July 2008 – Page 2 – No Small Talk

The power of family

The Church can be a very powerful thing, when in balance with God’s heart, word, and spirit amazing things happen; things that can bring the hardest person to a place of falling in love with Christ. This past week I have seen the power of God’s family coming to life, in spite of what could be explosive, hurtful, and misunderstood. Although there are some very hard realities to deal with, God is showing each of us that His good will is here to bring us a full life.

When we take steps to be Disciples of Christ first, in all ways, even when dealing with hardships in the Church, we begin to see the big picture, the miracles, and truly experience the Church for what Christ intended – A healing family, a loving family, and a living family.

Encouragment

How do we give encouragment? Life is sometimes full of so much crap that it seems hard to give encouragment. Right now I have a lot friends that need encouragment, from life hardaches, to just the regular ups and downs. I don’t want to just throw advice, but I do want to speak truth of God’s favor on us, and the need to be closer to Him in worship, His word, and His body.

Testing feed

This is a test of my new feed settings. Thanks for the patience. I am finally going to bed, I’ve been a bit obsessive over this whole thing. The next big questions, to have ads, or not to have ads… I’ve already committed that all proceeds from the ads go to our mission trips, so that’s a good cause… any thoughts?

Good news – it looks like most people won’t need to update their feeds, unless they want to, which makes me happy, because most people are too lazy to make changes. 🙂

Welcome to my new home

Welcome, to “Living as a foreigner”, formally “food for fish”. I am still trying to get everything online. Not too many gadgets and widgets yet.. and I hope to keep it mostly that way.

I had a few casualties along the way, there’s a 4 post discrepancy between blogger and this site, and all my recent comments (12 of them) are gone. Other than that everything seems good.

Remember to check your RSS subscriptions for the proper address (if using the feed burner address there is no difference).

It starts now

Okay, so as of right now I am beginning the task of moving this blog over to my own hosted site, travis.reachpolska.info, the address has been changed for a while but the content is still here at blogger. So over this weekend things may get a bit bumpy, I think I have a way of keeping the feed address the same, so everyone who is subscribed in a news reader, or via email, shouldn’t need to make any changes.

On another note, the big family things that went down on Thursday is, while very hard to walk out, is probably in the end a good thing. Romans 8:28 is what everyone invovled in (who are Christians) is hanging onto.

Thanks for your prayers!

Grieving

My wife and I just learned some terrible news (the kind that gets your hands trembling) about a family member. No one is dieing, and no one has died. The ramifications are huge, the wake from this news will cause many to feel anger (such as I do), frustration (such as I do), and either move people closer to relying on God or cause people to shut down and continue on like nothing happened, yet slowly becoming more cold.

I wish I could explain it, I wish I could express how I feel in my spirit about the fears that have finally become reality, due to people dwelling on the problem, rather than expecting God to fulfil the needs.

The affect this has on Alexis and I will be one of spiritual and relational challenges.

Please pray for understanding, leaning on God’s word, how Alexis and I should participate, how the people involved should move, for God’s discernment, for healthy confrontation on questions.

Lord I ask for your truth, your wisdom in how I should personally minister in the depths of this event. I know what you have said in my spirit, and I have a tension with others on how to healthily administer the truth. I ask that you give me, all of us, a clearer understanding, and that most of all that circumstances do not tear apart your kingdom. I pray for wisdom in dealing with resources and relationships. I humbly submit to learning a new level of trust in you, and in the people you have placed around us. May the shortfalls of the world NEVER determine the call, relationship, or love we have for one another.In the power, authority, and love of Jesus I pray. – Amen – Make it so.

The sex fight

For a lot of Christian men there is a struggle to keep sexually pure. Now I realize that there are a lot of definitions of “purity” out there, it seem that some think masterbation is okay, and others think dressing in a sexually attractive way is okay, while some believe that not talking about any of these things is okay as well. Yes, we’ve heard this over and over, and I am still not convinced that the Church at large (the full body of Christ) has really taken this on. As I speak to more and more men I realize the need for a new Church culture that speaks Truth and Grace into the suxual purity issue.

I guess I take a hybrid, or middle of the ground, approach to these things. I believe that most of the time people don’t take a deep look into the reasons behind these struggles. We, in the Church, have taken the appraoch of “think no evil, see no evil, speak no evil”. When, from what I observe this has lead us to isolation, shame, doubt, and in many cases deep wounds that fester anger and fear, Jesus instructed us to not have even a hint of lust. Yet he forgives.

You see, I know that the enemy plays with this part of our lives because it is so destructive towards our ability to relate to God, and to others. We can easily become isolated and cut off and then allowing people to Love us, and for us to Love others becomes increasingly hard due to the shame that surrounds our heart. So I ask, what is the root of these “problems”, how do we replace these desires with healthy ones? What is a healthy desire?

I am far from the answer, only recently have I began to fully grasp the freedom of exercising true freedom in this area. My past makes it difficult, but I know that He who is in me, is stronger than he who is in the world.

Hewbrews 13

While this is a short chapter, it’s still full of amazing things. Such as verse 2 ” Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it!” and verse 7 “Remember your leaders who first taught you the word of God. Thank of all the good that has come from their lives, and trust the Lord as they do.” and verse 17 “Obey your spiritual leaders and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and tehy know they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this joyfully and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit.”

Wow, some grea things to ponder over, especially concerning the pieces about leadership. Today there is so much distrust in Church leadership (and in many cases well deserved), and to trust takes trusting God first.

Major changes coming….

Okay so with our new Poland focused website pretty much up… I’ve fallen in love with using Word Press, and have decided to re-launch, re-brand, and re-focus food for fish… I’m kinda sad to see the name change… I might incorporate it somehow.. But I will converting this blog into my own personal blog, called “Living as a foreigner” for now, while I import, design, and tweak, you can see a test version here (right now, it’s absolutely nothing but the default install of Word Press).

And sometime in the not to distant future you’ll magically be transported to there when visiting this site… and hopefully the feed subscriptions as well.

Stay tuned….

Musing over the past

I have been looking at a lot of my old posts, and boy some of them are embarrassing. However, I have to realize, they are me. Now that we almost have a missions blog up, this place will become more about me, back to its roots. Sure I’ll have snippets of our missions things, but in general, I’m ready to start delving deeper into my walk, and my observations of life.