by Gwen Smith

Today's Truth

"My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires"
- James 1:19-20 (NIV).

Friend To Friend

"I'm a terrible mom!"

Do you ever say these words? I do. I did that day. The day I was working in my office, minding my own business, when my oldest son threw a paper airplane at the back of my head. Not one to normally welcome an air attack, I gave him the stern "mom voice," and asked him to stop messing around. I told him to give me some private time so I could get some work done. He agreed, and turned to leave. Surprisingly, he then jumped around and threw it at me again! Well, let me tell you, my grace-o-meter was reading pretty low at this point! I barked like an angry dog. "What in the world do you think you are doing? I just told you that I needed to be left alone so I can get some work done! Stop it!"

"But Mom, there's a message on the plane," he tenderly replied. "Read it."

As I unfolded the airplane made of orange construction paper, I saw this message written in pink marker: "Mom, I Love You." His affectionate declaration was followed by a few X's and O's. You know: hug, hug, kiss, kiss. Pure precious. Big fail.

"Nice!" I said to myself. "Loser-mom strikes again." I had scolded my son and reacted out of frustration with an unkind tone. All the while, my son was trying to communicate love to me.

I felt horrible. Time seemed to stand still as I started to beat myself up.

Shame began to fill my heart, but as it did the Spirit of God within me gently nudged reminding me that condemnation is not from Him ... that His conviction was purposed to spur me on toward choosing a godly response. So I chose love - God's love alive in me. As I chose God's better way, the grace way, His love trumped my anger. It's weightier. Praise God!

I called my son back into my office, and apologized for my behavior. I welcomed this tall, lanky teen to sit on my lap and told him that  while I'm not particularly fond of airplane attacks, especially while I'm working, I am fond of love attacks. We held each other and had a very sweet moment.

As Preston and I hugged, God reminded me of this principle: When we allow His love to trump our anger, we are able to experience restoration in relationships.

My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires (James 1:19-20 NIV).

The Bible tells us that we are to be slow to anger. It is a lesson that I am still learning. Now, that doesn't mean we should never be angry. Jesus exhibited righteous anger in the Jerusalem temple when he drove out the merchants that were buying and selling there. Righteous anger is permissible. We should be angry about sin and injustice. But when we respond to others in anger, it becomes our sin.

Got any relationships that are in need of restoration? Is there any anger, unforgiveness, or bitterness in your heart that might be gaining a stronghold in your life and keeping you from God's best? The benefits of allowing the love of God to trump the anger in your heart are tremendous, but the application can be very challenging. We can't overcome our natural, sinful tendencies to react, and overreact, in anger alone. We need God's help. His strength will meet us at our need when we call on Him. The Holy Spirit will help us to respond in God's strength, not our own.

Call on His strength today.

Let's Pray

Holy Father, Thank you for leading me in Your way of grace today. I need Your help! I confess my anger/bitterness/unforgiveness right now with _______________. Please forgive me. Please bring restoration to the relationships that have been affected by my anger. Help me recognize when I over-react or when I respond in anger that is ungodly. Give me the strength to respond in love €" to be slow to speak and quick to listen €" so that You can be glorified through my behavior.

In Jesus' Name,
Amen.

Now It's Your Turn

Do you need to trade anger for love? In what relationships? How?

Spend a few moments in confession and ask God to bring a fresh awareness to your soul each time you react in anger.

We ourselves speak proudly of you.
- 2 THESSALONIANS 1:4

If there's anything that characterizes the teenage years, it's self-doubt.

Barbara and I had six teenagers progress through our house. At one point we had four at the same time. And it was frequently obvious that the origin for some of their behaviors—and for many of the words coming out of their mouths—was their doubts about themselves.

As difficult as they sometimes would be, we knew how imperative it was for us to look them in the eye and say, "I love you. I believe in you. I'm glad you're my son [or daughter]."

There's nothing like a mom and dad's love to soften their hearts and ease their doubts.

