Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Back to Sudan (after nearly 21 years)

It’s been over 20 years since I lived in a remote desert village of northern Sudan for a year. It was a life-changing experience that left me with many wonderful memories that have softened the rough edges of the challenges I faced. Sudan was then at war with itself, and though the north and the south are no longer at war, Sudan still seems as unstable now as it was then. So why then – now that I’m a husband and a father – would I plan to go to southern Sudan in this present climate of tension and uncertainty? I suppose another question I could ask is, having been invited to consider going, how serious do the needs need to be in southern Sudan before I'm prepared to leave my safe and affluent environment to go and help?

I and two other people from our church plan to travel to southern Sudan about a month from now, and plan to spend almost two weeks ministering there. One of our threesome is originally from southern Sudan and has not been back for 17 years, and due to the war, has been separated from his family for 25 years. And though he is from a family of 15 siblings, only two of his siblings are still alive today. We plan to travel to his home town where he will most certainly be welcomed back with many tears and great celebration!

While we are there, it is our desire to minister to the local Christians in any way we can. We will spend time in the Word with them and will pray with them, and we hope to be an encouragement to a church that has been through great pain in the past couple decades.

In 2005, a peace agreement ended 21 years of fighting between the north and the south of Sudan. It had been Africa’s longest civil war, devastating the entire region of southern Sudan, and leaving two million people killed, over four million people internally displaced and half a million refugees. Christians experienced significant adversity throughout this war, and yet now is an opportune time for the Church outside of Sudan to help Sudan’s Christians be the light they’re meant to be among their own people.

What else could we possibly do to help? That remains to be seen.

As you can imagine, the task of rebuilding after such a long and terrible war is tremendous. Between one and two million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have already returned to their home towns since the peace agreement was reached and many more are expected to follow. But in the midst of limited resources and opportunities, tensions between the returnees and those who had remained are very real. Many homes and herds have been destroyed, schools and clinics are unable to cope with the numbers, and the cost of food as well as basic building materials is continually rising. This has left many thousands of people living in the bush or in primitive camps around the towns they returned to, with minimal aid or no aid at all to help them. There is an urgent need for clean water supplies, food, housing materials and medical care. And yet humanitarian aid has decreased of late because some aid agencies have moved on after the cessation of armed conflict in southern Sudan.

In addition to such pressing needs, education is neglected. It is estimated that three-quarters of the adults in southern Sudan are illiterate and only about 22% of an estimated 2.2 million school-age children are enrolled in schools. However, a third of these schools are simply wooden benches under a tree and many of the teachers lack proper training or adequate curriculum. We’re asking the Lord to guide and direct us to see how we may be able to partner with a church in Uganda to help with education in the area of southern Sudan we will be visiting. This could include meals and clothes, as well as a classroom and a teacher for children in need.

So why would I go to southern Sudan in the present climate of tension and uncertainty? My concern is that if God’s people were to stay away in such times, how would the people of southern Sudan know the love and light of Christ when they most need it? It’s at such times that I see many secular agencies helping people. So how can I as God’s child – who has my heavenly Father to help me – not be prepared to also help?

That is why I am planning to go to southern Sudan this August. We as a team would appreciate your prayers.

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Sunday, July 13, 2008

A Treasure worth Chasing (church bulletin cover)

I still clearly remember him, sitting up there on the highest shelf of a store display, so that I had to crane my young neck back to stare in awe at his hulking form. I couldn’t reach him with my hands, but my imagination knew no such limitations as I imagined him free from his stifling box and sitting on the top shelf of my bedroom dresser. Tyrannosaurus Rex: The fiercest and most terrifying creature that has ever walked the earth. This snap-together model had been brilliantly created to inspire the same dread that the living beasts must have roused in their prey of ages past. He was so tall, that I had to measure if there was room for him between my shelf and my ceiling. And his moving jaws were filled with glow-in-the-dark teeth. I would gaze up at the box and imagine myself lying in bed, staring at his rows of fearsome teeth glowing in the night. I wanted this prize. I would save every penny until it was mine. And there came a day when he was. I saved and saved my dimes and quarters until I had the twenty-something dollars that he cost – and then – I took him home: a prize worthy of the price I had paid!
Children understand the excitement of a prize. Their eyes light up more easily at the thought of something new and wonderful than do the more road-weary eyes of grown-ups around them. And yet I’m sure we can all think of one thing or another that has captured our imagination and that we just had to have.
Many such things are gifts from God that He’s pleased we enjoy. But in the midst of enjoying such blessings, it is vital that the things of this earth not become our treasure. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34). God wants to be the treasure we are most passionate about pursuing, and so we must regularly check our hearts to be sure that our relationship with God is still the greatest treasure we chase. Are we so enthralled with the Gospel that we are willing to spend whatever it takes to get it off a shelf and into our lives? It’s difficult in this culture of iPods and HDTVs and all-inclusive holidays, but all those things are pale in comparison to knowing the living God. Jesus is a King worthy of immeasurable awe, and the Gospel is a message of endless wonder. May we experience increased revelation of that this summer so that Jesus remains a treasure that outshines anything else we enjoy!

