Family Table FIRST PEOPLES VOICE | September 2019 The Pentecostal British Columbia & Yukon District First Peoples Newsletter Hebrews 10:32-39 But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
Perspective Perspective is everything. When we receive the call, our lives do not become uncomplicated or unencumbered with life. As we pursue the call there too we will find challenge, disappointments, and opportunity for discouragements to hinder or even side track, or worse shipwreck us. God has already written our story. he has written it,
from beginning to end. Within the context of all we have become and now live is the call of God.
Calling and Election It was a cool calm night as the breeze whispered through the tall ponderosa when the amazed congregants emerged. For hours, the congregation had sat praying, communicating with The All Mighty, as a young, five-year-old, boy knelt amongst the whispering of a gentle wind, filling his soul till tongues beyond his will came uncontrollably flowing from deep inside his spirit and across his lips. Spirit filled at the Altar of Pleasant view Baptist Church. In the weeks and months that followed this new gift became second nature and more frequent. God was conditioning me to know His voice. Along with the awareness of an omnipresent God came the ma ni fe st a tion o f the d em onic. Not knowing that there was a conquest happening for my allegiance. Even at the age of five I had become a threat to the powers of evil. So much of the North American Pentecostal church today has become distant to, and unaware of the power and privilege that there is in having an intimacy with a supernatural eternal powerful loving
God. My experience and story is rare or possibly even non-existent in the contemporary church, misnomered, Pentecostal. The battle is real! The war is intense. It is not merely on foreign soil, in a distant land. We have not been conscripted to be a part of the allied forces, fighting a distant war, but it is an act of our volition to enlist. It is one thing to believe it a much different thing to practice. James 2:19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe - and shudder! At the age of five I did not know the extent of my prayer of repentance. It was the prayer of enlistment, an enlistment that I would grow into, an enlistment into a war I was not gifted to fight, in a war nonetheless, that in it I would grow more and more aware of my assignment. Just as Israel (Isaiah 60) was called to get up and shine, so was I. Ephesians 6:12 “We are not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Let us stay true to our call, discipling all nations.
If you have any prayer requests that you’d like to share with our Indigenous Section, please email them to us and we’ll lift up our prayer requests together. Prayer requests can be emailed to: Rev. Harold Gutierrez hgutierrez@bc.paoc.org Director of International and Indigenous Ministries
Rev. Dan Starlund waapsnagwaadm@gmail.com Indigenous Section Pastor
Churches without PAOC Credentialed Positions: • Metlakatla • Kispiox • Kitwancool • Anaheim Lake
We love seeing what’s happening around our section. If you have a photo you’d like to share with us, please send it to info@bc.paoc.org
Pastoral Transitions: • Bella Coola
SEPTEMBER 22: APCF (Anointed Peoples College Foundation) Graduation, Fort St. James SEPTEMBER 23-26: Indigenous Leaders Summit, Fort St. James SEPTEMBER 27-28: regroup Church Leadership Summit, Prince George MARCH 30-APRIL 1: District Conference, Abbotsford MAY 22-24: Historymaker, www.historymaker.ca Find more upcoming events at www.bcyd.paoc.org
The Anointed Peoples College Foundation (APCF) provides ongoing discipleship and church planter training. For more information about individual or church training, please contact Pastor Edgar at el2655@telus.net or 604-308-3795.
Please consider how you can be involved with a home missions project through financial and prayer support: • Love Corp (Korean summer mission) • Cross Cultural Outreach Society (serving mostly newcomers to Canada) • Anointed Peoples College Foundation • YLDP (Youth Leadership Development Program) • COMPLETED: New entry for Kispiox
We remind everyone to please remember to continue to send in your tithes and find a ministry outside of your church to support. In addition to administrative costs, tithes also go towards training and church planting sessions throughout the year, as well as the Indigenous Pastors/Leaders Summit and other gatherings.
Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you. Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your soil, and your vine in the field shall not fail to bear, says the Lord of hosts. Then all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts” Malachi 3:8-12.
General Support | Mail a cheque to “PAOC BC & Yukon District” with “Indigenous Ministries” in the memo. Church Support | Influence your church to donate regularly. Prayer | Commit to praying regularly for Indigenous Ministries.
20411 Douglas Crescent, Langley BC V3A 4B6 www.bc.paoc.org | info@bc.paoc.org T: 604-533-2232 | F: 604-533-5405
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