Please pray...By Vicky Bentley

Dear Co-Laborers in the Harvest,

 

Dear Friends of this ministry - from Rybinsk, Russia - Lyudmila and her Mother, Valentina, emailed asking for prayer. First for Valentina; she fell and is in severe pain. She is being treated but the medication is not adequate and does not enable her to sleep – often she makes it through the night by prayer. I am requesting that you pray for Valentina to be healed. Jesus is more than able and I trust He will receive all the glory from these precious sisters in the Lord.

 

I also ask you to pray that Lyudmila will be led by the Lord to a good job with a generous salary. She has faithfully labored for many years at the same company. Financial hardship is forcing that company to close. Lyudmila is a single mother to two amazing young boys. I can tell you I have seen firsthand the passion she has for Jesus. When I ask her how I can pray she says, “That my boys will be REAL Christians!” Many of us are moms and have breathed that same pray for our own children…The enemy wants our kids and we must stand together in prayer for their salvation and sanctification!

 

I love this family dearly and ask you to pour His love on them in prayer. Thank you and may God speak so deeply and clearly to your heart as you pray that the rest of your life is given to continual communion with the GREATEST Lover of your soul!

 

Agape,

Vicky

 

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father… ~1 Thessalonians 1:2-3~

 

For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe…~1 Thessalonians 2:13~

 

…Pray without ceasing… ~1 Thessalonians 5:13~

 

Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,  do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers:  that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,  far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.  For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,  that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height-- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. ~Ephesians 3:14-20~

 

PS: The ministry in Russia is so dear to our hearts. I know we are focused on Africa but God has more than enough strength to look after ALL people on ALL countries. We are so thankful for Mark Piester, Natasha Chilikina, and the family of God in Vladimir and Rybinsk…please remember to pray for them too….THANKS!

 

 

 

Christian Community: Participation

Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification; it is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifiling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritaul pulse, so, too, the Christain community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. . . . Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in which we may participate.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Easthams: Bibles for the North

Psalm 1:1-2 “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the paths of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.”

 

We often don’t appreciate how precious it is to have a Bible.  In fact, we have many Bibles in our house.  We have a variety of Bibles: different translations, children’s, study, compact, and even those in different languages.  Many Ugandans don’t even have one Bible in their home. Many pastors, also, don’t have a study Bible or resources available to teach the Bible to their own congregation.

 

Anne Graham Lotz, the daughter of Evangelist Billy Graham, is coming to Uganda in October, 2012.  It has been a privilege to come along side AnGeL Ministries to bless the people of Uganda.

 

Through a series of seminars in Gulu (in the north) and Kampala, the goal is to revive the hearts of God’s people in Uganda by reviving the church leadership, rooting them deeper in the Word of God.  Two thousand study Bibles, two thousand compact Bibles, and six hundred children’s Bibles have been donated for this outreach.

 

At a recent planning committee, a decision needed to be made as to which Bibles would go to which venue.  Everyone wanted the study Bibles.  It was finally decided that the Study Bibles would go to the North. “This is the time for the North,” said Pastor Osiru, one of the committee members.  “Let them have it.” She couldn’t have said it better.  The people of northern Uganda are healing from decades of war.  The people desperately need a fresh touch from the Lord.

 

Please continue to pray for the country of Uganda, especially for the people in the northern cities.  Pray for the pastors coming, that they will have the means to come to this great outreach and that the Lord would do a mighty work in their lives so that they can take it back their villages.

Christian Community: Forgiveness

Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I too stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Real Life Bible Story

We read the Bible and read of the stories of old.  The stories seem so amazing and supernatural.  And then, you pray the words of Isaiah, “Here I am, Send me.”   According to the faithfulness of the Lord, He sends us and then we find ourselves in the middle of our own incredible Bible Story.  I found myself in the Kibera Slums of Nairobi, Kenya; standing on stage, singing songs of hope, sharing the Gospel, and staring into so many eyes urging them to come to Jesus, sit at His feet, and let Him live out a life of Purpose in their own lives.  So many faces whose names are known by our God whose arm is not too short to save, heard the message given by our team.  What was MOST encouraging, were the local ladies who came from Calvary Chapel Nairobi to participate in our skit: Cardboard Testimony.   Each lady wrote a few simple words of what they were before Christ: Prostitute to Bride of Christ, Man-pleaser to God Pleaser, Alcoholic to Free in Christ Jesus!  We gave the opportunity to receive Christ and many in the crowd raised their hands.  What a privilege to walk through this real-life Bible story!

Women's Prison Ministry

Langata Women's Prison Entrance

On Friday the 9^th of August we had the privilege of going to the maximum security women’s prison here in Nairobi.  After a bit of confusion regarding our paperwork and entering the prison we were invited in. We walked through the gate and all around the prison grounds we could see women dressed in striped dresses scrubbing the steps and sidewalks.  Guards were posted throughout the women as well to make sure everything was going smoothly.  We entered a room where we took our seats that faced about 20 inmates.  

These women, we later learned, were on death row.  It was very sobering to look into their faces and realize that the days were numbered for these women, and how important it was that we were there to share with them.  There were even a few  children in the group (the women are allowed to keep their babies with them until they are three years old). 

We sang some worship songs in Swahili, which the women enjoyed immensely with singing, clapping, and dancing.  We then each introduced ourselves and then one of our team gave the gospel message.  After the message we all stood in a circle, holding hands while a closing prayer was said. 

Natasha and Twinkle

We were then able to mingle with the group of women, which was such a special time.   In tears one of the inmates confided in us that she had not had any visitors in the last eight months, and just that very morning she asked the Lord to please send her a visitor - and there we were!  She thanked Jesus over and over for sending us. 

After spending our last few minutes with these beautiful women, we left, SO grateful for the opportunity to love them and share the great hope in Jesus!  There is a wide open door to these women, so please be praying for direction in how to effectively reach out to them.

When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?  And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,  you were doing it to me!'

Matthew 25:39-40

Christian Community: Thankfulness

We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God or giving us bretheren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank Him for what He does give us daily. And is not what has been given us enough: brothers who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? . . . In the Christian community thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life . . . If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Christian Community: The Vision

He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the bretheren and God Himself accordingly . . . He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure . . . So he becomes, first, an accuser of the bretheren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself. Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together