165- Fred Said to Plant a Church

November 16 1985

Streams in the Desert, devotional, today shook me up:

Rev 12:11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and they loved not their lives unto death.

I had just been reading the mail with Dan, and we were especially impacted by a New Tribes Mission newsletter regarding some missionaries captured by natives in Columbia and how they were doing after their release.

To open my devotional to this verse about martyrdom gave me quite a shake. In all honesty and confidence, I have felt for a long time that we would be with New Tribes and that our boys would go to a mission school.

Correlated to that possibility: Dan was able to talk to Fred W our district supervisor. He said he is praying this verse for us:

Colossians 1:9-11

For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding—so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience, joyously giving thanks to the Father.

Fred did not suggest going to Bible School at all, but promoted  evangelism and church planting. He suggested we pray and see what the Lord might do. He spoke of going to a city to start a church, getting a job to support the family, and then meeting people and evangelizing them.

[This is an example of a person having a vision or a goal that he wants to fit you into. We could have taken it as confirmation of what our Pastor had said, because he said the same thing. But we had been praying diligently and walking with the Lord through this for years, and we knew it was not what God had put on our hearts. He had put Bible School on our hearts and we respectfully stuck with that.]