food for fish

Today Alexis and I are celebrating our 2 years of marriage... Not much of a celebration... but we'll do something. I think anniversaries and birthdays should be paid holidays. It's been amazing, hard at times, but worth the pain. Not much else to say. Time to head home!

Life (or God, haven't figure out which yet) seems to keep putting me in the midst of inter-relational unrest lately. For the most part this doesn't freak me out, but when it happens at work, at home, at church, and amongst friends, than I get a bit fatigued.

It is in these times that I must remind myself and live by God's prompting that true love is a love that loves through these things. A love that corrects, a love that remains faithful to God's character, a love that is humble, and a love that has no end. Will everyone accept correction, no, but it is still my responsibility to speak what God puts on my heart, but it is not my responsibility for someone to correct themselves. I will speak truth in love with grace.

I will not continue to throw pearls to the swine, I will not continue to invest in those that can't accept the loving truth, but I will plant the truth when the soil is fertile. Even when I am fatigued from the energy of it, for relationships are the fabric of life.

Sometimes it seems that I have an energy inside me that has no way of being expelled. I know life has its ups and downs, and that joy is a choice much of the time. So with this extra energy I feel inside of me I hope to go forward and direct it at people. I want to be intentional with my life, and I do not want to direct this overflow onto myself, at least not this time. There are very important times when we need to direct energy onto ourselves, but for me, right now, that's not necessary, but it's not easy either.

"All you need is love", "Love is just a game"

Well, lately God has been showing me a new side to Love. Now I bet most of you think this is about Emma... well in a way it is, but not really.

Yes Fatherhood has shown me a new side of love, and quite possibly this is where these ideas are stemming from. But as I was talking with Marcus at our devo this morning...

You see, lately as I drive around from client to client, the Lord has been showing me people's faces, and giving me a glimpse of how he loves them. It's like I feel in my heart the overwhelming grief, and/or pride he has for particular people. When I think of people I know who have made choices contrary to God's values I get even more emotional and can't do anything but pray for clarity in the person's life.

And now there's even more, you see, I believe true love, is a love that holds people to God's values. A love that doesn't just let our friends, our brothers/sisters slip away into "their own choices", if the choice is made with loving confrontation and loving correction, and still does not honor God's values, well then, the choice is theirs...

But way to often than not I see the opposite. I see people too afraid of rejection, too afraid of confrontation, to talk in love and grace to people about red-flags... those red-flags turn into spiritually killing decisions. If we are going to be known for the love we have for each other, we have got to allow God to work through each other, obey your convictions and your heart when God speak to it. Only blessing and honor and glory can be given to Jesus even if a person makes a decision to walk another path, at least they know the loving truth... and believe me it can be done, and God's name is always given glory, I've been there, scared to death, but I've done it. I've had people still decide, but I've seen people make the right choice as well. The choice is yours.

Marcus got me thinking...
I'm feeling the need to go wild....

Years ago I read John Eldredge's book "Wild at Heart" and it was, at the time, a great read. However I think I need to read it again. I remember a few of the ideas; being free to adventure and including our loved ones, allowing others to love me and allowing myself to love, while all at the same time taking hold of my inner sense of adventure and stepping out into an unknown world.

Gosh, if only I could hold onto those things each day, and remember that everyday is a step in the adventure God has put us. Every major decision we have made has been with our calling to Poland in mind. From the house we live in, to the job I have, to the ministry's we volunteer in. Everything is for the great adventure we know we are stepping into.

But on a day to day basis, work in, work out, the adventure is lost. I have small "revivals" in my heart, times where I search far and long across the Internet at houses and apartments to buy in Kraków, at store-fronts for rent near the city center in hopes of that bookstore or café Alexis and I have talked about, and at times even the adventures of going to Finland (and the other dozen or so nations) with Polish leaders establishing relationships and seeing God bring about similar visions in them as he has in us.

And then.... well it dissipates (to say the least) when the phone in my cubicle rings because someone, oh so important, can't open some attachment in their email.

I strongly believe the job I have is from God, in fact, I know so in my head and in my heart. I know he has me there not just for my own good, but for other's well being as well. This past week was an example of that, in fact March was simply an emergency month, kind of nuts, but good all at once.

I know that when my priorities are met, my relationship with God, with people, and my calling will encourage the adventure to grow in me.

Sometimes I struggle with the general cynical and jaded attitude of my peers. I'm really grieved by other Jesus followers who look at life as if the glass if half empty. But it goes deeper than that, many times my generation hangs onto the seams of life with just the logical, western mind-set that we have to climb the proverbial ladder of success before we even be in authority over anything. Not that we desire authority, but for most authority for some reason is how they view their confidence and relation to the rest of the world.

The truth is, we have been given all authority, to do even greater things than Jesus did. Yet we let the world system tell us we don't, we need this paper, and that paper, and X years of experience. Bump that, bump it all, we need to realize what we are called to, seek wisdom from those that have gone there before, learn from them and experience it for ourselves!

