03/23/2025 – Again: “Do we really believe what we say we believe is really real?” / Re: Samaritan’s Purse ministry in Sudan and beyond…
This is an email I sent to our prayer group at church:
These excerpts are from Franklin Graham’s heartwarming, Praise God! update for Samaritan’s Purse ministry in Sudan that we received in the mail this past week:
“Samaritan’s Purse has been working in Sudan for decades, and I’ve been there many times. The country again is once again in chaos, devastated by two years of civil war. Millions have fled the fighting.
A failed harvest plus the sudden arrival of 700,000 displaced people has caused catastrophe in Sudan’s Cordovan. Famine has arrived… We prayed for an opening.
That’s when God orchestrated conversations between Samaritan’s Purse and the governments of Sudan, South Sudan, and the leaders of the SPLM-North, a splinter group. To be clear, these groups have a long history of shedding each other’s blood. Nevertheless, by God’s grace, they worked with us to create a channel of peace: a protected bridge from Juba in South Sudan to Kordofan in Sudan.
In the shadow of the conflict they chose to put people first. They agreed to 30 days of flights, a lifeline of aid to reach Sudan with desperately needed food deliveries airdrops. They signed off on another 60 days. We chartered two L100 aircraft and, in total, made 164 relief flights between late fall and February. Though they could see machine gun nests and anti-aircraft artillery as they landed, not a shot was fired at our planes. Praise God!
Through these efforts, we dropped more than 2,700 tones of maize (corn), beans and salt – helping to feed over 300,000 people in need. Doctors of Samaritan’s Purse staffers worked with hundreds of local men and women to save thousands of lives.
Our decades of faithful work in Sudan and South Sudan gained the trust of all parties, and the Lord used our teams to carry out this life-saving. All glory to Him! ‘Ah, Lord God, Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You”. (Jeremiah 32:17)
For us, this may connect with Marvin’s sermon two weeks ago as he noted that years ago, the community pulled together for revival prayer on the behalf of martyred Christians (*), adding: Let me know if you interested in reviving it once again. I’ve heard that from y’all already: “Do we start with conveying “tell me more” to Marvin at an appropriate time for him of course.
(*). – I’m paraphrasing but extension to suffering souls, be they current christians and future christians, which includes all souls to us. And martyred Christian families suffer for the rest of their lives, even as they march on fighting for our Lord in the face of death.
Do we really believe what we say we believe is really true? Yes, we do. So pray, trust and obey! Keeping it simple with assurance. And yes, even pray about prayer….
Comments:
The question is what we believe. We shouldn’t care about what the “world” says or thinks. But here is what I suspect would be reactions from skeptics, self-professed christians included, whether expressed or not:
- “If God is all-powerful, why hasn’t he completely remedied this human tragedy completely by now? //My hope would be that this would be contained to “future” christians, not current christians. As C.S. Lewis noted, It is putting the Lord on the dock (the witness stand), God forbid. Job flirted with this, with the Lord commending him in the end, an indication of His mercy and grace.
- If God has the perfect plan in place at all times, why do we even bother praying? // Does his perfect plan not include desiring a relationship with us ? Isn’t it amazing! His ways cannot be completely comprehended by us. Is it not an unbelievable privilege and blessing to be able to come alongside Him ? Is it not an opportunity within the struggle to give Him the glory?