KEVIN ELWORTH LIVE

Been reading a book recently over that past few weeks called The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. It’s a phenomenal book and probably one that has given me the most insight about life, my relationship with God, and how to grow in Him daily living in Kingdom view. I’ve learned that life (my walk with God) is not about a morning devotional and a few minutes in prayer. A relationship like that will likely end up shattered because of lack of respect for the King of the universe. How can you have a relationship with God based on 30 minutes in the morning? I’ll answer that for you, you can’t. Sometimes I think the most spiritual thing you can do if you are stuck in that mentality is leave your Bible on the shelf and in all sincerity ask God to just show you Himself and how much He can do through you without you having to check that daily bible read off you to do list because if you and I are honest with each other often times that’s exactly what it is.

As I read this week about Training vs. Trying, John alluded to the example of being chosen for a marathon that you would run. What an awesome thought, to be chosen to run for your country in the Olympics. To stand on the winners podium and receive a medal for your accomplishments and be honored by your entire country for your success. And….then you wake up from your day dream and remember that the most you have ever run is 2.3km on the treadmill at the gym. But what about the marathon that you are already running in your life? How are you doing in that area? This week I’ve thought a lot about this race this I was created to run. Man it seems that for the past few months and even years we’ve been in the uphill portion of the race. We’ve been through some rough times, some hurrdles that I didn’t think we’d ever be able to get over. It was almost like we had to climb the hurrdles rather than just jump over them, but God was in every one of the hurrdles and we learned. I think we even sat down for a while and rested watching people pass us by but that’s alright too.

Being new in ministry many times I find myself wondering am in the right race? Am I supposed to be running on a different track? I’ve even gone so far as to ask people about it. The answer is yes, I am at the right race, on the right track and at the right time. I might not be running with all I’ve got right now, just sprinting a bit, warming up (it’s all about the end game am I right?) Do a lot of evaluation, weighing the options, praying about where we should get involved, seeking the best opportunities rather than the greatest need, and waiting for God to blow my mind with His strength, ability and vision. My fear is that I will get in the way of God’s power and run my race with all the strength I’ve got all the while forgetting that it’s not about my ability, but His.

So again, how’s your race going right now? You tired? Feeling good about how your race is looking? At the top of your game right now? Praise God for it and write it down there may be coming a day when you need to remember God’s awesome faithfulness for some rough days ahead. Remember…He’s gives power to the weak.

It’s almost midnight. I don’t normally stay up this late, but Cris went to bed early and that makes this a good time for me to get somethings done. I was going to sit and read for a while, I’ve been reading three books and I need to finish them so I can move on to the next. I’m reading The Father Connection by Josh McDowell- highly recommend it to fathers. Also reading The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg- also a high recommendation on this one, especially if you are dealing with where you are in relationship to God and your position in Him, and finally I’m making my way through Breve Historia de Zacatecas- which I don’t recommend at all unless you know Spanish pretty well and have a fascination of the history of Zacatecas.

I got sidetracked a bit with some other things I have been working feverishly on for the past month and a half or so. If you’ve kept up with us at all you know that we are missionaries, we are passionate about reaching people and we are constantly trying to find new ways to make the most of our opportunity here on this earth. To some you may think that we are lazy missionaries having been on the field for seven months now and not having a lot to report, but I would say to you that you should become a missionary or at least spend a significant amount of time in the field and find out just how much preparation work goes into starting a ministry in another country and then you will know why the days are long and the results are small in the beginning. But you will also know that we have been struggling with our support since we started as missionaries. I could blame this on many things, but the blame falls on us, we just didn’t raise enough support when we were on full-time deputation and now we are feeling the pain. So I’ve been working on some new contacts and getting prepared for another spring trip next year to hopefully add 10 new churches to our list of supporters. With 10 new churches supporting us we could easily begin our ministry here and launch into what we believe God has for us. One thing I’m working on right now is finding the best churches to head to and how to get our information into their hands. I have an opportunity to speak with a church in the Middle of know where Texas that seems pretty interested, so I’m trying to make plans to fly out there this fall and talk to them about the vision that God has placed on our hearts for this city. Hoping it goes well, we will add this church to our list of supporters next year at some point. But to make sure all that time is not waisted I have found 10 other churches in that city that look promising, so I’ll swing by and visit them too. Lord willing we can build all of the support we need by visiting just one city! Now wouldn’t that be cool?

