Classic Friday: E. Burns 2015 Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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My name is Mike Abendroth, and we have a little slogan around here, and that is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

I�m really after your mind. I want you to think properly. I want you to think biblically, and whether you read the newspaper or you look at the weather, look at the sun, the moon, and the stars,

I want you to think things from a scriptural perspective. That�s what I�m after, and I want you to consider the one who never compromised.

While I don�t want to compromise, while I try to call people out who do compromise, the

Lord Jesus, imagine, he never once compromised in any way, shape, or form. So we�d like to point you, ultimately, to him.

On Wednesdays, we have interviews with different pastors, theologians, authors, missionaries, and I want you to try to get to know them and their ministry so that you�re encouraged that the

Lord�s kingdom is expanding, Jesus is building his church, and nothing will stop it.

And also, so you can pray for some of these men who are on the show as God has given them ministry, and they are required to be faithful.

So today, we have Evan Burns on. Welcome, Evan, to No Compromise Radio Ministry. I�m really glad to be here,

I�m a big fan of your ministry. Well, Evan, tell our listeners how we met and how that all happened, because it�s not a strange providence, it�s not a bad providence,

I�m trying to think of William Cooper�s term, but it�s a good one. So tell our listeners how we met. Well, I initially was introduced to No Compromise Radio through Wretched Radio, I got to know

Todd and was really impressed with that ministry and the ministry of discernment, and he promoted you guys and I started listening.

And then, providentially, I roomed with one of your elders, Pradeep Talak, at Southern Seminary, and after about two weeks of rooming with him, he said, �Hey, by the way,

I�ve been interviewing you for the last week and a half, and I think I�m going to propose to my church that we support you as a missionary.�

And then one thing led to another, and I got to speak at your church a few weeks ago. Well, Evan, tell us about your ministry that the

Lord has given you in Thailand, I believe you�re on the faculty of Asia Biblical Theological Seminary.

What do you do there, how long have you been there, what are some challenges in Thailand? Yeah, we have been there for a couple years, we used to be in China for a number of years before that, and Turkey before that.

And in Thailand, at the seminary, my main position is to teach missions and spirituality, and I�ve done both of those in my

Ph .D., and I think that Thai, Asian Christians, Chinese Christians, they are not as theologically driven often, they�re more often pragmatically and even spiritually driven in the sense that they�re very pietistic and very pragmatic.

And so, I think one of the best ways to get to their head is through their pragmatism and through their piety, and my goal is to serve mainly as an apologist and seek to contend for the truth and challenge and encourage and seek to refresh the saints in Asia through my classes in my various preaching ministries.

So that�s what I do, that�s my platform, formally it�s a seminary platform, informally

I work with a lot of pastors on the side as well, especially Chinese pastors. Evan, tell us a little bit about this issue of spirituality and how you teach that.

What is a biblical view of spirituality in contrast to maybe contemplative prayer or some other types of Eastern or Roman Catholic mysticism?

Well, where they diverge essentially comes down to the reason for the

Reformation. They seek to be united to God, they seek to be united to Christ through all those ascetic practices, all those contemplative practices, but if you come back to the doctrines of the

Reformation and the doctrines of the Bible, our spirituality is grounded in and emerges out of our justification and our union with Christ, which is what they�re seeking to attain through those kind of practices.

And so a lot of times, people who seek to employ Roman Catholic or other ascetic mystical practices,

I�d like to give them the benefit of the doubt that their heart is bigger than their head, but a lot of times they don�t know where those practices are coming from and what theological worldview is driving those practices.

So essentially when I teach biblical spirituality, I�m bringing them back to the supreme and sufficient source of all truth, the

Bible, and I�m asking them to only put into practice those spiritual disciplines, those spiritual practices that the

Bible prescribes. Being prayer, meditation, even fasting, meditation is not what we think of popularly in terms of, say, yoga or other false meditation ideas like emptying your mind, but the filling of your mind with Scripture, the chewing on it, the digesting, the living off of the

Word of the Lord. And so I always try to bring the Bible and Christ, Christ in the

Bible, the Christ -centered Scriptures back to the center of their biblical spirituality practices.

Evan, you and I were talking, or maybe when you were preaching here at Bethlehem Bible Church several weeks ago, about how people in the old days used to read out loud.

