Thank you Lord!

What a brilliant day it has been. We joined the congregation of Gospel Light Fellowship for their Annual Thanksgiving service as you will see - and both John and I were guest speakers! 

It was primarily a time of worship and celebration of all God's goodness to this people throughout the last year and it was clear that preparations had been going on for most of the past year for today.There were a couple of testimonies of how God had blessed lives; reading from Scripture; these delightful boys and girls singing "How great is our God" - albeit with some judicious prompting! - and all held together in an atmosphere of worship and exuberant praise led by the youth worship team. By the time John came to preach there was an anticipation and expectation which burst open in vocal agreement with the Word and at times, applause of the Truth. Soon nerves dissolved and the joy of declaring the Word from Psalm 100 broke through.

I had decided to preach on Romans.12:1,2 and had prepared accordingly however in the course of the sung worship the Spirit redirected me to focus on "God is good and his love endures for ever" as it is sung in various places of celebration and warfare in the OT. It was certainly not what I planned, but it was clear it was the Word of the Lord for us all. What a wonderful God we have - Hallelujah!

The time of worship then gave way to a time of fellowship - snapshots and hugs, and laughter and enjoyment before we shared food together. I am sorry this subject has occurred again, but really how often do you get a whole roast pig for lunch? I don't include the picture to offend anyone, but merely to illustrate the lavish kindness and blessing prepared and shared with us from a people with so very little. It was simple, beautiful food and the conversations which flowed were rich and deep. If the trip was only about today, it was worth it, but I have a real sense that this is only the beginning! God has even more in store for us all - it will be so exciting to see how it flows from now on.

We have a couple of rest days now, but are giving some thought and prayer to what we share with the church elders and ministry leaders on Saturday when we spend the morning together. We invite you to pray with us on this.