How is it that you go to comment on a friend’s blog and end up starting one yourself? 🙂
Well, since I’m here, let me tell you a little about FTN and the things that you will find posted here in the future.
Forbid Them Not Ministries is not yet a year old. It has developed out of a growing burden to see the world’s 143,000,000 orphans reached for Christ. The Lord first put orphan ministry on my heart as a twelve year old girl in a missions conference. Little could I ever have imagined that seven years later I would be on a plane to Moscow, Russia to serve Him in an orphanage. Nor could I have known that the next ten years of my life would be dedicated to that service!
Over the past year, the Lord has led down a very interesting and unexpected path to the development of this ministry. My desire is to help as many churches, missionaries and individuals as possible fulfill God’s plan for reaching the fatherless around us. This much neglected ministry is vital to reaching our world and turning the hearts of the nations back to our God. The difference between the gods of this world and the God of Heaven is that in Him “the fatherless findeth mercy.” (Hosea 14:3)
God mentions the fatherless more than 40 times in the Scriptures. There are more orphans alive today by almost 120,000,000, at this very moment, than the number of slaves that had passed through the slave trade up to the time that William Wilberforce began his push for the abolition of slavery. Yet for all this, in a recent survey of more than 100 IFB churches, only 12.5% of responding churches had any kind of outreach to the fatherless.
In the Old Testament, God measured the sincerity of His people in their faith by whether or not they were caring for the fatherless, the widow and the stranger. In the New Testament we are told that pure religion is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction. And yet we have excused their care away in the name of avoiding involvement with the “Social Gospel Movement”. The result has been that the hearts of our nations fatherless and widows have been turned to the government for their security. “God is no longer seen as the great judge and provider for those in need. Rather, all dependence is cast upon the state and the standard of morality set by the state becomes a little sought after banner of goodness, leaving men to contentedly walk in the gutters of their depravity with no fear of judgment. Instead of walking in the fear of the Lord, they move forward in the brash ideology that the state owes them every protection and provision and , therefore, will not punish their irresponsibility, sloth and debauchery. The higher standard and faithful judgment of a just God is neglected altogether, leaving men to do that which is right in their own eyes. And so, by neglecting our duty before God, we have allowed for the establishment of a system that educates a person from birth in godless living and idolatrous dependence upon government.” (“Living Pictures of Redemption: God’s test of Sincerity” by Me ;).
The purpose of this ministry is to bring the fatherless to the Father by helping to start, strengthen and maintain ministries to the fatherless through prayer support, training, connecting churches, individuals and missionaries, on-field assistance and however else the Lord leads.
What you will find on this blog:
Well, since I hadn’t planned on starting this until about 2 hours ago, things are a little fuzzy. But I think it is safe to say that you will find various updates, including our frequent FTN Prayer and Praise updates, as well as other reports of what the Lord is doing in this ministry. We will also post prayer needs and ministry opportunities as they arise.
I look forward to seeing how God will use this in the future!
