Your faithful intercession saw us depart the lower peninsula area of Virginia to visit a praying group outside of Richmond, Virginia. We stayed with them for a short amount of time before driving 400+ miles to West Virginia where another faithful group provided housing for us. We'll be here for a few more days and then it's on the road to visit more praying partners. Our hearts are refreshed as we embrace each faithful intercessor, realizing how God has blessed us with you. Thank you : -)

Twenty-four days of travel in June saw an increase of 1,234 miles to my parents' vehicles, and I'm sure thirty-one days of July travel will bring even more; fortunately, our mileage is on land and not on sea as were the travels of Paul and Silas <g>.

The end of June came quickly, and I was reminded to send our monthly financial statement of accountability to our regional office. Once again, we give thanks to God for His resources provided from your tithes and Christmas giving! Oh, and just to clarify... the "board" does *not* "take care of us" while we're in the US. It's you : -)

See, you take care of us while we're on the field and when we're in the US. We rely on your regular Sunday morning tithe (a portion of which reaches us directly) and your generous Christmas offering. Our time in the US for our regularly scheduled Stateside Assignments (STAS), however, finds us (again) relying on your generosity. Travel expenses and such are "personal" until God leads you to reimburse us, and are we ever so grateful for your supply of our needs. Some of you go "above and beyond," and we ask God to return to you at least a double blessing.

Let me add to that... by now you've heard the wonderful news that Southern Baptists gave $136.2 million to the 2003 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. That's an increase over 2002 of almost $21.2 million -- the largest dollar increase in the offering's 115-year history!

Because Southern Baptists gave so unselfishly, restrictions on appointments are being loosened. That means at least 200 additional long- and short-term workers will be joining our overseas teams! The result will be that more people groups will be engaged and more individuals will hear the gospel.

Thank you for the part you played in achieving this marvelous success with the Lottie Moon offering. Please make a commitment now to stand by your representatives -- and the others whom God will call -- by challenging your church to sustain and increase their level of giving. God's spirit is moving in the most remarkable ways all over the world. We must be faithful to provide for the workers He is calling into the harvest.

Matthew 24:14

* Be sure to sign up for the Wednesday Weekly.

+ You asked God to give us another opportunity of refreshing reunion with another group of faithful intercessors... and did God answer your prayers in a big way! This particular group has been praying for us since 1998 and does so in their public service either on Sunday or Wednesday. When we got together Wednesday, it seemed as if we'd picked up from where we'd left off back in 2002. Over a dozen people expressed interest in joining them in prayer for us... what a joy to hear "why aren't more groups involved in praying for people like you?" Good question :-)

+ You prayed that our all-night drive into West Virginia would be safe and that we would arrive refreshed and ready for the task ahead... we left that faithful group, feeling like Paul and Silas as they traveled quickly, and began a 400+ mile drive to West Virginia. Your prayers for safety kept deer on the side of the road several times during the night/early morning, and we thank you! We arrived at 515am, refreshed as we could be and definitely ready for the task ahead! After a morning nap and a shower, we met our neighbors. My heart broke as I asked one of the girls on the step if she lived here. "No, but my daddy does. Let me go hunt for him," she said. Broken families are everywhere... The gentleman is a Harley biker, and I'm on the lookout for a West Virginia chapter of "Bikers for Jesus."

+ You joined me in asking God for the repairs to a laptop, especially that all would go well and within a week's time... hmm, the week is closing and I've not heard anything yet; prayerfully, things will improve soon : -)

+ You prayed that our time with a host group would be well invested in terms of seeing His Kingdom grow... while not exactly what I had in mind, the three of us have had more rest these past few days than we've had in a long time! Our minds and bodies are being refreshed to carry on His Kingdom work here and abroad, and we're grateful for how He answers prayer.

<T H I S  W E E K><

<>< Pray that the three speaking opportunities this weekend will allow people to see what God is doing through the International Prayer Center of Jerusalem (IPCJ) and that they will join Him at work.

<>< Ask God to grant us continued peace of mind as we pack up (once again) for our next visit.

<>< Join us in asking God for travel safety on the highways and back roads of West Virginia.

<>< Pray that an upcoming presentation with a faithful group of intercessors would allow them to see the impact of their prayers.

* I am unable to stay online long enough to retrieve a new people group; however, once that changes, your specific intercession will be much needed!

CALENDAR UPDATES

<If you're not receiving our bimonthly snail-mail newsletter, let us know so we can send it to you!><

* I regret to inform you that my paper copies are, uh, in Jerusalem and my soft copies are inaccessible : -(

>From http://www.JoeMcKeever.com

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That Killer, The Deadly Inferiority Complex

By Joe McKeever

As a second-grader, newly relocated with our family from the rural South to the coal fields of West Virginia, I felt vulnerable and misplaced. When the children laughed at my backwoods accent, I shut up. On the playground, when the students chose sides for games, being the smallest boy in the class meant I was picked last. When the prettiest girl in the class could never remember my name, I was hopelessly sunk.

