Can God use a Bible and glasses to bring glory to Himself. Absolutely! It’s all in the video – along with a few other important things. If you’d rather read it, see the slightly edited transcript following the video.
A Bible And Glasses; Amazing Teamwork
Hello, thank you for tuning in. There are several important things to share with you, and not only are there important events to share, but there’s some important reasons to share them. What I want to do is share some things with you over the next few days. As you well know, this is a busy time of year for all of us, and that is a true statement for all things related to mission and ministry. We’re not fielding a mission team this month, but it is one of the busiest months of the year. And that’s part of the reason I want to share some things with you. I want to give you an insight into how God works.
God’s Ways And Thoughts
The Bible says that God works in mysterious ways works in ways that that we don’t really understand. His ways and our ways are not the same. His thoughts and our thoughts are not the same. And one of those moments came in our Dominican Republic mission last month. And I want to just give you an idea of what coalesced in one moment. And if I had had a video of the moment, I could play it for you. But like so many of those surprise moments in life, you’re never prepared. You don’t know that they’re coming so you can’t record them.
As you may know, we give Bibles and many study materials to those in our pastor training school. And earlier this year, we had a graduation in the Barjona area. And we didn’t have a Bible for everyone. We wound up having a couple or three more graduates than we anticipated. So we weren’t fully prepared. And so, going back last month, we took some Bibles with us and had made note that we were going to give the folks their Bibles. Well that was part of our plan. We also work with a number of different organizations, one of them being a local Lions Club.
Mission Work Is Teamwork
Some of you may be in a Lions Club or you have friends who are. And the project of local Lions Clubs is to collect glasses and these have become a ministry tool for us and we have delivered this year thousands of pairs of glasses to different ministry points. That was also true when we packed to go to Barahona in November. We had about 2, 000 – 2, 500 pairs of glasses with us thanks to the local Lions Club. They had donated those and so we were going to take those and what I turned that into was an evangelism project for our pastors. The local pastors association was going to get together and use the glasses as an evangelistic outreach. they said that they would work together and have an event to share the gospel in their city and I was really excited about that.
Now that city in particular is Tamayo. So Tamayo was going to have evangelism event but before we turned them loose with the glasses, what we did was to allow those in our class that day to get a pair of glasses or sunglasses whichever one they needed most and just let them meet their own physical need. And one of the folks was a lady who has graduated from our school and is continuing to study further advancement. She was one of the folks that we had to take a Bible to, because along with the other things from the spring, her Bible that she got in the spring haappended to be in English.
Now, she does English modestly, about like my Spanish, I think. But we had taken her a Spanish Bible. So in class, we presented the Bibles to the graduates from the spring, just as we would have in the graduation ceremony. And that was met with great excitement, and they were very, very grateful. And this lady who I’ve come to know, and she’s a delight to have in class, was super excited about her new study Bible.
A Bible And Glasses: I can read it!
Well, move forward to the last day of the week, and we got the glasses out, demonstrated how to do the evangelism project. And I had no idea who was going to want a pair of glasses, but she was one of them. She came running up to the.front of the church where our teaching crew was, and she said to us in the most excited manner:
Now I’ve got a new Bible and glasses so that I can read it.
And that just made an incredible impression upon me because she was so exuberant about it. And I began to think about all of the hands that were involved in that moment. There were people involved in that who collected the glasses. There were people involved in that, I happen to know, who cleaned the glasses and sorted the glasses and got them ready. There were people who donated the Bibles so that we could give them to the pastors. And none of those people were on the team. They made a contribution to the ministry, but they weren’t on the team with us. But it really doesn’t matter! You know, we were doing the part that God had given us to do and others were doing the parts that God had given them to do. And it was God Who was bringing all of those pieces together and meeting needs that He knew in advance that she had. I didn’t know she had it, but it was just one of those moments that kind of grabs you. You think:
Gee, I’m glad I was here to see that!
And so, you know, all of our ministry opportunities really work that way. We just don’t always see it in such graphic terms. And what I’m doing in the month of December, as is always the case, is helping to secure year-end donations. We have several folks, business owners, other professionals who, you know, donate annually, And that’s fine. It’s a very busy month, but it’s kind of busy behind the scenes. It’s not real visible. Like most nonprofit ministries, a very significant portion of the budget comes in in the last several weeks of the year. It’s just the way things work. And so, as we move to Christmas, which is just a couple of weeks away, as I’ve said before, Christmas is the greatest mission story ever told.
The Original Mission Story
Think about it. The Holy came to the unholy. The infinite came to the finite. Love came to the unloving. It was cross-cultural on a scale we can’t begin to imagine And yet, Christ crossed the distance between God and us and put on a robe of flesh and dwelt among us so that we could know the Father. And that is the essence of the Christmas story and the coming of Christ. It is, as I said, the greatest mission story we can ever tell. It’s demonstrated for us. Why do we do what we do? Because Christ did it first and we follow His example.
Another tool in God’s tool box!
There are a number of things that have taken place this year. And I want you to know about them. I want you to know that there are some ways like glasses and some other things that you can put literally missions under your Christmas tree. It doesn’t take a lot, wouldn’t take a lot. And I’m not suggesting that it become the predominant part of your family’s activity. But I’m also encouraging you not to leave it out. And so I’ll give you some things over the next few days, as I get time and opportunity, to record some of this and just share with you some of the incredible moments from 2024. So I just ask you even now to pray that God continues to do His work for mission and outreach as we wrap up 2024. And we have many, many plans already in place for 2025!
So keep praying, keep an eye on your inbox or your social media and we’ll put some more things out here and share some things with you that I think will encourage you bless you. It’s all just another reason to celebrate the greatest mission story that we can ever tell. I hope that blesses you. I will see on the next time. Bye!
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