02 September 2010
The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place. Deuteronomy 1:30-31
Birthdays and anniversaries are milestones commemorating wonderful events, something that we tend to minimize these days. But God wanted His people to remember what He had done. He instructed Joshua to place 12 stones in the Jordan so that when successive generations would ask, "Hey, Grandpa, what mean the piles of stones?" he could tell them how God stopped the waters of the Jordan and let them cross.
Many of the Old Testament feasts were meant to be a time of celebration, feasting, and reflection. It's the last item that we are short on today. But it also seems to me that with age comes more reflection--perhaps trying to bring a sense of attachment and reason to the past.
Forty-seven years ago today, our first Guidelines' commentary was aired on a Los Angeles radio station. Today the program reaches into more than 100 countries in a half-dozen languages and is broadcast on a network of more than 1000 stations. By means of live audio on the Internet, Guidelines can be heard anywhere on planet Earth where someone has access to the Internet. This means that virtually no country in the world cannot be accessed one way or another.
We marvel at what God has done! Radio will always be the anchor of Guidelines' ministry, but it has also been a catalyst which has spawned a host of related outreaches and ministries. In striving to explain exactly what Guidelines is--far beyond the commentary which you are hearing or reading right now--we use three words to summarize: reaching, teaching, and touching.
First--our mission statement reads: "Guidelines International Ministries exists to proclaim the Good News of God's love in Christ Jesus and to disciple men and women around the world, helping them understand God's plan and purpose for their lives." The media--radio, television, video production, and the printed page, and more recently the Internet--are a means of accomplishing this.
At the present time, printing projects are underway in English, Filipino, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Burmese and French. The content of most of these originated on this program. Working with major Christian publishers, Guidelines provides the funding for distribution in countries where people are too poor to buy a Christian book, or they are inaccessible.
We have been able to provide major funding for four Christian radio stations in the former USSR, and now these stations are punching holes in the darkness, sharing the Good News.
The teaching phase of Guidelines' ministry includes training pastors and university students, and discipling men and women through seminars and conferences. Our target includes couples, singles, and single parents. Yes, families are important to God, yet because of the number of singles and single parents today, we've had to adjust our focus, ministering to the entire household of faith--not just part of it.
The third phase of Guidelines' outreach is a humanitarian ministry to hurting people, including the children's orphanage in Makeyevka, Ukraine; the Cancer Hospital for Children in Kiev; and Sister Freda’s Hospital in Kitale, Kenya along with the Nzoia School of Nursing which will train young women to serve God and their country.
There's one more thing I'd like to say on this, Guidelines' 47th birthday. We have never attempted to compete with anyone. We've sought the mind of God and determined to use our resources to build His kingdom and touch the lives of people, not to build either a large staff or organization. In the U.S. our ministry is housed in a simple industrial building. And if you visit sometime, which we hope you will, you're just as likely to find me carrying out the trash as counseling or recording programming, or speaking somewhere. Someway, I've always felt that's what Jesus would do. And if He would, why not I?
Resource reading: Romans 10:14-21.