Kyle Tanner

Still searching…

Kyle Tanner — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:22:28 +0000

Let me start by saying this post is a follow up to the last post, so if you haven’t read the last one entitled “Is God your source”, go read it first.

As I was saying in the last post, it’s easy to turn to other things as a source of comfort, hope, joy, peace, or love in times of need. It’s easy to try and replace God as our source, but in the end we are ultimately going to be let down because anything that we turn to other than God only provides temporary satisfaction. Once you learn to turn to God as your source, you will find that He is true to His promises. He does provide, He does satisfy, He does bring joy and hope. But what if you didn’t know about this hope? What if you were constantly searching, but everything seemed to fail you at some point and you had no idea what else to turn to? As Christians, we know about this hope. We know about the love, comfort, joy, and peace that Jesus provides and yet we still seem to turn to other things so often, but what if you had no clue who Jesus was and what He promises to do if you place your trust in Him? That is the case for most of Thailand. Less than 1% of Thai’s know Jesus as Lord, and not only that, but of the more than 99% of Thai’s that don’t know Jesus as Lord, most don’t know of Him at all. Until I moved to Thailand I had never really met anyone who hadn’t heard of Jesus. Whether they believe in Him or not, most, if not all, Americans know of Jesus and the good news that He provides, but in Thailand I’ve literally met people who will say “Jesus? Who’s that?” and of those that have heard of Him, most if the time the reaction I get is the Catholic hand gesture of making a cross on your chest. These people have no idea. They place their hope in idols (literally the golden statue type of idols that you read about in the Bible). They worship spirits and false Gods. These things CANNOT provide them with the hope they are looking for. Thai’s want to worship, they love to worship, they just don’t know about the God that they were designed to worship. People are going to worship, we were all designed for it. The question is not if we will worship something, it’s what are we going to choose to worship. It breaks my heart that these people have no clue about the hope that Jesus provides, and as a result, they are forced to place their trust in man made idols that are sure to fail them. And it’s not just Thailand. There are almost 7 billion people in the world, and of those 7 billion, over 2 billion have never been reached with the Gospel. Over 2 billion people have no idea about the love, joy, hope, comfort, and peace that Jesus provides, and therefore are placing their trust in other things as their temporary source. That’s heartbreaking. Church, we are called to do something about this. We are the vessel by which God is going to reveal Himself to those that have never heard. It’s time to step up.

Is God your source?

Kyle Tanner — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:02:59 +0000

Is God your source? Test yourselves. What do you run to when things get tough? When trials arise who or what do you seek for comfort or hope? So often we find refuge in the things of this world, atleast I do. It’s so easy to let other things fill us up when we are in need of comfort, joy, peace, hope, or love. There’s a huge problem with this though. Anything that we seek as a functional source of any of these things is temporary, other than God. They will all fail you. You will turn to them and they might provide temporary satisfaction, but it’s only a matter of time before you are let down. If you keep running to the same things for comfort or peace in times of distress, you will be left longing for more. This is a very dangerous place to be in. Feeling dissatisfied, you will find yourself saying, doing, or thinking things you never thought you would in order to receive the comfort that you are searching for. Ironically, this leads to more dissatisfaction, which in turn leads to more seeking. Before we know it, we’ve begun idolizing these things that we turn to as a replacement for God, but the problem is, they aren’t truly a replacement.

Can Idols bring you joy? Yes.

Can they bring you peace? Yes.

Provide you with hope? Yes.

Comfort? Yes.

But for how long? How long until the idol fails you and you are left feeling dissatisfied, hopeless, and lost? There is hope though. An endless hope. A hope that will never leave you, or fail you. A hope that promises to eternally satisfy, and will. In order to receive eternal comfort, we must place our hope in an eternal comforter. In order to receive infinite joy, we must find our joy in an infinite joy giver. God is the only thing willing or able to provide us with the comfort, joy, peace, hope, and love that we all long for. We must strive to make Him our source of all these things. The more we seek Him, the more we find that He is true to this promise. The more we run to Him, the deeper we fall in love with Him, and the more passionate we become about making Him known. When we are hurting, discontent, or even just bored, the things that we run to are indicative of where we are finding our comfort. We must choose God, even when we don’t necessarily feel like it. By choosing Him, we are denying our flesh, putting to death the desires of our sinful nature, and declaring Him to be Lord over all of our life. Seek to find refuge in Him, I promise you won’t be let down.