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Seeking God in a Way that Pleases Him (church bulletin cover)

God is certainly not impressed with outward shows of devotion when our hearts are not actually seeking Him. I can read my Bible, attend special Saturday night worship meetings and write this devotional, and my heart can still be far from God, leaving none of the above pleasing to God or of any benefit to anyone. The prophet Amos addressed this when he wrote that God actually hated his people’s festivals and assemblies and sacrifices (Amos 5:21-22). Even their songs were as noise to God (5:23). Are my songs or my blog postings noise to God? Amos offers some appreciated insight into how to avoid this. Amos was speaking to a people who loved the outward stuff – their rituals and offerings (4:5), but whose hearts were far from God (4:11). So he brought the word of the LORD to them: “Seek Me that you may live” (5:4). The sort of seeking spoken of here is about what I do between the rituals so that the outward things are an expression of the genuine life I have in God. “Seek Me” can be done anytime, all the time – it’s the posture of one who is eager for God, not just interested in attending spiritual meetings.

But Amos was also urging God’s people to a better kind of outward expression in their devotion to God. Rather than stressing religious rituals and gatherings, which typically only impact the individuals in attendance, Amos stressed deeds that impacted others for good. He spoke of justice and righteousness (5:24). He said to “Hate evil, love good, and establish justice” (5:15). That is how to avoid singing “noisy” songs to God (5:23)! This isn’t a message exhorting us to stop singing, or even to avoid meeting together. It’s about what direction I’m facing as I sing – toward God or self? And it’s about what I do between the meetings – pursue righteousness or personal gain? What I choose could mean the difference between “Seek Me that you may live” (5:4) and “Prepare to meet your God!” (4:12).

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Clean Water is meant for Everyone

Amid the myriad of very real physical needs we are aware of in this world, why would safe drinking water be the need one chooses to financially help with? I believe the reason is that safe water goes beyond saving lives — it improves communities. And when there’s water for everyone, it even strengthens nations! When safe, clean water is provided as a part of proper community development programs, it has the potential to improve the health of a community to such a degree that people are able to work or attend school more consistently, uninterrupted by diseases caused by unsafe water. This means that entire communities will have greater opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty that prevents them from pursuing a more hopeful future. In this way, safe, clean water releases hope as well as quenching thirst.

The situation is critical. As many as 1 billion people in the world must drink unsafe drinking water (ISERP, Columbia University, Spring 2005). Diarrhea, which is caused by unclean water and by inadequate sanitation 88% of the time (WHO, World Health Report 2002), is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.8 million people worldwide each year, 1.6 million (90%) of which are children under five – even though children under 5 constitute just 10% of the world’s population (World Resources Institute, EarthTrends, September 2005)! That’s approximately 4,400 children dying from a preventable disease everyday... one child every 20 seconds.

Good health is among the most valuable assets the poor possess, but it’s the poor who suffer the most health problems associated with unsafe water. Those earning less than $1/day —which happens to be about 1.1 billion people (World Resources Institute, EarthTrends, December 2005) – are nearly 10 times more likely to have health problems related to unsafe water than those earning a mere $2/day in much of the developing world. And experts estimate that nearly half (46%) of workplace productivity lost to ill health in the developing world is attributable to unsafe water and hygiene (World Resources Institute, EarthTrends, September 2005). “Having a household member fall ill can destroy a poor family’s standard of living. Household and village-level studies show that the illness of a key income-earner is one of the leading causes of a household's decline into abiding poverty... The immediate loss of income is only the start: health bills can mount quickly and create an urgent need for cash, and since the poor possess few liquid assets that can be used for such emergencies, they may have to sell land or items central to sustaining their livelihoods… One common coping strategy is to pull children out of school and send them to work, depriving them of training they will need in the future to keep themselves out of poverty” (World Resources Institute, EarthTrends, September 2005).

