Lebanon (MNN) — As the consequences of war continue to ravage Lebanon, its people live in survival mode. Triumphant Mercy Lebanon addresses immediate concerns while helping people look beyond the physical to their soul’s needs.
Lebanese people have been living day-to-day for years. From their civil war that ended in 1990 to continued clashes with Israel and spillover from the Syrian civil war, many Lebanese don’t have the luxury of making plans. They cannot rely on many processes that others take for granted.
Nuna with Triumphant Mercy Lebanon says, “Everything is short-term. In people’s lives, they live day-to-day… They don’t know if tomorrow we will have a war. They don’t know if tomorrow we will have a shortage of fuel, shortage of foods, there will be no flour (that happened before). Suddenly, we don’t have flour. Suddenly, we don’t have fuel. Suddenly, something happens. So, this is how we live.”
Coping with the Exhaustion
Living without any long-term stability is difficult physically and mentally. This exhaustion affects everyone, not just leadership in ministries. Whatever your job, the constant concern about the next day is tiring.
(Image by Steve Haselden from Pixabay)
Nuna says that to combat the heavy mental loads, she takes breaks from thinking about ministry or even just regular future planning for her own life and steps back to read, pray, and enter a time of thinking about the Lord rather than daily life. She encourages others to do the same.
TM Lebanon implements this strategy of dealing with the trauma and burn-out extends not only to their workers but to their beneficiaries as well. “Every day, we also send a devotional. We have hundreds on WhatsApp groups and every day, we send a devotional so that they will have at least 5-10 minutes of just listening to a devotion. They need to stop thinking about the immediate need.”
Searching for True Peace
Nuna emphasizes that this strategy is some of the most practical care they give. Whatever troubles come, the state of people’s souls is most pressing. There is no lasting peace without a relationship with God.
“He is our peace. He is not just a God of peace, He is our peace,” Nuna states. “If we don’t have a peace inside, whatever happens around us, we will never have peace because there is no peace outside. You will have troubles and you will have problems with people and you will have enmities and you will have all this. So really, it’s really praying that people will find a place of refuge in the midst of trouble and in the midst of hardship.”
This truth applies to everyone, in any situation. Whether you are facing the harsh realities of war, family hardships, health concerns, or any other thing, peace only comes through Christ.
Please pray that the peace of Jesus would invade the hearts and minds of TM Lebanon and those they work among. “We need the light of Jesus. We need the hope of Jesus to just come and just go into all these places of darkness and culture. This is our job – but this is also the Spirit’s job. It’s more than our job. He does that. He’s the one who can light up that spirit in them… We need Jesus – Jesus’s peace, Jesus’s light to light up our world so that we become lights.”
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