Greetings and Catch-up

Greetings family and friends,

Joan and I wanted to have a venue that would allow us to keep up with the many who have asked to stay informed with what God is doing in our lives.  Thank you for the prayers and unbelievable support over the past several weeks. 

We are doing extremely well!  God’s presence has been known with great intimacy and His voice heard with wonderful clarity.   It has become clear that God has had two things He wanted from us.

 One: God does not want part of our hearts but all of them.  There were strongholds in our lives that kept us from being all God wanted to be in us.  I knew there were many times in my life that I was not dealing with stress in appropriate ways.  Joan was sensing for her life a need for greater trust and intimacy in the Lord.  We have found that God has gone so much deeper than we knew He needed to.  Daily He has ministered His Word to us.  “The Lord has appeared of old to me saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love.  Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you.  Again, I will build you and you shall be rebuilt.”  (Jeremiah 31:3-4)  While we spent three weeks in San Diego alone with the Lord and each other God spoke clearly every day. 

Two: God has a new work for us.  Not really a new work but a focused work.  Through the years God has given us a passion for house church planting around the world.  We have seen God do so much in the small amount of time we have been able to put into this ministry.  God has made it clear this is the ministry He wants us to invest our lives in.  God really takes His commissioning of us seriously. 

One of the last messages I taught at Sheridan Hills was on the cost of discipleship.  In Luke 9:57-62 Jesus had a message for us.  He explains a disciple is guaranteed of nothing, not even a home.  “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no-where to lay His head”.  The same may be true of His followers.  Joan and I find our selves homeless at the present.  He speaks to a man that was willing to follow God only when his father was dead.  In short, he would follow after he had received his inheritance.  Joan and I often spoke of starting this mission emphases when able to live on retirement.  God wanted it sooner!  The final encounter was with a man who asked to say good by to guests at his house.  This concern appears honest enough.  The issue here is acknowledging the importance of following Jesus without the urgency of following Jesus.  Our urgency was not the same as God’s.  Now is the time and today is the day says our Lord.  We make so many excuses but Jesus made it clear His commission is to be urgent.  

In short, God has had to set us free from so much to get us locked in on His very best.  Joan and I have spent  a great deal of time in the Word and one awesome study has been the book of Galatians while in San Diego.  “It was for freedom that Christ set us free and don’t be entangled to a yoke of slavery”.  (Galatians 5:1)  God’s love, mercy and power combine to give wonderful freedom in Christ.  It is awesome to see God set us free to be greater tools in His hand. 

We have so much more to share and I assure you these posts have only just begun. 

Keep walking in His Grace;

Mark and Joan