#6, Regrets of My Life, Part Two

“How do we deal with our life’s regrets?” was the question I left you with in my previous post. Here are some stories that answer that question.

In our early years on the field, I delighted in joking with our missionary friends and neighbours and complimenting them. Their responses often made me feel great. Unfortunately, these friends tended to be women. What was worse, I sometimes neglected to spend sufficient time with my own lovely young wife and daughters. When, after far too long a time, I finally realized how much my thoughtless and selfish behaviour hurt my wife, I deeply regretted my actions.

I also regret being undiplomatic with powerful Brazilian government officials. I should have been wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove. I was not. I was as wise as a dove and my conversations with them may have harmed more than helped my ministry. Instead of enthusiastically casting my personal vision for what we wanted to do to help the Canelas physically, socially, economically, educationally and spiritually, I should have asked the  Brazilian official, “What is your dream for the Canela?” then shown him how we could help turn his dream into reality.

Jo shocked me one day when she said, “It’s no fun being married to you.” What?! We were the only family in the missionary community that had a regular family fun night each week. I regularly took our daughters out on individual dates in their teens. 

But there was something missing: I was driven to work, “married to the ministry” and to relax I turned to what Jo called “your crusades” which involved lobbying fellow missionaries and leaders to change policies on anything I felt strongly about, from printing Scripture portions to the location of new sidewalks. How I wished that I had sat down with Jo and said, “Let’s think up some fun and relaxing things we can do together, and make sure we do some every week.”

We all have said, “I wish I had done . . .” or “If only I . . .” and from there it is a small step to, “I’m such an idiot!” “Why didn’t I . . . ?” and other expressions of regret and self-loathing. Saying that is not bad in that we need to face up to things we have done wrong and the good things we didn’t do. Where we have sinned against God, we need to confess our sin and accept His forgiveness. Sometimes we simply goof up, forget something, or make small mistakes. They aren’t sins, just dumb things we do that confirm our humanity. We need to forgive ourselves for those actions too. 

Many of us regret something we did or did not do in the context of our families. Whenever possible we must make things right with those affected by our actions or inactions affected. We need to admit we messed up, ask for forgiveness, and change our behaviour. But once we have done that, we need to forgive ourselves, and stop beating ourselves up over these regrets.

Satan will try to remind us of the mistakes and wrong choices we have made, and of the hurts and embarrassment we have caused, and he will do this when we are the most vulnerable, just when we are trying to make a new start. That’s when we need to declare,

“Since God forgives my sin against Him, I also forgive my sin against myself. Satan, get out of here, I am forgiven and God gives me daily strength to live the way He wants me to live!”

Please email me. jack_popjes@wycliffe.ca

#5, Regrets of my life, Part One

“If, knowing what you now know, you were able to do your whole translation program over again, what would you do differently?” I asked the veteran Bible translator. As a relative newbie, still in the first years of our program I expected this expert to give me esoteric advice on language learning or translation techniques. I was blown away by his answer.

“I would take more vacations.”

“Huh?” I couldn’t believe my ears. More vacations? Until that time we had not taken any vacations. It was work, work, work, day in, day out, month after month, ever since we arrived in Brazil.

He further told me that although he and his wife took time to retreat and rest quite often, they also traveled abroad once a year to the Caribbean to take a two-week-long vacation. And he wished he had taken more!

After that conversation our family made some good decisions about vacations. No, not annual Caribbean vacations, but we did work with other missionaries to build a small house a hundred metres from a beach on the Amazon. We spent as much time there as often as we could. We also took Brazilian vacation trips by car, staying with friends or in cheap hotels. We built some good memories. No regrets about vacations!

But I do have other regrets.

Before we left for Brazil, I had never sat down with close friends, family members and pastors of churches to tell them up front exactly how much money we still needed to raise before we left to work in Brazil. Nor had we ever asked anyone for his or her help in raising it. How I wished I had done this! Back in the mid-sixties the policies of many missions agencies, ours included, were very shy about stating specific financial needs, and absolutely forbad asking anyone to consider making a gift. “Just pray, God will supply,” our mission director counselled. “He will move people to give when they see you are on the field.”

We prayed a lot, but God did not supply, and we soon regretted leaving for Brazil with only 40% of our financial support promised. Jo and I had never, ever borrowed money for our daily living but the moment we left Canada we had to start borrowing money for groceries, and we lived in debt our entire first term. Our poverty and indebtedness made a deep and negative impact on our service with the Canelas during those years. We could have bought more medicine and saved more lives, we could have hired more language helpers, we could have . . . .

God did not move people to give until four years later when we returned to Canada and implemented a much more open and still biblical approach to inviting people to become our partners in ministry. Yes, one of my life’s regrets is being so reticent about recruiting financial partners.


How do we deal with the regrets of our lives? Obviously following sound biblical advice to prevent mistakes is the best method! Hanging in there until it is possible to make a change is another. But what about mistakes, sins, errors, stupid things we regret doing? How do we handle those regrets? More on that in the next column.

