I love it when groups come through...however hectic it may be at times...it is a reminder of how far God has brought us and the miracle that we truly live in in this place.
Yesterday, in our staff meeting, we read through Romans 4. I loved this piece of it out of the Message:
"So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, or first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he would certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we are given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, 'Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.'"
Romans 4:1-3, The Message
I love that. We are entering into a God-story.
If God had told Abraham that him and Sarah would have a baby at the ripe old age of...well...35...Abraham could have taken full credit for it. Even perhaps at 45. But, no. God doesn't work like that. He prefers that the glory remains with him. So, he waited. And he waited. And then, when God knew that it could never have been credited to Abraham, he gave him the promise that he had been waiting for--a son.
I thought about this and remembered a situation that we just talked about with the group that traveled though. It happened only a couple years ago, and now, as I look back, I see the God-story at work.
When we began building here at the children's village, we spent a lot of time praying for our electricity to be brought in. John and Stacy met with the head of the ECG company in Accra several times, trying to get it approved to bring electricity into our village through the military camp. The problem was the cost...they told us that it would cost close to $30,000USD to bring the power in from the roadside, through the military camp, into our camp. We were going to have to pay for the labor, the poles, the transformer, everything. It was something we didn't have and we didn't know what we were going to do.
In the meantime, we all moved into the children's village, with no electricity, trusting that God would bring it when it was time.
John and Stacy went back to the States and wouldn't you know it, they had the money raised quite easily. We all thanked God for the willingness of God's people to invest in the projects we had going on here.
But, when John and Stacy arrived back in Ghana, to their surprise, the power poles were already being installed all the way to our land and we hadn't paid a single cent.
When they were away, the head of the ECG company was fired and someone new came in. The new director found a request from the military to put in a new transformer to lighten the load on their current one, and our request was attached to it. It was approved and the government money was allocated to bring the poles in. We only had to pay a small fee to put the poles in our own compound.
Being a part of the God-story, he knew that we would take the glory of bringing in the electricity if we had come back with the full amount of money and paid for it ourselves. But, because he saw that, he removed any doubt that it was about us and did it all himself.
I love that.
And I love being a part of God's story. I love when I can give credit where credit is due!
Yesterday, in our staff meeting, we read through Romans 4. I loved this piece of it out of the Message:
"So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, or first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he would certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we are given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, 'Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.'"
Romans 4:1-3, The Message
I love that. We are entering into a God-story.
If God had told Abraham that him and Sarah would have a baby at the ripe old age of...well...35...Abraham could have taken full credit for it. Even perhaps at 45. But, no. God doesn't work like that. He prefers that the glory remains with him. So, he waited. And he waited. And then, when God knew that it could never have been credited to Abraham, he gave him the promise that he had been waiting for--a son.
I thought about this and remembered a situation that we just talked about with the group that traveled though. It happened only a couple years ago, and now, as I look back, I see the God-story at work.
When we began building here at the children's village, we spent a lot of time praying for our electricity to be brought in. John and Stacy met with the head of the ECG company in Accra several times, trying to get it approved to bring electricity into our village through the military camp. The problem was the cost...they told us that it would cost close to $30,000USD to bring the power in from the roadside, through the military camp, into our camp. We were going to have to pay for the labor, the poles, the transformer, everything. It was something we didn't have and we didn't know what we were going to do.
In the meantime, we all moved into the children's village, with no electricity, trusting that God would bring it when it was time.
John and Stacy went back to the States and wouldn't you know it, they had the money raised quite easily. We all thanked God for the willingness of God's people to invest in the projects we had going on here.
But, when John and Stacy arrived back in Ghana, to their surprise, the power poles were already being installed all the way to our land and we hadn't paid a single cent.
When they were away, the head of the ECG company was fired and someone new came in. The new director found a request from the military to put in a new transformer to lighten the load on their current one, and our request was attached to it. It was approved and the government money was allocated to bring the poles in. We only had to pay a small fee to put the poles in our own compound.
Being a part of the God-story, he knew that we would take the glory of bringing in the electricity if we had come back with the full amount of money and paid for it ourselves. But, because he saw that, he removed any doubt that it was about us and did it all himself.
I love that.
And I love being a part of God's story. I love when I can give credit where credit is due!
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