For
you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have
received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”
The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of
God..” Romans 5:15-16
In the
past month, I’ve been remined about the reality of spiritual warfare, the
goodness of God, and exhaustion. It all
started the day I received a phone call about my dad dying. He has been an alcoholic longer than I’ve
been alive. I’ve seen him homeless, and
in other ways having to live with the outcome of his addictions. I’ve shared the gospel with him, others have
cared for him and shared the gospel with him, at one point he even “got saved”
but then fell back into his old lifestyle, and then one day a few weeks ago he
was found in his apartment surrounded by empty bottles.
A few
weeks later at the kids’ school, we had our yearly spring fundraiser
event. It is the biggest source of
scholarship funds for the school, but involves lots and lots of work to get it
going. This year we had a committee of
already busy people who were stressed that the event just wasn’t going to
happen, or wasn’t going to be as fruitful as it has been in the past, but we
decided to do what we could do while remembering the things that are real
priorities in our lives. Last Saturday
the event happened, it was fun and everybody I have talked to loved it, and the
proceeds were actually more than last year.
This
week I had a plan to get caught up on calling some of you, calling new churches
where I want to go and speak about Encountering Muslims and our own
fundraising. I started the week by
changing the oil in my truck and found a broken spring shackle on the rear end,
rendering the thing undrivable until I can get it fixed. That day was a whole day of trying to arrange
another vehicle to drive, which a brother from church was able to provide. Today I was just reflecting on how much this
reminds me of working in Lohutok!
I spoke at River Oaks Church a couple of weekends ago, and Pastor Larry said, “God used twelve years in South Sudan to prepare Justin for the ministry he is doing today.” I kind of chuckled about having never seen it that way before, but man he’s right. People die while others grieve and need help, busyness just keeps going on and cars break… But the gospel is still there, and still needed, and we are the ones who have it. In the midst of all of this chaos, when giving up seems like an attractive option, the Lord still has a heart for the nations, the nations are still on our doorstep, and He is still providing opportunities all the time for mobilizing churches and taking the gospel to the unreached. Thanks for reading, praying, keeping up.
