Definition of An Unreached People Group
"We’re not talking about people who are lost and don’t know the Lord; we’re talking about people who are lost and don’t know the Lord and there’s no one that speaks their language that can tell them. There is no church that exists…That’s an unreached people group." (Pioneers Church Planter) Man...I can't wait to get to Africa and tell the Fulbe people about Jesus!!!
About Me
- The Waite Family
- Edgewood, New Mexico
- We are a family devoted to making much of Christ and we think we can best do this by leaving our home to go live among an unreached people group who don't know Jesus and therefore don't worship Jesus because no one has been there to tell them. We'd like to tell them all about Jesus and then see them come to know Jesus and worship Him as the absolute greatest treasure and pleasure in life. Then we want to help them start a bunch of churches that believe in and worship Jesus too.
I Am A Joy Stalker Too!
VERSE OF THE WEEK
"Not to us, O LORD, not to us, But to Your Name give glory . . ." Psalm 115:1a
Great Discussion On Three Millennial Views (Pre-Mill, Post-Mill, & A-Mill)
Hope For Backsliders
My Identity Is In The Gospel
MISSIONS--So The World May Be Filled With His GLORY!
"No, it isn't for lack of money that there are 1,568 peoples with no missionaries. It is because we have so much. The comforts of the West have made us soft and cautious and fearful and indulgent and self-protecting, instead of tough and risk-taking and bold and self-controlled and self-sacrificing. . . . . . .Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. The glory of God is the ultimate goal of the church—because it's the ultimate goal of God. The final goal of all things is that God might be worshiped with white-hot affection by a redeemed company of countless persons from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Revelation 5:9; 7:9). Missions exists because worship doesn't. When the kingdom finally comes in glory, missions will cease. Missions is penultimate; worship is ultimate. If we forget this and reverse their roles, the passion and the power for both diminish." --John Piper
Jim Elliot still speaks . . .
Perspectives
"Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ's purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ's undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards." --J. Campbell White (1909)
George Whitefield on Himself
“I know no other reason,” Whitefield said, “why Jesus has put me into the ministry, than because I am the chief of sinners, and therefore fittest to preach free grace to a world lying in the wicked one.”
With The End In View......(My Musings On Turning 50)
Hudson Taylor on The Christian Life
“If God has called you to be really like Jesus in your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians; and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things that He will not let you do. Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires and work schemes to carry out their schemes, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent. Others may brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing; and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works. Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely that God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and that is helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege (the right) of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord will let others be honoured and put forward, and keep you hidden away in obscurity, because He wants some choice fragrant fruit for His coming glory which can only be produced in the shade. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will let you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, over which other Christians never seem distressed. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. He will take you at your word and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things which He will not let you say or do. Settle it for ever that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not deal with others. Now when you are so possessed with the Living God, that you are in your secret heart pleased and delighted over the peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.”
C.S. Lewis
“Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Where Are The Preachers--Where Are The Men?
"I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the gospel and the opening of men's ears to hear it. The moment the Church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. It has been through the ministry that the Lord has always been pleased to revive and bless His Churches . . . We want again Luthers, Calvins, Whitefields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foe's ears. We have dire need of such. Whence will they come to us? They are the gifts of jesus Christ to the Church, and will come in due time. He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, a time as fertile of great divines and mighty ministers as the Puritan age, and when the good old truth is once again more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar, this shall be the instrument in the hand of the Spirit for bringing about a great and thorough revival of religion in the land." -----C. H. Spurgeon
Spurgeon On Pastors Who "Almost Get It Right"
“Discernment is not a matter of simply telling the difference between what is RIGHT and WRONG; rather, it is the DIFFERENCE between RIGHT and ALMOST RIGHT"
Martin Luther On Pastors Who Flinch
"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battles rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefields besides, is mere fight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."
Keith Green Still Speaks
"I Repent of ever having recorded one single song, and ever having performed one concert, if my music, and more importantly, my life has not provoked you into Godly jealousy or to sell out more completely to Jesus. . . .It's time to quit playing the church and start being the Church"
Dietrich Bonhoeffer On Cheap Grace
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
SAFELY HOME
Real Men Don't Leave Their Friends Behind
Thank You For Your Service & Sacrifice
U.S. Soldiers coming home for burial.
