A Very Looong time

The title has nothing to do with today's thought. It has just been a very long time since I wrote something on this blog. What often happens to me is that I have many things to do and so I do not take the time to post a thought on this site. Sort of like not making the time to work on the church Webpage like I want, would like, should do on a regular basis...

So, I was reading today and I came across this verse in John 15. Jesus, having just finished the Passover feast with his disciples and also the washing washing of their feet, continues on in his dialog to them. He is talking about how important it is for them (and us) to stay connected to Him. When we are connected to Him, then we are in fact connected to the Father. Our Father, the creator of the world and ... well, just everything, things we see, know and still cannot grasp or imagine... he is THE CREATOR. So being connected is really important.

I ran on to this verse: Jn 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. As I read that verse, I have to admit, I really liked the tail end of it. ...ask whatever you WISH and it will be given you. Out of the whole verse you see where my eyes went to, or should I say my mind. Hmm, what do I wish for. Perhaps the reason for the draw is because of what time of year it is. Here in Germany it is Christmas Market time. That means tons and tons of little booths with all sorts of Chistmasy things to eat, buy, see and think about for gifts for ... me or someone else for the holidays. I love Christmas time. I wish for a lot of things every Christmas, but I don't get them all. Do you? Okay, digressing here...

As I consider this verse, or I should say reconsider this verse, I notice a couple of things. First, the part that caught my... little boy eyes... is at the end of a sentence. Perhaps Jesus was putting the less important part at the end for a reason. What does he start with? He starts with what I like to call the biggest small word in the world, IF. So, I get the feeling that me getting to ask what I wish for and Him granting that for me is contingent on something. Hmm. I have to remember to take this verse and keep it where it was at, in the middle of a conversation Jesus was having with His followers, about being tied into him and through him being connected to the father, the creator. After the contingency word, Jesus tells us what we have to do. One, remain in Him. Two let His word remain in us. What does this mean for you and me today? This was written 2000 years ago. Jesus has lived, died, been resurrected and has ascended into heaven and we are waiting for his return. How can I remain in him. For me, the two reasons he gave are really intertwined. Remaining in Jesus, is walking with Jesus or walking like we learn that Jesus walked. Being Jesus like. How can we do that, first we do that by letting his word, GOD'S WORD, into our hearts and minds by spending time, not just reading it, but studying it, meditating on it, savoring it and letting it work on our hearts. Letting it change us from the inside out. When we believed what we read in the Bible, and seek to show Jesus that we love him by following what he has instructed us to do, we are remaining in Jesus, we are allowing His word(s) to remain in us. As children of the living God we also have something else, we have the Holy Spirit that lives IN us to help us to grow, help us to understand the things we read, to convict us of those areas that we are not conforming to God's idea of the way to live.

So, as I considered this thoughts this morning, it became quite apparent to me that once I tried to tackle the first part of that verse, when I got the last part, I realized that what I would be wishing for... not a Christmas list from Santa Claus... but the opportunity for God to change me into the person that he wants me to be. To be praying for those people that God puts in my life that do not know him yet, that His spirit will work on their hearts and that he will use me and give me wisdom to be an instrument of his service in these peoples lives.

I am still gonna enjoy Christmas time. I am gonna love getting and giving gifts. But when I WISH for things in my time of prayer with my father through my blessed savior, I am going to ask Him for the things that will further His will in this world. I know what that is, it is simple. It is giving the people of this world who do not know God an opportunity to see him through me. Getting His message of love and grace into a lost world. He wants everyone to come to him, so do I. I want to be up for the task, that is my wish.

God bless you and may you feel his peace in a powerful way this day. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today.

Mark

What comes out....

I was doing my daily Bible reading today. Came across this scripture in Matthew 15:

What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’ but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’ ” Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.” “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’ ”

Now, my mom always told me to wash my hands before I ate something. Hmm. Good idea, I even taught my kids that, but that is not what Jesus is dealing with here. First I find it interesting that the disciple came to Jesus and asked him if he noticed that he had offended the religious leaders. Imagine that! Of course Jesus knew what he was saying! Poor guy, just didn't get it did he? Then Jesus asked them, "Are you so dull?" Really that gives me hope. They were right there with him, listening, following, asking questions and learning from Him, yet they still had trouble grasping everything that he was saying and teaching. But then Jesus gets to the point, it is about the heart. Jesus was trying to get it across to these religious guys that their hearts were not right. Good news is the disciples hearts were right even if they did not understand everything he was trying to tell them. Jesus wants our hearts, not our ability to follow rules. He wants us to want to follow him, to serve him, serve others and to be an example to the world... because we love him and want to do this not because it is a bunch of rule for us to check off our list so that we can do what we do to gain what God promises us...

