National Director Commissioning Celebration
15/01/2011 3:56 pm
On January 15, 2011, Michael E. Littlefield with LeMei was commissioned as the next national director of OMF International (U.S.). Nearly 200 friends and family attended the event at Colorado Community Church in Denver. Below is a written summary as well as a link to a podcast of his message. Praise God with us for the blessing of godly leadership for the last 146 years that gives us confidence looking forward.
Dear Colleagues,
A change in National Director. An evening to celebrate. My heart was full on Saturday evening, January 15, as we gathered to worship and celebrate together. Perhaps the emotion I felt most was gratitude.
I am thankful to Neil and Wannee Thompson for their leadership over nine years and the privilege to have served with them on the home team for more than six of those years.
I am grateful to all who came to the celebration and all who prayed from around the world for that evening (which took place during our annual Mobilization conference). What a joy to join with our regional team, volunteers and headquarters’ staff to share what God is doing through OMF International.
Above all, I am deeply grateful to our Lord. In his grace, God is still working through our fellowship. There is a strong sense of God's desire to propel us forward - and that our greatest impact for his kingdom is yet to come.
Three of Hudson Taylor's quotes ring in my ears as we embark on the next stage in our journey.
Unless there is an element of risk in your exploits for God, there is no need for faith.*
Hudson Taylor was irrepressible. You couldn’t stop him! He went where others would not go. He took on Chinese dress. He brought lay people to the field and sent women into the interior of China. He did not play it safe.
Now, 146 years later, the needs are still staggering, and God compels us to move forward - to take risk, to try new things. Think of the risk that someone took to bring the gospel to you. Then think, “Where would I be without Jesus?” The risks done at his leading are worth taking. Every time.
We have an incredible motivation, which leads to my second quote:
God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.*
Taylor said this in the midst of financial need. Even as I write, we are facing formidable financial challenges (more of this in future letters). However, this quote cannot be limited to financial need. Doing God's work in God's way is far broader. Look at the sentences preceding that quote:
Let us see that we keep God before our eyes; that we walk in his ways and seek to please and glorify him in everything great and small. Depend on it. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.*
Much can be written about God’s ways. These months I have focused on one thing - God is the God of the miraculous: lives changed, sin forgiven, illnesses healed, demons cast out. My challenge to us all: Are we expecting God to work? Do we believe that God’s kingdom is coming in power - here and now - enough so that we press in for God's breakthroughs? Are we willing to crucify our thoughts and ways for his?
Surely, God's work done in God's way will never lack God's miracles.
What motivated Taylor? This third quote sums it up:
If I had a thousand pounds, China should have it. If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for him?
Taylor's passion for China flowed from his love for Christ, which in turn flowed from God’s love for him. As I embark on this adventure with you as National Director (ND), I want to know Christ’s love more and more, to abide in him (which is what Hudson re-discovered as his “spiritual secret”).
What I want for us is that we would be a fellowship of men and women who know who they are - sons and daughters of the living God, loved by their father. Those who seek first the kingdom of God, who listen well to the Holy Spirit, and move in power.
We can be men and women with a heart for Asia - God's heart - who long to see God's hope kindled in the hearts of the people of East Asia. Men and women who are not content with the ways of the world - who want to see things done Gods way, even if they look like fools. Who are willing to risk all for Jesus, to see his kingdom go forward.
We are facing tremendous opportunities and challenges, and I will be unpacking these more in future letters. However, the first thing I want to do as ND is to exhort and encourage us to seek our Lord. What are his thoughts and his ways for such a time as this?
Join me in prayer and fasting as we seek his guidance together. We are not setting specific days or ways to fast, but I invite you to ask the Holy Spirit to guide you. For some of us, it will be fasting from food. For others it may be fasting from something else (e.g. TV). Whatever it is, let us be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's lead.
Please feel free to write me if you are sensing Bible passages, words or thoughts from the Lord, or things that are on your heart. This will be a critical year for OMF International (U.S.) - and one filled with all of the promises of God. God is able. May you know his deep encouragement this day.
Thanking him for you,
Michael E. Littlefield
National Director
(*Sources: Attributed to Hudson Taylor, source unknown; Houghton, The Fire Burns On, p. 93; J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Three: If I Had a Thousand Lives, p. 198)
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