Endings Mean Beginnings

Check it out–my newsletter for the month!  I pray this newsletter will open your eyes to see what I see and to see how God is at work in South Africa thanks to your support and prayers.

October Newsletter

b’ahava (with love): הבהאב
To let everyone know of the abundant life in Christ by living to glorify God through
following Him, speaking words of life, and coming alive in order to do everything
with love that overwhelms, empowers, and transforms.

I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.-John 10:10

Behold, I make all things new. -Revelation 21:5

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.  Romans 8:28

Take Away

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord Blessed be Your name

—-

For the longest time whenever I heard this song, I immediately thought that the “take away” part included things that I wanted to keep.  Like sacrificing in certain areas or having to give up certain things.  Yet, as I listened to the song a few weeks ago….it finally dawned on me that, no, the Lord can take away other things as well!  Things I WANT Him to take away including sickness, pain, feelings, desires, and so much more.  By taking away these things, He gives me so much more and replaces them with things even better than I can imagine.

Quiet on the Homefront

Forgive me for the quiet end of the week.  As Sister Hazel would say, “Life Got in the Way.”  Yet, last night and today have been rather low key.  I was able to watch some Grey’s, Heroes, Wedding Crashers, Princess Diaries.   I napped through most of the last one so that was pleasant as well.  Plus, I got to go out for breakfast this morning! (love, love, love breakfast food).  I also spent some quality time in the Word and praying.  I’ve been steadily reading through the entire Bible this year.  I started out with The New Testament and worked my way toward the Old Testament.  Then about a month ago I added in reading some Psalms and Proverbs while reading through the Old Testament.  I finished Deuteronomy this morning and the section fit right into my feelings recently:

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” Deuteronomy 31:6

Tough Stuff

How cool is this.  The forum in November for my master’s program is on Women in Ministry. I’m pumped.  Now I just have buckle down and continue reading and learning and diving into what the Bible says.

Finalized Antioch Community Church Core Values

Truth

We believe Jesus Christ is the supreme embodiment of Truth.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  All things find their ultimate meaning and purpose in Him.  We also believe the Bible is God’s written, authoritative, and completely true revelation to His creation.  We are passionate about being transformed by God as we grow in love, zeal, knowledge, and obedience to the truth He has revealed. (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Hebrews 4:12; 1 Timothy 3:15; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21)

Pursuing God

God is the center of everything we do.  We seek to glorify Him as we live out our lives as an expression of worship.  We acknowledge our complete dependence upon God and strive to be people of faith and prayer.  We pursue an active, growing, obedient, and abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:31; Romans 12:1-2; Colossians 4:2; Ephesians 6:18-20; John 15:1-8)

Organic Community

God exists as a community of three in one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  God’s people are called to live as a relational community expressing diversity within unity.  We strive to cultivate loving, authentic relationships that are centered in Jesus Christ.  Our goal is to be an active, healthy, growing, and life-giving organic community that reflects the reality of who Jesus is to the world around us. (John 13:34-35; John 17:20-23; Acts 2:42-47; Ephesians 4:1-3)

Creativity

We have been created in the image of God.  As followers of Jesus, we are part of God’s cosmic work of redemption and new creation.  We desire that our community be an expression of the creative work of redemption God is doing within and among us.  Our goal is to utilize the diverse gifts and abilities God has given us to creatively engage people and culture with the gospel. (Genesis 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 12; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Acts 17:16-34; 1 Corinthians 9:19-23)

Holistic Mission

God is a missional, sending God.  As the Father sent the Son, we have been sent out into the world by Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Acknowledging we are hopeless apart from Christ, we desire to become “friends of sinners” as we guide lost and broken people to Jesus.  We believe in the power of the gospel to transform people, our city, and our world.  Therefore, we believe the gospel must be both tangibly demonstrated and courageously declared in our culture.(John 20:21; Luke 24:45-49; Acts 1:8; Matthew 9:9-13; Jeremiah 29:7; Matthew 5:13-16)

Intentional Multiplication

In obedience to Jesus’ mandate, we intentionally strive to make disciples of all people.   We are committed to developing and multiplying leaders.  We also desire to start new churches that start new churches.  Our goal is to help ignite a movement of the gospel in the Twin Cities and beyond that will contribute to the advancement of God’s Kingdom upon the earth. (Matthew 28:18-20; 2 Timothy 2:2; Ephesians 4:11-16; Acts 11:19-30; 13:1-3)

 

Sound interesting? Inspiring? Encouraging? What do you think? 

Read Andy’s message about the Core Values here and find out more about Antioch Community Church here.

Core Values

Churches often have “Core Values” unique to their situation, location, ect.  But how often do members even know or “value” these 7 or so principles?  How does a church embody and live out these values in such a way that they are evident?  How do you possible narrow down your Core Values when the Bible contains SO many great principles?  Plus, I often find myself mixing up Core Values and Doctrine.  I’ve been wrestling with Core Values for two weeks and I still feel overwhelmed.  I feel like I have so much to say and so many beliefs and values, but at the same time I’m speechless.  I don’t want to say anything because of all that I’m leaving out…  So what are your Core Values?  What would you want your church to value?  I’ll report back tonight or tomorrow after our Core Team meets and discusses more…until then enjoy the wrestling!

