Living God's Word - June, 2013

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Living God's Word—June, 2013

God brings people into your life whose style is different from your own so that you may be strengthened and made more complete. Building stronger relationships with those people begins first with understanding and appreciating the four styles and basic motivations that drive a person's behavior. The second key is knowing what the best situation or environment each person flourishes in, the third is...

—Excerpt from Solving the People Puzzle Leadership Training Course,
an exclusive training course from Walk Thru the Bible

Help dramatically improve relationships at church, at home, and at work.

Attend the Train the Trainer Leadership Conference and learn valuable skills for yourself, then teach others how to...

Change the World: Pray

Happy summer! We hope your summer is off to a great start and you are able to enjoy a slower pace of life.

This month, please join us in prayer for the following:

The victims of the tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma. Please pray for the families of the victims and for the healing of those people who were hurt. Pray for the healing and rebuilding of Moore and the surrounding areas.
Over the past few months, we've asked you to pray for Raouth, an Egyptian missionary in Sudan. God has answered our prayers! Ruth was released from jail in late April. She is able to stay in her home in Sudan, but is monitored, watched and followed everywhere. Every couple of days she must go to the police station for interrogation and wait up to five hours before being interrogated. Sudan is withholding Raouth's passport hoping she will "give up" some names. Although she is out of prison, she is not out of danger. Please keep praying for her safe delivery from Sudan to her home in Egypt.
Please pray for the upcoming Pastor Conference in Managua, Nicaragua on June 16-19. Pastors from across Central America, including Honduras, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, will attend the conference where Phil will teach Detour: Finding Purpose When Life Doesn't Make Sense based on the life of Joseph.

The Man Who Wouldn't Take "Nyet" for an Answer

Sergei, one of our Walk Thru the Bible workers in Ukraine, kept asking and we kept answering. The answer was "No" or "Nyet" or "Nee". Whether in English, Russian, or Ukrainian they all meant the same thing: "Thanks for the gracious invite to a Russian banya, but we'd rather not."

I had experienced the full banya treatment before and was convinced that once was at least enough for me. It never was on my bucket list; but even if it had been, I had checked it off years ago. Chris Tiegreen our wonderful writer, and Wahid Wahba, our Director for the Middle East and North Africa, joined me in voting for other options on how to spend our one free day before we headed to Bila Tserkva. There, we would launch our new course Crucible at a large pastors' conference before returning to Kiev for more teach opportunities.

Yuri, our leader in Ukraine, just kept smiling and saying, "Everyone needs to go to the banya at least once." When I tried to offer up Chris and Wahid as sacrificial lambs, their firm refusals reminded me that they had heard my horror stories from my first visit to the banya in the mid-nineties...