(sunday church)

We heard a really good sermon today from Pastor Mike Gibbons. The last 2 weeks we had “church” at home and listened to CDs of sermons from our home church. I went through the stack several times then decided on one. It never ceases to amaze me where my FATHER is at work. It was a sermon that really spoke directly to where we are at right now even though it was 6 months old. We listened to it as a family while we were getting ready for a leftover Sunday lunch. Kel and I talked about what we were hearing. Talking about where we think we had failed and where we were doing what we supposed to do. Pastor Mike talked about following Paul as Paul followed Christ. Man that sounds arrogant but it is not. We all follow other people’s examples around us. We began asking ourselves if we were being good examples. The answer we felt was a yes and a no. Yes we followed Christ across the ocean to a land we did not know. But (there seems to always be a “but”) we need to work on being an example worth following here. We have a tendency to be very brutally honest; I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I think it is better than the alternative. But in many ways we feel we have failed. Failed to acknowledge our FATHER’S sovereignty and HIS love and provision for us; HIS never ending pursuit of growing us in faith and deepening our relationship with HIM. “This” is about HIM-not us, and too often the focus is us and for that we seek forgiveness. All we go through is just training for something else; but too often we get caught up in the moment and the most recent crisis and we forget to look for/at the bigger picture. There is always more to what we see, “for we see through the glass darkly”. Remember, no matter where you (we) are, we are not perfect but in the process of being perfected. The process is not pretty but necessary. As Oswald Chambers said, “The process is the end. For it is the process that is glorifying to God.”

"there is no oil without squeezing, no wine without pressing the grapes, no fragrance without crushing the flowers and no real joy without sorrow" (unknown)