Interview With Matt Allen (part four)
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Interview with Matt Allen (part three)
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Interview With Matt Allen (part two)
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Interview with Matt Allen
This is an interview with Missionary Matt Allen hosted by Pastor Austin Gardner. I thought you would enjoy it.
Faith
So many times we talk of faith and have faith promise meetings, yet recently I was in two meetings back to back that stirred my soul. The first in Tn was a smaller church of less than 50 where the Spirit of God moved in the meetings. At the end of the meeting, the church faith promise was almost $40,000.00 There were no “money people” just faith. It was very exciting.
The next week we were in Louisiana. This is a very sweet, generous church that has a pastor with a heart for missions. Each night we were aware of God’s presence. On Sunday morning before the conference was over with or the cards taken up, the church voted to take on 25 new missionaries. Once again faith abounded.
God give us faith. Whether in the church or on deputation, God give us faith. Increase our faith. What is God not doing just because we do not believe?
Thanks for praying.
Bro. Tony
Traveling
Just to bring you up to speed, we have been in Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, and now are in LA (and not that is not lower Alabama!)
We start a meeting with good friend Tom Schreeder and the dear folks of Grace Baptist Church here in Zachary, LA. This is a great church with a heart for the world. Please pray that God would do incredible things during this week for His glory.
In our other meetings, we have seen God move and work. In the last church we were in, they run less than 50 and had a faith promise of nearly $40,000! It was a very evident moving of God’s Spirit.
Pray for the family. In the last meeting some folks were sick and Lauryn had a 102 fever last night. The children are doing school and I have an “office” set up in the house we are staying at. Maybe over the next couple days we can get caught up some!
May God bless you greatly and thanks again for praying.
Bro. Tony
Connecting
As I was reading in Romans, I came to the last chapter and was touched by the people Paul names and greeted. How he spoke of men, women, couples and what they meant to him. How tender and sweet his words were as he salutes them.
Are we making any connections as we go into churches? Can we remember anyones name? Is there any type of relationship being developed? Can you recall anyone by name in a church you have been in recently? Guard yourself from being so focused on “support” that all a church becomes is a check once a month.
Yes, there may be churches where all you are is a certain amount of money they send you once a month. Though they are like that, does not mean you have to be. Establish relationships and connections. A good friend of mine, Austin Gardner, has been very good at this through email, blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. These things may drive me crazy but are a great tool for staying in contact with people.
A young missionary that does very well with keeping the churches he is in before people is Mark Tolson. Let me encourage you to go to projectchina.org and sign up for his blog.
As you go into your next meeting, see the people.
Praying for you,
Bro. Tony
A Great Opportunity
I wanted to encourage you, if you have not done so yet, to sign up for the Our Generation Summit in Pigeon Forge, TN.
The Our Generation Summit is an annual gathering in Pigeon Forge, TN of Christians with a heart for world missions. Pastors and missionaries, teachers and students, businessmen and families join for three days to address the needs of a world waiting for the Gospel. This year’s theme, Equip for Battle, will deal with our opportunity and responsibility to prepare and equip ourselves to take the Gospel to the world. Our theme verse is I Chronicles 12:33: “Of Zebulun, such as went forth to battle, expert in war, with all instruments of war, fifty thousand, which could keep rank: they were not of double heart.” We will hear from veteran missionaries, as well as missionaries on deputation, home from the field, or on the field from all around the world. Located once again at the beautiful Music Road Hotelin the center of action-packed Pigeon Forge, the Our Generation Summit provides a fantastic venue for any church or youth group seeking an easy-to-organize retreat filled with excitement and passion for Christ. Join us for this Missions-Centered Winter Retreat from December 31, 2009-January 2, 2010!
Redeeming The Time
More and more, I am realizing the importance of time management. I am getting older, there is more I want to do for the Lord but less time. With these thoughts going through my head, I read this article from FBIS this week. I would like to think that each of you would get through deputation and get to the field. The truth is we do not know how much time we have on this earth to serve God. May your life count for His glory.
Bro. Tony
“LOST YESTERDAY: somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.”
The Bible exhorts us to redeem the time because life is short (Ephesians 5:16), but the average person wastes vast amounts of time that could be spent profitably.
The book of Proverbs has many warnings about slothfulness. The sluggard “deals with a slack hand” (Prov. 10:4) and loves to laze around (Prov. 20:13; 26:14). He likes to “fold the hands” (Prov. 6:10; 24:33). This phrase could refer to conversing about things of no value, watching television, endlessly collecting pop CDs and MP3 files, playing video games, being consumed with professional sports, fishing, golfing, snowboarding, surfing the Internet, you name it. The sluggard is diligent toward folly but he is lazy toward wisdom. He wastes time and opportunities and doesn’t plan ahead and work hard to fulfill wise objectives (Prov. 6:6-8). He is not self-motivated and diligent in the important issues of life, but he must have someone ruling over him and telling him what to do. When out from under this authority and when left to himself he puts off and neglects the important things. The sluggard uses many excuses to get out of work (Prov. 20:4; 22:13). While the diligent man finds a way to work regardless of the circumstance, the sluggard is busier finding an excuse not to work than to find a way to accomplish the work. The sluggard thinks success is 99% genius and 1% sweat, whereas it is more like 1% genius and 99% sweat. Success makes it own way through diligence and persistence, but the sluggard would rather hope for a jackpot. The sluggard has many desires and plans and covets many things, but he will not work hard to attain these things and thus he is frustrated (Prov. 21:25-26). It’s not that the sluggard doesn’t have any ambition; he is going to do a lot of things whenever he finally gets around to it!