People are gonna see the way we live our lives. From the outside, they cannot always tell if we do what we do because we love God or because we are trying to "gain" our salvation through the following of the "rules" we read about in God's word. They may not be able to tell, but we can. We know why we do what we do. We do what we do because God showed us the ultimate love by sending His son to this earth to live and to die for us. To make a way for us to have a relationship with Him. We love because He first loved us. We love others because God love them and us. We do the things we do because we love God and want to share that love with those in this world that do not know God and know his unbelievable love for His creation.

We live differently. We act, talk and respond differently to people and circumstances in our daily lives. We do this because of the love of our Father. The hope that we have of spending eternity with our Father and with each other in heaven. It is about the words that come out of our mouths, but it is also about the actions of our lives that show the light of the love of Jesus to a dark world.

I want the things that come out of my heart to be kindness, love, sympathy, caring, patience, joy, peace and all the ways that God our Father is, I want to show the world my Father through the way I live my life. What is coming out of your heart? Fill your heart with the love of the Father and what comes out through your life will be a reflection of the Father. Praise be to His name!

_

TEAM

What do you think of when you hear the word "team". One thing for me, especially because of the Weltmeisterschaft (World Cup of Soccer) going on right now, I think of Soccer. I think about how these teams work together (or in some cases do not work well together) towards a common goal, pun there, to score a point and eventually win the game and tournament. I see them struggle on the field, not just with their opponents, but also with their own teammates. I have also seen the value in being unselfish. How many times have I seen in the different games where one man is taking the ball to the goal and at just the last minute, when the suspense is just about to kill you, will he shoot, will the opponent knock it down or out of the way... the man with the ball doesn't shoot... he instead passes it to another player because...BECAUSE he has the better shot. Think about how hard that is. Giving the glory to the other person. Literally giving it away. You had the shot, maybe you make it, maybe you don't, but you had the chance... But you are a team. A team isn't about one person, it is about the common goal. During this tournament I have seen so many selfless acts. So many times that someone passed the ball to someone else for the greater good. Seeing the other person getting the glory for a great shot... that they would not have had if the other person had kept the shot for themselves. You know what I am talking about... I don't just mean Fußball (soccer) either. I am talking about God's Family. I am talking about our workplaces, our individual families, our extended families and all those areas in our lives where we interact with other people "working together for a common goal". I must confess... it is hard to be a team player. Ha, no surprise to you there... if you know me. I like to be the one with the great idea. I like to be the one to score the winning point. I like to be the one to receive the glory... But being a part of a team means IT IS NOT ABOUT ME. Hard pill to swallow, ha, it is a difficult pill to even put in my mouth.

Years ago, many more than I choose to count, I worked in a grocery store. Pikewood Food Center. Each year Karen and I would go to a convention with my boss and his wife. This was put on by the supplier of our groceries. Each year there would be a theme. You know the kind, get everyone excited, pumped up so that they would buy a ton of stuff later at this show... you know, all those deals that were a once in a lifetime deal that you just could not pass up... at least until next year. :-) Sorry, I got sidetracked in all the memories. A theme I remember well, was centered around this word TEAM. T is for Together, E is for Everyone, A is for Achieves, M is for More. Together everyone achieves more. Hmmm, think about that. Agree? Disagree? Was it just a ploy to get all the grocery guys to buy more stuff from our supplier?

I would like to tweek that a bit. I would like to suggest that, TOGETHER, EVERYONE is ABLE to do MORE. I guess this comes down to what together means. For me that means that if I am not the center of attention, if I am not the one seeking the glory as I work in a group, then the group as a whole will be better off as we attempt to accomplish what we have started out to do together. Jump back to God's Family. We ARE family, God made us that way, kind of like our own families, we didn't get to choose who is in it, we just love them anyway. God adds us to HIS family. Hopefully we are, want to be, a team. What are our motivations as we would together as a team? What is our goals? Obviously Jesus gave us the ultimate goal... "seek and save the lost"! God's family, God's team, has the opportunity to share the great message of Jesus Christ with a lost world. This my friends is not an easy task, (saving that thought for another day)but this requires every player to play his part. Everyone cannot be on offense, everyone cannot be on defense, everyone cannot be the goalie. Ha, I just got a funny picture in my mind. I thought if all the Germany players decided that they all wanted to be the goalie... you have all of them standing in front of the goal and their opponent having the run of the field... sorry, i am digressing... maybe not. We are a body, Christ is the head, we each play a role in the body, Paul talked about this, this body working together, each part doing what GOD INTENDED IT TO DO, BEING PLACED WHERE HE WANTED IT TO BE... Working together. I am thankful that the body that God gave me works well with itself. I believe we call it cancer when the body turns on itself. I do not want to be cancer in God's family. I really would rather be the little toe and never get noticed for the support I give than to cause death and destruction in something so beautiful as the body of Christ. There are power in numbers, there is power in family. You know this. There is power in working together. We can help each other do better when we put the needs of others above ourselves. I think I read that somewhere...

