75 percent of the way

This is a brief excerpt of our March newsletter. If you don't receive it and would like to, it's easy, just sign-up using the form on the right sidebar...

Right now we stand at approximately 75% of our goal! We’re getting so close! Day after day we’re shown the amazing provision of our God, and God isn’t stingy. He’s lavish in the ways he provides. We often forget that fact, but we’re reminded over and over again. God has provided through individuals, through churches, through friends, and through strangers. Each and every time, we marvel at his timing and overall goodness, and each and every time, we are reminded that our God “will meet all our needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:19). 

End of February Retreat

Last week we spent two nights at a cabin in Hocking Hills to reflect and thank God for all He has done the past couple months in the support raising process, and to recharge and get ready for the next few months. We were aiming to get to 70% by the end of February, and we were 1 week behind but we just hit 70% today! Even while we were relaxing for a couple days, God was still faithfully providing. He is such an awesome God. Here are a few of the highlights in pictures.

Our retreat location in Hocking Hills (courtesy Valley View Cabins)

We had a nice fire going most of the time

We did a lot of reading

No really, a lot of reading

We had a late night visitor who was pretty cute actually

We took a lovely hike

...and saw awesome frozen waterfalls

It was a great getaway and now we are recharged and ready to go! Our next big goal is to reach 90% by the end of April. 

Sneak Peak: February 2013 Newsletter

The following is an exerpt from our February newsletter:

In October we told you about a new outreach that was beginning in Versailles called the Gospel Café. For whatever reason, the French adore Gospel music, and each month the team crafts a program, recruit musicians, and invite as many people as possible to a Gospel concert. 

One of our teammates invited a friend of his, who is a musician, to play at the café. This man is not a Christian, but after playing at a few of the cafés he started improvising during one of the performances. As he was singing and playing on stage, he made a profession of faith! Please join with us in praising God and praying for continued fruit for the  Gospel Café. 

If you want more than just a sneak peek, please sign-up for our monthly newsletter on the right. Thanks!

Sixty percent of the way

We are so thankful and excited right now in the process of getting to France. By the first of the year, we had reached 50% of our monthly support need. That is ongoing monthly partnerships with a handful of churches and dozens of individuals. And for our close partners and friends, you know how big of a hurdle 50% was for us for several months. And now, just a little over a month later we are over 60%!

It is important for us to pause and reflect on how good the Lord continues to be and how in several ways, both small and large, He is confirming the call for us to be church planters in France. So now, with both humility and joy, we pause… reflect… and praise. 

We have set several milestone goals each month because we are trusting God to reach 100% by June 30th. The first big milestone is that we are hoping to reach 70% by the end of February. If you are one of our amazing Partners, or if you just want to, please pray that we would reach the 70% milestone this month and also that we would be a blessing and encouragement to every person and church we meet with along the way, whether they become a Partner in this ministry or not. Thank you.

God’s will vs. Our actions

I try not to share too many devotional thoughts that God is using to teach me on here, because I know that kind of thing can get old fast. But sometimes I can’t help it. 

Lately, the idea of predestination vs. free will keeps popping up in conversations and books I am reading. Please know that I am in no way an expert on this topic, but I do think about it and wrestle with it, like most followers of Jesus. I am not an intellectual, and compared to many am pretty simple-minded, but I am proud of how God uses that and still gives me insights into his ways. So hopefully, someone will be encouraged by my thoughts. Like a lot of controversies or debates, I usually fall somewhere in middle, and I do on this one. 

I don’t know if you know this about Ryan yet, but he loves analogies, and the analogies God gives him often encourage me. I think it comes from both his passion for intellectual pursuits but also his passion to communicate in ways that anyone can understand. This is important to me too, probably because it helps me understand! But he was given the analogy that God’s will is like a play in which he is the director. There is a master script that contains what is going to happen, but we are all individual actors in the play who bring our own individual ideas and improvisation to our roles. We each have a part to play and even though God knows what we are going to do, he also gives us the freedom to embrace or reject our roles. 

I don't think so

So, do I believe in predestination, yes. Do I believe in free will, yes. Am I allowed to believe in both, I don’t know? But for now I would like to have my cake and eat it too. And for those who know me, you know that I really love cake. I also wanted to share a small excerpt from a book I am reading that helped reinforce my thinking. 

