The other morning I read a story. A TRUE STORY (that you can read if you click the picture above) About a boy who was feeling fine one day. The next morning he had a headache. By noon he had died. But his mother loved him, and his mother believed in her God. I know she believed in her God… not because she told everyone she believed in Him..   but because of what she DID     when she discovered her son was dead. She went quickly and got a man named Elisha who lived life for his God. She told him to come quickly. Elisha came, and prayed to God for this boy. And he prayed again. And God gave back the life He had taken from the boy. And the boy came alive. I’m afraid that today, many who claim faith in a powerful God, show through action that they do not really believe! I personally know a lot of people who are sick, confused, or need intervention from a powerful God, and yet they are told by busy “believers” to just take medicine, take out a loan, take antidepressants, see a psychologist, so that we can get back to our “own walk with the Lord.” Well….     The E.R. is filled with people who have not been prayed over     Mental hospitals are filled with people who have never had God’s truth in LOVE     Elderly widowed brothers and sisters are immediately placed in government facilities rather than being cared for by the elders of the church like in Acts…   “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”  [Matt 7:21-23] I pray that we as a church would begin to speak loudly to our country that we believe in the only true, powerful God, by the way we live, asking Him to make His name great through us as we obediently surrender to His Will for us. View high resolution

The other morning I read a story.

A TRUE STORY (that you can read if you click the picture above)

About a boy who was feeling fine one day.

The next morning he had a headache. By noon he had died.

But his mother loved him, and his mother believed in her God.

I know she believed in her God… not because she told everyone she believed in Him..   but because of what she

DID

    when she discovered her son was dead.

She went quickly and got a man named Elisha who lived life for his God.

She told him to come quickly.

Elisha came, and prayed to God for this boy.

And he prayed again.

And God gave back the life He had taken from the boy.

And the boy came alive.

I’m afraid that today, many who claim faith in a powerful God, show through action that they do not really believe!

I personally know a lot of people who are sick, confused, or need intervention from a powerful God, and yet they are told by busy “believers” to just take medicine, take out a loan, take antidepressants, see a psychologist, so that we can get back to our “own walk with the Lord.” Well….

    The E.R. is filled with people who have not been prayed over

    Mental hospitals are filled with people who have never had God’s truth in LOVE

    Elderly widowed brothers and sisters are immediately placed in government facilities rather than being cared for by the elders of the church like in Acts…

  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”  [Matt 7:21-23]

I pray that we as a church would begin to speak loudly to our country that we believe in the only true, powerful God, by the way we live, asking Him to make His name great through us as we obediently surrender to His Will for us.

Anonymous asked: I don't know you, but I have just come across your page through mutual friendships. I just wanted to say how much of a blessing it is to see someone so filled with Christ that he can't help but spill that Love out to others. What you blog is wonderful. What a beautiful life you live. I know God must smile down at you all the time. I only pray to have a life so devoted. I want the passion to want to wake every morning to a new day in sharing the love of Christ with the world. You inspire me. Thank God for you. Bless you.

hebrews 10:24-25

You have encouraged me and spurred me on towards love and good deeds! Thank you, and please dont stop :)

This was a much needed encouragement to me during a strange time for me. I’m gonna start blogging again… thanks!  

All glory belongs to God though!

Love. What is love without trust?

Psalm 13.

How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever? 
       How long will you hide your face from me?

 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 
       and every day have sorrow in my heart? 
       How long will my enemy triumph over me?

 Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. 
       Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” 
       and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

 But I trust in your unfailing love; 
       my heart rejoices in your salvation.

 I will sing to the LORD, 
       for he has been good to me.

To love, is to trust.

To trust is to believe.


“
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of half your body hanging out of the window of a van flying down the interstate… while you are vomiting.

And unfortunately that was the start of my day today, on the way to the airport to catch a flight from Jakarta to Las Angeles, which takes about 25 hours (with airport time).  Right now I am in the Taiwan airport and feeling tired, weak, and a bit disheartened.  But not abandoned.  I’ve been sick and in bed for almost a week now, which changed many plans… though yesterday I was feeling a bit better, and Friday God gave me just enough strength to speak at a school a few hours from the place I was staying at to feel better.  

Over the last few years God has really given me a passion for speaking to youth, and He has been teaching important lessons to this generation.  One of those lessons is that life is not about us, or our plans.  It sure doesn’t make sense to me why God would keep me healthy the whole trip only to go through unbearable pain last week during the most difficult travel, and then stay sick through today’s travel.  But as I said…

I Believe life isn’t about us.  Its seems like since we have a will as humans, and its harder to praise God when things really suck, God in a sense gets more praise.  When we praise Him through trials, it makes Him look like an even more Trustworthy, Praise-able God!  And since heaven will never have the troubles that Earth has, this is our only chance to worship Him through struggles.  Might as well make the most of it.