It’s encouraging to know though, that health improvements “from a 50% reduction in the number of people without access to safe drinking water would result in an extra 272 million school attendance days and 320 million productive work days each year in the developing world – resulting in major economic and social benefits” (WHO UNICEF, 2005 (from “Turn on the Tap” literature, Samaritan’s Purse)).

Many relief and community development agencies are working with water filter technology that is sustain
able in the developing world, and they are gradually giving more and more people access to safe drinking water. They simply need the funds to continue this work. One that I heartily recommend is Samaritan's Purse and their "Turn on the Tap" program.


© 2008 by Ken Peters

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

But we... and But HE...

The stories of the kings of Israel and Judah are sobering to read. The kings of Israel seemed to go from one level of evil to another until they were judged. But the kings of Judah had glimmers of light as many kings chose to do right in the sight of the LORD. What sobers me though is that even as the chronicler described kings who did right, they so often needed to qualify those descriptions.

Amaziah did right in the sight of the LORD, “but not with a whole heart” (2 Chronicles 25:2), which became his undoing. Then Uzziah did right in the sight of the LORD, and it says that “as long as he sought the LORD, God prospered him” (2 Chr. 26:5). “But when he became strong, his heart was so proud that he acted corruptly” (2 Chr. 26:16). And that was his undoing. The next king was Jotham, who did right in the sight of the LORD, and of whom it was said that he “ordered his ways before the LORD his God” and thereby became mighty (2 Chr. 27:6). And though no qualifier is mentioned regarding Jotham, the chronicler is compelled to mention a qualifier about the people he led as it says, “But the people continued acting corruptly (2 Chr. 27:2). It’s as though Judah was incapable of turning to God in such a way that deserved an unqualified commendation! There always seemed to need to be a “but…” Divided hearts, pride, acting corruptly. All stuff I’m capable of.

I want to serve the Lord in such a way that no “but…” is necessary, no qualifier needing to be mentioned about me. The problem is though, that’s not likely to happen in this earthly body, and that’s precisely why another use of the word “But… frequently appears in Scripture.

Ephesians 2:1-3 describes how God found us to be dead in our sins, walking according to the ways of this world, and deserving of God’s wrath. Then in verse four we read: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us… made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5). God knows that we cannot seek Him in a way that requires no qualifiers, and so He adds a qualifier regarding Himself: “But I will save you!”

The words “But now…” of Romans 3:21 have to be the most encouraging words in all of Scripture. Paul has just laid out how totally pervasive our sin is, and he sums up that dark description of this rebel race by asserting that no one can be justified by attempting to do well enough at following the law of Moses. It all seems hopeless. Then come those words, “But now…” There is hope for us. “But now, apart from the Law, God’s righteousness has been revealed… even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe” (Romans 3:21-22). In other words, for all who believe, the righteousness of God will become our righteousness.

What a wonder! There I was, standing in darkness and full of darkness, and suddenly – “But now…” – the sun rises right before my eyes and shines upon me, and fills me with brightness and warmth! All I need to do is believe in what Jesus has done for me. And I do! And now God’s righteousness is at work in me to make me wholly acceptable to God with no “buts” necessary to qualify His love for me!

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Obedience after the work seems done (church bulletin cover)

School is out and summertime is upon us! For Winnipeggers, that’s the equivalent of offering sunlight and celebration to workers coming up from months in the Mines of the Mundane. Freedom, we cry! But what if as we came up from those shafts of hard work and honest labour, we found that God was asking us to help Him with something amazing He wanted to do? What would be our response?

There was a time when, after a hard night’s work for Peter and his fishing companions, Jesus asked Peter to put out into deep water and let down his nets for a catch. Peter’s response was to say, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing! But I’ll do as you say and let down the nets” (Luke 5:5). How much of our labour between September and June can be summed up by the words, “I’ve worked so hard already, and it hasn’t even seemed that worthwhile”? The hard work of life’s routines can produce a resistance to anything new God may ask of us come summertime. But God doesn’t stop moving in the summer, and may be asking us to do something far more wonderful than what we’ve seen since last summer! Yes, it’s easy to say, “I’m too tired – haven’t I already done enough?” And we might even dare to wonder at the value of doing the very thing God asks of us. But in so thinking, we must be careful that weariness doesn’t become the seedbed of unbelief in our hearts.

Peter, though, does as he’s asked, and the result is a net so full of fish that it was to the point of nearly breaking (Luke 5:6)! Obeying the voice of God is so much more rewarding that the toil of our own efforts. So no matter how weary I may be from the routines of September to June, if God is merciful enough to speak to me about what He’s doing these days, I want to be ready to obey Him. And God forbid that I should be so weary from the busyness of fall-winter-spring that I’m not willing to obey Jesus in the specific things He asks of me come summer. For it’s as I obey Jesus that I will be left so amazed at Him that I’d be willing to leave everything behind to follow Him (Luke 5:9-11)!

