Getting ready to go

LORD you return us to dust, our sin brings this about. We willfully rebel against you; we casually ignore you; we turn aside from the one who gives us life and find death. We are stuck in our sin and so we long for your work to be shown to us, your glorious power to be revealed to us. Father, we marvel that you sent the Son to take on a body of dust and lift us from the decay of our sin. We praise the one who took on flesh and was crushed by the terrible wrath stored against us, and yet who overturned the decay of sin and death, bringing life imperishable through his resurrection. May the Spirit of life fill us and give us hope and joy in Christ our saviour. May this motivate me and my family as we seek to proclaim this gospel to many in Cairns. Amen.

Thanks for partnering with me in prayer. It’s great to be teaming up together for the sake of the gospel in this way. The way I’ll use this blog is to post the occasional newsletter (I’ll email a link to all my signed up prayer supporters) but throughout the week I’ll post shorter entries of brief prayers (like the one above). That way if you’re wondering how you can be praying for us in Cairns, check the blog and echo my prayer, then we’ll be teaming up together in our requests to God.

Here’s a brief update of what we’re up to at this stage. For the last week or more we’ve been packing up house and preparing for the truck to arrive to take our stuff into storage and then 1600km north to Cairns. We’re stopping in Bundaberg for a couple of weeks over Christmas to spend time with our extended family, then beginning what I expect will feel like a very long drive to our new home in the North.

Speaking of new homes, we don’t actually know where we’ll be living yet (we have some generous friends offering us temporary accommodation) so finding a house will be first on our agenda. Then will begin the process on settling in to a new church; Brynley (our son – 4yrs) will be starting kindy; Erin (our daughter – 1yr) will be starting to climb walls; Wendy and I will be starting to find new friends… all the new things a move in home will bring. We’re sad to have to leave everyone we know and a little nervous but we’ve always wanted to head back to North QLD and invest in gospel ministry up there, so we’re also very glad. We also get to reconnect with a handful of old friends from the North, so we’re looking forward to that.

I haven’t packed away the drawing board yet, and am trying to plan how I might start off at JCU Cairns with AFES. My plan is pretty simple at this stage – pray and open the Bible and point people to Christ. I might need a bit more of a strategy though (I’ve never been highly pragmatic) so am looking forward to the AFES QLD staff conference in a couple of weeks to throw some ideas around.

Our financial support at this stage has just reached 20%. I’m very thankful to God for this generous provision. At this stage though, AFES policy is for me to reach 80% before the start date, so I might postpone my start to allow me more opportunity to connect with supporters. Obviously, if you want to be a part of that I would be very grateful. Otherwise, please add that to your prayer for us and I would be just as grateful.

We’re looking forward to the Christmas break remembering the astounding incarnation of the Word, in the birth of Jesus. I loved being reminded of this by Kevin DeYoung at the National Training Event for AFES a couple of weeks ago. 2000 uni students sang together “O come let us adore him” in response to the preaching of John 1. The eternally begotten Word, who was God and was with God, became flesh over 2000 yrs ago, and we have seen his glory! How good that we have, for he has given us life in him.

I wish you all a merry Christmas and look forward to the year ahead, serving our glorious king together!

4 thoughts on “Getting ready to go

  1. Hey brother, can you add me to your prayer supporter newsletter etc… sign me up for whatever you’re sending out!
    thanks. (you’re in our prayers either way.)

Leave a Reply to Tim Kimmince Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *