Editor’s Article
A letter from the Editor – Ron Barnes
In the year of Source of Light’s 70th anniversary, we have been celebrating God’s goodness. He has taken this little ministry from Madison, Georgia, started in the second floor of a building right in the heart of Madison, and spread its influence all around the world. If a missionary hasn’t gotten there yet, the materials have been paving the way for their arrival someday!
For sure, the “Harvest” has truly been plentiful, and the laborers are still too few. God has blessed and multiplied the efforts of the SLM missionaries, current and past, and much has been accomplished, but there is yet so much more to do.
Season after season, we have seen God’s hand on that current harvest, but we never stop planning for the next. Celebrating 70 years of God’s blessing and harvest at SLM only reminds us to be preparing for the next.
Zechariah 10:1, “Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain; so the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.” KJV
We know it’s time again for SLM to be asking God for rain for this next season. There is so much yet to do: creating and designing new courses, translating into new languages, going into new regions, organizing ourselves logistically for growth, positioning the facilities for expansion, training new leaders and missionaries, improving our publications capabilities … The list could go on and on and sometimes seem overwhelming. But … God …
Besides the challenges of venturing into new areas and expanding the current, we have the added element of the enemy seeking to keep any of this from happening. We fully expect and are prepared for the “thunderstorms” that come when we pray for the rain. God has been faithful through the storms of the past, and He will see us through them again.
For me, growing up in Tampa, Florida, considered to be the “lightning capital of the world,” I rather enjoy a good thunderstorm. There is something about having so many of your senses alerted during the storm that wakes you up! The flash of the lightning, the noise of the thunder, the boom in your chest from the rumble that follows, the warm humid air that rolls in simultaneously, only to disappear almost as quickly as it arrives, breaking way to the sun shining brightly once again, with skies quiet and calm. That’s what serving God is like, and it’s exhilarating.
Those who serve at SLM do so certainly at great financial sacrifice. I remember one of our MKs sharing with me that it wasn’t until he went to college and applied for student aid that he realized he grew up “poor” according to their rubric. But as he went on to get to know other classmates outside his circle of MK friends back home, he realized his life was richly blessed. Money didn’t define his experience; it was serving the Lord.
The same is true at SLM in the ministry sense. For 70 years, the small size of our mission and our annual budget has neither defined nor limited our ministry. In fact, I believe it expanded it! My grandfather, Glenn Dix, used to put it this way in a song from 1924 by Kittle L. Suffield: “Little Is Much When God Is in It.”
When Matthew says in chapter 17 verse 20 that faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains, it becomes clear that it is faith, not size, not money, not polish, not strategy, nor any other vice that has allowed SLM to see the kind of fruit God has blessed us to see. So when we ask God how to move forward, we don’t pretend to even know how to do so apart from faith! Faith and faithfulness.
We will continue to seek God’s direction moving forward, not walking ahead of Him and being faithful with each next step He illuminates. It doesn’t mean we don’t plan, strategize, and develop vision, it just means we do so in faith, by faith, and through faith … and prayer!
I tell people often, when I get off a plane overseas, there are things that I anticipate happening and can plan for them, but perhaps the greatest ministry opportunities I have had have come through the thunderstorms on the trip. The unplanned interruptions have been the greatest opportunities for ministry by far. Through my wrongful arrest, SLM was given unfettered access to immigrations camps on the border of Sudan. An unplanned invitation to a prison in South America opened the door for high security access to prisons around that country. A simple mention of SLM led to introductions of key leaders throughout Europe seeking resources “just like SLM’s” to disciple their denominations.
And I’m just a simple man; nothing special about me. Just being in the right place, put in the right place by being yielded to God’s plan over my own. These opportunities and so many more I could have never planned. But when we ask God for rain, we can expect thunderstorms … if we are not afraid.
This Reaper is devoted to some new and exciting things God is doing for us. Many new places and faces will be introduced. We have faith that God is going to continue to lead us to new people, new places, and new and expanded ministry, and that He will provide for each step.
Expansion and updating are on the horizon for SLM and will require an amount of faith that we have never had to experience before… the faith of a mustard seed.
