Identify this missionary kid . . .

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Who’s the taller one in front, the ten-year-old?

One evening last summer Tim and I were both lounging in bed, both reading. Suddenly I said, “Hey, look at this.” I covered the caption of the picture and showed him. “Who do you think that goofy (but loveable) looking ten-year-old boy is?”

Tim barely looked up from his engrossing novel. “I have no idea.”

“No, seriously!” I said. “Look at him! Can’t you tell who it is?”

“Am I supposed to know?”

“Yes! You should be able to tell!”

He sighed. “Give me a hint. What year is it?”

“It’s 1973.”

Tim squinted at the picture and acted like he was going to turn back to his book again. Honestly, I couldn’t get his attention away from it for two seconds.

So I reminded him that I was reading this book as part of my research for Witness Men. Then I showed him the cover. It was Torches of Joy, by John Dekker, a missionary.

“All right. Now, who’s that boy?” I raised my eyebrows in anticipation.

“Is it Ted Dekker?”

“That’s it! Ted Dekker at ten years old! Remember, his parents went to work among the Dani people in Irian Jaya, I mean Papua, and he says that growing up in that jungle is part of what gave him the background for his. . . .”

But Tim had already turned back to his gripping novel. I think he didn’t even hear me.

What was that compelling book that drew him like a magnet?

Oh, yes. It was Obsessed.

By Ted Dekker.

Power Pieces (Witness Men ch 4)

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Chapter 4

Power Pieces

“Tuan!” the boy called. “Tuan Botemon!”

Tom Bozeman came out of his little pole-and-bark house to see the bright-eyed boy. Tom had lived here among this Dani tribe a few months, and had learned enough words to begin teaching the people a little bit.

“Greetings!” he said, snapping his fingers with the boy’s. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Hilitu,” the boy said. “I saw you at the cannibal feast yesterday.”

I’m posting one chapter at a time of this children’s book of true stories. Each chapter will be up for about a week and then will come down. Read along with me to get a taste of what the book will be like when it’s published!

Thirsty yet?

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[Reprinted by request from January, 2011.]

Ho! Every one that thirsts! Come to the waters . . . Drink!

New Year’s Resolution #2,012: Drink more water.

Have you ever noticed that you can systematically drink less and less water, way less than your body needs, without feeling thirsty? Counterintuitive, I know. But that thirst mechanism behind your throat sort of atrophies or something.

And lots of people, when they do feel any thirst, go to coffee or soda to try to assuage it. Of course those beverages actually drain water from your system.

And as that thirst mechanism shrivels up, sometimes when people are thirsty they think they’re hungry, and then they eat . . . and eat . . . and eat . . . while they’re actually dying of dehydration.

Thirsty yet?

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God? . . . O God, You are my God; I earnestly seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You, as in a dry and weary land without water.

At eleven years old, I developed a life-threatening kidney condition that hospitalized me for two weeks. My parents made me drink two quarts of water a day, and I became the healthiest I had ever been in my life.

Did I mention that I was a very sickly child? Besides asthma and stomach problems, I had this weird skin disease all over my hands and feet that made me become unable to walk normally or do pretty much anything. I dropped out of sixth grade. My mother took me to one doctor after another. I suffered much at the hands of these physicians, and rather than growing better, I actually grew worse.

But then I got the kidney disease and got well.

It was only as an adult, married to a man who knew the importance of water, that I understood what had really happened. Throughout my childhood, I never drank water. I mean I never drank water. Since I was almost never thirsty, I drank one or two cups of milk a day, and that was it. I was dying, and my skin was trying to let me know. Finally my kidneys gave the red alert.

None of those wise skin doctors, with their pills and potions and lotions and creams and plastic bags and soaking solutions ever asked my mother, “How much does she drink?” Never. Nope. Not once. Even though probably every last one of them knew that the skin is called the third kidney.

Thirsty yet?

As an adult, when I drank more and more water, I found myself becoming thirsty more often. Drinking even more. And becoming more healthy.

Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. . . . Everyone drinking of this water will thirst again; but whoever will drink of the water that I will give him will never ever thirst, because the water that I will give to him will become a fountain of water in him, springing up into everlasting life.

Oh, my soul, be Thirsty. Be very Thirsty. Don’t forsake the Living Water to hew out broken wells that can hold no water. Drink the Water. Long and deep.

Through the written Word, drink long and deep of Jesus Christ. You’ll find your Thirst Mechanism kicking in. And your Thirst can continuously be satisfied, because the Water will always be there. The Living Water. Drink, and find that you become a river.

Ho, everyone! Are you Thirsty yet?

Let’s pray right now

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 Please pray about my relationship with my husband. My sickness. My trouble.

