Dear friend and partner in His unveiling His love,
While enjoying time with my family in the UK this Christmas this verse in Psalm 65:11 has been ringing in my heart!
You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance 2013 was a full year – spiritually, emotionally and physically. We experienced mountain tops and spiritual highs, and valleys filled with deep sorrow. Yet the Lord has crowned our year with His goodness and shown us His paths dripping with abundance.
God has poured out His financial provision through our partners to fully meet the $33,000 needed to provide 20,000 LUV evangelism and discipleship materials, and Butterfly training for 1100 ethnic minority leaders in S.E Asia in the next two months.
Thank you! Thank you for your partnership in prayer and your responsive giving to the Lord for this need. We are rejoicing that together we are significantly helping our brothers and sisters in Asia to reach the many unreached people groups in their country.
In November we celebrated the commissioning of our S.E Asia butterflies who completed their three year training. I handed over leadership to these 14 national women who will continue the ministry reaching their unreached people groups. Pat our S.E Asia coordinator referred to what God is doing through our Butterflies in that region as a “church planting movement”. Thousands of unreached tribal women, and men are finding new life and freedom in Jesus through His word communicated and taught through our Butterfly leaders. We have at least 2 trained butterfly leaders in each of the 13 provinces. These leaders are training many others who are teaching and discipling groups of up to 50 ethnic believers for 5 days every 6 months. With the funds provided this December 1100 ethnic group leaders will be trained and equipped to reach their people in the coming months! Praise the Lord!
Earlier this year I was asked by a spiritual leader in the US “is the success of you ministry due to content or strategy?” The only answer I could think of was what Peter might say on the day of Pentecost. It is neither content nor strategy which is transforming women’s lives, their families and their communities. It is the transforming power of the Holy Spirit revealing God’s love and truth through His word, and setting them free. Our best plans and teaching are nothing without the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pat our leader in S.E Asia commented “the LUV training is not a curriculum to develop how-to skills, or a bible study for more knowledge. It is soaking in God through His word, experiencing Him, receiving Him, coming closer to Him. It’s experiencing His freedom, His love and His grace in our own lives so that we are filled and transformed by Him and then He sends us out to share with others. The power to witness starts with what He does right here in our own hearts.”
At the end of the wonderful prophesy about Jesus’ birth Isaiah writes “The zeal of the Lord will perform this” Isaiah 9:7. It is the zeal, power, compassion and jealousy of the Lord for His Kingdom, His Church and His Bride which is performing the transformation and multiplication through our butterflies. “This was the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes” Psalm 118:23.
In 2010 the Lord laid on my heart a word from Isaiah 55:5 “Surely you will call a nation you do not know and nations who do not know you will run to you.” Although I didn’t understand it, I now see that at the time we were ministering to women in India from language groups I had not known. In 2010 God opened doors to women in tribal groups in S.E Asia which I had never heard of, and they are now reaching their country!
In 2013 God continued fulfilling His word bringing women from other nations and countries for training in the USA. In one year God opened doors to train and equip women to reach women in Kenya, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Honduras, Peru, Cambodia, Greece, Mongolia and USA. We now have two groups of these 20 women, meeting every six months in Orlando for 4 days training, as well as a group of 12 women meeting every six months in North Carolina.
It continues to be my vision and desire to equip and disciple women in the church to build God’s kingdom among the broken hearted. Why the broken hearted? Because in my own experience broken hearts respond most readily to Jesus, and God resides in the broken and contrite heart (Isaiah 57.15). I rejoice when I receive testimonies from our women around the world who are bringing healing to the broken hearted and setting captives free (Isaiah 61:1-3). There is an urgency which has taken hold of all of us as the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to the vast numbers of women from the USA to Mongolia, desperate and hungry for true healing and freedom only found in Jesus.
Martha our India Coordinator wrote last month about a new group she has started in central India: “On the last day of training we had Inner healing ministry time which was led by the Holy Spirit. Amazing things happened this whole week, I was hearing life transforming testimonies. All 6 ladies, believers broken when they came, had no idea what God is going to do in them through LUV training. Miracles were taking place in these 6 days, Holy Spirit was making the Word real and powerful, masks were falling off, captives were set free, inner healing took place, women got their identity in the Lord and found their purpose in the lover of their soul. According to Is 61:1-3 broken hearts were healed, God was bringing beauty from ashes, praise the name of the Lord.”
Sam a man from a S.E Asia tribal group shared “We have no bible in our language. Our church used to be 100 people but in the past 5 months after studying the Word in LUV Workshop One, the 100 increased to become 200. Those who used to be drug addicts and backsliders have repented and have come back to church. God is working in our church now through receiving His Word and many women who used to be very shy and timid can now stand up and share God’s Word. Some go to other villages to take the teaching there, they are bold in the face of persecution.”
Christy and Jody our Butterfly leaders in Kenya wrote “As we discover who we are in Christ, the Lord always brings up to the surface incorrect belief systems we have had about our self -worth. In discovering these lies, we renounce them and receive God’s deep inner healing. As He has healed our own hearts, we in turn, go out as transformed butterflies to spread God’s message of love and hope to the hurting women in the slums of Kenya”.
My greatest joy this year has been witnessing so many Christian women grasping a deeper understanding of God’s love for them, a deeper knowledge of His truth, finding their freedom in becoming all God wants them to be and learning how to break the lies which have held them bound for so many years. As each one finds healing and freedom in their deeper relationship with Jesus, they are like the “woman at the well” they can’t stop telling others, sharing the Spirit filled truth of God’s word which has now come alive for them.
The power behind their Butterfly wings is love – God’s love unveiled by Jesus the healer who enters into the deepest places of our innermost being where healing takes place and His freedom and light replaces darkness and sorrow.
Lord willing we look forward to sharing many more testimonies from women – and men, set free around the world over the next 12 months.
We thank our wonderful God for who He is and all He has done in our lives in 2013. We trust Him to strengthen and help us as we follow Jesus in discipling and equipping those nations He has sent us in 2014. We desire to be those who obey Him. “Where I am there My servant will be also” John 12:26. We rejoice that as His Bride, we are called to do it with Him “the Spirit and the Bride say Come” Revelation 22:17.
Thank you for your love, your support and your partnership thus far. I pray the Lord will bless you and your families and fulfill all your purpose in Him this year. May He strengthen you daily in the knowledge of His unconditional love.
Liz Dickson
Founder & Executive Director, Love UnVeiled