Love the Lord your God... first command
Love your neighbor as you love yourself, treat him/her as you WANT to be treated... second command
All the rules, all the commands, all the regulations, all the teachings and all the prophesies of the Bible boil down to these two...

Family = Team. God's Family = God's Team. We have a team captain, He is Jesus Christ. I am thankful to be a player on His team. I want to live, breath and work as a team player. Seeking to make YOU stronger, utilize your talents, help you be closer to our Father as we reach out to the lost of our world and ultimately bringing Glory to God our Father through the life and service that we give Him as his family and team.

Thank you for your time this day that it took to read the writings of a person striving to truly put God and His Son Jesus on the throne of my life, then making sure that I am also putting your needs, your concerns before my own. Guess I am not through yet, actually I guess it would be better to say that God is not through with me yet. Thank you Father for the Spirit that you gave to me as a gift, that lives in me and helps me to grow to be the man, husband, father, brother and your son that you want me to be. Praise be to your name. Amen.

Random thoughts this day...

I was talking with Karen at breakfast this morning. She brought up an interesting point that hit me quite profoundly. Many times I am rather disappointed in myself because of what I have NOT been able to learn or NOT been able to accomplish in the almost 4 years of living in Germany. Come the end of August of this year, we will have officially been in Germany for 4 years. That seems like a very long time. Sometimes it seems very long for me… sometimes it seems like I blinked and it is over. Know what I mean? I think you do. Okay, her point. She made the statement that we have lived in three different cities in the last 4 years. First was Bremen. Bremen is a city of officially about 500,000 people. Add in the surrounding small towns that actually connect to it and you have over a million people milling around that city. Ha, that was our first place to live in Germany. I say ha because we came from a city, Little Rock, that with its surrounding towns probably had somewhere over 200,000 people. Big city for me and then we moved to a huge city. After living there for two years we moved to a city in the eastern part of Germany, it is called Chemnitz. It has relatively the same population as what we were used to in Little Rock, but the difference is that it was a city that earlier, before the wall came down, housed over twice that many people. So the city itself was much bigger than what I was used to, just only having the number of people that I had grown used to. Then our next move is to Leipzig. Leipzig has over 500,000 people and then it has many towns around its edges to make it quite a metropolitan area. Again, like Chemnitz, many of its inhabitants left for the west when the wall came down. Many of the industry was closed down after it no longer had the support of the communistic government to keep it running and staffed. So ultimately my rambling today… Have you ever moved to a new city? I am sure you have. Had your set of problems with that? I know you did. New places, new people, new ideas, customs and even sometimes a different way of speaking by the people in that city are what awaited you. I know. I too have experienced that… three times in the last 4 years. God is good, God is faithful. He has brought us through these moves. He has enabled us to learn and to grow beyond what we could have ever imagined. Does that mean it was easy? I say emphatically, NO! But life is not easy. That is what is so great about the promise that we will spend eternity with our Father. Where everything… EVERYTHING is good, great, wonderful! We all struggle with different things and changes in our lives. It is life. But God is with us as His children. We are not alone, even in a city of close to a million people when I know only a handful of those people. I am not alone! You are not alone! Thank you Father for being with us even in our tough times and also being there in our times of victory and triumph.

Warm weather

We have so much to be thankful for. I did not believe it would ever get to 28° (80°), but it did! I do have to say, that I still like the heat better than all that snow we had! Okay, it can get a little difficult, or uncomfortable, because there is no air conditioning, but I realize how much Karen and I are adapting to this European climate.

We are in the middle of our LST (Let's Start Talking) campaign. We now have three students living with us that come from the Sam Houston University in Texas. They are meeting daily with people here in Leipzig that wish to improve their conversational skill in English. I am so humbled by seeing how God is working in so many different peoples lives. People coming from many different walks of life, wanting to develop new relationships. It is such a blessing for us to have these students here. On so many levels. I do so enjoy seeing them interact with different people. Talking, laughing, and just getting to know people with different ideas and many times a very different way of thinking.

It has also been a blessing to have them here because it helps Karen and I recognize just how much of the language and the culture we really do know and understand. Have you ever learned a foreign language? Have you ever been to a place where you could actually use this language and speak to someone who spoke that language as a native tongue? Maybe a better question is, have you ever been to a country and not been able to speak, read or communicate with the local people? Yea, it is not so much fun. In a tourist area you will probably find someone you can communicate with. Often, in many foreign countries the people can speak English as a second language, but not always. I think you get the picture I am trying to paint for you. So, it is not an easy thing to do to communicate with someone who does not speak your language. I have been reminded through helping these students read how to get somewhere, understand what someone is saying to them, shopping in a grocery store where everything is written in a language you cannot understand (thank goodness for pictures :-) ) and general just getting around in a city of nearly 3/4 of a million people. It feels very good to be able to help them do these things. It reminds us that we have learned a lot... ha, yes, we have much more to learn... but when we stop learning... well, I guess that is when we leave this earth, yes?