Pray with me will you?

Made it from El Sal to Mexico City today. We were origianlly supposed to get all the way back to Zacatecas tonight, but before we left they canceled our flight and never told us, so here we are stuck. Thankful though because the airline picked up the tab for the hotel and food. It’s strange to think that there are nearly 27 million people where we are right now. Mexico City is no longer the largest city in the world, I believe Tokyo took over that role a couple years back, but it’s amazing to think that there are that many people here! Sometime this year we have to come down here and be tourist for a few days so that will be interesting.

Man I can’t tell you how awesome our trip to El Sal was. It was what we needed at the right time. Cris and I were just talking about our time there and she agreed we needed that breath of fresh air. To be able to see some ministry in the works, and even be a part of it. I was able to go to a discipleship seminar on Saturday and learn about teaching discipleship to others and more specificially how to get them to disciple people themselves. I had a blast riding around with my buddy Jeff and seeing him in his element, meeting with his friends there, working his contacts, and just being passionate about finding new ways to reach more people. Often times missionaries need to see that too. We get in a rut, stalled out, and in need of new vision, this is sometimes what it takes to get back on track, to regain some passion about ministry and striving to make the most of every opportunity as I began with this year.

I tell you what, God is at work in El Salvador. I spent about an hour talking with a lady last Thursday morning while I helped with their medical/dental clinic. I asked her about what her preception of the spiritual condition of her country was and she told me even getting emotional at some points about their struggles back a few years ago when they were in turmoil because of a huricane that had swept their land and stripped it clean. Then just weeks after a terrible earthquake level a lot more of the homes and land. She recounted about the civil war that was a problem here and how that effected them. And then she told me that everywhere Salvadoranians thought help would come, never came. The previous dominant religion left them high and dry, the governments did little, but the Christians! They saw it as a prime opportunity to help and now they are seeing massive fruit because of their care for the hurting. They didn’t just come into the land to beat people with the gospel, they came to do what Jesus did- help where they hurt the most. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care- unknown.

I pray that God does something of the same in our city. He’s given me that burden and I believe with all my heart that it’s coming soon. Pray with me…

I don’t know if you could say that, it’s not bottled water it’s bagged water. And that’s how you do it in El Salvador.

This has been a great trip for us. It has been totally awesome to spend more time with Jeff, Paula, and Emily. It’s hard to believe that we said goodbye to them 18 months ago in Costa Rica. Austin has changed quite a bit since they saw him last. But it’s been great for us to get reaquainted with them again and learn about how they reach people in El Salvador.

This morning Jeff and I headed over to a daughter church they have been working with as they are preparing for an event they will be doing for Fathers day this weekend. I got to talk with the pastor for a few minutes about start up works and he was so encouraging about what he had seen God do in their church of only 5 years. He told me about how during the first few months and even year he really questioned whether God was at work in their city and if it would in fact take off. Now here they are 4 years later with 150 people coming weekly, they are discipling, they are reaching out constantly in new directions and they own their property which is more than sufficient for the time being. He told me of a passage that God had given him from 1 Kings 5 where Solomon was building the temple. He addressed the people to go out and get the best and most costly stones they could in order to build the foundation of the temple. He believed that God is pointing to the fact that in order to build a solid ministry it takes time, effort, resources and lots of hard work. I don’t think those stones that Solomon was talking about were very easy to carve out of the ground nor were they cheap either. In this way Pastor Alex was speaking of our need to put time, effort, energy and resources into the foundation of whatever God is going to do in Zacatecas. I can’t wait to see what that will be.

First couple days now complete. We were whisked from the airport to a medical/dental event they were doing in one area of San Salvador, so we observed there a bit and interacted with some of the people waiting.

Yesterday we went to a different area and did the same thing, medical/dental stuff, but this was much more interactive for me. Cris and Austin stayed at the house to rest a bit, so the boy wasn’t too crazy. During the morning I was able to see a lot of what need to be organized to pull a trip like this off. It’s all about how well it’s organized although organization in Latin America doesn’t mean a whole lot there still needs to be a lot done. I also had opportunity to do some translating. The plan is that they bring people in and have them sit in a group. Then one by one they take these people over to a group of two or three and are given a brief gospel presentation. At the end of this campaign several hundred had accepted Christ and now they have hundreds of contacts to potentially add to their churches.

It was awesome to see God at work in these people lives and even use us to help them.