#4 The Dark Side of Dreams

Readers responded to the post Does God Speak to us in Dreams Today? with seven separate dream stories, both through the comment option and by direct email.

One dreamt of the death of her mother and was moved to write a letter telling her mother how much she loved her. The letter arrived and was read by her mother just before she suddenly went into a coma and died. One dream prepared the dreamer for her father's remarriage. One reader told of crying out to God in the pain of losing an infant to death. God answered her prayer by giving her a dream in which she held her baby for a time, turning her grief into lasting joy. Another dreamt of her father's funeral reception where he walked about smiling hugely, not in the body of the weak sick man but in the vigour of his early manhood. 

Each dreamer considered her dream a gift from a loving heavenly Father in order to prepare her for a difficult time or to comfort her.

I wonder why all my correspondents were women. In every biblical incident it was the men to whom God spoke in dreams. So didn't God speak to women in dreams in Bible days? Does He not speak to modern, western men in dreams today?

A missionary lady told of working with an indigenous people group that often suffered from terrifying nightmares. A major theme involved dreaming about losing or breaking teeth which meant that the dreamer's relatives would die. Each tooth stood for a different relationship. 

One night the missionary dreamt all her teeth were breaking off. She woke up spitting into her hand thinking her mouth was full of broken teeth. With a shock of fear, she remembered that her three married children would all be traveling long distances by car that weekend. And she and her husband were flying into the village the next morning in a single engine plane over a wide river and trackless jungle. 

"I was now very awake and my heart was racing" she wrote. "And then I recognized I was under attack and I needed some armour. I prayed to my loving Heavenly Father and rebuked Satan.” Soon she was sound asleep.

When they arrived in the village she told her broken teeth dream and everyone was transfixed, staring at her with fear filled eyes knowing they were about to hear horrible news.

"I reminded them," she wrote, "how powerful God's Spirit is, far more powerful than even the chief evil spirit. I read them Ephesians 6, of God’s armour for our protection.” When she said that after prayer she fell peacefully asleep, the people were astonished and relieved. (Her whole family, by the way, returned safely from their travels that weekend.)

Sometimes God increases our faith in Him by giving us dreams that prepare us for difficult situations. Sometimes He allows Satan to give us a dream that leaves us filled with fear instead of faith. But we can turn this fear into faith by following God’s instructions in Ephesians 6:16: “ . . . take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

#3 Does God Speak in Dreams Today?

I occasionally remember dreams I’ve had but Jo never does—except for one notable time in the Canela village.

One afternoon our whole family was having a swim in the creek just outside the village. I left first and our 10-year-old daughter Leanne decided to leave a minute later sprinting up the trail to catch up with me. As she rounded a bend, she nearly ran into a long grey stick propped between bushes about waist high, barring the trail. Oh, daddy is having fun with me, she thought, as she grabbed the stick to clear the path. Instantly the long grey snake wrapped itself around her arm and bit her.

She screamed, shook the snake off her arm, and raced back to the creek crying, “A snake bit me! A snake bit me!

When Jo heard Leanne scream, she instantly remembered dreaming this scene the night before—a dream she had forgotten. “It was like God was telling me, ‘Don’t worry. Be calm. I know all about this snake,’” Jo said later. She soothed Leanne and led the girls home. It did turn out alright; the snake either was not poisonous or God intervened and saved her.

What is it with dreams?

The Bible mentions dreams or visions over 220 times. Matthew begins his story of Jesus by telling of Joseph’s four dreams: 1) It’s okay to marry Mary. 2) Take your family to Egypt. 3) Go back to Israel. 4) Go live in Galilee, and one dream of the Wise Men: Go home without telling Herod about Jesus. Five dreams in the first thirty verses!

People took dreams seriously back in those days.

Even today, many non-western people take dreams seriously. Large numbers of Muslims in Iran are turning to Jesus. One third of these testify that a dream about Jesus telling them, “I am the way to God” had prepared them. This astounds people like me who explain vivid dreams by blaming the spicy food we ate the night before.

Dreams don’t astound Canela people. A popular early morning greeting is, “What did you dream?” One of our Canela friends and helpers started getting drunk on sugar cane rum every time he went into town. The Canelas elders’ council lectured him and shamed him but nothing helped. We prayed for him for years. One day we returned to the village from a two-month-workshop in the city and he told us he had stopped drinking after having a dream.

“’Do you want to stop drinking?’ a man up in the sky asked me. I told him I did. ‘Every morning take a large cup of cold water, go outside, look into the sky, think about me, and drink it down in one long swallow.’ I have been doing that for two months. One day in town someone offered me a drink of cane rum and when I smelled it I ran outside because I nearly vomited.”

Why don’t we westerners, and Christians especially, dream God dreams? Is it because we don’t believe in dreams and therefore don’t have them? Or do we, but we aren’t comfortable telling anyone about them? Are we missing out? Have any of you readers had God oriented dreams? Want to tell me some?

