A brother on a mission:
It is often the case that where we come from there are many who can count themselves as called out ones but in the mission field, there are few.
When we travel abroad we become even more so, ambassadors for Our God.
The few brethren in our adopted country look at us and pray that we can help guide them in their journey along the way.
Often we come from lands where the Truth is well understood.
We speak the language that so many books about the Truth have been written in.
The few brethren and sisters in our adopted country have a Bible and scant works to help them along and because of language barriers it is so much harder for them to discover the richness and depth of the things of God.
Every new revelation is hard won.
We only have to pick up one of the many books in our libraries and have a read to learn some more of the wonderful hope that we share.
Our new understandings do not require the tenacity that they have to exercise to reach.
We are so blessed and much has been given to us.
The few brethren in our adopted country have such a high regard for us and they seek us out for guidance.
They want us to teach them, to `father` them in the Truth.
They (often) look up to us. We are needed and have a clear cut responsibility to live up to.
In our home countries we could, if we had chosen to, have just sat in a corner and gone unnoticed.
In our adopted country there is no dark corner to retreat to.
The ecclesia is a small circle and nothing can be hidden.
Just by being in the places we are Our Father in Heaven has assigned us to a vital task.
If we let the brethren down in our adopted country, if we fail to live up to their warranted expectations then we also let Our Father in heaven down greatly.
We still have a choice of course. We can either perform according to Godly expectation or leave.
In our home countries we are also called to be ambassadors for the King, but in our adopted countries, in the field, that position takes on a heightened meaning.
We cannot simply pass on the work to somebody else; for the embassy is so short staffed and we all have to pull our weight and truly perform at our very best and as optimally as we can.
If any of us individually fail to do that we let the whole ‘away team’ down and we do the brethren of our host country a great disservice.
By being where we are, we are naturally tasked as teachers and guides and as such we cannot exercise double standards.
We are in our adopted countries to help the local brethren with the problems they have in their quest, not to add to their problems.
Our hosts are kind and considerate toward us and we must be kind and considerate toward them.
We are not burdened with a long cultural history that frustrates our ability to take hold of the Faith once and for all preached and we must be cognizant of the fact that our hosts may well be.
We cannot gently wean them away from old ideas if we fail as examples.
They will not listen and nor should they listen if our worthiness as ambassadors becomes questionable.
We are a royal household and as royals we need to always be conscious of our high calling.
For some, with a very simple understanding of the Truth, it may just be enough that they believe and hang on tenaciously to that belief, but for us to whom much has been given much more is expected.
We all begin our lives in the field, away from our home countries, for different reasons and at the start we may not understand exactly the situation we have let ourselves into.
Ultimately we are in the field because God has put us there. Our Father in Heaven has deemed our placement as our lot in life.
Because we are in the field we know assuredly that much is expected of us and not little.
We have to acquit ourselves as true teachers and guides and as good examples.
We must, more so than others, put ‘self’ aside.
If we have to wife a sister of our host country then we have to be mindful always of our calling.
We are obliged to be ‘that respected brother’ before her in all our comings and goings.
We must be that wonderful husband that we preach about; we must be perfect in her eyes. Giving due consideration to her cultural bondage and ever so gently weaning her away from that old identity.
We must lead the way by example if we expect her to follow.
If our sister wife spiritually grows because we are trying our very best to be shining lights then our host brothers will also spiritually grow.
It is a simple formula of love and trust and ample forbearance.
Put simply our sister wife will follow us if we follow our Lord and with that example we light the way for our host brothers and sisters.
Remember this, my brothers, we are not just men, we are princes of the Most High God. We are latter day ‘apostles’.
Does all this high talk make us better than our host brothers and sisters?
Does all this high talk place us higher than our host brothers and sisters?
Bluntly it does not and if truth be told they deservedly should be esteemed all the more. In all probability they have come to the knowledge and heard the knock in circumstances much less amicable than our own.
We are merely servants by way of circumstance.
Our wrong steps are of course many and I can count myself as a particularly adept failure when it comes to living according to the ideal set before us. When I consider my overall past performance I wince with shame.
I have been in the field for many years and I have wasted so much time and energy. I am supposed to have always been on the King’s business, but far too often and even yet I serve myself liberally.
However we are not here to wallow in the muck of failure so that is all I will say of the negative.
Will faith be evident in the earth in the last of the days of men?
Well we all know the unspoken response to that.
‘Hopefully, and can I make it till then or am I truly the profligate failure I inwardly sense that I am?’
My dear brothers, my fellow labourers in the field, let us work together to attain to that which we are called and let us pray that we are not attainted for willingly and selfishly falling short.
With much love in the King that we profess to love and serve,
Paul Riggio
Japan
I have written this piece over the period of a few days or so and have had time to think about the consequences that the content brings to mind.
If we do not consider our responsibility and ponder the various expected manifestations of it then we very conveniently fail to appreciate and attempt to execute the full gamut of what is expected of us.
Omitted thoughts conjure the blindness that we have when we come to look at ourselves.