I am thankful for friends. I am thankful that we have a best friend in Jesus and I am glad that we are here and have the opportunity to share the good message about Jesus with the people God puts in our path in this city. Thanks for reading, praying and caring!!

Mark

Summer time

I am so excited about summer. One it is warm... two it is time for our LST campaign. I must once again apologize for being so bad about making a post. I have no excuses...

We have students here from York College to help people improve their English by reading and talking about Bible verses. We had our meeting this past Tuesday and had over 25 people show up to the meeting to find out how they could take part. 25 people. That is amazing! Only one of those that showed up was someone that we were already acquainted with. The students have their work cut out for them as they seek to build a relationship and a bridge to us, those of us who live here year around, and make a connection so that we can share the love of our Father with people in this city. I am humbled, I am thrilled and I am so excited about the next 6 weeks.

I shot a video of our students playing in a field of Rapps (not sure what we call that in English). It is a crop that is used to make oil to cook with. They have the most beautiful yellow flowers this time of year. Let me see if it will let me upload it... hold on...


So, I think it worked... but I am gonna keep writing till it is finished.

We are having a great time getting to know the students and we now have a building where they can meet and we can also use it as a place of worship on Sundays. Exciting times. Ah ha, it is finished. I think it will work. Hope you enjoy the video.

Enough for now. I hope to add more later. Thanks for you patience...
For Him,
Mark

Change… or not?

1. Think for a moment…
   
   1. How have things changed in the way you live, just in your lifetime?
      
      1. What are three things that have been developed since you have been born?
         
   2. For me that is a little bit easier, I have been around longer :-)
      
      1. Microwave oven
         
         1. Consumer use began in the 60's
            
      2. Color TV
         
         1. okay they were actually developed in the 50's but no one could afford to have one until the 60's
            
      3. Video Games
         
         1. Atari started in the 70's
            
      4. Personal computers
         
         1. Yes, we had computers when I was young, but they were the size of a large room and no one had them at home
            
         2. My first computer was a Vic 20
            
            1. 5 KB (not mb) of Ram
               
            2. Came out in 1980
               
         3. Next was the Commodore64
            
            1. 64 KB of Ram
               
            2. Came out in 1982
               
      5. Handys (Mobile phones)
         
         1. The first produced for public use was in the 70's
            
            1. Bag phone
               
            2. Brick phone
               
      6. We went from LP records to cassette tapes to cd's to mp3
         
         1. We didn't have Ipod or Iphone
            
2. All changes have not been positive or good changes
   
   1. The worlds attitudes about things have changed
      
      1. Marriage
         
      2. Sex outside of marriage
         
      3. Modest dress
         
      4. Abortion
         
      5. Honesty, integrity, ethics
         
   2. Many times I feel like many people in the world call me "square" (uncool) or an "old fogy" (too retro) if I hold to my Bible beliefs
      
      1. I am not "with the times"
         
      2. I am not living in the "real world"
         

1. So what do we do when the world trashes the good things, Biblical teachings through its change in thinking?
   

1. In Psalms 11:3 David talks about the same problem, only many years earlier
   
   1. What would good people do if the wicked destroyed all that is good?
      
      1. This is the question for us tonight
         
      2. What will good people, people following God, do about negative changes in our world?
         
2. David gives us the solution by revealing 3 things about God here in Psalms 11
   
   1. Let's read this together
      
   2. Focus on vs. 4: (someone read this verse again, please)
      
      1. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord sits on his throne in heaven. He sees everything that happens. He watches people closely.
         
   3. 3 important things about God
      
      1. God is holy
         
         1. His holiness is unthreatened by an unholy world
            
         2. His standards set forth in the Bible for Holy living do not change just because people's opinions change
            
      2. God rules!
         
         1. Things changing here on earth do not change the fact that God rules in heaven.
            
         2. He allows things to change here, but all people will give an account for how they lived their lives.
            
      3. God sees.
         
         1. He is aware of what is going on
            
            1. On this earth
               
            2. In each of our lives
               
               1. How each of us choose to live
                  
3. God who is HOLY, and who RULES in heaven over all creation, also SEES everything that is going on in HIS CREATION.
   

1. Read vs. 7 again
   
   1. The Lord always does what is right, and he loves seeing people do right. Those who live good lives will be with him.
      
   2. God's way is the best way.
      
      1. God made a way for us to be with Him, through Jesus Christ
         
      2. Change will happen, sometimes good sometimes bad
         
         1. We need to follow God's way