What’s in your heart?

Love For Myanmar Ministries Update

Christ Centered, Servant Hearted, Myanmar Focused

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20

Christmas has become a “crisis of desires” where we dazzle one another with our lists, today’s “stone tablets” to be honored at all costs. Christmas morning has become an art form of its own with each year defining the kind of person we are by our sensitivity to one another’s lists. The value of our relationships is wrapped up in the price of our gifts with their packaging to be the sole expression of our affection.

This Christmas, let’s add some real gifts to our lists. Let’s give others our nonjudgmental understanding. Let’s give others our genuine forgiveness. Let’s give others our constructive listening. Let’s give others our best patience. Let’s give others our heartfelt love. The depth and transparency of our love for another will be the measure of our courage to be vulnerable with one another, to reveal the truth of our hearts.

We have allowed corporate America to silence the “Christ” in Christmas, quieting that special intimacy with our Creator. As a result, whether we acknowledge it, Christmas has become a shallow spectacle of consumerism.

The splendor of Christmas is bound to those unwilling to stand still in the midst of the temporal happiness created by corporations, and instead hones their hearts to find ways to love beyond their lists. It’s not about that catchy commercial, “what’s in your wallet”? It’s about “what’s in your heart”?

“God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” C.S. Lewis

Gary Watkins, LFM Co-founder

• Prayer Request: (Myanmar coup day 1,412)
  Please pray that there is a renewed enthusiasm for our “Christ” during this “Christ”mas, being joyful in the hope only He can provide, patient in our relationships, and faithful in listening to our God’s voice.

The Kachin Independence Army and allied resistance forces recently launched several simultaneous offensives against regime positions in Kachin State’s Bhamo and Mansi townships capturing at least seven military outposts. Bhamo town, which lies on the Ayeyarwady River and the highway connecting Mandalay and the Kachin capital of Myitkyina, is a transport hub of enormous strategic value.

Electricity output has been reduced by one-third in Myanmar since the 2021 coup. The decline is due to the regime’s poor management and insufficient budget for the sector, since the junta is preoccupied with spending its limited funds on military equipment to fight the resistance against its rule.

The United Nations has decided to keep Ambassador U Kyaw Moe Tun, the UN’s Permanent Representative to Myanmar, for another year.The United Nations Country Representative Selection Committee made a decision on December 6th. U Kyaw Moe Tun was dismissed from his post as ambassador by the juntal because he expressed his opposition to the military coup at the United Nations. This Un action successfully continues to prevent the violent military regime from representing Myanmar.

In a desperate attempt to conceal its significant losses, the junta is intensifying surveillance and digital oppression. Their aim is to stop the flow of truthful information to the public, cover up their war crimes in these regions, and disrupt communications among revolutionary forces online, while also trying to suppress public dissent against the regime on social media. 57 persons were recently arrested for expressing their opinions online against the junta while two newspaper reporters were sentenced; one for life and the other for twenty years.

The Chin National Army (CNA) has announced that all junta bases and outposts along the route between Hakha, the capital of Chin State, and Thantlang town have been captured by Chin revolutionary forces, with the exception of the strategically positioned Auto Hill camp overlooking Thantlang.The CNA and Chin Coalition Forces recently achieved a significant victory by seizing the C3 camp, a critical military outpost between Hakha and Thantlang.