President's Update

HUMAN EFFORT
While on my recent “around the world” trip, I found myself constantly tired. Everyday I would ask the Lord to “help me”. One day, while training the staff in Australia, I was reading John 6 from the New Living Translation. After telling the Lord again, “I’m going to really need your help today”, I came across John 6:63 in the NLT… “It is the Spirit who give eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing.”

In a powerful way, the Spirit clearly said… “You don’t need my help, you need Me to do it”. It was like a bolt of lightning. I needed to stop asking for the Lord to help me and to totally trust Him to do it all. My solution would be found in total dependance upon Him. It was a powerful and freeing moment for me. This was a new level of trust He was asking of me. Unless He worked, all my efforts would be in vain. I didn’t just need His help; I needed Him to do it.

Stepping out of His way, I found myself totally dependent upon His working. And the result was powerful. After training for 2-3 hours each day, I would just stop and at times see people in tears. Why, because the Spirit of God was speaking. He was doing His work. I was just a conduit for Him to speak. It was a whole new level of rest and dependency for me.

Later that day, in restudying John 6, I came back to John 6:57… where Jesus, in His humanity, modeled this very truth. He said, “I live by the power of the living Father who sent Me: in the same way, those who feed upon Me will live because of Me”. Jesus was saying, “I modeled total dependence, doing what I did because of the power of the Father in Me, in the same way, your human effort can accomplish nothing. You too must live in TOTAL dependence upon me, just as I lived with total dependence upon my Father”.

I believe the Lord gave this fresh insight because of so many of your praying for me. Thanks!

HOME AGAIN.... THANKS FOR PRAYING
After being gone for 20 days, I am finally beginning to see my body return to normal… sleeping through the night and feeling awake during the days. My recent trip was long, some 26,000 miles total, but it was worth every minute. Here are just a few highlights of what happened:

Vancouver Canada: Working with the top leadership of Crusade Canada, I had a chance to see their creative and innovative team seeking to reach the unchurched of Canada. With over 500 staff, I saw first-hand their many innovative ministries. With over 40 plus “fishing pool’ websites designed to begin to discuss Christianity with people on the web, they are receiving hundreds of thousands of web based hits every month. With their Family Ministry, they just signed a contract to train 3000 employees of one of Canada’s largest corporations in marriage and family living. What is supernatural about this is that over 30% of these employees are gay and lesbian couples. The last session of this training is about a relationship with the Living God through Jesus Christ.

Because the new president of Campus Crusade Canada is a former executive of a large company and someone who had been greatly impacted by the training of Sonlife years ago, he asked me to come and provide some Life of Christ training to their leadership staff. The response was overwhelming… with requests to come back in January to train all the rest of their Athletes in Action staff along with all their Campus staff in July. On top of this, we have also decided to begin the process of providing parts of the training on the web, in a way that could be used by the tens of thousands student leaders in Crusade around the globe. This may be a multi-million dollar project taking a couple of years… but one with huge potential. Please pray for this project as it is being discussed and evaluated.

Sydney Australia: Working with my dear friend Bill Hodgson, I again spoke at the Australia Bi-annual staff conference. This year all the New Zealand staff were invited. I provided the Life of Christ training over a five day period.

It was very productive and challenging… especially as the Lord was teaching me about total dependence at the same time! As one staff person wrote, “So often speakers tell us how to exegete our culture to make a difference, you showed us how to exegete Jesus to impact our culture. It was totally different, but so fresh.” Not only is Bill and his team providing great leadership, I was amazed at a number of very innovative efforts to impact their culture. I have truly developed some great friends in Australia and New Zealand.

Manila Philippines: One of the direct fruits of the ministry of Australia, is the launch of a new ministry in Manila called WaveMakers. As a result of the Australian training, along with our Singapore team, God raise up Randolph Valesquez as someone who built a very effective model ministry and developed a deep burden to raise up other youth leaders in his country. While in Manila, I was able to speak at a fundraising banquet for the launch of this new ministry. While hoping to raise about 100,000 pesos (about $2100), we were able to see over 450,000 pesos raised. Partially because of a matching gift from the GYI fund, but also because of the genuine excitement among the Philipino people to see the youth of the country reached.

With over 50,000 churches, less than 2% of the churches in the Philippines have any type of trained youth leaders. With almost 60% of the country being under the age of 25, and over 8 million young people each year traveling around the globe as domestic workers, you can easily see the global impact of discipling this next generation of young people.

While training in Kuwait, I consistently heard that some of the greatest impact in the Middle East is happening because of Philipino believers who were working as maids or nannies in Sheiks homes and discipling their children. The Philippines is a sending nation already. What if a large percentage of them were being sent out as Kingdom Builders! Imagine the impact!

PRAYER REQUESTS
Praise: Nothing broke while I was gone and Char and the girls did fine!

Israel 2008: With over 100 registered, we are half way there. I must soon begin to write my talks for the tour, so pray for me as I begin to study and prepare.

Turkey in November: (not Thanksgiving Turkey ☺) On November 8-14 I head to Turkey to be with the top leadership of Crusade from all the ‘Stan” countries (Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan etc.). As I seek to teach the Life of Christ and Movement Building to them… pray for wisdom on contextual and cultural application.

Family: Christy will graduate early and is hoping to intern this next year in Costa Rica. Pray for God’s leading concerning this.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
A man returned from a trip when a big storm hit their town, with crashing thunder and severe lightning. When he got home and into his bedroom at about 2 a.m., he found his two children in bed with his wife, apparently scared by the loud storm. He resigned himself to sleep in the guest bedroom that night.

The next day, he talked to the children, and explained that it was okay to sleep with Mom when the storm was bad, but, in the future, when he was expected home, please don't sleep with Mom that night. They said okay.

After his next trip several weeks later, his wife and the children picked him up in the terminal at the appointed time. Since the plane was late, everyone had come into the terminal to wait for his plane's arrival, along with hundreds of other folks waiting for their arriving passengers.

As he entered the waiting area, his son saw him and ran toward him shouting, "Hi, Dad! I've got some good news!"

As he waved back, Dad said loudly, "What's the good news?"

"Nobody slept with Mommy while you were away this time!" the boy shouted. The airport became very quiet, as everyone in the waiting area looked at the man's son, then turned to him, and then searched the rest of the area to see if they could figure out exactly who his Mom was.

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As you are receiving this Update by e-mail, it's wise to remember how easily this wonderful technology can be misused, sometimes unintentionally, with serious consequences. Consider the case of the Illinois man who left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day. When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick e-mail. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her e-mail address, he did his best to type it in from memory. Unfortunately, he missed one letter, and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher's wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before.

When the grieving widow checked her e-mail, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream, and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

Dearest Wife,

Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

P.S. Sure is hot down here.

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A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.

So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing. "We missed the R ! We missed the R !

His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"

With A choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word was...

CELEBRATE!!!"

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