Living in Biblical Community

I feel like this is something we "church people" hear all the time, but how many of us really know how to do it? How many of us are actually doing it? I would say that until recently, we weren't. But now that we are, I love it & pray that every member of the Body of Christ would experience it too!

Our church is big on life groups. As in, if you attend our church regularly, you will feel like that's almost all we talk about & you'll receive phone calls from people inviting you to them. Our life groups are based on the Acts church - a small group of people who love Jesus & who spend time together singing, reading scripture, praying together, eating together, encouraging one another & holding each other accountable. We know what is going on in each other's lives & we help each other out. (Is every group functioning like this? Probably not. We are human after all - every participant needs to be willing, group leaders need to set the stage, etc. But this is the goal of our church leadership.)

We have been in the same life group for 3.5 years. People have come & gone, but there is a core group of us who have been there the whole time, & a lot of new fairly new people from the past year or so. Some older, some younger; lots of kids, mostly little ones. We don't all look the same or act the same & we wouldn't necessarily hang out together socially if we happened to randomly meet. We're not a group of friends who decided to make a life group. We are a diverse group of people who have one main thing in common: we are a part of the Body of Christ.

When you are with a group of committed people for that long, you will encounter obstacles to your relationship. You will see that every person is flawed. They might even get on your nerves. (They probably will.) But we are committed to love one another. So we've had tough conversations, we've had tears, we've had hours upon hours of prayer together & apart, we've had times where we fought spiritual battles for each other. But we've stuck it out & now I feel we are benefiting from that. We are truly a family. We love each other.

I am blessed to have been able to be a part of this group & to know what it is really like to be part of the Body of Christ. So many people just fight through life on their own. Even some Christians. We're not meant to! We are meant to live in community. That's how we were designed. We miss out big time if we aren't doing it. It's hard work & it's not always pretty. But it's so good. No matter where we are in life, for the rest of our time on earth, Josh & I will always pray to be a part of Biblical community & we will always seek it out. It's a vital part of the life of a believer & we praise God for His perfect plan for us. It's a good one!

LATE update!

Wow, almost a month since I blogged... what a loser!! Unfortunately now that I sit here to try to not be a loser... I don't know that I have much to say. Let me think.

I went to five showers in the last month... four baby & one bridal. I think that's enough to last a while. Of course they were all fun, & I like being able to make people feel special. & thankfully none of them have included ridiculous games! Games, yes, just not the "grin & bear it" kind. (If you've been to a baby shower, you know what I'm talking about.) In fact, today's couples baby shower really focused on the guys/the father, which was fun! They had a competition where the guys had to wear bibs & suck prune juice through tiny bottles as fast as they could to see who could do it the fastest. It's amazing how guys will do anything to win a competition - the faces they made drinking that stuff were hilarious, but they kept going! Oh yes, & half of the guys were pastors from our church. I hope those pictures pop up somewhere expected someday; that'd be funny.

Josh & I are in the works planning a vacation with Zac & Cara to San Francisco! We decided 2 years in a row in DC was enough to see all we cared to see, so we're heading west this time. If you have any recommendations on things we should do, let me know!

So I've done John MacArthur Bible studies for the past year & a half or so, & I really enjoy them, so I downloaded a few of his sermons for a couple trips I've taken recently. I love his sermons! He speaks TRUTH unapologetically. One of the series I listened to was about how he thinks the number one problem with the American church (which, that's a whole series on its own) is the lack of ability to discern who is a Christian & who is not. God has revealed so much to me regarding this topic. Consider your definition of a "Christian" - does it line up with Scripture? ALL of Scripture??

I really recommend John MacArthur for a good Bible study or sermon.

Ah, then there's the Africa/India trip some of our pastors/leaders just got back from... God is going to be doing some stuff in our church, GOOD stuff that I'm really excited about. Maybe I'll blog about that soon....

Anyways, there is a bit of an update on our lives. Hopefully I'll get back on here sooner than later. :-)

double-edged sword

I am fully aware I have been a blogging loser lately.

Oh well.

This past weekend Dr. Ralph Neighbour came to speak at a leadership event at our church, & also preached on Sunday. It was a great weekend; he has so much wisdom. I could just sit & listen to his stories of God moving all day long. He wrote The Arrival Kit, a great mentoring study we do at our church, as well as Christ's Basic Bodies which I told you about here (& lots more books). He is a sweet, yet bold, 80-year-old man that we were so blessed to have with us for three days. It was also a great time of worship & ministry to each other. I am amazed at the people in the Body of believers our church represents, & so thankful for them.