#2 Part Two of Notice, Remember and Tell Stories

“Why did God make people?” The traditional Jewish answer is, “Because He loves stories!” 
 

True! Who packed the Bible full of stories? God did! Who constantly told them to His friends? Jesus did! Stories carry truth. Stories build faith. Stories bring glory to God. No wonder He arranges our lives so that we have stories to tell about Him. 

Jo was pregnant with Cheryl while Valorie and Leanne were just little tots. We were in the last week of a three-month-long survival training camp in southern Mexico, and I was about to go on a weeklong survival hike. “While you are away,” Jo said, “I will pray Psalms 91 and 121 every day.” (A vital part of the story.)

I left the next day with a small group of men. An experienced missionary led us a day’s hike into the jungle to play the part of a lost hunting party and practice our newly learnt survival skills until other groups of trainees found us—hopefully within a few days. 

We scavenged daily for food and for dry firewood to burn to keep us warm at night. One day while following and marking a faint trail, I spotted a long branch about the thickness of a fence post lying across a fallen log. Dry firewood! Alright! I put it on my shoulder and carried my prize back to camp. I dropped it near my improvised cot and lay down to rest before grabbing my machete to hack it into pieces. 

At the first blow, my firewood began to bleed! I stared at the gory mess that oozed from  the cut in the branch. Then, from a knothole near the middle slithered a four foot-long snake, with a nasty cut in its belly. I immediately stomped on its head, and carried the still writhing serpent to the staff member to identify. Yes, a highly poisonous snake. 

Oh happy night! Not only did the snake stay in the branch and not bite me, after a bit of cleaning and roasting it turned into supper—a welcome meal after meagre rations for nearly a week. I also thanked God for answering Jo’s Psalm 91:13 prayer about “trampling the serpent” and Psalm 121:7, “the Lord will keep you from all harm.”

That night I asked myself two “why?” questions. For thirty minutes as I carried that branch down the hill, the knothole had been right beside my head. If the snake had come out and bitten me in the neck or throat, I would have died within seconds. Why hadn’t it? Obviously, Someone with a plan wanted me alive. 

After I threw the pole down, the snake could easily have slipped out of the pole and escaped into the bushes. Why didn’t it? Obviously, Someone wanted me to know it was there. Someone who wanted me to tell the story. Someone who loves stories, especially stories that make Him look good. 

Like this one.

To Bring Him Glory,

Jack

©  2011 Jack D Popjes

Ph: 780 948-0082

E-mail: jack_popjes@wycliffe.ca

Website: www.thewordman.ca

#1 Notice, Remember, and Tell

I am rarely stuck for words, but this great-grandmother’s reply left me gaping like a dying codfish.

I had just finished leading a writers’ workshop based on Psalm 78:3-4 for several dozen retired people who wanted to leave a legacy of written “Family God-stories”. One elderly lady briefly told a fascinating story of how God had answered the prayers of her family during the beginning of the Great Depression.

She was just a small child but prayed earnestly for her Daddy to get a job. And he did, as a construction worker on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. When, after four and a half years, the bridge was opened on May 27, 1937, she and the rest of the family rode in the first motorcade to cross the bridge. 

After the workshop I asked if she had already written that story. “No, I haven’t,” she replied, “this is the first time I have ever told this story to anyone.” Huh? Never?! The first time!? Codfish time for Jack.

I discovered she had not even told her late husband, or any of her kids, grandkids or great-grandkids. For 75 years, two generations of her family born after her had been driving across that huge orange bridge regularly, never realizing it symbolized God’s provision for their grandfather’s family during those dark, desperate depression years of the 1930s.

As I drove home that day I wondered how many thousands of other Christians are failing to tell God-stories such as these, and thus robbing Him of thousands of opportunities to receive glory and praise.

Throughout the Bible God commands people to remember—147 times in the Old Testament and 70 times in the New Testament. “. . . things we learned from our ancestors, and we will tell them to the next generation. We will not keep secret the glorious deeds of the Lord.” Psalm 78:3-4. When the Israelites stopped telling the God-stories, their descendants fell into sin, over and over again.

We live in chaotic times. It is hard to notice and then remember. We are overloaded with information and have no time to think. That is Satan’s work. Our work is to stop, think, pray, and note the answers to our prayers. Keeping a diary is a great tool to help us think, reflect and remember. The weakest ink lasts longer than the most powerful memory.

Then, we need to tell and retell the God-stories in our lives: the answers to prayer; the protection from harm; the amazing provision—all the things that God has obviously done for us. Our kids, grandkids and great-grandkids need to know these things.

If we don’t notice them, we will forget. If we don’t remember we can’t tell the next generation. Through our negligence we keep secret what God has done and rob Him of the glory and praise due to Him.

Who wants to do that?

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Introduction to Insights & Outbursts