Thoughts About Living a Devoted Life for Christ
(from Bengt Sjöberg, November 2024)
How can we find a balance between strong commitment, work, rest and relaxation? I don’t have the full answers.
Lately, I have read about how young people in Sweden have reacted negatively to the preaching of investing wholeheartedly in their Christian faith and sacrificing time, energy and commitment. Some believe that time spent in purposeful prayer and personal responsibility does not belong in modern Christian practice.
Some time ago, I read about a new trend among Christian youth in Norway. It was in an article in the Norwegian newspaper Vårt Land and later in DAGEN (Swedish newspaper) that told that young people in the Nordic countries want to leave Sunday Christianity behind and live a life dedicated to God. If this has an impact in the Nordic countries, we could expect revival times.
I have seen how one of our grandchildren has become “completely turned on” to Jesus and God’s Word and how he is involved in igniting his peers at school and in the church.
In the summer of 2022, the festival “The Send” was organized at Telenor Arena in Oslo. Youth With A Mission (YWAM) was the initiator and the event gathered about 10,000 people. The purpose was to encourage young Christians to go “all in” for Jesus and live a life of wholehearted following. According to the young people, the new life has practical consequences such as self-sacrifice, self-discipline and putting aside one’s will, to follow God.
It’s about spending time with God every day in Bible reading and prayer time, and asking Him what is right if I am faced with a choice. The Christian life must have practical consequences in everyday life, several young people said in the interview.
I think of how my father was wholeheartedly involved as an evangelist, pastor and church builder in Hälsingland and later throughout the country in order to engage in the Middle East and countries in Asia for the last 17 years of his life. At the beginning of his ministry he had meetings almost every day of the week and often baptisms and salvation meetings were held on weekday evenings as well as holidays. If no one was saved or baptized for a week, Dad arranged prayer and fasting, and after a few days they could again have baptisms and welcoming new members. When I have read my father’s 80 diaries from this era, I get to take part in joy, wonderful fellowship but also struggle, problems with relationships but a life with deep meaning and joy of life.
Did Dad and his colleagues from that time go too far in their involvement?
Did they find any balance, rest and relaxation?
I remember that my father often started writing as early as 4am in the morning. He wrote until 11am and then had a prayer time, took a walk, visited the library, studied and rested. In the evenings there were often meetings.
Isn’t it the case that all people who have visions, dreams and ideas realize that they have to invest and realize their dreams? To some extent, leisure activities and socializing had to take a back seat during certain periods. Sometimes we children would have liked more time for dad and of course mom often had to carry too heavy a load.
I remember how answers to prayers, unexpected gifts, and extraordinary times of victory occasionally surprised us as a family. There was a party and joy. Mom sat down at the piano and sang and Dad took out the guitar or mandolin and played. Without struggle and commitment, they would never have experienced these heights and successes. But was it too big a price to get involved so completely?
I see before me the joy in families where the alcoholic has become sober and a good family man. I see the joy in the children’s eyes when Jesus has come into the family. I am touched when I read how the slave workers in Pakistan were freed and the children had to start school. I read the letters of thanks from Sri Lanka from the tea pickers who got a roof over their heads and the congregation’s joy over the money from Sweden that made it possible to build a church.
Maybe the effort was worth it after all…..? I think so, even if I would have liked to take care of my dad a little more.
Global Gospel Worship Radio: Praise the Lord All You Nations!
(by Marina Maria, Founder, Global Gospel Worship Radio)
Psalm 117
Praise the LORD, all you nations;
extol him, all you peoples.
For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever.
Praise the LORD.
God is a God of the nations! His love is for all the peoples of the world regardless of their ethnicity. Let us all worship the Lord in spirit and in truth. Do you worship Him only in your own language? Have you ever tried to listen to worship music in a different language? God is moving in all the nations to worship him in spirit and in truth. God created us to worship Him and to pray and learn His truth through the Bible.
