“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.” Hebrews 10:19-25

The Global Gathering happens every four years. Around 60 Sports Friends leaders from 13 nationalities, ministering to 19 countries gathered in Chiang Mai, Thailand last week. We gather to pray, reflect, inform, encourage, equip, support and have fun within the global family of Sports Friends. This year God directed us through some difficult trials. The coronavirus caused havoc with travel plans. We had several people cancel the trip altogether because of it. The leadership prayed about postponing the event, but felt led to trust God with protection and move forward with the meeting.

I (Bob) arrived early in hope of getting over jet lag (12 hour difference) and explored the city, ate some delicious food, and enjoyed the awesome hospitality of the Thai people. 

Sunday all the Sports Friends people started to roll in. All the people we have been working and praying for over the past three years. It was humbling to be there. These are people who put their very lives on the line for the sake of the gospel. It’s amazing that God would allow us to serve along side these brothers and sisters in Christ. Our conference days where filled with country reports, prayer, Bible study, break out sessions and team building activities.

One of the awesome aspects of using sports as a tool to reach people for Jesus is that it’s non-threatening. It crosses barriers that otherwise would not be crossed. We have 13,200 coaches ministering to 294,000 youth, and impacting over 1 million people as we hear the stories of entire families changed by God’s love. This ministry is being done in places known for their hostility toward the gospel. God is using Sports Friends in a mighty way. I believe the devil is aware of the impact and wants to stop the advancement of God’s kingdom.

“Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” 1 Peter 5:8

Halfway into the conference we received the terrible news that John Kato (SF Nigeria leader, in the yellow jersey above) died while en route to the Global Gathering. John suffered some sort of sudden asthmatic attack / respiratory distress while waiting for his delayed flight in Lagos, and died at a local medical clinic. I had never met him, but I’ve been told he was the life of the party and all the kids loved being around him. We grieved, prayed, and worshipped Jesus together as a Sports Friends family. Please pray with us for his wife and two boys as they mourn their loss.

We also got news from our leaders of terrible persecution that was taking place back in their home countries of ministry. In west Africa, terrorists killed two pastors and kidnapped two other friends of our team leader in that country. Later we found out the two that were kidnapped had also been killed. One of our workers learned that new believers in a southeast Asian village where they had been serving had been told to deny their faith in Jesus or face the consequences. They stood firm and saw their homes destroyed and they were expelled from the community. Please pray for the persecuted church within the Sports Friends ministry.

One of the biggest things I got from this Global Gathering was that we are truly a family as the Body of Christ, and He calls us all to serve, support and pray for our brothers and sisters around the world. I believe our Nigerian brother said it best “Death or Expansion (of His ministry)”. Serious. Focused. Real. Life here is so short. Death is coming…we never know when. How are we living the life He’s given us? For ourselves or for His kingdom?

Extra Blessings:

One of our Compassion sponsored children (really a young man) lives in Thailand, and when we realized he lived only 10 km from Chiang Mai, I wanted to see him. I asked one of our Thai SF leaders if he knew where he lived. “Nop” has written us on several occasions and talked about how he is growing in his walk with Jesus, and how much he likes going to church. Come to find out, our Thai SF leader is actually his pastor! I got to meet Nop in person and bless him with some new shoes. He thanked us and asked me when he would see the rest of our family! Pray for him as he finishes school and enters the workforce as a mechanic. Pray also that his family can find a new place to sell their goods. Pray that he will continue to be encouraged to have seen how BIG his God is, and how much He loves to bless His children in surprising and profound ways.

We serve a God who, according to Romans 4:17, loves to establish and reveal what’s true. Only, it’s not what we thought things were…

[He is] the God who gives life to the dead, and speaks into being the things that are not.

He’s let us know how little of even the measurable electromagnetic spectrum we can see… and there’s certainly more out there than we’ve figured out how to measure in our most advanced ways.

And yet… we walk by sight.

Oh, even if we have seen through Webb telescopes and electron microscopes and history, and we can remember what is (and acknowledge our typical oblivion to it)…

nasa.gov

 

visualsonline.cancer.gov

 

…we walk by sight.

But we are people of faith!

We have the faith to breathe deep the clean air in our backyards.
The faith to step out of bed onto a floor we believe will hold us up.
The faith to actually expect we’ll make it to the office intact.
The faith that our medication just might work. Our check just might get deposited. Food will be at the grocery whenever we run low. Our spine will hold us upright all day long. We’ll understand the words we see on the page. Etc, etc, etc.

