This is another video GemStone produced recently. I can’t take much credit for this one, although I wish I could, because it’s really awesome. I helped out some with pre-production and on the shoot day helping track the shots and keep things on schedule, but the brilliant artistry that sells it is all the work of my colleagues, Walt and Jim.
This is the first segment from the video series I’ve been working on. The concept is to produce a series a videos, directed at missionaries, to help them correspond with their supporters via video. The hope is that this will more deeply engage the North American audience in missions, as well as helping missionaries more effectively communicate the exciting stories from their fields. The video may still change a little bit, but this should be pretty close to what the final video will look like.
(updated with video link for RSS folks)
Tags: gemstone media, gsm, howto, low budget, mission, missionaries, training, video
A number of years ago, I was editing a video. In it a man shared his life story. He was relatively old, and there was a whole lot of footage. A personal conflict had prevented me from being able to do the recording, so I’d never met him. For several weeks, I poured my every free moment into editing his life. He had experienced some incredible hardships, but the twinkle in his eye, friendly demeanor, and the sense of who he was won me over. As I watched the story of his life again and again trimming and tightening his story, I felt I’d come to know him.
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. 
Tags: chain letters, email, Jesus, knowledge, relationship
As I was stressing out massively about our finances and what God was going to do to keep us here and on the field, I turned to my bible. It’s always a good idea to turn to the bible when having an anxiety attack, I think. So today as I read the passage laid out for me in my One Year Bible for Women, the New Living Translation, I was reading all about Solomon and his massive amounts of riches. In my short 2 chapters of II Kings, he acquired sixteen tons of gold from his fleet of ships (9:28), nine thousand pounds of gold from the Queen of Sheba (10:10), and each year he received about 25-tons of gold, not including the additional revenue from merchants and traders, all the kings of Arabia, and the governors of the land (10:14-15). So on one hand I’m thinking, “Awesome! What a waste! Why did Solomon need all that gold!? I mean, give me a break, what was the point?” on the other hand I’m thinking, “OK, God is still the same God. He has access to all that excessive amount of gold. We don’t need near anything like that so God can totally provide for us here.”
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.)
Tags: barn, challenges, construction, gemstone, howto, low budget, video
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