Friday, November 27, 2009

"All things may change"

A thousand silver ships have sailed a thousand silver seas,
and hosts of saintly lips sang songs suspended in the breeze.
Prodigals one day regret their foolish fall from grace,
while sweet expressions briefly paint the most suppressive face.
Mighty trees make music on their slow determined climb,
mocking mans' futility, our mindless march through time.
The waves of every ocean join to crash upon the sand,
while soldiers blindly follow every officers' command.
A runner's starting steps are vindicated by his last,
and bright potential futures can be squandered by their past.
Because a thousand golden ghosts can haunt a thousand gloomy graves,
while captains on their silver ships must stand and face the waves.
For nothing here created will forever be the same,
and everything that's wild can in time be rendered tame.
The chain that binds the captive's feet will one day turn to rust,
and this tranquil world's a raging fire beneath it's fragile crust.
Warm rain that falls in summer is the winter's fiercest ice,
as fortunes made with toil can be lost on rolling dice.
The lips that sang the morning's praise will grace tomorrow's dust,
and souls who once betray you may cross oceans for your trust.
Not hopes, nor fears, nor fallen tears, nor footprints in the sand,
will endure the test of time, but by God's grace we stand.

(c) A.s.G.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

SBS Mobile Core Course

I want to share with you a bit of what I will be doing in the near future...

We with the School of Biblical Studies here in Kona are passionate about bringing the Word of God to the nations of the earth. The school that I am leading now ends it's lecture phase in December, but that is not the end of the journey for me, and hopefully not the end for many of the students. In January I will meet up with a YWAM outreach team that will be on the mission field traveling for 15 months! I will join them in Egypt and teach a bible course over the next three months that they will be completing on the field. Their main project over this trip is to publish a photography / documentary project advocating for social injustice issues.

The three month course I will be directing is called Biblical Foundations for Photographic Communication, and will hopefully ground these students and their project in Biblical truth, as well as God's heart for the poor, the outcast and the destitute for whom they are advocating. I hope to bring an outreach team from SBS along for this time, to teach in the countries we travel as well as teach part of the course. Please pray that God would move in the hearts of SBS students to take all they have been studying to the nations!

Monday, August 3, 2009

The unseen vs. the Unknowable

Many post-modernists today accuse Christians, or more broadly “theists,” people who believe in some sort of God, of basing their life and their belief system and their values on “blind faith.” They would even go so far as to say that God demands blind faith from anyone attempting to follow him. The kind of faith the Bible calls for however, is by no stretch of the imagination blind faith.

Biblical faith is a logical progression of projecting past experiences and acquired knowledge into the present reality, and the future existence. What a Christian is asked to believe about the unseen is nothing more than anyone who claims to live in the real world is required to believe countless times each day, and certainly cant be categorized as irrational faith.

For example; my volleyball team has lost its first two games this season. The statement “I have faith that I will win a game” is not irrational for several reasons. If in fact, I did not play volleyball at all, did not have a team and there were no games to be won, this statement becomes unfulfillable and therefore irrational. The facts that (a) I do play volleyball, (b) there are more games to win (c) winning is a valid result to volleyball games, makes this statement something more than blind faith.

Take square roots. Can you describe what a square root looks like? How much it weighs; what color it is? When children are taught math they are taught the square root of four is two. Are they asked to believe it blindly? No. They are given examples, and the concept is explained and “mathematically proved” but no one in the history of the world has been shown an actual square root. The end result of mathematical training therefore, ends with faith; faith that the next time the answer to the square root of four is given; the answer will still be two.

The same could be said about gravity. Our faith that the next step we take will not send us rocketing off the face of the planet is based on our past experience of gravity, and our knowledge, however limited, of the invisible law. Gravity, which keeps our earth in motion around its sun, and its surface securely beneath our feet has never been seen, tasted, smelled or heard, but mankind’s’ accumulated experience with gravity as an unchangeable force touching one of our senses is enough for us to put our total faith in it’s reliability as a constant, unchangeable physical law.

Belief in a God who created unchangeable physical laws, mathematical absolutes and the universe they govern is not an irrational conclusion based on blind faith. It is the most logical conclusion then; that the unchanging laws that make the universe what it is are reflections of an unchanging creator who designed a universe in accordance with his character. What would be more irrational is to say that these “laws” unchanging as they are, are the result of the random occurrence of a spastic and unorganized universe which, by some miracle, managed to morph reality to conform to universal laws. Knowledge of, and faith in God, are the only logical results an examination of our acquired knowledge and experiences can bring us to: Faith.

Andrew Greenplate
picture taken on Mauna Kea, Hawaii

Thursday, May 28, 2009

SBS in Kona and Budapest


Well I just got back from my time in Switzerland and Hungary, so blessed to be able to be a part of what God is doing in YWAM over there! All my travel went smoothly and teaching in the SBS in Budapest was an incredible week. I was able to spend time with students and YWAM staff from Lebanon, USA, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Macedonia, Singapore among others, teaching in the mornings and being part of the community there. God totally orchestrated my time, and the trip was a great blessing to the staff team who had been praying for a speaker for that week before I committed to go. While I was there I taught three books in their SBS: Lamentations, Nahum and Zephaniah. They have a team of two SBS staff pioneering a new school there, which is a huge amount of work, and it was great to be able to bless them this past week.

Divine appointments

I try to remember I Peter 3:15 as I travel which says: "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." On my flights and train trips these past two weeks I've been able to have some great conversations that I believe God set up and I want to share one with you.

Last Sunday I took a train overnight from Switzerland to Hungary. The only other person who spoke english near me was a Hungarian girl who was going back home after vacation. We talked for a while and one of the things she shared with me was she had been a Jahova's witness for several year but recently had stopped believing in that religion. We had a long conversation about who Jesus is, and when I got my bible out to show her some scriptures another girl across from us got really excited and pulled out a Hungarian Bible from her bag. The two of them then started speaking Hungarian (effectively ending my part of the conversation) but when we were leaving the train my new friend shared with me that the other girl had told her about a church she could go to and they were going to stay in touch. So praise God! That's the power of His word!

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Poetry from Jeremiah


I recently taught the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, this is a poem I've written to try and capture the timeless message Jeremiah has for the children of God.

Daughter Zion


Awake! Fix your eyes on me, daughter, my love.
Set your path on the statutes that come from above.
For the rain has poured down, behold, everything’s new,
Heaven and earth I made special for you.
When I saw you rejected me by what you’ve done,
I gave you new hope by the birth of my Son.
Miracles can happen as you, daughter, can see,
And all of your blessings come straight from me.
How long will you waver before doing what’s right?
It’s not hard, look to me my love; I’ll be your light.
For behold, I’ve created this new thing on earth,
My own death in a man, your new life at his birth.
Could I stand idly by and watch all I love fall,
Or remember their pain, and in turn, give it all?
And that’s what I did; I fixed all that you broke,
I rent heaven and earth and I lifted your yoke.
Clap your hands, sing aloud or the stones will cry out,
Oh, my heart skips a beat at the sound of your shout.
For I’ve done all these things so you might have a clue,
All I want in this world is to spend time with you.