This morning before church I (David) took Rachel up river about 7km and dropped her and her supplies off on a big wide gravel bar to wait for her boat ride coming up from town. She seemed so small and insignificant on that big expanse of gravel. But in God’s sight she is a giant doing a big job. As I write this she will not have yet made it home. It is dry season and the rivers are low so slower going.
Thank you, to each of you who prayed for the regional conference of our fellowship of churches. We started Monday evening and went through to Thursday morning. There were about 200 believers from 3 tribal groups. The theme was “Modern Idols”. But when we got into the material it was really about worship. What is worship, why we worship, what we worship, how to avoid false worship, results of false worship. Materialism is sweeping this area like a wild fire, but as we think about it, materialism is actually a form of idolatry.
The verse that stirred my heart as I thought about this subject was Psalms 73:25 The psalmist said “Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on the earth.” We often think of worship in terms of praise and adoration. But “desire” is also worship. If we desire anything more than the Lord, it has become idolatry.
These cultures are classed as “shame based cultures”. Which means people are very easily offended by words and references to them and their family. From the feed back we are hearing, if there was offense on these sensitive topics it was settled. (money and kids are sensitive in any culture) We did hear of one who was offended but a believer from one tribal group stayed up until 2am the last night talking the issue through with the believer from another group. This is the function the Lord desires of all of us.
Next years general conference will be in July at Rachel’s village and the theme will be “In the Image of Christ”. Now that all this business is behind us, the next project will be to prepare the teaching lessons on Romans for the regular bi-monthly fellowship. We appreciate your prayers as we work thru this all important book. The next fellowship will be Sept 22-25.