When Jesus Throws A Party!

A Celebration of Luke 14:7-24

When Jesus throws a party, he'd rather celebrate His creative genius through honoring His guests than being in the limelight himself. As a matter of fact, every person He sees carries enough unique potential in his or her being worthy of a real celebration. He is totally excited about spotlighting you at his party and anyone who may have been missed. Yes, the people who are most important to Him are usually at the fringe of the crowd or camouflaged in the shadows. He's just itching to show off His brilliant creativity through each one of them and to enjoy the warm smile of the Father over their lives. His best celebration is you! Why do you think He endures all the mess on this globe? Because He knows our potential and where we are headed. He knows our spiritual DNA, the genetic imprint of the divine upon us. It’s more than spectacular!

But I wonder if Jesus did throw a big shebang of a party, would we really show up? Remember, the party is all about enjoying Him through us and us because of Him! But might'nt we squabble for the best spots or, even worse, be too busy to realize we are already highly honored guests? It’s even more likely we'd forget to invite a few who attend the local children's outreach because their parents are drunks. Or, what about the lady down the street who has been divorced for three years because her husband used to beat her? She's still not very friendly, and frankly her frown is all we know about her. Those very folks may be our high dollar ticket to all the fun and feasting. Bringing the "unlikely" with us is a sure sign we understand what kind of party we are showing up to in the first place: it's about celebrating the Father's love over others. The more we do that, the more we get celebrated ourselves! That's why Jesus, who is putting on all the festivities, doesn't mind being the best servant to every guest there. The more He celebrates others, the more wild joy about who He is rocks the entire crowd. Have we ever considered a drug-addicted killer from a cartel in Mexico may be on God's Top 10 "Rescue and Love" list in Heaven? Let’s bring someone like that with us and watch the raging celebration erupt!

A Kingdom MLM works something like this: the more unlikely people you invite, the more God is able to highlight the work of His Most Famous Son in them. As we celebrate them, essentially honoring Jesus in them, it elevates our status as guests of honor. Then, all those folks bring their friends, and the party grows to be huge and the joy becomes massive. Because the Father’s palace is extremely spacious, the saying, “the more the merrier” fits well. And for every new reveler, some of their gladness and heaven's increase comes back to you! All of us introverts don't need to worry at the thought of crowds and noise…there are plenty of nooks and crannies and hidden garden alcoves if you'd rather have some quiet moments with a few friends. Papa God does His parties right.

Guests of honor are like Jesus: they celebrate others first. They come to serve, not to be served. They see the Father in the most unlikely. They live in a raging current of heaven's gladness!!

An Interplay Of God’s Attributes

The characteristics of the Godhead are mutually intelligible. What I mean by that is to say that even though some of them appear to be different on the surface, they all make sense in light of each other and are compatible and complementary. None of them contradicts the rest and all of them are sub-dialects of central characteristics of God such as “God is Love” (1 John 4:16).

An attribute like solitariness is very similar to holiness when applied to God because holiness means set apart as wholly other than and entirely different from the “norm.” Whenever something is uniquely set apart, it also becomes at that moment solitary. When something is solitary, it is no longer like a tree in the forest, but a tree outside the forest, and its vision is vast and far, which reflects God’s ability as sovereign to see and act from a much different perspective than humanity.

God’s holiness, His “wholly other-than-ness” is most distinct in that He is a relational being who enjoys immutable love within the Godhead. Mankind has been relationally dysfunctional since the fall. We struggle between man and man and God and man and are rarely consistent or equitable in showing or sharing love. God is perfectly fulfilled and content within His triune fellowship, never reflecting a hint of friction or dysfunction. He has no need of us within His inner circle of absolute love that makes Him wholly unique and other than us, yet it is exactly because of this holy fellowship that He shows us mercy.

