Often new years are started with promises lofty and dreams of grandeur. Not my year. Not this year. This year, 2013, I'm just gonna be real. Here's my one resolution. Hear me...just one. I want to LIVE. I want to engage fully, fearlessly in all aspects of my life. This year I'm going to LIVE and live intentionally, abundantly, passionately. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone of fear, complacency and glass half empty mentality. My life, this life, the ONE I've been given, is going to be a grand adventure.
In March of this year we will be moving to the greater Seattle, WA area. We are looking at Mukilteo or Everett. Our family is submitting to God's calling to serve as missionaries. Please check us out at this site. 2700+ miles, a new world, a new start, yet what we've always been walking towards. Although every part of this feels exciting, new, and a little scary it also feels comfortable, familiar with a sense of coming home.
Here is a copy of our "partner letter" and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
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Dear Co-Laborer,
We are
so grateful for the precious love of Jesus that calls us, woes us, carries us
moment by moment into a deeper more intimate understanding of Him. It is this love that has been beckoning us to
something more, something special, something weighty, yet so simple. Loving God and loving people is what the Lord
asks us, no, commands us to do, in His word (Mark 12:29-31). Although we have been walking in this calling
for years, God is re-defining us and how we can serve alongside Him in being
His hands and feet to a lost, dark and dying world.
A
missionary is defined as someone who is sent to an area to evangelize, and
perform ministries of service, such as social justice, education and restoration. Jesus used this term when sending the
disciples to preach in his name. As
followers of Christ we can be “salt and light” wherever we are. It’s the wherever that is changing for the
Flint family. As we are realizing that
God is calling us to a position of service on the mission field, we will be
moving to the Mukilteo, WA area to serve as missionaries with Restoration
Ministries.
This
is a three-fold ministry including:
planting churches and serving communities at the local level, working to
develop and institute recovery programs, in the form of Celebrate
Recovery , and
to come alongside pastors and their families who have experienced burn-out,
moral breakdown, and/or hurts that have prevented them from continuing in
ministry. We will be using the model of
the City of Refuge.
Why
the Northwest? People need love
everywhere, especially in the Asheville area.
Well, researchers have dubbed the NW area of the United States as the
“none zone”. Nine out of ten people
check “none” as a religious affiliation.
In the “Bible belt” where we currently live, nine out of ten check
“Christian” as their affiliation. Oswald
Chambers put it this way “…Jesus never measured His life by how or where He was
of the greatest use. God places His saints where they will bring the most glory
to Him, and we are totally incapable of judging where that may be.” We didn’t
choose the NW. God chose it for us! By checking a box, we know that doesn’t give
an accurate description of someone’s heart.
However, to check “none” brings with it a definitive position of either
a lack of knowledge or concern to the place and divinity of THE Higher Power,
Jesus Christ. Please hear us, people
need love, everywhere!
It’s
also vitally important that you hear that we are NOT moving 3200 miles across
the country for a man (although we do have friends there), for a man-made
program (yes Celebrate Recovery changed our lives as individuals and as a
family), or to DO anything for God. God
is the one that redeems, saves, changes and heals. He simply wants us to follow him, love him
and share that love with others. We are
compelled to LOVE people. People like us
AND people very different from us. God’s
perfect love is so delicious that we want to share it with others. It is our
prayer that this love spills out from us and helps others to see the true
Light. We take up our mantle as
missionaries to love, to serve, to share life with those whom God places in our
path.
We
have been loving people in Western North Carolina for years. By participating and serving in Celebrate
Recovery for more than seven years our eyes have been opened to the spiritual
poverty of all people (ourselves included). God has blessed us with
opportunities to minister in prisons, rehab facilities, have a recovering
addict live with us for almost two years, serve in almost every capacity of our
local Celebrate Recovery program, minister to homeless Veterans, participate on
various worship teams, work with youth, teach Sunday school, become trained
Precept Bible study leaders, co-lead a LIFE group and minister through the
“Walk to Emmaus” ministry. We also have been able to serve on accountability
teams for personal and family restorations, serve as sponsors to recovering
addicts and work with the Department of Social Services to help people who are
working diligently to get back on track.
As
mentioned previously, all followers of Christ have been called to love their
neighbor. How can you help us love the
neighbors in the NW? First, you can
PRAY. Restoration Ministries and
Restoration Church-Mukilteo need a canopy of prayer. We as a family need prayer for safety,
provision, protection and peace during this transition process. A move of 3200 miles is a grand
adventure. You can participate with
Restoration Ministries by getting involved in short-term mission work, or if
God should lead you to move to the NW to partner there. Thirdly you can provide monetarily. There are many needs: moving costs, housing
costs, off-setting salaries (Nathan will be bi-vocational for now), providing
specific ministry needs, you name it…we need it! However, we are expectant to see God provide
miraculously. Giving is monitored
through the Puget Sound Baptist Association.
For up-to-date information, a more thorough explanation of the ministry,
or to give online, visit www.restoration-ministries.info. Also feel free to write, email or call us
with any questions.
Thank
you for loving us, sowing into our lives, supporting us in prayer and
considering partnering.
In His
Extravagant Love,Nathan and Janelle Flint
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