These updates are an important lifeline to those of you who pray regularly for us. The last few weeks these blogs have taken a bi-weekly format but that does not mean we need less prayer, please stay committed to bringing Restore Church before our great God!
Amy Carmichael missionary to India at the turn of the 20th century wrote updates to supporters that were known as Scrap letters. One of her main objectives in writing the updates was to communicate how “it is important that you should know about the reverses than about the successes of the war. We shall have all eternity to celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact of the reverses is so little realized, and the needed, reinforcements are not forthcoming, as they would be if the position were thoroughly understood… so we have tried to tell you the truth-the uninteresting, unromantic truth.”
Like Amy I could make a list of the many “true circumstances” facing this group of believers who are regularly engaging people with the truth. But if you are attempting to make disciples in the relationships of life, you know the rejection, lack of interest, mockery, hardness, and many other responses that can be experienced when the gospel is shared.
When you pray this week, reflect on a recent conversation you have had with someone who had no interest in hearing about Jesus. Pray for victory in your situation and while you do, include those who make up Restore church who are undoubtedly experiencing much of the same thing.
“For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews,” 1 Thessalonians 2:14