Last week I had the chance to head to the Reach Conference in Australia.
Each year, it is a great encouragement to gather with brothers and sisters in Christ who are committed to reaching their cities with the life-changing news of Jesus. We sit under clear and faithful Bible teaching. We learn from those who have gone before us. We carry burdens with one another. And we return with renewed clarity, vision, and commitment to keep going in the work of ministry God has given us.
And then there is the singing. Oh my! There is something deeply moving about hearing 1,400 people praising God together and encouraging one another in Christ.
One of the other gifts of returning to the same conference each year is that it becomes a marker of time. This time last year, we had just launched our Hutt Congregation. The year before that, our family had just come through a difficult season.
So this year, both the conference itself and the passing of time reminded me again of God’s faithfulness and goodness, to our family and to our church.
God really does sustain us when we depend on him. God really does grow his church through the preaching of his word. God really does hear our prayers and answer them, even if not always in the ways we expect. God really does use hard seasons to grow and mature his people and his church.
And that gives us great confidence for the future.
This is a constant theme we have seen in Deuteronomy. Again and again, Moses calls God’s people to remember what the Lord has done, so that they will trust him for what lies ahead. As Moses says:
“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years…” Deuteronomy 8:2
Remembering God’s faithfulness in the past gives us courage to trust him in the future.
So as we look back, we give thanks. And as we look ahead, we keep depending on the Lord, praying that he would continue to sustain us, grow us, and use us to bring the life-changing news of Jesus to Wellington and beyond.
Grace & peace,
Andrew