On our FamilyLife Today program, we interviewed Josh Weidmann, who has become a passionate Christian voice to teens and college students. He told us about once being at a youth camp and preaching on the biblical story of Esther. As he told about how beautiful the queen was in form and feature, he said, "You know, I want to stop here and tell you—every individual woman in this room—you are beautiful, and you are God's creation."

As soon as those words left his lips, he heard what he describes as the loudest gasp he'd ever heard in his life. Why? Because so few of these girls believed it. So few had been reassured at home that they had worth and value and were loved—just for who they were.

Even after my sons outgrew me, I would hug them and tell them I loved them. I never had the sense that I said it too much. When my girls had become beautiful young women and I wasn't always sure I should hold them too close, I would hug them and affirm them and tell them how lovely they were to me.

No matter how big they get and how adult-like they look, never stop expressing your belief in your children. They need it.

DISCUSS

Give yourself a grade on how well you do on expressing love and belief. Talk about how you can express it more.

PRAY

Pray that your children will never be starved for your love and affirmation.

By Ian Lovett, Wall Street Journal

EL CAJON, Calif., Sept. 23, 2016

The backyard gathering was part Catholic Mass, part rebellion.

The priest, an Iraqi immigrant, had been kicked out of the local church. Parishioners had been warned by local church leaders not to worship with him. Yet 50 people sat in makeshift pews behind a home east of San Diego in a show of opposition to church officials urging Christians to stay in Iraq, where their numbers are dwindling.

"There is no future for Christians in Iraq," said Bahaa Gandor, a 31-year-old who fled the country in 2010. "We have to bring them here."

The Chaldean Catholic Church, a nearly 2,000-year-old branch of Christianity based in Iraq, is at war with itself over how to ensure its survival. And the dispute is threatening to fracture this ancient faith.

Some Chaldeans in the U.S. have been scrambling to help Christians escape Iraq, where they are being targeted and killed by Islamic State. But that work has put them in conflict with top church officials in Baghdad who say Chaldeans must stay and help preserve Christianity in the Middle East.

Tensions between Baghdad and the Chaldean diaspora have reached a breaking point in El Cajon, where many Chaldeans have settled.

Father Noel Gorgis, a priest who has spent much of the past two years lobbying the U.S. to accept more Iraqi Christian refugees, was expelled from his post at the church here in July. A longtime bishop, another advocate for Iraqi refugees, has also been forced to retire.

The changes have rocked the large Chaldean community in El Cajon, and some here have entered a quiet revolt against church hierarchy.

They have begun holding what they call "underground Masses" with Father Gorgis at homes in the area. Some are even floating the possibility of starting their own church, based in the U.S., where they say they are better able to preserve their language and their culture than in Iraq.

"What's our relationship with Iraq? We're American," said Father Gorgis, who fled Iraq in the early 1990s during the Gulf War. "We can have our own church here."

He quickly added: "That's not our goal. We want to keep our heritage."

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the Chaldean population has been steadily shifting away from its homeland. There are now around 400,000 Christians in Iraq, down from 1.4 million in before the invasion, according to church officials. Secretary of State John Kerry has called the attacks on Christians in Iraq genocide.

Meanwhile, the Chaldean population in the U.S. has ballooned to more than 250,000, mostly around Detroit and San Diego.

The exodus has been a growing concern for Patriarch Louis Rapha�l I Sako, the leader of the Chaldean church, an Eastern Rite Catholic Church that answers to the pope in Rome.

"This is our land," he said in an email to The Wall Street Journal from Iraq. "If we leave, everything will leave with us, and little by little will be dissolved [by] assimilation in new societies."

In a letter to bishops in May, which was obtained by the Journal, Patriarch Sako wrote, "Priests should not be allowed to give any official statements encouraging other priests to immigrate."

"We must sacrifice a few priests in order to maintain the rest," he wrote. "We are already running short on priests."

He said via email that Father Gorgis has been removed because he criticized his superiors and the church itself.

Father Gorgis's supporters said the real reason he was dismissed from the church is clear.

"It was about the refugees," said Mark Arabo, an activist in the Chaldean community here who worked with Father Gorgis on obtaining visas for Iraqi Christians, through their organization Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group for Christian refugees. "It was because of his help for the most vulnerable in Iraq."