So I suppose the question presented is what we’re putting our faith in.

Perhaps the painfully truthful short answer is: ourselves.
Namely, our perception and comprehension of the world.

What we can “see”.

We trust the air because we’ve always breathed it. We mindlessly trust gravity and floorboards and vehicles because we’ve used them for some time now, and know how they work. We’ve been taught to rely on science and doctors and pharmaceuticals practicing evidence-based medicine (though, rightly, not everyone has equal confidence).

Maybe we understand microbiology, but she has a grip on cause and effect, so the bush mother doesn’t trust the water without boiling it. He never studied forces, but the post-landslide villager doesn’t trust the ground to be solid under his next step. The misused and exploited child doesn’t trust a gentle touch to be safe. We live on the same spinning sphere with all the same rules of physics, but vastly different understandings of this world. Is it safe or unsafe?

So while we acknowledge that our resources for accurately interpreting the reality of our surroundings are quite limited, and our unawareness of those limitations is perhaps the biggest one… we walk by sight.

We operate according to a system of familiar experiences, ideas, and values at work in our lives. But at some point we’re struck with the reality that the sum total of our entire existence’s capacity is ridiculously minuscule. Mid-life crisis? Awakening? A drop of wisdom graciously laid on ignorance?

But if we re-arrange our lives according to our limitations, even if we do re-direct, how much better off are we? We need something far bigger than us in order to say we’ve placed our trust wisely.

The Lord founded the earth by wisdom and established the heavens by understanding.
Proverbs 3:19

Lord, Your testimonies are completely reliable; holiness is the beauty of Your house for all the days to come.
Psalm 93:5

Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or who gave Him His counsel?… Who will you compare God with? What likeness will you compare Him to?
Isaiah 40:13, 18

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9

“You have heard it said…. But I say….” -Jesus, repetitively.

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”
Jesus, Mark 9:35

“You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and have revealed them to infants.”
Jesus, Luke 10:21

“What is a man benefited if he gains the whole world, yet loses or forfeits himself?”
Jesus, Luke 9:25

“Not My will, but Yours be done.”
Jesus, Luke 22:42

These all died in faith without having received the promises, but they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place: a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:13-16

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Prov 9:10

 

Let’s spend a few posts reflecting on some discoveries of this truth about “things that are not” that God calls HIS. You have a thousand such stories from your years, also. Think about them. Let’s be transformed as our minds are renewed by a living Word, Spirit, and story.

 

Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God… In Your sight a thousand years are like yesterday that passes by, like a few hours of the night… Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts… Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:2, 4, 12, 17

 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the deep. Then God said, “Let there be light,”
and there was light.
Genesis 1:1-2

We can go all the way back, waaaaaaaay back.

If we just stopped there, it would be enough. God said… and there was.

He brings the dead to life and speaks of things that are not as if they were.

 

Now go back to the beginning of little you.

 

When You send Your breath, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth. -Psalm 104:30

It was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb… Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began. -Psalm 139:13, 16

Then, perhaps, as a spiritual child of Abraham, you “believed God, and it was credited to [you] as righteousness.” -Gen 13

Now you are in Christ, a new creation. The old has passed away, and the new has come. Walk as children of the light. In Him you are complete. Blessed with every spiritual blessing. Heirs of God. Fully known, and fully loved. Fully redeemed.

Behold, what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are. -1 John

Things are what God says they are. We may not understand it a lick, but He’s the Creator, Author, and Completer. The Beginning and the End.

“Now I know that You can do anything, and no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak. When I question you, you will inform Me.’ I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I take by my words and repent in dust and ashes.” -Job 42:1-6

This is probably what we still are, as much as we wish were more. We are just getting started.

He sent forth His Spirit, sent for His Savior, birthed us of water and Spirit.  (John 3)

We exist.

7 week gestation Annabelle

But we remain tightly bound in the womb of the world. So much happening all around us, in us, beyond us. We’re growing our senses, our ability to comprehend what is. We’re affected by the nutrition and toxins that flow through our space. Our hearts are beating, our ears are hearing, our bones are lengthening, and our nerves are signaling, but we don’t yet have the capacity for what’s out there. Some days it begins to feel awfully tight in here. We realize that for all the amazing provision growing and sustaining us in this place, we can’t stay here forever. We won’t. We don’t really want to.

15 weeks

 

Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of man the things God has prepared for those who love Him. 1 Corinthians 2:9 (And how I anticipate the wonder at our “delivery” out of this world, where we see as not through a glass… just like a wide-eyed newborn staring at all the incomprehensible that was there all along.

