“Follow Your Heart” Really?

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“Follow Your Heart” Really?

Current Self-Oriented Culture
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., NeXT, and chairman of Pixar, often advised people to do what they really would like to do, saying, “There is no reason not to follow your heart.” Many other leaders have promoted the same idea: “Do what you really feel like doing.” Even TV preacher Joel Osteen teaches, “the heart is right.” In other words, “whatever path you sense in your emotional centre and appeals to you, that is the right path for you. Go ahead and follow your heart; give in to every desire. Happiness is getting your way.” Many people, young and old, today are entrenched in this culture of self-pleasing and self-fulfillment.

What is God’s Opinion?
Yet, as believers, we have strong biblical warnings against trusting our hearts to lead us into a fulfilling life. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick, who can understand it” Jer. 17:9 (NIV). “One who trusts in his own heart is a fool.” Prov. 28:26 (NIV).

We need to be like David, whom God chose to lead his people Israel. In Acts 13:22, Luke quotes what God said in that historic event, “I have found David, a man after my own heart, he will do everything I want him to do.”

My Personal Journey
After graduating from Bible School, marrying Jo, and starting a family, I was following my own heart. I loved public speaking. I could tell and write good stories and had no problem speaking well before a group, even with little preparation. I had been converted under the ministry of the Janz Quartet and was fascinated by the preaching I heard during that weeklong Crusade. Afterwards, I loved listening to great evangelists speaking at crusades, and visualized myself in such a ministry. I told Jo, “Since I already speak two European languages and could learn other languages, I would love to be an evangelist in Europe, possibly with the Janz team.”

A representative of Wycliffe Bible Translators suggested to us that we could spend a summer in university at the Summer Institute of Linguistics to learn phonetics and how to learn a foreign language. We decided to attend since working as an evangelist in Europe, we might live in various countries and would need to learn other languages.

It was during a chapel service at that SIL course that God showed me what was on His heart for me. A Bible translator from Vietnam told how Christ used the newly translated Scriptures to build His church among people who had never had the opportunity to hear God’s Word in their own language. Suddenly, I knew that Bible translation was what God wanted me to do with the language, speaking and writing skills He had given me.

I started to follow God’s heart then and have practiced critically examining my desires and changing them when needed to match what God desired. “I’m excited about the need for Bible translation,” I told the Wycliffe director for Canada, “and would like to write promotional stories about that.”
“Great!” he said. “We need well-written stories about Bible translation in indigenous languages. So why don’t you and Jo do a translation first, then you’ll have something to write about.”

During our decades of Bible translation in Brazil, I discovered that I enjoyed speaking in public not only in English and Dutch but also in Portuguese and the indigenous language Canela. I also learned how to lead people who worked with me. After we left Brazil, God led me into a ministry in leadership, in public speaking, as a recruiter for translators and donors, and a fund-raiser at banquets and to write weekly blog posts to cast a strong vision for the need to translate the Scriptures into every language on earth.

When God opened my heart to His heart, He set us on a path of ministry in which Jo and I have now operated for sixty years. In the past ten years, He has moved me into the role of storyteller, less as a speaker, and more as a writer. Now, many decades later, here is the book about Bible translation I wanted to write long before we went to Brazil: The Great Adventure; Our Life Among Brazil’s Canela People.

 

 

What’s the Word for ‘Thanks’?

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What’s the Word for ‘Thanks’?

“How do Canelas express thanks?” I asked my wife, “I have not found a single term that means ‘Thank you’.”
“Yeah, are Canela people never grateful?” she said. “If they are, how do they express it?”
During our early years as Bible translators in Brazil, Jo and I asked ourselves, “So, what is implied when people say, ‘Thanks’?”

I remembered standing by our car in a parking lot one cold day in Canada. I had the hood open and stood in front holding the ends of the jumper cables coming from our battery. A few moments later, a car pulled up, the driver popped his hood open, and I clipped my cables to his battery. Within seconds I had started our car. As I unhooked the cables from his battery and closed the hood on his car, I shouted. “Thank you, that worked great!” “He gave me a grin and a thumbs-up as he drove off.