(Side note: While writing this post, I began thinking about some things that I wanted to add, but they would cause things to go in a different direction than I originally intended. I’ll make this into a 2 part post and will incorporate these ideas into the next one.)

The goal of friendship is the glory of God.

Kyle Tanner — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:43:20 +0000

Have you ever sat down and thought about your friendships? The amount of effort you are putting into them, and ways they could be improved? It can become easy to let a friend or multiple friends be used to meet our needs without giving thought to returning the favor. We might get lonely, or bored, or want to share something that’s on our mind and so we turn to friends, but how often do we think, “what are this person’s needs and how can I meet them?”. How often do we ask our friends how we can be praying for them, what they are struggling with, how you can encourage them, or how you can serve them? This is a thought that’s been on my mind lately. I want to strive to show selfless love to all my friends, because if I can’t even do that, how do I expect to show that kind of love to my “neighbor”? I want to love even when it’s hard. I want to love even when it’s painful. I want to love even if it’s a sacrifice at times. I don’t want my friendships to be about me and what I can gain from them, I want them to be about God’s glory. I believe friendship should be about pointing eachother towards Christ at all times, challenging and pushing one another constantly. Using that friendship for God’s glory should be our ultimate goal, but how often is it? I would challenge you to start thinking about this, just as I have been reminded to.

Christ is better

Kyle Tanner — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:56:09 +0000

I believe we are all created for relationship with God. Without that relationship, we are left with an emptiness that needs to be filled. The enemy cons us into believing that things of this world are capable of filling this gap and bringing us true satisfaction, when in reality these things destroy us. The red-light districts are filled with people who are looking for ways to fill this gap. They are searching for an answer for their loneliness, emptiness, and brokenness, and all the things they find on these streets are only going to lead them to more searching. But what if they were able to find an answer for all their pain here? What if we as Christians were the ones that brought them that answer? This is my hope as I stand on these streets and engage with men. I don’t desire to condemn them for trying to fill their emptiness in the wrong ways, but rather, to show them the only thing that will permanently fill that gap, eternally satisfy their hunger. I don’t want to tell them they need to change, I want to show them a changed life. I don’t want to tell them they are wrong, I want to show them that Christ is better.

Christ, the solution.

Kyle Tanner — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 05:36:38 +0000

As many of you know, I’ve recently started volunteering a few nights a week with a ministry called the MST Project here in Bangkok. The purpose of this ministry is to reach out to men in the sex trade industry. A few nights a week we will go out to the bars in the red light districts here in Bangkok and look for men who are willing to talk. Talk about anything. Life, their interests, their purpose for visiting Thailand, their reason for coming to a red light district, their thoughts on the sex industry in Thailand, etc. Our desire is to meet men where they are and to connect with them in a way that will allow us to walk with them on a journey that will hopefully lead to Christ. We want to show them Christ through our actions and the way we treat them, not merely by our words. We want to hear about their struggles, or pain, or brokenness, and we want to show them that we aren’t going to look down on them because of those things. We want to show them a life that has been completely redeemed because of Jesus and we want that life changing power to captivate them.

It’s been a few weeks since I started volunteering with this ministry and throughout the course of these weeks I have experienced things that are absolutely heart breaking. I’ve listened to men come clean about their loneliness, talked with men who acknowledge all the evil in this world but see no hope. I’ve seen hundreds of women ready to sell themselves to make a living, men in such confusion about their identity that they have literally turned themselves into women, children who have been surrounded by the culture of these red light districts for their whole lives and it’s become the norm for them, the list goes on. It’s heartbreaking to witness all of this, but throughout it all I am constantly reminded of God’s love and goodness. The more I am confronted with the evil and brokenness of this world, the closer it pushes me to Christ. He is the answer to all of it. He is the solution to all these problems. My desire is to be a vessel by which God uses to communicate this life changing, soul saving, sin defeating message to the world. Here I am Lord, use me.

Friendships, Ministry, and Jesus.

Kyle Tanner — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:12:55 +0000

Man, it’s been a while since my last update. I’m really hoping to get back into a regular habit of blogging sometime soon, so maybe this will be the post that sparks the blogging revival for me. This post is basically going to be a series of thoughts based on an emotion that I find myself often faced with when trying to reach out to friends here in Thailand.

