FBC Missions

The Joy of the Lord is our Strength…..

Somehow that phrase sounded different in Portuguese to me this morning when I heard the soulful and strong voice of a beautiful spirited Mozambican woman belting it out at the top of her lungs.   

I have had the most awesome couple of days and I just had to tell you why.  For example… this morning I went to an early morning church service.  I was not excited because first- I am not a morning person and second- I’m feeling quite drained at the moment because we have been working hard for the past 2 weeks with the team that’s here from Chicago (hosting a team is hard!), and so I went sort of begrudgingly.  BUT! Let me tell you God blessed me.  This lady this morning, she’s the pastor’s wife, and she starts off the service by welcoming everyone and speaking some short scriptures of truth and encouragement and after everything she said she would just burst out in song and the rest of the congregation would join in.  Her song wasn’t just any song.  It was coming from somewhere deep- welling up and then overflowing with joy out onto us all.  It was the way she spoke- with conviction.  It was the way she sang- with confidence and joy.  We really worshipped God this morning.  It was awesome.  In the church services here, the africans- they move and they express their joy with their whole body.  They sing between every part of the service, when the pastor goes up to the front and when he leaves… they sing with joy wholeheartedly, their thanks to the Lord.  God is showing me that He wants that from me.  When I pray to Him, or I respond to Him, I worship Him, or say something in His name…. he wants me to say what I mean and mean what I say.   

Backtracking a bit- yesterday afternoon we were out in a community on the outskirts of town giving a talk at a baptist church about sexual abstinence until marriage.  It went really well, but the cool part was what happened afterwards…. the african worship group got up and sang this beautiful song about how God is sufficient for us and He picks us up when we fall and forgives us and makes us clean…. in portuguese.  it was one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard- because it was filled with God’s spirit… you know the way they were singing.  

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Mozambique 2006 - Ashley & Brooke. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.