Holy love focuses its attention inwardly and outwardly. Because love is both of these and God is unchanging, it is part of God’s eternal nature to create objects of His love. Though the Godhead is forever happy and complete in the divine rhythm of the love of the Father, Son and Spirit, He also reaches outside Himself to give still more. He delights to show mercy because the nature of love is to give abundantly. Though there is no actual shortfall or need in God, He will always give and create more than He needs because holy love is extravagant beyond measure.

Mercy, then, is an act of one who has no obligation to act on behalf of another, yet still chooses to do so. Mercy is not driven by God’s need, but rather by the overflowing holiness of a God who is free of internal conflict and abundant in complete love. God is the “cup that runs over.” He is more than simply 100% full. He is 100% in overflow. All of His divine characteristics come in extreme measure: He is super-unique and ultra-abundant.

So mercy is the Niagara Falls of God Himself reaching out to His creation through Jesus, whose name is Savior. “God Saves” (AKA “Jesus”) is our most common name for God in the flesh. To save means to rescue. To rescue, in God’s case, is to show mercy, since He has no actual obligation or debt towards mankind. As the One whom the Father sent to save, Jesus is passionate about rescue…which creates a mandate for His people to become rescuers, too.

It is my privilege to work and minister under this rushing, overflowing cascade of God’s mercy. Our mission at Divine Inheritance involves rescuing child soldiers in some of the darkest corners of the earth. It is God’s mercy to us that we can experience the exuberance of heaven in every rescue. I pray that as you read this, you too will pursue a lifestyle of rescue and ride out upon the mighty, thundering waters of God’s mercy.

Jehovah Jireh –God Sees (Goodness Part Three)

"A good name is to be desired more than great wealth” (Proverbs 22:1). We are the Father’s children and all God’s names are like family surnames we all can gladly and proudly wear. In an earlier post, I examined how God descriptively named himself “El Shaddai” to disclose his goodness. Now I’d like to look at a second name of God that, like El Shaddai, is one of the very first revealed names of God. It is also a conclusive name of God like El Shaddai (the Lord Almighty) in that it appears again alongside Shaddai as one of the very last names used in the New Testament. This name is Jehovah-Jireh, which I propose, is the Old Testament’s forward-looking description of Jesus, the Lamb.

You know the story of Isaac’s “almost” sacrifice and how at the last possible minute an angel intervenes and shows Abraham a lamb that God has provided to redeem a nasty situation. Genesis 22:14 says, “Abraham named that place ‘God-Yireh’ (God-Sees-to-It). That’s where we get the saying, ‘On the mountain of God, he sees to it’”(The Message). It was at this moment God first named himself Jehovah-Jireh and gave us a new name in which to take refuge (Proverbs 18:10).

The concept of “God Sees,” however, is first presented in Genesis 1:3-4 after God spoke, “Let there be light,” then “he saw” that it was good. This was more than a casual observation; this seeing was clear comprehension and understanding. The first time God saw the light, the prophetic implications blazed in his heart. The first act of creation was so powerful, so saturated with latent goodness that it still has impelling impact all the way into the distant day when the Lamb will be unveiled, brighter than 10,000 suns (Revelation 21:23).

One clear reason why God can claim his thoughts are not our thoughts is that he understands the power of goodness; he views the entire scope of history and how even “one cup of water…will not lose its reward.” (Mark 9:41) Yes, don’t lose heart my friend: God makes sure our small efforts count. Abraham’s encounter with God was smack in the middle of his own culture. Biblical sociologists believe that Abraham could have been acting out a ritual offering common in that day: a custom of sacrificing the firstborn to God that even the firstborn would believe held great honor, similar to how a young jihadist may consider the honor gained by being blasted into charred hamburger as a living bomb.

Yet even in the midst of something so very dark and evil in a culture, God saw: he looked beyond the surface to a heart cry for redemption. In those moments, Abraham gained revelation of a God who sees into the murky place where humanity struggles, ill-equipped to right evil. Abraham comprehended that God saw far-reaching goodness when He spoke “Light!” as Creator into that young, moonless, sunless creation.

