Divine Voyagers

For sin’s human captives God never intends anything less than full deliverance. The Christian message rightly understood means this: The God who by the word of the gospel proclaims men to be free, by the power of the gospel actually makes them free. – A.W. Tozer

For the Guthrie family, these past few months have been busy. We went to the UK: we saw some puffins, I went to a theology conference, my brother met the twins for the first time, they got some teeth and have started to crawl. Needless to say, it’s been a lot. Overall, heading to a different part of the world was a much needed break from our normal lives. It gave us breathing room and space to reset for the next part of our journey.

At the start of July our mobiliser from PI, Suzanne, came up from Melbourne to spend the day with us. It was a wonderful time. In the afternoon, Ange (the senior minister) and Graeme (the head of the missions committee) came over to join us. Together, all five of us mourned the loss of our Basque dream, prayed for where we are at now, and cast our eyes to the future.

Since the beginning of our missions journey, our church has been extremely suppoortive of us. I remember first talking with Ange about our desire to be sent by NBC and him replying, “Before you go, let’s make sure there’s room in the budget. But either way, we want to support you.” That conversation was at least two years ago, and it all that time, Ange, along with many others from our church, have kept supporting us even with all the changes in our lives.

As we look to the future, we are investigating new teams once again. Patty would say it’s like going on a bunch of first dates. It’s been a while since we have done this but I think that we now bring a different set of questions to the table. Partly due to the girls, partly due to our own calling being refined. As we pursue the calling God has placed in our hearts, please be praying that we would be leaning of Him in all of this.

And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” – Matt 9:35-38