Everything is closed on Mondays!

Today I spent the afternoon with an 18 year old Dutch reformed pastor’s son named Ruben. I am not sure the exact chronology, but he attended a convention called Soul Survivor around the time I just got to the Netherlands. His father tells us he hasn’t been the same since, and has been spending a lot of time with the FIRE people in Leeuwarden and devouring his Bible just hungry for the things of God.

I have seen him regularly at the C.H.N. where he attends school, and he has been coming to the prayer meetings held there, and our Thursday night Bible study, and as well as attending the Puleo/Arkley cell group. So I made a point of spending time with him as often as possible. No point in wasting my time on people unwilling or uninterested in spiritual things—might as well feed the spiritual hungry with what I have to give.

I learned something else about Dutch culture through my afternoon with him: that a lot of things are closed on Mondays in Holland. I neglected to find this out until we walked all around centrum and couldn’t find anything open other than McDonalds, and Moaz—a falafel place I go to way too often to desire eating there again today. We had planned on going to a pizzeria joint close to Moaz, but it wasn’t open until 4pm and it was only around 2 pm and we were too hungry to wait that long for something to open.

So, it’s apparently a Dutch cultural thing for things to be closed on Sundays and Mondays. BUT to make up for this, stores and eateries are open late on Thursdays. This is to compensate for the worker who cannot do his shopping during the weekday because everything closes by the time they’re done their jobs, so there’s one day of the week where everything is open late. Interesting concept. Canadian banks should do that.

We settled for a burger and fries joint called Double F (fast food). It was expensive, but everything is expensive in the Netherlands and you learn to live with it. Free refills are unheard of here! They give you tiny glasses that hold like half a soda can in them, and cost 1,60 euro and if you want more you pay for each glass. Man alive!

One thing I was really impressed with was how Ruben is just hungry for the things of God. I asked him on Thursday if he wanted to hang out today, and I couldn’t reach him by phone, but around 1:30pm today he just showed up at De Fakkel—because I had invited him to spend the afternoon together, so he showed up. That blessed me. And also, when we were at the mall in centrum, (the “winkelcentrum”) as we walked by a music store, he noticed a brochure for some kind of rock festival. I didn’t understand what it said since mijn nederlands niet zo goed, but it was totally demonic apparently. Ruben took the whole stack and when we were far enough away from the store, trashed the whole stack. Way cool. He burns with fresh fire this young man. I don’t even need to teach any of or most of the Dutch I’ve had significant interaction with about holiness standards. It’s refreshing to not have to teach against compromising the Gospel with worldliness. And I’ve been challenged in some ways by the very people I’m here to pour myself into! In all fairness, I wouldn’t have known what those brochures said in order to know they’re promoting some demonic festival, but I have been known in the past to take stacks of free brochures, Mormon Bibles, and Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower magazines and trash them.

Then when I got home I had my first piece of mail. Ok my second, the first has been the In the Line of Fire newsletters from the FIRE community in Charlotte. But a woman from my church who doesn’t have a computer or e-mail wrote me a hand written letter to encourage me. It really blessed me to hear from her. When I went away to Bible School in Florida back in 2001, my pastor and then this woman were the first to write me in any way. I was totally blessed to receive the letter now that I’m living in yet another country.

This is being written offline as a Word document that I’ll copy and paste onto blogger the next time I go over to the Evans’. But in the meantime, I’m having my world rocked and my feelings hurt by the late Leonard Ravenhill in his book “Revival God’s Way”. Anything this man wrote or preached is worthy of reading and taking to heart. Definitely an authority on the subject of revival, and influenced many people, such as Dr. Michael Brown and Rev. Stephen Hill, both of whom were mentored by him, and then both of whom were heavily involved in the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola from 1995-2000. I actually have had it on my heart to write or copy and paste a brief but detailed history of the events that led up to that outpouring and the impact it had on the world, churches, and missionaries that were raised up and went to the nations as a result. I think it’s important to chronicle given that this work I’m a part of in Holland is a direct result of people being touched by revival and burdened to spread the radical Gospel to the nations.

Anyway, an understanding of revival wouldn’t be had without a proper concept of things like repentance and holiness—something lacking way too drastically in the modern Church. So in the coming entries, I’ll be posting poems and quotes written by Ravenhill. The reason I put a lot of quotes, is because I have I think I have little to no right to say some of these things, even if they are true—until I’ve earned my stripes. The thing about using quotes, is they carry an authority themselves to say something I might not be respected for saying, or they might not be received by people who think I’m too wet behind the ears. So, quote someone who knew what they were talking about, and lived it out.

That is all for now, keep reading for more. And go find yourself some Leonard Ravenhill books and get your life right. If you’re hungry to see God move, then you won’t regret it.