Paul and Christie Johnson

Missionaries in Rochester, MN

A Tender Story

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This morning at breakfast Christie and I were talking with the kids about the man healed near the Bethesda pool in John 5. The man had been disabled for 38 years and desired to get into the pool when an angel stirred the water and be healed. But, he never made it in. Jesus heals him instantly.

Discussing the power of God (and thinking about Jesus’ question in Mark 10) I ask my kids “What would you say if Jesus asked you what you want?” I thought it was a good question just to stimulate conversation about God’s power and get to what is in my kids’ hearts.

Elliott (age 5) jumped in first: “I’d ask to be invisible!” and went on chattering about getting bad guys.
Next I asked Theo (7) and being the thoughtful and rather private guy that he is he deflected with an “I don’t know.”

Then it hit me. My daughter Lily (5) has a lot of health issues. My boys are extremely healthy and anything they would ask of Jesus would be from that place of relative contentment.

I was then interrupted by my youngest, Caspian, wanting to be asked the question. So, I asked him what he would want from Jesus. He said: “Jesus love Elliott, Theo and Lily.” What a sweet response, even if as a 22 month old, he doesn’t know much he does know that he wants Jesus to love his siblings. I was touched.

But then the rounds came back to Lily. What would she say? I want to be able to speak normally? I want to be able to hear like everyone else? I want to be strong, fast and healthy like my brothers? I want my intestines to work properly so I don’t have to take all these medications? There is a long list not to mention the emotional trauma that she endured before we adopted her three years ago.
As I write this, tears roll down my cheeks as I grieve for what that little girl has gone through and what she is still going through.
After some brief consideration she finally responded. “I want Jesus to be kind to me.”

I assured her that he is.
What a response! We all live in a place that is dependent on the kindness and the mercy of God and that is the most important thing in all the world that we can ask for.
When we are living in the kindness of God we don’t have to worry about anything. Trouble comes.

Hardship is here every day. We all have emotional pain that we carry around with us and many have physical pain as well. But if we truly believe that God is kind we know that he is for us and desires eternal good for us rather than temporary good.

Whatever you’re facing – if you’re like Lily with a mountain of physical and emotional trials or just have the average helping that most people get – you can depend on the kindness of God. That doesn’t mean that he will heal us instantly like he chose to do for the man at Bethesda (though he may, he has the power to) but it does mean that he desires to be the father that we need.

Romans 2:4 (CSB)

Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

The Gospel says that God desires us and paid the ultimate price not so that we could have anything and everything that we ever want but so that we… would be his.

Christmas in the rear view mirror

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It’s good to be home. I took some time off between Thanksgiving and Christmas to get refreshed and re-envisioned and it was a really good break. I read a lot, spent a lot of time with my favorite people (Christie and the boys) and even got some house work done.

We also had the pleasure of meeting with both our extended families over Christmas. It’s so good to celebrate Christ’s birth together.

After that we jumped into our annual Faithwalkers and not only were reconnected with our local church family whom we had missed for several weeks but also our extended GCC church family from all over the country.

Coming off Christmas and Faithwalkers I’ve been meditating on what keeps me content and joyful. What can I constantly return to no matter what my situation or  feelings are telling me. I tried to articulate it this way on facebook: The greatest relief is not a sense that you’ve done well enough to escape hell but that you’ve done poorly enough to need Christ’s payment and therefore are assured heaven!

When I’m in touch with my sin as a basic reality I can step away from expectation and effort and relax in the grace that has been given to me. Then I want to do my best for the one who loved me enough to die for me and promise me heaven!

Tom Brown said it this way during his talk at Faithwalkers (I’d encourage you to listen to it – one of the best of the conference): “Because Jesus the lamb was the hero for us I don’t have to be… We are freed from the need to perform for God or for other people”

Christmas is about Jesus coming to earth as a little baby and doing what we cannot do – living a perfect life and then dying the death we deserve so that if we put our faith in him instead of ourselves we get to have his death applied in our place – so we don’t have to face eternal punishment in hell for our offenses toward God. Then it means that we are free to live for him and do what we were created to do. Good works!

This is a little bit of an extension of the topic at hand but these works God has prepared for us and fantastic things we can do for him! That was my seminar topic at Faithwalkers. Check it out and let me know what you think.

The LT Greenhouse – An Artificial Structure

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A summer leadership training program is an artificial structure – it’s not “real life”.
I told the students that in Wisconsin Dells as we kicked off the Dells LT. We live in very close quarters, meet daily for prayer, music, sharing the word and all eat together for breakfast and dinner. Many people even work together and reach out to their coworkers together. During college, summers afford us these sorts of opportunities. The opportunity to enter a greenhouse to encourage spiritual growth, to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones and to build new relationships across regional lines.
In Acts when 3,000 people were added in a day God used an artificial structure in order to establish his young Church. They met together daily in the temple courts and from house to house, devoting themselves to the apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and the prayers.
In “real life” we simply cannot maintain this lifestyle and as we see in Acts they didn’t either, they got chased out of Jerusalem and went about living out the lifestyle of disciples and disciple-makers.
Our goal with the Dells LT is to spend this summer in a greenhouse growing together and then head back to real life in the fall as disciples and disciple-makers.