The Weekend is a Time for Praying!

Please pray for this Saturday as we will be doing a lesson on our sin and God’s forgiveness. The idea of salvation by grace alone is difficult to understand, but we are really hoping that the girls will. I am so excited about this lesson, to be honest! It’s a really important subject, and Jesus gave us some cool ideas!

Please pray also for Sunday:  we will be going to more churches, some very large, including where the military families worship! This time my Dad and some other young men want to start mentioning that they are thinking of starting a program for young men. We need that here so, so, so much!!! But I’ll write more about that later…. 🙂

Stammering Lips and Dull Hearts in the Potter’s Hands

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.....

We bend low together, heads touching as we scrutinize the stained, creased paper on the table. Fingers trace the lines of print, foreheads crease with questions. As we prepare our lesson, it comes again. The old, old feeling. It washes over me like a tidal wave, and carries me back out with it into the sea of doubt. This sounds so ridiculous…so feeble. How will the girls ever understand? Do the leaders themselves understand? Are we sowing the Word of God or our own weak words? They shake their heads, and say the words I’ve heard so many times, “I don’t understand.” I manage a faint smile, and we turn back to that paper. I printed it yesterday, but it looks so old. I explain, and as the words pass from my mouth I hear Anna on the other side of the room explaining too. What rejoicing when the new leader finally understands! What cold dread when she shakes her head and says, “I’ll just try to do it.” and you know that even if she does “do it” fine, she hasn’t absorbed it, hasn’t understood it, hasn’t made it part of her life. What right have we to tell girls how to live their lives if we can’t live ours first? How far we are from holiness!

What a God we serve! How He could ever make use of us, of our feeble attempts to make known the glorious mysteries of eternity that angels long to look into, is beyond my comprehension. How does He use these stammering lips, these dull hearts, these broken lives? I just can’t understand it. I sit back, stretch, look wearily at those girls trying to learn by heart the lesson when all I want is that they would learn it with their heart.

Tomorrow and Thursday we are again teaching the girls.

Pray for us, as the going can seem so hard, the mystery so great, the road so tedious.

Pray that it is Jesus who is preached – not our feeble, broken selves, but JESUS – the master potter who is molding us into vessels for His glory. May we have the eyes of faith to look beyond these moments into the eternal fruit it will bear.

Holiness is What We Long For…..

This coming Saturday we are going to challenge the girls with the one of the greatest, most ultimate challenges of all – to be holy as our God is holy. This is a subject very, very close to our hearts and although we are painfully aware of how often we ourselves fall short, we burn with the desire to see these girls zealous for a life of complete surrender and holiness! The world has enough compromising, easy-going Christians. Pray that God would raise up these girl to be His women of virtue and valor, fighting His battles, and being bright lights!!

Also, this Saturday we present the girls with the opportunity to sign up for our Leaders’ Training. Pray that the right girls would respond, and that we would have wisdom as to how to go about this crazy adventure Jesus has for us. It’s a totally new form of discipleship for us, and we’re excited to learn with them! On Sunday, we will announce the same to our church, in case some girls who are older than the age limit for our group also want to come.

Thank you for praying!!! Your prayers are precious to us and give us courage!

Excited for Easter!

Another exciting day is ahead of us. We are planning a special Easter Day lesson for this Tuesday (April 19). It will start, Lord willing, at 9:30 and go to dusk. We want to talk first about why Jesus had to die – and that means starting with the Commandments and Hell. It’s a tough subject, but so very important. Pray that each of the girls would realise the horrific depth of their sinfulness as God sees it, and be able to be truly grateful when we bridge to the GOOD News about Heaven! Pray for understanding, as this message is so basic to everything we believe yet so often misunderstood. Then we will go on to explain about how we die to our old selves in Christ, and live to Him. So Easter is not about only celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, it’s about celebrating our resurrection too! Drawing from some of C.S. Lewis’ arguments, we’ll discuss how we can be perfect and holy in a world of sin, and whether Christianity is easy or hard. Please pray that throughout, the girls’ would be focused on what we’re saying and will clearly understand and be able to respond.

Unfortunately, we’re not as ready as we’d like to be. 🙂 Things just kept coming up this last week, and Anna and I are going to be busy Monday! There is still a LOT to be prepared. Please pray that we’ll lean on Christ while preparing and leading, that we’ll be able to wholeheartedly serve the girls and to be able, in the midst of the bustle, to be awed again by the glorious beauty of Easter!

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read this, and to pray. We’re excited to be celebrating our crucified, risen Lord as we follow Him into the battle!

preparing the lesson for Easter