Being the person who has their phone and internet turned off for not paying the bill, is not a part of my normal self image.  In fact, I typically see myself as a good credit rating, bills-paid-on-time sort of person.  So Friday when our phone suddenly stopped making outbound calls (but continued to recieve calls) I figured that our prodigal Telkom was striking again.  That may require a bit of clarification.  Suffice to say that we’ve had all sorts of problems with Telkom, from failed/sub-standard hardware, to service outages, to inexplicable billing.  Friday morning, when the phone stopped, I thought we’d give it a bit of time and see if things resolved themselves.  This was an easy decision since I don’t really like talking on the phone much.  Saturday morning when the internet went out, I got a little more uncomfortable.  But I figured that was just confirmation the line was messed up some where and I assumed they were working on it.  However, by Sunday, when none of our neighbors were having problems and we were still without service, I picked up the phone — the cell phone — to call Telkom.

I’m not a fan of making phone calls.  I don’t know why, but I have an almost irrational fear of it.  Making them in German is even more scary.  Often, when conversing in German, my fears are realized, and I can’t understand a word the person on the other end of the phone is saying.  However, this phone conversation went fairly smoothly, and after a few attempts the Telkom representative made it clear to me that they had not received our last payment.

Virtually everything here in German is handled via electronic funds transfer.  When you recieve a bill, it comes with a little yellow slip you fill out to have the funds transfered, or you can go online and transfer the funds directly from the bank.  These transfers are not instant, however.  They usually take 24 hours.  You probably see where this is going.  We’d payed the bill, but because it’s been a very challenging season for us financially, we’d paid it at the last minute.  Some hiccup in the process meant that Telkom didn’t process it before the weekend, and so they shut off our service.  It took until Tuesday to get our service restored.

This came at an interesting time for me, though.  I don’t know if it’s a stage of culture shock, or just a lot of stress, but I’ve been finding it more difficult to really make a connection with God.  I often feel like He’s terminated my service, and I don’t know why.  It seems arbitrary and unfair.  But when I’m really honest, I realize that my sense of disconnection isn’t coming from God, but rather it’s the result of my own actions.  I rush through my devotional and prayer time to get on to “more important” things.  I get angry when He leads me to some struggle or trial that’s meant to shape me into a better man, instead of leading me to the prosperity and ease I desire.  The communications disconnect isn’t really God’s doing at all.  It’s my own, just like our service getting interrupted because we paid the bill too late.  Unlike Telkom, though, God doesn’t punatively disconnect my service, He’s always tuned in.  I just can’t hear Him when I drown out his voice with my own noise.

View on Vimeo.

View on Vimeo.

View on Vimeo.

(updated with video link for RSS folks)

A few weeks later, I ran into him at an event.  Warmly I hailed him from across the room, one friend to another, only to be greeted with a cold stare and his retreating back.  I didn’t really know him.  I only knew about him.  I had confused knowledge with relationship.

This story came to me this week as I was thinking about Jesus.  In this part of Germany, you can barely go ten steps without seeing a “Jesus.”  He’s been carved from wood and stone, cast in plaster, painted, and cut from tiny shards of glass.  You can find him on the sides of buildings, in any one of thousands of churches, or even on the side of the road.  Almost no matter where you look there is a cold lifeless figure of Jesus.  In general I attribute the best of intentions to the people that scattered Jesus’ image all over the world, but I wonder, does it really help?

Do you know Jesus?  Or do you just know about him?  Do you have a relationship with him or just knowledge about him?  Please don’t confuse the two.  Relationship with Jesus will change your life.  If you don’t see the evidence of that, the little changes day by day that are radically impacting you and your choices, I would challenge you to get to know him better.  It won’t necessarily make you healthy, wealthy, or wise.  In fact, I think in many cases it will lead to struggle, possibly even suffering.  At the same time, neither wealth nor getting our way all of the time can bring us happiness, just look at our Hollywood icons.  (More people we know all about, without really knowing.)  A life of virtually endless money, surrounded by sycophants who indulge their every whim, yet very few of them seem happy.  What knowing Jesus can give you is better than money, better even than happiness.  There is a Joy in Jesus Christ, a hope that life in the future will be better, a contentment in living where he places you that doesn’t exist anywhere else in life.  Living in relationship with Jesus isn’t easy, but it is incredible!

