Salama, friends. As we move through “Passion Week,” we praise God for the gift of Jesus Christ, who makes ALL the difference in our present life AND the life to come. I’ll be preaching at ReachChapel on Sunday, my favorite day of the year, about the Risen King, and hope you find yourself walking closely with Him at this time.
Yesterday, Holly and I had a great encouragement, and it came at just the right time, which led both of us to believe God’s hand was in it. An uneasiness has been growing in both of us recently that we are not “performing” and “doing” all the eternally significant things we’d like to be doing here. Most certainly, we are products of our “results-orientend, performance-based” Western culture, but it just seems like we spend so much of our time surviving in life, doing the mundane, when our hearts are crying to build eternity into people – directly, hands-on, in visible ways.
As we’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve been praying extra for friends of mine who are going through some turbulent waters in northern Uganda, God opened a door for the kind of work which we’ve been praying for. I had planned to take a trip to northern Uganda to do more training in about six months or so. God had other plans. Both Holly and I (without either of us knowing) had been praying independently for God to open doors for a trip to that area sooner. Then, yesterday, I received an email from our national director saying that some plans and details had changed, and asked if I would be at all open to making my trip sooner, like in two months. That is the exact timing both Holly and I were independently thinking of. Praise God!!! Not only will I be able to offer the training I’m so eager to do for pastors and leaders who are hungry for it, but I’ll be able to offer support to dearly loved ones who are suffering deeply after the loss of a young pastor who was father of eight young children. In addition, I hope to offer guidance to a newly forming church planting movement in this area. That is so exciting, a Godsighting, and leads us to praise our good and gracious God!
Pressing on by His grace, Eric