to a life of uncompromising honesty and a life of unchallenged hope. If you are going to be honest, really honest, then you are going to be sad. Why, because you cannot be honest without recognizing the horrible legacy of damage that sin has left on each one of us and on the surrounding world. Sin damages us, it damages our relationships, and it damages our environment. There is nothing you will ever examine or experience, this side of eternity, that has not been damaged in some way by sin. The destruction is so widespread it almost leaves you breathless. When you are really honest about how broken the world actually is, you cannot help but be profoundly sad.

Yet, we are not just called to be people of honesty, we are called to be people of hope as well. When you begin to consider how magnificent God's love really is, when you begin to understand how powerful his grace is, and when you begin to realize that God is right now exercising both his love and his grace so that this world would be fully and completely restored, you can't help but celebrate. This God who is the ultimate definition of love and wisdom, will not leave us and the surrounding world alone until we and it are fully and completely restored to what we were meant to be in the beginning.

So we should be the saddest and most celebrant community on earth. And we should be sad and celebratory at the very same time. We are sad becuase we know how bad things actually are and we celebrate because we know that the help that Jesus offers us reaches to the deepest level of our need.

Are you sad at the condition of your world and does your sadness dance with your celebration because you also know how great God's life-transforming grace actually is? When you take those honest looks at your world, have you remembered that God will not quit or rest until he has made all things new?
May both celebration and sadness dance in your heart to the rhythm of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

As you leave the blog, don't forget to visit again our website, www.paultrippministries.org. When you go there you can:

1. Learn more about the ministry.
2. Check out the schedule of upcoming events.
3. Listen to the daily radio broadcast.
4. Purchase a resource that will put the transforming power of Jesus Christ
right next to where you live each day.
5. Subscribe to daily podcast and have the radio program delivered to your
computer daily.
6. Make a donation to support bringing the transforming power of Jesus Christ to
individuals, churches, and ministries around the world.
7. Fill out the form, requesting Paul to come to your area for a conference.
8. Read and reread the blog that is daily being updated.
9. Make direct contact with us through email.

May you weep with joy and celebrate with sadness until He makes all things new once again!