What an interesting time to be alive! On one hand, we feel the effects of national and global financial disasters unlike anything experienced in our lifetimes. We face unprecedented and sometimes invasive security measures in airports and other public places. We fear Internet schemes that badger honest people and add thousands of dollars in expenses to organizations like ours who need to protect their network systems. On top of all this are too-frequent reports of fires, famines, floods, and merciless disease.
On the other hand, tough times often strip away the artificial allure of false idols, transient goals, and harmful relationships. Broken hearts are turning to Jesus. Fearful hearts are learning to rest in the hands of the God Who loves them. Forgiven people are forgiving as God forgives them.
Underneath it all, my heart draws to these verses at the end of Romans 8:
“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” . . . “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” . . . “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Many people realize the weight of ministry leadership in today’s climate of spiritual warfare, worldwide tension, and economic depression. Since most friends know me by my nickname they ask, “Skip, how are things going for you and the Mission to Children?” If I look down, I see myself wading through one serious challenge on top of another, seldom getting through a day with a sense of completion and always seeing more that I’d like to have done.
As I look up, I see lots to lift my heart: Hundreds of street children are ministered to by caring Christ-followers. Hundreds more kids are cared for in children’s homes under Godly supervisors. Lepers see God’s love in action through Mission to Children. Extraordinary ministry doors are open to us in dark places through Character Solutions, such as women’s and men’s prisons, militant Hindu settings, Islamic students, and temple prostitutes—along with their children at risk. On top of all this, more than 100,000 have given their hearts to Christ as Character Solutions has been taught across India! That’s a lot of incentive for me to keep looking up and thanking God.
So how do I answer my friends’ question? “I am knee-deep in challenges—and I’m heart-deep in thankfulness!”
How about you?
