• 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!

Community prayer snapshot

Posted on February 9, 2017 by wtdavid

I don’t know what you did today, but I spent the morning praying for Asia with the France team.

The room was divided into seven (7) stations.  At each station, we prayed for 15-20 minutes, in small groups, for the prayer points at that station.  We ‘moved around’ the room throughout the morning and prayed with different groups of different people.  At two stations, the group watched a short video from two of our teams in Asia.  Prayers were offered in French. Prayers were offered in English.  Prayers may have been offered in other languages.20170209_105127

One person commented as we were leaving, “I’m really glad I came this morning. It was so encouraging.”  Another said how good it was to be praying for and learning about another area of the world which he had never visited.

We would love h20170209_105153ear about your ‘community prayer snapshot’. Feel free to post those in the comment section.

Prayer leads us to “see the world as God does, to recognize more and more the depth of His grace towards us, and allow our hearts to ‘overflow’ with joy, with passion, with the unstoppable desire to grab that rope cord and join together in a movement.”

Filed under: Community, Movement, Prayer | 4 Comments »

Raise the sails!

Posted on February 8, 2017 by wtdavid

This past Monday, I met with two young leaders from a small mission that is “re-building” itself.  I say ‘young’ because the two guys could have been my sons.  They asked me questions, almost nonstop, for 90 minutes.  Good questions; the kind that make you sit back and hesitate before you try to answer.  They were eager to learn from another.  They were passionate.  They were focused.

When I say that their mission is ‘small’, it does not do them justice.  Their numbers may be small, but their dream is huge and draws you in to want to know more abpelicanpnewall4out how they believe God will accomplish it.  Their vision caused me to want to help them, not criticize their efforts and strategies.

As I thought about all this later, I realized the dream was compelling, but it was their passion, their hunger to engage in the accomplishment of this vision that spoke to me.  It was as if, we were all on a sailboat together and these guys were screaming: “Raise the sails!  Get ready to ‘rock and roll’ because the wind is up!”  What would you do?  You would run to grab hold of one of those rope cords and start heaving to raise those sails.

God has laid on our hearts a dream, a vision of multiplying disciples and communities of believers among the unreached.  However, we ‘lack’ the passion at times to give our all for this missional endeavor.  When the call is heard to ‘raise the sails’, some of us prefer criticism and push back, rather than heart-y engagement.

As we begin to see the world as God does, as we recognize more and more the depth of His grace towards us, our hearts will ‘overflow’ with joy, with passion, with the unstoppable desire to grab that rope cord and join together in a movement.

Filed under: Community, Passion, Vision | 4 Comments »

Prayer DOES take planning

Posted on February 7, 2017 by wtdavid

It’s good to hear how others respond to things we talk about in the WT Global community.  I was copied on this note the other day and thought it might ‘stir your minds and hearts’:

prayergroups“To my field mates,

 I am not sure if everyone has been reading some of the emails from David but they are great reminders to why we need to gather to pray as a field, team.

 One quote was from a book by David Bryant that I especially like,  “Years ago, David Bryant wrote the book, Concerts of Prayer, in which he argued for prayer communities and offered a ‘format’ for hosting a concert of prayer.  What I pulled from the book could be simply stated: **** we need to pray together, in community.”

 I remember back in the early days when we were studying language. We were a small team and lived close to each other. We took the whole day off from school and we gathered as a team to pray and worship.

 I know it is not as easy today with us all spread out and we have more ministry going on but the importance of prayer as a large team is still just as important. The Day of Prayer happens only a few times a year so I encourage you all to take some time out as a team to pray. It doesn’t need to be for the whole day but a time in “community” to lift your concert of prayer to God.

 I don’t know how that will look for you but here I will be gathering on the roof of our teammates’ house in the morning. Not sure who else will be able to make it. Will send out specifics when I know.  For all of us, be creative.

 As we serve together,

 S”

I note a couple of important elements in this note: (1) team prayer demonstrates our need for community, and allows us together to lift our voices to God; (2) no specific pattern or agenda is necessarily required; we can be flexible in our community prayer time; and (3) some planning is needed to provide a context, a framework for the community to gather and pray.

Prayer is one of our guiding principles.  Prayer resets our focus ‘to the North’, to the One who is our Father and our God.  As one writer put it: “It is not that we need to pray for the work, prayer is the work!”