Yes, I would be glad to. Let’s pray right now.

Here? In front of all these people?

Well . . . it’s a church building. . . . These people probably pray too. . . .

Have you ever requested prayer from someone and wondered if the one who promised to pray about it really would? Have you ever said you would pray about something and then forgotten?

You can say it. Say it.

“Let’s pray right now.”

Loving Father, I pray that You would use this sickness, this trouble, to draw Your child closer to Yourself, to show Your power in a mighty way that goes beyond the simple healing of the body, to a stronger faith in Jesus Christ and a deeper joy in Him.

Let’s pray right now.

You didn’t say you’re afraid to pray in front of someone, did you? That you’re afraid your focus would only be on what the other person thinks of your words instead of on the great God that you’re approaching boldly, because you can enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus? Did you offer the flimsy excuse that you’re not a prayer warrior?

Oh Father, break down the walls, scatter the clouds of confusion and lies. Break forth in your dawn of Holy Spirit understanding.

A new year is upon us. You’re part of a church that has a prayer meeting. Maybe you’re part of a church that has a real prayer meeting. Go there and pray.

Learn to pray. Live prayer. Let prayer flow like a fountain. Pray without ceasing.

Then speak prayer. Speak it before others, and don’t worry about what they might think. You’re not talking to them. Pray spontaneously, in the halls of the church building. Outside the grocery store. In the front seat of the car.

Say it to that friend. “Let’s pray right now.”

How desperately the church needs to pray.

Pray . . .

. . . for the Holy Spirit to fall in power on your church, in the erupting of joy. Pray for hearts to be turned fully to Jesus Christ, for faces to shine with His love. Pray for the disasters, the calamities of life—and there are so many, all around us—to cause us to see those unseen things that are eternal, and to understand that the things that we see are temporal.

That the spiritual is more real than the physical.

Pray . . .

. . . that the passion of Jesus Christ would blaze in the hearts of His people, and that many would see that light and be drawn to Him. Pray that the passion would set hearts on fire to take the living Word of God to those who have never heard, that nations from the ends of the earth would lift their hands together and praise Him.

Because our God, our Savior, is mighty to accomplish beyond what we can ask for or even imagine. And we are not.

Pray. . . .

Pray. . . .

Let’s pray right now.

 

Writing for the Glory of God (Exposition)

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A couple of weeks ago I published the Introduction to my workshop “Teaching Writing by Teaching Rewriting.” Here are some highlights from “Rewriting Exposition” (essentially, “non-story”).

If somebody is trying to write an article . . . or a newsletter . . . or a research paper . . . or a nonfiction book . . . . being aware of a few potential pitfalls can help.

First, in the organization. If you don’t start with an outline but instead write your piece as if you were writing an email (“here’s something I thought of, and oh I don’t want to forget this”), then you’ll need some help with rewriting. I actually really enjoy, in my editing work, helping people get their papers organized.

Second, in the tone. Writers can sometimes sound pompous and condescending or too flippant. There can even be an angry or downbeat or bitter tone to a work that can obstruct the writer’s message.

Third, in the use of passives and nominalizations. (Passive: “Permission was granted to us” instead of “She let us.” Nominalization: “She met the requirements of qualification” instead of “She qualified.”) For some reason, people who write exposition often think that they need to use lots of big words and write in a way that’s somewhat obscure. But just because our government does this all the time doesn’t mean the rest of us should do it—we actually want to be understood. (I think some people in the government are afraid of being understood, but that’s a matter for a different time.)

And last—and this is the hardest one—getting creatively specific.  It’s all too easy to write exposition in generalities. After all, that’s what I’m doing right now.

But I gave a specific about getting specific, borrowed from Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (mentioned in my previous writing post).

Original statement, to rewrite: “People who live in big cities are generally threatened by street crime.”

Nothing wrong with that statement. It doesn’t violate any rules. But the replacement he has rewritten in the back is even better:

“A New Yorker can’t walk down Park Avenue without getting hit over the head.”

And suddenly, you see it.

Writing is all about drawing the reader in to your own thinking, to help him see what you see through his own eyes. Writing with creative specifics helps accomplish that goal. (After all, fiction isn’t the only “creative writing.”)

I gave my students—who were all teachers—a rewriting assignment. It was a (real) newsletter, poorly organized, full of passives and nominalizations, with a very negative and pompous tone. It needed to be cut in half and lightened up and given a positive tone, with a few creative and specific touches. Some of the teachers did an excellent job—maybe almost as good as the rewrite that my ninth-grade student did years ago.

This original newsletter came from the president of a Christian women’s group that eventually folded. As the teachers read the newsletter, someone said, “I can see why.”

If someone had helped with a rewrite?

It could have changed their history.