In Uganda
see our recent communications online at: https://missionafricajk.blogspot.ug/.
In other
countries also see our communications at: https://www.missionafricajk.net.
Friends: Our Updates are sent
to instruct, encourage, edify and act as a help in prayer. We appreciate your
receiving them, your replies, comments and prayer requests.
March 2019 Mission Africa Prayer Letter“...approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel,” 1 Thessalonians 2:4 NKJV
Friends: May our Lord bless you in His grace once again this month of March! Our verse above speaks of the charge that the Lord has given us in the commission of our preaching of the Gospel. He has entrusted us with His most valuable and powerful message, the very power of God unto salvation and the Word of life, and in a trust to God and men we are to declare it to all men.
In February I was blessed to travel to Guinea, West Africa
to minister the Gospel to primarily French speaking and Muslim people with new
friend Sieh Kargbo, a Christian minister and former Muslim. Sieh is pictured at
left with his wife (called Big Mama) and son (Wesley). He leads an
English-speaking school where many of his students hear God’s Gospel. He and
his family came to Guinea from Sierra Leone some years ago as refugees;
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea all suffered devastation and war in the late1990’s
and early 2000’s and later Ebola in 2014-2016. Since then he has brought the
Gospel and education to Guineans. Guinea means ‘woman’ in one of the local
languages, I was told, hence the memorial to Guinea’s independence and
nationhood as seen in the photo at left. A soccer (football) match is also
pictured at left—this photo was taken from the guest house where I stayed and
where the two children at the right live (they are sister and brother—with
great smiles—may God save them!).
Because of His Gospel trust I was blessed to teach, preach,
evangelize and disciple and also train pastors and leaders. In the photo at the
lower right on the first night of ministry I spoke to a group led by another
Muslim convert, Pastor Kareem. Please pray for the students at the school (most
of whom are Islamic) who heard the Gospel, for those we brought the Gospel to
in our visits in churches and in the city of Conakry, the capital of
Guinea—it’s about the same size as Kampala. And please pray for the pastors and
leaders that they may be encouraged to serve in and preach the Gospel in this
land where so few know and trust the true God in Jesus Christ. As always, we
appreciate you and all that you do in prayer and in your kind gifts that enable
us to serve the Lord here in Africa.
“For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish
but have everlasting life.” John 3:16 NKJV
KAPPY’S CORNER—Which Switch is Which?
I did it again.
In the dark kitchen I hit the switch that opens the electric security gate
instead of the kitchen light. I’ve also done the opposite, turning on the
kitchen light instead of opening the gate. In each rental house here in Uganda we
have had complicated electrical switches. In one house I would tell visitors,
“Just hit the switch that seems the least likely to be the right one and you’ve
got it.”
When we move into a new house one of the first things we do is test to see what each switch does. The house we live in now is no exception. Fresh from furlough and slightly jet lagged, with one of us on the outside of the house and one on the inside, shouting back and forth, we marked the switches that work the outside security lights. It’s too easy to turn on an outside light during the day without knowing it and waste electricity.
Our first day in this house, after Jim left to get another load of our things out of storage, I went about doing what I love to do—set up housekeeping. While I was busying I spotted a switch we hadn’t tested in an unusual place down by the floor. Huh... I wonder what this one does, I thought. The next moment a high-pitched shriek split the air. It seems we have a panic button. We’ve never before had a panic button. Every so often I look at it and wonder if we’ll ever have occasion to use it. Of course we pray we won’t.
Every switch in
the house looks like every other switch with the exception of two. Each of
these has a red light on the switch plate. One of them operates the water
heater. We know this because when we flip the switch and the red light comes on,
the water heater starts heating water. But in the over three years we’ve lived
in this house, we’ve never seen the other switch do anything at all. Actually,
I take that back. When the switch is on, the red light comes on, but that’s
apparently as far as it goes.
This reminds me of what God says in His word about us. If we profess to know the Lord and profess to be saved, we must be disciples of Jesus our Lord or our profession of faith is false. If we don’t obey Christ, He says we don’t love Him. If we don’t love Him, we are not saved. We may go to church and “turn on like all the other switches”, we may even be talented at preaching or singing and be applauded by others for our abilities, but if that’s as far as it goes, we’d better examine ourselves to see if we are truly in Christ. By the way, there is no sin in professing Christians asking Jesus if we are truly His. The belief that it is sinful to ask the Lord if we are truly saved after we have professed faith puts us in eternal danger, particularly if the answer is “No.” The sin that remains in my members has driven me to ask Him more than once. Because I am His, He gives me fresh assurance through His word. And falling back on “grace” as an excuse to do what God in His word tells us not to do, is simply rebellion against our Lord. Pastor John MacArthur wrote, “Clearly, grace does not grant permission to live in the flesh; it supplies power to live in the Spirit.”
So which switch
are we? Are we the one that the Power of the Holy Spirit works through in
obedience to our Lord and Savior, or the one that looks good but does
nothing?
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"If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy
God, blessed shalt thou be in the city" Deuteronomy 28:2-3
“The city is full of care, and he who has to go there from
day to day finds it to be a place of great wear and tear. It is full of noise,
and stir, and bustle, and sore travail; many are its temptations, losses, and
worries. But to go there with the divine blessing takes off the edge of its
difficulty; to remain there with that blessing is to find pleasure in its
duties and strength equal to its demands. A blessing in the city may not make
us great, but it will keep us good; it may not make us rich, but it will
preserve us honest. Whether we are porters, or clerks, or managers, or
merchants, or magistrates, the city will afford us opportunities for
usefulness. It is good fishing where there are shoals of fish, and it is
hopeful to work for our LORD amid the thronging crowds. We might prefer the quiet
of a country life; but if called to town, we may certainly prefer it because
there is room for our energies. Today let us expect good things because of this
promise, and let our care be to have an open ear to the voice of the LORD and a
ready hand to execute His bidding. Obedience brings the blessing. "In
keeping his commandments there is great reward."”
-C.H. Spurgeon
British Preacher 1834-1892
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