 

 

Filed under: Community, Prayer | Leave a comment »

Learning the Gospel is a daily experience

Posted on February 3, 2017 by wtdavid

It’s the end of another week. As I look back over this past week, there are a number of questions I can use to evaluate or assess the fruitfulness of my week.daily-learning

One that doesn’t often come to mind, but should, is: how did the Gospel become more precious to me this week?  To put it another way, how did the Gospel help me see more of the depth of my sin and cause me to hold on more strongly to the honour and blessing God bestows on me as His child?

When you or I are in one of our ‘snits’ – simply defined as: “a fit of irritation; a sulk” – the last thing we are probably thinking about is unfathomable love of Christ for us.  What we are thinking about is how angry, frustrated or irritated we are with a teammate, an event or the seemingly bad things coming our way.

Yet, those very moments are the moments when God is most at work to show us our sin and push us back to Him where we would find all that we need.  Much of our work as cross cultural workers happens at a level which is invisible to the eye.  God is concerned above all with our heart, and our ‘stance’, probably more than He is with ‘our ministry’ (just read the book of Jonah again).

We talk a lot about the Gospel in World Team.  However, ‘talk’ is by no means the same thing as experience; nor the same thing as struggling with God to open our hearts to His Spirit’s searching work.

It is just hard sometimes to ‘believe’ that God truly loves us (1 John 3:1).  The truth is that He does, and we need the Spirit to drive that home to our hearts through experience, through His Word, through prayer, and through friends.

This was only one of many weeks to learn again of the unfathomable riches of Christ poured out to us even when we were in a snit.  I wonder how the Gospel will become more precious to me again next week?

Filed under: Gospel | Leave a comment »

Prayer takes planning

Posted on February 2, 2017 by wtdavid

One of the guiding principles in the World Team Ministry Framework is prayer.  We describe it this way:

“Prayer is real conversation with God and is vital to growing relationship with Him and ministry in His name.  Prayer reflects our belonging and submission to Him, our need for direction and provision, and our acknowledgement that we can do nothing without Him.prayer-in-groups

We believe that personal and corporate prayer manifest obedience and humility, submitting ourselves to God and His agenda, and for His power.  Such dependence nurtures alertness to the spiritual dimensions of our undertakings and equips us with wisdom and knowledge for our calling.  Above all, prayer changes things because it is God’s desire that we ask Him to work.”

 It is a growing dependence that we seek in prayer; a dependence that reminds us of our constant need of the work of the Spirit.  However, prayer takes planning.  When I don’t ‘plan’ prayer into my day, it gets overlooked.  We all know how true that is.  Most of the time, it’s simply a reflection of the fact that prayer is not a priority in our daily lives.  To become more dependent though, prayer must become a reflex.

A week from today, we as a WT Global community will join in prayer for the needs of the ministries God has entrusted us with.  We need to ‘plan’ prayer into our day next Thursday or Friday; to set aside time, however short or long, to be with others to pray.

I received a note from the France team earlier this week and know that they have ‘set aside’ next Thursday to pray.  Is it in your ‘agenda’ already?

Prayer is a real conversation and is vital to growing relationship with Him. 

Filed under: Community, Prayer | 1 Comment »

Reading backwards

Posted on February 1, 2017 by wtdavid

These words of a 17th century English Presbyterian minister, John Flavel,right-to-left are worth ‘chewing over’ in our day:

The providence of God is like Hebrew words—it can be read only backwards.”

The Hebrew language is read backwards, from most of our perspectives.  It is read from right to left, rather than from left to right.  What Flavel meant to say was that God’s providence must be read in a similar way, or as one writer put it: “backwards in time”.

Remembering what God has done is one of the structuring devices of the Bible. It would do us well to ‘remember’ more often what He has done for us in the past in order to hold more firmly to the assurance that He will continue to show His mercy to us in the future.

John Flavel had this to say further in that regard:

“Search backward into all the performances of Providence throughout your lives. So did Asaph: ‘I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings’ (Psalm 77:11, 12). He laboured to recover and revive the ancient providences of God’s mercies many years past, and suck a fresh sweetness out of them by new reviews of them. Ah, sirs, let me tell you, there is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own lives, if you would but sit down and record from the beginning hitherto what God has been to you, and done for you; what signal manifestations and outbreakings of His mercy, faithfulness and love there have been in all the conditions you have passed through. If your hearts do not melt before you have gone half through that history, they are hard hearts indeed. ‘My Father, thou art the guide of my youth’ (Jeremiah 3:4).”

Those words are definitely worth ‘chewing over’ in our day!

Filed under: Remembrance, Sovereignty | Leave a comment »

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