A Scary Job
A U.S. soldier digging up an unexploded IED not too far from where my son Mark is serving. Note the Iraqi soldier looking on.
U.S. Soldiers On Patrol In Iraq
How was your morning walk?
The Wounded
So, how's your day been going?
The Doctor's Prescription (Martyn Lloyd-Jones)
The first thing our Lord said of us was, 'Ye are the salt of the earth'; and it is only after this that He says, 'Ye are the light of the world'. Why does He put it in that order instead of the reverse? . . . Scripture, in dealing with the Christian, always emphasizes first what he is, before it begins to speak of what he does. . . . Far too often we Christians tend to reverse the order. We have spoken in a very enlightened manner, but we have not always lived as the salt of the earth. Whether we like it or not, our lives should always be the first thing to speak; and if our lips speak more than our lives it will avail very little. So often the tragedy has been that people proclaim the gospel in words, but their whole life and demeanour has been a denial of it. The world does not pay much attention to them. Let us never forget this order deliberately chosen by our Lord: 'the salt of the earth' before 'the light of the world'. We are something before we begin to act as something. The two things should always go together, but the order and sequence should be the one which He sets down here.
Quote of The Week
“Jesus has many who love his kingdom in heaven , but few who bear his cross. He has many who desire comfort , but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share his feast, but few his fasting. All desire to rejoice with him , but few are willing to suffer for his sake. Many follow Jesus to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of his passion. Many admire the miracles but few follow him to the humiliation of his cross. Many love Jesus as long as no hardship touches them… They who love Jesus for his own sake, and not for the sake of the comfort for themselves , bless him in every trial and anguish of heart, no less than in the greatest joy. And were he never willing to bestow comfort on them, they would still always praise him and give him thanks.” Thomas a Kempis
Preaching & Preachers
Alistair Begg writes: “I remain fascinated by the variety of approaches that preachers take in preparing their sermons. In our preparation, as well as in our delivery we must ‘to our own selves be true.’ When I am asked to summarise my method of preparation, I mention the following points, which I learned from the late Leith Samuel…. 1. Think yourself empty. As strange as it may sound, we must be careful to ensure that we do not avoid sound thinking. The temptation to respond emotionally to a passage (this is how this makes me feel) is not unique to our listeners. If we are to have ‘thinking’ congregations it is incumbant upon us to be ‘thinking’ pastors’! We do not want to be uncertain by the time our study ends, but it is surely right and proper to begin with the perspective, ‘I must know what this says, and I must learn what this means.’ 2. Read yourself full. 3. Write yourself clear. Aside from the essential empowering of the Holy Spirit, if there is one single aspect of sermon preparation that I would want to emphasise, it is this. Freedom of delivery in the pulpit depends upon careful organisation in the study. We may believe that we have a grasp of the text, only to stand up and discover that somewhere between our thinking and our speaking things have gone badly awry. The missing link can usually be traced back to the absence of putting our thoughts down clearly. 4. Pray yourself hot. There is no chance of fire in the pews if there is an iceberg in the pulpit! Without prayer and communion with God during the preparation stages, the pulpit will be cold. In 1752 John Shaw reminded the incumbent pastor beginning his charge in Cambridge, Massachusetts: ‘All will be in vain, to no saving purpose, until God is pleased to give the increase. And in order to do this, God looks for prayers to come up to His ears. A praying minister is always the way to have a succesful ministry.” 5. Be yourself, but don’t preach yourself. A good teacher, like John the Baptist, clears the way, declares the way, and then gets out of the way.”
