Always fight to love.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

romans 12:17

Jesus, your love is bigger than what this world can give.
You love without condition.
I want to love like you do.

Fellowship Hurts Sometimes

“Philippians 3:10

Many people suffer financial loss, health problems, family breakup, that’s not the fellowship of his suffering.

This is the gospel. Jesus Christ paid the debt for your sin he took upon himself the punishment for your sin.

Did he deserve that? No. But did he take it? Yes.

I experience the fellowship of his suffering when I take a pain that I do not deserve. In pastoring and leading a church you frequently experience the injury of taking something .. and i’ve done many things where i deserve what i got but in addition to my own failings, there’s the pain of misunderstanding, rejection and betrayal that Christ experienced. When you embrace that and don’t speak out in your own defense and don’t go to war over things you can handle with his grace, when you absorb it for the sake of others… When you absorb the injury for the sake of others you know Jesus in a new and deeper way. You know him in the fellowship of his suffering.”

Jesus, you are with me.
You are all that ill ever need.

“If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for the darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”

Psalm 139:11-13

marshill.com

“i am a saint” from the sermon series “Who do you think you are?”

I need you more, more than yesterday.

matthew 23:1-36

Then Jesus tsaid to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 u“The scribes and the Pharisees vsit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you,wbut not the works they do. xFor they preach, but do not practice. 4 yThey tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,1 and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 tThey do all their deeds zto be seen by others. For they make atheir phylacteries broad and btheir fringes long, 6 and they clove the place of honor at feasts and dthe best seats in the synagogues 7 and dgreetings in ethe marketplaces and being called frabbi2 by others. 8 gBut you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you arehall brothers.3 9 iAnd call no man your father on earth, for jyou have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, kthe Christ. 11 lThe greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 mWhoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

13 “But woe nto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you oshut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you pneither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.4 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single qproselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a rchild of shell5 as yourselves.

16 “Woe to tyou, ublind guides, who say, v‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or wthe temple that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by xthe gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ 19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or ythe altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. 21 And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by zhim who dwells in it. 22 And whoever swears by aheaven swears by bthe throne of God and by chim who sits upon it.

23 d“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For eyou tithe mint and dill and fcumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: gjustice and mercy and faithfulness. hThese you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing ia camel!

25 j“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For kyou clean the outside of lthe cup and the plate, but inside they are full of mgreed and self-indulgence.26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of lthe cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

27 n“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are likeowhitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and pall uncleanness. 28 So you also qoutwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of rhypocrisy and lawlessness.

29 s“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 Thus you witness against yourselves that you are tsons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 uFill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33 You serpents, vyou brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to whell? 34 xTherefore yI send you zprophets and wise men and ascribes,bsome of whom you will kill and crucify, and bsome you will cflog in your synagogues and dpersecute from town to town, 35 so that on you may come all ethe righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous fAbel to the blood ofgZechariah the son of Barachiah,6 whom you murdered between hthe sanctuary and ithe altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, jall these things will come upon this generation.

Proverbs 20:5

“The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.”

Psalm 37:4

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Philippians 4:4-5

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

I can feel myself frustrated and stressing. When i read these verses, I know what I should be rejoicing but many times, I don’t feel like it.  Verse 5 says let your reasonableness be known. To not worship because I don’t feel like it, is to be unreasonable. Verse 5 says let your reasonableness be known to everyone.

It’s reasonable to rejoice cuz of what Christ has done.

ouch. 

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from gthis body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Romans 7:24

How does Satan tempt us?

7 devices temptations

1. Shows you the bait and hides the hook. (He gets you to look at the short term pleasures of what this will do and hides from you the long term misery.

2. Rationalize sin as virtue. (I’m not nosey.. i’m concerned. I’m not an alcoholic, I’m sociable.)

3. By showing you the sins of other christian leaders so you say to yourself, “He did it too. No one is really that pure.”

4. By over stressing the mercy of God. (Do it, God will forgive you. That’s his job)

5. By making them bitter over suffering. (I suffered, so I deserve this. Nobody knows how hard i’ve worked so I deserve this.)