I am well acquainted with feelings of inferiority. I know intimately the sense that everyone else is better, stronger, bigger, and smarter. Inferiority complexes are killers--destroyers of hope and joy and vision, striking victims with a paralysis preventing them from taking any kind of action.

That's why I was surprised to learn that churches have them.

As a new seminary student in New Orleans, here to learn to preach and lead a church, I was called as pastor of a small congregation a half hour west of the city. For years, Paradis Baptist Church had run 40 in attendance. The day I arrived, I overheard two men talking. One said, "This church is doing about all it's ever going to do." The other agreed. I was bent on proving them wrong, but did not have a clue where to begin.

Two things occurred to give new life to that church. First, I began knocking on doors of church members. It was such a simple strategy that it never occurred to me this was the single most effective thing I could have done. No preacher had been in the homes of most of those members for years, if ever. Within one month, attendance reached 65. Inspired now, I began ransacking the seminary library for books on how to lead a small rural church. I took a dozen home and began reading. The single discovery I made--one that made all the difference--was that what imprisons most small churches is their inferiority complex. Because they are not as large as the church down the road or in town, the members convince themselves they cannot do anything. As a result, they do nothing.

I knew immediately I was on to something. Already I had heard people say, "We can't do that. We're too small." "The First Church of Bigtown down the road, now they could do it. Not us." Someone said, "Pastor, you came from a big church in Alabama. We're small." The inferiority complex was alive and well at Paradis.

Not knowing what else to do, I began preaching sermons on the power of God in the lives of His people. Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst." He did not require hundreds, but two or three  would suffice, and we had a lot more than that.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" and "If God be for us, who can be against us" were themes I hammered on repeatedly. Gradually, the lesson began to take.

Gradually, people began to do things. We gathered paint buckets and hammers one day and changed the appearance of our drab educational building. We bought a church bus, which I learned to drive, and we took the young people into the city for ministry and rallies. We held witnessing training and knocked on doors. Within two years we were averaging over a hundred in attendance and producing mission offerings that compared with the larger churches in town. We put chairs in the aisles of our little sanctuary and started talking about relocating to the population center of our area. Paradis Baptist Church had shed its feelings of inferiority and donned robes of confidence and faith.

One afternoon I was sitting in the office of the First Church of Bigtown chatting with Pastor Ralph who had become a good friend. Their church ran over two hundred in attendance, their buildings were sparkling red brick, and they seemed to have everything going for them. A church member stuck his head in the office and said, "Pastor, what would you think about us taking a group of adults on a mission trip next summer, maybe to Dallas or Atlanta, and do some inner-city ministry?" I was surprised to hear Ralph answer, "That's a great idea, friend. But where will we get the money? I remind you, we are not the First Baptist Church of New Orleans." Suddenly it occurred to me: this church had its own battles with feelings of inferiority.

Over time I learned that a sense of inadequacy and inferiority is not the exclusive domain of the tiny churches. Everything is relative, and every church of every size has to fight this killer. Small churches look at larger ones, and envy their facilities, their resources, their talent. Those churches in turn often feel paralyzed because they do not have the influence, wealth, and success of still larger churches. I have not figured out yet whom the mega churches are envying, but with human nature being what it is, there's probably an answer.

The basis of inferiority feelings is a misplaced focus. The individual turns his eyes inward upon himself. All he sees are his inabilities, his poverty, his scant resources, all inadequate for the massive challenge looming before him.

Bible students know of the twelve spies who checked out the Promised Land for forty days prior to the planned invasion in the days of Moses. These scouts returned to the million-member throng of Israelites at a spot south of Canaan called Kadesh-Barnea to gave their report.

"It's a grand place," they reported, and brought out grapes and figs of enormous size to dramatize it. "The land is everything Moses said, flowing with milk and honey." The people were ecstatic.

"But there is a problem," the spies reported. "The cities are walled. They maintain standing armies. It is a massive land that dwarfs its visitors. But that's not the worst thing. They have giants there. Everywhere we looked, we saw men towering over us. People, we are in a lot of trouble."

Then, one of the spies added a line that summed it up. "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes. And to be honest, we looked like grasshoppers to them also." That did it. The people panicked, started weeping, and eventually rebelled against any intention of invading the land. They wandered in the wilderness for the next forty years as a result of their fear.

The grasshopper complex. Poor us; big them.

God's people always get into trouble when they let the world tell us who we are. When we make our decisions based on our own abilities instead of the promises and resources of Heaven, we doom ourselves to failure. When we listen to the enemy and ignore the word of God and the presence of the His Spirit, we will storm no gates, challenge no falsehoods, and see no miracles.

Think how remarkable it was for the Lord Jesus standing on a hilltop to say to a small band of uneducated, unsophisticated followers, "Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all men." How could such a group achieve such a task? "And lo, I am with you all the way, even to the end of the world."

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