Matthew 5:44-45

Matt 5:44-45 (NIV) “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

We arrived in Taipei early Friday morning just as a typhoon was about to strike Taiwan later that morning. There are two types of typhoons, fast moving typhoons that cause allot of wind damage and slow moving typhoons that bring lots of rain and flooding. This was a big typhoon, they say the biggest typhoon in Taiwan in 5o years, a category 4, but it was slow moving and on the southern part of the island dumped over 5 feet of rain. When we finally arrived on the campus of Taiwan Adventist College on Saturday night we were told that we brought the rain with us when we arrived to Taiwan.

We did not understand what they were insinuating at first, even slow moving typhoons can be hazardous, we had been told that 14 people had been killed by this typhoon alone. Were they saying that by coming we brought evil upon them? No, it turns out that in the Taiwanese culture, rain is considered a blessing, and they were telling us that when we came we brought them a blessing. In fact, before the typhoon hit there was a shortage of water, the government was considering rationing water. But with the Typhoon came the blessing of fresh water.

Because God cares for the unrighteous as much as the righteous He causes the sun and the rain to be a blessing to both the evil and the good. God is love and God’s love is unconditional. Likewise, as sons and daughters of God, we are told in order to be like our Father in Heaven we should be a blessing like the rain, unconditionally falling on everyone around us.

My family and I have taken on an enormous challenge here with this new move to Taiwan. There are 24 million people living in Taiwan, and only 2700 Seventh day Adventist attending church on a given Sabbath morning. There are few young people in the Adventist churches here; it appears that they get caught up in secularism and leave the church. Couples here are choosing not to have children or just one child and focus their time and energy into working, making money and enjoying life, so the small little churches are shrinking smaller and smaller year after year. In the past Buddhism and Taoism have been traditionally the dominant religions in Taiwan. But now we are facing a force that is even more of a difficult challenge to confront, which is secularism and a post modernism combination added into the Buddhist culture. We need to make Christianity appealing to a materialistic culture that has its roots in Buddhism; how do we do that?

The only thing I can figure out to do is to lift Jesus and proclaim Him as the true blessing, the God who loves us so much that He pours out His grace like rain down on us. Lift Him up in prayer and ask Him to give us wisdom, strength and guidance to know what to say how to act and what to do. Lift Him up in faith and trust in the Lord that He will make us into a blessing and accomplish mighty things through us because we trust in his power and strength.

Discuss the value of Christianity above materialism? Share some examples of how you can share Jesus in a post modern world?