To my dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I
hope this letter finds you all well and full of Christ’s overwhelming love, joy
and peace. As I write this letter and think about all of you that I will send
it to my heart is filled with such love and joy as I remember all the ways that
each of you, as my brothers and sisters in Christ, have encouraged, challenged
me and brought me to where I am today. I say, along with Paul in Philippians
1:3-5, “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of
you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the
first day until now.” Some of you I haven’t seen as recently as others,
but know that all of you have been in my prayers and continue to be in my
prayers.
I am so excited to be writing
you this letter and sharing with you how God is working and the opportunities
he is bringing into my life.
This past year has been full of
changes and trials but also full of blessings and God is infinitely gracious
and merciful to me in all of my mistakes and failures. I often find myself
relearning some of the most basic concepts of what it means to be a Christian,
but God is always taking me just one step further into what those “basic
concepts” really mean and what that looks like in my life. He has been teaching
me to serve him for the sake of others and not myself, to love deeper than ever
before, to have compassion and ultimately has made my life and my relationships
so much more full and purposeful as I learn to serve him more completely.
A truth that God has been
working on in my heart recently is what it really means to love people,
something I am constantly relearning as God grows me in him. He really has been
impressing on my heart that it is not enough to just be “nice” or kind to
people, it’s not enough to do good things or even sacrificial things for people
but my heart should be in a place of agony and aguish for their souls and their
eternity. Paul says in Romans 9: 1-3:
“I
have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
For I
could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my
brothers, those of my own race.”
I
have been praying that this anguish that Paul felt, this desperation, for
people’s souls would overwhelm my heart and drive me to love and serve people
as Christ would. I want to anguish to the point that I would give up my
eternity for theirs and that I would stop at nothing to give them the hope I
have. I want a desperation to overtake my soul in a way that I cannot not
ignore it. God has been working this truth and this desperation into my heart
and the more that I anguish for people the more I have been driven to love and
pray for them and intervene for them.
Something
that I feel God has called me to, as part of this new desperation and love he
has planted in my heart, is a missions training program in Pasedena, California this summer. It’s called the I.T. (Intensive Training) Project and
is sponsored by a non-denominational,
non-profit, missions organization called The Traveling Team. The program is
designed to train college students for missions and to help them better
understand God’s vision for the world. As God continues to call my heart to serving
others for him I want to understand and know more completely what his vision is
for the world and his calling on my life. I feel like the I.T. Project would be
a practical step towards what God is calling me to do.
The
I.T. Project will consist of visiting different mosques and temples, evangelism
and a college-level course on missions training, called Perspectives, at the
U.S. Center for World Missions. It will be from June 7th – July 26th and will cost $2,800, as
well as traveling costs (around $600) and some minimal living expenses while
down there. Also an optional Perspectives Coordinators Workshop that will give
me the license and material to pass on what I learn will be $200. The total –
minimal - cost comes to $3,600. If
you feel like God is calling you to support me financially as well as through
prayer I would be ecstatic but God is also able to provide “exceedingly more”
than all I ask or need and so I ask that you only give money if that is
something you feel God is calling you to and not out of a sense of obligation.
I would ask that you pray for me,
however, while I am down there and even in these months leading up to this trip
as God prepares my heart for it. Pray that God would continue to make my heart
sensitive to his voice and open to whatever he wants me to learn. I can’t thank
you all enough for all of your support and prayers over the years and for your
continued support in this new adventure I’m taking. You are such a blessing!
May the Lord bless
you and keep you,
May He make his
face shine upon you and give you peace,
Jessalynn
P.S. If you choose to support me financially you can make
checks out to “The Traveling Team” and send them to
me, at:
P.O. Box #491
Circle, MT 59215
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