And so you spurred me on. I went and got a book about silent reading and when that came about. Tell our listeners a little bit about silent reading, reading out loud, maybe a little bit of Psalm 1, meditating on God�s law.

I found that fascinating. Yeah, so this isn�t obviously an original idea to me.

I learned this from my PhD supervisor and he pointed out in a patristics and Celtic spirituality class that the early church fathers and the

Celtic pastors, they would employ the method of out loud meditation and reading, which they borrowed actually from the old

Hebraic practice, pre -New Testament. And that kind of led me to doing some looking into things and research, and my supervisor pointed out to me that up until the

Industrial Revolution and around the Age of Reason, the loudest place in any city in the literate world was the library.

That's because up until then, everybody read out loud. It was unheard of to read silently, and so this whole practice of silent reading is really a recent phenomenon, and people have always read out loud, and even parts in Asia where I've lived, it's not uncommon to see somebody in a bus stop sitting there reading out loud to himself.

And Asian Christians often, they employ tons of Bible memory through the practice of reading aloud over and over.

And the idea of Psalm 1, where it says, �Blessed is the man who walks not into counsel of the sinner, stands in the way of sinners, or sits on the seat of scoffers.�

But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law, he meditates day and night. The word for meditate is the idea of chewing or ruminating on, or like a cow chews its cud.

It's this idea of something going on between what's going on in your mind and in your mouth.

There's a connection, but not the words in my mouth and the meditation in my heart. It's displeasing to you, and I see there is a direct correlation, even in the

Hebrew idea of meditation, between what you do with your mouth and what you do with your mind and what you do with your heart.

Talking to Evan Burns from the Asia Biblical Theological Seminary. Evan, tell our listeners a little bit about what happened with you in terms of your testimony, and then what the doctors said about you and your brain and the issues there.

I just find it encouraging that we know Romans 8 .28 isn't just some verse thrown in.

God is, for His glory and our good, really orchestrating every little detail. So share with our listeners if you would.

Yeah, well, I grew up with epilepsy, and this was in the days where neuroscience wasn't as developed as it is today, and so for years the general practitioner thought

I was making up my symptoms, and he didn't know what to do with them until finally he suggested I go to a neurologist, and I did, and then they started putting out lots of medications.

And around that, in that time, I became a Christian earlier in life, and then

I actually first started sensing a call to missions when I was about eight years old, and I was laying in bed in the dark of my room.

I'd have a migraine every time I'd have a seizure, and I could have up to five to seven seizures a day. So I grew up with perpetual migraines, essentially.

I'd be laying there in bed and listen to preaching on the radio, and I heard the story of Jim Elliot on the radio, and that's essentially where I first started feeling a draw at admissions, and I grew up being told by the doctors that, you are not going to live past high school, and if you do, the only way that that's going to be possible is if we operate on your brain, and this is before they had lasers.

They're still using, I think, hammers, and chisels, and chainsaws back then, because the procedure was a bit more caveman -ish compared to what they do today.

And yeah, so even after the surgery, the fact that I was not a vegetable and I was able to finish school and go on to college and get a job and graduate school and so on and so forth,

I had one neurologist who knew me earlier in life say, that's nothing short of a miracle.

Knowing how aggressive your epilepsy and all the other issues were, this shouldn't be the case for you, and essentially, he wasn't a

Christian, but he pipped his hand to some sort of level of providence in my life. Evan, how can a

Christian, I mean, we're to be thankful people, show thanks, this is God's will, 1 Thessalonians. Are you or were you able to say,

Lord, I thank you for this and for these reasons? Walk our listeners through that, because many of them struggle with all kinds of issues.

How can we say thank you, Lord, for a very tough situation or trial? I mean, it's hard to compare your trials and your difficulties with other people, because we all have our unique level of trial that the

Lord has providentially placed into our lives. And so, it's difficult, because every trial is going to have its unique challenges.

However, I grew up with this situation. My mom, also at that time, she always had muscular dystrophy, so I grew up helping her out a lot.

And so, there's constant trials, but what I found to be my way of coping with the epilepsy and the pain and the migraines and all the other health issues related to that, and still today

I have migraines a couple times a week, what gets me through it is a high view of God and a low view of any of my worth.

And that's just not a coping mechanism. That's life. That's gospel.

