Each One, Doing Their Part

Before I tell this story, let me update you on our Father's Day service. We were extremely blessed to have Steven and Lori Dougherty lead worship for us. Sometimes you don't realize the hole of not having live worship leaves in your heart. You could say, "Well you can worship God anytime!" Yep, but there is something about corporate worship and live leading, that makes it so three-dimensional.

We handed out a cup of beer nuts (in church!) to every dad and gave them a book as they left. Our daughter put together a beautiful video called Daddy's Hands and we had a clip from Wild at Heart, a men's study we're starting. The sermon was brief but to the point about Peter's encounter with Jesus, and coffee and lemonade topped off the fellowship time afterwards. It was nice to be in a building. It felt 'official' in a good way.



Here is most of our team after praying for the service. Josh was inside working out the sound with Steven and Lori.

Now for the story: Last night was our final night of Greg's series on community, sharing our vision with our small group. We focused on the P of EQUIP (Everyone Qualified, Unified, Ignited in Purpose). Purpose has to do with God's story. We focused on reaching out to others far away (missions). Greg told a story that was told to us Tuesday as we had lunch with one of our board members who was visiting from Arizona.

Bruce is on the Barnabas team at Frontiers, a missions agency that is in every Muslim country. Bruce's job is to send his team members anywhere in the world where one of their missionaries is in crisis. This story has to do with a couple in Pakistan who's marriage was in crisis and they called Bruce for help, saying they wanted to go back to the states. As Bruce prayed about who to send, he realized he was going to be near Pakistan shortly and decided to go himself.

The couple that was there had been brought by God to replace a couple who had been there for 15 years. This couple went to vising the existing couple to see if they wanted to be missionaries in the area. While there, the husband who had been there died suddenly. The wife decided it wasn't a safe place for her and her children without a husband and decided to come back to the states. The visiting couple felt God's calling to take over the group this couple had worked with for 15 years. They spent the next year preparing to go and went.

Now Bruce is there counseling the couple. The couple decided after a few days of reconciling to stay in the country and continue ministering to their group of young men. The group had become bold in their outreach to the Muslims in the area. One of the men decided to go into Taliban camps and share the gospel. The cook for the Taliban camp accepted Jesus. The cook realized it may not be safe for him to be following Jesus amongst these extremists and secretly snuck out of the camp. The Taliban group searched for him and found him and begged him to come back. "But I'm following Jesus now, and you're not." The Taliban replied, "That's okay, you're a really good cook and we need a cook, please come back." So he did.

The cook continued to witness to the Taliban and some also became Christ followers. One day as the gentleman who led the cook to Christ was entering the camp, he was met by one of the new Taliban members. As the Taliban member reached out his hand to greet the bold witnesser, he set off a bomb and they were both killed.

The moral of the story is, that was we support Frontiers and Bruce, he does his part by saving marriages on the mission field. The missionaries do their part by discipling a group of men. One of the men did his part and witnessed in a Taliban camp, converting the cook. The cook did his part by witnessing to the Taliban, many of whom have accepted Christ. Little by little, if we all do our part, souls are saved from an eternity in hell. God loves every Taliban member. Wouldn't it be awesome to see all the Taliban come to Christ?

Have a blessed sunny Thursday.