Every state and almost every country can hear many songs from different languages on Global Gospel Worship Radio (GGWR). This includes English, Hebrew, Spanish, and Native American languages. More music in different languages is slowly being added in God’s timing. A few times, you may hear some prayers and a few Christian programs because the station focuses on a variety of worship and praise music from different nations. This station is where the nations worship and praise Him 24 hours a day.
The Lord sends Christian Pastors, authors, global leaders, worship singers, and other ministers from all over the world to the Faith City Outreach Radio Program to share their testimonies and the work they are doing for the Lord, which inspires hope and encourages believers to fulfill God’s will for their lives. The Lord truly gets all the glory since, “He is our Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, and light in the darkness,” Isaiah 42:16. Nobody or nothing else can ever compare to His holiness and greatness.
Recently, the Lord sent two inspirational and godly women from two different countries of the world to Faith City Outreach.
The first woman was Lilian Schmid, a Christian author and prayer strategist. Lilian is originally from Lebanon and moved to Australia where she met and married her husband, Bjorn. They have a prayer ministry, Prayer Strategy for the Spheres of Influence, and the impact of this ministry continues to expand around the world. Her recent book, For His Glory, shares insights and testimonies revealing God’s faithfulness in every situation and experience. Lilian adds God’s word in the testimonies and in her reflections, which encourage us to obey the Lord and shows us that He intervenes every time in His miraculous ways and for His glory. There’s nothing too impossible that the Lord can do. “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God,” Luke 18:27.
The second interview was with Chevelle Franklyn, who is an esteemed international worship singer. In her forth coming album, South Wind I, Chevelle has some songs in the Zulu language, one of South Africa’s most widely spoken indigenous languages. She lives in Kingston, Jamaica, yet God is using her to sing worship music and to minister to thousands at large gatherings across the world. Her next gathering will be in Nigeria. Her new song, Jesus Wins, is the title of her outreach in Nigeria.
If our Lord Jesus conquered sin and death and resurrected Himself for us, then He can conquer anything. “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us,” Romans 8:37. I invite you to join us in singing and lifting our hands up to the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the one and only true and great God!
We are always willing to expand our worship music from different nations, so if you would like to recommend or email Christian worship music from a different language to air on GGWR, please email me (address below).
Faith City Outreach Podcast (direct)
https://faithcityoutreach-nations.captivate.fm/listen?
Faith City Outreach Podcast (list of Podcast providers)
https://faithcityoutreach-nations.captivate.fm/
Global Gospel Worship Radio YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@globalgospelworshipradiowi3203
(All radio interviews can be accessed here.)
Global Gospel Worship Radio (website)
https://www.globalgospelworshipradio.org/?
Come worship in spirit and in truth and praise Him while listening to Global Gospel Worship Radio twenty-four hours daily and seven days a week. (Note: the GGWR live broadcast provided through live365.com is currently licenced only for the U.S.A., Canada, and the U.K.)
Global Gospel Worship Radio – Partners Page
https://www.globalgospelworshipradio.org/our-partners
Thank you to all our prayer and ministry partners!
Marina Maria
Fcoprogram@gmail.com
A Sporting Chance?
(by Bjorn Schmid)
I was not a ‘good sport’ as I was growing up, and I mean this in both contexts; behaviour and ability. In spite of being a very ‘just’ child and sometimes getting into fights for others to be treated fairly, or at least not treated unfairly; i.e. bullied, I usually didn’t stand up for myself and was regularly bullied. Subsequently I would often overreact verbally when I felt I was being treated unfairly, usually with words that should not pass the lips of children. Thus when I say I was not a ‘good sport’, I mean of course I was not always totally fair myself, but I also mean that I was not good at sporting activities.
There are definitely some children who for whatever reason are not accepted by the groups/gangs/clubs/clicks at school, and this often persists into adult life, for some people with very sad consequences. I was always the last to be chosen for a team (or ‘side’), and it was always with regret from the accepting group and with ridicule from the other group that I was assigned to a team. Since helpful intervention from Physical Education teachers was rare, I was educated from a very early age to hate Sport. In Australia during my time in school, compulsory ‘Class Sports’ was always on Fridays after lunch. Very often I would be ‘sick’ on Fridays so I could avoid being publicly mocked and vilified.