But God also asks us to “not worry about anything, but in everything, through PRAYER and PETITION, present our requests to God.”

So this is me, asking all of you who have been following me, to please pray for me. Not because I want everyone to know how bad I got it, but because I’ve seen so many prayers answered by those back home, and I right now I’m kinda feeling like a week was long enough for me to be sick… but that’s just me.  God’s will be done.

I still have a 13 hour straight flight to LA in about an hour, then I will be staying there for 10 days, and Lord Willing, if I am well enough, I will do what I love most and travel to several churches to speak about what an awesome God we serve.  So please keep praying for my health, and for those I will share with.

So I hope you join me, whether healthy or sick, prospering or failing, empowered or tired, feeling strong or weak, In praising God with whatever your everything is.

It just clicked one day, so I wrote it down…   You can have everything, or nothing, but if you don’t have constant communication with God, you just can’t be satisfied. So I pray that you, and I, will work for the one thing that matters: Life with God. View high resolution

It just clicked one day, so I wrote it down…  

You can have everything, or nothing, but if you don’t have constant communication with God, you just can’t be satisfied.

So I pray that you, and I, will work for the one thing that matters: Life with God.

I decided to share a little of my story along with some pictures of people I’ve met all over the world… Hope you like it!

“
God has been teaching me a lot about the power of prayer. This story really showed me the power of intercessory prayer. And God has been showing me how the prayers of those back home really do effect my life here. Even the blessing of a breeze on the hottest days, or encouragement from someone i meet here, is the result of people praying and God working. So thank you, truly, for your prayers! Here’s the story:

A missionary was serving as a medic at a small field hospital in Africa. Periodically he had to travel by bicycle through the jungle to a nearby city for supplies It was a two-day trip so he had to camp out overnight. He had made this trip several times without incident. One day, however, he arrived at his destination and saw two men fighting. One was seriously hurt, so he treated him and witnessed to him and went about his business.

 

Upon arriving in the city again several weeks later, he was approached by the man he had treated earlier. “I know you carry money and medicine,” said the man to the missionary. “some friends and I followed you into the jungle the night you treated me, knowing you would camp overnight. We waited for you to go to sleep and planned to kill you and take your money and drugs. Just as we started moving into the campsite, we saw you were surrounded by 26 armed guards. There were only six of us and we know then we couldn’t possibly get near you, so we left.”

 

Hearing this the missionary laughed and said, “That’s impossible. I can assure you I was alone in the campsite.”

 

The young man pressed his point: “No sir, I was not the only one to see the guards. My friends also saw them, and we all counted them. We were frightened. It was because of those guards that we left you alone.”

 

Several months later, the missionary attended a church presentation in Michigan where he told about his experiences in Africa. One of the congregants jumped tohi feet, interrupting the missionary, and said something that left everyone in the church stunned.

 

“We were there with you in spirit,” said the man. The missionary looked perplexed. The man continued. “On that night in Africa, it was morning here. I stopped at the church to gather some materials for an out-of-town trip to another parish. But as I put my bags under the trunk, I felt the Lord leading me to pray for you. The urging was so great I called the men in the church together to pray for you.”

 

Then the man turned around and said, “will all of those men who met with the Lord that morning please stand?” One by one they stood.

All 26 of them.

His power is made perfect in my weakness…

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:7-10

To be honest, the last week has been rather rough.  I feel like I’ve been given a thorn in the flesh and its been really attacking me every hour.  But Paul’s attitude was one of joy, that he might be able to suffer for Christ. After all, his only chance to suffer for God is here on Earth because there will be no suffering in heaven!  I can’t say i’ver had that kind of an attitude this last week, but I am praying to keep that mindset until the burden is lifted.

I want to thank everyone who has been praying for me, especially this last week. I got several encouraging emails yesterday from people saying for some reason they couldn’t sleep the last few days so they prayed for me, or they were given dreams and reminded to pray for me, and it was treally encouraging.  I feel so weak, so unstable, and yet God’s power is shown to be greater in me because anything that happens is His doing and not mine.

Life is not about me. It’s not about you. It’s not about surviving or prospering.

We exist for God’s glory.

To God be the glory forever.

“
Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you
He promises

On June 1st, 2010 I had the great opportunity to be a part of one of the greatest events in Papua’s History.

Over 10,000 Dani people congregated in a field a little larger than a football stadium, along with close to 500 pigs, heaps of vegetables, and huge piles of firewood, for the biggest celebration Dani-land has ever seen. For a tribal people with a history of animism and continual fighting, the coming of the one true God through His written Word in their tongue was an event worth celebrating.

