Audrea found this today on Carolyn Mahaney's blog:
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
Food for thought...
On my drive to and from work I’m listening to a series on anger put out by CCEF. Bible teacher and broadcaster, Steve Brown, said this in the message I was listening to today:
There is a direct correlation between our proclivity to wear masks and God’s proclivity to rip them off.
He argues that the greatest danger to the Christian life is not a lack of commitment, but rather the fact that it is so easy to fake it. In light of the many fallen that I have seen in my life, and in light of the reality that it is so easy to have a beautiful pharisaic aura about me, I agree. Ask my wife—I am a lazy, selfish, discontent, materialistic, angry idolater. I can’t do this on my own. My best attempts are but filthy rags.
Brown’s point is this: the best thing we can do for the sake of the name of Christ is not to put up a façade of piety, but to confess our sins even to the world. When the reality of the need for our forgiveness is evident then the grace of God can be put on display and thus He will be glorified.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Jumping in...
I've tried this blogging thing once before... I think the only way for it to work for me is to just jump in. So unless you've been keeping up with our lives lately, you're going to have to do some "mirror reading" to figure out what's going on in the life of Paul and Audrea...
So here we go: Monday morning we got an email from our realtor in KY saying that the sellers of the home which we had a contingent (on selling our home in MN) offer on received another offer. We had 48 hours to show that we could "perform" (that simply means that we could either find a buyer for our home or somehow come up with the money to close on the KY home) or we would have to back out of the deal. Unfortunately, we had gotten somewhat emotionally attached to 2702 Alice Ave and losing it would be a setback for sure.
I was just wrapping up reading Lost in the Middle. In the final pages, Paul Tripp talks about God's grace being a disappointing grace. God intends at times to disappoint us as He fights for our worship of Him alone. It is grace that will often take from us things we cherish closely in order we might see how misplaced our affections have been. As I talked with Audrea about potentially losing that house, I realized that even in something like this home that we didn't even own, we could elevate our desires to an inordinance if we were not watching ourselves.
We had two showings of the MN home since Monday morning, but no dice. By yesterday noon, we knew that it wasn't going to happen. So as with all things that have occurred, we can look back and say that God did not want us to have that house (unless of course His providential hand later shifts things back to that house). He wants us to just lean on Him alone for what He has for us.
So now we wait. We're going to just sit here until the MN home gets an offer and once that happens we will then make another trip down to Louahville and begin the search again.
So pray that we have our affections drawn to God Himself and not the stuff of life. Don't worry about when the buyer will come, though of course, I still pray that way--I can always express my wishes to God. Pray that whether it is in one week or six weeks or twelve weeks, that we will only fall deeper in love with the God we serve.
So here we go: Monday morning we got an email from our realtor in KY saying that the sellers of the home which we had a contingent (on selling our home in MN) offer on received another offer. We had 48 hours to show that we could "perform" (that simply means that we could either find a buyer for our home or somehow come up with the money to close on the KY home) or we would have to back out of the deal. Unfortunately, we had gotten somewhat emotionally attached to 2702 Alice Ave and losing it would be a setback for sure.
I was just wrapping up reading Lost in the Middle. In the final pages, Paul Tripp talks about God's grace being a disappointing grace. God intends at times to disappoint us as He fights for our worship of Him alone. It is grace that will often take from us things we cherish closely in order we might see how misplaced our affections have been. As I talked with Audrea about potentially losing that house, I realized that even in something like this home that we didn't even own, we could elevate our desires to an inordinance if we were not watching ourselves.
We had two showings of the MN home since Monday morning, but no dice. By yesterday noon, we knew that it wasn't going to happen. So as with all things that have occurred, we can look back and say that God did not want us to have that house (unless of course His providential hand later shifts things back to that house). He wants us to just lean on Him alone for what He has for us.
So now we wait. We're going to just sit here until the MN home gets an offer and once that happens we will then make another trip down to Louahville and begin the search again.
So pray that we have our affections drawn to God Himself and not the stuff of life. Don't worry about when the buyer will come, though of course, I still pray that way--I can always express my wishes to God. Pray that whether it is in one week or six weeks or twelve weeks, that we will only fall deeper in love with the God we serve.
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