by Dan | Jun 25, 2012 | Devotional, Next Step
This is going to be an eventful week. Edinbrook has Vacation Bible School this week so Tina has been very busy getting ready for that, plus we just wrapped up our first in a series of “Garage Sales.” This time Tina had out a lot of Scrap-booking supplies and between Friday and Saturday we made just under $1,500!
Anyway, Tuesday we leave for Washington DC for the Converge Biannual Conference. Our main purpose is for our official commissioning service on Friday evening. But we will have several other opportunities while we are there. Art & Dorothy Helwig will be there so we will have an opportunity to spend more time with them learning more of what will be required of us when we arrive in Nigeria. We will rub shoulders and share where God is leading use with Converge church leaders from all over the country. Then after the conference we will be staying for 3 days of training in Missionary Partner Development. We will also be finishing up an interview with the “Point” magazine (this is the official Converge Magazine), be watching it looks like GECHAAN will be the feature story for the fall issue!
Please pray that we make valuable Church connections while we are there.
by Tina | Jun 19, 2012 | Devotional
Mark 2:13-14 tells us~ Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to Him, and He bean to teach them. As He walked along, He saw Levi Son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed Him.
Today I am going to share with you the things that God has used in our lives to mold us and shape us to start this journey of being a “Missionary”. Why I use missionary with quotation marks is because I believe is we have a relationship with Christ we are already a missionary. We are mandated to share God’s love and the Redemption Story with all we meet. But, first that starts with relationship. We need to be different than the world around us. When people look at us, our goal is for them to see Jesus through us. Wherever we are, whatever we do. How do we show Jesus to each person we come in contact with? He tells us in the bible, “We are to be Salt and Light”.
After Dan and I were married, we started learning more about each other and each others families. We loved being married and we loved spending all the time we could together. The first thing I learned is consistency. The third Sunday we were married I said to Dan, “I’m not going to go to church today”. Dan said, “Are you really sick?”. I said, “No, I just don’t feel like it”. Well, I hate to admit it, but he spent a few Sundays during that first year dragging me to church. You see, my family went to church if they felt like it. Dans philosophy was, even in those first weeks, “our children will grow up to know that when church is open, we are there”.
After I got done with school and started working at about month number two of marriage I received my first paycheck and told Dan that I was going to go to “Leslie’s”( a high end clothing shop in our town) and buy some clothes. Dan said , “That money is for bills”. I said, “Your money is for bills, mine is for clothes”. Needless to say, I was convinced otherwise.
From the start, Dan has been the most consistent person I have ever known. Growing up, things were very random in our house. One day I would do something or say something and it was fine and the next day I got in trouble for it. I grew to be very inconsistent in my beliefs and practices. I, have now spent 30 years TRYING to be consistent in all I do. It is an on-going challenge, but I have to say, each day becomes a little easier.
I grew up with a lot of broken promises. There is One who does not break His promise to me. He has called me and He will equip me. He tells us this in His Word.
Enough for this stage of life.
The Point is, God brings people into your lives to help you. Your spouse is your number one help-meet. That means where I am weak, Dan is strong, and the opposite is true. We need to let the Lord show us what is right and what is true.
by Tina | Jun 14, 2012 | Devotional
As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed Him.
When He had gone a little farther, He saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay He called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed Him. Mark 1:14-20
Today I am just going to reminisce about God’s invitation to two farm kids, two little people on this great big world that God created.
He invites each of us to join Him. Is it a short sprint? Maybe for some. For most of us, it’s a daily walk, step by step, day by day, listening to our Father’s voice and morphing and changing our inner beings to reflect His glory.
Dan and I grew up in Rural Minnesota, with hard-working, patriotic, God-fearing parents who taught us that if we did good in school, worked hard, God would bless. That may not be what they intended to teach us, but that is what we got out of it. We met when I (Tina) was in Fifth Grade and Dan was in Eighth Grade. We were in the same Church Class and got to know each other at church. When we were 18 and 21 we married in that little church. Did God have a plan for those rural children way back in the 70’s? I believe He did.
We grew up in a wonderful little community church where we got to experience missionary conferences every year and knew missionaries as real people doing God’s work in another part of our World. As we get ready to go to the Biannual Meeting of Converge and be Commissioned to our denomination, I want to share how God has brought us to this point of our response to His Invitation.
