"You can't get thar from hare."

It was a little unnerving the other day when our travel agent, while trying to book a flight from Budapest to Delhi, said, “You can’t get thar from hare.” This notorious idiom from the State of Maine speaks of the impossibility of taking a direct route from point A to point B because of the winding roads and numerous lakes in Maine. It was even more unnerving when he said he found some cheap flights through Tehran!

Most of you probably heard last Sunday’s announcement that Steve Moore and I are going to encourage mission partners in Budapest and South Asia. Living as a missionary in a foreign country most times is a lonely experience, especially in locations hostile to the gospel. The elders are sending us to strengthen our partners with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When Paul was talking about visiting the Corinthians again he said to them, “I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace.” When Paul first went through Corinth and preached the gospel, the Corinthians experienced the good news of the gospel. Paul wanted to return to the Corinthians to give these new Christians a second experience of God’s grace.

Now Steve and I are not apostles, but we trust that God uses all believers as a means of His grace. In fact, a few verses later Paul says,

“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant…” -2Corinthians 3:5-6

It is also encouraging to see that this ministry of strengthening mission partners was a practice of the early church, especially of the apostle Paul.

When Paul and Barnabas were returning from their first missionary journey they passed back through the cities they evangelized and were “strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” ( Acts 14:22).

When Paul started his second missionary journey with Silas they “went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches” (Acts 15:41). Again, after his second missionary journey Paul “went from one place to the next through the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples” (Acts 18:23).

The focus in each of these visits was strengthening the believers with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Steve and I ask you to pray that God would use us to strengthen our partners in Hungary and South Asia. Pray that as we minister God’s grace to them that they will experience “fullness of the blessing of Christ” (Romans 15:29).