God is good – All the time

One of the recurrent themes of the Word of God is the repeated and dependable faithfulness and kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He continues to amaze us in both the practical and ephemeral.

Every day I am learning and growing in the knowledge of the grace and goodness of our God. If I proclaim anything, it is this, that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (not physical father but Spiritual Father who existed with Christ from before the foundation of the world and made everything with Him), is good.

His only desire for people is that they be blessed with the union He desires with us (John 17:3). He is willing to do extreme things for this to happen. Allowing the world to create its own disasters that might lead people to call on the name of the Lord and be saved from penalty, power and presence of sin carried out to its extreme end.

There is absolutely no unrighteousness in Him. Do not blame God for the troubles in your life. He is and always will be the answer. He is faithful and true.

Being more specific I will give you an example from our personal lives lately. After returning to the United States after a difficult but absolutely successful mission trip to SW Mali, we experienced an “untimely” flood at our home ruining most of the floors of our house.

For a couple days I was despondent until the Lord opened my eyes. You see we needed new flooring anyway. Although we had a huge deductible, the check we received from ASI Lloyds was able to cover the floors and the uncovered expense of the water heater, which went out the very same day unrelated to the other flood.

We never had a problem with them and the latter state of our house was much better than the former. Yes it was a trial for us, but we quickly saw the hand of the goodness of our God in all of it and now we rejoice.

That was the lesson for the day, and now the goodness of God is being revealed to unreached Muslim villagers all across West Africa. Even some of my closest colleagues in the faith are unaware of what God is doing from Cameroon to Mali.

We have seen significant numbers of believers in Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, the Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire), and now Mali in 2016. I have wanted to break into Mali now for a couple of years but the Holy Spirit prevented it until now.

We saw almost 2,000 make decisions for Jesus and 30-50 miraculous healings this past trip. What is even more encouraging is to see our spiritual children (read African evangelists), be used by God to do mighty exploits in unreached Muslim villages of West Africa. The ethnic group the Holy Spirit seems to be reaching the most is the Fulani, and many different branches of this group of needy people.

The number of responders, in the eight countries where we have seen fruit this year, is well over 45,000, and almost 700 miraculous healings. I suspect by the year’s end the new souls will be more than 50,000.

We replaced damaged A/V equipment and distributed two sets to two new evangelists there. We bought two tricycles for transporting the equipment, and one motorbike. We distributed almost 400 French New Testaments.

We treated over 500 children with life-threatening illnesses. We helped build one church building. We distributed almost one ton of food to the hungry.

The decisions for Jesus are more than the first seven years of Lost But Not Forgotten combined. Jesus said in Luke 8:15, “but the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.”

To our team and partners of those who have persevered, well done, and to the King, glory be to your name.

May you join with us in 2017 to bring utter transformation to this previous stronghold of the enemy, and expand the Kingdom further than ever before.