charlie brown christmas

charlie brown thumbnailIt says in Psalm 68 that the Lord sets the lonely in families and this Christmas has proved to be no exception. It was just a blessed time with good friends, incredible food, amazing wine, and very heart-filling times of Christian fellowship. Some notable parts of the weekend would be the lutafisck, a type of Scandinavian fish preserved in lard.

They also gave us two Christmas gifts that were very special to me. One, original Swedish house shoes made by Ulla’s mother and two, a copy of a special edition Gospel of Mark in Russian. It was a leather cover with plastic pages and small enough to fit into one’s mouth. It was actually ideal for circulating around Soviet prisons, if a guard suddenly came by, one could pop it in their mouth, their cup of coffee, really anything, and it wouldn’t be damaged because it was plastic and leather. Robert had smuggled several of them into Moscow himself.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

LISTEN! to me preach in bosnia

[audio:http://www.jasonposthuma.com/audio/Searching-for-Purpose-in-Bosnia.mp3]

this mp3 is from one of my first weeks here. we took a missions trip to bosnia and held a youth conference for about 100 kids.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

Pride, conversion, and the Holy Ghost

gutenstein flowerI am proud. I’d been learning this for the weeks prior, but it finally came to a head. Nothing theatrical, but I did begin to learn more of leaning on the Lord for wisdom, not speaking but listening, and humility in the Lord.

Humility due to the fact that I suddenly have found myself surrounded by a society of multiglots who are better educated than me, know something about politics, and have fabulous jobs. And what am I doing here? Following the call of God on my life as best I know how.

Anca is a twenty-something year-old originally from Romania. She conveyed her conversion experience to us over lunch one day: As an unchristian living in an unchristian home, she grew up with no knowledge of God. Then one year, her circle of friends at the club began to disappear under the influence of a missionary. This man who became her friend would say to her, “God is love, Anca.�? I thought that I don’t need to be smarter than everyone I minister to as a missionary, that what the world needs most is not another intelligentsia. What the world needs most is to hear someone say, “God is love, Anca.�?

Posted in Musings | 2 Comments

Flight plan fiasco

Mountains in viennaMountains in viennaThe first few days of this incredible journey have been rigorous to say the least. An unbelievable $270 airfare to Bratislava, Slovakia turned into a very long 37 hours of travel as I had booked tickets from Chicago to Toronto, Toronto to London, and London to Bratislava. It was genius, to be sure, the only administrative overlook was that our supposed flight across the pond was booked instead from Toronto, Canada to the small town of London, Canada. No joke, really.

Continue reading

Posted in Miscellaneous, Musings | 1 Comment

Questions?!?!

Now, after all of this discussion on doctrine and creed and believe, what is the heart of the Gospel? I mean, doesn’t it seem that all this time we’ve been arguing about issues surrounding the Gospel, but not really about its center, its core? Is the gospel the seven sacraments or that Christ came to gift us with church hierarchy? Is it that Jesus gave us the ability to decide for ourselves what is right and ostracize all who don’t agree? Is the Gospel about being right? Perhaps the reason that Christ came was that humanity, lost and blinded by their own device, would be set free from the enslavement of sin and death, to buy us back from darkness and give us back to God.
Christ Must Imminently Be

Posted in Essays, Musings | Leave a comment