Category Archives: Jesus

Our 70’s Rock Band Tour!

 In 1972 I met Dear at a concert he was singing in. My best friend just started singing with this group and I accompanied her to the concert. Dear and I  became attracted to each other later that year after I auditioned for the group and joined.  In the summer of 1973 and 1974 Dear and I toured England with this American Christian Rock Group. We were called the “Contemporaries”.  Never to be confused with the Continentals! These articles and photos are a combination of our tours in ’73 and ’74. Dear and I were engaged during the ’74 tour and got married December of that year.

I’m one of the singers on the far right and Dear is right next to me.

“The American evangelical folk-rock group The Contemporaries received a superstar welcome when they played last week in St John’s Church, Waterloo. More than 600 children between the ages of 12 and 18, together with a small number of adults, packed the building for the hour-long concert which featured the latest in religious music. Outside local residents opened doors and windows to hear the music from the church and later a spokesman for the group said ‘The audiences on Merseyside are far warmer than any we ever had in ten years of playing in the states.”

“A band of young people spreading the word of God in their own unique way are the Contemporaries. The young American group have been touring England for the last two weeks at their own expense. The group visited Liverpool before making a tour of local schools.”

I’m in the front row standing on the right with Dear next to me of this picture with Dear.

“Hymns gave way to Jesus rock in morning assembly at St. George’s Church of England School, in Meadow Road, Gravesend yesterday. The concert was given by the Contemporaries, 14 musicians from the United States, who are in the middle of a world tour. They have already completed a number of successful “gigs” in Liverpool. They are all professional musicians, but they are giving their services free. They have also appeared at Gordon Secondary School for Girls and today they will be at Northfleet Count Secondary School for Girls. On Friday they will be at Gordon Secondary School for Boys and on Monday Southfields High School.”  [this article was pretty sensationalized…the band were professionals, not the vocalists. Our World tour consisted of 4 weeks in England]

We have great memories of our tours in England. Dear went on 2 previous tours before I joined the group. We were able to sing in schools for their religious hour. It was exciting for us to be able to give testimonies and talk about Jesus at schools. (couldn’t do that in the U.S.)

It was hilarious that the kids would chase after us and want to get our autographs. After our school concerts during the day we would sing at a town hall or church at night and many of the students from the schools would come again to hear us.

I’m in the middle of all those young girls!

Dear and I left the group in the mid 70’s after we were married.

Life Together ~ Bonhoeffer

This is a quote from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from the section on Community:

Christian community is like the Christian’s sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.

Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.

Life Together. Copyright 1954 by HarperCollins Publishers.

Preaching The Cross

My husband and I have decided it’s time to stop dancing between our church in Seattle and our church in Southern California. We are going to settle into reality. Although I’ve been traveling back and forth we live in Southern California because that’s where “Dear” is working full-time. To make our departure official we gave our two pastors whom we love dearly a copy of  Preaching the Cross by Mark Dever, J. Ligon Duncan III, R.Albert Mohler Jr., C. J. Mahaney with contributions by John MacArthur, John Piper, R.C. Sproul. It was hard to “join” another church after 18 years of being faithful to our church in Seattle.

We love this body of believers and we have grown significantly through our experiences here. Our very closest friends and children have gone to this church. “Dear” was an elder at this church, I was a deaconness. But…God is calling us to something new, a change, something different. We choose to be obedient and though it’s hard we look forward to what new thing God will do with us for His Kingdom and we hope we can be faithful servants in this new thing. There is a quote by A.W. Tozer in the introduction to Preaching the Cross that I thought was very good reminder to all of us in the Body of Christ.

“Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.” -A.W. Tozer

Thank you Lord for Sunrise, where we learned to love you more, love your people, we learned through experience what true forgiveness and reconciliation look like, and learned that suffering makes us more like you.

My prayer is that we all bow the knee to Jesus and keep our eyes on Christ, our Standard, so we can truly become nearer to each other as the Body of Christ.

Colossians ~ Kierkegaard

 Colossians 1:9-14 (NASB)

“For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Excerpts From the Prayers of Kierkegaard

To Will One Thing

“Father in Heaven! What are we without You! What is all that we know, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if we do not know You! What is all our striving, could it ever encompass a world, but a half-finished work if we do not know You: You the One, who is one thing and who is all!

So may you give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may You grant perseverance to will one thing: amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing.

You that gives both the beginning and the completion, may You early, at the dawn of day, give to the young the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may You give to the old a renewed remembrance of their first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.”

From: Devotional Classics, Edited by Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith

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Remarks by John Newton ~ Out Of The Depths ~ Hymn

 The following excerpt is taken from, John Newton Out Of The Depths, an Autobiography

I have read of many wicked popes, but the worst pope I ever met with is Pope Self.