© 2008 by Ken Peters

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Be Prepared! It’s a Test! (church bulletin cover)

It’s exam season for a great many students out there. My 12-year old daughter is facing them for the first time. And as I watch her stress about it, I’m tempted to think that I’m glad I’ve gotten that over with. But that’s not entirely true.


Remember when the LORD tells Moses to send twelve spies into the Promised Land to spy it out (Numbers 13:1)? Have you ever wondered, “What was the point of that?” I mean, what did they need to check out if God already knew exactly what was in there and fully intended to give His people the land? What use were the spies if God planned on leading and directing His people every step of the way? Moses instructed the spies to check out whether the people of the land were strong or weak, many or few; whether the land was good or bad and whether the cities were well-fortified or not (Numbers 13:17-20). Why? Of course it’s good — it’s the Promised Land! And who cares how weak or strong the people or the cities are if the living God is your commander? Moses knew all that. And God knew all that. And that’s the point! The spies weren’t sent to reveal what was in the Land, but to reveal what was in their hearts! It was a test! And that makes me wonder how many of the paths God sends me down are also tests of the same kind — the kind that reveal what’s really in my heart. Faith or fear? Gratitude or grumbling? Worship or whining?

My heart is that my daughter does well on her exams, and as her father, I’m prepared to help and encourage her so that she can do well. God also desires that His children pass the tests He sends our way, and He too wants to help us to do so. And just as my daughter’s exams are meant to help her grow stronger in math or science or English, the tests God provides are so that we can grow stronger in character. To prepare for such tests, the Bible is our textbook and God is an accessible teacher. So instead of getting stressed about life’s tests, God invites us spend abundant time with Him so that we can be better prepared to approach tests confidently, fully persuaded of God’s truth whatever the circumstances!


© 2008 by Ken Peters

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Prayers cause things

I struggle to pray. I struggle to make time to pray, and then when I do pray, I struggle to keep at it amidst the many things pulling at me, crying out to be done. I feel so pragmatic in my mindset that the idea of stopping all activity and bowing at my desk or kneeling by a chair and speaking to an unseen God feels like I'm being unproductive. After all, there's so much to DO! But I think I also struggle to persist in prayer is because of the things I've prayed for so many years which appear to have gone unanswered. I expect we all have prayers like that -- and some of us have even stopped praying them because it's too difficult to keep asking in faith. They've become prayers of unbelief. Well, in the midst of such challenges, I came across a wonderful video clip of John Piper teaching on prayer. The final words of this clip have been echoing in my spirit for over a week now, and I want to share it with you. Take a look, and be encouraged -- prayer matters!



© 2008 by Ken Peters

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

"God is the Gospel" by John Piper, 179 pages

This is certainly my favourite Piper book and I highly recommend it. It defines the Gospel in the context of a culture obsessed with self -- a fixation I have not been immune to. Even my Christian theology has been decorated with the fragile ornaments of self, leaving my view of the Gospel often more about me than about Jesus: about MY sins being forgiven, about ME being a new creation, about MY purpose in life, about ME going to heaven. But as I’ve focused on me and mine, it has never left me satisfied for long.

As Piper combats this self-absorption that has greatly affected many people's theology, he focuses the spotlight of the Gospel directly on God Himself. John Piper calls this “biblical God-centeredness” and he describes “the acid test of the biblical God-centeredness” as this: “Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever?” (p.11)


John Piper begins this book at full throttle and never lets up in his attack against our “man-centered view of love” and our idolatry of heaven. Piper stresses that “The Gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It’s a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don’t want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel” (p.47). Wow. It’s a hard-hitting book, but it’s the kind of hurt that feel good, like a massage that pounds the aching knots from our weary souls. Piper’s point in this small but powerful book is that “Propitiation, redemption, forgiveness, imputation, sanctification, liberation, healing, heaven – none of these is good news except for one reason: they bring us to God for our everlasting enjoyment of him” (p.47). All these gifts are wonderful and are not to be minimized, for Christ paid for them with his life, but “not one Gospel blessing will be enjoyed by anyone for whom the gospel’s greatest gift was not the Lord himself” (p.12).


When Piper says that “God is the Gospel", he means “that the highest, best, final, decisive good of the gospel, without which no other gifts would be good, is the glory of God in the face of Christ revealed for our everlasting enjoyment” (p.13).


