Iris Global

❤️

""Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.""

— Mark 3:33–35

It’s very important to stay low and remember to stand on Daddy’s feet—so we don’t keep on trying to do things in our own strength.

Some of us are strong and resourceful, tenacious and resilient. We can do a lot of stuff. Despite that, our abilities are not the way forward in His Kingdom. Life in God’s Kingdom demands childlike faith.

It demands radical dependency on Him.

Wherever I travel in the world, I often invite children to pray—for people, situations, healing, anything. I especially do this when I’m travelling in first world nations like the U.S. and the European nations. I especially do it when I’m in a place where adults have outgrown the sense that God still moves in the miraculous, where they find childlike faith hard to grasp.

I find that the younger children are, the more they believe, the more they are prepared to trust God implicitly. They have not yet learned to rationalize Him! They have not learned to put Him in a box or place imagined limits on His abilities. They just believe.

And Father responds to their faith. I always make sure we have children as part of our prayer and ministry teams in Mozambique. My Landcruiser is constantly jammed full of kids. They are the ministry team on all our bush outreaches. They see God do miracles in answer to their prayers.

Amazing things happen when kids pray. The power of God comes. Father hears and responds.

It’s hard to let go when we are capable. But we need to learn radical dependency. We need to acknowledge that He is so much stronger than we are in every possible way. As we lay down our abilities and surrender to Jesus, He responds to our faith. As we depend on Him, like little kids, He delights in answering our prayers, constantly surprising us with His love and grace.

Childlike Faith - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 127)

Many beautiful baptisms this Sunday in the Indian Ocean. All around us we know the angels rejoice!

Baptisms never get old. The Indian Ocean is our favorite place to do them and it is always a time of wonderful celebration.
This is a place where people can suffer for their faith, but their celebration of the gospel is as real as anything you will ever see.

One life loved; one life connected to the Father; one life transformed ❤️
Iris Global’s Stop for the One sponsorship program is an opportunity for you to put your compassion in action! By sponsoring a child you provide for a full spectrum of care, giving a child a thriving life and a bright future. Visit stopfortheone.org to learn more and find out how you can join the movement to reach one million children.

We are seeing organic and spontaneous growth directly tied to distributing solar audio Bibles! God is using this amazing technology to declare His good news of hope and hunger for His word is spreading from village to village as solar Bibles are shared and listening groups form.

Every single human being is created in the image of God; created for dignity, created for the Father’s love, created for kindness, created for mercy - Heidi Baker.
Visit stopfortheone.org to get evolved through sponsoring a child or community.

📷 Jessica Brewer

Thank you for all the prayers, support and love. The Lord has brought joy and dancing to our brothers and sisters living in the IDP camps.
Heidi shared an engaging message with a skits to teach about gratefulness through the story of the 10 lepers and the one who came back to give thanks to Jesus.
Print NT, solar audio Bibles, Capulanas and vitamin and rich meals were given out as the Gospel message was preached.
The Lord took our team out in the Bush area and brought them back and safety.
The children are planting and taking care of saplings; that will turn into trees with nutritious leaves, and fruit to eat, singing songs to Jesus and fun games.

Inexpressible - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 107)
When children are happy they don’t even know how to express it. They can’t find the words to describe what they are feeling; they just are. This is the kind of joy the Bible speaks about in 1 Peter 1:8: “You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy” (NLT).

The Voice translation renders the second part, “celebrate with a joy that is glorious beyond words.”

Sometimes childlike Christians who brim over with joy are criticized for their attitude of abandon; they are frowned upon because their behavior can’t be explained in theological or doctrinal terms. But I think these are the people God finds the most pleasure in.

Inexpressible joy means I can’t sit you down and explain it to you in mere words. By definition, it defies explanation. It is the type of joy so glorious, so far above any earthly comparison, that it is simply other-worldly. We’ll never understand it.

And that is the point. We are called to be full of the joy of the Lord. We are not called to measure it, analyze it, critique it. We do not need to find empirical evidence to underpin its existence. God’s joy just is, and our job is simply to allow Him to fill our beings with it and enjoy it.

We return to the first premise of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” His joy is inexpressible, unexplainable, indefinable, without measure, totally glorious and completely fulfilling!

📷 Jessica Brewer

Testimony time!

Consistency is key, and having our teams work and serve in these communities day in and day out is what helps to make a gradual difference in people’s lives. No more was this highlighted than when we heard the story of one of the single mothers in the community we serve.