The heir of a great estate, while a child, thinks more of a few shillings in his pocket than of his inheritance. So a Christian is often more elated by some frame of heart than by his title to glory.

I feel like a man who has no money in his pocket, but is allowed to draw for all he wants upon one infinitely rich; I am, thererfore, at once both a beggar and a rich man.

Sometimes I compare the troubles which we have to undergo in the course of the year to a great bundle of [sticks], far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once; He mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry today, and then another which we are to carry tomorow, and so on. This we might easily manage, if we would only take the burden appointed for us each day; but we choose to increase our troubles by carrying yesterday’s stick over again today, and adding tomorow’s burden to our load, before we are required to bear it.

“Out of the Depths”

It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
‘Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And to the weary rest.

Dear Name! the Rock on which I build;
My Shield and Hiding-place;
My never-failing Treasury fill’d
With boundless stores of grace.

By Thee my prayers acceptance gain,
Although with sin defiled;
Satan accuses me in vain,
And I am own’d a child.

Jesus! my Shepherd, Husband, Friend,
My Prophet, Priest, and King;
My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End,
Accept the praise I bring.

Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought;
But when I see Thee as Thou art,
I’ll praise Thee as I ought.

Till then I would Thy love proclaim
With every fleeting breath;
And may the music of Thy Name
Refresh my soul in death!
~John Newton

All We Will Get Is Mercy ~ Piper

 

From Life As a Vapor (Thirty ~ One Meditations for Your Faith) by John Piper

 

Let us make crystal clear at the beginning of each new day, all we will get from God as believers in Jesus is mercy. Whatever pleasures or pains may come our way in this day, they will all be mercy. This is why Christ came into the world – “in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his great mercy” (Romans 15:9). We were born again “according to his great mercy” (I Peter 1:3); we pray daily “that we may receive mercy” (Hebrews 4:16); and we are now “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 1:21). If any Christian prove trustworthy, it is “by the Lord’s mercy [he] is trustworthy” (I Corinthians 7:25). In the end, when all is said and done, we will confess, “So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:16).

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O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus – Samuel Francis (1834 – 1925)

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!

Rolling as a mighty ocean

In its fullness over me.

Underneath me, all around me,

Is the current of His love

Leading onward leading homeward,

To Thy glorious rest above

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Spread His praise from shore to shore.

How he loveth ever loveth

changeth never, nevermore.

How He watcheth o’er His loved ones,

Died to call them all His own;

How for them He intercedeth,

Watcheth o’er them from the throne!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

Love of ev’ry, love the best!

‘Tis an ocean vast of blessing,

‘Tis a haven sweet of rest.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

‘Tis a heav’n of heav’ns to me;

And it lifts me up to glory,

For it lifts me, Lord, to Thee!

 

“““““““`

This is one of my favorite hymns. The words are so rich and the minor key  that it is written in takes me back to my Russian heritage.

 

Lord of all the Pots and Pans

 Lord of All the Pots and Pans

A poem written in by a 19 year old girl in domestic service in England:

 

Lord of all pots and pans and things
Since I’ve no time to be
A saint by doing lovely things
Or watching late with Thee
Or dreaming in the sweet dawn light
Or storming Heaven’s gates,
Make me a saint by getting meals
And washing up the plates.

Although I must have Martha’s hands,
I have a Mary mind,
And when I black the boots and shoes,
Thy sandals, Lord, I find.
I think of how they trod the earth,
What time I scrub the floor:
Accept this meditation, Lord.
I haven’t time for more.

Warm all the kitchen with Thy love
And light it with Thy peace;
Forgive me all my worrying,
And make all grumbling cease.
Thou who didst love to give men food,
In room or by the sea,
Accept this service that I do–
I do it unto Thee

Colossians 3:17 (ESV): “And whatever you do , in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through him.”

Thanks to my girlfriend Jody who sent me this poem a while back.

 

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Testimony Tuesday ~ Kathy (a.k.a. Jack’s Nana)

This is my sister Kathy’s testimony. She is the oldest of 8 siblings. She was born in Tehran and immigrated to the U.S. with my folks shortly after World War II. Kathy is married to Len and she has two daughters Michelle and Melissa. Michelle is married to Ryan and has one son, Jackson.

