Love Is In The Blair

So, as I sit here, I realize that this is 3 blogs posted in 1 day, and 4 in a week, but it might be a while before we post more.  I’m leaving for the Cape Town airport in an hour or less and our race is moving on to India after that. I’m writing this as an advance blog, because I don’t know when, or how often I’ll have internet next month.  My team and squad always need prayer, but our team will certainly be thankful to receive some extra prayer support this month. We will be working with a ministry, “Burn” traveling all over India.  We’ll land in Mumbai on Monday and be moving from there.  We’ll head to some very dark areas, places that have yet to hear the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.  These will likely include some regions where idol worship and human sacrifice still take place today. There will be a lot of spiritual warfare.  Pray that our team doesn’t give the enemy any foothold within us as individuals or as a team.  Pr...

A lot of times it’s tough to sum up a month, especially a month like this one with 3 different types of ministry and all sorts of peripheral things.  But that’s the task I’m “charged” with.  So brace yourselves. Our team had a couple of additions this month, Wesley Presley Snipes, or, as his birth certificate might more accurately say, Wesley Parker Reed joined us from the great state of Georgia, ever heard of it?  And Kyle Winston Tubb of Amory, Mississippi fame also took his talents to a South (African) Beach.  Now, I know what you’re thinking… He’s not Kyle Winston Tubb V.  As you much as you might expect a name like that to be locked onto for hundreds of years, such is not yet the case. These gents were kiff (it means “cool” here in South Africa) and were keen(willing) to join us as part of a World Race Exposure trip that brings people in for a month of our journey, and without them and their manly muscles we would have been in for some extra ...

In my last blog ( Faith is Useless ) I made the point that many of us don’t really obey.  (Read it if you wanna know what I’m talking about).  We don’t really exercise faith at times, and maybe, just maybe, you identified with that.  It’s possible that now or some point in the future you will find yourself with the realization that you should be exercising your faith in Christ, but you’re falling short of that. If so, as I questioned at the end of the last blog, “Ok, so I don’t have the faith to obey like I know I’m supposed to.  How can I fix that?”  ( Well there are a myriad of individual reasons, but I think for the most part they boil down to a small root cause. Fear. “Um, excuse me Matt, but I’m not afraid.”  Well you’re either really in a good place or a lying to yourself.  Bear with me and openly consider if this applies to you, and if it doesn’t let it roll on off… but if it does…you can begin to face and conquer it. What w...

(So, quite recently, I posted a blog called “Pretend Angela.”   If you haven’t read that one, you should know it’s the precursor to this one.  So it might be a good idea to read it, because that’s where this one picks up) … How does someone get to this place?  How do we find ourselves in situations where, without intervention, we fly down a path of not trusting God?  How often do we justify our lack of faith more and more until, if we are fortunate enough to wake up, we eventually find ourselves way down a road we never thought we’d go? Faith in Christ is a tough thing.  It’s often something we cling to more theoretically than literally, but by default that’s not faith.  Like a guy or a girl we want to like, we’re more into “the idea” of faith in Christ, than an actual reality of it.  But the reality of it, we think, involves a bit of risk. I say “Faith in Christ” and not simply “faith,” because faith is easy and ulitmately useless...

Last month we had Manistry (all the dudes together) month in Swaziland, except the women… they did no “manistry” to speak of, but were still in Swaziland.  I know you’re glad you had that explained to you. Our ministry mainly involved helping out with the children of an orphanage and school, working in the fields, and helping around our contact Charmain's home.  Between all that, our random guy things, and, of course, tea time... I managed to meet a lady name Angela... "allegedly."  … Cows often found their way onto the property at El Shaddai, and one of our daily tasks quickly became herding them from the corn fields.  On one such occasion, "Angela" was walking down the road and her phone messed up, which led her to call for the assistance of Ben Mullett and Johnfrank.  (They can give more of the story, but if you don’t know them this will have to suffice). She asked for help fixing the music on her phone and moved on, offering t...

As most of my blogs, this one is late, but don’t worry… neither I nor my world race blog are pregnant.  (I imagine that Reagan has just struck her knee).  If you aren’t on the race, you probably won’t get that, don’t hurt yourself. (Digression) Precursor:  I’m a logistics dude for my squad.  That’s not vital to any of this, but it explains the next sentence for those of you who didn’t know. Part of this whole logistics gig means I get to be a part of the lovely process known as visa applications and, for this race in particular, India has been a hefty sized garbage bag of issues.  First, we tried to apply in Romania, but it was too soon, “allegedly.”  So we regrouped and planned to apply in South Africa.  Well, at the beginning-ish of June, roundabout the 7 th , BenW, the squad leaders, and myself rolled on down to Durban after Mozambique ended. To our slight surprise, we were told we needed to have everyone fill out new forms becaus...