Abraham then realized the forthcoming time the Lamb of God would walk on the earth and he was elated (John 8:56)! He even saw the day of the Lamb as the centerpiece of the heavenly city, according to the author of Hebrews 11:10. He saw a future time which John the Apostle also saw and recorded in Revelation 21:22: “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”(ESV) He saw all of this because unexpectedly, on an isolated hilltop in a moment of “almost-child-sacrifice,” God named himself “Jehovah Jireh" (the God who Sees).

The succeeding verse in Revelation 21:23 proclaims the fulfillment of God’s “seeing the light was good” at the dawn of creation: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”(ESV) The great Lamb is now the Lamp of the heavenly community so that they can also see the beautiful power of goodness with the same cleared-eyed vision he has.

There is a heavenly courtroom scene in chapter 5 of John’s Revelation. The courtroom is a whirl of commotion as they are frantically looking for someone to open the last will and testament of the cosmos. John is distressed. Suddenly the entrance of the worthy one, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the great and long-expected messianic warrior is announced. John looks up and to his shock sees not a warrior lion but a young, sacrificial lamb on the throne. Its throat is severely slit and blood is seeping out.

For John, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is now redefined as the Lamb of God. He is a worthy Judge because he has borne all evil, yet never once become tainted or distorted from overexposure to its toxin. He is the Lamb who has seen humanity’s darkest moment when they killed their Creator, yet has forgiven all men. He has forgiven them so utterly that there is absolutely no hint of corruption in him. From here on out in John’s apocalypse, the Messianic deliverer, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, is never mentioned. Instead, the Lamb of God (i.e., Jehovah Jireh) is now the terrifying conqueror. But he is a conqueror we can trust. He has seen our worst and forgiven us.

It is because the Lamb of God has emphatically given us the perfect picture of absolute forgiveness by His conquered cross that he possesses the right to justly and mercifully bring his rule of peace. It is because he has seen the evil of the human heart and still chose to die, redeem and deeply love us. In Abraham’s day, he saw the solution to child sacrifice and today he sees a way out for a young mother considering abortion. We have a Jehovah Jireh who sees right into our “now.” Into the very circumstance of our lives that lock us down and defeat us. He knows the way forward. He is the burning Lamp of God’s people.

If we could encourage our little hearts to grow hugely larger in the belief that El Shaddai and Jehovah Jireh are at work in our world, what kind of people would we be? What if you believed in a Jesus who really sees you right now in a deep, scary and intensely kind and merciful way? How about a Father God who easily masters overwhelming chaos for our unimaginable good? A heavenly kingdom, perfect in beauty and goodness that wills to fully fuse its presence into the physical realm? “If God is for us, who can be against us?” This is truly what Paul means when he reflects in Romans 8 how nothing could tear us from God’s spectacular love. Goodness is too powerful.

The Lord sees and all is well with my soul.

An Assassin Turned Rescuer

Stories of Rescue 4th Installment

I know at first glance it feels distracting to hear a story and care for somebody on the other side of the globe. You don’t even know them, so why should you care? God uses a multitude of stories about people we don’t know. They are threads creating the weave of scripture. Life stories that warmly yet sometimes painfully make us care as we realize someone cares for us. My hope as we cross into the New Year is that we would be inspired by fresh stories of rescue and redemption that elevate our faith for even greater exploits in the coming days. Edgardo’s story is one such example (name changed for security).

One side of my head was having a conversation with the other as I listened to Edgardo’s story. “This guy should really be in jail,” I thought. “He’s extremely dangerous!” I observed the cautious glances of his eyes, the conditioned and controlled motion of his body. He was a professional. He had assassinated so many people that he should be a hardened shell. But instead, I watched him continually tear up as he told his story. You see, Edgardo is a former child soldier and assassin who is now one of our key workers in the Philippines. He was instrumental in helping us launch our child soldier rescue project there in early 2010.

