Dear ITEM Friends,
Psalm 37:4 reads, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” When we are delighting ourselves in the Lord, His desires for us fill our heart and therefore, the desires we have been given to us by God.” Obviously, our fleshly desires may confuse the issue but the general principle is true. Well, I believe that what I am about to be involved in fits this pattern. What I am going to be doing is what I have been desiring to do for the past couple of years.
DESIRE FULFILLED
Sunday was totally a travel day so I gave you and me a day off. Today, Monday, I am on my way back to Rwanda and am looking forward Wednesday and Thursday with great anticipation. I’ve been speaking to various groups, my last few trips, comprised of the emerging generation, some pastors, and some church members. Wednesday and Thursday I will speaking six times in a university setting in the southern province in Rwanda. Five times, during the two days, I will be speaking to an estimated 100 leaders and Tuesday evening I will be “preaching” to a group that might surpass 1000.
In the smaller sessions I will have an opportunity to cover a number of important topics. One is the way we view the world. Do we evaluate what we see through the lens of Scripture or through the lens of cultural narratives coming from media, entertainment, and education? Another is seeing a moment in time, we might call it a “cultural moment” and fit it into God’s over arching story from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22. I will cover topics of “Is Jesus really Messiah-God?”, “How is Christianity different from other religions of the world?”, “How do we know the Bible is reliable?”, plus “What does the Bible say about gender and sexuality?”, in which I will be talking about God’s design and purpose for marriage, sexual relations, families, and human flourishing. Then describe how we got from there to the current LGBTQ revolution.
END OF THE DAY
After finishing the above paragraphs, I went to the gate where I boarded the plane to Rwanda. It was a 90 minutes flight. Landed just before 1:30pm, long immigration line too time, met my contact, Emmy, found our car and left for the seminar location. It was about 90 miles and it took us 3.5 hours! Good road but only one lane and slow, commercial trucks slowed us WAY down.
We arrived about 6:30, checked in, I had a Zoom meeting at 7. Dinner at 8. Here I am at the end of the day.
PRAYER
The big event scheduled for Tuesday night (between 1000-1500 university students) is in jeopardy. The university has a conflict with their auditorium now, and we have to find a different venue. It didn’t sound promising. Pray they find something in time to save the meeting.
Pray that I will be clear in what I present and that those in attendance will understand the ideas and concepts I am presenting.
I am going to try to upload a number of new pics; mostly scenes from our 3.5 hour trek.
HERE IN THE LINK TO THE PHOTO ALBUM
Thanks for praying.
By His grace,
Steve