Bugs Bunny
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive. - Bugs Bunny
Theological Thought of The Week
From R. C. Sproul: "The great misconception in our day is this: that God isn’t concerned to protect His own integrity. He’s a kind of wishy-washy deity, who just waves a wand of forgiveness over everybody. No. For God to forgive you is a very costly matter. It cost the sacrifice of His own Son. So valuable was that sacrifice that God pronounced it valuable by raising Him from the dead – so that Christ died for us, He was raised for our justification. So the Gospel is something objective. It is the message of who Jesus is and what He did. And it also has a subjective dimension. How are the benefits of Jesus subjectively appropriated to us? How do I get it? The Bible makes it clear that we are justified not by our works, not by our efforts, not by our deeds, but by faith – and by faith alone. The only way you can receive the benefit of Christ’s life and death is by putting your trust in Him – and in Him alone. You do that, you’re declared just by God, you’re adopted into His family, you’re forgiven of all of your sins, and you have begun your pilgrimage for eternity."
THE PURITANS & THEIR SPIRITUAL WISDOM
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About John Owen
Owen was by common consent the weightiest Puritan theologian, and many would bracket him with Jonathan Edwards as one of the greatest Reformed theologians of all time. Born in 1616, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of twelve and secured his M.A. in 1635, when he was nineteen. In his early twenties, conviction of sin threw him into such turmoil that for three months he could scarcely utter a coherent word on anything; but slowly he learned to trust Christ, and so found peace. In 1637 he became a pastor; in the 1640s he was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and in 1651 he was made Dean of Christ Church, Oxford's largest college. In 1652 he was given the additional post of Vice-Chancellor of the University, which he then reorganized with conspicuous success. After 1660 he led the Independents through the bitter years of persecution till his death in 1683. (by J.I. Packer) - QUOTES FROM JOHN OWEN
"Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death."
"Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before."
“Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you”
LINKS Worth Checking Out
- A Straggler's Progress....My Son, Mark Daniel's Blog
- Cody The Clydsdale Blog (For Triathletes, Triathlete Wanna-bes, Runners, or folks who just need a little inspiration & motivation to get off their behinds and get some exercise.)
- Covenant of Grace Bible Church
- Eucatastrophe (Daniel Cruver)
- Exiled Preacher (Guy Davies)
- Expository Links--Free Online Biblical Resources for Preaching & Teaching
- Greek New Testament
- Hard Truth (Russ Moore's blog)
- Honoring Our Soldiers of The Cross Who Are In The Field
- Luke Waite's Blog
- Mark Daniel Waite's Blog
- Monergism
- One Thirst Ministries (featuring original worship music by Mark D. Waite & the preaching of Mark S. Waite)
- Reformed Pilgrim
- Sara Grace Waite's Blog
- Sarah Butler's Blog
- Sovereign Grace Missiology--Trevor Johnson's Mission's Blog
- Spirit Empowered Preaching (Arturo Azurdia III)
- Tama Covert's Blog (Good stuff from a woman in my church.)
- The Badwater Ultramarathon 135 Race (Just Thinking......and wondering)
- The blog of Aaron Joshua Waite (my nephew)
- The Jonathan Edwards Center
- The Spurgeon Archive
- Under His Wings (My wife's blog)
I AM PROUD TO BE A WELSHMAN
FAVORITE AUTHORS
- A. W. Tozer
- A.W. Pink
- Bryan Chapell
- C.S. Lewis
- David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
- Iain Murray (Biographer & Historian)
- J.I. Packer
- Jerry Bridges
- John Calvin (Reformer)
- John MacArthur
- John Montgomery Boice
- John Owen (Puritan)
- John Piper
- Jonathan Edwards
- Luke A. Waite (My Son)
- Mark D. Waite (My Son)
- Sara Grace N. Waite (My Daughter)
A Sampling of John Piper
THE FAMILY GALLERY & OTHER PERSONAL THINGS
Mark Jr. commuting to work. Mark is presently serving in Iraq.
Prayer Warriors
Let's not forget them or forget to pray for them!
And You Think You've Had A Rough Day!
"Some give all--most give more than we'll ever be asked to."
Army Combat Medics--Their patients come in all sizes!
My son Luke enlisted as a combat medic under the delayed enlistment program and reports for basic training this September. Luke is presently 17 years old.
My Dad's Plane In WW2 After It Was Shot Down Over Austria
Lt. Milton D. Waite (my dad) bailed out with the crew and became a POW.
