Sarah Normenyo, a mission law student from Ghana said;”The transformation of lives by God’s word and love that I have witnessed first-hand while serving as a short-term missionary three times among the ‘Dagomba’ people group, is distinct, unmistakable, and sensational.
God is working tangibly to bring His “lost sheep” home.” Today we begin our Mission week, a calling upon all of us to go out and look for the lost sheep to come back home and share the eternal hope that believers have in Christ Jesus.
I like a writer who said, “Looking for God’s Footprints guides us to feel and perceive the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in and around us. Just as a windmill captures the wind and converts its force into energy, so what we discover in our hearts, what we discover in the world around us and the signs of our
times, has to be understood as “God’s voice”. It should give us the strength and energy to answer this voice in our lives.
Looking for God’s Footprints is based on the conviction that we can discover signs of God’s presence everywhere – in what lives within us, in the people we meet, in creation, in the small and great events
of history, in developments in science and technology.
Samuel established a stone and called the place ‘Ebenezer’ to enable generations to come to trace the foot prints of God’s mission to the world through the figure of this great prophet. Before Ebenezer people had to return to the Lord with all their hearts. They were reminded to put away all their idolatry.
“If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreth and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the Israelites put away theirBaals and Ashtoreth, and served the LORD only (1 Samuel 7:3-4).
Engaging in God’s Mission requires the missionaries to deal with all the hindrances in their lives and devote themselves wholly to serve the Lord. This service requires a complete change of heart and that is why the Israelites fasted and confessed their sins in the passage above. Many of us declare Ebenezer before allowing the Lord to clean our hearts and make a commitment to serve Him alone. As missionaries, we need to understand that He is a jealous God, without competitors and for that mat-
ter idolatry is an abomination before the Him.
The children of Israel also begged Samuel to continually pray for them, a request that affirms the ministry of intercession as an important arm of God’s mission.
As we celebrate Jubilee, God is calling us into setting our feet into the barren wicked lives and cause restoration, to confess and repent our sins, get rid of foreign gods, resist idolatry and believe God through intercessions to deal with all obstacles to mission. May God bless us as we choose to go and make disciples. Ebenezer!
The Very Rev. Canon Dr. Rebecca Nyegenye.
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