As Jo and I thought about this, we made up a list of what is implied when people say “Thanks:”
1. What you gave to me was good; it was just what I needed.
2. What you gave me satisfied me and made me happy.
3. I owe you one.
4. I feel bad you had you had to put yourself out to give me what I needed.

Looking at the little list we recognized how different languages express thanks. When we gave a Canela woman a piece of soap, she said, “It’s right, it’s good,” expressing #1 on the list.
When they were very pleased with our gift they would say, “Because you gave this to me, I am happy!” expressing #2.
Other languages focus on different aspects. For instance, Brazilians say “Obrigado” meaning “I am obligated to you.” expressing #3.
Several Asian languages say, “I’m terribly sorry” which focuses on #4, the fact that you took the time and made the effort to meet their need.

Expressing Thanks is Not Natural
Every parent knows that human beings are born as the most self-centred beings on earth. It is all about our food, our comfort, and our pleasure. Parents spend a lot of time teaching their toddlers, it is not all about them. They need to learn to share toys, await their turn, and to express thanks. Parents constantly model gratitude by saying, “Thank you,” when a child does even the smallest thing in response to a request.

Selfish ingratitude started with Satan, the most impressive, beautiful and powerful angel created by God. Satan owed everything he was and all his abilities to God who created him, yet he was not thankful. He refused to acknowledge God as superior, the Great Provider, and instead launched an angelic rebellion to usurp the throne of God. God exiled Satan to earth, where he has polluted the minds and wills of people with this same ungrateful attitude. Romans 1:21-32, lists the resulting horrors, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” (NIV) Not expressing thanks to God was the first in a long list of dozens of types of evil, depraved behaviour.

Our Sin: Taking God’s Blessings for Granted
Submerged in an ungrateful culture, it is so easy to take for granted all the things we got as gifts from God—many of them through little work or effort of our own. Think of our physical life and health, our spiritual life and growth, our families and friends, our freedom and affluence, the abilities and opportunities open to us, and especially God’s Word translated into our own language.
Billions of people in developing countries would give anything to have what we take for granted.

How can we be more thankful? We could start by realizing we in North America are richer than 90 percent of the world’s people. We could continue to compare ourselves with those who are sick and without health care, those who live under oppressive regimes, who have lost their friends and families, who have never had a chance to learn to read, and who have no Bible in their language.

Unless we regularly thank and praise God for all that He provides for us and then go on to share our blessings with others, our ingratitude will lead to increasing selfishness, a hardening of our hearts, and eventually a ruined relationship with our Great Provider.

Canela Christians love to sing a hymn to Jesus with the line, “Because you came, we are very happy.” Meaning, “Thank You for coming to earth!” They are right. Jesus, the Saviour, was God’s greatest gift to humanity—how we need to thank Him for coming and then share this news with others.

Talking and Listening Biblically, Even in Old Age

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Talking and Listening Biblically, Even in Old Age

Frank, an older man, was telling a friend who had come to visit, about the excellent dinner he and his wife had enjoyed in a local restaurant the previous evening.
“What restaurant was that?” the friend asked.
“I have a hard time remembering names,” he replied, “What’s the name of that red flower with thorns on its stem?”
“A rose.”
With that, Frank turned and called into the kitchen, “Rose, what’s the name of the restaurant we were at last night?”

I am not quite that bad, but both Jo and I help each other in memory lapses. Every evening after supper, I read aloud from one of the three current books. Jo likes to stretch out on the couch to rest her legs and back and does some artistic picture colouring on her tablet, enjoying the stories I read. We had finished one book and tried to remember the name of the popular author of a funny book we wanted to read.

“Dave is the main character in his stories,” I said.
“Right, and his wife’s name is, uh, Morley!”
“And his stories often mention The Vinyl Café.”
“Right, oh I know, the author’s first name is Stuart. Yeah, Stuart McLean!

Our interaction is not always so successful. Whereas I tend to forget names of people and refer to them by description or “What’s-his-name,” Jo simply uses a generic noun like “thing” as in “Hand me that thing there, I can’t reach it.”
This irritates me, since she is looking or pointing in the general direction of half a dozen “things”, leaving me to guess which one she wants. If I ask her, “What thing?” she looks irritated, “The sieve, didn’t we just talk about needing to drain the vegetables?”
Yes, she had said something about veggies, but I had listened with only half an ear since I was thinking about something entirely different and was starting to talk to her about that.

