Prayer Requests & Praises
• It is a praise that the humanitarian aid container arrived here after many days of negotiation and paperwork, and has been successfully unloaded. It now just awaits a customs inspection.
• Continue to pray for our conversation class, as we are building relationships with people, that we might be able to show them Christ through those relationships.
• Pray for the church here in Berdyansk, as they are having struggles with interpersonal politics. Pray that differences would be able to be resolved, that reconciliation would be an ongoing practice and that Christ would be glorified through it all.
• Pray that God would go before us and that He would make a path for further ministry opportunities here.
• For me, I would just ask that you would continue to pray against the distractions of homesickness. That my mind would just be here in Ukraine, and not back home. Also, that I would be able to find my niche here, and that I would be able to make deep and lasting friendships with the people around me.
• Continue to pray for our conversation class, as we are building relationships with people, that we might be able to show them Christ through those relationships.
• Pray for the church here in Berdyansk, as they are having struggles with interpersonal politics. Pray that differences would be able to be resolved, that reconciliation would be an ongoing practice and that Christ would be glorified through it all.
• Pray that God would go before us and that He would make a path for further ministry opportunities here.
• For me, I would just ask that you would continue to pray against the distractions of homesickness. That my mind would just be here in Ukraine, and not back home. Also, that I would be able to find my niche here, and that I would be able to make deep and lasting friendships with the people around me.
posted by Sarah C | 12:46 PM
1 Comments:
Pressing on Toward the Goal
12Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of
me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
15All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16Only let
us live up to what we have already attained.
17Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. 18For, as I have often told
you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach,
and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord
Jesus Christ, 21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his
glorious body.
Phil 3:12-21
I think one of the most glorious gifts of being so far from home and outside of our daily comfort zone is the clarity. It is not necessarily a clarity that applies only to our present circumstances, but rather in the absence of the materialistic and worldly distractions of our comfortable, "American" lifestyles - a statement which I write as I lounge in my brand new home, with central heat, typing upon my relatively new computer...you get the point - illuminates the true reality in which we ALL live as Believers. Paul writes that we are citizens of Heaven, by default not of earth...by definition, our home is not here...not in the Ukraine, not in Alabama (from whence I come)...not even the Snoqualmie Valley...anywhere where we have family and friends. We are as yet but travelers in a strange land, who will some day be called home...to our true home for all eternity with Him.
So, now that I've totally depressed you to point out that you really have NO home, let me brighten your day to remind you that in John 14, Jesus tells us that those who love Him, obey Him, and He and the Father make their home with them.
23Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24He who does
not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.
So, when the Enemy taunts you with homesickness, remember, even when you're "here" (wherever "here" is), you're still not "home" because your true home is in Heaven. In the meantime, because you are being obedient to His teachings, Jesus and the Father love you, and They have come to make their home with you, so "dude...back off!" (smile>
Praying that you will keep your eyes on Him and on the prize for which He has called you...
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