One part of living in Minnesota that I love is the changing of seasons. Out with the old and in with the new can sometimes be just what our souls need to regain strength and perspective. Of course, ultimately, the Lord gives exactly what we need in the area of encouragement and hope. But, sometimes that comes through the warmth of the sun after the cold bitter days of Winter. A gift from God.
Family Life Update:
Since my last post we have celebrated four family birthdays (Paisley, Jubilee, Gracie and mine), sent our teenage daughter's off to prom for the first time, continued to deal with chronic pain, endocrinology appointments and watched as two of our little boys wrestled their way to a wrestling season of (wait for it) 0 victories. But hey, they wrestled their hearts out and loved it! It was fun to go and watch tournaments then turn around and watch as our teenage girls got all dolled up and walked the Grand March into their first Prom. Our house was a good mix of spray tans, artificial nails, expensive dresses as well as singlets and sweaty wrestling matches. It made for a good distraction from the long winter days and gave us events to anticipate and look forward to. Now we are anxiously awaiting the warm days of Summer!
Ministry Life Update:
When I left off in our last post I shared that we were starting to fund raise as a means for our family to continue on here at Lifespring Church. So far we have had a few individual donors as well as a couple churches who are wanting to support this ministry. We are continuing to pray for provision and direction in this area and we are thankful to those of you who have supported us financially and through prayer over these last few months and years. We look forward to how the Lord will work it all out in the future and trust that however He chooses to provide, we are in his care.
We have been asked several times how the church is doing and what our plans are for the future here. When I have time to explain my answer is usually mixed with optimism and maybe a little bit of (healthy?) pessimism . In some ways we are doing very well. As I have shared in the past we had a few years of "not so smooth sailing" in ministry. As we have tried to discern what the Lord was doing during that period in our church's history we trust that the Lord was pruning us and our church. We are thankful right now, however, for a time of rest where the intensity of conflict is not present and we are able to relax a little more restfully. While it was painful at the time, and still continues to be at moments, there were a lot of necessary lessons learned and purifying during it all. Despite the hurt involved, we are very thankful for the fruit and assurance of faith it produced in our own lives and the lives of some of our kids. It helped Eric and I solidify some of our beliefs and root out some lies we had been believing.
I believe there were a number of reasons for this long season of pruning we experienced. Ultimately it all was due to the sovereignty of God and his all knowing control in our lives. That is from a bird's eye view, or better yet God's eye view. But, coming down to a closer look at things you would see the sin of ours and others clashing up against each other. In a even more detailed description of what went on there was harshness, gossip, slander, selfishness, unforgiveness, bitterness, misrepresentations, resentments, divisiveness, lies, assumptions, power games, foolishness and pride played out in numerous ways . Pretty picture of a church right? Sadly, this doesn't just describe Lifespring!
It still is a painful reminder to us that we are no longer in Eden and until Christ returns this will be a part of life, even life in a church. We all know that we don't always experience physical healing in our bodies this side of heaven but something we are learning is that a perfectly healthy church was never promised to us either. With that being said we continue to pray for health and recovery for our church and do the necessary work to try and be as healthy as we can as a local church body.
Sometimes we are tempted to want to leave here because of the conflict, because of the pain, because we no longer fit with the culture of this people, we aren't seeing an increase in numbers, we don't have enough money to support us in the future, and any number of other reasons. These are all considerations for us and we have prayerfully been mindful of them as we seek the Lord on what His direction is for our lives. Every time we come back to God's word though, and prayer, we are reminded that we are to die to self and the comforts of our flesh. We are reminded to give up our own agendas (desires) and work for the Lord's (James 4). We are reminded to give up the idolatry of our own comfortable and cushy lives and that when we seek Him he will be our comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3). We are learning that numbers of people in our doors is not what we are working for but that we are working as ambassadors for God in the midst of a "crooked and twisted generation" (Philippians 2:15). When we are tempted to fear about the future and how we are going to provide financially for our family the Lord reminds us that He is the ultimate provider (Luke 12:24) and He knows His sheep and all their wants. He is the good Shepard and will provide for us in everything we need (John 10).
That was the nitty gritty side of things. On the flip side, we have had several people from the community come to worship services and a few family's that seem promising in the area of committing to and serving a long side of our local body. Eric continues to lead "Kid's Club" on Wednesday afternoons and that has grown to the size of (at times) 50 kids. They do a bible lesson and then play dodge ball. As a church we do an outreach to the families of these kids with a meal and we have one coming up next month. We continue to partner with local churches and have favor in our community. Over the last few months there has been a renewed, sweet, unified spirit among the people who are still here at Lifespring and a desire to see this mission succeed. We had a biblical counselor come in for a night of "Gospel Healing" and that seemed to be fruitful for our congregation.
As we press on and move into the future here doors have been opened for Eric and I to start taking courses on biblical counseling and we are both really looking forward to going through the process and finishing that. We were also given the opportunity to attend this years FIRE (the association we recently joined) conference in May together for 4 days. One of the main speakers is the head of the biblical counseling courses (ICBD) we are going through and we would love to connect with him. Also, Eric and another one of our elders are attending the TCT networking group hoping to partner with them in the near future. TCT stands for Treasuring Christ Together and they are based out of Bethlehem Baptist Church in the cities. Traditionally they have been an inner city and suburban church planting network but recently they have expressed an interest in coming a long side some rural church plants as well. I think Lifespring would definitely fit the description of rural! Over the course of the last few years there have been a number of connections between our church and some of the people involved with TCT. We are excited to see what happens with them in the future.
All in all we are starting to see light again at the end of the tunnel and are becoming more encouraged as to the church's stability whether we are here or not. We are aware that as we pursue holiness, times of trouble will come again. But hopefully our faith has grown and will be able to walk through it with the confidence from His word we have gained from already going through it once already.
In Christ,
Miriam
No comments:
Post a Comment