Josh & I are going to read through the Bible together, both of us reading a couple of chapters a day separately then talking about them. I'm also reading through all the commentary in my study Bible as we go along, which takes some time but I love the extra information. I'm excited to see what the Lord does through it; we had a lot to talk about yesterday & it was just over creation - I mean, we've read that passage so many times - but I love how the Word has something new to offer every time I read it!

I'm trying a frittata for the first time tonight - I'll post it on the new recipe blog if it's any good!

de-junked!

If you have been to our house, you know that one bedroom is our catch-all. Toby's food & litter box are in there, Josh's hunting stuff, unused wall decor, etc. We don't have much storage either, so both of the guest closets were pretty full too. So this week Josh & I decided to tackle it all. We got rid of some stuff, pulled out things to put out in the shed or in the attic, rearranged, & voila - we now have an organized (altho pretty full) guest closet, another fairly empty guest closet, & a CLEAN & EMPTY third bedroom! Ahhhh.... I LOVE getting rid of things, cleaning things out, reorganizing... I don't do well with junky. Amazing that room lasted as long as it did. But, Josh & I have the desire to live a fairly simple life, so as time goes on we end up getting rid of more & more.


In the church realm, things are getting pretty busy. We are going to two services next month, which is exciting, as well as kicking off the new, revamped membership class with our (now bigger) team that I serve with. So this means lots of prep! It's exciting to see all the things the Lord is doing at our church. We are growing, so we have to work to keep it feeling like a church body of connected people, who are experiencing life in Jesus individually & corporately, but it is so worth the time. I really love working with people who encourage & build up each other, pray for & with each other, worship together. I'm blessed!


I need to post the last two parts of the Italy trip huh? Coming soon!

Jesus & friends

We have some new friends. Their names are Caleb & Laura (their blog is to the right, The Schafer's blog, if you are interested). I am so blessed by their friendship. Within two times of being around each other, the four of us instantly became good friends, & it's because so much of our conversation is based on the truth of the gospel. We talk about God's Word, how He is working in our lives, about lies & deception we see, about how we struggle & need accountability (this last one is something that should be done girl to girl, guy to guy by the way). They have encouraged us to be bold in speaking to strangers about Jesus. Together we have made packages to give to the homeless we see. Laura & I set a precedent of being real, admitting neither of us like putting on any kind of facade & knowing that whatever the other says is real & honest, not what we "should" say. They are in our life group, along with other amazing couples, & along with these relationships, just being at our church for the past year has painted such a beautiful picture of the Body of Christ to me. There is so much love, service, encouragement, prayer, accountability, & support in that church, all based around truth & unity. God sure knew what He was doing when He told us what the church should look like. It should point us & others to Jesus, & I am amazed that God has allowed us to be a part of something so glorifying to Him, not just our church body, but the personal relationships Josh & I have with others.

At the same time God is trying to teach me how to love people. Selflessness is a difficult thing to master, mainly because the only way we can be selfless is by keeping our minds on Jesus, & unfortunately in a world of self-made agendas & pursuits, that is a battle. But He is showing me how to love & serve, not just people I know but people I don't know as well, & with a right heart, without judgment, with compassion & mercy. Apparently this is hard for me.

God is doing a lot of things, some good, like the first paragraph, some challenging, like the second. But I am so thankful that He finds me worthy of refinement & blessings.

I am so excited... we are planning a vacation! We had thrown around a few ideas of places to go, since we'd like to take some sort of vacation each year, but everything was a little (or a lot) on the pricey side of things. But, Josh's BFF (aeaeae) Zac just moved to DC, & we just earned our second free flight with our credit card (we pay it off each month, we just use it for the benefits & to boost our credit score), SO we are planning a trip to DC! We are super excited. We have never been there, & Zac will be a great tour guide since he has seen all the sites. We are also planning on taking the AmTrak to Philadelphia. It will be a really fun (& cheap!!) vacation!!

Jason & Paige are coming to stay with us this weekend, yay! We have some fun plans... it will be a good time!!

Have a great fourth of July!

C

Messiness

I'm SO SORRY for being such a blogspot loser. I went almost a month without blogging! Hopefully I did not lose my loyal fans... well, I know my mom will still read. :-)

I really have had a lot I've wanted to write about, but we've been so busy with the house & potty training a puppy & the holidays that I just never got around to it. So here's a fast update:

*The living room is painted as of last night! I had help from Becca & Kristin & FINALLY those yellow walls are gone. I love the color. I will post pictures eventually, I need to get everything in there situated, & things on the walls, etc. (If you want to see pictures of the outside of the house, let me know & I will email them to you, but I'm definitely not putting them on here for all the world to see :-) ) I'm thinking I'll start painting the kitchen tomorrow, to get rid of the Fiesta Green we've got going on in there. When that room is done, I will be just ecstatic! Those are the two rooms I wanted done quickly.