The gospel that God is a God of sovereign, miraculous, merciful grace who chose me when

I could not or would not choose Him. He chose me and He overcame my unbelief, and He, in His mercy, has decided to adopt me into His family.

And living with that perspective, it actually gives me an enjoyable platform to share my faith when

I am able to talk about my weaknesses, whatever those might be, whether it's the physical issues or other things related to that or emotional or anything.

I am able to enjoy the privilege and the pleasure of sharing the gospel with people.

Even a Muslim taxi driver, I'm getting in a cab and he's asking me about the scar on the side of my head from my brain surgery, and I'm able to talk to him about, you know, what

I struggle with, what I've gone through, and then I'm able to rejoice over the fact that God has not just helped me with my epilepsy, but He has healed me of the disease of sin and He is progressively bringing me into conformity to Christ.

And so, I think one of the best ways we can interpret our weaknesses is by looking to the power of Christ resting in us.

And what is that power? What does that power do? And essentially, that power is in us, second Corinthians, it's in us to bring attention to Jesus Christ and His resurrection -saving power.

And so, a lot of people, they use that verse out of second Corinthians that Christ's power is made perfect, and our weakness is kind of a therapeutic way, almost, of just thinking proverbially about the fact that, you know,

God's going to do something with my weakness, but I think we need to take it a step further and not just hope for the best, but we need to ask, what is the best?

The best is that Jesus Christ will be glorified in my body, whether in my living or whether in my dying.

I want Jesus to get the attention for this, not me and not my problems. And when you do that, you enter into that happy place of self -forgetfulness.

You don't think about yourself as much or your issues, but you get caught up in thinking about how great and glorious Jesus Christ is.

Good answer. Evan Burns, today we're talking to on No Compromise Radio. Evan, it seems to me that, and again, this is my personal observation, it's only anecdotal.

Back in the old days, men, excuse me, children and teens and maybe young students would hear a missionary that would come in from furlough or off of furlough, and they'd talk about what's going on in Burma or what's going on in Thailand, and it seems like there would be, probably there were altar calls, but there would be a call to serve the

Lord overseas. Now I know we can serve the Lord where we are, and you need to be a good missionary where you live today before you go overseas, but what would you say to people who maybe need to be pushed a little bit to think about the glory of Christ in His kingdom across the world?

Do you have something you say to young people to spur them on to consider missions? Well, I think one thing

I'm quick to tell people is that they don't, especially younger people who are maybe not as future -oriented in their thinking, they live in the here and the now and the next latest app and the next latest download and the next selfie and whatever else they're doing,

I do push them to think about every little decision they make really matters for their future and for eternity.

It's not just those big decisions that someday down the road they're going to be able to make that big career decision. Who you are today largely determines who you'll be tomorrow, and it comes down to those little decisions of faithfulness, of getting in the

Word, getting on your knees in prayer, sharing the Gospel, seeking to grow, to be like Christ, and I think the call to missions largely rests upon those little what we think are insignificant decisions and daily life choices.

Now, that being the case, that sets you up to become missions -worthy, so to speak, just like anybody going into ministry needs to have a certain level of integrity and spirituality and maturity in the faith.

Just because somebody wants to go into ministry doesn't mean they should, and the same thing with being an overseas missionary.

But what I do tell people, even young people, is get plugged into a church.

Being a missionary, the definition of a missionary is a sent one. A self -sent missionary makes about as much sense as a self -ordained pastor or a self -baptized

Baptist. You need to have... You need to have a strong, solid fellowship and a body of elders overseeing you and giving you the green light to go ahead and pursue this.

The call to missions doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's a... And it's not just a quiver in your liver, as Kevin DeYoung would say.

It's multifaceted. It is seeking to discern through wisdom, through the wisdom of your elders, is this where God is providentially leading me?

So my short answer to that long answer would be, make the most of those little decisions.

And seek to be faithful today, and seek the glory of Christ.

Not interest in culture, not interest in adventure, though that's nice, and it's kind of like the honeymoon, the initial romance of that stepping out of faith.

But if that's what gets you to the mission field, it's not going to sustain you there. What we...

In a sense, what you're won to the mission field with is what will keep you there. And if you are won to the mission field through seeing the glory of Jesus Christ exalted in all the people groups, that is what is going to sustain you.

