Volume #8 Issue #3 February 2012 - Crooked and Depraved Generation

It is easy to romanticize the life of a missionary.  I have long seem my job as being a bearer of the light in a spiritually dark place.  My YOU friends seem lost in the grip of Islm and unable to hear and accept the freeing truth of Jesus as Savior.  My ongoing prayer has been, if only they would hear the good news; they too could have new life… they too would step out of the darkness of the religious teachings that surrounds them into His glorious light.

That unrealistic bubble or romanticized ideal was recently pooped.  YOU people are not lost in Islm; they are lost in sin.  In the course of two weeks, I heard YOU people recount to me every sine under the sum.  I heard stories of adultery, homosexuality, divorce, polygamy, sexual abuse, physical abuse, alcohol abuse, pornography, prostitution, drug addiction, lying, cheating, stealing, greed, envy, corruption, and countless other sins  Some were things my friends had done themselves; others were things their family or friends were struggling with.  No matter where the stories came from, they all broke my heart and brought me to a much needed reality check of what we are really facing.

In my quite time one day I read, “that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you old out the word of life”  (Philippians 2:15).  It was like Paul knew exactly what my neighbors were struggling with right now.  I had to laugh at my own naivety.  Of course he knew.  The list of stories I had heard almost perfectly mirrors any one of the many sin lists he printed in the epistles.  The world has not changed.  They Uygur people really aren’t unique.  Paul lived in a time that could be deemed a “crooker and depraved generation.”  You live in Canada surrounded by a “crooked and depraved generation.”  I see the same depravity all around me here in Central Asia.  YOU people are sinners; they love their sin.  It is so much more than being trapped in religious ritual; my friends are going against Jesus willingly because they love the darkness.

Paul also summed up for all of us our job description as children of God who daily witness the pain and brokenness that sin has brought to the relationships around us.  We need to be so transformed by God’s salvation that it is evident to all that we are no longer living for the sinful pleasures of this world.  We are shining like stars and holding out the word of life as an explanation for our difference.

Please join me in praying for those that God has put in my path.  Pray for this crooked and depraved generation; that they will call out to Him asking for the perfect forgiveness that only He can give for this sin problem.