Tag Archives: missionary preparation

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Dear friends of TLC Uganda, 

Pandemics have a way of altering even the best made plans. Don’t they? I imagine many of you have had your lives, homes, and schedules more than a little disrupted. We can relate. We had expected to travel to a mission compound this fall. As James 4:15 recommends, we were careful to say, “if God wills..” when speaking about our intentions. This season of uncertainty seems to be proof of the vanity James warned against. 

Uganda remains closed to outsiders. Furthermore, Uganda’s President Museveni has taken a position of abundant caution, so our trip will likely be pushed back to next spring. Meanwhile we wait, cautiously optimistic about our future in Uganda. We are reminded that God’s timeline is not ours and His ways, perspectives, and purposes are loftier than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9). So, we submit to wait until the Lord opens the door for us to proceed. Meanwhile we pray that His will is done and that a way will be made clear for us even in this present darkness. May His Word be a light to our path and a lamp for our feet (Psalm 119:105). 

God’s timeline is not ours and His ways, perspectives, and purposes are loftier than ours.

Please pray for us. We, like many of you, have come under attack in this season where discontent, like a cloud, overshadows our communities and one hateful act justifies itself into a flood of others. It is not only our plans that got tossed in the current storms. Our families, marriage, jobs, church, finances, physical and emotional health are all at risk in this tumult. We crave the relief the Spirit brings when God’s people pray. Thank you in advance. God bless each of you reading this, and may He protect you and yours from the deceiver running rampant (1 Peter 5:8) in our culture. May He empower you to be bold influences of grace, salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16) in a bitter, dark world.

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I’m hurting. My spirit is dark and my heart is heavy. I felt like a liar every time I told someone this morning that I was doing fine. If you think missionary wannabes don’t have dark periods, I’m proof they do. The one who steals, kills, and destroys is busy in the lives of those who seek to do Kingdom work! Our Bible study this morning addressed the first of the Beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit...” (Matthew 5:3) and I was overwhelmed with a familiar relationship with that description. 

The way I relate to it, poverty of spirit is the recognition that, without a Savior, all I have, am, will, or do amounts to precisely NOTHING. It is the “bottom” from which I can look up and say, Lord, lift me up, fill me, and be my everything. It is the point at which, according to Jesus’ first sermon, blessing begins. 

In recovery circles, this recognition is Step One to building an arch through which to walk into the sunlight of the Spirit. Some of you know that I am recovering from an eating disorder. Today I recognize again that, while I serve the god of my selfish appetites, I am spiritually bankrupt. Absent a vital connection with Christ and His life-giving Spirit, I am powerless over sin and selfish desires, and my life is unmanageable without God’s influence in it. 

The glory of the proclamation of this Beatitude is that the blessing begins here. Though, in my darkness of spirit, I may best relate to Noah in a torrent, Shadrach in a furnace, Daniel in a lion pit, Jonah in the depths, Lazarus in his grave, or David the Psalmist whose waves and breakers had overwhelmed him (Psalm 42), every one of those stories ends in deliverance — a deliverance that is promised to me too when I live in the life-giving grace that God, through Christ Jesus, breathes into us one moment, one breath, one day at a time. 

Today, I die again to self, because the idol of self-service is lethal, and I call again to my Creator, “Breathe into me once more Your breath of life, and hold me close in Your grip of grace.” I place myself at His feet in the knowledge that He will gently lift me into His embrace. 

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 NIV)

May the abundant life for which Christ came to deliver to us be yours as well, as we each draw His next breath of life. 

References: Genesis 2:7, John 10:10, Matthew 5:3, Psalm 9:13, Romans 16:18, Genesis 7:17, Daniel 3:26, Jonah 1:17, John 11:43-44, Psalm 42:7, 11, Galatians 2:20 (Read all)

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This year for Giving Tuesday will you consider partnering with us? We will be leaving for Uganda next fall to serve with a mission in Uganda, East Africa, where war, disease, and poverty have left an estimated 2.6 million children orphaned and many more in need of the loving care of Jesus. There are those who go and those who sow, and we are looking for supporting senders to be a part of our mission.

To participate in this mission, visit our Donate page. There you can give a one-time Giving Tuesday donation or enroll in recurring giving and be part of an ongoing mission to send your love and resources across the globe where it is so desperately needed.

Whether you choose a one-time or recurring gift, we would like to say "thank you" and ask that you keep this ministry in your prayers as we move forward toward God’s call on our lives. May He richly bless you according to His bountiful grace!