Having Some Fun Before Mark's Deployment
Resurrection Bay -- Seward, Alaska *My son Luke and I traveled to Alaska this past August to spend time with Mark, my oldest son, before he deployed to Iraq with his unit from Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks.
Resting After A Hard Day of Fishing
Mark Daniel and Me--Luke is taking the picture
Trip of A Life Time
Me & My Boys On The Kenai Pennisula somewhere between Seward and Nikiski.
Humpback Whale
We saw plenty of these in the Cook Inlet outside of Anchorage.
"The Woman" In My Life
My wife Nancy & I near Fairbanks
Here She Is Again
Nancy somewhere in the middle of Alaska
The Other Women In My Life
Rachael, Sara-Grace, Bethany, & Esther (the short one)
My Daughter Sara-Grace & Me
Sara Grace is a freshman in Bible College preparing to be a missionary.
Me and My Boys
Luke, Mark Jr., Me, & my little blue-eyed grizzly bear-Peter
Trying To Go To Work
Peter & Esther want to be cops too!
Peter's First Driving Lesson
Peter & I got the job of packing down the driveway into the church property. The rest of the crew was getting the site ready for pouring a slab for our new church facility.
Last Year's Mule Deer
Taken in the Capitan Mountains
Bi-Vocational Ministry
Oftentimes, I don't know whether I'm coming or going as in bi-vocational ministry both callings sometimes blend into one. That of course is how it should be if all of life is for the glory of God.
What A Great Experience!
The Lord allowed me to fulfill a lifelong dream of wearing this badge as an Albuquerque Police Officer. I left APD in 2001 to pursue full-time pastoral duties. Since then I have also served as a police officer in Santa Fe and Estancia. This allowed me to feed my family while working to establish Covenant of Grace Bible Church in Edgewood, NM.
Shepherds Conference 2007
John wanted a picture with Luke & I--how could we resist?!
A Man To Look Up To
Luke had the privilege of meeting John MacArthur at the Shepherds Conference.
Coast Guard Coxswain's Insignia
I became a Coast Guard Boat Coxswain back in 1980 while serving on Lake Michigan out of Grand Haven, Michigan. I ran a boat similar to the one pictured at the to of my blog above. My boat was CG 41448. I usually had a three man crew and we did everything from law enforcement to search & rescue missions. It was during my time in the Coast Guard that God called me to preach the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ.
U.S. Coast Guard
A whole lot of fun & responsibility for a 20 year old.
My Current Reading List (Books I am presently in the process of reading or have read recently.)
- Election and Free Will--God's Gracious Choice & Our Responsibility (Robert A. Peterson)
- Stand--A Call For Endurance (John Piper/Justin Taylor, editors)
- In The Hearts of Wild Men (Ernest Herndon)
- Holiness (J.C. Ryle 1877)
- The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification (Walter Marshall 1692)
- Lloyd-Jones--Messenger of Grace (Iain Murray)
- Triumph Over Temptation--Pursuing A Life of Purity (John Owen 1656)
- Watch Your Walk--Ministering From A Heart of Integrity (From "The Reformed Pastor" by Richard Baxter 1656)
- Faithfulness and Holiness--The Witness of J.C. Ryle (J.I. Packer)
- Lost Boy--My Story (Greg Laurie)
- It Is Not Death To Die--A New Biography of Hudson Taylor (Jim Cromarty)
- Romans--Exposition of 2:1-3:20 (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones)
- The Epistle to The Romans (Leon Morris)
- Romans 1-8 (John MacArthur)
- An Exegetical & Theological Exposition of Romans (Robert Mounce)
My Place & My Friends (Most of whom are long dead)
Half of my Study at home
Another Favorite Place w/My Favorite People
Gulf Shores, Alabama 2008 (Mark Jr. is in Alaska)
Just Dreaming
Maybe someday I'll be back--somewhere north of Denali, Ak.
2 comments:
That's awesome Mark! God bless you. I watched your video with my little ones. Would love to meet you in person some day.
Mark, Nancy, & kids ... Thank you for putting this together to share your love for Him and the desire to serve Him among the Fulbe people. God bless each of you.
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