A Season of Faith: 2015

Friday, March 20, 2015

Taking Church Outside Its Walls

This has been a week of divine appointments. There are too many things that have happened, lessons we've learned, things God has shown us that we can't begin to cover them all. I will attempt to share a few highlights with you and I pray that you are as encouraged as we are.
We have found since we moved to Tucson that ministry has been done out of just being who God made us to be. It happened by just being us. This trip only solidified that experience.
I heard Jean share about her job and her passion for inclusion and God used those conversations to encourage so many. And since her relationship with Jesus is also interwoven in it, it was impossible to share it without talking about Him.
Today she had a chance to present the gospel message through sign language to three individuals who were deaf. Something like that is only possible with a background in sign language. Truly a divine Appointment reserved for her.
I was able to do some hip hop and spoken word 2 times on this trip. Something that God has given me the ability to do, that just happened to fit with what the need was. And both times led to follow-up opportunities, one of which was a true divine appointment. A young man visiting from a Bible college, helping for the week, wondering what his purpose in life is. I was able to help him discover it and mentored him on how to create an effective music ministry.
The real story is what God showed us beforehand, and how it came to pass before our eyes. We knew we had a vision to pray for college students on a beach. We knew we were to go to Lake Havasu, and we knew we were to feed people. What we didn't know was that a local church has a ministry where they serve free pancakes and water on the beach for four weeks during spring break. They do so from 9-2 everyday. We were able to partner with what they already do. We were able to help feed people on Lake Havasu. We were able to participate in several divine appointments. And we were able to pray for people on the beach.
God had a plan, I am grateful He let us participate with Him in His plan. We look forward to more opportunities to be used by God, both at home in Tucson or wherever He would lead us.
God bless!
Brad

Sent from my iPhone

Sunday, March 8, 2015

2015 Family Ministry Trip

I realize its been a few years since my last entry. I guess I could sum up our time in Tucson with three statements. 1. Jean's dream job. It is very evident that a big reason we are here is for the impact that she has in the school district where she works. I believe what we have seen far is just the beginning. We will get back to that in another post. 2. Indirect Ministry. This is how I describe our main ministry objective. Which is simply to be us, stand out for being different, and live our lives in a way that directs people to God. This often leads to direct ministry through personal conversations, and those are pretty cool. 3. To model to others what a life of faith looks like. We are about to venture out on a ministry trip where we know where we are going and when we are going. But beyond that we are simply waiting for God to show us what to do. Let me give you a little back story and then get to the awesomeness of God part. Hopefully by the end of this post, you will be like us, eagerly waiting to see what God is going to do next. And hopefully, your faith will be strengthened as well.

A couple months back I had a series of visions where I pictured myself praying for people on a beach and them experiencing supernatural healing. I have learned that these visions are usually a direct result of somebody, somewhere praying for something, and God preparing my family to be an answer to that prayer. We decided to plan a ministry trip and trust God to fill in the blanks. What we thought would be summer break trip shifted, when I next began to get a burden for hurting college students. After seeking The Lord, Jean and I decided we would pick a week of spring break and dedicate it to following God's leading and leave the details up to Him. We started to plan for a trip to some college spring break destination the week of March 14-21, but had no idea where we were going. A couple weeks ago, The Lord woke me up in the night to give us our destination. We would spend a couple days in Las Vegas, then finish out the week at Lake Havasu.

As far as what we will do, the only direction we were given was to be there, be a presence, wait for divine appointments, and be ready. This doesn't seem like much, but I read through the book of Acts and see story after story of ministry happening just by going to a place and following the leading of the Holy Spirit. It stirs in us an excitement, which is fueled by all the experiences we have from times in the past where God used our family to touch others. If is humbling when we realize that God has a plan and invites us to participate with Him in His plan.

The Holy Spirit told me that distractions were going to come up. He said circumstances were going to make it seem impossible to go, but we were to go anyways. Little did I know that I would get laid off just 3 weeks before our trip, and it would seem impossible to go. I didn't want to start a new job with a week long trip happening soon. So I waited to see what would happen. It seemed as though the only logical choice was to postpone the trip and seek full time employment in order to avoid falling farther behind financially. This Orion didn't feel right. I believed fully that to go this route would leave me feeling regret. So we prayed, we sought council and we waited for The Lord. He woke me up one morning and asked me how much I would need for the ministry trip. I told Him I would need to cover the cost of the week's wages, which I have been doing handy man work to fulfill. Also I figured we would need at least $600.00 to fund the trip.

