Full Throttle on the MVP!! 🎖️

Hello friend,

In the past month, I have started working on the interactive gospel presentation 👨🏽‍💻, taken up a part-time contract with Upstream 🦈, and had my youngest brother join me for a year of discipleship ✨.

More on those in subsequent sections. 👇🏽

Life update

I have resolved to switch churches, following a couple of conversations with a pastor and some experiences. Relationships and memories make it somewhat difficult to walk away 🥲. However, I am convinced that the Lord wants me to move, and that is what I will do 👌🏽. God-willing, I will be joining Grace Reformed Baptist Church from next month 🤞🏽.

It has truly been a blessing to be surrounded by God's people who call me out in love when necessary, and I am particularly grateful to God for Christabelle, my girlfriend, who has been truly helpful in helping me consider my commitment to healthy work and rest rhythms while planning for this busy season ✨. I was zooming off Hypocrisy Highway 🏎️ when the Lord used her to bring me to a screeching halt. 🚦

So far, it has been mutually edifying ⇆. The most obvious may be that he's being discipled by me, but he's also giving me a beautiful opportunity to learn to be more responsible 🤠. Besides that, I have been pleasantly surprised by how much the Lord has taught him in such a short time, through some resources I shared with him 😮.

Ministry update

I have eased off on preparing for volunteers at Skeûos, having been advised to do so by my mentor. It takes significant effort, and it may be too early to invest that much into anything but active development 🫣. The plan for having volunteers is not out the window - it's just on the back burner for now, awaiting a good time to turn up the heat! 🔥

Speaking of turning things up, I have to turn down a really good designer I have been anticipating working with 🥲. He's so talented and loves the Lord, and is really interested in the projects, but he is really busy. I had presented him with an offer earlier, and a selfish part of me wants to just keep that on the table, hoping that he'll take it on too 👉🏽👈🏽, but I can't even do that in good conscience. And as such, I am pulling the offer off the table. This is especially important because one of the core values we are trying to maintain at Skeûos is "serving from a place of rest". I'm not convinced this will be upheld even if he, somehow, manages to work on the gospel project. It was a tough decision, but I believe it's loving to him, and glorifying to God ✨.

On a brighter note, Upstream (one of the organizations I volunteer with) decided to partner with me financially for a season, and that has been incredibly helpful. Essentially, we scaled up my volunteer commitment into a part-time contract for a season, as we trust the Lord to provide what would be needed for His work in subsequent seasons. It has been a joy to co-labour in this way, and I am grateful, both to God and to the wonderful people at Upstream 🙌🏽.

Changed lives

I am enjoying using a new method of Bible study called Bible Arcing. A few Saturdays ago, Olaoluwa just happened to come around, and before long, we were actually having back-and-forths - reasoning through Scriptures together. I was expecting that an Arcing101 of some sort would be a necessary prerequisite, and I was wrong! 🤠 

Now, while I am grateful to God for all the beautiful learnings we're having in this season as we study God's word together, I am also reminded that having the right response to God's Word is far more important 🎯. You can check out how Francis Chan put it. I pray that the Lord helps us to delight more in His Word, and obey Him in and out of season ✨.

Prayer requests

Here are a few specific ways you can pray with me 🙏🏽:

• Obedience: Please thank God for helping us enjoy time studying His word, and ask Him to help us respond as well in obedience.

• Continued Dependence: Please pray that I continue to rely on the Lord 🙇🏽‍♂️ and not my own understanding or strengths, as I go about building the gospel presentation.

• Church Transition: Please pray that my transition across churches is smooth, and that the Lord protects us on our long commutes to and from church each Sunday. Oh yeah! We pray for journey mercies a lot here. 🤠

• Relationships: Please pray that I learn to prioritize important relationships despite the busy season I am in, so that they don’t get sacrificed on the altar of ministry.

I am committing to praying intentionally for my partners weekly, and I'd love to know how I could be specifically praying for us. If you are interested, use the button below to share prayer requests, and I'd be happy to join you in praying for them.

Something to think about

Earlier this month, I was reading the introduction to "Do you Believe?" by Paul David Tripp 📖. In there, he described a dangerous dichotomy that plagues a number of believers - a gap between what we believe (or at least think we believe) and how we actually live our lives. I could relate deeply to what he was sharing, and it made me slow down and start to ask myself important questions. I will invite us to consider some of those with me.

Please think about that part of your life that doesn’t seem as glorifying to God, and ask the following questions:

• What do I believe about this thing? 🤔

• Do my beliefs align with Scripture? 📐

• If so, what "buts" are responsible for my life looking the way it does? 😬 (e.g I believe blah blah, BUT dah dah dah…)

• What can I do about those "buts" to better re-align with what Scripture teaches? 📜

I will advise that, for that last one, we start by bringing our "buts" before the Lord - acknowledging them before Him, and asking Him to purify our hearts.

He wants to answer - part of His will for His children is sanctification!! 🥳✨

I pray the Lord helps us as we seek to discern what things are off, and trust the Lord to bring us into more alignment with His word.

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