50 years ago, Dave Scovill and his wife Esther surrendered their lives to God’s mission to the 200,000 Dani of Papua. On this hot Tuesday morning, thousands of our Dani brothers and sisters sat on the field and listened as Dave held up some local currency in his left hand.

“Who spoke the Earth into being?!? Can this Rupia (currency) bring trees into being?? Can your pigs bring anything into being from nothing?? Can anyone here, can any one of us bring anything into being by just speaking? NO! But our God created everything by speaking it into being, and He gave us is Word in written form… the Holy Book which today is presented so that all might read and see for themselves what our great God has to tell us…”

Its hard for me to think of a better way to spend one’s life. What an eternal investment! For the first time, since the beginning of time, Bibles were available for someone born as a Dani to read in his own language. The stories so many of us have heard since our childhood can now be read by the Dani themselves. At the end of the video you can hear an older man reading John 1 in Dani.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…”

And so they had a massive feast to celebrate, and so that the generations to come would be reminded how precious is the Word of God. And during following the incredible feast, the Bibles were brought out and sold by 3 of us. In just a few hours that first day and several following, 4,000 Dani Bibles were sold.

Rather than giving them away, Dave had them sold at roughly 30,000 Rupia, or $3.31 US so that the people would feel more ownership and value for the books. The low cost of each book was made possible by various donors o the cause. Most people walked barefoot for several hours through the mountains to buy a Bible, some even walking for three days just to get a Bible. In no time at all, every Bible was sold. Dani Bibles are now being distributed from several other locations in Papua, but as demand is far greater than supply, more money is needed to subsidize another printing of the Scriptures. The government of Papua gave roughly 12,000$ for another printing, and others are quickly adding more to help reprint take place soon.

I must admit its rather humorous that the government of the largest Muslim nation of the world is giving 12,000$ to print Bibles!!

God is faithful to make Himself known among the nations!

Today we had brief internet to update, but for the next 2 weeks we will be back in the jungle, this time hotter than ever with less supplies, so please pray for health and strength, as well as an increased love for the people and help learning Indonesian.

Thanks so much for reading!!

If you have any questions or comments feel free to facebook me or e-mail me at josiah.goering@yahoo.com!

Boxes of Dani Bibles we counted and loaded up… View high resolution

Boxes of Dani Bibles we counted and loaded up…

We woke up bright and early at 5 am, then got stuff together and headed 3 hours through the mountains to a church where 3 congregations gathered together to receive the Bible that Mr. Scovill has spent most of his life translating into the Dani language. Talk about an amazing experience.  As singing and clapping filled the air, we walked in through the back of the church and sat on the front row with the older men.  I could see straight through the hole in most of their noses where war jewelry used to be.   Then i noticed that tears filled the eyes of every church leader and elder on the row beside me as they were filled with joy to receive a full translation of the Bible. Something so common to westerners meant so much to these people.   Written on the pages of a Bible is God’s Word to man! Truth, Life, Guidance, Encouragement, Light, Hope, Power, Change, and Help!  So if you have received sufficient education to be able to read this, and feel like you have taken for granted even a little, the gift of the Bible in your heart language, I want to encourage you to stop and thank the LORD. Then I want to challenge you to spend more time using your Bible! For to whom much has been given, much is expected… Luke 12:48 And Lastly I want to ask you to pray that God would use you and me to help the approximately 2,500 languages that still need Bible translations to one day soon be able to receive the blessing that both Americans, and Dani now have. Praise God for making Himself known in the ends of the Earth! View high resolution

We woke up bright and early at 5 am, then got stuff together and headed 3 hours through the mountains to a church where 3 congregations gathered together to receive the Bible that Mr. Scovill has spent most of his life translating into the Dani language.

Talk about an amazing experience.  As singing and clapping filled the air, we walked in through the back of the church and sat on the front row with the older men.  I could see straight through the hole in most of their noses where war jewelry used to be.  

Then i noticed that tears filled the eyes of every church leader and elder on the row beside me as they were filled with joy to receive a full translation of the Bible. Something so common to westerners meant so much to these people.  

Written on the pages of a Bible is God’s Word to man! Truth, Life, Guidance, Encouragement, Light, Hope, Power, Change, and Help! 

So if you have received sufficient education to be able to read this, and feel like you have taken for granted even a little, the gift of the Bible in your heart language, I want to encourage you to stop and thank the LORD.

Then I want to challenge you to spend more time using your Bible! For to whom much has been given, much is expected… Luke 12:48

And Lastly I want to ask you to pray that God would use you and me to help the approximately 2,500 languages that still need Bible translations to one day soon be able to receive the blessing that both Americans, and Dani now have.

Praise God for making Himself known in the ends of the Earth!