Friday morning I woke up feeling hopeless. It seemed like canceling the trip was the only option at that point. I had no work set up for the following week and the bills were falling further behind. That day I landed 2 bigger jobs that would make enough money to cover the week of work I would miss. Later that day we were approached by a young woman at church who told us she had been faithfully stashing money aside for some time. She kept waiting for God to give her direction on what to do with it. She woke up from a nap that day and heard The Lord tell her Lake Havasu. She saw my post on Facebook from that morning and knew what she had to do. This morning at church she handed me an envelope, and it contained $530.00 in it. A while later Jean was handed another envelope with $100.00 in it. I sat speechless. 2 days ago It seemed as though we would have to cancel, now we sat here with the amount of money I had asked The Lord for. God is faithful. He is our provider, and He takes care of us in ways beyond what we can imagine. So we are less than a week away from hitting the road for an adventure with The Lord. We will be sure to update you on how it is going, and what The Lord reveals to us throughout. We appreciate your prayers and welcome them. God bless! Brad

Background: what led up to this adventure?

This has been about three years in the making. Three years ago, while attending a conference in Houston, Jean and I both sensed the Lord was telling us to begin to get ready for something. We didn't know what but we knew we had to start doing things differently. I started restructuring Community of Men and had a renewed passion for empowering leaders to take more of a leadership role in things. We sensed God was telling us to be ready in the fall of 2012.

Later that year, I began to get the nudging by the Holy Spirit to go and pay a visit to a friend in Alabama. I didn't know why and I began to pray for him. The more I prayed, the more I sensed I was to pay him a visit. Finally, in January 2010 I made the twenty five hour drive through all the elements nature can throw at you to see what God was doing. We had no money, but said we couldn't afford to be disobedient. It turns out God used me to confirm some things in him and I was blessed with the money needed to cover the cost of the trip.

Later that year, we took our first Family Ministry Trip. We left home with $500.00 in our pockets as we began our three and half week road trip that took us to Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. God used every member of our family to serve other believers who needed some encouragement. I had received a vision from God. He showed me a map of the United States and told me that every place I saw a town, he had a remnant of people who loved Him and served Him. That was our mission, to be a support to the remnant of God's people. And it was awesome to see the opportunities that opened up to us and the ways in which God provided for our financila needs the whole way.

The next year, we sensed we were to take another Family Ministry Trip. The Lord had impressed upon my heart to go to Cody, WY, a town I had lived in when I was a boy. I had a vision of a mobile home park and the words "an overlooked people" in my head. So we hit the road, along with another family to see what God would do. He miraculously used us to draw people to Himself. And when we got to Cody we met a man who did ministry in a mobile home park where he told us, he and his wife ministered to the overlooked people in Cody. It was amazing to see how God had made that connection. He and his wife were doing a form of urban ministry but had no skill set or experience to do so. They had been praying for God to send them some help, and then we showed up. We ministered alongside them as well as doing outreaches in the local parks.

Which leads me to the latest thing. God had begun to impress upon my heart back in the spring of 2011 to resign from my current role at Minneapolis Believers In Christ and to begin to prepare for the next season of ministry. After going back and forth about it all summer, I finally decided this was God's will and I did so in August. That same week God spoke to me and said "Pack your family and get ready to move. I will show you where you are going when you are on the way." I consulted the scriptures and found a similar call God had given to Abraham. He packed up his whole family and left on a promise that God had a place reserved for him and that he would make him into a great nation. The Lord showed me that just the same as He led me to do all the things mentioned above and that lookinhg back I could see the evidence of why He did, this time will be just like all those others.

We do not know the full details of what God has prepared for our family. He has showed us glimpses of what we might be doing, but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and try and figure out God's plans. We are excited to discover them as they unfold.

As I write this I reflect back to the time frame that we had always thought of and the time of fall 2012. That is a time when some obligations that we have to fulfill would be completed and always made the most logical sense for when God would open up the next chapter for our family. But faith defies logic. And often God's purposes for us require us to go by faith and not by sight, because He knows better than we can ever imagine what is in store for us. Please return to this site regularly as we update you on what God is doing, showing, and using us to do in the coming months. And pray for us as we take the biggest adventure we've ever embarked on. God Bless!

Brad Peglow
bpeglow@gmail.com
612-388-5320