Jeff Ling

The picture here shows most of the NEI team that was at the conference. The faces that are blurred are young men who are working in restricted countries. I wish I could tell you about the work they are doing. They are serving the Lord in remarkable and creative ways in places where the pressures of persecution are very real. The rest of the people in this picture are either part of the church planting team in Cambodia or serving in Chaing Mai Thailand as support staff for the NEI missionaries.

The entire week was a very meaningful experience. New friendships were made, vital contacts were established and it seems the teaching I was able to offer was well received and greatly encouraged the team. Thank the Lord for that! Topics included:
- God’s Commitment to Reclaim the Earth
- Preaching the Gospel to Ourselves Daily
- The Spirit’s Leading in Our Lives
- Using the Shield of Faith
- Suffering and Promised Glory

Every teaching time was followed by reports from the team members. After their reports, the team would gather around them and intercede for them. We had some really great prayer time!

 
I really appreciated the NEI leaders providing some fun things for the team to do together. They place a very strong emphasis on commitment to one another and playing together is a means of enhancing the family relationships. Thursday night we went into Hau Hin and took the team bowling. Hilarious! (Don’t ask how I did.) I have to say that watching a gentle, humble and grateful Cambodian pastor bowl for the first time in his life was just delightful.

We arrived in Cambodia without problem and spent the afternoon with children and workers from the House of Hope, an NEI sponsored orphanage. Pictures of that coming up!

“Moved by the perfection of His holy love, God in Christ substituted Himself for us sinners. That is the heart of the cross of Christ.” –John Stott

John Stott passed from this world into the presence of God on the 27th at the age of 90. A leader of leaders and pastor to multitudes through his writing, may God multiply the investment he made in all of us many times.

“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
- Psalm 46:10 – NEI 2011 Theme.

It’s been my privilege to join a number of missionaries associated with NEI Asia at their annual retreat in Thailand. Johnny Buckner, the director of NEI, asked me to come be the guest speaker for the event as well as visit some of NEI’s projects in Cambodia and Burma. As always, I find the blessings and challenge to my own life from these dear saints greater than anything I could possibly offer.

If you search for NEI on the web you will only find their American operations that specialize in disaster relief. You won’t find much about NEI Asia on the web because of the sensitive nature of some of the places they work. What I can share with you is that NEI is a very special organization in that it’s sole focus is on developing indigenous churches among the “least reached and the most needy.”  But that is only a part of the vision. The real meat of it is to train those churches to send missionaries out cross culturally. For instance, it is almost impossible for western white skinned missionaries to be effective in a land like Myanmar (Burma) but indigenous believers from neighboring countries have a greater access and effectiveness. NEI is committed to expanding the vision of indigenous churches to see themselves as sending agencies to release workers into the fields.  Many of the workers I have been speaking to this week have left their home countries to share the love & good news of Jesus in neighboring lands. Many are the first ones sent by their tribe.  Did you catch that? These are tribes where there was no church, a church was planted and now they are sending workers! These lovers of Jesus live on $75-200/month & joyfully sacrifice all to serve the Lord.

I arrived in Bangkok about 11:30pm on Saturday (23rd). I found a cheap place to crash for the night and then went back to the airport in the morning where I met Tim Boden, a friend of Johnny’s and a worship leader from New Horizons in Starkville, Miss.  Since Johnny was delayed a day we found transportation and headed to Pran Buri, about 150 miles south of Bangkok, on the coast. (NEI is based in Chaing Mai in the north but when they have their annual conference they try to do it at a place the missionaries can enjoy and be refreshed by.) We were greeted by the team and enjoyed the welcome dinner that opened the conference. The basic format for Monday thru today has been a time of worship in the morning followed by an hour of teaching which has been my responsibility.  After coffee, we hear reports from the workers and then spend time interceding for them. Afternoon are free and the evenings after dinner have been various group activities.

More to follow…

“Contemplate the multitude of the redeemed around the eternal throne. They are very many; no stretch of mind can count them. They all were once transgressors upon earth, stained by innumerable sins. Now they are all whiter than the whitest snow.

How has their loathsome blackness vanished? They have all washed in the one laver of cleansing; they are all pure by the application of the one blood of the one Jesus. Their filthy garments are all removed, they are arrayed in fitness for their high abode. Where was this lovely apparel won? They drew near, and by the hand of faith put on the righteousness which Jesus alone wrought.

They all sing one song; it is ever new, it can never weary. It is thanksgiving, honor, praise, and power, unto God who sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.”

— Henry Law
Gleanings from the Book of Life

“The cross is the perfect statement both of God’s wrath against sin and of the depth of his love and mercy in the recovery of the damaged creation and its damagers. God’s mercy, patience, and love must be fully preached in the church. But they are not credible unless they are presented in tension with God’s infinite power, complete and sovereign control of the universe, holiness, and righteousness. And where God’s righteousness is clearly presented, compassionate warnings of his holy anger against sin must be given, and warnings also of the certainty of divine judgment in endless alienation from God which will be unimaginably worse than the literal descriptions of hell. It is no wonder that the world and the church are not awakened when our leadership is either singing a lullaby concerning these matters or presenting them in a caricature which is so grotesque that it is unbelievable.

The tension between God’s holy righteousness and his compassionate mercy cannot be legitimately resolved by remolding his character into an image of pure benevolence as the church did in the nineteenth century. There is only one way that this contradiction can be removed: through the cross of Christ which reveals the severity of God’s anger against sin and the depth of his compassion in paying its penalty through the vicarious sacrifice of his Son. In systems which resolve this tension by softening the character of God, Christ and his work become an addendum, and spiritual darkness becomes complete because the true God has been abandoned for the worship of a magnified image of human tolerance.”

- Richard Lovelace, Dynamics for Spiritual Life, 84-85 (emphasis mine).

Courtesy of Desiring God Ministries