"Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1:27).
After preaching and praying for everyone Sunday morning at the Redeemed Gospel Church in Kenol, Kenya, Your Spirit spoke to my heart to ask if there was a widow in our gathering. So I interrupted the pastor's benediction to ask if I could share what Your Spirit just said. When I did, a woman at the very back of the church timidly raised her hand. So I went to her to put the roll of money in her hands You told me to give from my heart. You had been working something in my heart during our worship and I had no idea what You were about do our in all of our hearts.
This church had amazed me at their incredible generosity among the people, most of whom would be seen as very poor by the standards of my own nation. A young man had left his new bicycle at the altar a few weeks before in sacrificial giving to the ministry of the Kingdom through this church, and within a week his Asian boss told him to go buy a brand new motorcycle for himself. He pushed it up to the front of the church during the offering time for our Gospel Festival to show everyone his proof of Your spiritual principle that you can't out-give God.
As soon as I put the money in the widow's hand and began to pray a blessing for her, she began to weep and wail. The pastor called her to the front. And he told the congregation that this woman had come to him earlier to tell him she had no money for her needs and that he felt led to tell her that day "God Himself will provide the money to you." Everyone began to weep and wail throughout the church. Then the pastor asked me to pray for any who would come to the altar to receive a generous heart of giving to the Lord for the blessing of His people. As almost everyone came, they spontaneously began laying down where they kneeled their deeply sacrificial gifts of their very limited resources out of their hugely generous hearts. And church was already supposed to be over!
O Lord, give me a generous heart. Let Your generous Spirit fill my spirit. Let the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God, as we learn to give first to You and the ministry of Your Kingdom however and whenever You lead. Give me a greater joy in giving and a greater expectancy of increase in the great harvest to come - here in Kenya and in all the nations of the earth. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays
Freiends, the leader of the city-wide Pastors' Fellowship in Kenol, Kenya just told me the estimated that 3,000 people were there last night at the closing night of the satellite Gospel Festival I been preaching outdoors for 4 nights! Last night a wave of people came for salvation, another wave for healing and deliverance, and another wave for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire with a passion to live a radical life for Jesus. Praise God! All the other evangelists in each of 5 cities preaching these Satellite Festivals on the same 4 nights were reports a similar move of God's Spirit in this region! Thank you for your prayers!
Now, we begin our Pastors and Leaders Conference for the next 3 days, where I'll be teaching with other on our mulitnational, mulitcultural team of evanglists (America, Kenya, Uganda, Korea, India) here with Wesley Paul Ministries. We'll have videos and pictures to pass along from the festivals soon! Then later this week I'll be preaching with Wesley Paul and the other evangelists at our main Sabasaba Gospel Festival, north of Nairobi, where they are expecting 30-40,000 people over the 4 day festival. Please keep praying for us and for the people of Kenya! God bless you!
Here's a short video that Dr. Wesley Paul and I made for our trip: http://www.youtube.com/embed/NMV3bUagljM Please pass it along to anyone who may be interested in joining with us in prayer or financial support. God bless you and thank you for all your encouragement and support for me and our minsitry!
While I'm away in ministry in Africa, please keep Messiah Ministries in prayer. We're needing to raise additional significant fainancial support right now, so we would welcome your generous support as you are led, whether on-line, by phone, or through the mail. Thank you and God bless you!
Tommy Hays
Founder, Messiah Ministries
2800 Tates Creek Rd.
Lexington, KY 40502
859-422-1794
