Category: Bruce Posts (Page 80 of 211)

We’re in day 5 of 7 with the team in town.  Group of 14, mostly 1st year Bible College students.  The classes have gone well.  We’ve had Andrei Murzin, Kelly Hoodikoff, and a few local missionaries/youth workers share.  I’ve been working my way through the topic, “The Character and Nature of God” which is always a challenge – such a weighty and powerful topic to survey, as a mere mortal, the immortal, invisible, immeasurable God.

How can we know Him really?  We’ve talked about creation, how it declares His power, creativity, beauty and so much more.  We’ve talked about how God has revealed much of His nature through relationships themselves, the nature of love, family, and unity as flowing from His triune nature.

God has ultimately come in 4k, HD reality in the form of Jesus Christ.  Christ, who existed before the world’s creation, who in fact created all things – He has come to display, to bear the image of God ultimately.  Only God gets to define His nature – not religion, not your pastor or church, not even the Bible accurately displays in full His nature outside of Jesus Christ – He’s the center of it all!

Even Brent getting in on the music! Pretty decent drumming son 🙂

We will be wrapping up Thursday and Friday, saying goodbye to our friends on Saturday.  The best part of the week, in terms of our mission and heart for this generation, has been mixing the Minsk young people with our students here.   Last night we had an amazing time together, culminating in group prayer for one another.   For some, it was probably the first time they prayed in together in this type format – it didn’t feel forced, it felt like the Holy Spirit was touching hearts, assuring us of His love and presence – we are not alone, we have an amazing Father on our side.

Lord teach this generation Your incredible nature – Jesus, you gave it all for us.  It is finished!

Thank you for your prayer and support!   Next week we are taking 10 youth from our Club 180 group to Steiger, a day of Christian outreach to young people, prayer, worship and connection with our maker.   Pray for them and us!

Bruce & Deborah

From our dear friend Larissa who was married this summer and now lives in the US. Deb helped make this staged frame thing with Cheryl… my lovely Deb!

Preparing for incoming teams is always a lot of work.   It’s also exciting because we know the Lord is at work, and many lives (both coming and already here) will be touched.  I sometimes catch myself thinking, “Why in the world am I doing this?”

If you do nothing, pretty much nothing is going to happen.   It sounds so basic, but for much of Christendom doing nothing has become a form of trusting God.  There are times when God calls us to stand firm in faith and it might look passive to others, I get that.   I wonder if those who stand in faith are in actuality standing in unbelief.

We often want God to move but I think He wonders why we aren’t moving ourselves.   Faith looks more like Noah swinging a hammer than someone praying for a boat.  We get bored with God, maybe He’s bored with us?  We play things too safe.  What motivates our fear of stepping out and trusting Him?  I’m thinking out loud to our generation of believers.   We are so incredibly risk averse, it’s as if everything depended on us.   Lord help us change this focus.

Today I met Valeri, the leader of Steiger Ukraine – a youth movement that hosts concerts and has started 20 youth clubs in the last 2 yrs all over post-Soviet Union.  These guys are leaping in faith, it’s inspiring.  He explained how difficult touring for 5 months in Ukraine was.   They had a ton of problems and over 1,500 hearts surrender to Christ (and over 20k hear the gospel).

Why should we host a team of Bible College students for a week of lessons in our little town?   It’s going to cost quite a bit of money, time and energy.  Why should we operate a Coffee shop in the middle of one of the worst economic situations on the planet?  Why do you take on roles and opportunities given when you know inside you really aren’t qualified?  Why do we do anything that is risky?

God calls us out.  He challenges us to trust beyond our senses.  He delights in our abandon. 

I’m excited for next week!  It will be stressful, and cool.  The team arrives from Belarus on Saturday.  We will be worshiping this Saturday evening with area believers.  We have a couple guest worship leaders (one from Kiev who asked if they could come, sweet!).

The Kiev escalators to the metro system are some of the deepest in the world. This is seriously only half way!

During the week we will be intermixing  young passionate believers in Bible School with the precious lives we are loving through the week.   We will be trusting Him to do ‘above and beyond’ what we ask or think.   Pray with us for hearts to be awakened to the Spirit of God this coming week.

Do you have a vision or itching desire to see something ‘not yet’ come into pass?  Step out in faith.  Begin speaking it (start with those who know your heart!), praying it, believing it.  Share it with others, ask folks to lift these burdens up in prayer with you.  Prayer, in faith, accomplishes stuff.  It re-routes history, it brings the risen Jesus into focus and dares the world to take notice.

As Tucker and I ran around Kiev today getting products and preparing to host 14 folks for the week I was smiling.  Some folks on the subway probably thought I was weird.   I enjoy the calm before the storm, because I know the storm is what the Kingdom of God is all about.   Sometimes we need to create the storm, commit to stuff, take risks..  He relishes, I think, the opportunity to move in situations when those situations are created in faith, even as a prayer.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Rom 15:13

Let’s go trust Him!

Bruce & Deb

We’re hoping our new Lighthouse website will better communicate the story of what God is doing in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia as our ministry and team grows.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our new website!  If you have a few minutes please take a look and tell us what you think.

Click Here to Visit (or the image above)

In the coming months we will be filling it up with more videos and content to keep it interesting.  I realize we are living in a snapshot culture and folks don’t typically surf websites anymore.  I’m hoping that through video, live events, and other interactive mediums we can better tell our story online.

Building a website is always an interesting experience.  It helps you define what you are, obviously, but also your vision for the future.  Over the past year, I believe God has been helping us refine our vision and I’m very excited about it.

My prayer is that you sense some of that vision clearly as you click around the site.   If you don’t, maybe a few pictures will bring a smile to your face anyway!

Some interesting areas of the site:

• YouTube Channel: we don’t have many videos right now, but we’re actively producing some Student Biographies and plan to ‘tell our story’ more through video with Max and our new video department.  Check back and share our videos!
• New Donation Format:  We allow you to designate to various parts of our ministry.  The funds now go directly to our sending church Crossroads in Texas, which we will receive as part of our ongoing monthly support.  This will enable us to legally provide you with an end of year tax-receipt (for US residents only).
• Support Team Page:  We have listed those that have been faithfully part of our financial and prayer support family.  We have also included many of those that have contributed to various projects this past year in particularly.   As we head into 2017, we are growing (geographically and number of staff), and praying that God might use this site to gather more support as well.   If you are already a supporter, please share with your friends!  If you’ve never been a part of our ministry, we welcome you to invest with us in Kingdom growth in the former Soviet Union.
• Translation of Site: Currently the site is only in English.  Our primary audience out of the gate are the supporters in the US/Canada that have followed our journey and pray for us.  We are actively working on a Russian (possibly Ukrainian as well) version as well, step by step.

As we head toward the finish of 2016, we want to thank each of you that have generously sown into our faith journey in Ukraine.   2017 has some really cool things in store for us as a ministry and pioneering effort in the former Soviet Union.  God has been stirring us to believe Him for more, not sit back or be satisfied.  We need the body of Christ and thank you in advance for continued partnership.

Together for the Kingdom,

Bruce & Deborah Crowe