We care so much for ourselves that inevitably we find ourselves, if we would but look carefully, entwined in a conflict of interest.
We unconsciously opt to not look particularly carefully at our predicament.
We absolve the entanglements we have with ourselves with our own justice.
We are oh so forgiving with ourselves. And even as we recognize this, one of our excellent capacities, we continue in the paradigm we have arbitrarily authenticated. Sometimes we just shrug.
Writing these few pages have been rather eye-opening…… All of us believe to a certain point, and we stubbornly, year after year and for as long as we can, refuse to challenge the rest of the course.
We opt for incremental progress or rest at a convenient point of balance.
Yet even as all this is the pitiful case we keep going and when all is said and done that is most of what we are asked to do.
“To go forward and ever upward toward the high mark of our calling.”
Shepherding
We are called to Shepherd …true it is that not all brothers are called to lead but if you are one that that now wakes up every morning in a land that is foreign to the one of your birth then you can be sure of at least this one thing in relation to your calling. You are a shepherd.
And if we do not sit well with the connotations of that then we’d be better positioned waking up somewhere else.
EZEKIEL Ch 34 v1-10
At a glance!
1.The word of the LORD came to me:
And the word of the Lord has also come to us. So many do not even have the ears to respond …but we haveresponded and we have been graciously been afforded eyes to see.
2."Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ho, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?
Our God is watching …. He knows exactly what we let drive us… He is about to show us what we should be doing as opposed to what we want to do….. He is about to reveal that we have to be Ecclesially centered rather that self centered.
3.You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.
Content in our own satisfaction, making sure that we are OK and pursuing the success of what we presume to be our needs.
4.The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the crippled you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.
So centered on our own comprehension of what is the right thing to do we lose empathy for the needs of our brethren and sisters.
5.So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the wild beasts.
We forget our high calling and fail in our duty and inadvertently let our brothers and sisters get lost because we have not been there to turn to.
6.My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.
So busy looking after number one we forget that without our brothers and sisters we are nothing. We cause loss.
7."Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD:
We have to exercise the ears and the eyes that we have been blessed with.
8. As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep;
Our failures deserve indictment.
9.therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD:
The repeat here should emphasize to us the importance of our need to truly act as guiding shepherds and not silly goats in the field.
10.Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.
And if we do not do what the word reveals we should do we will in the end be of no account and not only will our shepherd ship be withdrawn but also our very hold on eternal life.
Please feel free to comment
www.nihonseisho.org
info@nihonseisho.org
It is often the case that where we come from there are many who can count themselves as called out ones but in the mission field, there are few.
When we travel abroad we become even more so, ambassadors for Our God.
The few brethren in our adopted country look at us and pray that we can help guide them in their journey along the way.
Often we come from lands where the Truth is well understood.
We speak the language that so many books about the Truth have been written in.
The few brethren and sisters in our adopted country have a Bible and scant works to help them along and because of language barriers it is so much harder for them to discover the richness and depth of the things of God.
Every new revelation is hard won.
We only have to pick up one of the many books in our libraries and have a read to learn some more of the wonderful hope that we share.
Our new understandings do not require the tenacity that they have to exercise to reach.
We are so blessed and much has been given to us.
The few brethren in our adopted country have such a high regard for us and they seek us out for guidance.
They want us to teach them, to `father` them in the Truth.
They (often) look up to us. We are needed and have a clear cut responsibility to live up to.
In our home countries we could, if we had chosen to, have just sat in a corner and gone unnoticed.
In our adopted country there is no dark corner to retreat to.
The ecclesia is a small circle and nothing can be hidden.
Just by being in the places we are Our Father in Heaven has assigned us to a vital task.
If we let the brethren down in our adopted country, if we fail to live up to their warranted expectations then we also let Our Father in heaven down greatly.
We still have a choice of course. We can either perform according to Godly expectation or leave.
In our home countries we are also called to be ambassadors for the King, but in our adopted countries, in the field, that position takes on a heightened meaning.
We cannot simply pass on the work to somebody else; for the embassy is so short staffed and we all have to pull our weight and truly perform at our very best and as optimally as we can.
If any of us individually fail to do that we let the whole ‘away team’ down and we do the brethren of our host country a great disservice.
By being where we are, we are naturally tasked as teachers and guides and as such we cannot exercise double standards.
We are in our adopted countries to help the local brethren with the problems they have in their quest, not to add to their problems.
Our hosts are kind and considerate toward us and we must be kind and considerate toward them.
We are not burdened with a long cultural history that frustrates our ability to take hold of the Faith once and for all preached and we must be cognizant of the fact that our hosts may well be.
We cannot gently wean them away from old ideas if we fail as examples.
They will not listen and nor should they listen if our worthiness as ambassadors becomes questionable.
We are a royal household and as royals we need to always be conscious of our high calling.
For some, with a very simple understanding of the Truth, it may just be enough that they believe and hang on tenaciously to that belief, but for us to whom much has been given much more is expected.