 

Just like my children that I carried knew me from the inside, we can know the Father. My children were all born with a taste for green veggies and for coffee, a love for movement and music, an inherent need to be with me. And my eyes, or ears, or something. They were in me, and my genetics were in them.

 

But I no longer live (as independent); Christ lives in me. And Jesus walked atop water and through walls. We’re not limited to the physical universe anymore. (Please don’t get silly and go jump off the roof. Read the Gospels and pay attention.)

So we already bear the image of the Father, we are in the Son, we are alive by the Spirit. And we are acquiring His tastes:
We love justice.
We draw near the brokenhearted.
We care for the widow and the orphan, and join Him placing the lonely in families.
We give to the poor as to the Lord, and He will provide all we need.
The Lord opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble… so we choose humble.
We understand that the meek will inherit the earth.
He comes to serve and not be served; to give His life… and we join Him.
We learn to rejoice in the truth, even if it hurts.
We weep with those who weep.
In His strength we love in a way that covers a multitude of sin.
We forgive as we have been forgiven.

 

Only by grace do we understand the truth. Only because He made us to know it, and has not withheld Himself from us. He who seeks will find; to him who knocks the door will be opened.

We’re so thankful. God is so good, and none of us deserve to receive Him the way He offers Himself to us. But He is love, and so love is the constant mark of His presence. We are thankful, because Love covers a multitude of sin at its own expense, welcomes the undeserving, extends forgiveness and provision, creates hope for the hopeless. Love remains when all the rest of all of this goes away. It is the greatest gift. It never fails. It drives out fear. God is love, and God is light. He calls us continually to walk in the light as He is in the light. To be exposed in truth so that He can wash away our sin, strengthen our weakness, remind us that we are small and wretchedly failing, but He is GOD. He does all of this in love, that we can live what it means to be a child of God.

In September, Mary visited a women’s group in Indianapolis to encourage them in the sufficiency of God’s strength and faithfulness in our weaknesses. She shared many “chapters” of the redemptive story He has written in her life, and of His powerful work of always overcoming evil with good. What a privilege, to tell the story of a real and personal Savior who is fiercely faithful, absolutely pure, and overwhelmingly kind.

The family (most of us, anyway) were also blessed to share at another Indy church and tell of what God has been up to in our lives and work, and what He is calling us further into. We loved spending time with friends who have loved and prayed for us from a distance. We felt so welcomed and encouraged, and were so thankful to worship together with these congregations. These are people we’ll spend eternity with and then have the joy of getting to know without the constraints of time. What a great thing to anticipate, even as we only get to brush up against each other very occasionally on earth!

The last full week of September, everyone except the older two girls (who stayed with friends to attend school and their sporting events) traveled to Charlotte to spend a few days in annual planning meetings with Sports Friends’ International Support Services team at SIM Int’l Office. What a joy it was be in the same physical space with our colleagues, to pray and seek the Lord together, to plan and communicate face-to-face instead of through a screen! We spent each day accomplishing the necessary school work, then building relationships with old and new friends Yahweh has already prepared in the area.

One of Abe’s best friends and “brothers” from his orphanage in Ethiopia lives within a few miles of where we expect to land. What a gift to see him and his family again, and share a few days of play and reconnecting. We have so much to look forward to, and it is always a challenge to wait through the necessary times, trusting the rightness and goodness of God in all the things He gives. But how thankful we are, for safe travel, for both refreshed and brand new relationships, for team unity and realization of new things God is doing in and through this particular ministry.

There is much going on in the Sports Friends world. Or, rather, in the world through the ministry of Sports Friends. God is so specific and wise. Please pray for the international, national, and local leadership levels to have discernment and diligence to obey the Lord, that He will have His way fully in all of these locations where He is continually bringing light into darkness. Pray for people of peace in regions of expansion, who are willing to receive what He offers in community strengthening, direction and mentorship for struggling young people, and the hope of Messiah: Immanuel come to save us all. Pray for wisdom and courage for the missionaries, pastors, and coaches who are experiencing harsh persecution for their representation of the Gospel in hostile regions. Pray for the ongoing spiritual growth and discipleship of (all of us, but especially) the roughly 10,000 SF coaches: believers who are volunteering to reach out to youth in their communities in the name of Jesus. They need all the grace of working with a group of kids and young adults, while seeking to unite and disciple them in the setting of sports. Obviously, competition and pride thrive in this age group and activity, as highly strategic as sport is to connect with so many youth (we’re working with around 240,000 currently, in 14 nations).