Because when you get there, you're going to realize that you might like their culture, but they don't like you, and they don't want you to be there, and they don't like your gospel.

And so, you need to have something else solid underneath your feet than just the fact that you're interested in culture, and languages, and Asian food, and travel.

You need to have the gospel of the glory of the sovereign grace of Jesus Christ under your feet to sustain you while you're there.

Talking to Evan Burns today, I was thinking of Psalm 37. Evan, as you were speaking, trust in the

Lord and do good. And he goes on to say, delight yourself in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart.

And commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. I think you've given our listeners some great advice in terms of the small steps of faithfulness in light of the strength that the

Spirit gives us, and God does lead and guide. And Evan, I wanted to, because time is going by fast,

I wanted to ask you about Adoniram Judson. You have finished your PhD thesis, and you've passed your oral exam.

When can I technically call you doctor? Well... Okay, tell our listeners about Adoniram Judson, and maybe a lesson or two that we can learn in light of...

Well, let me just intercept it for a second. I think of missionaries, and I wonder if you think the same way.

Men like Adoniram Judson. I say to myself, I could never be like that, and I'm spurred on to,

Lord, help me to be more faithful. Then I also say, you know, he was just a man, a sinful man.

He was still struggling with his unredeemed humanity or flesh, whatever we want to call it. And the

Lord used him, so thank you, Lord, that you could use a person like me because you used him. Is that how you think about it?

Yeah. Well, first of all, to answer your first question, I'm not a doctor until May 14th when

I graduate. So even though I'm done, they can't call me that yet. But regarding Judson, he...

Augustine said that you can't know a man unless you become his friend, and I feel like over the last three years of my immersing myself in the writings and the journals and the letters of Judson, I feel like I know the man as well as I would know him if he were here with me today, just because I've really gotten under his skin, so to speak, and understood who he was.

And I think that a few of the main takeaways—one thing I flippantly say to people if they want to know what

I thought of Judson, I'll say, well, he was messed up like the rest of us, but God providentially used him in spite of himself.

But also an observation about him is sometimes in all of our lives, our greatest strength can be our greatest weakness, and our greatest weakness can become a great strength.

And I think that was true in his life. He was, of course, not perfect, but the thing to remember about the context of when he was a missionary is that was the...

His mission was really the boom of what they call the missionary biography or the conversion narrative.

And so the stories that were written about him were called hero novels, and it was around the same time as the other hero novels written by—or written about men like Danny Crockett and Daniel Boone and Lewis and Clark and others.

There was a time in America where people were looking to heroes. And so it doesn't mean his stories are fabricated, it just means that certain details were left out that would have maybe cast him in a more normative light.

And so all that, to be fair, he did suffer a lot, but also you have to remember that this was in the era of pre -modern medicine, pre -jet travel, pre -internet, and he was in pre -modern

Asia, and if he could have gotten on a plane and gone back to the

States to get medical attention for his wife or his children, he would have done it in a heartbeat. He put them on a boat for six months, and they were gone for two years, and that was his greatest attempt for their health.

But, you know, we often look at the great sacrifices they made, but, you know, to be fair, there's probably a lot of people even today who would still make those sacrifices if they had to, if that's what

God pushed them to do. It's just that we don't have as many opportunities now to do that because of modern conveniences, and that's not bad, it's just different.

And the thing about Judson that sustained him, because some people suffered in similar ways that he did, and they went crazy.

Some of his colleagues committed suicide, some probably left the faith, and one of the things that sustained him that made him different than even his contemporaries was a strong Reformed theology that kept him going.

It didn't discourage him from evangelism, it actually encouraged him that God is the one who's going to save through pain or pleasure.

And that really set him apart, was a high view of God, a low view of man, and a strong vision of the centrality of God's providence in all aspects of life.

Well, Evan, today has gone by quickly, 24 minutes done, we've got 30 seconds. If our listeners would like to support you via prayer or know more about you or give to the ministry, how could they do that?

We have a family blog, you can go to it, it's probably the longest domain name in the history of the internet, it's called thefellowshipoftheburninghearts .com.

Alright, say it one more time, you've got 10 seconds. Yeah, thefellowshipoftheburninghearts .com.

Go there and there's places to support it. A hard break, Evan, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio, may

God bless your ministry. Yeah, thank you. No Compromise Radio, with Pastor Mike Avendroth, is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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