Dubai Teaching Day Three

Monday, April 29th
We love to begin our conferences each day with worship to the Lord with our Pakistani brothers and sisters. For our readers, how do you spend your first waking hours of the day? Does it begin with worship unto the Lord? Well, what a great reminder for each of us as we begin our day in worship to the Lord!  We sang Psalm 99 in Urdu.  Here’s what we sang:
Psalm 99:1-5 “The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake! The LORD is great in Zion, and He is exalted above all the peoples. Let them praise Your great and awesome name; Holy is He. The strength of the King loves justice; You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the LORD out God and worship at His footstool; Holy is He.”

Our first lesson for the day was about Spiritual Gifting. We observed and studied 1 Corinthians 12:8-23; Romans 12:608; and Ephesians 4:11-12 in depth. We learned that everyone has at least one spiritual gift as a believer in Jesus.  What a great time of discussion and reflection upon the Word and Authority of God. After AJ’s teaching, our next lesson was another panel discussion with Martin, Denise, and Jennifer as we looked at God’s structure and foundation of the church specifically with the God’s design for men and women serving within the church.  We were reminded of God’s beautiful structure and foundation of men and women created in the beginning and how this is applicable within the structure and function in God’s household, the Church. We had lots of great conversation over our lunch time which we had next after our panel lesson.  

After lunch we moved into our afternoon lessons regarding care for the Household of God. Jennifer reminded us of our basic needs of Love, significance (identity, purpose) and security Jeremy shared about how to care for believers within the church.  The participants were super encouraged with the resources that they were given that can help them counsel within their churches. The goal in all the lessons is a focus of a healthy church who is glorifying God. After this lesson, we took a music break and sang Psalm 136 “ Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. For His lovingkindness is everlasting”. We look worshipping in another language. The last lesson was a recap of the last three days of characteristics of a healthy church as this last lesson concludes of Ecclesiology and we will begin Eschatology tomorrow.

Also, today’s weather has been quite cloudy with clouds that look like rain clouds. If you could continue to pray that the Lord would keep any flooding away as there is still standing water around our area. Each day in the late afternoon while our leaders are debriefing with our missionary Falak, our team heads out for walks and exercise. Here’s a few photos of some familiar sites of Sharjah. We’ve seen cats, very tall buildings and cats that wander all through the city. The bonus, we don’t see any rodents !

Then after each day, our missionary Falak, debriefs our participants in their language and they discuss and reflect upon all that they have learned for the day.

Hebrews 10:24—25 “And let us consider how to stir up one another in love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”