Monday, January 29, 2007

Less!

Jag är så less!! Söker man Ulf Ekman på en sökmotor så får man fram hundratals sidor där det talas om honom. Självklart att det för det mesta är negativa saker. Jag förstår ifall det är människor som inte är bekännande kristna som skriver alla dessa negativa saker emot honom och Livets Ord. Men ofta, ja ofta, är det kristna som skriver och det är inte snälla saker man skriver om honom utan ofta är det mer fråga om väldigt hårda och grova anklagelser än uppbyggande läsning.

För några år sedan höll jag på med att vara på Dagens debatt sida på Internet. Där debatterades det flitigt om Livets Ord och Ulf Ekman. Som tur var stängdes detta debatt ämne ner efter ett tag. Men tror ni inte att de som ville debattera om LO eller Ulf kunde fortsätta iaf, utifrån vilket ämne som helst. Det kunde vara om "friskolans vara eller inte vara" eller om "homosexualitet", men ofta så handlade det inte om en debatt om kring dessa ämnen utan istället började man att utifrån själva ämnet svartmåla LO och Ulf E. Ofta var det tre speciella personer som skrev på denna debatt sida. Skrev man något för att försöka tona ner svartmålandet av LO så var man "hård och kärlekslös" och "dömande".

Jag tycker att det är så fruktansvärt mycket struntprat som många kristna håller på med. De bygger sina liv på att försöka svärta ner vissa samfund eller personer bara för att man inte tror precis som de. Jesus sade att vi ska "gå ut och predika evangelium". Detta är vad som är viktigt.

Djävulen håller på att skratta på sig när han ser på oss. Han har fått oss precis dit han vill. Istället för att vara upptagna med att sprida evangelium till alla människor så är vi upptagna med att prata struntprat mot varandra. Och säg inte, "ja men jag försöker rädda folk från att gå med i LO."

För min del är jag inte medlem i LO men jag älskar den församlingen. Jag bor i Ryssland och har gjort så i några år. Fråga en människa här vad han vet om Sverige så är det några saker som han säger, Fotboll, ishockey, IKEA och Ulf Ekman. Livets Ord har ett otroligt gott vittnesbörd om sig här. Och jag vet att det är likadant överallt i alla de länder som de har missionsarbete. De har faktiskt gjort något som kommer att räknas till historien.

Det finns många samfund och missionsorganisationer runt om i världen. Det finns många som har gjort ett väldigt gott arbete. I Sverige finns det också många bra små missionsorganisationer. Men de som jag ser upp till mest i Sverige är Ljus i Öster och LO. Ljus i Öster har funnits i över 100 år och har behållit den glöd och iver för mission. De gör ett otroligt bra arbete i forna Sovjet men också i Kina. Sedan LO, de har inte funnits så länge, men de har redan arbete i Ryssland, Östeuropa, Kina, Central Asien och andra länder. Dessa människor måste vi se upp till inte prata illa om. Vi är ju faktiskt även om du inte tror det, en familj. När Jesus kommer tillbaks och hämtar oss kommer vi inte att vara i olika fållor beroende på vilka samfund vi har tillhört här utan vi är Kristi församling och kommer att spendera en evighet tillsammans.

Låt oss istället för att slå ner på varandra, bygga upp varandra och hålla på med det som Jesus kallat oss till: att vinna världen för Kristus!

Sunday, January 28, 2007

70 World Christian Quotes

"I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages - villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world."
- Robert Moffat

"The command has been to "go," but we have stayed - in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth…But 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland."
- Robert Savage

"While vast continents are shrouded in darkness…the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field."
- Ion Keith-Falconer

"I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China…I don't know who it was…It must have been a man…a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing…and God looked down…and saw Gladys Aylward…And God said - "Well, she's willing."
- Gladys Aylward

"Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees."
- J. Hudson Taylor

"The man…looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, "Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?" "No sir," said Morrison, "but I expect that God will."
- Robert Morrison

"Here am I. Send me."
- Isaiah

"And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives…and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted."
- Nate Saint

"Jehovah Witnesses don't believe in hell and neither do most Christians"
- Leonard Ravenhill

"Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary."
- C.T. Studd

"Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine."
- said to a young William Carey

"Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals."
- Robert Moffat

"We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God."
- John Stott

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
- Jim Elliot

"A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story."
- K.P. Yohannan

"I have but one passion - it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ."
- Count Zinzindorf

"God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies."
- J. Hudson Taylor

"He must increase, but I must decrease."
- John the Baptist

"If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him."
- C.T. Studd

"The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner."
- William Cameron Townsend

"Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes."
- Robert E. Speer

"The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a "field full of wheat and tares."
- Amy Carmichael

"I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth."
- James O. Fraser

"It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global cause."
- David Bryant

"If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray."
- Frederick Franson

"What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?"
- Malla Moe

"I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver."
- Robert Murray M'Cheyne

"It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit."
- Clarence W. Jones

"Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power."
- T.J. Bach

"Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give."
- David Livingstone

"From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross."
- Sadhu Sundar Singh

"I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been."
- Lottie Moon

"All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient."
- William Carey

"How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves."
- C.T. Studd

"I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to."
- Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

"The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something."
- Clarence W. Jones

"Expect great things from God. Attempt great thing for God."
- William Carey

"God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith."
- Andrew A. Bonar

"All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!"
- Jonathan Goforth

"The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West."
- E. Stanley Jones

"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come."
- Jesus

"All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ."
- Keith Green

"Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them"
- A.W. Tozer

"I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares."
- Alexander Duff

"Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions"
- Leonard Ravenhill

"It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home."
- J. Hudson Taylor

"We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first."
- Oswald J. Smith

"God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know."
- David Bryant

"And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man's foundation."
- Paul

"Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?"
- K.P. Yohannan

"If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged."
- C. Gordon Olson

"I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!"
- George Miley

"Oh dear, I couldn't say that my church is alive and I wouldn't want to call it dead. I guess it's just walking in its sleep!"
- Church member

"When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen."
- said of John Geddie

"At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself."
- John G. Paton

"Save others, snatching them out of the fire."
- Jude

"The evangelization of the world in this generation."
- Student Volunteer Movement Motto

"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring"
- Jesus

"Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't."
- John Piper

"His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice."
- John Stott

"Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them."
- David Bryant

"Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ."
- Francis Xavier

"Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ."
- Luther Wishard

"We who have Christ's eternal life need to throw away our own lives."
- George Verwer

"Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell."
- C.T. Studd

"When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone"
- J. Hudson Taylor

"God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation. Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth."
- David Smithers

"The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity."
- Mike Stachura

"Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.'"
- C.H. Spurgeon.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Who am I?

My name is Patrick Olund. In fact I spell my name Patrik Öhlund but because I am surrounded 
by people that can not pronounce the Swedish letter ö I write o instead. 

I am 38 years old and I am married to the world's most beautiful and wisest wife in the world. 
Her name is Olga is born and raised in Murmansk, Kola Peninsula, Russia.  The 31st of May this year we have been married for 10 years.

Right now we are living in the city of Ussuriysk. Probably many of you have never heard of this town, but it is in the Far East of Russia. The notorious Siberian Railway goes through this town and ends 110 km further south in Vladivostok.

I really do not know why I am writing this blog but maybe I can empty my thoughts here. You are very welcome to reply to my blog. Maybe you do not agree with what I write but it doesn´t matter.

I want that everyone will come to the knowledge of God and be saved. God loves you!!