Meet my friend Fany. EA in-country partners come in a variety of capacities and locations, and Fany is without a doubt a treasured EA ministry collaborator. I’ve had the unique pleasure to know her for over 7 years, not only as the group coordinator at a Dominican hotel that often hosts our visiting service teams, but also as a sister in Christ, with a passion for the Lord and a heart for her country. She is a true professional with a servant’s heart, and reminds me very much of JC Ryle’s description of those who are “ever adding grace to grace, faith to faith, and strength to strength.”
“Every time you meet them their hearts seems larger, and their spiritual stature taller and stronger. Every year they appear more, and feel more in their religion. They not only have good works to prove the reality of their faith, but they are zealous of them. They are not only do well, but they are unwearied in well doing.”
This made my visit to Fany last week all the more enjoyable and encouraging. Often, when meeting with EA supporters or partners, I bring along, as an encouragement, a book that I’ve found beneficial in my own personal walk with the Lord. (Now truthfully I rarely hear any feedback, and occasionally I’ve joked about assembling a stealth repossession team to enable some regifting.) But Fany’s visit gave me hope! I had planned to zip quickly into her office, grab a lost item and be on my way. However, when I arrived she was ecstatic over having just completed a bible study lesson plan, based on a book I had recently passed along to her. She was beaming, about to make copies for her class, saying she couldn’t wait till Sunday! It brought a smile to my face, to see her truly consumed with joy, over the prospect of teaching others what she herself had learned. Isn’t that who Christ followers are called to be?
The psalmist wrote in Psalm 119:20, “My soul is consumed with longing for your laws at all times.”
And 19th century theologian Albert Barnes said of this passage,
“The desire to know more of the commands of God acted continually on him, exhausting his strength, and overcoming him. He so longed for God that, in our language, ‘it wore upon him’ – as any ungratified desire does. It was not the possession of the knowledge of God that exhausted him; it was the intenseness of his desire that he might know more of God.”
That was the basis of Fany’s excitement: she knew more of God and was anxious for others to do likewise. This is the desire of EA, combating physical and spiritual poverty, or in the word’s of Jesus Himself: “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