This book is not an easy devotional read, though it’s highly satisfying for those who are unsatisfied and weary with the shallowness of a self-centered Gospel. Piper digs deep into various passages that revolve around what salvation and grace and suffering and missions and the glory of God really mean in the context of a God-centered Gospel. It’s as though John Piper wants to analyze the gospel from as many angles as possible, each time coming to the same conclusion, each time putting a nail in the reader’s self-centered gospel.


But as deeply theological as this book is, Piper’s writing style is personally engaging and at times, richly poetic. One can’t help but be stirred by the following description:
“But the climax of the glory of his [Jesus’] life on earth was the way it ended. It was as if all the darker colors in the spectrum of glory came together in the most beautiful sunset on Good Friday, with the crucified Christ as the blood-red sun in the crimson sky. And it was as if all the brighter colors in the spectrum of glory came together in the most beautiful sunrise on Easter morning, with the risen Christ as the golden sun shining in full strength. Both the glory of the sunset and the glory of the sunrise shone on the horizon of a lifetime of incomparably beautiful love” (p.65).

John Piper’s goal in writing this book was certainly that his readers would find deep and lasting satisfaction in a life focused on Jesus Christ. But his heart is obviously also for those not ready to pick up such a book as he writes, “The world needs nothing more than to see the worth of Christ in the work ands words of his God-besotted people. This will come to pass when the church awakens to the truth that the saving love of God is the gift of himself, and that God himself is the gospel” (p.17).

Click here to view the text of this entire book online!


© 2008 by Ken Peters

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Giving like we just can’t help it!

I don’t write letters to newspaper editors very often, but the last few times I’ve done so, it’s been in response to articles that highlight our society’s commitment to the high life while so many desperately poor people suffer all around us. I wrote such a letter to the National Post in response to an article in Friday’s paper entitled, “The problem with the right to food.” The article was a reaction to the UN declaring that because having food is "a right," wealthy nations are obligated to help the poor. I felt that the writer's reaction to this declaration was very much a “take care of yourselves” kind of attitude toward the people of the two-thirds world. The letter I wrote to the Post ended up being one of the “Letters of the Day” in Saturday’s paper, though it was somewhat abbreviated. Here is what I wrote in full…



Dear Editor,
In Karen Selick’s case against the “right to food,” she seems more concerned about the right for the wealthy well-fed West to have the right to “rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours” than about the fact that, as you also reported, six million children under the age of five in Ethiopia alone are presently at risk of acute malnutrition. This is the problem with a culture obsessed with affluence – we’re so concerned about what we might have to go without while trying to think as little as possible about those who might need it more. If insisting on the “right to food” is so problematic to Ms. Selick, then why not change the focus to the right to give? We have incredible resources in North America. We consume far more than any other part of the world to sustain our lifestyles, and my salary actually puts me in the top 2% of the world’s wage earners even though my gross salary is less than $50,000. My feeling is that, as a resident of this planet, with great abundance comes great responsibility. Whatever rights to food that the starving masses of the world have or don’t have, I believe that we have a responsibility, and the right, to care about their plight. So let’s not get distracted by any “one-world socialism” conspiracies while literally millions are dying of starvation while we pile our plates high with food everyday.

Ken Peters, Winnipeg, MB


The Bible is clear that everyone has a responsibility to look out for the interests of the poor: Government leaders, spiritual leaders, God’s people, citizens of the world, everyone. Even a godless city like Sodom was judged for having “abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek. 16:49). If God expected that of Sodom, all the more reason that God’s people should be concerned about the poor. And when someone writes something for all of Canada to read, saying that it’s wrong to tell someone that they have to give up some of their food just because someone without food feels they have a right to eat, I want to stand up and shout – Did we do something to deserve to be born in this affluent nation? Is the privilege we enjoy purely a result of our own hard work or is it a gift from God? And what did those starving, dying children in Burma or Ethiopia or Haiti do to deserve their low, impoverished place in this world? If we have abundance, it’s by the grace of God. And if we don't like someone telling us that because they feel someone has a right to something we have in abundance, we have to give some to them, then what do we think of God telling us that? I guess the question for the Christian then is -- Is this something that God tells us that we must do, or is it something He'd just kind of like us to do?


There’s no shortage of Biblical support for being generous toward the poor. My feeling is that it’s simply not optional. God expects it of us. He provides grace and resources to us so that we can obey Him in this. And when God’s people choose to give generously and sacrificially the way God wants us to, we become extremely bright lights amidst the desperate neediness of this world.

© 2008 by Ken Peters