We had previously shared Jesus’ love with her, had an ongoing relationship with her and had given her an audio Bible. But one day she was having such a hard time and things had gotten so bad that she wanted to end her own life. She went to a bridge over the main river (a common place where people take their life here) and dangled herself over the edge ready to jump. She felt like something evil was trying to pull her down into the water but she also felt a Presence pulling her back like arms wrapping around her and she was pulled back off the edge of the bridge. She looked around and no one was there. She remembered about the Love of Jesus and what we had shared before and she knew it was Jesus who was pulling her back.

In that moment, she felt hope rise in her and she regained her will to live. It was the first time she discovered Immanuel, God with her in the here and now of her own life.

We like beautiful churches, but don’t worry too much about them. A lot of the greatest services we’ve ever known happened under trees.

Made for Encounter - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 99)
All the good work we have been able to accomplish in Africa has been sparked, fueled and sustained by the fire of revival and the supernatural. We never could have gotten to this point—more than ten thousand churches and over ten thousand children—without miracles all the way. Life is more than food and the body more than clothes (see Luke 12:23). The Holy Spirit gives us rivers of living water that flow out of our innermost being. We love and enjoy all the manifestations of God’s presence and find that as we take more and more pleasure in God, we are filled with all the more strength and motivation to do His will through good works.

We do what we do because of visitations, visions and heavy doses of His Spirit. We are excited and keep going because the dead are being raised and the blind and deaf are being healed. The poor come to Jesus whole villages at a time because they see the power of God’s love. We are financed because God grants supernatural generosity to thousands of people without appeals from us. We are awed and thrilled that God would tangibly enter our meetings, touch our bodies and fill us to overflowing with love and joy—inexpressible and full of glory. We are on fire because He does more than we ask or think. It’s very simple. We desperately need revival, all the time. Heidi and I would both be dead now without miraculous healing. Every day we face need, pain and suffering that cry out for more than any human can give. Our own hearts pant for the living God like the deer pants for streams of water (see Psalm 42:1). We are made for God. We are made for revival. We are made for the glory of His presence. We must encounter Him.

While we live in extraordinary circumstances, in so many ways our situation is not different from yours. You will find true freedom from self-effort and striving when you live each day dependent on His Spirit to meet every need and sustain you through every hour. You are made for encounter.

📷 Jessica Brewer

Quality - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 96)
What God is really after in our lives is to produce quality—quality of character that compels Him to bless us all the more. Quality of life that sees us increasingly transformed into the Bride of Christ. For that reason, we are not content just to be; we also want to do things for our Lord.

We are not called to sit back and enter God’s Kingdom after doing nothing. We are called to develop lives of quality so that Jesus Himself is blessed, proud and honored to be the Bridegroom of the Church. So that on the Day of Judgment He can look around at the powers and principalities and say, “Look at My Bride! Look at the quality of My people.”

Then He will take immense pleasure in rewarding His faithful, blessing us with His rich inheritance. Rewarding us for every tear we’ve shed, every sacrifice we’ve made, every hardship we’ve endured in the pursuit of reaching others with His love.

We live in the paradox of grace and works. We get out of bed each day, assured we live in His grace today. We need do nothing more. But equally, we get out of bed and realize we are called to prove ourselves worthy of our calling today, called to prove ourselves worthy of our Lord Jesus.

We need do nothing more. But we want to do so much more!

📷 Jessica Brewer

LIFE-SAVING MILK & NUTRITION SUPPORT: We help mothers who are either too sick or too malnourished to produce milk as well as newborn babies who have lost their mothers and are now cared for by other family members. Learn more at stopfortheone.org
📷 Chelsea Yeaman

When children are happy they don’t even know how to express it. They can’t find the words to describe what they are feeling; they just are. This is the kind of joy the Bible speaks about in 1 Peter 1:8: “You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy” (NLT).

The Voice translation renders the second part, “celebrate with a joy that is glorious beyond words.”

Sometimes childlike Christians who brim over with joy are criticized for their attitude of abandon; they are frowned upon because their behavior can’t be explained in theological or doctrinal terms. But I think these are the people God finds the most pleasure in.

Inexpressible joy means I can’t sit you down and explain it to you in mere words. By definition, it defies explanation. It is the type of joy so glorious, so far above any earthly comparison, that it is simply other-worldly. We’ll never understand it.