Edgardo’s constant training as a killer began at a very young age. He spoke of the day his father pulled him by his small hand to the riverbank to gaze at the bodies of his three aunts who had been raped and killed by the opposition army. It was in those broken moments he plunged down the precipice of hatred for the outsider “Christians.” Every day, his father would take him to the beach and have him shoot bottles out of the air. When he missed, he was punished. By 12 years old, Edgardo was a skilled gunfighter and sniper. He recalled his triumphant assassination of a 40-year-old “Christian” at age 14, which he carried out by emptying all 30 rounds of his M-16 magazine into the man.

He then shared about how a decade later a different Christian from his own culture spoke simple words that jarred his soul. This man was a senior leader among his people, so he was required by honor to listen to him as he told the story of Messiah who triumphed over the need for revenge and offered a path to heaven that was not earned by giving death to the “unbeliever.” This micro-narrative was the story that not only had ultimate cosmic impact, but it was the one that gently crumbled his resolve as a hardened killer as well.

Back in my head again, I heard another side of my internal argument as I began to visualize the story of Paul the apostle. Paul made more than a few people in the Jerusalem church uncomfortable, too. A few of them could have said, “Hey! That man killed my daughter!” Or, “The fiend beat my brother bloody, what is he doing here?” As I considered Edgardo’s story in light of this, I couldn’t help but notice how it really is a story of the kingdom of light plundering the kingdom of darkness: the former child soldier and assassin is now a rescuer of the same.

Doesn’t Edgardo’s story retell the power of the crucial story of scripture? The Good News that our God forgives and his vibrant gift of forgiveness through Jesus is strong enough to redeem and rewrite every story in the world into a celebration of love. These stories of rescue belong to us. Rescue is in our blood. Our DNA is of Jesus. The majestic blood that flows in us is from a Savior, a Redeemer, and a Rescuer. That is His name and so also it is ours!

You can visit www.DivineInheritance.com to learn more about our work.

Stories of Rescue (Installment 3)

Today I'll introduce you to former child soldier, Peng, in a simple yet profound story. It is a short story—only a couple minutes’ read. This story struck me as so profound when I first heard it because in a moment of desperation for a young boy, the grace of God intervened…all because his people were engaged in bringing justice.

Peng (as we’ll call him) is another young man who had a story to share. Peng’s parents had been forcibly conscripted into the army to pay off taxes levied by wealthy landowners, at which point his entire family became slaves of the army. Shortly after, Peng’s parents were shipped south to the warfront in 2003 while Peng stayed in the care of his 15-year-old brother. His parents both died in a firefight, which Peng and his siblings learned some months later when a soldier showed up at the door of their hovel in the military camp. Since the army had custody of him, Peng had nowhere to go and was shuffled over to serve as a water boy for a military officer. During that time, he saw hundreds of other kids suffering as they trained for war. After losing both his parents to war, the harsh life of a soldier was the last thing he wanted. But soon Peng heard the dreaded news that he too was to enter training as a soldier. His life was already difficult enough with little food, having to sleep on a wet mud floor at night and hauling heavy water buckets for hours every day.

A teacher connected to the military/government base happened to live a couple houses from where Peng worked. One day out of desperation, Peng mustered up the courage to visit the teacher and tell him boldly that he felt he could serve his country better by going to school. Little did Peng know, our team was already in negotiations with the army at this point, and the teacher recommended Peng for our education project since he had received little training as a soldier. So, missing soldiering by the skin of his teeth at 11 years of age, Peng came to us with the 50 other children we officially received through our initial negotiations with resistance and drug cartel armies in 2005.

Though I’ve heard more dramatic stories from child soldiers, what struck me about this boy’s life was grace. He was orphaned because his parents became enslaved to an army because of debt. He himself was at extreme risk of becoming a soldier as a child, but we happened to be there at the right moment by God’s grace to spare him from what would have been much more difficult story, filled with the horrors that accompany child soldiering.

