The picture nearby was taken exactly one year ago today, January 25, 2017.  It was during our first trip to the Holy Land. 

We are going back to Israel on Monday with a wonderful group of 19 pilgrims on our 2018 Bethel Series Pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  Our going back to the places where Jesus walked and taught and prayed demonstrates yet again that God "is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine." To be back in the Holy Land one year later is a dream come true!

I am reminded of the Russian pilgrim who said, "By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my actions a great sinner, and by calling a homeless wanderer of the humblest birth who roams from place to place." (The Way of the Pilgrim).

We have just completed a wonderful, Spirit-filled week teaching the Bethel Series Old Testament to 126 Kenyan pastors at Manna Ministries in Kisumu, Kenya. 

Without the prayers and financial support of so many people, we could not have done it. Thank you.

You can get a sense of the week by watching a very good, four-minute video created by team-member David Newton.

Soli Deo gloria!

When I went to the hotel restaurant to get coffee this morning, our last day in Kenya, I overhead the leader of another mission group ask if what he was doing through his ministry was actually doing any good in this beautiful and challenging country. 

I am not confused.

The work that God has done at Manna Ministries Kenya this week has been transformative for many, including those of us on the Bethel Series mission team from the US.  It has become clearer than ever to me that an understanding of God’s Word in Scripture is of first order of importance. 

As Isaiah tells us, “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will endure forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

It is this life-giving Good News proclaimed in Scripture that brings confidence, peace and joy. I believe this is the reason that so many of the believers we met were calm and happy.  To us, they seem to have little, but their steadfast faith in Jesus Christ is worth more than anything.

It also has become even more clear that the Bethel Series with its picture-based lessons transcends language and culture.  It is unique in its ability to show the arc of Scripture so that the Bible comes alive with the revelation that the God of the Old Testament is the same God in the New Testament.

I will add much more about our trip in the days to come, but I begin with this observation because, for me, the value of understanding God’s Word in Scripture is clearly so important that all things, even good things, are a derivative of it.

Soli Deo gloria!