that was a super-fast week! wow! here it is - monday morning - and i didn't take the chance to blog at all last week! i guess that means it was super-packed!
speaking of super...
our theme was superheros at vbs. "unleash the power of god". cool, right? unleashing the power of the holy spirit is a great theme!
i love to be involved with "missions". our theme was "the proclaimers!" and it was such a fun week in that room! the teachers shared about tools that we need when we proclaim the gospel and follow jesus.
here are two new friends of mine - jenn and ashley. they were teaching about seeing the world the way god sees the world. it was SO GOOD! their tool was the globe. they will be leaving very soon to join a team in west africa to proclaim the good news to an unreached people group! it was such a blessing to hear their passion and excitement!
i had to leave vbs on wednesday morning to pick up ashley and jenn (and jenn's husband, michael) at the airport. it was good timing, because my heart needed some adjusting... coffee and quiet while waiting for their flight was just the thing i needed:
i love missions. i love the idea of finishing the task of acts 1:8. i love the picture of revelation 7:9-10! i can't wait until all nations, tribes and tongues are worshipping the king around the throne!
here's a little something i don't love, though: the push-back from the enemy. sometimes i forget that when we are working towards reaching and engaging a people group that satan has kept unreached for a long time, we are definitely going to experience some push-back; some warfare.
at the beginning of the week, kids maybe had never heard of the y people. they may have never even heard of the countries that the y people live. by the end of the week, they knew all those things and more! the kids had raised (with the generous help of their parents!) over $2,200 to purchase solar-powered audio bibles to send with these missionaries to west africa! the y people will HEAR the gospel proclaimed in their heart language because of these kids! we were ALL so excited for what god was doing and was going to do! and we got to be part of that!
and satan? he was mad. he was ticked that this people that has been unreached and unengaged with the gospel for soooooo long might soon be engaged.
i'll spare you the details, but satan has a bag of tricks labeled "tami" and he knows just which ones to pull out. and he did. and once again my response was "why would god allow this to happen? we are being obedient to HIM! shouldn't this be easier?!" (yes, i said that...) chris reminds me in these times that satan doesn't care too much about disobedient disciples... he's right.
(and, seriously - where does that line of thinking come from in the first place?! i'm embarrassed that my default is thinking things should be easy...)
time and prayer brings clarity and a renewed (and correct) perspective. i'm reading "spiritual warfare and missions" by jerry rankin and ed stetzer. i wish i would have started reading it before vbs... but the words have been an encouragement, no less.
i'm in the debrief time. god has given a clarity to discern and i am thankful.
but there is something else on this page - towards the bottom: "to win the battle, we must value the advancement of god's kingdom instead of our own agenda." that's something else god is teaching me right now. i have great plans and ideas and i love sharing them. i believe they are even god-given. but, sometimes, for the advancement of the kingdom, we fight for our king and now just our cause... and if you know me, you know my heart and my passion... god's got this. and this past week (and hopefully long term around our church) the kingdom and our king made some serious ground among the y people in west africa...
(i just went to sip a little more coffee and it's empty. isn't that sad on a monday morning?)
to top it all off, yesterday i sent my big girl to camp. actually, i sent her to counsel at camp. for two weeks. and i already miss her dearly... i got a text from her last night. i don't feel i can share the details, but would you pray for two girls in her cabin? k and c? god knows. my heart hurts so much. and as i drifted to sleep praying for them and for ash, i knew why god had taken ashleigh to them for the week... what a blessing to a mom's heart - that misses her daughter - to see god working and growing and using her daughter. i seriously anticipate god using this girl. ahem. i mean woman...
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