Yes, I see the amazing grace of Jesus written all over Peng’s story like the red ink of an extraordinary editor. God sees what happens in one child’s life in a remote jungle of a forgotten corner of this earth. By the mercies of heaven, may we somehow see too.

You can learn more about how to help at www.DivineInheritance.com

Stories of Rescue (Installment 2)

What is it about rescue that rocks our world? Those times when we felt that there was absolutely no help for us…when someone stepped in, took our hand and helped us find hope and a true friend. Who is this “half-crazy” God who leaves the 99 sheep at risk of predators in the mountains to rescue the one? He is the same God who throws a massive, joyful party when the rescue of that little one is accomplished.

In continuation of our installments of micro-narratives, I am sharing some stories from our interviews earlier this month. May they pierce our deep places with truth and be God’s sword of love in our souls and spirits. These stories came from an interview with our country director, who has worked with us since 1998. After we listened to stories directly from the children, he also reminisced about the time in 2006 when he and more than 30 of our key leaders were imprisoned in a military prison compound for distributing bibles and preaching the good news.

The circumstances were dismal, but he labored all day—every day—without complaint and scrounged for weeds to eat in the evening, sharing what he had. Bit by bit, he cleaned out the dirty hovel that was their shelter and continued encouraging his team members to serve willingly and trust God. He gradually gained the trust of the guards and was allowed to hold small gatherings to worship and pray. His joy was infectious and it piqued the interest of the young boy soldiers that lived at the army base. Every night, they would drift in to visit after his toil in the fields. He said the one thing they asked him about over and over was, “How do we escape?” It was their constant dream. He was released after a month and a half of the negotiations our team leveraged through a local government leader. He recalled that when he began his hike out to the pickup point, the young soldiers threw their guns aside, chasing after him, weeping and calling him father, begging him to not forget them. Their cries and questions of escape still echo in his ears.

During their captivity, our director and team shared their quarters with a lady who had been imprisoned for buying young children in Bur-ma and shipping them into a human trafficking ring in Chi-na. As this woman grew to trust him and the leaders imprisoned there, our country director experienced the wonder of leading her to the feet of Jesus. She explained a lot about how human trafficking rings work in the region. Her own role was to find about 10-15 young kids a year to sell to the middleman she worked for. Because she had a long-term sentence, this lady’s hands and feet were shackled. Our country director spoke again of his release and how she also ran after him weeping with the child soldiers. She stumbled every few meters as she ran and fell facedown in the mud because of her shackles, but she got up again and again to run after him, crying out for mercy and for him not to forget her.

I am sure you can imagine a portion the depth of what stories like these do to the person who lives through them. Perhaps through these narratives you can begin to understand why it is necessary that we live a little bit too much on the edge and why I bawled my eyes out (again) while retelling this story of the former trafficker and child soldiers. These stories paint a small part of the picture of why we partner with Project: AK-47 to sell dog tags at www.ak47tags.com so that people like you can tell the stories of these unrescued children who have no way to tell their own stories. Maybe stories of this sort make it clearer as to why I’m willing to travel all over the globe instead of being home every night with my awesome family. Stories like these are the reason why we find it necessary to continue the conversation with you, our friends and fellow advocates in the rescue and prevention of children being trafficked and caught in armed conflict.

I don’t have all the answers to injustice, but I do believe we need to let these stories touch our hearts. If they don’t, something is wrong. If they do, something is still wrong, but we have the opportunity—even if we don’t have a clue yet as to how—to be part of the answer.

Thank you for engaging with these stories, and please be on the watch for the next round of stories on their way to you very soon.


