Why Am I Listening?

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Why Am I Listening?
Those of you who, like me, enjoy talking, have probably had James 1:19 quoted at you. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak.” But there are wrong and right kinds of listening.

Listening to Top the Speaker’s Story.
As a teenager, I worked in a pick-and-shovel crew with three recent immigrants from several countries in Eastern Europe. We often shared stories about our lives and I noticed that every time one of us was talking, the others all listened intently.
When the speaker stopped talking, one of the listeners would say, “In my country this happened to me and . . .” He then would tell something he experienced that was even more dangerous, more thrilling, or ended in worse trouble than what happened to the previous speaker.
These listeners were focused on their own story, which would top the current speaker’s story.

Listening for a Break and Jumping in.
As a pastor, I had preached on why believers need to get involved in some form of ministry outreach. I greeted the congregation as they left the church. Three couples stopped to talk.
“We have been financial partners of a missionary family in Africa,” one woman said. Her husband mentioned they had spent a month in Africa to help build a medical clinic, living and eating together with the African staff.
The other two couples were listening intently. I hoped to hear some ministry-experience stories from them. When the speaker paused for breath, however, the wife of one of the other couples jumped in with a vacation-in-Mexico story and how the food had made her sick.
This totally derailed the personal-ministry-in-missions conversation and deteriorated into sharing bad foreign food experiences. Yes, she had listened intently but was just looking for a break so she could tell her off-topic story.

Listening to Argue
We have all heard people arguing about sports, religion, and, of course, these weeks about politics. The listener is strongly focused on the speaker’s words, but only to pounce on something the speaker said and use it to win the argument.

Biblical Reasons for Listening
The apostle Paul expanded on what James wrote about being quick to listen and slow to speak.
“Don’t be selfish; don’t live to make a good impression on others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourself. Don’t just think about your own affairs, but be interested in others, too, and in what they are doing.” (Philippians 2:3-4 TLB)
The motivation for listening biblically is to focus on the person speaking, to get to know the other person better, to strengthen relationships, to meet their needs—to understand the other person; to learn what they value, what they think or feel about a situation, event or person.
Listening Biblically is listening to learn, to become wise (Prov 1:5), listening to validate the speaker, in effect saying, “You are there, you matter, you care”.
We listen biblically when we want to meet a need in the other person—to mourn with those who mourn; to rejoice with those who rejoice; to encourage the downcast; to build up the ones we listen to.
Biblical listening is other-centered listening—the kind of listeners we all like to have when we speak—the kind of listeners we need to be when others speak.

Our Strengths, Giftings, Weaknesses, and Disabilities.

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Our Strengths, Giftings, Weaknesses, and Disabilities.

During the decades that we served God among the Canela people of Brazil, Jo and I thanked God for giving us the ability to learn an unwritten language and feel at home in the Canela’s culture.

Girls, stop playing with lunch!

God Given Abilities
We also thanked Him for giving Jo and me some special abilities. He made Jo an excellent cook. She took many meats and vegetables she had never imagined using to make meals and then cooked them all over a wood fire built on a clay-packed table.

Jo’s clay kitchen stove

I thanked God that He made me a problem solver. I used this God-given skill to solve household problems, as well as problems the Canelas brought to us to solve. Many of them were medical issues, from rotten teeth and deep cuts from accidents with bush knives and axes to fevers, difficult births, and multiple tropical diseases. Other problems were mechanical issues, such as a defective muzzle-loading shotgun.
One day, I injected a snake bite victim with anti-snake-bite serum, then permanently repaired a hole in a large cast-iron cooking pot, using a small bolt, a couple of washers, and some epoxy metal glue. Bystanders marvelled and exclaimed, “Behold, he doeth all things well,” in Canela, of course.
The Negative Side
My problem-solving skills were undoubtedly a gift from God. I just knew what to do. What I didn’t realize was that my ability was accompanied by some negatives, like constant interruptions in our main task, linguistics, literacy and Bible translation. That showed some of my disabilities: impatience, a hatred of distracting interruptions, and losing track of what I was doing.
The Story
When I was seven years old in Holland, I had a huge problem. My mother sometimes cooked cauliflower for our meals. She served it on my plate and covered it with a ladle of white sauce. I didn’t like the taste of cauliflower to begin with, but along with the white sauce, it made me gag unless I quickly took a large bite of potatoes to cover the horrid taste.
One day, everyone had finished eating, and I still had my cauliflower and white sauce, although I had mashed it all together. So, my mother picked up my plate, saying, “Come with me.” She led me into a small room and set the plate on a wooden box, saying, “Stay here and don’t come out until that plate is empty.” Then she left.
The Solution
I sat on a little stool and swallowed a tiny bite and gagged again. Then I solved the problem. The wooden box I was using as a table had been made by my father as a place to keep a cooking pot warm. My mom had only two small gas burners to cook on and no oven, so she needed a place to keep a third pan of food warm.  The box was insulated with hay and lined with cloth, leaving just enough space to put in a hot pan.
I opened the lid, the box was empty, so I scraped the cauliflower and white sauce dinner into the empty space and closed it. Then, I happily walked into the kitchen and gave my empty plate to my mother.
The Lesson
That was one of my early successes in problem-solving. I meant to go back later, scoop up the food with some toilet paper, and throw it into the kitchen garbage. I forgot to do that, however, and several days later, when my mother came with a pan to keep warm, she saw the moldy mess on the bottom. That led to my own bottom receiving a well-deserved spanking so I would remember to never do that again. It worked! Eighty years later, I still remember!
God’s  Compensations for Our Disabilities
It also made me realize that with every God given ability, we tend to also have a disability: distraction and forgetfulness in my case. I’m learning to take my weaknesses and disabilities to God and ask Him to show me ways to compensate. And He does. For the past few months, for instance, I’ve been using many more sticky notes for daily, even hourly reminders of all kinds, not just for the weekly shopping list.

“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.