If you know that you are called (and all followers are called) then step into it. Of course you'll make mistakes, that's why we have mentors (Timothy and Paul), that's why we week wisdom, and that's why we submit ourselves to grace-filled truth tellers (or as I said the other day, butt holes for Jesus) - people who we have given permission to point out the boogers in our lives and the blind spots so we can have more confidence and authority to speak Jesus' gospel.

I was called to be a pastor over four years ago, this created a fear in me because I had never thought about it before and I've always been afraid of rejection. But now, even though I'm not "ordained" or "licensed", I am doing pastoral kinds of things, such as mentoring, being relational with others, and allowing God's voice to be heard and his flock cared for.

PS check out this new blog I found, fits the topic of this post quite well, none the less, I love what he has to say - it's grace filled truth at its finest!

For my generation, especially those that have grown up in the church, or been in it long enough to be jaded by the humanity of it (the imperfect, hypocrites that fill the church) of which they themselves fall into, the idea of “freedom in Christ” has turned into a poison that means “I’ll do what I want, and I know God will forgive me”.

Of course there is scripture that directly rebuttals this, I forget exactly where, but I know Paul does write about the “abuse of God’s grace” – getting drunk, and knowing that you will, and not caring, because “God forgives” is an abuse of grace. God isn’t going to forgive a person for something unless there is a truly repentant heart, unless he or she is convicted in their heart and mind that they will change their behavior, but most of all the heart behind it, that they’ll change their heart response.
Yes we have freedom in Christ, freedom to choose his straight path, and freedom to go off of the path.

We have freedom to do just about anything as long as it doesn’t dishonor God. Yes he forgives, but if we choose to do something dishonoring, knowing that it is, and with the dangerous attitude of “he’ll forgive me” then we have a lot of scary things to come. This is pride at its best, and at worst it’s blatantly defiant to the God of the universe, whose forgiveness is NOT free, and whose forgiveness DOES have one condition, of a repentant heart that is willing to humble itself.

We have the church, in all its crap, all its humanity, and in all its beauty, it is here to help us see what we cannot. I’m sorry it’s hurt so much, I’m sorry I’ve hurt so much, but at the heart of it, there is love.

The news of 2007 is:

Alexis and I are having a baby!!!

Back on our anniversary we thought we may have been pregnant, although we were on the "pill", Alexis took a few different pregnancy tests, all came out negative. Then on our trip there were a few symptoms that we decided Alexis should see the doctor, so on Tuesday of this past week she did exactly that.

By Wednesday at 9am she found out, she is 12 weeks pregnant! Which means our little one has already been to France and Poland :P

The baby is due March 11th at this point. It's crazy, it's kinda fast, but we were ready to start trying in September anyway! So God's provision we know is coming!

Love you all! Thanks for your prayers and support!

Hello everyone,

I am now on facebook.com, so much better than MySpace, I never enjoyed being subjected to random pictures of human anatomy. I'm not abandoning this thing at all, in fact, I'm just enhancing this blogs presence by joining facebook. It is here, and here alone where I will write my thoughts, share our stories about Poland and missions, and continue to encourage others.

Our online presence is growing, we're now on blogger, MySpace, Facebook, and You Tube... Our you tube profile doesn't have much in it yet, but soon it will have our wedding video, a tour of our place here in Gresham, and when we return, tid bits from our upcoming trip.

So stand by....

Alexis and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary this past weekend (yesterday was the actual day), it was great! We went to Seaside and Cannon Beach both in Oregon and loved it, the weather was pretty good, although a little overcast (while Portland was baking, today it's reaching 100!). I'll post pictures as soon as I think about it, I didn't even think of using my phone to post pictures and videos, we were just having that much fun :P



Thanks for all your prayers and support, see you later!



PS. We leave for France/Poland on the 26th, just a couple of weeks! We've fund raised $8,000 of the $9,000 we need, the rest is coming out of our own pockets, hopefully a few more donations come in so our time in Poland is free of money stress. Thanks again!

I've been trying to figure out what this blog is really about. What direction I want to take it. Well, I've decided to take it the same direction as when I started. It's about me. It's about me and my walk with Jesus. It's about me and my relationships. It's about me. Why me? Because when I focus on the inner thoughts, my outer expressions are closer to Godly expressions. When I take the time to think, process, ponder on my stuff, I find that I can give more to others. It's about loving others AS I LOVE MYSELF... I've been bad at this, and I need to start paying attention. So... I'm going to write a lot about myself, in fact those are the blogs I find the most interesting... the open, sickly honest ones about people's inner thoughts. That's what this life is about... learning from each other's interactions with others, themselves, and most of all with their Creator.

I don't have the words to describe how amazing the men's group that I go to on Saturday mornings is. It isn't just a "guy's talking about their problems" group, it's a truly loving group, completely sincere in purely desiring God. Because of this group I have tools that have made me so much more aware of why I do the things I don't want to do and why I don't do what I do want to do. I have so much more of a life because of what God has done for me, using these men, using relationships that a mere 5 years ago I would have thought to be impossible. While I still struggle in doing things I do not want to do, I at least know that my desire to be pure and set apart is where God wants me to be. I'm beginning to get a slight glimpse of where God wants to direct me, in the mean time before Poland.