December 2016 | Advent Week 4

"Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet:
“‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way."
Matthew 2:1-12

The last time we were in Africa, we asked Pastor Linus a question, "What types of things keep your people from coming to church?"
He seemed stunned by the inquiry and after a few minutes we had to explain to him why people don't attend church where we live.
We then learned that there are groups of people who travel over miles and miles to attend church, to gather and rejoice over King Jesus. We also learned that once while baptizing in a river, Pastor Linus had to have someone in the water with a stick to fend off the crocodiles.

Crocodiles.

There are times we don't go to church because it's raining.
Or we're tired.
Or we just don't want to.
I think we've forgotten what we're waiting for.

The biblical narrative of Christ's birth includes a specific journey by three men to come see Jesus. A journey. This wasn't a walk down the street. These men had a deep desire to come see the Christ. They had waited in anticipation for his birth - and now it was here.
Now the promise had come.
And He will come again.

Our lives are often so busy we rarely stop to consider our future. When we do consider it, it's often filled with fear and trepidation hammered into us by the media. If it's not that, we fill our lives to the brim with activities, people, and binge sessions on Netflix. Rarely do we take the time to remember what we are waiting on, or what we have to look forward to.

The promise that has come, will come again.

God sent Jesus to earth, to live a spotlessly clean life that we cannot live. To die a horrific death that we deserve. To rise from the dead so that sin and death are defeated and we have nothing to fear.
King Jesus will return. 
That is what we should be waiting for.

Our waiting should be full of eager anticipation, fervent mission, joy and excitement.
Our King is coming again. This time to stay.
Forever.

On this final advent week as Christmas approaches, take some time to think about what you're waiting for.
Think about what your waiting looks like.
Think about what that moment will be for you when King Jesus returns.

It will happen, you can be sure of that, because God promised it would.

And He always keeps his promises.

December 2016 | Pastors

THE MEN GOD CALLS

In 2014 a group of us traveled to Kenya. Some to teach and some to help a local pastor and his school for slum children.

On that trip, we met a little girl named Beth. Beth made quite an impression on us as she lingered around while we worked and she kept us company through our time there. One evening we watched this five year old girl leave the school and begin walking home alone through the slums, an area replete with crime, rape, and HIV.
This moment would cause me immense grief and ultimately God would use it to spur my heart to action. For quite some time God has made clear to me his mandate for planting churches and has placed in me a passion for it. I know the importance of it, the infinite worth of it, and the value of the men God calls to do it.
As for Beth, I knew this little girl living in the slums of Kenya was receiving two meals a day, attending a private christian school, and being cared for by a church planter who had planted his church in this very community to minister to adults and to little children like Beth.
A church planter, answering God’s call on his life, who wanted to see the Gospel transform his community, was the reason there was hope for Beth.
 
God calls men to plant churches. We exist to further that mission.

Throughout Kenya churches are everywhere.
There's no shortage of nonprofit organizations who are involved in helping the country to feed and educate the people. We want to help do that as well. We believe the best way to do this is to support local men who God has called to plant churches so that they can oversee and help these efforts in their communities.
We will continue to establish this stronghold with solid theology delivered through committed pastors who have a heart to see their community transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Our goal is to see Kenya changed from a place where the gospel has been misunderstood and misapplied, where Christians are biblically illiterate, where the prosperity gospel thrives and cultural idols are still pursued, to a place where Jesus is worshiped and glory is given to God and God alone.

Our primary mission is to continue to work with our contact in Kenya to plant churches and support the pastors in their work.
We can achieve this with your help.
We can achieve this if churches in the United States are awakened to see that they have family members in Christ, brothers and sisters in Africa, who are struggling and who are in need of help and guidance. They need to see they have fellow pastors who desire to see the hearts of their people and their communities changed just like we do here, but they often lack the things we have in abundance: information, relationship, and financial support.

We have what they need.

We partner churches here in the United States with these church plants in Kenya to provide those things for them. The things they so desperately need.

You can be a part of helping us do this.

December 2016 | Advent Week 3

"And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them."
Luke 2:8-20

WHEREVER YOU ARE
It's hard to understand what this moment must have been like.
We can imagine, and some movies might do it a little justice, but had we been there - what would it have been like for us?
What would it have been like if God had interrupted our lives, wherever we were, with the shining deliverance of His promised rescuer?

He still does it, you know.

He still interrupts our lives with the reminder that we've been rescued and He still interrupts the lives of people all over the world so that they can hear for the first time of the coming of a savior who has rescued and redeemed them.
Just like these shepherds with their heads down, working diligently at tending their sheep, only to have the God of the universe disrupt their night by sending an angel to tell of the Messiah that had come, God loves to disturb our lives with the radiant glory of who He is.

We should be thankful that He does, for nothing else will draw us towards Him like those moments.

WHOEVER YOU ARE
It's those moments that reveal God's love for us, and in Luke 2, we see a glimpse of the nature of who our God is.