Since moving here to Thailand about 15 months ago it’s become apparent that reaching the Thai people is a very slow process. Buddhism is so ingrained into Thai culture that it takes tons of patience and persistence in order to help a Thai reach the point of truly understanding the Gospel. Unlike western culture, eastern culture doesn’t really push a person to question things or try and find flaws in the logic of their beliefs. In a sense, they have a ton more faith than most westerners. When applied to Christianity, this is obviously a great thing, but for the nonchristian easterner this often leads to believing things without a whole lot of reason or even really knowing why. Amongst the people that I am reaching out to here, I have to have a lot of discernment when sharing my beliefs in Christianity. When do I share? How much do I share? Am I at a point in my friendship with them that I can share my beliefs without pushing them away? These are the questions I’ve had to ask myself many times, and throughout the last 15 months these questions have really helped to challenge me in the own beliefs in evangelism. Shortly after moving here it was apparent that in order to reach the Thai’s, relationships had to be built, and through those relationships the gospel would be shared. Like I said before, it takes a lot of time to break through those cultural barriers. But, because of this approach, It can become very easy to get settled into a friendship with a Thai without ever really having those tough belief based conversations. Excuses like “well, they know I’m a Christian so now it’s just up to God to do the rest” can be made, but is that enough? This is a thought that I’m still challenged with. I’ve found though, that the closer I get with a person, the harder it is for me to hold back. I want so badly for them to understand the truth of the Gospel that I can hardly contain it at times. This leads to that emotion that I spoke of at the beginning of this post. I often find myself becoming slightly upset when sharing with a friend that just doesn’t get it. It’s painful to continuously share the good news with a friend who, as 1 Corinthians 4 says, is “blinded by the god of this age from seeing the light of the Gospel of Christ”. So many emotions go through my head as I continually pour myself out to my friends here. I love them, I’m concerned, and I want the best for them. It’s very easy though for these situations to cause me to feel impatient, discouraged, frustrated, and hurt. Throughout examining these emotions, I’m reminded of another guy who had friends that just didn’t seem to get it. I wonder how Jesus felt knowing that Judas didn’t truly understand His message and would eventually betray Him? I wonder how He felt each time one of His disciples lacked faith? How does He respond? Despite being misunderstood, neglected, denied, and betrayed, Jesus was patient, He kept on loving, and He kept on pursuing. Regardless of the range of emotions that I feel while investing in friends, I must always look to Jesus and try to follow the example He set when faced with similar situations.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.

Addicted to mountain top experiences?

Kyle Tanner — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:59:38 +0000

Have you ever had those “mountain top” experiences? Those times when you experience the glory of God and you are absolutely moved and changed and want to do all you can to live a life that is completely devoted to Him? I think that these moments are incredible, but the problem is, they can be slightly dangerous. What do I mean by that? How can those experiences, those times when I feel closest to God, ever be dangerous? Let me explain. When we have experiences like this, whether it be at a camp, or because of a song, or even a particular sermon that was preached, what’s typically the first thing that we think? Is it something along the lines of “Man, God really showed up today!”? I confess that I am guilty of thinking in this manner, but the truth is, God doesn’t “show up”. The fact of the matter is that God was always, is always, and will always be there, and even more so than that, He is ALWAYS deserving of our praise and worship. Now hear me out, I’m not saying that those moments where we feel that closeness to God are not special. There are definitely instances where the particular setting that I am in causes me to be more aware of God’s presence than other times, but the problem is, what happens when we leave that setting? Most of the time we tend to try and recreate those moments where we felt closest to God. The reality is, without realizing it, we’ve made worship about us rather than God. Funny how that works huh? We love the feelings that we got we when heard that particular song, so we are constantly waiting for THAT song to play. It can even get to a point where we don’t feel inclined to worship unless we hear those few choice songs that WE love. “The worship just wasn’t good today”, “That message wasn’t very powerful”, “I can’t wait for camp next year so that I can feel God move like that again!”. Do these phrases sound familiar? Do these phrases sound self focused? When we say things like this we are unintentionally (or maybe even intentionally at times) shifting the focus to ourselves. Does the music have to be perfect or your choice of songs in order for you to worship? Does the message have to be packed full of intensity in order for it to be true and convicting? Do we HAVE to wait all year for camp to come around again in order to feel that close to God? I think it’s clear that the answer to all of these questions is no. If we are truly focused on God during our times of worship, it wont matter what setting we are in, God WILL be praised. It’s easy to become “addicted” to those mountain top experiences. It’s easy to allow ourselves to constantly search for the ideal setting of worship before we begin praising. The truth is, God is always here, always deserving of praise, and always radiating His glory, we just have to open up our eyes. It’s about Him not us. It’s about His glory, not ours. We HAVE to stop worshiping ourselves and START worshiping the God of the universe…..Just some thoughts.

