Pray for Our CFL Team in the Carribean
As many of you know, Hurricane Melissa struck eastern Cuba with devastating force. While the storm has passed, the aftermath has created challenges our CFL team has never faced at this level. Power outages, food shortages, and limited transportation have now been compounded by widespread sickness.
Several of our leaders and their families have been hit hard by Chikungunya, dengue, and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Many are experiencing high fevers, debilitating joint pain, and exhaustion. With little to no medication available, even simple recovery has become difficult.
Because of this, we have had to pause all ministry work that requires travel, not from lack of desire, but because our team is physically unable to reach the couples and churches they normally serve.
This is an incredibly hard season for them. Yet even from their sickbeds, their hearts remain steadfast: “As soon as we are able, we will continue the work.”
As we walk with them through this valley, we want to ask you, our CFL family, for two things:
Please pray for healing, strength, restored health, and protection from further illness. We believe God is more than able to bring the healing they need. And if the Lord leads you, please consider supporting our international ministry so we can provide care, relief, and encouragement to our team as they recover.
Your partnership helps sustain the very people who pour themselves out daily to disciple marriages across the island.
Thank you for loving them well in this moment of real need.
As Thanksgiving gets closer, Tammy and I have been talking about how easy it is to sit at a table surrounded by people you love, and still feel disconnected. We can be physically present, passing the mashed potatoes and smiling for pictures, yet inwardly guarded, carrying the unspoken, avoiding the vulnerable, hoping no one notices the parts of us we’d rather keep hidden. It’s a strange tension: being together, but not truly with each other. And that reality is exactly why we’re beginning this new podcast series, Unashamed: Redeeming What Shame Broke.
One theme we come back to again and again is this: vulnerability is God’s pathway back to intimacy. It’s the courage to be seen as you truly are, without any guarantees of how you’ll be received. That’s not easy for any of us. But when we look back on the early days of our own relationship, the moments that drew our hearts together weren’t the polished ones, they were the honest ones. Those first conversations where we shared something deeper, took a small risk, revealed something real, and the other didn’t pull away. That’s where closeness began. And it’s still how God invites us to move toward one another today.
No wonder shame works so hard to keep us covered. From the moment Adam and Eve hid in the garden, humanity has been choosing distance over connection, fear over openness. Yet even there, in the first appearance of shame, God moves toward His children, not away from them. He asks a simple but searching question: “Where are you?” It isn’t about geography. It’s about the heart.
Where are you hiding?
Where are you afraid?
Where have you settled for being “at the table” but not actually connected?
As you prepare for Thanksgiving, maybe that’s the invitation the Lord is extending to you and your spouse. Before you sit down with family, He’s inviting you to sit with Him, and with each other, and let Him begin redeeming what shame has quietly damaged. This doesn’t require a long conversation or dramatic moment. Sometimes healing begins with one honest sentence. One small truth spoken gently. One quiet moment where you stop pretending and allow yourself to be known.
If you’re looking for a simple way to lean into this, here’s something you and your spouse can do this week: read Genesis 2:25 and 3:8–10 together, and then pray, “Lord, show us where shame has caused us to hide, from You and from each other. Give us courage to be open and to receive Your love right there.” After that, share one sentence with one another: “One place I tend to hide is…” or “One thing I’m afraid to be honest about is…” No fixing. No trying to solve. Just the gift of being heard and the question, “How can I love you well in that place?”
We’ve found that moments like this, simple, honest, unforced, have strengthened our marriage more than anything else. And our hope is that the conversations from this new series will do the same for you. We’d love for you to join us as we unpack the lies shame tells us, the strain it puts on our relationships, and the way Jesus gently leads us toward freedom, closeness, and genuine connection.
Here’s this week’s episode if you’d like to watch or listen:
https://youtu.be/XpBSEZpay44
As you gather around your table this Thanksgiving, our prayer is that you experience not just togetherness, but true connection, and the reminder that in Christ, you are fully known and fully loved.
Remember,
God created marriage. He can make it work.
Vulnerability, Intimacy & Eden: What Shame Broke, Jesus Restores | Genesis 2:25
