We can probably all recall a time that we had to make a sacrifice for someone else. Maybe we sacrificed our time that we could be resting, to help a neighbor work in their yard. Maybe we sacrificed going on a trip, in order to help a family member pay off a medical bill. Or, we sacrificed watching TV to spend more time with our Savior. In all these situations, we found ourselves sacrificing something, in order for good to come for someone or something else. Well....that's what sacrifice is! We must give of ourselves, even if it hurts sometimes, to give to others. Maybe it's our money we have to sacrifice, or our time, or our car or house. Whatever it is, sometimes God calls us to sacrifice so that others might benefit.
Well.....God has recently called Michael and I to sacrifice something and it's been on my mind a lot. This sacrifice is not going to be easy, in fact, it will be very hard for me. But, for Him, I will do it!
Our church, CrossPointe, is doing a fundraising campaign to raise money for our new building. I'm super excited about this new building and how God provided us with it at just the right time. However, we need to fix the building up and that will take money! Every church member has been asked to pledge money for this campaign and to then find 6 other people outside of the church to pledge as well. Well, Michael and I prayed about what to pledge and felt that we wanted to give more than what we knew we could physically give ourselves. We wanted this, so in the end, only God would get the glory. We also wanted to sacrifice something, so that we could give even more. After praying about what to do, God laid on our heart that we are to give up going out to eat during the week and on Friday and Saturdays. Wow....that's a big one for us because our lives get so busy sometimes that we tend to eat out a lot.
As of now, it has been two weeks since making the pledge and it has been a challenge. Michael and I are used to going out for "Date Night" on Friday nights and we haven't been able to do that the past two weeks. We have several more weeks left before we have raised all our pledge money and it will be hard few weeks. But, I pray that God will be glorified through it all!
I pray that through raising the money for our new building, that others may see the blessing that sacrifice and obedience to Christ brings. But, also, that through this new building, many lost people may come to know the Lord!!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Watch God Work
This past weekend, our church's youth group participated in M-Now. This is much like D-Now (DiscipleNow) but with a focus on missions. The week leading up to M-Now was very busy and chaotic for Michael and I. Satan was definately trying to attack, but we knew that God was with us.
First of all, Michael found out the Monday before M-Now that the speaker for the event had been in a very bad car accident (he's fine now) and would not be able to come to speak. Since it was very last minute, we knew there was no time to call in another speaker. Michael immediately prayed about what to do. Through prayer, Michael knew that he would be the one speaking on such short notice. This meant that he had 4 sermons to prepare in one week. On top of preparing sermons, there were errands to be run, food to be purchased, materials to be printed, emails to be sent, and phone calls to be made. We set to work!
The morning of the event, we had a host home have to bail at the last minute. Of course, this wasn't expected, but God prepared the way for another host home to step in to help. In the chaos, we did not allow for Satan to get a foothold. We knew that God was going to do a mighty work in the hands of our youth that weekend. We had 30 youth and about 15 youth workers involved in the weekend, and we knew that God was working in their lives.
On the first night, several youth came down for prayer. Many were wanting to recommit to living their lives for the Lord, not for themselves. Many were laying sin down at the Lord's feet and praying for help in turning away from that sin completely. It was powerful and humbling to see how the youth responded, and that was just the first night. After the message on Saturday morning, the youth had recreation time were we played several group games and just had a chance to hang out. After lunch, we went to a very poor area of town and got to pour our lives into the children of that area. We set up stations for the children to come around to. Some of those stations were face painting, jewelry making, balloon animals, crafts, and games. Before going to the stations, the children listened to a Bible story. It was amazing watching our youth with those kids. No one just sat back and watched, everyone got involved and enjoyed their time we spent with the kids. Afterwards, many of the youth asked if we could make this something we did once a month. How awesome to see the youth respond that way to doing missions. That night, I had the privelege of being with a group of the girls when one of them prayed to receive Christ.
God is so awesome and I'm humbled and blessed to be a part of the plan He has for CrossPointe youth. God was glorified and honored during M-Now and it was great seeing our youth grow spiritually this past weekend!
First of all, Michael found out the Monday before M-Now that the speaker for the event had been in a very bad car accident (he's fine now) and would not be able to come to speak. Since it was very last minute, we knew there was no time to call in another speaker. Michael immediately prayed about what to do. Through prayer, Michael knew that he would be the one speaking on such short notice. This meant that he had 4 sermons to prepare in one week. On top of preparing sermons, there were errands to be run, food to be purchased, materials to be printed, emails to be sent, and phone calls to be made. We set to work!
The morning of the event, we had a host home have to bail at the last minute. Of course, this wasn't expected, but God prepared the way for another host home to step in to help. In the chaos, we did not allow for Satan to get a foothold. We knew that God was going to do a mighty work in the hands of our youth that weekend. We had 30 youth and about 15 youth workers involved in the weekend, and we knew that God was working in their lives.
On the first night, several youth came down for prayer. Many were wanting to recommit to living their lives for the Lord, not for themselves. Many were laying sin down at the Lord's feet and praying for help in turning away from that sin completely. It was powerful and humbling to see how the youth responded, and that was just the first night. After the message on Saturday morning, the youth had recreation time were we played several group games and just had a chance to hang out. After lunch, we went to a very poor area of town and got to pour our lives into the children of that area. We set up stations for the children to come around to. Some of those stations were face painting, jewelry making, balloon animals, crafts, and games. Before going to the stations, the children listened to a Bible story. It was amazing watching our youth with those kids. No one just sat back and watched, everyone got involved and enjoyed their time we spent with the kids. Afterwards, many of the youth asked if we could make this something we did once a month. How awesome to see the youth respond that way to doing missions. That night, I had the privelege of being with a group of the girls when one of them prayed to receive Christ.
