My team has about 2 weeks left to our trip here, and about 5 weeks behind us. In this time, God has been working among our team and has been continuing his work among the Thai people.
This past weekend the team was able to go with several church members to the much more rural town of Lopburi, part of a province famous for it's monkeys. There we saw monkeys in the streets, elephants in the streets, and were able to experience more fully what rural Thailand is like. We praise God for the work he has been doing in Lopburi. While we were there we hung out with a new believer, and 1 young Thai man accepted Christ during a Bible study with some Thai believers before dinner. At that same dinner we were able to pray for the non-Christian grandpa of a Christian family who attends our church in Bangkok, and who has problems with alcoholism. Just earlier this week we were astounded to hear that this older man accepted Christ just days after we were able to pray for him! God is the great doer in his saving work, for "neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth" (1 Corinthians 3:7), and so we desire to give him all the glory for his work. We thank him for opening the hearts of these men to see "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Corinthians 4:4)
In my reading time here I read through a passage in John Piper's book "Finally Alive" which I would like to share as an encouragement to everyone who calls on the name of Christ. It is based on the text of 2 Corinthians 4:1-7. In regards to our personal evangelism efforts, Piper writes
"If you feel average or less than average in your sense of fitness to tell the gospel, you are the person God is looking for -- a clay pot, who simply shares the treasure of the gospel, not the glitzy intellect, not the glitzy eloquence, not the glitzy beauty or strength or cultural cleverness. Then God will do his work through the gospel, and the surpassing power will belong to him and not to us. Be encouraged, ordinary Christian. You are appointed, precisely in your ordinariness, for the greatest work in the world: opening the eyes of the blind and showing the Treasure of Christ."
One of the things that I have been learning on this trip and that I pray we will all learn more and more the is the gloriousness of justification by faith. That God loved us, and gave his only Son that we might know him by believing in him (that's it! believing!) is truly the greatest news in the world. We don't need to dress up the gospel or to add or subtract anything from it. Justification by faith is right there at the center and it's a truth that I pray we will all realize more of the greatness of day by day, and that this truth would cause us to go out and share this news, this glorious news of the mercy of God, with friends and acquaintances and the man on the plane and the guy next to you on the bus. Yearning to seek after harder Him with all of you,
Erik
Please pray: That our team would be open to learning in these last 2 weeks, that the new Thai believers would be planted on the good soil, and that God would conform us more to the image of His Son, by whatever means necessary.
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