• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

The ‘long arm’ of God

Posted on June 5, 2018 by wtdavid

touch-of-God-gives-life-to-the-soul-400x320I have always been fascinated by the verse in Isaiah: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear” (59:1).  It’s a poetic way of stating that God is not limited, in any way, from doing what pleases Him.  What delights Him most is when His creation attributes glory to Him.  As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it: “And in our prayers to praise him, ascribing kingdom, power and glory to him.”  God’s desire is that in everything we do, we bring glory to Him (1 Corinthians 10:31)

Here’s the rub: despite our best intentions something often stands in our way from turning all praise back to God.  The prophet Isaiah goes on to say in the following verse: “but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and you sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear” (59:2)  It’s our inability to do what we know we should do. It’s the separation we experience when we know we have brought shame upon our Father.

Yet, we often ‘plough on’, believing that the weight of the good things we will do for God will compensate for our warped heart motivation.  We don’t stop to consider what might be ‘going wrong’ in our hearts.

The extraordinarily good news is that Jesus broke down that ‘wall of separation’ and restored us to live in community with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Father ‘delighted in bruising His Son’ so that His glory now covers us in robes of righteousness, giving us access into God’s presence.  The ‘long arm’ of God has reached down, and reaches down again each day to draw us back to Himself: to experience His forgiveness and to give us a heart to offer back to Him our thanks and praise.

Earlier this year, I ‘gifted’ the World Team Global community the challenge of impacting two unreached people groups this year in some significant way. We have had good conversations so far about who those people groups might be.  However, prayer is our first, and continual, step in this process.  Join me the 7th of June at 15h00 Paris time!

 

Join me for five (5) minutes for a ‘worldwide concert of prayer’ this coming Thursday at 15h00 Paris time. Wherever you might be at that time, would you stop and simply pray:

God, show us what people groups, among whom we currently work, that You long for World Team to impact this year?

Spread the word to others that they might join us for 5!

Filed under: Challenge, Prayer, Unreached people groups | 2 Comments »

Gifting the challenge – HOW?

Posted on April 26, 2018 by wtdavid

One of the other questions that has come up when talking about the ‘Gifting a Challenge’ project is: how are we going to identify the two people groups on which to focus and the indicators for determining impact? how bis

It’s a great question.

In the first series of online forums, we asked two questions:

  • Which one or two UPGs (that WT is working with) would you suggest we focus on and the reasons why?
  • What 5 markers would demonstrate concretely the impact of our efforts among those one or two people groups?

What I found interesting was that there a fair amount of convergence in the answers given to these questions.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised since it’s something many have been praying about for some time.

The HOW, I believe, is discovered by gathering people from the WT Global community to enter into conversation with one another and asking the Lord to lead us as we talk.

We need you to work this process further.  I hope you’ll join us on one of the next online forums.

Information on times and the link will be sent soon.

Filed under: Challenge, Interdependence, Prayer, Unreached people groups | Leave a comment »

Gifting a challenge — Why?

Posted on April 24, 2018 by wtdavid

Earlier this year, I gifted this challenge to you, to us as a World Team Global community: “To concretely see, observe and identify the impact of our efforts among two people groups.”  After holding two online forums earlier this month, I realized that the ‘why’ behind this challenge may not have been clearly communicated. the-challenge

So, why did I ‘gift this challenge’ to you, to us?  Three reasons come quickly to mind.

First, God calls us to declare His glory to the nations as a community.  When the apostle Paul reminds us of the fact that we are the recipients of the ‘mystery hidden for ages’, he calls us to join him in teaching, proclaiming, declaring that mystery to the nations which is ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:24-29).  The ‘you’ in this text refers to us as a community; a community called to take up this ‘challenge’ to declare Him to the nations.

Second, such a challenge binds us together in new ways as a global community; uniting our strengths and resources towards accomplishing together something that we could not accomplish alone. By nature, we are focused on the ministry to which God has called us.  However, when we lift our eyes off that local ministry for just a moment, we gain a greater perspective of what God is doing in our part of the world as well as many other parts of the world.

Finally, other ministry initiatives would be the natural fruit of taking on such a challenge.  As our hearts are ‘warmed’ by seeing the impact of the Gospel in concrete ways among two unreached people groups, many in the WT Global community will naturally propose other projects to other unreached peoples.  As we see God work, we are spurred on to trust Him to see the Gospel impact other peoples and nations.

No challenge is by nature ‘easy’.  Having each other to ‘spur one another on’ is our best next step for addressing any challenge.

Join us for another series of online forums where we will further discuss this challenge.  Information on times and the link will be sent soon.

Filed under: Challenge, Community, Unreached people groups | Leave a comment »

Gifting a challenge

Posted on January 17, 2018 by wtdavid

Last Friday night for the first session of the Alpha Course sponsored by our local church, we were introducing ourselves around the table.  L–, a guest and friend of Jean-Claude, looked at me several times saying, “I feel like I’ve seen this man before.”  “Are you local?” he asked.  Jean Claude jokingly said that he might have seen me running around Cergy.  “David runs several times a week.  He runs marathons.”

Yes, I do run.  Or at least I try to run three times a week.  However, I haven’t run a marathon in over 10 years.  I didn’t correct Jean Claude’s statement, I let it ride (read, I let it ‘run’).  The challenge is gone. I’ve been running for my own stress relief and health, which is a very good objective according to my doctor.  The challenge, the vision of something greater is not part of what gets me up in the morning anymore to go out running. It’s become a routine.

In our family, we do what is called ‘Secret Santas’.  Each member of the family is given the name of another family member through an online program.  My oldest daughter drew my name this year and her gift to me was: the entry fee for the Florence marathon on November 25th of this year.  Another marathon?! The challenge is certainly not the same as it was a number of years ago – to run three marathons before I turned 50 years old.  However, it’s a challenge nonetheless; a challenge to run a marathon with two of my children.

The people we are most concerned about; the people for whom we work are the lost.  Our desire, our central ministry focus is to see all our work contribute to raising up disciples and communities of believers and praying for exponential growth (read, multiplication) of those disciples and communities across a people group.  Whether you are ‘on the ground’ in ministry or processing support gifts or mobilising new workers or keeping our finances healthy or fixing our IT issues, all of it has the same ultimate objective in mind.

Today, I am ‘gifting’ you a challenge. 

run with me 3Run with me.  Run together with me.  Not just to do your work better, not just to see a number come to Christ through our work and efforts, but to concretely see, observe and identify the impact of our efforts among two people groups.  Our tendency will be to want to ‘go it alone’ – just as I told my kids that I would run on my own and they could run ahead of me.  However, the joint chant should become: “I, we want to run with you.”

How will we know?  How will we know what that concrete impact upon two people groups will look like?  We will discover it together as we talk, pray, dialogue, plan and pray again together. All of us.

I’m sending you a ‘save the date’ note by this post.

Save Tuesday, November 27th as the date when we will stand back to see what God has done as we ‘run together’ this year (#givethanksTuesday).

Filed under: Challenge, Unreached people groups | Leave a comment »

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