Favorite Place

Thanks to my roomie’s friend (who happens to be her sister’s fiance’s sister–do you get that?? heh) we get to take care of this lovely outdoor bench/loveseat for the summer.  I’m stoked.  Now we just have to find lots of other deck furniture like a table so that we can entertain!  I have been able to sit and eat breakfast on the deck for the last two mornings thanks to this little chair.  I love it!  Perfect place to eat cereal and read the Bible I’m really hoping this will help me improve in my consistency in reading the Bible (aww yeah and thus begins the performance review references).  Either way, I’m happy to have a spot to sit outside!

Hiding Behind a Rim

I’m obsessed with crazy, crimped, wavy, flared, pinched, spiked, and well basically every kind of non-normal rims in terms of pottery.  Pretty much every teacher has commented on my love for unique rims.  I’m not artsy in the draw an amazing bird on a vase kind of way so I make up for that in other ways–like rims or glaze.  I also hate wasting clay and throwing away pots.  I will do almost anything to make the clay work itself into something decent.  I’ve forced wavy tops down with a needle tool.  I throw in more clay if I cut through somewhere even though this technique is unorthodox.  All of this to say, I use rims to hide the off-balance, off-centered pieces.  With a wave or a flower type design, you have to hold the pot or be skilled to really notice.  Hence, I hide my inability to center perfectly behind my love of rims–mind you, I can center! Sometimes things just go awry.

In relation and going Bible-y on you, I can totally relate this to my life and the analogy of the potter (God) and the clay (me/you/us).  Often I’m the stubborn clay wanting to be off center and veering out.  I want to bow and thin rather than stay uniform and even.  At church, we’re started a series called “Be Killing Sin or Sin Will Be Killing You.”  As we went over the definition of sin, many of my rebellious and stubborn clay attributes came to light again.  Sometimes I don’t even let the potter spend time with me because I’m too busy flirting with the slip or the glaze.  Ha, I feel like I’m taking this a bit too far and could come up with a ton more cheesy clay jokes/references/analogies so I’ll stop there while my hole is only a bit deep!  You get the idea

I like big books I cannot lie.

Mark Driscoll is hilarious.  I could not stop laughing on my drive home when I was listening to his podcasts.  Who would think that the subject of spiritual gifts could be so funny?!  I sure wasn’t expecting to be driving alone at night laughing my head off.  From previous podcasts, I know he uses a lot of humor, but I was still surprised at how funny he made the topic while keeping it relevant and important.  I’m sure part of why I found the comments so funny is because I see myself and others as embodying the characteristics.

For example, he talked about the gift of knowledge and some characteristics of those who have this gift.  Granted, he did touch earlier in the podcast about the difference between spiritual gifts and natural talents and abilities, but I’ll refrain from going into further depth on that subject (listen to the podcast!).  First off, he indicated that this is one of his primary gifts, which also helped the humor.

Definition: “the ability to research, remember and make effective use of a variety of information on a number of diverse subjects”

Evidence:

1. You are an information freak.
2. You can’t wait for the amazon.com guy to show up
3. If you get a book written by a dead guy, you dance a jig
4. If you get a book out of print, you immediately run around to anyone in the vicinity showing them the “out of print” book so they too can stand in awe
5. “I don’t even believe in the rapture, but if it does happen I’m going to grab my books and take them with me”
6. You love footnotes and appendixes
7. You like big books and cannot lie.
8. What do you do on your day off? Study.
9. You love to learn and are not content with surface level knowledge on a topic
10. After reading a book, you think: “I know there are other perspectives….I need to get more books to look at all the perspectives.  I’m going to look at all of them just because I can.”
11. You get frustrated when you hear bad teaching from someone who hasn’t done their homework— example: that’s not what the greek text says
12. You are compelled to do long hours of research so that others can benefit
13. You love when people ask questions and are excited to share your insight
14. You don’t like to be more than arms length away from a book. i.e. You keep books in your car, room, bag, backpack, satchel…basically everywhere
15. Reading and knowledge simply make you happy.

Also, Mark Driscoll described his library. Man, I was drooling… I can’t wait to have a house and a library!!  He explained how he has a 13 foot desk like the Starship Enterprise and is surrounded by books.  The books of course are cataloged in the same way as the Library of Congress and he can search from his computer by date, subject, time, author, ect. Finally, the reminder came that the whole point of study is Jesus.  Driscoll called himself a “google for Christ.”  Zach Hubert used this gift to create (in his spare time!) a whole website to “help make the Greek New Testament more accessible to the beginning Greek student, the Greek scholar, or to anyone who desires to experience the Bible in its original form.”

In terms of text, Driscoll used 1 Corinthians 12:8 and also suggested doing a character study on Solomon, Timothy and Ezra if you are interested in the gift of knowledge.

*Podcast on iTunes: Spiritual Gifts, Part 1

*Zach Hubert’s website= The Resurgence Greek Project

Holy Club

The members of John Wesley’s Holy Club asked themselves these questions each day in their private devotions:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I hypocrite?

2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

3. Do I confidently pass on to another what I was told in confidence?

4. Can I be trusted?

5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?

6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?

7. Did the Bible live in me today?

8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?

9. Am I enjoying prayer?

10. When did I last speak to someone else of my faith?

11. Do I pray about the money I spend?

12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?

13. Do I disobey God in anything?

14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscious is uneasy?

15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?

16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?

17. How do I spend my spare time?

18. Am I proud?

19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisee who despised the publican?

20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard?

21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?

22. Is Christ real to me?