Dear Family and Friends
Happy Thanksgiving to you all and hope you each have a wonderful holiday! We are so thankful for each and every one of you and all your love we feel even though we are so far away. We feel prayed for, loved and supported by all of you and we are grateful to you for this. Thank you for communicating and keeping in touch with us and keeping us updated on what is going on in your lives.
We have so much to be thankful for this month and year. Thank you all for your prayers, as we have been house hunting. We finally did find a home and it is such a blessing from God. We will be moving in a couple of weeks and we are so grateful that this somewhat stressful month is coming to a peaceful close. God answered our specific prayers for this move and we stand in awe at his faithfulness. We came across the house through our head board member that had us over for dinner last Friday. This family will be moving out of town because of a job transfer. We had been trying to get together with them for months and haven’t been able to schedule it. So finally we got together last weekend!! They were actually showing the house to a couple that night and so we asked about it and the next thing we knew we had a home to move into. The location of the house is great and it will allow our house helper and guard to continue working for us. The hospital where I will be delivering is less that 2 blocks away and our church is about 2 min away. There is also a nice yard for our dog, which was very high on the kids prayer list. So we are very thankful for God’s timing and provision once again for our family. We appreciate your prayers and encouraging e-mails these last couple of weeks.
We are also thankful for good health, as this last month has also been a little shaky health wise for all of us. Emma was treated for malaria last week and has recovered quite amazingly, and we are still unsure if it was malaria or what actually was going on inside of her!!!!! Macie with her sensitive skin gets any kind of rash that’s available here but Payton has survived somehow, even though he gets the dirtiest and plays with the most creatures.!! Luke and I have had a couple of weird bugs, but they all have passed and we have survived another set of African health adventures. We are so thankful for the patience that God has given us and also an amazing amount of peace through all these weird and unexplainable things. We daily have to choose if we are going to worry about it or give it to God. God has used so many things here to challenge us daily to let Him have control in every area….big or little. God cares no matter what it is and He has shown us that in real ways over these 9 months here.
So THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for your prayers, love and support. We can feel your love and prayers and appreciate your faithful friendships. We wanted to share our thankful hearts with you and wish you a happy turkey day. We will be gathering with all our fellow ACTION missionaries for a big treat of a meal at a local hotel and will be enjoying home made pumpkin and apple pies as many of you will also. May you each reflect on all the things that you are thankful for today during the holiday and each and every day after.
Love and Blessings,
Elise, Luke and all the gang!!!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Sacrifice
Dear Friends
As previous emails have stated, I (Luke) am teaching a class at a local Bible school on biblical eldership. As I was preparing this week I came across this section concerning the sacrificial nature of the post of elder or leader in the local congregation. While the selection calls leaders to serve sacrificially the message is applicable to each of us no matter what part of the body we represent. The follow was taken from Alexander Strauch’s Biblical Eldership:
“ Some people say, ‘You can’t expect laymen to raise their families work all day, and shepherd a local church.’ But that is simply not true. Many people raise families, work, and give substantial hours of time to community service, clubs, athletics activities, and/or religious institutions. The cults have built up large lay movements that survive primarily because of the volunteer time of their members. We Bible-believing Christians are becoming a lazy, soft, pay-for-it-to-be-done group of Christians. It is positively amazing how much people can accomplish when they are motivated to work for something they love. I’ve seen people build and remodel houses in their spare time. I’ve also seen men discipline themselves to gain a phenomenal knowledge of the Scriptures.
The real problem, then, lies not in men’s limited time and energy but in false ideas about work, Christian living, life’s priorities, and especially—Christian ministry. To the Ephesians elders Paul said, ‘you yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’’ (Act 20:34,35). How do workingmen shepherd the church yet maintain family life and employment? They do it by self-sacrifice, self-discipline, faith, perseverance, hard work, and the power of the Holy Spirit. R. Paul Stevens, author and instructor at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, sets us on the right track when he writes, ‘And for tent makers to survive full-time jobs (work, family, and ministry) they must also adopt a sacrificial lifestyle. Tentmakers must live a pruned life and literally find leisure and rest in the rhythm of serving Christ (Matt. 11:28). They must be willing to forego a measure of career achievements and private leisure for the privilege of gaining the prize (Phil 3:14). Many would like to be tentmakers if they could be wealthy and live a leisurely and cultured lifestyle. But the truth is that a significant ministry in the church and community can only come by sacrifice’”.