Marcus Young

For 2010 End of the Year donations please visit www.divineinheritance.com

Stories of Rescue

The power of micro narratives (short, local stories that impact us as individuals) is clearly demonstrated throughout the compendium of stories that paint the macro canvas of scripture. I had the opportunity to hear some micro narratives on my trip to Asia earlier this month. Similar to those found in our scriptures, these stories have the power to turn my heart inside out and leave me hyperventilating and in wonder of "Jehovah Sneaky" who suddenly plunged me into the whitewater rapids of this Kingdom river.

During the trip, I was with a team from Traffic Jam (www.trafficjam.org) that was doing a film treatment for a longer documentary that will be in theaters around 2013. At their request, we brought in a few former child soldiers from our projects in Bur-ma (My-an-mar) for interviews, as well as a few children who had been on the ragged edges human trafficking and sexual slavery before we took them into our home in Thailand.

Some of the stories that ensued reminded us of our own history in Southeast Asia, such as the time surrounding the resettlement of Bur-ma’s Southern Shan States that began in 1999 and involved the forcible relocation of nearly a quarter of a million people with only what they could carry on their backs. This conflict created some border tensions with Thailand, as fighting came and went for several years, peaking in 2002. We clearly recall our city becoming a ghost town overnight, with mortars landing in town and machine guns going off like strings of firecrackers. Many children were orphaned by that war, so naturally we started a home for some of these children.

Khun, one of the children we received, was the first child soldier we ever rescued. We did not have to negotiate his release, as we have done for the other children, since he was a deserter in hiding. As he told us the story of his time as a soldier, it was reminiscent of the stories we have heard all too often: long hours of labor and training, floggings for any slight hint of insubordination or inability to perform, hunger pains with only three small bowls of rice in vegetable broth a day. He also spoke of ill-fitting clothing or lack thereof and being jammed into dirty, narrow barracks with 50-60 other children with one threadbare blanket apiece. And even years later, he still has no earthly idea how to find his parents.

With terse, emotion laden words Khun shared of how he made a desperate escape late one night with his 13-year-old accomplice who knew the way across the mountains in the dark of night. By God’s grace, one of our village pastors found Khun a few days later and brought him to us, since he was wanted as a deserter and needed a safe place. Khun is now a thriving young man 8 years later. He is close to finishing high school and is grateful for God’s intervention in his life.

At this point in our ministry, we have access to several hundreds—even thousands—of child soldiers, children in armed drug conflicts and young girls who were raped by soldiers and discarded as products of their society and war (many of whom now have unwanted babies). I don’t really know how to communicate to you that these are not typical rescues. It is highly unusual for us to have access to so many children like this in multiple countries. It is extraordinary, actually, but I think that it should be normal…meaning that the church should be so engaged in pursuing justice that we would normally be the ones to have access to the least accessible and darkest places.

So, what do we do now? Do we rescue all the children that have become accessible? I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve encountered the dunamis (dynamite power) of God’s love once again through the children’s micro narratives of suffering and redemption. When God said in Exodus 20:2, “I am the Lord God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt,” he was essentially saying, “I AM the LORD GOD who RESCUED you from slavery.” This rescue was a formational time for Israel, and it is still the way we meet Jesus: he radically rescues us who are slaves to sin and evil. He is the God of rescue, which is why I believe the abolition of slavery is central to the heartbeat of this generation. Slavery is a physical institution that reflects the spiritual reality of the whole world, but it also heralds our call to amazing freedom as the sons and daughters of an absolutely good Father.

It takes people with resolve and Holy Spirit boldness to rescue these kids. If God has put it in your heart to partner with Divine Inheritance, please feel free to visit our website by clicking here. If that is not what Holy Spirit is prompting you to do, then he has surely stirred your heart if you’ve read all the way to this point. Our prayer is that you would let the divine wrestle begin until you encounter God through finding your own stories of triumph over injustice in the world as Papa’s chosen and beloved family.

God bless you this Christmas Season,

Marcus Young
Founder of Divine Inheritance