Finding God's Promises - Update for 2021 part I
Updated: Jan 23, 2022
It is now January of 2022. As I sit here recovering from COVID-19 I hear the Spirit of the Lord saying "Well done faithful child." I am persuaded to be at peace as He sits with me unveiling some of His plans and designs for Family of God Ministries. He is requesting that I allow the vulnerability and transparency of His Heart for mankind to be revealed here today.
I am asking that you as partners with Family of God Ministries do not run or flee. Do not cower back, but allow Gods Spirit to embolden you and raise you up. I am asking you to give financially more than you thought possible. I ask that you pray more fervently and deeper, without ceasing than you have before. I ask that you stand with us and fight the good fight being bolder and stronger than ever before.
The Time of the Lord is at Hand and I believe He has brought you along side of Family of God Ministries for "Such a Time as This!!"
I find grasping all He has has brought me through personally and as the Co-founder with Christ of Family of God Ministries impossible. I find it impossible to fathom the depths of my God's love and yes, His compassion for mankind.
The ending of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 felt so disastrous I struggled to see a way forward. I had placed my complete trust in my God. I trusted Him to reveal His plans and teach me how to walk beside those that had only known hopelessness and death.
Now I felt that I had failed in all He had asked of me!
Defeat is a spirit from hell, but it can only enter in when we begin to doubt our GOD!
As anyone that knows me can attest, I walk in a simple child like faith and yes, trust. This seems to many to be completely naive. Yes, this simple way of being in relationship with my God has caused many around me to struggle. Now, the simpleness of my trust in my God has also given me places of deep struggle. God asks me to trust completely, to hold nothing back from Him. This is also the way He directs me to be with those around me. In our human ways this is known to be quite foolish. To be this way personally and spiritually is a choice and a delight to my spirit and soul. But within business of ministry can it create great challenges that could have been avoided? Had I not trusted so completely could it have saved much energy, time, pain and yes, money?
BUT GOD... His ways are far above my ways....
Portion of Impact Statement:
Family of God Ministries, is intentionally giving to others, all that we are receiving from Christ Jesus. We are walking beside our neighbors, engaging and purposefully growing relationships with broken individuals, displaced families and our surrounding community. In doing so, Family of God Ministries, is stepping into the gap and serving real physical and spiritual needs. We have been placed here to build up the broken, bind up the lost on the streets and within our bush community, neighborhoods and extended areas.
Family of God Ministries,
is revealing the tangible Agape Love of Christ Jesus in Word, Action and Deed.
Portion of our Mission:
Family of God Ministries takes teens and young adult men and women from surviving occupation, war, survival and their long term effects. We are bringing God's Love into a tangible place of faith, hope, and love of Jesus in building relationships with Christ as their personal savior. He is becoming the only necessity for victory on earth and eternity in Heaven.
So I ask myself once again, has God placed this simple trust and His Agape love within me to punish me or to reveal Himself within me and through me? Is He revealed to those around me? The Answer - Reflect Christ in all my ways.
October 2020, one of our ministry leaders was found to have been stealing. This was a huge test of faith and trust. Part of what makes F of God so different is in the ways of leadership. F of God has been formed not as a typical American Mission grown and assigned to be run by foreigners within a Nation. God has formed Family of God Ministries to be operated by the broken Nationals of a corrupt and broken Mozambique. This means we are to intentionally raise up the broken and lost around us and grow the responsibility of leadership within them. This level intentionality is not seen as wise or prudent in the eyes of men. It is seen as foolish, idiotic and of poor judgement.
I am not saying that choosing to trust without condition or restraint is not without great risk, it most certainly is. But who is taking the risk? Is the risk mine or is it risk that God takes on for each of us? As I weigh "risk" within the nature of my Jesus, I see it as Godly Wisdom.
To trust and believe as a child trusts his earthly father carries with it the certainty he will be let down and the father will fail the child at some point. This is where I choose to put my trust in Christ Jesus. My responsibility is to trust Him in "All His Ways," having Jesus as my perfect example.
His responsibility as my Father, Teacher and my Leader is to, NEVER let me down!
Now, I and Family of God had been betrayed and deep levels of deception, manipulation and theft had been revealed. This means that each of you, as our partners and yes, God, had been betrayed! For 3 years opportunities were given over and over and over again.Yes, there were parts of my spirit there were aware of these deceptions, but each time I was answered with a renewed assurance from Holy Spirit to continue forward. Ignorant perhaps, trust in God, definitely!
Finally, the fatal day came and God Himself abruptly closed this door within my heart. Instantly time was up and change arrived. With a simple phone call, the investigation began. Within a few hours and with another call it was ended! Within 24 hours this man was removed from leadership and legal actions began.
