Dear Brethren,
Praise God for the great blessings of our 23-day maximized USA trip that involves visits to my immediate family, in New Jersey and California, as well as fellowship with our former Bethany members. It likewise includes ministry and speaking engagements in various Churches in America. We truly thank God for the kindred and generous spirit of our gracious hosts who helped us in the various phases of the trip. Thank you our dear brethren for your consistent prayers, support, and understanding. Our God has indeed orchestrated and guided in every step of the way.
As we celebrate Father’s Day today, we are always to be thankful for how the Lord has used our fathers along with our mothers for the great role they fill in the training of their children. While it is really a good practice to set a day in a year to formally honour and recognize our fathers and mothers, they deserved to be respected and remembered everyday of our lives for without them as instruments of God, we won’t be here in this world. The Bible clearly exhorts us to honour our father and mother, “that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth”. It is the 5th of the 10 Commandments, and the 1st directed laterally, and the 1st Commandment with promise.
It is worth and timely to notice that a good depiction of our Heavenly Father is that in the prodigal son’s father in Luke 15. The father of the prodigal has continued in faith, faithfulness, and firmness of conviction while exemplifying forbearance and forgiveness. He continued in following and fulfilling God’s call even through fierce pain, grief, and depression. He faithfully stayed in God’s love, God’s care, and God’s service. What a great example for our earthly fathers to follow.
Praise God for another formal recognition of God’s call with the Commissioning/ Sending-out for our 31st full-time Missionary to the foreign field. This will be along with our 4 o’ clock afternoon service today for Bro. J.L. with his wife Y. and children who will be going back to their country in Indonesia to reach-out their own people with the Gospel of Christ. They will be our 3rd Missionary family unit sent-out from Bethany to the field of I.. We continue to trust the Lord for His direction and provision as we pursue our Missions thrust and faithfully carry-on Christ’s Great Commission. What a blessed privilege to be “On Mission With God!”
All By God’s Grace and For God’s Glory!
Pastor Gerry Nable