Two notable exceptions to this was in swimming and running. Although not properly trained, I was quite fast and strong despite at that time being smaller than most of my classmates. I also rode a bicycle everywhere, often by myself but also with a small group of my younger neighbours’ kids. So I was ‘fit’, but I hated Sport. (By the way I hated Music at school too – I always ended up with the wood block in Music class and had to tap away the rhythm and sing the silly songs they played – another wonderful school experience which I balanced by using my perfect pitch and singing deliberately out of tune.)
This hate of Sport continued until I discovered Tennis. Partially this was because of a Swedish tennis player named Björn Borg becoming world famous for his cool demeanour while demolishing opponents, but also because like in running and swimming, I could play on my own team; by myself against another. I became more interested in Sport and was a fair tennis player, and I could have gone further, but there was no free coaching available to advance me where I lived, and other things began to take up my time: my future career path.
I had decided that I wanted a future in Science (as far away from Sport as I thought possible), and therefore aimed at what I reckoned would be the highest place to study Science: Sydney University. I did however also join the large Cricket Club there and became one of the ‘lean 11’ players, which helped me to balance my mind with the high level maths in my Bachelor Degree. After a couple of years of this, I began to see more in the ‘team’ side of Sport: no-one is an island, every successful player has a team behind them.
At the same time I also realised that Science was not going to be a way into well-paid jobs, so I left Sydney University and went to the NSW Institute of Technology (NSWIT, now the University of Technology, Sydney) to study Computing Science. There I also joined the Cricket Club, but experienced a very different atmosphere to Sydney Uni: the players were more focussed on dinking beer and talking trash in the pub after games than on playing as a team to win, so I left them after one season and have not gone back to playing any Sport again.
After completing most of my degree at NSWIT, I started working at the University as a tutor and on some projects. Almost by coincidence I also started going to the Student Christian Fellowship. I was amazed at how many people attended meetings and that they were all across the denominational spectrum, but I was shocked at how many people I already knew in the group, and they were also shocked to discover that I was a Christian. The two years I spent in that group were some of the happiest and most joyful times in my life: the love and support that was shared between us I have rarely seen anywhere else, before or since. This was a ‘team’ that I was proud to be part of and support in any way I could.
Since then I have moved through numerous roles in project ‘teams’ in Information Technology, and I became somewhat adept as a ‘team player’, eventually fulfilling roles as a Project Leader, a Project Manager, and a Senior Business Analyst. The depth of practical interaction and responsibility in my work life, in my married life, and in my Christian walk has finally taught me what it means to be a ‘good sport’.
Sport is good and if all young people are encouraged through it to learn from an early age the values and rewards of what is and how to be a ‘good sport’, they have a good chance to do well in earthly life. Being a ‘good sport’ in the Kingdom of God is also important; we should learn from Christ’s example how to encourage and grow a successful team that outperforms the opposition to His Kingdom. It requires sacrifice; He made the first sacrifice for us to be a part of His team, now we need to reciprocate and sacrifice our egos and earthly lives to allow the Holy Spirit to coach us to become the top players and top team members.
The Apostle Paul expounds this well:
“For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6-8 NIV)
Lord Jesus, help us to stand shoulder-to-shoulder together with our brothers and sisters as ONE TEAM in the challenges we face.
We acknowledge that we need each other almost as much as we need You, and we admit that we are all equal before You – we are ALL Your favourite picks!
Inspire us to use this time of rest and recreation over Christmas to connect and pray with those we know, and used to know, and You want us to know.
We abandon what we think we know and submit to Your perfect knowledge and instruction – lead us to pass this on to each other as You deem appropriate.
Give us words of wisdom and encouragement to help build them up in Your expert example and with all Your love and patience.
We love you Coach, Lord, King, and one God,
Forever and ever,
Amen!
Merry Christmas!