God is so awesome and I'm humbled and blessed to be a part of the plan He has for CrossPointe youth. God was glorified and honored during M-Now and it was great seeing our youth grow spiritually this past weekend!
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Bahamas
As the last blog stated, the past few weeks have been busy. However, being a teacher, I have Spring Break around this time of year. Months ago, Michael and I decided that we were going to use my Spring Break as a vacation time for us both. We booked a cruise to the Bahamas with our best friends from North Carolina way back in October. Last week, we set sail!!
Out of the four of us (Lauren and Keith - our NC friends, Michael and I), none of us had ever cruised before so really didn't know what to expect. We have a 4 night, 5 day cruise to the Bahamas, stopping in Freeport and Nassau with one day at sea. It was one of the BEST vacations I have ever experienced.
We enjoyed some of the shows on the boat at night, while during the day we spent our time on the islands. We really enjoyed Nassau! We rented scooters and drove all over the island. We saw Atlantis and spent time on the beach, soaking in the sun in the ocean. During our day at sea, we ended up being very lazy. We lounged around our room watching some t.v. before finally venturing out to the top deck to lay by the pool and get some sun. Every night we ate in the dining room and made sure we took advantage of the wonderful food being served. We ate stuffed mushrooms, escargo, kalamari, steak, beef wellington, lobster, shrimp, scallops, and so much more during our dinners on the boat. Every night they served several different appetizers, salads, main meals, and desserts. It was all very wonderful! We were so spoiled on the ship! As soon as we got back home, we started looking online to book our cruise for next year. We are hooked on cruising now!
To see more pictures from our cruise: http://picasaweb.google.com/apb4jc/Bahamas
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Through It All
Wow, what a very busy month March was and now almost half of April has passed. It has been awhile since I last had time to write, so I have some catching up to do. This past month has been much of a blur between planning for Missions Now (just like Disciple Now) at our church which happens to be this coming weekend, to going through the motions of getting approved to build a house, buying land, choosing a house plan (which is harder than I thought it would be - guess I'm too picky), figuring out what to do with my car that's messed up, celebrating my 28th birthday and our 5 year anniversary, and taking time to actually have a much needed vacation.
Michael and I are super excited about what God has been revealing to us lately. One of those things is being able to build again. We have found a great lot in a great subvision that is newly being developed. It's a pretty big development with three different phases so far (more will be developed soon) and we are only the 8th house to be built in our phase of the subdivision. It took forever, but we finally decided on our house plan and are "patiently" waiting on the bank for final approval. We are preapproved and will hopefully hear the final word of approval by the end of this week so we can actually start the building process. We are so excited to finally, once again, have a house of our own. God is SOOO good. This process, however, didn't go as smoothly and easily as I first thought it would. I kept praying for open doors and closed doors before even starting this process to make sure it was God's will for us to build right now. Michael and I completely felt that God was telling us to move forward, so we did. To make a long story a little shorter, after several closed doors I started feeling discouraged. I asked God what to do.....He had already told us to build....so why the closed doors? I finally had to decide to just leave it up to Him and not to worry. After doing this, there seemed to be open doors everywhere. God was teaching me to completely rely on Him. When He says He's going to do it...He means it...but it's always in His timing, not our own!! Lesson learned.....until next time unfortunately. Why is it that God teaches us something and we get it, only to forget it later? I guess it's just our sinful, prideful nature that kicks in and tells us that we can do it on our own. I'm so glad that I don't have to do this on my own though. Praise God! I'm so glad that He is with me through it all!
More on the rest of our busy month later....
Michael and I are super excited about what God has been revealing to us lately. One of those things is being able to build again. We have found a great lot in a great subvision that is newly being developed. It's a pretty big development with three different phases so far (more will be developed soon) and we are only the 8th house to be built in our phase of the subdivision. It took forever, but we finally decided on our house plan and are "patiently" waiting on the bank for final approval. We are preapproved and will hopefully hear the final word of approval by the end of this week so we can actually start the building process. We are so excited to finally, once again, have a house of our own. God is SOOO good. This process, however, didn't go as smoothly and easily as I first thought it would. I kept praying for open doors and closed doors before even starting this process to make sure it was God's will for us to build right now. Michael and I completely felt that God was telling us to move forward, so we did. To make a long story a little shorter, after several closed doors I started feeling discouraged. I asked God what to do.....He had already told us to build....so why the closed doors? I finally had to decide to just leave it up to Him and not to worry. After doing this, there seemed to be open doors everywhere. God was teaching me to completely rely on Him. When He says He's going to do it...He means it...but it's always in His timing, not our own!! Lesson learned.....until next time unfortunately. Why is it that God teaches us something and we get it, only to forget it later? I guess it's just our sinful, prideful nature that kicks in and tells us that we can do it on our own. I'm so glad that I don't have to do this on my own though. Praise God! I'm so glad that He is with me through it all!
More on the rest of our busy month later....
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