It feels like everything is happening very quickly now. We move out of our house at the end of this month and are busy packing up and decorating ready for the people who will rent our house. It is so nice to write this, we wondered if we would find someone who would rent our house and are very pleased to have someone.
We also have our Volunteer Visas, so it feels like the countdown clock is ticking.
In all the business, I feel God is still talking to me about values, not only values that I believe that should shape Church, but values God is emphasising for life.
The value I am learning at the moment is confidence in the prior activity of the Father.
Tozer wrote in "The Pursuit of God"
"We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. "No man can come to me," said our Lord, "except the Father which hath sent me draw him" John 6:44, and it is by this prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming...God is always previous."
The temptation is to think that to be useful in Zambia, I need to read lots of books or listen to lots of podcasts and these things can be very helpful, but they cannot make me effective. Any effectiveness in Zambia will be because of the prior activity of God, We are God's workmanship, created for good works Eph 2:10.
Scott Marques took an amazing seminar at Together on a mission where he talked about this.
I won't be useful because I have read books, attended conferences or training courses, have experience, I will be useful because the Father has started something. I don't need to wait for the lift off command, I need to look for what the Father is doing. This is not to say I don't value the books, conferences, training and experience, but I recognise that the Father's creative work in me is the essential thing.
There will always be more qualified, better read, more experienced people than us, but like Samuel in 1 Samuel 3:8-10, the issue is primarily about God starting something.
I am praying that a Church will be planted in Lusaka that recognises God is in the business of creating us for doing the works of God.
In the next few weeks I will be looking for what God is doing.