At this point, a Scripture passage popped into my mind, “Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” Jas. 1:9.
Here both of us were irritated (angry) with each other, because we each accused each other of not communicating clearly, whereas it was my fault for not listening attentively to her.
Jo does need to say the actual name of the object, but I need to “treat my wife with respect,” (1 Pet. 3:7), and when I tell Jo, “stop saying “thing”, use the name!” I need to speak that truth in love.” (Eph. 4:15,) not in an irritated outburst.
Sometimes my “rash words are like sword thrusts, instead of wisely speaking healing words.” (Prov. 12:18.)
We probably both need to remember that “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” (Prov. 15:1).
Remembering some of the hundreds of wonderful, deeply satisfying experiences we have enjoyed together throughout our married life also tends to soothe our upset feelings.

One of those wonderful experiences last fall was the publishing of our fourth Memoir, The Great Adventure: Our Life Among Brazil’s Canela People. I wrote it and Jo critiqued and edited it. Yes, another marriage growing experience!

Buy it on Amazon, The Great Adventure. Jack Popjes

Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family

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Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family
Many churches practice responsive readings of Psalm 136, where the pastor or worship leader reads the first line, and the group responds with His love endures forever. Here’s how Psalm 136 starts:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
      His love endures forever.
(After a few more lines urging thanksgiving to God, the theme swings into a line-by-line description of what God did for Israel:)
to Him who alone does great wonders,
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
      His love endures forever.
to Him who led his people through the wilderness;
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down great kings,
      His love endures forever.
and gave their land as an inheritance to His people Israel
      His love endures forever.
This type of responsive reading was practiced in songs and chants for several thousand years by Jews and later by Christians as well.

After studying all 26 verses of Psalm 136, I thought of making up a responsive reading about the “great wonders” God did in our own family. Here it is. We plan to use it the next time some of our family members come together.

As you read of God’s Wonders in the Popjes Family History, I hope you will be inspired to make up something like this for your own family.

 Responsive Reading of the Popjes Family History
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who preserved the Popjes Family during the 2nd World War
      His love endures forever.
And brought out the family to emigrate to Canada
      His love endures forever.
To Him who revealed Jesus to Jack as Saviour and Friend
      His love endures forever.
And led the family through three cities to settle in Red Deer
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called a girl to be Jack’s friend,
      His love endures forever.
And take Jack to an evangelical church
      His love endures forever.
And led Jack to attend a Bible College in Calgary
      His love endures forever.
To Him who brought Jack and Jo together and blessed their marriage.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called Jack and Jo to become Bible translators
      His love endures forever.
And led them to live and work among Brazil’s Canela people
      His love endures forever.
To Him who helped Jack and Jo to translate His Word into Canela,
      His love endures forever.
To Him who made many Canela people from all the villages His children.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
      His love endures forever.

 

 

 

It’s a New Day Dawning

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It’s a New Day Dawning

My last InSights and OutBursts blog post was over a month ago. I compared the thousands of snowflakes piling up on our mountain ash berries to the many tiny improvements in Jo’s recovery from her lumbar laminectomy. We give thanks for this continuing recovery process. Many of you readers wrote to tell me this concept of giving God thanks for even tiny improvements was an encouragement to them.

Here are some major changes Jo is experiencing: first, the constant terrible pains going down Jo’s hips and legs have totally stopped. Hallelujah! Jo reduced her painkiller use drastically.
Her legs, however, are still numb from the knees down, probably the neuropathic side effect of her cancer chemotherapy. When Jo walks, holding onto her walker, she constantly looks down to see where her feet are. She has one “dropped foot” so she can’t feel if one foot is standing on the floor or on top of the other. A major tripping hazard! She has two appointments in the next few weeks: with her neurologist and her surgeon. They may prescribe an AFO, ankle-foot-orthosis.

