Our Story Chapter 1

Without boring you into a whirlwind of “This is a story of a guy and a girl…who fell in love…yada yada yada…”  Let me just start with Chapter 1:

Chapter 1:  Blind Dates…Oh no! (Mandi’s perspective)

Yes, it all started with a blind date.  As awkward as they are, a blind date at a baseball field, without really realizing it was a blind date. “He’s here!?” says the coach of a team I was doing lessons with.

“Jesus has returned!?” my first hearts desire and wonder as I pondered what in the world he is talking about. 

“Who’s here?” I asked back dazed and confused.  “Jeremy, you know, our neighbor we were telling you about.” 

Oh, how the Lord knows I sure love surprises, and humoring in this way, he sure did bring a curve ball on this one.

“Oh yea, Jeremy” I replied with a confident hesitancy, thinking, “Here we go…another disaster ready to go down!” 

Walking towards him, I noticed his pale skin and long monkey arms, cute baby face, and humbled stance.  As I reflect on this, I am telling on the full scan that women run through in about 1.8 seconds, or really just the time between one blink and another.

After and awkward handshake, and invite into the lesson, we spent sectioned out times, talking about you know the basics, surfacey information that I honestly don’t remember now, but just enough to realize, “Hey, I could talk to him some more, especially about Jesus.” 

Phone numbers exchanged, were lost, and exchanged again.  The conversations here and there.  Phone conversations.  Late night dates at Chick-Fil-A, trying to talk over one another as the lady mopped the floors! Friendly conversations completely centered on common interest, pet peeves, silly jokes, and of course our understanding of Jesus, the bible, authors and pastors we are a follower of, and other random things.  Walls were high, emotions low, and transparency beginning to develop. 

Weeks past, and Jeremy found himself at the Homeless shelter helping me move a someone’s stuff from the storage unit and to his own home. I figured “If this one is legit, then he’s gonna have to serve with me!!”

“Just down the road.” the guy tells us, turned into a 30 min ride into the middle of no where, down a dirt path, through metal gates, and to a trailer hidden in the back of the woods.  Whew, I could only imagine what he was thinking as we drove and drove and drove, and it got darker and darker and darker. 

Well, this left room, for a long, and awkward “Do you want to be official” conversation, and the beginning of the rest of our lives together! 

Grace

I started reading a book by D.L. Moody entitled "Sovereign Grace". In this book, Moody seeks to draw out the great emphasis of grace as a free gift from God. There are many good quotes so far but here are a few that have stuck out to me the most.
"Thousands have been kept out of the kingdom of God because they do not realize what this free gift is. They think they must do something to merit salvation."

"The thief would have continued breathing out his blasphemies, had not grace arrested his tongue and tuned t for glory."

"My friend, we would have been this day wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness-Christless-hopeless-portionless-had not grace invited us, and grace constrained us."

"When the church and the world wake up to the fact that works before salvation go for nought, then-and not till then, I believe-men will come flocking into the kingdom of God by hundreds. We work from the cross, not to it. We work because we are saved, not in order to be saved. We work from salvation, no up to it. Salvation is the gift of God."

"God works in us; and then we work for Him. If He has done a work in us, we certainly ought to go and work for others. A man must have this salvation, and must know it, before he can work for the salvation of others."

"The religion of Christ is not man working his way up to God; it is God coming down to man. It is Christ coming down to the pit of sin and woe where we are, bringing us out of the pit, putting our feet upon a rock, and a new song in our mouth."

"If we look at salvation as a new life, it must be the work of God. God is the author of life: you cannot give yourself life. If we consider it as a gift, it must come from one outside of ourselves."

"Salvation is freely offered to all, but the trouble is that men do not believe God's Word, and do not accept the gift."

Going Going Gone!

Check out our video from previous trips to La Romana. This will give you an idea of what it is that we are working on in regards to baseball. There are also some pictures with regards to our friends Marcos and Candace. Marcos and Candace are good friends and are already living in the Dominican. Going Going Gone!

Holiness and Redemption: God’s Choice, Man’s Response

Today God has been teaching me about the holiness and redemption of God, in a way that I have never understood before.

In redemption we see God sending Jesus to save us “from” our sin, but we must remember he saved us “unto” Himself.  Meaning, it wasn’t just a “get out of hell” free card, but more of a “hiring” into the pursuit of holiness that God is, has, and desires for us to be completed in.

It’s important to understand that as Jesus saved us from hell, he redeemed us back towards heaven.  So, in this we accept grace, unmerited favor and choice, that God so loved us that He chose us, FOR the purpose of being made perfect and whole before him on that day when Jesus returns.

Here we have truth: that God in his sovereign will and love, chose and redeemed us.  The key is our response and engagement in this truth.  If we don’t recognize, acknowledge, and respond to this truth, the truth has no power in our lives.  Now, that doesn’t make the truth less powerful, it just personally has no affect on the person.

Andrew Murray says it this way in his book “The Path to Holiness” page 44 “God has made us His own, and allows us to say that we are His, but He waits for us to yield to him and enlarged entrance into the secret place of our inner being so that He can fill us with His fullness.  Holiness is not something we bring to God or do for Him.  Holiness is what there is of God in us.  God made us His own in redemption that He might make himself our own in sanctification.  Our work in becoming holy is the bringing our whole life, every part of it, into subjection to the rule of our holy God, putting every member and every power upon His alter.”