This past week I got a chain email.  I really don’t like chain letters, and determined a long time ago that no matter what the letter contained, if it pressured me in any way to send it on, I wouldn’t.  As they so often are, this email was a “forward this on if you really love Jesus” email.  I struggled a bit with guilty feelings about not forwarding it on.  However, a question struck me and I read it through again.  There was nothing in this email, nothing at all, that would reveal the character of Jesus to someone who didn’t already know him.  That’s what inspired this message.  I want you to know that if you reach out to Jesus he will not glare coldly and walk away.  He loves you and desperately desires relationship with you.  He gave up being God to come down to earth and live with all the same conflicting wants, unmet needs, passions and sufferings you experience today, and then he was brutally beaten, murdered, and he overcame death.  He did this, not because he needed to, but so that he could have a relationship with you.  No one else in your life will ever go to these lengths to try to know you.  Don’t stare coldly and turn away.  Take the opportunity of a life time.  Jesus loves you.

If you want to forward this on to your friends, feel free.  However, please do not include any guilt trip inducing language as though somehow punching the forward button on your email is living out the great commission. 

Then I go on to read in Acts, about Simon, the sorcerer and him asking how much it would cost for him to have the gift of laying on hands and people receiving the Holy Spirit.  OK, I know that story, but what does that have to do with me?  And why does Peter reply so harshly?  “May your money parish with you…you can have no part in this…turn from your wickedness and pray…perhaps he will forgive you for your evil thoughts, for I can see that you are full of bitterness and held captive by sin.” (8:20-23)  Here Simon had just become a new believer  and began following Peter wherever he went.  Cut the guy some slack!  The next verse has Simon pleading that Peter will pray to the Lord for him, so that those things won’t happen.  That’s it, end of story.  Peter doesn’t say anything else.  No one knows what happens with Simon.  It’s just right on to the next story.  OK God is omniscient, He knows the point of that one and what happens, and I’m sure He has a great reason for all of it.

Then it goes right on to Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.   OK, again, know the story.  Philip follows the leading of the Holy Spirit and gets to convert an extremely important muckety-muck in Ethiopia.  Awesome!  “Then the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away.  The eunuch never saw him again but went on his way rejoicing.  Meanwhile Philip found himself farther north at the city of Azotus!”  (8:39b-41a)  OK, great our God can do all things, including beam up Philip and transport him to another town.  Nothing is impossible with our God.

Next is Psalms 130:1,2 & 5 which says,

“From the depths of despair,
O Lord,
I call for your help.
Hear my cry, O Lord.
Pay attention to my prayer.

I am counting on the Lord;
yes, I am counting on him.
I have put my hope in his word.”

My Proverb for the day was 17:2-3, and 3 says, “Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the Lord test the heart.”

So why are we in such dire straights right now with our finances?  God is completely capable, He has all the resources in the world, we have been diligently praying, is it that He is just refining my heart?  I guess that’s good and all, but why do I have the same reaction every time we get to this point in our finances?  Maybe it’s because I still have yet to learn that God “will provide for you and your little ones” (Gen 50:21).

Lord, help me this day and every day to hold fast to that promise you gave to me on my bed when I was only 19, in tears, and going through a custody battle for my 2 year old little girl.  You have been so faithful.  I can not even count how many times you have provided for us, even as my family grew, over the years, and yet I continue to worry about the details.  How?  When?  Where?  will the money come in to pay the bills, to pay for food, to pay for BFA tuition, to fix the van, to get us to annual conference, to get the stupid cat’s teeth cleaned, cuz she somehow got my rotten teeth problems, etc.  I am feeling a lot like the Psalmist today,  “from the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.”  So what do I do now?
“Wait”, I hear you say.
For how long? I ask.
“Until you see my answer.”
OK, Lord, but I am weak, I am only human, and I need your strength.  I want to believe, please help my unbelief.  Please help me to not take it out on my family as I wait.  Help me to be joyful and at peace.  And be excited for the amazing way you will provide for us.  Help me to be able to glorify you through all of this, and learn my lesson once and for all so I don’t have to continue to be in this place again and again.  I want to be a witness for you, so that other’s will learn about your love for them and want a relationship with you.  I want to have Philip’s opportunity to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, bring someone to you who will take You back to their country, their town, their home and teach other’s about your love and provision, so that all of the nations will be present at your table in heaven.  That is my desire, not to be suffocating from worry about finances.  Please free me from these bonds.  I know you can, I know you want to, but I don’t know what I am to do in the meantime.
“Trust me”
Trust, it’s such a big word, and yet it sounds so simple.
“Have faith.”
“I love you.”
Thank you Jesus, Thank you Father, Thank you Holy Spirit.
Amen

Last week I started shooting our new web video series aimed at helping missionaries with their video correspondence. Because we’re thinking about missionaries and their budgets, we’re making a lot of difficult equipment choices. For example, we are shooting on my $200 handy-cam instead of on our professional high definition cameras.

