A PLOUGHED FIELD WAITING....

The congregation where I have been worshipping for the past almost two years, recently celebrated its 4th birthday.

This was exciting - looking back and realising that as with everything else, it started small. There are only a handful of the congregation who were founding members - our Senior Pastor and his wife and family being, of course, amongst these.

For some time we have been lightly touching on the subject of outreaches to our local community... but that is where it stopped.

Then week before last at the prayer meeting, God spoke through a question our Pastor put to us : "Why did Jesus make disciples and train them for three years?" Each of us had to reply for himself. Well, even the songs we sang that evening turned out to be about sharing, praying, telling, going.... and then two sisters had the same Word from the Lord about going out to Jerusalem, Judea, Cesarea, and unto the ends of the earth to preach the Word of the Lord and to make disciples... and a brother had a vision whilst we were singing about a land ploughed and ready, with big bags of seed standing opened and ready, a man standing at the water pump ready to open up the streams of water BUT NO ONE TO SOW THE SEEDS.... We believe it was Almighty God who spoke to us directly during that prayer meeting.

It was immediately decided that on Sunday at the morning service, Pastor would announce that we are starting our evangelism strategy from the assembly and having our first meeting on Monday evening. We were 14 in total at the meeting (out of a total of approx. 300) and TO-NIGHT we are flooding our local community surrounding the church with pamphlets, tracts and soaking the area in prayer.

It is a beginning... and I do not see an end to this outreach... I know that it is God's will and we shall go forth and grow and grow and grow..... we cannot harvest if we do not sow.

We are also starting a feeding scheme at a local Government Training Hospital on 7 August - just providing sandwiches to the people waiting in queues for hours at out-patients.... and dealing and praying with them...

We are already involved in a Saturday afternoon prayer meeting in the chapel of this  same hospital where we intercede for the patients, doctors, nurses, technical-, catering-, cleaning-, security- staff and where we have services in the said chapel every Sunday morning for patients. Once you get involved and see the suffering in the hospitals, you will not be able to stop reaching out to one and all of them;

and we already are thinking about a prison fellowship outreach as well...

God's timing is always perfect...

Will you not also look around for a field that has been ploughed and it waiting on the sower to sow the seeds? May the Lord lead you to do just that because time really is running out and there are millions out there starving physically and spiritually, just waiting for YOU (and me) to get up in the Name of our Saviour and get going...

                  ¹⁸ And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to
                  Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹ Go therefore^[a] and make disciples of all the nations,
                  baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ 
                        teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with
                  you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.^{[b] Matt. 28: 18-20}


Thank You, Lord, that this Word, which You spoke to Your disciples 2000 years ago, still holds good for us today. Thank You that You are also still with us, as You were with them, UNTIL the end of the age, where we are now. Bless your Word and Your work wherever and by whoever it be done, in the Name above all Names, Jesus Christ, the Lord.

PRAYING FOR ONE ANOTHER

Recently I experienced first hand how the prayers of friends and brothers and sisters in Christ sustain in times of sickness or trouble.

I was in hospital for an operation, which in itself was not very big, but the growth that was removed, turned out to be malignant!

It is a shocker to have that word spoken into your life! But, as I said, I could truly feel the weight and the effect of the prayers said on my behalf.

One of the prayers in the Bible which I have always loved was when David prayed to God and said words to this effect :

"Who am I, oh God, that you have brought me and my house thus far?"

I have borrowed his words many times when I have prayed towards God.

Sometimes we do not know exactly how we should intercede for one another. During this last week I was reading Colossians  and was struck by the prayer of Paul for the christians in that assembly :

            

                               To God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in

                   Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father.  We always thank

                   God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴ because

                   we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all

                   God’s people — the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for

                   you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message

                   of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing

                   fruit and growing throughout the whole world —just as it has been doing

                   among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.

                   You learned it from Epaphras, our dear fellow servant, who is a faithful

                   minister of Christ on our behalf, and who also told us of your love in the

                   Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not

                   stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the know-

                   ledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit

                   gives so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every

                   way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God,

                              being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you

                  may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the

                  Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people

                  in the kingdom of light. Col. 1: 2 - 12

^{It is our privilege and our responsibility to pray for one another and we do no more than our duty if we do it every day. I know that my mother, who will soon be 89, prays for each living member of her family by name, every night, and it is a comfort to know that my name also, is to be found in her prayers each time.}

^{Thank you, Lord, for the privilege to pray for one another. Please help us not to neglect this daily duty of love.}