Photography: Rolland Baker
"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."
— Jeremiah 29:13
"Missions has often been taught as unromantic; it is disciplined obedience to the Great Commission. Prayer is hard work, feelings are irrelevant, getting the job done is what counts. We don’t need spiritual experience to proclaim the Gospel. We can’t expect immediacy and intimacy to be normal. We can function without His manifest Presence.
We feel the opposite. We’ve gone through enough fire and hardship to know that without actually finding God, in fulfillment of Jer. 29:13, we cannot do what we do. We cannot love with supernatural, unstoppable love unless we actually experience the love of the Father for us first. As the radiance and exact image of the invisible God, Jesus is a spiritual lover, our perfect and ultimate companion. Our first value is to know Him in a passionate relationship with a love that is stronger than death (Song 8:6). We major first of all not on mission strategy, methods, projects and fundraising, but having the life that the world needs and craves.
But neither are we attracted to mindless, impersonal mysticism, experience without content and relationship. We pursue passion and truth, not just eastern balance and serenity with no actual basis for happiness. We relate to God with our minds and hearts both; we engage with Him, and find life and joy in our interaction. When we find Him, we find and gain everything… Without Him, we can do nothing of real value." - Rolland Baker
https://www.irisglobal.org/newsletters/core-values-at-iris
Photographer Bio:
DR. ROLLAND BAKER
Dr. Baker is a third-generation missionary born in China, and raised in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Dr. Baker was greatly influenced by his grandfather, H. A. Baker, who wrote “Visions Beyond the Veil,” an account of the extended visions of heaven and hell that children received in his remote orphanage in southwest China two generations ago.
He began Iris Global in 1980 with his wife Heidi, and has been a missionary for more than thirty years. Since 1995 they have seen a miraculous people movement spread across Mozambique, once one of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world. Greatly influenced by his grandfather’s experience of revival among poor orphans in China, his ministry emphasizes immediate intimacy with Jesus, a life of utterly-needed miracles, concentration on the humble and lowly, willingness to suffer for love’s sake and the unquenchable joy of the Lord.
He combines a rich background in theological education with practical experience imparting the love of God to the most destitute and forgotten he and his wife could find. Now Iris Global has bases in countries around the world carrying their values with power and simplicity.
He loves capturing God's beauty through photography.
His personal ministry website:
https://rollandheidibaker.org
Iris Global website:
https://www.irisglobal.org/
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