Our Family’s ReflectionAs we come to the end of another year and the beginning of a new one, we are so grateful and thankful first for a merciful God who can use broken vessels. Also for you – the people who are praying for us, caring for us and standing with us in ministry. As we reflect on this last year we have had some great times and some very difficult times yet the Lord has been our constant, reliable stability in the midst of the storm and our cheerleader in the victories.
We give praise to Him for those of you who have stood with us. Your ministry to us has kept us going and your prayers have spurred us on to continue by His grace. And even though there have been difficulties, it has also been an incredible year of growth and personal spiritual development. For this we can truly look back on it with complete thanks-
giving!
However, God has taught us one major lesson this year. That is, what it truly means to live simply and by God’s provisions.
I read a saying once that said if you were willing to pick up a penny lying on the ground, you were rich beyond measure for God has filled our world with shiny new pennies, free for the taking, that others simply ignore: a sunset, a hug, a birdsong, the smell family dinner cooking…all these shiny, free pennies! ―Less stuff‖ is not such a bad thing. It has caused us to rely com-pletely on God’s mercy and provision. We can have those necessary daily conversations with God because we don’t have as many distractions to get in the way. We are also more open to His leading and the recognition of His sovereignty. We are also free to develop those relationships with each other that are so very important.
When we are ―rich‖, I think we tend to rely on ourselves or on the market or something other than our Lord. It clouds our judgment and distorts our vision and makes very ungrateful people. It is an awesome thing to see the hand of God at work on behalf of His children without our meddlesome behavior. This has been the greatest lesson this year: To live simply and know that God will care for us in a way only He can.
“Our Prayer for the Persecuted Church”
I love you, o Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. O Lord our deliverer, deliver us from evil. Sovereign Holy God, we marvel at Your work amongst the nations and we trust You. As we bring our requests to You, please forgive our sins, and our fleshly weaknesses and hear and answer our prayers for the sake of Your kingdom and glory.
We pray today for our brothers and sisters who live with sadness, trauma and fear, and who live with daily hardship, discrimination and persecution because they have taken Your name and are Christians in a world that hates Christ. We bring before You our persecuted brothers and sisters whose lives and security are under threat daily. We bring before You especially those who are imprisoned and those who are branded 'apostate' and sentenced to death because they have turned to Jesus. Lord our deliverer, deliver them from evil.
We bring before You our persecuted brothers and sisters whose lives have been shattered by religious repression, violent religious hatred and jihad, as they now face the daily struggle to maintain faith, hope and grace to forgive, as Satan attacks their hearts and minds. Lord our
deliverer, strengthen their faith and deliver them from evil. We bring before You those who through ignorance, blindness, demonic interference and sin have set themselves against Your Church and yet are merely sinners in need of the Savior. Lord our deliverer, convict them of sin and deliver them from evil.
We bring before you all those who profess Christ and yet are soft, lukewarm, uncaring, unregenerate, fearful or lazy. Lord, may Your Spirit awaken, revive, reform and embolden us all to seek and embrace Your call upon our lives as ambassadors for Christ, no matter what the personal cost. Lord our deliverer, forgive us our sins and deliver us from evil.
We pray to you, the only living God, the Sovereign Almighty God for whom nothing is impossible. We ask that You, the God of Peace, will intervene in the conflicts in this world.
We pray especially that You will 'frustrate the ways of the wicked' and disrupt, expose and destroy terror net-works and the illegal trade in weapons and ammunition. Put an end to this trade in death, shatter its foundations and strike its roots, disrupt its progress and starve it in the field, for the sake of Your kingdom and glory.
Lord, may Your Spirit embolden and compel Your church to preach the whole gospel. May conviction of sin abound, may righteousness spring up, may persecutors of the church be trans-formed into preachers of the Gospel , may liberty fill the earth so that the sower may overtake the reaper and may all who see it rejoice in the Lord. We thank you for Your grace and mercy. Deliver us from evil o Lord our deliverer, so we may live to serve You, for the sake of Your kingdom and glory. In the name of Jesus. AMEN
Ministry/Family Update
This new year will bring about the biggest and most changes our family has seen yet. Here are some of our plans. We will be traveling most of January—March to places in Kansas, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Colorado, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee & any where else we can get someone to let us share the passion God has put in our hearts.
We will be buying our plane tickets & travel necessities, applying for passports, and getting lots of necessary paper work together for the next big step of getting on the plane early this summer. When we leave we will be headed to Chiang Mai for language and cultural acquisition. We are so overwhelmed at how God has in many ways already paved the way for us there, by having people we already love and trust in Chiang Mai. We grew to love them while at Tennessee Temple . They are currently helping us locate housing, doctors/hospitals, schools, tutors, and any-thing we can think of to ask they are trying to answer.
As far as on the home front, the anticipation of leaving is brewing. In the house we are getting rid of lots of stuff and making lists of things we may need. We are all very excited to continue seeing God work everyday in our lives. Pray for us and especially the children as we begin the transition now and leave in a few short months. Right now we have only 5 months before we are scheduled to leave for the mission field. We are still about $1200 short per month. We are looking for people to contact their home churches and see if we could present our ministry and if the church is supporting new missionaries at this time or in the near future. If we can get 15 new churches to support us we should be ready to leave when June roles around. It takes one or two phone calls for you or hundreds for us alone. Thanks for supporting us in this way…