He later goes into talking about truth and recognizing it subjectively.  “What God sanctifies is holy with a divine and perfect holiness as His gift.  Man has to sanctify himself by acknowledging this and then maintaining and carrying out that holiness in relation to all his life before God and man.  God sanctified the Sabbath day.  Man has to sanctify it by keeping it holy.  God sanctified the firstborn of His own; Israel had sanctify them by giving them over to God.  God is holy. We are to sanctify Him by acknowledging and adorning and honoring that holiness.  God has sanctified His great name; His name is Holy.  We sanctify or hallow that name as we fear and trust and use it as the revelation of His Holiness”

So, here we read words of man’s response to God’s holiness: “Yield to him”, “the secret places of our inner being”, “bringing our whole life, every part of it, INTO SUBJECTION to the rule of our holy God; putting every member upon his alter”, “acknowledging this”, “maintaining”, “carrying out that holiness IN RELATION to all his life before God and man.” "Man has to sanctify it by keeping it holy." and so on...

It is only with the help from the Holy Spirit that we can “respond” and fully live into holiness.  As much as it is our own pursuits and responsibilities, the Holy Spirit gives us the wisdom, knowledge, discipline and will to surrender our lives before the holiness of God.  Recognizing and adoring Gods full holiness is key to responding.

If we really don’t believe in faith God in His full truth and holiness, nothing else really holds power in our lives.

Let us pray that we will pursue with joy, obedience and discipline the Holy Spirit as it teaches us the pure and true Holiness of God.  In this, let us respond to our redemption in Jesus, with a subjective right view of God and his desire to acknowledge him as Holy One.  In our responsibility and putting off of all areas of our lives to His control, we become sanctified before Him, which is what our whole redemption story is all about, and what God meant for His people in the redemption of them to Himself through His son Jesus!

May our prayers be of “humble adoration….hungry for wisdom and truth, praying for complete surrender of all areas of our life.  To desire to be refined in our inner souls, made whole and prepared as the bride awaits the groom.  A mere desire to be righteous and holy, redeemed and new.  Amen.” 

Warming Up

Last night was our first speaking opportunity to share about our vision and plan to move to the Dominican Republic. Many times we overlook the divine hand of God in our lives and I believe that is because we rarely look for it. But when we are on a specific mission or are relying totally on the Lord, we see him move in "mysterious ways." God's sovereign hand guided us to meet our friend Paula in the parking lot after our coed softball game, paving the way for the opportunity to speak last night. It was a night that one of our friends had some baseball equipment to give for us to take down to La Romana...that opened up the conversation with Paula. Paula and Mandi worked out the details for us to go share but we had to move the original date to last night.

It was such a pleasure to share with our new, kind, and gracious friends who were rotary club members in the town of Ayden, NC. I'd never been to a rotary meeting before but apparently they always sing one song out of their songbook and the song "ironically" happened to be "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"...tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor or order our steps!

The more that we lay aside our plans and seek the Lord, the more he reveals himself in the minute details. There are many stories that we can share and would love to begin keeping track of those in our journey to go. I leave you with this imagery from Mark 4:35-41 of Jesus and his disciples in the boat with the storm. In this passage, the disciples begin to freak out about the storm as their lives were in danger (so they thought) and Jesus was asleep. The disciples wake him up saying, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" It's very important that we look at who they believe Jesus, it's very important who we believe Jesus is. If Jesus is just a good moral teacher then there's really nothing he can do to stop the storm. If he's a prophet, there's not much he can do. But if he is the Son of God then he can surely save them. Jesus then rebukes the wind and sea and it calmed. Jesus then questions the disciples "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" Was Jesus questioning their faith in his abilities or was he questioning their faith in who he was? The disciples then ask themselves "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" That is the question today...who is this Jesus? If he is simply a good teacher then we have no need to do anything more than take his teachings as advice BUT if he is the Son of God then we must be changed by his loving commands. In fact, if we believe he is the Son of God then we will be changed and we will love him and obey him.

Preaching the Gospel with Faith

This is from a couple weeks ago and I was going to expound some on this quote but it's really sufficient in communicating a piece of faith that is often neglected. I think the thing that I would add is that often we are unsure of what to say when we share the Gospel with people but the simple fact is that we are reported Good News of real events. We are simply presenting the true story of who Jesus is and what he did and what that means for those who believe. So without further ado...
“St Paul expected his hearers to be moved. He so believed in his preaching that he knew that it was “the power of God unto salvation” [Rom. 1:16]. This expectation is a very real part of the presentation of the Gospel. It is a form of faith. A mere preaching which is not accompanied by the expectation of faith, is not a true preaching of the Gospel, because faith is a part of the Gospel. Simply to scatter the seed, with a sort of vague hope that some of it may come up somewhere, is not preaching the gospel. It is indeed a misrepresentation of the gospel. To preach the Gospel requires that the preacher should believe that he is sent to those whom he is addressing at the moment, because God has among them those whom He is at the moment calling: it requires that the speaker should expect a response.” Roland Allen