*Sage is a mess. She's very cute, but less cute to me since I'm the one that picks up her poop! The potty training is going slowly. Toby serves as a pretty good babysitter; they chase each other around & he smacks her silly sometimes (literally... it's funny). Here they are together...

*About a month ago we went on a retreat where God spoke a lot to us. He refined us in several ways, showing us how much our world affects us & how weak our flesh really is. As a result, we stopped watching most TV shows, stopped listening to top 40 stations, & will not be watching movies with even one, "not that bad" sexual scene (which means getting rid of some movies such as "How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days"). I hate that those things were even part of our lives. It's not about more rules for us to follow... Josh & I just realized how we look too much like people that don't know the Lord, & what He has for us is so much better than that, & I have seen God bless our lives in several ways since cutting those things out. We want to look more like Jesus!

*It's been amazing what God has wanted for us since moving here. With all that happened with my job, getting so involved in our church so quickly, we are amazed at what He had planned for us. & we continue to be amazed, b/c He has more. It's scary tho. I feel inadequate, & it's going to be a challenge, pushing me outside of what I am comfortable with. But every time I feel that way, & am obedient anyways, the Lord shows up in a HUGE way. More details to come....

*At the retreat mentioned above, the speaker showed us a way that he spends time with the Lord & gets to know Him more, & I have been doing it & loving it! Basically, you create your own list of who God is. I'm reading through the Bible chronologically right now, so after I do my reading, I just flip through the Word & read wherever I land, & search for descriptions of my God. (I'm a goober & I have two lists going - one of nouns & one of adjectives.) Here is an example-

Pardoner of iniquity - Micah 7:18
Husband - Isa. 54:5, Hosea 2:16
My avenger - Rom. 12:9

Incomparable - Isa. 40:18
Perfect in timing - Hab. 2:3
Alluring & tender - Hosea 2:14

Look those verses up - they are good! Anyways, this has been an exciting way to get into the Word, & I know that I'm always going to find more to describe the Lord that I am betrothed to. I recommend doing it. :-)

I just realized I meant to explain the title for this post, so here you go - messy house, messy dog, messy me. & working on all of them!

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Yay... I love Christmas!

C

I am a blogging fool!

What a productive day I have had!

I went to the bank to get my new debit card sent since the first one got lost or something, checked out the sale at Kohl's (but bought nothing, oh well), ate some salad, did three loads of laundry, took out the trash, cleaned the toilets, dusted, & I think I might just vacuum!

Josh has driven through three states & is now sitting in an airport. Poor Joshie.

I'm pretty excited about this weekend! Of course I'm glad because Josh is coming home to break up his two weeks in the... state next to the Peach State. But we are going to have a home-cooked meal tonight & watch High School Musical! Neither of us have seen it & we want to see what the big deal is with this movie!

Then tomorrow I am going to Ranelle's baby shower & hopefully Josh & I will be able to hang out with some of our new friends since we haven't been seeing too much of them.

Sunday we start working in the Sunday School at church!! We are going to be shepherds for (most likely) fourth graders, which means we won't be doing the teaching, but our role is more relational. I'm really excited about it! We have a training meeting before church then start that day, & we will be in there every other week since there is only one service. Yay! Thank the Lord for an amazing church to get involved in & start serving so quickly!

Next week I'm staying here. I'm planning on hanging out with a couple friends, hopefully getting a new social security card, & probably some car maintenance - wash, oil change, new brakes. It shouldn't be too bad of a week... our LAST week with Josh out of town!!! Wahoo!

Yay for life getting going in San Antonio!

J&C

We joined a church!

Yay! Thank you guys for your prayers - God has been so faithful in giving us a church & friends within two weeks of living here! We're really excited about what God will do with us & through us there, & we're now praying that He would show us where He wants us to serve. Also be praying that if He wants me involved in serving the church during the week, that He would provide the opportunity & make it clear to me. But yay for now! The small group we quickly got involved in had a birthday celebration for Josh & our two-year-old member last night, so that was fun & we felt so special that they would honor Josh although we're so new. The Body of Christ is such a blessing!!

We also joined a health club today! We got a really good deal so we're pretty excited about it. I have been trying to run around our neighborhood in the mornings, but with these South Texas temperatures & the crazy humidity, it has been pretty miserable. So now Josh & I have a place to go work out, & something to do during the evenings. Yay!

Kristin is coming to visit me Wednesday! We will have some fun times I'm sure. Then we will be wedding-ing it Friday night, & dinner on Saturday with a couple new friends of ours. What fun!

God is good, isn't He?

J&C