    "We are not mere mortals, with a chance beginning and a chance ending and a flurry of pointless activity in between. We are meaningful players in a cosmic drama, intended to know that more is going on beyond what we can see. God has 'set eternity' in our hearts, and although we cannot fathom 'what God has done from the beginning to the end' (Eccles. 3:11), we sense that the events of life are heading somewhere and that we can either get on board or stay seated on the bench. 

    God has placed his Spirit in charge of directing the story and equipping the players for their parts. By his decision, writing a few books was included in my script. I am free to pursue other interests or to cooperate. If I cooperate, I am lifted up into the stream of his purposes, and my yearning to be a part of eternal things is satisfied. I become one with my destiny." — Connecting by Larry Crabb

So I am comforted. Both in the reality that God is in complete control of all things, and also in the reality that he is not a puppet master pulling our strings. I also know though, that I find my life’s greatest freedom and fulfillment only when I am embracing my role in his cosmic drama. Each day is another chance to do that more and more or less and less. A great privilege and responsibility… praise the Lord.

Finding Our Value

I feel so much better about myself when I feel useful, when I can point to tangible, concrete things in my day and say, “I accomplished that.” Whether its going into work, filling the car with gas, or changing a light bulb, I feel better about myself when I get things done. It’s good to get things done, but without immediate and definite results for my actions I start to feel miserable. I get this sort of “wasted day” feeling, and I feel like I have to go through my day and find the stuff I did to prove that I was somehow productive or useful that day. I’m not really sure who I’m trying to prove it to. Am I trying to prove it to myself, to other people, to God? I don’t want to feel like a useless human being, and I don’t want other people to see me that way, and I want to be able to justify my existence before God and say, “Here’s why I’m a good person. Look at all this stuff I’ve gotten done.” I want to be valuable.

Erin and I are having a hard time with this desire to feel valuable at the moment. We’ve left our jobs, our involvements, and many of the things that gave us value in order to raise support full-time until we get to France. At first leaving everything felt freeing, “won’t it be great to make our own schedules,” we said to each other. But it was amazing how quickly the freedom to make our own schedules became the guilt of not being able to tally up our accomplishments. Where’s our value when we can’t quantify and evaluate what we are doing? It’s a struggle, a daily struggle.

But this is where the Gospel becomes Good News to me. 1 Timothy 1:9 says, 

“God has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time….” 

I want to create my own value, but the Gospel says God gives me value. While I’m trying to defend my value before God, He is trying to show me my value to Him. The value I have is the value He gives, not the value I think I can earn. We are worth the infinite value of His Son, because that is the price He has chosen to pay for us. No matter how useful I feel or how many accomplishments I can tally, the final say on what I’m worth comes from God, and the Gospel says it’s more than I could ever fathom. 

What happened at Boot Camp

Last Monday night, after 7-hours cruising in the faithful Honda, we arrived at the Comfort Inn in Harrisburg, PA. What were we doing in Harrisburg you ask? Well, we had the privilege of going to an intense 2-day training called Boot Camp. It is for Christian workers from dozens of different organizations, denominations & associations, who, despite those smaller differences, share many awesome things in common, including the very practical need to raise their own financial support in order to do God’s work. And that is precisely what Boot Camp was all about, how to develop partners who will send all these workers into the harvest fields. 

Here is a photo to prove we were there.

Can you find us?

The best part for me about Boot Camp was really examining God’s Word in all the instances it talks about ministry and how God’s workers are to be provided for. 

I was so encouraged to spend so much time in God’s word, to really soak in it. It strengthened my understanding of why we develop Partners, because our Partners are going to hold the ropes for us, literally not figuratively. They are going to be our dearest friends, the people who invest in us and the people we invest in, here in the U.S. 

But also, and this was a newer concept for me, we are doing a great service to our Partners by providing an opportunity for them to give and grow in generosity and cheer. God loves generosity and somehow, I don’t fully understand it, but somehow by opening our wallets it also opens our hearts more fully to God’s purposes and also to God’s blessings. Jesus rewards our sacrifices. Like He explained in Matthew 19:29, after the rich man went away sad after Christ told him to sell all that he had and give to the poor, Jesus explained to the disciples that...

“everyone who has left houses, or brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” 

I am so joyful that our Partners are not just providing for and blessing us, but God is doing the same for them.

Another of the passages I really like is Proverbs 11:24–35 

“One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.”

We learned a lot more at Boot Camp, but today I just wanted to express how awesome God’s Word is. It really is the bread of life. Now, I think I will go make a sandwich for Ryan and I so we can be nourished by that as well.