Although many of us are not called to be shepherds or overseers of a local flock we are members the body of Christ, and we know that body is made up of many parts and that each part is necessary. Strauch reminds us that the path of a Christian is one of sacrifice, hard work, selflessness as it was for our Lord during His time on this Earth. It is not just a lifestyle demanded of those leading God’s flocks but for all of us as we are all called make disciples of men. As I share these truths with Zambian pastors and leaders tonight I am going to challenge them to evaluate and check if they sacrifice their time for Christ as much as they do for the things of this world. What a good question for us all to ponder. I hope you are encouraged and challenged by Strauch’s thoughts as I have been, and I pray we would be able to live and serve in the manner described above. Thanks for your continue prayers and support. We love each of you dearly and would not be able to touch the lives we are touching without your involvement. You are truly appreciated. God bless and PRESS ON & INTO HIM!!!
His Servants
The Whitfields <><
ps—Continue you to pray for our housing situation as we will need to be moved by no later than Dec. 15th and have still not settled on a new location. We trust He knows and cares about our needs and so we rest in Him.
As previous emails have stated, I (Luke) am teaching a class at a local Bible school on biblical eldership. As I was preparing this week I came across this section concerning the sacrificial nature of the post of elder or leader in the local congregation. While the selection calls leaders to serve sacrificially the message is applicable to each of us no matter what part of the body we represent. The follow was taken from Alexander Strauch’s Biblical Eldership:
“ Some people say, ‘You can’t expect laymen to raise their families work all day, and shepherd a local church.’ But that is simply not true. Many people raise families, work, and give substantial hours of time to community service, clubs, athletics activities, and/or religious institutions. The cults have built up large lay movements that survive primarily because of the volunteer time of their members. We Bible-believing Christians are becoming a lazy, soft, pay-for-it-to-be-done group of Christians. It is positively amazing how much people can accomplish when they are motivated to work for something they love. I’ve seen people build and remodel houses in their spare time. I’ve also seen men discipline themselves to gain a phenomenal knowledge of the Scriptures.
The real problem, then, lies not in men’s limited time and energy but in false ideas about work, Christian living, life’s priorities, and especially—Christian ministry. To the Ephesians elders Paul said, ‘you yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’’ (Act 20:34,35). How do workingmen shepherd the church yet maintain family life and employment? They do it by self-sacrifice, self-discipline, faith, perseverance, hard work, and the power of the Holy Spirit. R. Paul Stevens, author and instructor at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, sets us on the right track when he writes, ‘And for tent makers to survive full-time jobs (work, family, and ministry) they must also adopt a sacrificial lifestyle. Tentmakers must live a pruned life and literally find leisure and rest in the rhythm of serving Christ (Matt. 11:28). They must be willing to forego a measure of career achievements and private leisure for the privilege of gaining the prize (Phil 3:14). Many would like to be tentmakers if they could be wealthy and live a leisurely and cultured lifestyle. But the truth is that a significant ministry in the church and community can only come by sacrifice’”.
Although many of us are not called to be shepherds or overseers of a local flock we are members the body of Christ, and we know that body is made up of many parts and that each part is necessary. Strauch reminds us that the path of a Christian is one of sacrifice, hard work, selflessness as it was for our Lord during His time on this Earth. It is not just a lifestyle demanded of those leading God’s flocks but for all of us as we are all called make disciples of men. As I share these truths with Zambian pastors and leaders tonight I am going to challenge them to evaluate and check if they sacrifice their time for Christ as much as they do for the things of this world. What a good question for us all to ponder. I hope you are encouraged and challenged by Strauch’s thoughts as I have been, and I pray we would be able to live and serve in the manner described above. Thanks for your continue prayers and support. We love each of you dearly and would not be able to touch the lives we are touching without your involvement. You are truly appreciated. God bless and PRESS ON & INTO HIM!!!
His Servants
The Whitfields <><
ps—Continue you to pray for our housing situation as we will need to be moved by no later than Dec. 15th and have still not settled on a new location. We trust He knows and cares about our needs and so we rest in Him.
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