Being home twelve days in a row has sure been a blessing. I have enjoyed spending time with Donna, having the time to update the web site, and hearing from many of you. I have also had the time, with the help of some friends, to get some things done around the house. I am so grateful for all of you being apart of our lives!
Over the next couple of weeks I will be busy with some speaking engagements and preparing to head back to Guatemala on May 8, but before getting into all of that I wanted to say thank you once again to The Bridge Church, Spring Hill, TN for their kindness, generosity and sacrificial love they have for all people.
Our relationship with The Bridge began six years ago after John Howard, long time friend and WWWC board member moved to Spring Hill. John called and said we have found this wonderful church, you need to come check it out. Our hearts were blessed with our very first visit to The Bridge and the blessing continues to today.
Moving On --Two Books Every Believer Should Read: (In my humble opinion)
Recently I have been reading a book called Crazy Love, written by Francis Chan, a pastor in California. In it he said that his church had gotten to the place where they gave fifty percent of their total offerings away. Saying, "we decided that when God said Love your neighbor as yourself, He meant it. Why should I or we have more than our neighbor?" This is extreme thinking for most, but perhaps it should cause us to re-assess lifestyles, reevaluate personal giving and perhaps rethink our next new upgrades.
In a new book called Radical, Taking back your faith from the American Dream by David Platt, pastor of The Church of Brook Hills, Birmingham, AL, he says this.....
Here we stand amid an American dream dominated by self-advancement, self-esteem, and self-sufficiency, by individualism, materialism, and universalism. Yet I want to show you our desperate need to revisit the words of Jesus, to listen to them, to believe them, and to obey them. We need to return with urgency to a biblical gospel, because the cost of not doing so is great for our lives, our families, our churches, and the world around us.
As I mentioned previously, I have more questions than I have answers. And every day I see more disconnects between the Christ of Scripture and the Christianity that characterizes my life and the church God has entrusted me to lead. I have so far to go. We have so far to go.
But I want to know him. I want to experience him. I want to be part of a people who delight in him like the brothers and sisters in underground Asia who have nothing but him. And I want to be part of a people who are risking it all for him.
For the sake of more than a billion people today who have yet to even hear the gospel, I want to risk it all. For the sake of twenty-six thousand children who will die today of starvation or a preventable disease, I want to risk it all. For the sake of an increasingly marginalized and relatively ineffective church in our culture, I want to risk it all. For the sake of my life, my family, and the people who surround me, I want to risk it all.
The verdict's still out......will I risk it all? WIll you?
Praying this finds you well but causes discomfort.
Lewis and Donna
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