We all begin our lives in the field, away from our home countries, for different reasons and at the start we may not understand exactly the situation we have let ourselves into.
Ultimately we are in the field because God has put us there. Our Father in Heaven has deemed our placement as our lot in life.
Because we are in the field we know assuredly that much is expected of us and not little.
We have to acquit ourselves as true teachers and guides and as good examples.
We must, more so than others, put ‘self’ aside.
If we have to wife a sister of our host country then we have to be mindful always of our calling.
We are obliged to be ‘that respected brother’ before her in all our comings and goings.
We must be that wonderful husband that we preach about; we must be perfect in her eyes. Giving due consideration to her cultural bondage and ever so gently weaning her away from that old identity.
We must lead the way by example if we expect her to follow.
If our sister wife spiritually grows because we are trying our very best to be shining lights then our host brothers will also spiritually grow.
It is a simple formula of love and trust and ample forbearance.
Put simply our sister wife will follow us if we follow our Lord and with that example we light the way for our host brothers and sisters.
Remember this, my brothers, we are not just men, we are princes of the Most High God. We are latter day ‘apostles’.
Does all this high talk make us better than our host brothers and sisters?
Does all this high talk place us higher than our host brothers and sisters?
Bluntly it does not and if truth be told they deservedly should be esteemed all the more. In all probability they have come to the knowledge and heard the knock in circumstances much less amicable than our own.
We are merely servants by way of circumstance.
Our wrong steps are of course many and I can count myself as a particularly adept failure when it comes to living according to the ideal set before us. When I consider my overall past performance I wince with shame.
I have been in the field for many years and I have wasted so much time and energy. I am supposed to have always been on the King’s business, but far too often and even yet I serve myself liberally.
However we are not here to wallow in the muck of failure so that is all I will say of the negative.
Will faith be evident in the earth in the last of the days of men?
Well we all know the unspoken response to that.
‘Hopefully, and can I make it till then or am I truly the profligate failure I inwardly sense that I am?’
My dear brothers, my fellow labourers in the field, let us work together to attain to that which we are called and let us pray that we are not attainted for willingly and selfishly falling short.
With much love in the King that we profess to love and serve,
Paul Riggio
Japan
I have written this piece over the period of a few days or so and have had time to think about the consequences that the content brings to mind.
If we do not consider our responsibility and ponder the various expected manifestations of it then we very conveniently fail to appreciate and attempt to execute the full gamut of what is expected of us.
Omitted thoughts conjure the blindness that we have when we come to look at ourselves.
We care so much for ourselves that inevitably we find ourselves, if we would but look carefully, entwined in a conflict of interest.
We unconsciously opt to not look particularly carefully at our predicament.
We absolve the entanglements we have with ourselves with our own justice.
We are oh so forgiving with ourselves. And even as we recognize this, one of our excellent capacities, we continue in the paradigm we have arbitrarily authenticated. Sometimes we just shrug.
Writing these few pages have been rather eye-opening…… All of us believe to a certain point, and we stubbornly, year after year and for as long as we can, refuse to challenge the rest of the course.
We opt for incremental progress or rest at a convenient point of balance.
Yet even as all this is the pitiful case we keep going and when all is said and done that is most of what we are asked to do.
“To go forward and ever upward toward the high mark of our calling.”
Shepherding
We are called to Shepherd …true it is that not all brothers are called to lead but if you are one that that now wakes up every morning in a land that is foreign to the one of your birth then you can be sure of at least this one thing in relation to your calling. You are a shepherd.
And if we do not sit well with the connotations of that then we’d be better positioned waking up somewhere else.
EZEKIEL Ch 34 v1-10
At a glance!
1.The word of the LORD came to me:
And the word of the Lord has also come to us. So many do not even have the ears to respond …but we haveresponded and we have been graciously been afforded eyes to see.
2."Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ho, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?
Our God is watching …. He knows exactly what we let drive us… He is about to show us what we should be doing as opposed to what we want to do….. He is about to reveal that we have to be Ecclesially centered rather that self centered.
3.You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.
Content in our own satisfaction, making sure that we are OK and pursuing the success of what we presume to be our needs.
4.The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the crippled you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.
So centered on our own comprehension of what is the right thing to do we lose empathy for the needs of our brethren and sisters.
5.So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the wild beasts.
We forget our high calling and fail in our duty and inadvertently let our brothers and sisters get lost because we have not been there to turn to.
6.My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.
So busy looking after number one we forget that without our brothers and sisters we are nothing. We cause loss.
7."Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD:
We have to exercise the ears and the eyes that we have been blessed with.
8. As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep;
Our failures deserve indictment.
9.therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD:
The repeat here should emphasize to us the importance of our need to truly act as guiding shepherds and not silly goats in the field.
10.Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.
And if we do not do what the word reveals we should do we will in the end be of no account and not only will our shepherd ship be withdrawn but also our very hold on eternal life.
Please feel free to comment
www.nihonseisho.org
info@nihonseisho.org