Each of us has been given the great gifts and the responsibilities of free will. We are granted by God the right to choose from all things. This endowment however, does not mean that all things are good for the choosing. The reputation of Family of God Ministries left behind by this man and his betrayal was one of falsehood and scorn. Many in the bush community had been manipulated, deceived and betrayed by broken promises and human failures. Family of God Ministries was used to misrepresent the love and compassion of my God.
Each step or choice we take will either bring great Joy to Christ Jesus or it will serve as a place of great pain.
In my humanness i longed to hate this man! He had violated the foundation of trust I had so innocently bestowed upon the relationship I thought we were building over these last 3 years. That was the personal side.
Then the professional side, the representation of Jesus by a leader within Family of God Ministries had been used to stain the reputation of my precious Jesus. I thought this was more than I could bear. I thought to close the doors, to run and admit openly in all humility Family of God Ministries was ruined and dead. I had failed. I wanted to give up and yes, give into the pain of defeat.
Defeat is a spirit from hell, but it can only enter in when we begin to doubt our GOD!
BUT MY GOD...
What was I to do now? Unconditional by definition means " : with no limits in any way : without restriction by conditions or qualifications."
Love, true agape love does not stop in the face of betrayal - IT GROWS. The great love, the compassion, the agony of sorrow I felt for this man; This part of God's heart never faltered, never left me, not for one moment! Through this love I can now glimpse the reality of what Jesus endured as walked this earth full of all our sin.
Now I had to deal with the feelings left to me by this persons choices to consciously betray and everything that had gone on to accomplish his personal desire for self. I felt that I had failed God. I loved with an Agape love those Lord had brought out from the obscurity of the hopelessness within survival life. I had made the choices to consciously trust and believe that the choices this person would make would be led of God and not flesh of himself.
As I have walked through this process I have grieved and been torn open by pain. This pain has brought confusion, doubt, fear and many other spirits and emotions that are not of my God! Only as I have been able to begin the process of allowing Jesus to remove the emotion and begin to analyze openly within the truths of Holy Spirit have these other things given way to the true answer.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
As Jesus has been faithful to reveal that He knows the pain of betrayal He brings a new humility within me that has begun to grow. I have often wondered and asked of the Lord why is it that Family of God Ministries seems to be so hidden. In our obscurity I am coming to understand that it has been part of God's bigger plan.
Through the obscurity Jesus faced as He came closer to the days He would step out from behind and into His bold victorious ministry, there was the gleaning process between Him and His Father. He had to endure in order for His strength to come completely from God. After He was baptized by John the Baptist, the Spirit of God rested upon Him, but immediately, He was thrust out into the wilderness. For 40 days He wondered, no food, no water, no shelter from the storm. I wonder what was His strength? All hell came against Him at His most vulnerable times.
BUT HIS GOD...
Jesus never faltered, He did not fail! The times of testing were so much larger than His frail human body could endure; But the Spirit of God was His Strength! I now needed to find this same strength of Gods Spirit.
Jesus walked beside a man that outwardly represented himself as His disciple. This man was openly trusted without reservation or condition. This man was to care for those around him leading them to the truth of Christ Jesus the Messiah for all mankind. For 3 years, Jesus chose to walkout His ministry with this man at His side, entrusting him with the duties of his office within Jesus' ministry. This man was in charge of the money sacks, being the one responsible for buying and selling, making arrangements of food and shelter for Jesus and the others. This man was with Jesus day and night. This man had in intimate relationship with Christ himself, How was it that Jesus allowed this man to be any part of his ministry? Jesus has been showing and talking to me about Judas Iscariot.
Did the choices Jesus made to walkout His Ministry with Judas at His side ever stain the face of God? Or did the unwavering love God displayed upon Judas and His Bigger Plan come to pass because of Jesus?
As Jesus has been revealing and showing the ways in which I have felt a fool, He has also been showing and revealing the bigger plans of His Father in Heaven. In my pain I could not see, but in His great Trust of me, I can now begin understand. If Judas had not betrayed my precious Jesus, the plans of God could not have been revealed and brought forth. What is seen as a mans betrayal, weakness and sin is also revealed as God's design and redemption for mankind.
Similarly, what the devil and hell meant for the destruction of Family of God Ministries is now being formed into God's Glory. By His bigger design and purposes people all around are experiencing a better way of revealing Gods Love, Power and Glory.
Throughout 2021, the might and power of Gods design has been not just revealed but tangibly poured out. In a matter of 14 months, Family of God Ministries has gone from being seen as a scorn to shinning a light so bright that no darkness of hell can withstand the glare! We have favor of man and yes, of God! The lands are abounding the with the harvest of souls. Christ is Alive and He Reigns on High.
Without challenges, pain, sorrow and choice why would we ever need God??
Please stay tuned Tonight for Finding God's Promises - Part II.
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