“The
Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s
household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make
your name great, and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Genesis 12:1-3 NIV
Too often in our era, we spend most
of our time reading, studying, and even preaching from the New Testament
only. We may have a sense that the Old
Testament isn’t really relevant and God is different now, and so we should be
relying on the New Testament for our understanding of God. I too thought that way for much of my life
until I came to realize that God hasn’t changed, and the God of the New
Testament is the same God we find in the Old Testament. It is one continuous story of God’s love for
mankind, and His relationship with those created in His image.
When God initiated His covenant with
Abraham, then referred to as Abram, He was beginning to make Himself known
personally to a specific group of people that He would call His own. Over the span of many generations, He would
make Himself known to them in a variety of different settings, through a
variety of different means that all were a part of this process of
self-revelation. God continues to this
day to call people into relationship with Himself and continues to use a
variety of different settings and means.
As curious as it is, and as weak as we are, God choses to use us to take
the message of His mercy and grace to the world; and it all began with this
promise to Abram, “…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
From the time of Abram, or Abraham,
the name God gave him later on, until now, God has been fulfilling this promise
and we see this in the evangelistic efforts of so many who answer the call to spread
the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Whether that means sharing the gospel with folks in our neighborhood, teaching
the message of the gospel with our children in our home, or a Sunday School
class at church, or traveling to take the gospel to foreign lands, people are
being blessed as they hear and respond to the message of finding peace with
God, and the hope of an eternal home in heaven.
And before we even think about
patting ourselves on the back for our initiative in this work, remember it was
God who was the initiator. He called
Abraham, He built the nation of Israel, He sent His only Son into the World as
the Lamb of God to take away the sins of those who would receive Him. And even in our faithfulness to share the
gospel, wherever that may be, it still requires Him working through His Holy
Spirit to awaken the heart and mind of an individual to the truth of the gospel
before that ancient blessing is realized.
`In a few days, I’ll be boarding a
plane, or series of planes bound for the region of Kajo Keji, South Sudan. My purpose is to share the gospel with those
who the Lord will direct our team to through the course of our time there. While I would appreciate your prayers for our
safety as we travel, even more important would be to pray for God to move and
make Himself known to the people of South Sudan, not just the ones we will talk
to, but to the region as a whole. The
work of evangelism there goes on whether Americans are there or not due to the
diligence and hard work of the nationals there who are constantly training and
preparing more and more men as pastors and missionaries because the need is so
great.
Perhaps it is because hope has been
such a scarce commodity in the region for so long given the political unrest the
people of this area have known in the last 20-30 years, but whatever the
reason, God has seen fit to stir the hearts of the people of South Sudan to
draw them to Himself. Please pray that this
work will continue, and that in some small way, we may be able to see and be a
part of the work that He is doing there.
By
His Grace Alone,
Pastor
Bruce Jacobsen
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