If we don’t realize that we are but one piece of the puzzle, we will either become arrogant believing everything depends on us or we despair thinking we are alone. Believing we are one part of a bigger whole allows us to joyfully and freely enjoy partnership and the reinforcements of the Body of Christ.
As we lean into the remainder of the year, I look forward to continuing together as a body to boldly and confidently ask the Lord to move us in building a personal relationship with the Nyamwezi people.
I would have never been mature enough to choose this past year, but I am so thankful for the experience. It took away my comforts, rhythms and self-reliance. It overwhelmed me at my human finiteness.
Ryan Berkman (our Student Ministries Pastor) and I are very excited to see the students’ relationships continue to grow in 2021, and we pray that their interactions among each other and with others would be representative of a Christ-like love.
I feel like over the past year of the pandemic, the Holy Spirit took us inward. We examined ourselves and had a time of confession. Now, I believe the Spirit is asking us to look outward, and a big part of this is moving forward with Him in our spiritual gifting.
By definition, “Lent, in the Christian church, is a period of penitential preparation for Easter. In Western churches it begins on Ash Wednesday, six and a half weeks before Easter, and provides for a 40-day fast (Sundays are excluded), in imitation of Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness before he began his public ministry.”
Love isn’t on our minds and hearts only on Valentine’s Day, but we certainly pay attention to it more than usual this month.
Thank you for continuing to pray this Breakthrough Prayer as we step into the second year of this decade: Father, use us to build a reproducing church among an unreached people – the Nyamwezi – by 2030!