I left our Arri light kit on the shelf, and lit the set with a lumber yard light, and two desk lamps. It’s been a long time since I’ve done work in this budget class, and it’s an interesting reminder of how much time you spend trying to make the wrong equipment do a job well. I’ve seen this again and again as we’ve done construction on our offices, the right tool can make a job so much simpler. Of course, having the wrong tool with skills and know how beats the right tool in unskilled hands. I’ve been the latter a lot as I’ve been doing construction, so it’s nice to be making a video, even with some challenges.

(photos courtesy of W.M.)

June:
One week after we got off the plane the kids started into German school for foreigners.
A couple weeks later Ted and I started our first German class.

We carpooled with another little boy going to the same school.

July:
Then we took a break from language school, cuz there just wasn’t one to be found while Ted worked as a full-time construction worker at the new GEM Europe Headquarters.
The kids and I began to get a feel for living in Germany and making new friends.

Ted's the one on the left.

August:
Ted and Britt went to the GEM Annual conference in Hungary and got connected with a lot of the GEM missionaries all over Europe. Britt and Isaac began school at BFA.

Sept:
Faith began German 2nd grade. Both Ted and Brandy join bible studies with other missionaries in the area. Isaac joins Middles School Praise Band and begins trumpet lessons. Faith and Britt begin piano lessons. Britt joins drama group at school. Faith joins AWANA.

The entire German school put on a welcoming ceremony for the First Graders.

Oct:
Ted and Brandy celebrated 11 years of marriage and our first anniversary in Germany. We had planned from the time we got married to take a trip to Germany for our 10th. Apparently, God had other plans. We took a short trim to Ulm with the family to show the kids where it ALL began.

The Ulm Rathaus--picture courtesy of David Korzilius

Nov:
Ted and Brandy started back into German language school- four hours a day five days a week.
Dec:
We all had a nice 3-week break from our various schools and did a little site seeing around the local area and enjoyed a wonderfully peaceful Christmas together.

Jan:
Winter GEM-K retreat for Britt and then back to school for all. And Ted got to help our German church by directing a group of Germans to video-tape a huge conference called Origins.

Feb:
Our first US visitor came, Ted’s brother, Tim. What a wonderful visit. We got to experience the local flavor of Fasching. The holiday where the people feel like they can hurry up and get their partying done before Lent. And if they wear scary enough masks they’ll scare away the Winter ghost.

Mar:
Britt went on her trip to Romania. Ted and Brandy have final month of language school, and join German prayer group to keep practicing their German.

Britt co-teaching English to the Romainian kids.

April:
Ted’s parents came for 3 weeks. And Ted used up some of his vacation while the kids had interspersing vacations too. Germany begins to bloom.

Dinner at the local pizzeria with family and friends from the US.

May:
The GEM European Headquarters are almost finished. Only finishing touches are being done now, and all the GEMStone Media team are in the office working on a regular basis, working out the kinks of who’s doing what, where and when.
Britt and Isaac finish up their school year. Faith has a nice 2 1/2 week Spring break before she goes back to school for the summer session.
Brandy joins German/English bible study.

GEMStone's Male Models - (from left to right) John Battenfield, Walt, Jim Meyer & the most handsome, My Hubby

It has been a crazy roller-coaster ride, but boy has it been a blast. We are so grateful to each of you for supporting us and continuing to pray for us.  We are very much looking forward to what God has planned for us for the next year.

I got off the plane sick and exhausted, but extremely pleased with myself. A mental image comes to mind: A brilliant sun-set fades into the hills outlining the figures of two people in reds and oranges too rich to be replicated. The secret agent on the left turns to the one on the right and with a satisfied smile reports, “mission accomplished.”

