OWSOMS Self Denial Appeal - Week 1

Read Psalm 50:9-15

We are about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. Do you love to travel? Do you love discovering parts of the world that are unfamiliar to you? Do you love going to places that are off the normal tourist route and experiencing things for the first time?

To travel overseas, you need to be prepared. Firstly, you need a passport. It recognises who you are and declares your credibility as a traveller. It identifies you as a citizen of your own country and gives you confidence in presenting yourself at the entry gates to a foreign country.

With your Self Denial Passport, we invite you to come with us on this adventure. This is not a holiday like a normal tourist. It is a pilgrimage – a journey of discovery and personal growth. You will see parts of God’s creation that you have only read about, or perhaps seen on television.

With our passport, our Self Denial pilgrimage will take us to the major continents of the world, to the very corners of God’s vast creation. We will discover people who live very different lives to our own; people who have greater needs than us, who struggle for daily survival, who contend with significant disabilities yet somehow find the courage to keep facing each new day.

We will discover what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples, “Go” (Mark 16:15). When Jesus said this to his disciples, he wanted us to realise that the world is bigger than the town or city in which we live. He wanted us to know that “neighbour” means more than the people we see next door or those we see in our regular lives from day to day.

Through the Self Denial Appeal we can do just that. Get your passport and let’s “Go.” As we do,
let us also start praying for the people we are about to visit and how we can help them through our generous giving to the Self Denial Appeal.