The other problem is that in the middle of the night, she wakes up with pain as if a needle is jabbing into the heel of her dropped foot. It doesn’t let up unless she walks about, so she is losing sleep. We are now trying a new special Capsaicin pepper pain-management ointment that I massage into her heel before her noon nap, her bedtime, and whenever she wakes me up during the night. It seems to be working, and we are learning to look “on the bright side” which is also a Biblical command.

“He gives His beloved sleep” Ps. 127:2, is a promise we claim every night. We also take a lot of courage from John K. Paine’s hymn, based on Psalm 103, which we sing frequently, the chorus of which goes:
Bless the Lord, oh my soul,
Oh my soul, worship His Holy name
Sing like never before,
Oh my soul, I’ll worship Your Holy name

The three verses also inspire us enormously!

The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me
Let me be singing when the evening comes

You’re rich in love, and You’re slow to anger
Your name is great, and Your heart is kind
For all Your goodness, I will keep on singing
Ten thousand reasons for my heart to find

And on that day, when my strength is failing
The end draws near, and my time has come
Still, my soul will sing Your praise unending
Ten thousand years, and then forevermore!

May God inspire and encourage each of you as you face your own “pains in the night” while waiting for the new day to dawn.
Blessings, Jack

 

 

 

 

Giving Thanks to God for Small Blessings

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The Emergency
Jo’s doctor called her on October 31, it was not a ‘Trick or Treat’ call. “I read your reports, you need to go to Emergency right now for an immediate MRI of your lower back and hips.” Jo had been on the waiting list for that test as well as a neurologist appointment for well over six months.

I took her to ER immediately. She was checked and admitted to the hospital and eventually had the test. After a week, she was released, taking narcotics for the pain and crippling, along with a walker while waiting for a date for another type of test and a neurology appointment. Two weeks later, she suddenly had such severe pain that we called 911. She ended up in the largest hospital in the city with neurosurgeons on staff. After more tests, she underwent a lumbar laminectomy surgery. The bone caps on four of her lower vertebrae were removed to allow the spinal cord to expand and operate normally.

The Lesson
That stopped the hip pains and back pains, but since she is 85 years old, she is taking a long time to recover. And that’s when we began to learn to thank God for small, even tiny, improvements: the subject of this blog post and of the photo of the mountain-ash tree loaded with red berries. Each of those berries caught one snowflake, and then another, and another. Multi-millions of tiny snowflakes later, this was the startling result!

Jo needed constant attention and regular medications. I kept track on daily computer charts for when to give her six different types of medicines, as well as food,  bathroom, temperature, emotions, sleep, and changes of position like sitting up, lying on a couch, and, of course, changing the bandage on the six-inch-long, 18-staples incision.

We read some Scriptures about having the right attitude, giving thanks even for the small things:
In everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (1 Thes. 5:18.) It was a good thing I like keeping charts because the tiny day-by-day improvements might have been overlooked.

The Examples
Sometimes, what made us give thanks to God was just one less Oxycodone tablet than the day before. Or a tiny improvement in digestion. Or a bit less redness in the incision after the staples were removed, an hour more sleep at night, or getting out of bed by herself for the first time, or a day without Tylenol.
We encouraged ourselves with Scriptures like Job 8:7, “Though your beginnings will seem humble, your future will be prosperous.”
And Isaiah 28:10, Speaking about bringing rest and refreshing, he wrote, “Do this, do that, here a little, there a little.”
And Zech. 4:6, 10 “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. “Who dares despise the day of small things? They shall rejoice.”

God was guiding us with His “still small voice” as He did when he spoke to Elijah, (1 Kings 19:11). And that is okay for Jo and me. We don’t need a whirlwind or an earthquake type of miracle. We will just keep on noting each tiny improvement on the chart and thank Him for that.
God can even make tiny things like a mustard seed grow into a great tree; a comparison Jesus used to illustrate the Kingdom of God. (Luke 13:18-20) It’s a good application to be thankful for Jo’s small improvements in health and strength.

Pray that we will hang in there for the long haul, in the manner of Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
And those of you who are in different situations, practice giving thanks for even small improvements and praising God as he works, bit by bit, towards a positive solution for you.

May God grant you all a blessed Christmas and New Year’s celebration. My next blog post will be in mid-January, as God wills.

Blessings,
Jack