Finding the positive in a disappointing situation

Kyle Tanner — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:37:47 +0000

So this past week was been full of memorable experiences. Before I get into that, let me first set the stage. For many months now, the team has been planning activities for a week long trip that a few juniors from our home church in Tennessee would be taking t oBangkok over Spring break. We’ve spent many hours trying to plan out exactly what the students would be doing while they were here. Well the time finally came. We were only a few days away when all of the tragedies happened in Japan. The team was scheduled to fly through Tokyo last Saturday, and because of the situation they were not able to come to Bangkok. All of us here in Bangkok were very disappointed that the students would not be coming. Because of all of this, we were left with a problem. We had planned for the students to host an English camp at one of the ministries that we’ve been partnering with here in Bangkok. We had told the team from Tennessee to prepare the lessons and everything for the students. Well, we couldn’t just cancel the camp with such short notice, but we had no lesson plans of our own. With only a few days to spare, we met together as a team and brainstormed through ideas for this camp. We were able to put some things together, even with such short notice. So, this past week we spent Monday-Wednesday hosting this English camp. Despite the last minute planning, everything seemed to go very smoothly! Praise God! It was such a great experience to be able to teach classes of 1st-9th graders for 3 days. Even if the students didn’t learn any English from us, our prayer is that they atleast were able to see God’s love shining through us this past week. It is always such a joy to be able to partner with fellow Thai Christians in hopes of showing God’s love to the people of this country. Seeing all of the smiles on the kids faces is such a rewarding experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything! All of this goes to show that as much as we plan and plan, God is still in control and we have to constantly be aware of that. When things don’t exactly happen the way that we had hoped, we have to ask ourselves “what are the positives that I can take away from this?”, as well as “could God be trying to teach me something through this?”. Looking back on this past week, it’s very clear that God’s plans were different from ours. Although it might not make perfect sense right now, I have to constantly remind myself that God knows best.

Exciting things to come

Kyle Tanner — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 04:56:13 +0000

So as we at getting closer and closer to approaching the one year mark here in Thailand, there are a lot of really exciting things coming up that are going to make these next few months seem to fly by. We will have our first short term team sent from Lifepoint arrive on March 19. A lot of preparation has gone into this. It’s going to be really exciting to see what God does with this team! Secondly, my roommate, Seth, is going to be getting married in April. We’ve been rooming together for over a year now, and so things are going to be different once he moves out. Right after that, I’m going to be heading back to the States for the first time in order to catch up with supporters and visit family and friends. I leave April 21-June 26. It’s so exciting! I wasn’t dying to go back to America or anything, but now that I have an actual date to go back, I am starting to really look forward to it! Definitely be keeping all of this in your prayers. I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible while I’m visiting the States.

Phlap Phlaa

Kyle Tanner — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:40:24 +0000

So a few months ago I wrote about a ministry opportunity that we were considering which consisted of investing in a local poor community. Well, we have officially started work within the community as of about 3 weeks ago. We were really praying and trying to discern whether God wanted us there or not, and now we feel affirmed in the fact that He does. As expected, the last 3 weeks that we have spent there have been a little inconsistent and not very organized. It will take a few months before the locals begin to realize that we are there to stay and will be there every Saturday. We have already formed a pretty close relationship with the community leader, and he has offered to give us a set of keys to the community center within the community (yes I realize I used the word community way too much in that sentence). I can’t wait to see where these relationships with the kids as well as the adults lead. Right now, typical Saturday within the community looks something like this: We show up and wait for the kids to start gathering around, we sing songs, play games, serve lunch, teach English, and teach a Bible story (not necessarily in that order). The kids here aren’t really used to being loved on, so the fact that they are seeing familiar faces that have come to love them every Saturday has already seemed to brighten them up.

I will continue to keep everyone updated as the ministry progresses.

Continue to keep this place in your prayers!

Kyle