Change in Plans

Some of you have asked, and I’ve recently confirmed that I will in fact be doing some work with Zinduka Afrika, during my last week in Nairobi.  It’s funny how God works.  At first it didn’t look like I would spend any time teaching; but that’s what I’ve been spending the bulk of my time doing, and I’ve loved every moment of it!

Last Saturday, I spoke at True Love.  The message was entitled, The Love of God: God is Not Like Your Father.  I shared a testimony of my own life, having grown up without an earthly father, but how the Lord has revealed himself as Father.  We spent the rest of the time looking at attributes of how God is unlike man – He’s holy, faithful, He’s chosen those He calls His children...

This week at Master’s Commission we had three days of class, all talking about spiritual leadership – leadership characterized by the presence of the Holy Spirit.  One of the biggest emphases was servanthood.  We serve now, as we prepare to serve all the more as leaders.  We also talked about how we see Jesus in John 13, who understood his identity, knew he’d come from God and was returning to God, therefore he got up and washed his disciples’ feet (taking the lowest place as servant among them).  Being confident in His identity, Jesus could empty himself for his friends, for the world.  We’d talked about identity a few weeks back, and having that foundation, we can demonstrate leadership by serving others.

Tomorrow we leave for Nyeri for Hope Fest (a 3-day event bringing the message of hope, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to this generation.  The plan is for Hope Fest to tour Kenya in 2012, and go international in the coming years, reaching over 5 million people with the Gospel and winning 500,000 souls by the end of 2016).   This weekend in Nyeri will be the first Hope Fest, and tonight we had two commissioning services with the ministry teams.  It was a beautiful thing, for us to minister to the Lord together before ministering to the people of Nyeri.  After a word from Pastor Gibson, we (the leaders) washed the feet of our team members, and prophesied over each of them.  By the way, prophesying is really, really fun!  Man, I LOVE it when God moves through his people!  

Washing the feet of some of our team members was an honor.  I felt privileged to speak into the individual lives of each person that came to my basin.  Later, as one of the other leaders washed my feet, he said (among other encouragements) that my life isn’t going to be the same after this trip (I receive that!).  It’s amazing what a demonstration of the love and humility of Christ does; the evening was at the same time glorious, stirring and kind of emotional, but God’s presence was tangible.

My expectations for this weekend are high.  Nyeri has been on the news lately: wives are beating their husbands because the men are not taking leadership in the home.  We’re praying for a new identity for the town of Nyeri, that it would be known as a place no longer where the women beat their husbands, but a place where God resides.

We have also secured a website where you’ll likely be able to find live webstreaming: www.hopefest.tv.  Events will kick off at 6pm my time, so 9am Central.

That’s it for now.  Will keep you posted next week about how Hope Fest went.

Onward.

Chy

Some Frontrunners Honoring their Pastor