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To donate to relief efforts focused on Joplin, Mo., visit www.namb.net.
BGR’s work is focused outside North America. Disaster relief efforts in North America are conducted by the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Network and are coordinated by the North American Mission Board.
Earlier this week, we asked you to pray that the steel roofing needed for a project at Sanyati Baptist Hospital be delivered in time for a volunteer team to use it. The steel manufacturer had less than a week to manufacture and transport the 30 tons of metal roofing before the Kentucky volunteer team arrived.
The team arrived this past Tuesday and the steel arrived on Thursday. Praise the Lord that His timing is perfect. We will be excited to hear what the team was able to do with the two extra days!
In Luke 7, there is a great story about Jesus raising to life the dead son of a widow from a village called Nain. By Luke’s account, Jesus has just finished teaching the great sermon on the mount (or level place) and was going through the local villages and towns. As he passed through Nain, he saw a dead person being carried out of the town gate. This dead person was the only son of his mother and she was a widow. When Jesus saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”
He then went up and touched the coffin and said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” Then, to the amazement of all present and the obvious rapture of his grieving mother, the young dead man sat up, began to talk and Jesus, Luke says, gave him back to his mother.
A number of things strike me about this story in relation to the Kingdom of God. For one, the compassion of Christ for one who had lost so much. “His heart went out to her…” Second, the authority of Jesus to say to the dead young man, “…I say to you,get up!” and then the great gift made as He, “…gave him back to his mother.”
But the thing that intrigues me the most is the reaction of the crowd of on-lookers. “They were all filled with awe and praised God. ‘A great prophet has appeared among us,’ they said. ‘God has come to help his people.’”
“God has come to help his people.” When we minister to people physically in the name of Jesus, the whole goal should be to point people to the Father and His Son, Jesus. When we respond to a disaster event in Japan, a chronic hunger problem in sub-Saharan Africa, an urban slum and its needs in a mega-city in India, our goal to have the people whom we minister to say, “God has come to help his people!”
A mentor of mine always taught me that when we are finished working in a community with our development projects, the highest praise from the local people is that they do not build a statue to us, but rather give glory to God.
Jesus used compassion and life touching ministries to point people to the Kingdom and to God. Our compassion ministries and demonstration of the gospel through acts of kindness should ultimately be about making His kingdom and the King Himself known.
What do people see and say when we help them in their hour of need? Do they applaud us or do they see that through us, God has come to help them? More importantly, what do we do to make sure that they don’t applaud us but see God’s Kingdom and His fingerprints in our acts of service and ministry to them?
It’s a good question…
Jeff Palmer
BGR Executive Director Jeff Palmer blogs at Kingdom Communities
BGR’s Sub-Sahara Africa director Mark Hatfield sends this urgent prayer request about steel roofing needed for a project at Sanyati Baptist Hospital:
The steel manufacturer has 6 days to manufacture and transport the steel order before the Ky DR teams arrival. This is about 30 tons of metal roofing. We need prayer to support their following through with the order and having it on site for this team. In Zimbabwe it is not unusual to have several days of electricity outage so pray that power remains on so that the factory can operate and then that the trucking can be arranged. The roads to Sanyati are not great so it is not an easy journey for a 30 ton truck. Join me in praying that God would work all these details out so that this volunteer team has a super experience.
Jeff Palmer, BGR’s executive director, has posted a new item at Kingdom Communities on ”our divine, painful, yet wonderful burden for God’s world.”
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Palmer says, “our inward life with Christ does not reduce our concern for the world but rather spurs us on towards a more truly whole and righteous burden for the world God created.”
Jeff writes:
We begin to see the world as it really is: beautiful yet dark; wonderful yet painful; filled with joy yet filled with evil. And we yearn and are even tired down to our bones with the anticipation of one day, God setting everything in place like He planned from before the beginning of time. Yet in the in-between time, we find ourselves - called to turn away from the world but still be concerned and join God in His great redemption process of bringing His world back to Himself.
Read the full post here: http://bit.ly/gFH4mY
The container of BGR In-Home Care Kits that was stuck in the South Africa port is now being moved to Swaziland. Pray that the container and all of its contents will be moved easily and soon.
Also, certain people in Swaziland are calling for national strikes next Tuesday - Thursday. The government has vowed to crush them. Pray that peace will remain and that God will intervene on the behalf of the innocent.
Oppression is in the air as Ivory Coast prepares for what may become a civil war. Supporters of the president-elect, Alassane Ouattara, are gathering in an effort to overthrow the current president, Laurent Gbagbo, from power. According to the UN, civilians are being attacked by armed forces. Nearly a million people have fled to neighboring Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana and Liberia. With the crisis in Japan, troubles in the Middle East and flooding in South Asia, what is happening in Ivory Coast can be easily overlooked. BGR leaders are assessing how to respond to the needs there. Ask God to give wisdom where it is needed so that many will feel the touch of God’s love during this crisis.
BGR’s executive director, Jeff Palmer, offers some profound insight into all the trouble we see in the world these days. A couple of excerpts:
We are living in some of the most opportune days since the beginning of the world. While our hearts go out to those in these areas mentioned who are suffering, we as followers of Jesus Christ and believers in an all powerful and all knowing God have complete assurance that God is at work in these historical events. Moreover, the history that we see being made today in the form of all these troubles really is a part of the grand design.
… If you and I want to avoid trouble, we have probably been born to the wrong species. How I find comfort in all the trouble is to ask God what He is doing in the midst of what I perceive as chaos. I then ask Him to show me not only what He is doing but how can I join Him in doing something about it that will align myself with Him in seeing His Kingdom come and His will being done.
Updated prayer points for Japan have been posted on BGR’s Prayer & Praise page.
Updates on Baptist Global Response relief efforts in Japan can be monitored on Twitter (www.twitter.com/gobgr), Facebook (http://on.fb.me/hKaE6J), and www.gobgr.org.
Donations to BGR’s Disaster Response Fund can be made here.
