God’s gift of hope

Love For Myanmar Ministries Update

Christ Centered, Servant Hearted, Myanmar Focused

“Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?” Oswald Chambers

Whether consciously or unconsciously, we try to find a place where our dreams make life worth living, where our purpose belongs, where the mystery of hope finds refuge. The beginning of a new year is a good meeting place for our body, mind and soul to unite around what has meaning for us.

Opened doors to opportunities can suddenly close; however, with the nudging of hope other closed doors can surprisingly be opened. Beneath the difference is the price we place on sustaining hope. To what extent are we willing to reshape an opportunity when the evidence distorts its possibility?

When we have doors to opportunities close to us, why do we try so hard to lead people to believe that all is well with us? Why do we contort our hearts into fearing hope? Seemingly, more and more of us are unable to tolerate doubt in our own God-gifted abilities, and place ourselves a safe distance from feeling hope.

Hope gives a voice to the possible. Hope silences our darker moments. Hope produces powerful experiences which enrich our lives. Hope wrestles our sordid past out of the arms of self pity.

The greatest gift of hope is the facilitation of the courage to live in the Truth of God’s promises for our respective lives. What is eroding your trust in God’s promises? What has caused your faith to betray your patience with your Christian values? Perhaps you think God is done with you. Then again, perhaps God has not had an opportunity to be involved in providing direction for your life. This would be a good time to re-evaluate our relationship with God focusing on the exorbitant price we are paying listening to our own voice of authority?

It is unsettling to think that a growing number of us are seemingly distrusting of our God’s promises, and choose to mistreat our hearts with the illusion that closed doors (setbacks, disappointments, suffering) should not play a part in realizing those promises. It is on the tender side of our suffering where we learn about ourselves, begin to dismantle our own significance in our lives, and realize that the immediacy of meeting our needs or realizing our dreams isn’t as important as the inner peace gained from surrendering them to the wisdom of our loving God. I pray this new year will bring about each of us trying to better understand the greatest gift in this life is the hope in the enduring promises of a merciful God that is designed to magnify the best within us. Hope can be found on earth in the inner peace God provides when we are realistic about our own fallen nature.

Gary Watkins, LFM Co-founder

• Prayer Request: (Myanmar coup day 1,454)
  Please pray that more and more Myanmar people will trust in the everlasting hope offered by our God and they will experience the blessing of His inner peace in their lives.

1. The junta administration in Karen State announced a “shoot on sight” curfew, and a ban on any gathering of more than five people, via loudspeaker, between midnight and 4am on Bogyoke Road in the capital Hpa-An.
2. The ethnic Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and its allies are attacking junta positions in the district capital of Bhamo on the Irrawaddy River after seizing neighboring Mansi Township. The district capital is now completely encircled as the KIA and its allies have also seized Momauk. The junta has been forced to airlift ammunition and food to its troops.
3. Worsening blackouts have left Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon and other cities with only a few hours of electricity per day since the start of 2025. Starting with the new year, the situation has deteriorated as the junta ordered only four hours of power a day followed by an eight-hour blackout, so residents have to endure 16 hours a day without electricity.
4. There is growing evidence that the cash-strapped junta is refusing to pay the pensions and compensation that soldiers’ families are entitled to when their husbands or sons die on duty. Since 2015, soldiers have been required to buy life insurance from the Aung Myint Moh Min Insurance Co which is owned by the son of junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. The promises made by senior officers about caring for bereaved families are becoming a joke in the junta military.
5. As conflicts between the military and opposition forces have escalated across Myanmar and more people have been forced to flee their homes – often with only the clothes on their back – health workers say things like mosquito nets have become overlooked casualties of war. The UN says this ongoing shortage of malaria supplies has led to a resurgence of the disease. But it is not just malaria that is stalking Myanmar. The country’s latest healthcare data from UN reports showed that cases of malaria and TB soared seven-fold. Armed conflict, political instability, logistical challenges, and targeted attacks on healthcare workers and facilities have shuttered hospitals, clinics, and monitoring programs, and the provision of life-saving medication has also come to a complete stop in many parts of Myanmar. A UN report on Myanmar’s humanitarian needs for 2025 contained a dire warning: “The health system is in collapse.”
6. Internally displaced people number more than 3.5 million in Myanmar, of which children count for nearly one-third, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. According to a 2024 report, six million children in Myanmar are facing a worsening humanitarian situation. “There is no food at some internally displaced persons camps, not even enough rice for the children. In some families of five, only children are fed, and the mothers cannot eat. Malnutrition is a huge problem.”
7. According to an October 2024 report by U.S.-based Freedom House, which surveyed 72 countries, Myanmar stands among the worst nations for internet freedom. The Myanmar Internet Project, a digital freedom watchdog based in Thailand, recently reported that the junta caused more than 130 internet blackouts in 82 townships in 10 regions and states in 2024 alone. The junta has cut off internet access predominantly in cities in Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, Chin, Rakhine and Shan states, as well as in central Myanmar regions such as Sagaing and Magway, where its forces have lost territory to rebel factions. Regular internet access remains available in junta-controlled cities such as Yangon and Mandalay.