My point for today is: We need to spiritually feed and nurture our children and bring them into the reality of what God is doing in this world and that with His help and guidance they can do anything THROUGH HIM and FOR HIM.
by Dan | May 25, 2012 | Devotional
Our Saturday morning Men’s group has spent the last 12 weeks in a study on Grace, which by the way is a very difficult concept to get into my wee little brain. Anyway we have discovered so much is dependent on our relationship with God. Todd Dugard, the Senior Pastor at Harvest Barrie, Ontario, says it so clearly on this devotional on “Relationship, Not Religion” .
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”
—Acts 17:24-28
I read a compelling tweet by a pastor in California, which said, “Religion does not provide an opportunity to actually know God, and is therefore cruel, powerless, and boring” (Bill Johnson).
Knowing God—being in a relationship with Him—is what every human being, whether they’re aware of it or not, is longing for and searching after. What most do to achieve that relationship is to establish some sort of religious observance. The options are literally limitless when you consider all the established world religions and faith systems.
And so, they go to places of worship. Perform rituals and sacraments. They make donations, give of their time, and volunteer their talents. They meditate, read, study and memorize holy books and writings: they chant, sing, recite, and sit in silence. They dance, sway, kneel, walk. They make pilgrimages, go on missions, proselytize and teach others about their particular way of getting to “god” or whatever it is they’ve chosen to worship.
They do all this, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “That they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him” (v.27). But it is a vain hope when religion is the means of seeking.
From the beginning, God related to His creation on a personal level. Adam and God walked together in the garden and conversed as one person talks to another.
Throughout Old Testament history, prior to the coming of Christ, God was relating to His people as Father. He gathered them as a family. He loved them, watched over them and provided for them, He listened to them and gave them good gifts. It was never because of what they did (religion) but because of His faithful love for them (relationship). The incarnation of Jesus Christ as a human being was all about God relating to us; literally becoming like us, in order to save us. It was the ultimate expression of His love.
That we have taken His love and the offer of a relationship and encumbered it with religion is our own undoing. By creating a set of rules and practices by which we gain God’s attention, we actually miss out entirely. Religion is our ineffectual way of getting to God, dependent on what we do. Relationship is His way of getting to us, dependent entirely on what He did.
by Tina | May 21, 2012 | Devotional
This coming Sunday, May 27, we will be speaking at the 10:30 service at Pine Mountain Gospel in Backus, MN! We are so excited about getting to share with some very long-time friends what God is doing in our lives.
Please pray that we can communicate clearly how God is working and molding us to partner at GECHAAN and that we can verbalize that vision well.
by Tina | May 11, 2012 | Devotional
I was reading in Matthew this morning and I read Matthew 6:25-34 in a whole new light.
25 Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 28 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying what shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or what shall we wear? 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Since our appointment by Converge, we have finished the Perspectives Class (yeah! No more homework nightly!) We have also wound down the AWANA year, Apples of Gold, and Dan is not doing as many bids for Curbing. I am also quite thankful that my leg is healing nicely! I have had no infection and I believe both wounds will be totally scabbed over in a week. God is Good! We are working on our missionary display for visiting churches, and trying to clean our house.
“Well, Tina”, you might say, “it doesn’t sound as if there is much to worry about, is there?”. I would agree, but here are the things we need to do in the near future.
Clean out 16 years of memories in this house, get rid of (hopefully sell) most of our possessions, pack up what we do want to keep to use when we return in approximately 10-15 years. Sell a stack of cars, snowplow equipment, etc. either sell our house or hire a property manager to rent it out, raise $10,000.00 approximately a month support, help re-design my current job, and train people to do it, facilitate Vacation Bible School in June, CEF event in July, summer Sunday school with very little help and rotating schedules for all. On top of this, I would like to spend time with family and friends while we are still here. All of this can cause a minor panic attack in my seldomly worried little brain!
Well, today God is telling me, “One step at a time”, work like it depends on you and pray like it depends on Me. I have you, right here in the palm of my hand. Do your part, I will do mine. This is such a comfort to me! I just need to be faithful one day at a time, so many people are offering to help in so many ways. I need to take advantage of this, and not try to do everything the way I like, by myself, and enjoy this process! I believe God has more to teach us in the steps we need to take to get to Nigeria!
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