We carry on with home school and high school (pray for both!). Cross country and soccer have wrapped up for the season, and we’re ready for a little respite from the flurry of practices/events for five kids. We’ve been enjoying fall-ish activities, though it’s been hovering around 80-90 until this mid-October. Bob is working with the ISS team to be as strategic as possible in his part-time availability to SF right now, as he continues in study, team-building, and participating in local ministry.  Mary continues to work the ER once or twice a week. Please pray for the colleagues and patients she interacts with there. Please pray also for her slow but steady Arabic study, and the strength and diligence to be faithful in precisely how God calls her to spend this short time.

As Jesus said, the poor are always with us, the harvest is plentiful but workers are few, and if we seek Him and His kingdom first, everything we need will be added. We are incredibly grateful for you who are partnering with us in this particular work of God’s kingdom. We encourage you still to keep your eyes open for whom and what He places before you as you walk with Him. There is so much opportunity to live the light and love of Messiah in our daily activities. When He prompts you to a new relationship, conversation, act of service, gift to give, or especially the call to spend more of your time simply with Him and listening to Him and doing the work of prayer, we couldn’t encourage you enough to act with an eager yes. He’s always right and always good. Above all, He is always worthy.

Grace and peace to you, our dear friends.

If you read our general family update you know our days have been full. It’s been hard to arrange one on one meetings with individuals, as schedules are all so varying in the summer months, but God has faithfully led us on. His Word says He will direct our steps and He will provide. He has.

We’ve been privileged to visit four new churches and share what God has done in our family over the last few years, and the the work He is doing through Sports Friends. It always encourages our hearts when we meet brothers and sisters who are so eager to introduce more young people to Jesus Christ. It remains amazing to us how interconnected the global church is; how we can each play critical roles in building God’s kingdom in some really dark places, just by doing our specific parts. Some work secular jobs but invest generously in what is eternal. Some spend hours of their time commodity in intercession, doing work that no dollar, program, or person can accomplish. Some are on the ground in Asia, Africa, North and South America, training coaches, running teams, and bringing the light of Christ to each of these 240,000 youth in Sports Friends.  What a privilege to work right in the middle of it all, to be a connection point between them all as part of International Support Services. We get to see and serve both sides of the equation, stay abreast of events and needs in many fields, and watch new doors opening. Please continue to be in prayer for our growing work with refugees in Sacramento. The opportunities to reach out are huge, and effective logistics and manpower must be supplied by God.

Bob has begun to work part time from his office space kindly provided in our home church, and loves the feel of officially beginning. We still have some significant support raising to do, however, so our time remains divided until we reach our financial goals. We have been so eager to get to work within the Sports Friends ministry, and are so thankful for this step forward!

Mary’s work has been to develop the boys’ education system and establish a new rhythm according to God’s wisdom for this season. The ER always affords opportunity for good conversations, and settings to look for the move of God in. I’m ever intrigued by the ebbs and flows in types of emergencies as I am constantly learning about the triune us, as interconnected spirit-soul-body. The spiritual impact on physical (and obviously psychological) wellness is such a real but poorly discerned thing in western care. I’m beginning to look ahead, also, toward short medical-oriented trips perhaps for next year. I would so appreciate your prayer for the Father to direct this intricately. I have well learned better than to let my zeal or limited understanding lead the way to anywhere. He knows with precision, and as I take one step at a time I trust Him to unfold the path.

In the meantime, He gifts with all sorts of surprises that are perfectly constructed to bless in multiple dimensions. Just a few weeks ago I was introduced to a precious new sister: a Middle Eastern single mom, who was recently baptized as a follower of Jesus.  This is a woman I had begun praying for specifically after God had led her into the path of other friends who serve among Mslm populations in the States.  In the powerful goodness of Yahweh, she has secured a good job and moved in amidst the quiet cornfields, just a few miles from here. We have begun to meet weekly to read the Bible and pray, and she is beginning to teach me Arabic. How it blesses my heart for God to so gently but powerfully (if only you knew the story) place a sister like her right here, where I have longings to love and learn from Mslm women and discover Jesus with them… but there aren’t so many such women around here to befriend, and I am not in the setting to go hunting for them! Further, three years ago I felt prompted to learn Arabic, but had no idea when and how that was going to happen in real life. What freedom there is in believing Him when He says something, and waiting for the details to come forth.