God reveals the coming of His Son, the savior of the entire world, to a group of shepherds. As our favorite children's Bible puts it, to "riff-raff", men who would have been unimportant. They certainly wouldn't have been the royalty that we might have expected God to reveal His Son to.

He chose shepherds.
He chose 'riff-raff'.

In the middle of our high-performance culture where pseudo-perfect lives are permanently displayed on social media, the truth about us is astounding.

We are all broken.  We are all "riff-raff".
None of us live the perfect lives we like to display to the world.
None of us.

Yet God still comes, no matter who we are, and He rescues. It's what He does. It's why He is who He is.

WHENEVER YOU ARE
God didn't wait on anyone else. He chose the time and moment for Jesus to come and He orchestrated everything else to serve that purpose.
The shepherds had sheep to tend, Mary and Joseph had a family to begin, the magi had things to ponder.

God delivers his promises of rescue whenever He desires.

This is amazing news for us.
It means that God's rescue can come to us regardless of our age or how much we know.
It can come for the drug addict, the prostitute, the thief, the liar. It can come for the adulterer, the cheater, the fool.

God's rescue isn't dependent on us, but on Him.
It comes when He desires for it to. Even if that is right now.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son..." Galatians 4:4

December 2016 | Advent Week 2

A PROMISE KEPT

"In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn."
Luke 2:1-7

A CUTE STORY?
In our living room we have a 'Little People' nativity set that my daughter received from her Grandma for Christmas one year.
Each year around this time we pull it out and put it where she and her friends can play with it.
It's a beloved toy. The characters are smiling and all pleasantly plump, they look satisfied and happy to be in a barn. They seem put together, excited, cute even.

But the story of Christ's birth isn't a cute story.
It isn't meant to be.

It's a story of scared young newlyweds, incredible faith, poverty, doubt, fear, feeling abandoned and lost, unexpected pregnancies, and gut-wrenching trust.
I'm guessing there weren't many people who expected Christ to enter the world this way.

But He did.

PROMISES KEPT
When God keeps His promises, they often aren't as we expect them to be. They are usually outside of the nice, neat, container we want to put them into.
God see what we don't see. He knows what we don't know. He loves to work in unexpected ways.

Sometimes God answers His promises in ways that cause us pain, but it usually hurts because we'd rather hold tightly to something less wonderful than to hold tightly to Him.
Sometimes God answers His promises in ways that make us feel lost, but that's only because we were walking in the wrong direction to begin with.
Sometimes God answers His promises in the middle of our everyday, messy, lives, just to remind us that He's there with us in the middle of those messy, everyday, lives.

He comes to meet us where we are.

WHERE WE ARE
That's exactly what Jesus did with two young, scared, newlyweds, who were poor and desperate, in the middle of a smelly barn.
That's exactly what Jesus did to a people who had abandoned their God and started chasing after other things.

He met them where they were.

God delivered on His promise of rescue by sending a Savior who would enter in to our pain and our struggle so that He could be a rescuer who knew everything about the people He was rescuing and so He could show us that His love for us is stronger than the biggest mess we are in.

This Advent season, remember that Christ enters in with us. We have a savior who is not far, but near.
He doesn't prefer cute situations and His coming was quite a bit more scandalous than we like to think about.

Christ was sent to make our dead hearts alive.
There's nothing cute about that, but there is something wonderful about it...

God will keep His promises.

December 2016 | The Invaluable Teacher

At Christlike Academy in the Misiri Slums, our teachers are the real heroes. These wonderful women have worked hard to become certified as teachers in Kenya and have chosen to work at a school in the middle of a slum area so they can teach and instruct children who have little other chance of recieving such care. If you know a teacher, then you know their job is no small task. Teachers often work long hours. For our Kenyan teachers, they work year round, as school in Kenya runs on a three-month-on, one-month-off schedule.

Nearly all of these teachers make their way into the slums by public transportation or their own two feet. They travel from their homes, some of which are very far away, because they want to make a difference in the lives of these children.

Our teachers work hard at their jobs. So hard, that Christlike Academy has a few students who are testing in the top percentage of students in their region.
These are children born and raised in the slums who are out performing children in other high-income areas.
Our teachers love our students and put in extra effort to be sure the children understand the material and are ready for exams.

When you give to Feed.Teach.Hope., you are helping us continue to support all of the operational costs at Christlike Academy, including teacher salaries.
Currently, our teachers have an average income of $80 per month. We are working to be able to raise that considerably because of the hard work and effort they put in for our students.

Would you help our teachers?

We are looking to meet an end of 2016 Goal of obtaining one year of operating costs for Christlike Academy by December 31, 2015. You can read more about it here.

You can be a part of helping us do this.
We'd love for you to be a partner - please join us.
And also, please forward this email to a teacher that you know.
We think they'd be proud to see how they have sisters in another country who are working hard to teach children there, just like they do here.