In recent months, Masses at the St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral here are still mostly full, but frustration is widespread, said Father Michael J. Bazzi, who remains at the church.

Father Gorgis has become a symbol of that frustration with Baghdad, which also has imposed changes to the liturgy at the church here.

The recent service in Father Gorgis's backyard largely resembled a traditional Chaldean Mass: He spoke in a dialect of Aramaic, a language that Chaldeans have used for two millennia, and offered communion using wafers that someone had pilfered from the church.

Wasan Jarbo, who left Iraq 40 years ago, said she didn't want to break with the Chaldean church in Iraq--and has continued to also attend Mass at the cathedral--but wouldn't rule out a split.

"Here is where we have to preserve our identity, our liturgy, our language," Ms. Jarbo, 56, said, adding that the Chaldean community had started a language school, seminary and monastery here. "I love my country, but we cannot practice our faith freely there. There's a genocide."

Still, pieces of Americana were apparent at Father Gorgis's Mass. The younger attendees chatted in English before the service--not all of the second-generation immigrants could speak Aramaic. Bible verses were read in English, as well. A refrigerator was stocked with cans of Budweiser that had "America" emblazoned across them.

Michael O. Emerson, a sociology professor at Rice University who studies religion and ethnicity, said distinctive religious practice can be maintained in diaspora. But the traditions shift--and language fades--in a new environment.

"Religion and culture are so impacted by the surroundings," he said. "By the third generation, it's just so hard to preserve what it was like it in a different environment."

Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim, a retired Chaldean bishop based in the Detroit area, has sometimes acted as a spokesman for Patriarch Sako in the U.S., including on the importance of maintaining Christendom in Iraq. But Bishop Ibrahim now believes Chaldeans can survive only in the U.S.

"Even the Chaldeans in Iraq feel it," he said. "If we're saying it, it's because we hear it from them."

By Paull E. Spring

"Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." What a marvelous promise God gives us in these words from the book of Revelation. God promises us the crown of life as his gift to us.

But God also calls us to faithfulness and loyalty, even to the point of death. In my mind I think of all the heroes and heroines of the faith down through the ages who gave up their lives because of their Christian convictions. Peter and Paul and all the apostles. James of Jerusalem, Polycarp and Lawrence and countless others who suffered martyrdom because they believed in Christ.

In more recent times I think of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero of Central America and Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany. Both of these Christians gave up their lives in the face of persecution by the state, because they believed in Christ.

Indeed, I think of all those today who remain faithful to Christ and who are "persecuted for righteousness' sake." There are countless Christians in our lifetime who are suffering under persecution, many of them faithful unto death. It has been said that there is more persecution of Christians in the past two centuries than ever before in the history of the church. In the words of the of book of Hebrews, "We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses."

At the same time I think of so many others who - while they do not suffer death - endure severe privation because of their faith. There are the many faithful witnesses who, out of their devotion to Christ, experience isolation and hostility from others. They remain quietly faithful to Christ in spite of personal abuse and scorn. Nevertheless, quietly and faithfully they maintain their faith as part of their daily lives.

I know many Christians like that, and I am sure that you do too. It is our calling, and our challenge, to be faithful in all we do to the One who has redeemed us and given us life.

For that is what Jesus promises to us and to all who follow him. He promises us the "crown of life," fullness of life and newness of life. "I am the way, the truth and the life," said Jesus.

It is this life that Jesus has given to us. Not just physical life, but spiritual life, life in the Spirit. He promises to forgive us. He promises to open the future to us. He promises eternal life for us in the future, overcoming even the powers of death for us.

But he also crowns our days with life now, in the present. He forgives our sins and crowns us with his grace and mercy. He gives us hope and joy, peace and security in him. In the midst of our daily lives, he promises to be with us as our comfort and support. As we struggle to be his faithful people today, he assures is that he is by our side at all times.

And always before us is the crucified Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. We hear him today as he calls out to us, "Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life."

Paull E. Spring is the pastor at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in State College, PA.