It Was You
“3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace…For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:3-11
Partner,
Thank you for your partnership with me in the gospel this summer. As cliché as it may sound, the truth is, I would not have been able to go, and to speak and live out the gospel to the people of the Mathare Valley for two months this summer without your support in giving and support in prayer. Truth be told, it wasn’t just me and my teammates who ministered in Mathare.
It was you.
You played with children day after day. You did house visits every day with pastors to encourage believers and herald the gospel to those who weren’t yet believing. You shared the good news of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and humbly led people to him. You did a VBS for hundreds of students. You played soccer with kids for hours upon hours. You encouraged the Kenyan workers who go out daily into the slum to be salt and light in an extremely dark place. Sure you were not there physically. But neither would I have been if it wasn’t for you supporting and sending me. And because of that, it was you as much as it was me. Had you not given financially, had you not prayed for me, those things would not have happened. And so it was you, along with me who was used this summer to bring God’s people back to him.
One day, when we all enter fully into the Kingdom of our Lord, I will introduce you to Gloria, my best little friend I made in Mathare; I will pull Judith and Richard, a young married couple that came to faith after sharing the gospel with them, over to meet you; I will have you shake the hand of Antony, our driver and my Kenyan brother. And I will explain to them that these are the people that they should be thankful to God for. These are the people that God used to make it all possible. These people, for no benefit of their own, gave a twenty-one year old college student money and prayers upon prayers enabling him to go across oceans to share the good news of Jesus with people who had never heard it or accepted it.
And they will thank you.
They will thank you for your partnership in the gospel. They will thank you for being selfless. They will thank you for praying for the people I would interact with, because those people, it turns out, were them. And they will be right in thanking you because it was you that sent me, it was you that supported me, and so it was you that ministered to them even though you never spoke a word to them. People have told me since I’ve been back that they are proud of me, and I know what they mean. But the people they should be proud of and thankful for are you. Because without you I wouldn’t have went. Without you, the work God did in and through me—and don’t get that wrong it was God’s work not mine—that work, would not have come about. So thank you. Thank you a million times over. And may God bless you for your partnership in the spreading of his gospel, his kingdom, and his glory in Kenya, and by consequence, all over the earth. And I hope, if it is God’s will, that you might partner with me again in that same cause.
I leave you with a benediction that was said every Sunday at the close of each service in the churches we attended: May the peace of our Father, and the love of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you now, and forevermore. Amen
In Christ,
Zach Hollifield
Gloria
Antony
Mathare alley
Part of the Mathare Valley slum