Forgiveness takes us deeper.

I was sitting next to a Turkish businessman on the flight to Helsinki.
He got interested in my person after I told him about working
as a pastor in the church in Istanbul.
He asked, ”How do you find the Turks? How is their religious life?”
I responded boldly saying, ”I find them to be very superficial in their
religious beliefs. They have often a strong emotional attachment
to their religious confession, but it’s not intellectual.
They don’t like talking about it too deep.
I say this because you asked.”
He tried to cover up of him being offended and started telling me how
disappointed he was with the Arabs and their ways of praying, “They
know nothing about it. They don’t even know how to wash themselves
before prayer, not to even mention how many times and where they
should pray.”
He went on and on complaining about these uneducated Muslim brothers.
I responded to him saying, ”I don’t really care at all about that stuff.
I’m not a religious person, but I love God.
It means nothing to me, how many times people
pray and where. It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t actually tell us
how many times we should pray , but the Bible tells us how many times
we should forgive. This is Christianity. It’s all about the power of forgiveness.
It’s not about me praying more or better than my brother. It’s about
me forgiving more.”
We landed in Finland.
My snowy homeland looked like a fairy-tale from the air.
My new Turkish friend was fascinated by the exotic view.
Before we departed, he gave his business card to me and said,
“Please, visit me in Ankara.”

God makes all things beautiful in His time.

Urgent prayer request from Samarkand!

Dear friends! Something very bad happened, so, please, pray for our
church intensively and for the situation that is happening around.
Several days ago we were informed that KGB was collecting data and
inquiring after several families from our church. We asked for pastor's
advice and decided to cancell our Wednesday meeting and
changed the time of our Sunday meeting.
So this morning we didn't have our
meeting but we had our youth meeting visited by 12(!) KGB
people. They took Pasha who is out Youth ministry leader and EVERY
other child to the Police. There were 13 years old teens. They kept
them for 5 hours there. Later we found out (we have a friend working
in the Police)that they knew where we gather and those flats were under
surveillance.

We have two places for gathering. They were waiting for us to gather
in the morning but we didn't come, they kept waiting and trapped our
youth. They made them to write an explanatory letter.
So we might have guests
soon...
Pray also about this, please.

Niyazi, Martin, Tiina and Nina enjoying the Istanbul snow!

The famous Uzbek bread! Today's prayer is for Uzbeks, see the right hand column for more information.Pray for our church in Samarkand.

What about those who have never heard?

easy come, easy go

Slow living is a reaction against the stressful tempo
of modern life.
People try to avoid supermarkets and everything that
has been artificially speeded up in order to take time
to grow their own carrots.
As spiritual people we also believe in slow living.
We are learning to “rest in the Lord” and not to
“strive in the flesh”.
It is a strange thing if someone burns out in doing the
work of God. I t looks like they actually tried to do
the work of GOD and collapsed.
There’s always a danger that the supermarket mentality
deceives us also to look for fast, impressive and
just easy results in the church. Easy come, easy go.
God took his time in creating the world.
He took time to appreciate his own creation.
Jesus took his time. In responding to the Pharisees
who warned him about Herod’s plans to kill him he said,
“Go, tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform
cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be
perfected.” Luke 13:32
He was not in Herod’s program. He was in the will of God.
The kingdom of darkness, the cosmos, wants our blind
submission. We seek first the Kingdom of God.
With fast living people loose their sense of holiness.
Holiness cannot not be called fast.
The same happens with genuine friendships.
They take time. You cannot be faithful fast.
It takes time to love. Wisdom cannot be attained fast.
Satan knows that his time is short. Revelation12:12
He wants to paint a picture of us missing something
if we start to think. His fast track is considered to be the
only reasonable life-style. We say, ”no”.
We are busy in resting in Him.