 

Lana, Kathy, Ellen and Vera (sisters)

Growing up in our family, where our Mom was a Christian and Pop was a very religious man, was a real privilege.  Babushka Vera [our maternal grandmother] was a real prayer warrior and prayed for all of us especially Pop.  Vera [my younger sister] and I would go to Bethany Sunday School occasionally because of our friendships with Tamara and Milla Katkov.  We also went to a midweek meeting at Tamara Kushnerov’s [one of the teachers at Bethany].  I remember hearing my need of a Saviour at this midweek meeting, and then I went home and got on my knees and asked Jesus to come into my heart.  It is all a little fuzzy but I think I was about eight or nine.  Summer camps were a very important part of my growth and maturing in the Lord.  I started teaching Sunday School when I was probably about thirteen, and preparing for that helped me to grow as well.  We used to go to a Tuesday night youth group at YRCA (Young Russian Christian Association) which also added to my growth.  So many events and so many people were used by God to help me grow.

I am now challenged and refreshed by my family as they grow and walk with the Lord.

Thank you, God, for your faithfulness!

Kathy has a peacemaker’s heart and is very kind. She has a degree in teaching but more than that she has the gift of teaching.  Right now besides spending as much time as she can with Jack and substitute teaching,  she is caring for her 93  year old mother-in-law. May God bless her richly for all the good she does in obedience to Him. Kathy truly is an example of a Proverbs 31 woman who fears the Lord and does good for her household and others!

II Timothy and The Reformation Study Bible

This year I took a suggestion to read through the Bible in a different way. Retention is not my strong point. I have to write things down and read them over and over to really get the point, so this Bible reading method was a great suggestion for me. I am reading every book of the Bible 20 times before I move on to the next. I’m starting with the shortest New Testament Books. At this rate I’ll not finish till I’m dead…but that’s OK. I find myself in 2 Timothy on my 17th read. I’m highlighting some great verses with footnotes and comments from The Reformation Study Bible, R.C. Sproul ~ General Editor, ESV.  I want to give a “heads up” appeal to Moms and Grandmothers to pay attention here to the great opportunity they have with their children and grandchildren!

2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

In the ESV footnotes they say the word of truth refers to  The gospel (2:8, 9, 4:2).

2 Timothy 3:14, 15; But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Footnotes: ( from whom you learned it) A reference to Timothy’s mother and grandmother, as well as to Paul himself. (from childhood) According to custom, the Jewish parent was to begin instructing a child in the law when the child reached five years of age. (Sacred Writings) The false teachers have been misinterpreting the Old Testament. (I Tim. 1:7, Titus 3:9) Timothy needs to remember the proper instruction he received from the hands of his mother and grandmother. The “Sacred Writings” here are the books of the Old Testament. The New Testament did not yet exist as a collection. (Salvation …in Christ Jesus), The Old testament interpreted properly, leads one to understand the central role of Jesus Christ in God’s overall plan for His Creation.

2 Timothy 3:16,17;  All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

(breathed out by God) This is one of the most important expressions in the New Testament of the doctrine of the divine inspiration of Scripture. The Bible has been breathed out by the Spirit of God (2 Pet. 1:21). God is the source and ultimate Author of Scripture. Though written by human authors, Scripture nevertheless has the full weight of His authority.

The following is an excerpt from a theological note “The Authority of Scripture” and from the introduction to The Reformation Study Bible:

The Authority of Scripture … “Historic Protestantism accepts the Scripture as the only written revelation of God. It is inspired, or “breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16), distinguishing it from all other words. As a result, the Scriptures are infallible and true in all that they affirm. They are sufficient, containing everything that is necessary to know for salvation and eternal life. They are clear, so that a person without special preparation can understand what God requires without the intervention of an official interpreter.”

And from the Introduction written by R.C. Sproul ~

“The Bible is an inspired book, that is, “breathed out” by God. Inspiration reaches far beyond the scope of the inspiration of human artist as commonly understood. The Bible offers more than brilliant insight, more than human sagacity. It is called “inspired” not because of its supernatural mode of transmission via human authors, but because of its origin. It is not merely a book about God; it is a book from God. Therefore the church confesses its trust and confidence that the Bible is the vox Dei, the veritable “voice of God.”

…God calls every Christian to pursue righteousness. Our trust is to be childlike, but our understanding must be mature. such trust and understanding require study of God’s word. The authentic disciple meditates on it day and night, continuing and remaining in it. Our goal is more than knowledge; it is wisdom and the fruit of inward and outward obedience.”

From my trusty dictionary I’ll share this definition.  Sagacity – the quality of being sagacious. Sagacious – 1. having or showing acute mental discernment and keen practical sense; shrewd.

So what have we learned, grasshopper? We the regular folk (those who need dictionaries to understand really bright people) can study and understand the Scriptures, with the help of the Holy Spirit.  We can be trusted with diligence on our parts to impart these truths to our children and our grandchildren. We can hear from the very voice of God because this book is from God.  We have all we need to be competent and equipped for every good work. This is amazing stuff.  Let’s study to show ourselves approved, dear Christ followers!

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