Justin Rose, from the Mayfair Community Church in Chicago, will be going to Kenya, Africa in the next few weeks with the Salvation Army’s Central Territory’s Mission’s Bureau. We want to keep you all updated on his experiences so you can pray for him. Read up and pray on!
The last few months of my life have been strange. I’ve been living in my mother’s basement in a town that is foreign to me, I haven’t had a job, and I haven’t had that much to do. I’ve been waiting to go to Kenya. For more than a year I have been working with the Salvation Army mission’s department to go overseas and work. Late last spring the possibility of going to Kenya arose, and I was hoping to head out in September. September came and went and I was hoping to be able to go in January. January is gone, and now I am waiting. Last week I heard that I will be leaving in about two weeks.
But I can see that God has changed me in the last year. A year ago I would have been upset that I was continually in limbo and that the departure date was continually being pushed back. A year ago, my patience would have been gone around October in this Adventure of Patience. But I can see that God’s timing is, as it is said, best and that he does really know what is best for me.
Several months ago God revealed a passage to me that has been very encouraging. In 1 Chronicles 17 David tells the Prophet Nathan that he plans to build a House for the Lord. But the Lord revealed himself to Nathan and said that David had spilled too much blood and so his son, Solomon, would be the one to build a House for God. So in 1 Chronicles 22 David gives an order for all the skilled workers to start preparing materials for the House of the Lord. David used his own money to provide stones, iron nails, bronze, and cedar logs “without number” (verse 4). Even though David was not to build the Temple himself, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to help make preparations for it.
I was challenged to see someone work so diligently for something that they themselves were not going to do. But here I was, the one actually going to Kenya, and yet I did not have the same diligence as some of the people who were making preparations for it. Others were making preparations for my trip while I sat back and waited. Patience is a good thing, but God has shown me that patience isn’t lazy. We are not to be patient just to wait for things to come, but it involves continued diligence to complete the task ahead of us.
Please pray for me as I continue to prepare, pray that I would be diligent.
Also pray for my ministry in Kenya.