On 7/79/2009 we welcomed our daughter, Tayla grace, into the world!
Isn't she lovely?!?
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
THE COMPASSIONATE AND GENEROUS ONE
Here’s a thought to chew on this week:
Faith is nothing more than accepting God’s kindness.
Ponder that for a moment…
I don’t know about you, but that’s the type of statement I want to embrace. That’s the type of truth that I want to wrap around me like a big quilt on a chilly night.
I love this truth so much because I know how it feels not to believe it. Not matter how often I hear the Gospel, I still seem to suffer from a persistant and nagging fear that God is disappointed with me. In those moments of doubt, I surrender to the lie that I God’s love and affection are things to be achieved…and I’m painfully aware that if God’s grace where a prize to be won by Christian competing in some sort of cosmic game, I’d finish at the end of the pack.
But God is not an olympic judge holding up score cards. God is not professor grading our work.
God is compassionate and generous.
He’s compassionate because He knows that none of us – not even one – could earn a decent score or make the grade. He knows how deeply flawed and broken His children and out of the knowledge He comes to us.
He’s generous as He provides for us all that we need. He gives us everything we cannot give ourselves and more. He has spread a banquette before us and invited us to feast…to indulge…on His body and His blood. God’s hospitality knows no equal.
Our Father knows us by name, by nick-name for that matter. He sees all that we lack, He sees all of our failures, and all of our wounds. And His miraculous response to this is to drench us with life – and life to the full!
Sometimes God’s gifts come in packages we’re not sure we want to tear into. Some of the life that God gives looks like discipline, tough-to-swallow truth, and, there are times when God will bless His children through suffering…holding them all the while. But God always gives life and He gives it abundantly.
And our job in all of this..?
Simple: To receive God’s kindness.
To feast on His grace.
To go to bed one night a condemned sinner and to wake up on Christmas morning ready to rip into the beautifully wrapped gifts He’s set before us.
Because our God is Compassionate and Generous. He bids us to daily come to Him and accept His unfathomable, irresistible, unchangeable, unachievable gift: His Son Jesus Christ
Accept God’s kindness today…
Monday, January 19, 2009
First and foremost, my apologies for the large gap between posts. Since we moved to Denver on Dec. 1st, Katie and I have been pretty busy, which is a good thing and a bad thing at times (as I’m sure you can all relate to).
Our new life in Denver can characterized, so far, by two words:
Abundance and Struggle.
We’ve experienced these competing realities in a number of ways and as we tried to get our roots established and our ministries launched.
Abundance
Katie and I are so blessed to have found a wonderful apartment to call home (see photos to the right). We have everything we need and we love the location.
In the heart of Denver, we are surrounded by a mosaic of life and culture. From the little Greek Restaurant down the street, to the vibrancy we on Colfax just a few blocks away, we find ourselves in the midst of a beautiful collage humanity.
Struggle
And yet we have to admit that this is an adjustment for a couple of suburbanites. We grew up in Colorado Springs and spent the first years of our marriage in a neighborhood just outside Zeeland, Michigan. If you’re in anyway familiar with those two places, you can imagine how different downtown Denver can feel.
Although we are blessed to have found such a great apartment, it is pretty different from our home in Zeeland. Mobley missed having a yard and we miss having a garage and not having to carry groceries up 4 flights of stairs.
Abundance
The welcome and community we’ve found at City Church has been overwhelming. We seem to meet new people each week that we feel right at home with. Ministry has been going well and we honestly couldn’t dream of a better groups of people to serve God alongside.
Struggle
The welcome we received from Denver was quite different. Our first week in town, our Dog was injured (paralyzed for about 2 weeks, see her rehabbing in a underwater treadmill on the left) and I was rear-ended. This was after a fun first day of moving and unpacking boxes…can you say week from hell?
Abundance
We were immediately lifted up in prayer by our amazing family in Christ. The grace we’ve come to know on a daily basis as the result of those who pray for us humbles us the to point of tears while at the same time encourages us to live out the calling God has given us. We are so grateful to belong to a community of saints that loves us so deeply, but we are most grateful to belong to Christ who loves us deeper than we could ever know.
Our first few months in Denver have had ups and downs, but we know we are where God wants us right now. Thank you all for your prayers, your financial support, and for walking alongside us as we stumble down this road that Christ is leading us on. We are forever blessed by our family in Christ.
Go here to listen to one of the sermons I gave at City Church: http://www.citypres.org/sermons/2008_12_07.mp3
Our new life in Denver can characterized, so far, by two words:
Abundance and Struggle.
We’ve experienced these competing realities in a number of ways and as we tried to get our roots established and our ministries launched.
Abundance
Katie and I are so blessed to have found a wonderful apartment to call home (see photos to the right). We have everything we need and we love the location.
In the heart of Denver, we are surrounded by a mosaic of life and culture. From the little Greek Restaurant down the street, to the vibrancy we on Colfax just a few blocks away, we find ourselves in the midst of a beautiful collage humanity.
Struggle
And yet we have to admit that this is an adjustment for a couple of suburbanites. We grew up in Colorado Springs and spent the first years of our marriage in a neighborhood just outside Zeeland, Michigan. If you’re in anyway familiar with those two places, you can imagine how different downtown Denver can feel.
Although we are blessed to have found such a great apartment, it is pretty different from our home in Zeeland. Mobley missed having a yard and we miss having a garage and not having to carry groceries up 4 flights of stairs.
Abundance
The welcome and community we’ve found at City Church has been overwhelming. We seem to meet new people each week that we feel right at home with. Ministry has been going well and we honestly couldn’t dream of a better groups of people to serve God alongside.
Struggle
The welcome we received from Denver was quite different. Our first week in town, our Dog was injured (paralyzed for about 2 weeks, see her rehabbing in a underwater treadmill on the left) and I was rear-ended. This was after a fun first day of moving and unpacking boxes…can you say week from hell?
Abundance
We were immediately lifted up in prayer by our amazing family in Christ. The grace we’ve come to know on a daily basis as the result of those who pray for us humbles us the to point of tears while at the same time encourages us to live out the calling God has given us. We are so grateful to belong to a community of saints that loves us so deeply, but we are most grateful to belong to Christ who loves us deeper than we could ever know.
Our first few months in Denver have had ups and downs, but we know we are where God wants us right now. Thank you all for your prayers, your financial support, and for walking alongside us as we stumble down this road that Christ is leading us on. We are forever blessed by our family in Christ.
Go here to listen to one of the sermons I gave at City Church: http://www.citypres.org/sermons/2008_12_07.mp3
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