And that is the point. We are called to be full of the joy of the Lord. We are not called to measure it, analyze it, critique it. We do not need to find empirical evidence to underpin its existence. God’s joy just is, and our job is simply to allow Him to fill our beings with it and enjoy it.

We return to the first premise of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” His joy is inexpressible, unexplainable, indefinable, without measure, totally glorious and completely fulfilling!

Inexpressible - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 107)

📷 Jessica Brewer

Beautiful baptisms from this Sunday. Many of the ones that were baptized were internally displaced people. This is a huge victory and an amazing testament to the victorious power of the cross of Jesus.
It’s amazing that these displaced people were able to flee to different region, and encounter Jesus, and publicly declare their faith publicly.

What God is really after in our lives is to produce quality—quality of character that compels Him to bless us all the more. Quality of life that sees us increasingly transformed into the Bride of Christ. For that reason, we are not content just to be; we also want to do things for our Lord.

We are not called to sit back and enter God’s Kingdom after doing nothing. We are called to develop lives of quality so that Jesus Himself is blessed, proud and honored to be the Bridegroom of the Church. So that on the Day of Judgment He can look around at the powers and principalities and say, “Look at My Bride! Look at the quality of My people.”

Then He will take immense pleasure in rewarding His faithful, blessing us with His rich inheritance. Rewarding us for every tear we’ve shed, every sacrifice we’ve made, every hardship we’ve endured in the pursuit of reaching others with His love. We live in the paradox of grace and works. We get out of bed each day, assured we live in His grace today. We need do nothing more. But equally, we get out of bed and realize we are called to prove ourselves worthy of our calling today, called to prove ourselves worthy of our Lord Jesus.
We need do nothing more. But we want to do so much more!

Quality - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 96)

📷 Jessica Brewer

Here is a glimpse of a child in Nepal doing a beautiful drawing and letter helping give thanks to all our supporters who sponsor children at our Stop for the One locations.
Follow to learn more about how your tangible investment in a child, a classroom, or community can have a lasting impact.
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As adopted children of our Father, we don’t have anything to prove. Our Father loves us, and He has a future mapped out for us that will fulfill the desires of our hearts. He knows what is embedded deep within us, even before we see it ourselves, even before we have dared to express those hopes and desires to Him. He knows how to bless us and, as one author put it, “subjects us to His relentless kindness.” One of the great messages of the recent worldwide renewal has been a fresh discovery of the Father heart of God and His incredible love for His children.

This is a great thing, but it’s good this is not the only side of our God. The flip side of this position of unmerited favor is that great joy comes from being rewarded for doing something. So we have the dichotomy of not having to perform for God to earn His grace—and performing works for God to be rewarded with His joy, peace and favor!

It is one of the many apparent scriptural paradoxes. It is amazing that God lavishly pours His love and grace upon us. Yet, it would feel empty if everything was simply handed to us and we did not respond to it by doing something.

Such is the paradox of the life of grace. We are undeserving recipients of unearned grace from our Father. But that grace does not leave us unmoved. Rather, we respond gratefully to His love, and it motivates us to action. This is the grace equation working the correct way around. He initiates; we respond. This is the message of the Gospel. While we were still helpless, Christ died for us.

Paradox - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 92)

📷 Jessica Brewer

Joy - Rolland & Heidi Baker - Reckless Devotion (Day 87)
Perhaps the most controversial of our IRIS core values is joy. Joy doesn’t appear on many people’s job descriptions as a non-negotiable item. But for us, it is. Our aim is to impart so much of the Holy Spirit that people cannot stop bubbling over with love and joy.

Why?

The characteristics of God’s Kingdom are righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (see Romans 14:17). When we have this joy, we are unfettered by our own sorrows and all the more capable of compassion for others.

Heidi and I could never have endured this long without a river of life and joy flowing out of our innermost beings. We are not cynical and downcast about the world or the Church, but we are thrilled with our perfect Savior, who is able to finish what He began in us. We gain nothing by being negative, but we overcome the world with faith that we can cast our cares on Him.

Joy, laughter and a light heart are not disrespectful of God and incongruous in this world. Instead, they are evidence of the life of heaven. We are not referring to cheap and foolish levity that ends in grief but to exultation in the truth and reality of our salvation, a powerful work of the Spirit.

“Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy… The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy… Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.” (Psalm 126:2–6)

Joy is not an abstract concept but a tangible reality. It is birthed in His presence and can fill us, empower us. If you currently struggle to find joy, ask Jesus to fill you afresh.

📷 Jessica Brewer