I wanted to first take a moment to tell you about the devotional we read this morning. It focused on "praying the promises of God". It was a great reminder that we can trust that each of the promises in the Word of God will come true, because God made them, and He keeps His promises. We spent some time thinking about some of the promises we have in His word, and how we could pray for those promises. Floyd reminded us about the promise that one day Christ will return, and we prayed that we would be ready for His return. Tamra reminded us that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So we prayed that the Lord of the harvest would send out more workers. Since we know that God desires all men to come to a saving knowledge of Him, we can pray with confidence that He will rise up men and women for that purpose. I've been reading Ephesians and was reminded of the promise that when we believe in Christ, God identifies us as His own by giving us the Holy Spirit. I've been convicted with how much I really think about the awesomeness of having God Himself living in me. I fear that too often I ignore his voice, or I decide to do things the way I want to, rather than seeking His guidance or direction. So my prayer this morning was that we would be reminded of the presence of God within each of us. What an amazing gift to be given. Our final prayer was that we would be filled with a hunger and thirst to know the Word of God so that we might know the promises of God more deeply and be able to claim them for ourselves. May that be the prayer of us all!
I also wanted to share a little with you about the family group that we were paired with, and the devotional time we join them for each night. I'm sure we've mentioned before that we have been joined with the Pacific Family Group. We began joining their family for nightly devotions last week, and on Tuesday night, we had the opportunity to lead the devotional time. Floyd brought his guitar and we led them in several worship songs. Then we decided to take them through the gospel message using the gospel beads we have with us. Much like Rafe has had us do in our meetings, we each took a different bead so that we each had something to talk about. Floyd started us out by telling about the "dark" bead. Rafe would be proud to know that he began at the beginning with Adam and Eve in the garden .:) Tamra talked about the "red" bead, I talked about the "white" bead, Troy had the "blue" bead", Raegan covered the "green" bead, and Tyler volunteered for the "gold" bead. Floyd wrapped it all up for us by covering the symbolism of the butterfly. It was very exciting for us to have the opportunity to "practice" our gospel bead presentation with our family. They even had one of the boys interpret for us, so it was a very good way for us to practice having to stop after each phrase to allow time for him to interpret! We were able to give each of the family group members a bracelet of their own so that they can share the story with their friends.We plan to leave extra bracelets so that as they share, they can give a bracelet to that person (much like we do during the clinics).
I don't know if Tyler's had a chance to tell you much about his experience with sharing the beads with his classmates, but I wanted to take a moment to tell you about it. We asked one of the teachers, Uncle Joshua, if it would be possible for Tyler to go through the meaning of the beads with the class. Well, he was so excited about Tyler sharing the gospel, that he suggested sharing it with both classes...at the same time (50+ kids)!! The kids were very excited, and listened very well while Tyler shared the story with them. Uncle Joshua even had them repeat the meaning of each bead back at the end of the presentation to make sure they really understood each one. I noticed several of them wearing the beads the next day. We hope it will be a good visual reminder of all that God has done for them!
Here are some pictures...
Here is Tyler standing in front of the group. Uncle Joshua is to the right. There are even more kids sitting off to the left, but I could not fit everyone in the picture.
Here is a picture of some of the boys following along with Tyler as he went through the meaning of each bead.
We hope to have more opportunities to share the gospel message during our time here at New Hope!
Continue to pray for open hearts!
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