Mission accomplished. Those words send a shiver through me. I’m home again and I feel like I shouldn’t be, it all went too fast. I feel like we still had work to do, by the day we had to leave we had just begun to be able understand English through the heavy Romanian accents without asking for a repetition more than once. We had just begun to feel that these people were really our friends and not just momentary acquaintances. We had just gotten used to the insane and unpredictable schedules. But I guess this feeling of incompleteness is further proof that God, not man, is at work. Here, let me explain:

We arrived in Suceva with no idea of how or what we were expected to do for the week, only that God had got us here and He had the master plan. Throughout the whole week we were living for the minute, plans changed in the blink of an eye. Most of the time we were in the classrooms, practicing English with the kids, other times we were working on a project studying the types of good and evil that exist in the heart of man with one of the 12th grade classes. But at any moment classes we thought we were supposed to visit changed and we were instead sent off to different classes, or to practice English with a different group of randomly selected kids.

In the evenings, we were found loving on the dorm students, playing games with them, telling them stories, making music, or dancing with them. This doesn’t sound like your typical missions trip, even to those of us who went. But our God isn’t the kind you can put in a box. He will use whoever, whenever and however in just the most perfectly crafted way to get His work done.   The entire time we never knew exactly what was going on, schedule-wise or heart-wise, but we knew God did.  God was at work, and it was while we were still wondering what “thank you” in Romanian was, that God was working through us to share his love with the needy students.

Even though we feel like we didn’t have enough time, we do know we accomplished what God sent us to do. We gave our time and our love to a group of people who God knew needed it very much. And just like planting a seed, you don’t always get to see it grow, or the results of that planting. But God knew just how everything was going to play out. He knew which kids were most lonely, who needed to be loved on. God, through us, got everything done the way it needed to happen. I am rejoicing in this truth, even though I wish we could have had more time with the kids. Thank you so much for your support, without you there would have been no “mission accomplished.”

]]> http://blog.coxesquarterly.com/2009/04/13/mission-accomplished/feed/ 1 http://blog.coxesquarterly.com/2009/03/25/everything-and-agent-cox-is-on-a-mission/ http://blog.coxesquarterly.com/2009/03/25/everything-and-agent-cox-is-on-a-mission/#comments Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:55:51 +0000 Ted http://blog.coxesquarterly.com/?p=371 Our March newsletter is out.  It contains a special assignment briefing from Agent Brittany Cox sure to be fun for the entire family, and also a story about one of the ways God is working in our lives, and hopefully the lives of others here in Germany.  Here’s a quick preview…

EVERYTHING

What if God gave us freewill solely so that we can freely decide to give it back?

One of the harder moments in our long run up to the field involved a change in ministry. For a long time, I believed I was going to train European believers in video production. This was a really exciting idea to me, because I believe media is such a crucial battlefield. That’s no longer a part of the our ministry vision and that loss was very difficult for me. I fought against the change, because in my heart I firmly believed that was a critical part of God’s plan for me. It’s been several years, and God has done a lot to teach me about trusting Him, serving where He places me, and accepting the authorities He places over me. All hard, but important lessons for the work ahead.

Recently, I had an incredible opportunity. Many of you may be familiar with Erwin McManus and the Mosiac Church in Los Angeles. In a nutshell, Mosiac has decided to throw off their traditional structures and ideas, while holding fast to scripture, and truly focus on the salvation of the lost. At the invitation of our German church, a team from Mosaic came out to share what they’re learning from this process. The result was a conference called Origins.

I found the conference to be tremendously challenging. They challenged my assumptions about all sorts of issues from discipleship to what church should look like. I was particularly struck by one story: One of the speakers, Eric Bryant, was talking about his conversation with a lesbian woman who attends their church. She asked him, “[if I accept Jesus,] do I need to give up my lifestyle?” At this point I was riveted. There are few questions more bitterly defining the struggle of the church in the 21st Century.

Read the rest.

AGENT COX HAS A MISSION

During Spring break March 28- April 4, 2009, small groups of scheming and calculating BFA (Black Forest Academy) students will be dispersed to various and strategic places all over the world- each group has a top priority mission to carry to completion. Each mission is tailored to that particular group’s highly unique and most valuable capabilities. Brittany Cox is an agent assigned to one of these posses, the one destined for Suceava, Romania. The Mission: to spread word that her Employer, the Boss, the one with the power, power big enough to knock people dead with his pinky finger, is now at large. Yeah, that guy, his name is rumored to be “Jesus,” but he’s got other ones. It’ll be this group’s mission to warn the kids at Filadelphia Christian School (FCS), this guy is presently on the lose and… loving people? Wait, what?

Read the rest.

UPDATE: I have to apologize.  Someone just let me know the “Read the rest” links on both articles was broken.  It should be fixed now.