Merci

It’s Ararat Conference Day 3. Good morning!

Thanks for all your prayers, and for blessing people here through your generous giving. In our hermeneutics course, we’ve moved from observation to interpretation to application. We’re emphasizing the importance of sticking with a text of Scripture, and making the most of the text. This morning, specifically, we examined “the Lord’s prayer” as a pattern for prayer.

You would not believe the eagerness and passion with which these students have approached their assignments. We’ve done small-group Bible observation, and then asked some of the students to share their new interpretive skills with the large group. For example, we asked them to resolve what Paul says about Abraham’s salvation and ours (Romans 4) with what James says on the same subject (James 2:14-26). Is there a conflict in God’s Word between faith and works? That was the students’ task, and they completed it with excellence.

Today’s early afternoon lunch will be a special treat which you helped provide. I’ll try to send some photos later.

I have great hope for the body of Christ in this part of God’s world! Even as many believers are driven out of many parts of the Middle East, there is still a bright gospel light shining in the darkness. Some of the Syrians whom I’ve met here are ready to go back to their homeland as evangelists as soon as the political winds change direction just enough to make that possible. Wow!

Paul the Apostle expressed our timeless hope like this (Ephesians 3:20-21): “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Pastor Charles