He Goes Before

I have always believed that every season and period in our lives is incremental provision, wisdom and supportive for what the LORD will lead us into in the future.

As many know my wife and I spent fourteen years working with Simply the Story (STS) up until December 2022. We have always appreciated the value and investment of those years, teaching us ways to go deeper in the Word and in our relationship with God.

When we arrived here we had a young man (who struggles with English) going on about a well and an old man and I had no clue what he was talking about until I realised he was referring to an illustration used in STS to help people remember useful questions to use when digging into stories in the Bible.

When we met with the OBT (Oral Bible Translation) team and they asked about our ‘story’, they about bust a gut when I mentioned we worked with “Simply the Story”. They blurted out, “STS?” Needless to say they were so excited that the LORD has sent us here as they want to get the training on the YWAM base and in “all the schools”! They told me that they had been praying as leadership in OBT that the LORD would send them people who could help get them trained in STS for ministry and OBT purposes.

We are now seeking to get STS folks to come down here and train their hearts out.

Then yesterday, OBT team colleagues were electric with excitement as I presented Psalm 1, STS-style (in a story oral presentation format), with the base staff, and both yesterday and today they and many of the young PNG staff have been sticking to me like glue saying how much they loved the style of stories with oral Bible study that they had never seen before.

I also discovered that “the old man and the well” questions are also embedded throughout the OBT training materials, where they stress the importance of “internalisation” of the story for translation purposes, and use STS questions to help trainees go deep in the Bible text/stories.

Yet again the LORD weaves our past into our present to answer people’s prayers and open doors of opportunity and ministry for His Kingdom!