Before I was saved I had no great compulsion in life and as a result I was careless with time, but every since I have been saved I have had a great desire to redeem it. I wasted far many hours on vanity, and I don’t want to waste any more. Life is short and God has a perfect will that is to be pursued. We don’t know how long our lives might be. Jesus could come back today. I could die today. There is no promise of tomorrow, and when a day is gone, it is gone, and we can never revisit it and redeem it. The sluggard plans to do something tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes so he dreams his way through life.
Some people have made light of my diligence. When I was a student at Bible College I carried a large briefcase that contained a portable library, and every chance I had I would read, study, and memorize. During the first year I was working at a church about an hour’s drive from the city, and I would ride to the church with the pastor. His last class got out later than mine, so I would find his car and sit down nearby, open my massive briefcase, and get to work. Invariably he would find me deeply entranced in some project when he arrived, and he would chuckle and wonder why I didn’t “take a break sometimes.” By God’s grace, I ignored that type of thinking and continued to redeem the time. As a result I have had the privilege of publishing about 150 books, including a Bible Encyclopedia.
People that are diligent in the use of time challenge me, even if they are not saved.
There was a wealthy man in England who read a multi-volume history of England by using the 15 or so minutes at every meal while he waited on his servants to attend to him. He could have sat there daydreaming.
Minutes count. They add up. For example, in just one minute you can read the Great Commission chapter of Matthew 28, the Born Again chapter of John 3, the sermon on the Unknown God in Acts 17, or the great love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13. So much can be accomplished for the Lord in a small amount of time.
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was a diligent student. He was a great hunter, and on his trips he would carry a portable library. The library that he took on his lengthy hunting trip to Africa was called the “pigskin library” because the books were bound in pigskin to protect them from the harsh conditions. “They were carried in a light aluminum and oil-cloth case, which, with its contents, weighed a little less than sixty pounds, making a load for one porter” (African Game Trails, p. 29). He says, “I almost always had some volume with me, either in my saddle pocket or in the cartridge-bag which one of my gun-bearers carried to hold odd and ends. Often my reading would be done while resting under a tree at noon, perhaps beside the carcass of a beast I had killed, or else while waiting for camp to be pitched” (p. 570). He devotes an entire appendix to a list of the books that he carried on such ventures, including the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer, Poe, Keats, Mark Twain, Macaulay, Bacon’s Essays, Milton’s Paradise Lost, poems by Browning, Longfellow, Emerson, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and various histories.
Robert Dick Wilson (1856-1930) was one of the greatest biblical scholars of the church age. When he graduated from Princeton at age 20, he could read the New Testament in nine languages. Eventually he learned 45 languages. At age 25, Wilson decided to dedicate the rest of his life to investigate the historicity of the Bible to see if it could be defended against the onslaught of theological modernism. Based on the longevity of his ancestors, he assumed that he might have 45 more years to dedicate to his project. Dividing this into three periods, he devoted the first 15 years to mastering every language that had a bearing on the text of the Old Testament, the next 15 years to the study of the text of the Old Testament itself, looking at every one of its one and a quarter million letters, and the final 15 years to writing down the results of his research (“The Remarkable Robert Dick Wilson,” Christian Courier, April 24, 2000). Wilson concluded, “I have come to the conviction that no man knows enough to attack the veracity of the Old Testament. Every time when anyone has been able to get together enough documentary ‘proofs’ to undertake an investigation, the biblical facts in the original text have victoriously met the test” (R. Pache, The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture).
One reason why Wilson could accomplish so much in his life was his diligent use of time. He said, “Well, you see, I used my spare time. When I went out for a walk I would take a grammar with me, and when I sat down to rest, I would take out the book, study it a little, and learn what I could” (Robert Dick Wilson, Is the Higher Criticism Scholarly? foreword by Philip Howard, 1922).
Ten Commandments of Purity
I received the following from Pastor Steven Henderson in Kansas. May bless you and your wife greatly today.
Proverbs 4:23. It reads, “Keep thy heart with all diligence…”
John Edwards. Mark Sanford. Eliot Spitzer. Bill Clinton. Other than politics what do this men have in common? I know it was too easy. But after the hype of the news channels and tabloids, newspapers and magazines, the reality is that a marriage, and a family, hangs in the balance. Stopping short of throwing stones at them, here is some practical advice about the basic rules of purity to live by. The list is far from perfect, but if you aim at nothing- you hit it every time. We know this issue of immorality is not isolated to the political arena, it has been taking prisoners and leaving wounded within the walls of our churches as well.
Over the years, countless questions by thousands of people have been asked about marriage. But one of the most important questions asked is how to keep our marriage pure.:
The 10 Commandments of Purity
1. I shall have no other human relationship before my spouse, including our children.
2. I shall remember our date night and keep it holy.
3. I shall honor my spouse on anniversaries and special days so that I may live long in the land the Lord has given me.
4. I shall not take the covenant of marriage in vain.
5. I shall not ride in a car or eat in a restaurant alone with a member of the opposite sex.
6. I shall call my spouse every day when we are apart.
7. I shall not counsel a woman with the doors closed.
8. I shall not share the details of our marriage with others.
9. I shall not watch, read or expose myself to sexually explicit shows, books, websites, etc.
10. I shall remember the implications of committing adultery.
No matter who you are or how strong you think your marriage to be, make these your own. Follow them in your marriage every day. They may seem extreme. But something that has extreme consequences calls for extreme action.
Remember, everyone deals with temptation. It’s what you do before facing temptation to stay pure that determines what happens in the face of it. You have to protect your marriage. Because failing to do so can result in heartache – for ourselves, our families, and most importantly, our God.
This issue is bigger than only calling for purity for politicians. We need to call for purity as politicians, pastors and as all people.
What are your 10 Personal Commandments for Purity?