Dear Cornerstone Family,
Late last year, Christy and I were invited to join five PCA pastors and their wives for a mission/vision trip to the homeland of Presbyterianism––Scotland. At the turn of the year, we accepted the invitation, and on Thursday, July 7 (our 21stanniversary!), the adventure begins. We will spend five days in Edinburgh, a day (or two) in St. Andrews, and three days in Inverness. Along the way, we will see and serve a variety of church planters and missionaries. We’ll also get the privilege of worshipping in the historic St. Columba church in Edinburgh where my friend, Dr. Cory Brock, recently joined the pastoral team.
After our time in Scotland, Christy will return to the states while I make my way to London. I’m looking forward to seeing the sites and (finally!) visiting Westminster Abbey. I’m especially eager to be with Rev. Andy Young, the pastor of Oxford Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Oxford, England. He is one of Cornerstone’s supported church planters in the UK.
Needless to say, we need your prayers. Pray that our time away would be refreshing. Pray that the ministry support and encouragement we give would be effective. Pray that our time with the team of pastors and wives would be relationally rich and life giving. Pray that we would be able to be fully present and not worry about the children and all the ways we’re falling behind on everything back home. Your intercessions are a treasure to us. Thank you in advance for remembering us before the Lord.
Since I’m going to be away most of July (and, oh, how I’ll miss you!), we are going to leave the people of Israel by the Red Sea and enter a one-month sermon series entitled, “God for the World: God’s Heart in the Psalms for Our Neighbors and Nations.” I asked Rev. Ben Griffith to take the lead on designing this short series and to help introduce it. Here’s what he wrote:
Starting today, we’ll consider five Psalms together (and it was hard to narrow it down to just five!). We’re going to see that one of the main themes of the Bible is a main theme in the Psalms as well: God is on mission pursuing our neighbors and nations with his redeeming love, and he calls us out into this mission when he calls us to himself. From the early pages of Genesis to the last pages of Revelation, we see that God is at work reconciling all kinds of people to himself through the Gospel so that Heaven will ring with the voices of those “from every tribe, language, people, and nation” (Rev. 7:9).
As we see God’s heart for the nations and for our neighbors in the Psalms, we’re reminded that when Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission to “go therefore into all the world and make disciples,” (Matthew 28:19) he wasn’t calling them into something new. Rather, he was calling them into something he had been up to all along. We hope this short series will not only inflame our affections for the God who is sovereign over the nations and who has pursued and rescued us, who dwell “at the ends of the earth,” but we also pray our hearts would become more like his as we follow his call to pursue others with the Gospel—whether they are on the other side of the world or the other side of the street.
Your Servant