6. By showing Christians how many bad people seem to be having good lives. (Might as well do it since playing by the rules isn’t really paying off.)

7. By getting you to compare one part of your life to another. (Look, I’m good over here and over there.. so it gives me the right to do this.) (extreme ex. mafia hit men: Okay, I kill people but I’m really good to my mother.)

How does Satan accuse us?

4 Accusations

1. By causing us to look more at our sin than at our savior. (Criticisms really lodge and complements don’t, so parents are instructed to give 4-5 complements for every 1 criticism. The biblical reason for that is to know there’s something wrong with us. In the same way for every one look at your sin, 4-5 looks you need to take of our savior.)

2. By causing them to obsess over pass sins that have done damage that can’t be undone.

3. By making christians think that the troubles they’re going must be punishments from God. (This wouldn’t have happened unless God was mad at me.)

4. By making christians think that the inner struggles and the feelings they have, Christians couldn’t possibly have.

Do you recognize any of these?

He’s playing you.

-Thomas Brooks: Precious Devices.

- Timothy Keller: Spiritual Warfare Sermon.

2 Corinthians 2:11

Tim Keller, writing in his new book King’s Cross (on the Gospel of Mark), looks at how saying “I’m unworthy” can sometimes function not as a plea for deliverance but as a form of pride:

Great insight. Lots to pray for whether God calls me to church plant or not. The biggest obstacle is the heart and its motives. Always goes back to hebrews 12:1-2.

When God called my husband and me to plant a church, I said yes.

My yes to church planting echoed the vow I made on my wedding day, that I would support my husband in any ministry God might give him. As he does with us all, God has not stopped asking for my yes and he has not stopped showering his faithfulness on any willingness I offer him.

Sisters, I believe this — a willing heart — is the key to our fruitfulness and joy. And yet our hearts are the very things that will be tempted and tried throughout the church planting process. Feelings of loneliness, resentment, discouragement, or exhaustion lure us to wander from Him.

The temptations are subtle but real:

• to turn to others, to turn away from the calling because it’s difficult and demanding,
• to distance ourselves from our husbands out of resentment,
• to feed our children a faint distaste for the church and for God,
• to believe that our successes in church planting belong to us,
• to live off of our previous sacrifices and refuse to sacrifice more of ourselves to God.

The temptation is to self: seeking our own agenda, clamoring to have our needs met, self-promotion, and selfish ambition. As we seek these things, we become a statistic: burned out, isolated, depressed, and — sometimes — resigned.

Moving Box Burnout

I speak from experience.

My heart has been tested countless times throughout our church planting journey, starting from the moment I unpacked the last moving box in our new home in our new city.

Over the course of the first year and well into the second, nothing came easy, despite our hard work. I struggled to conjure up the faith and excitement I had come to our city with. I longed for God to make things easier and more comfortable for us. I wondered why we weren’t the church planters who experienced explosive growth in a short period of time. How I envied those people.

I began putting undue pressure on my husband Kyle because I was emotionally fragile, uncertain of my role, and lonely. Church planting was proving harder than I had originally expected.

“Why did you bring me here?” I’d say to Kyle, my words dripping with resentment. He’d gently remind me that God called me here too, that we were a team, and that I’d felt so certain when we were preparing to plant the church.

I mourned the change and what it required of me: more sacrifice, less of my husband, more uncertainty, less of the familiar routines we had once enjoyed. I grew disillusioned — with ministry, with church planting, and with marriage.

I dwelled there, feeding my sinful thoughts.

• What if we had never moved here?
• What if Kyle hadn’t gone into ministry?
• What if we had ignored God’s call to church plant?
• What if I hadn’t married someone in the ministry?
• What would it hurt just to give up?

I also aimed my bitter arrows at God. Why can’t you make this easier? I have been obedient and faithful in coming here, and this is what I get?

I had entered church planting with a firm faith, but because I didn’t closely guard my heart, because I listened to those little poisonous whispers, I forgot that God loved me and I doubted his provision. Resentful, my heart hardened toward Kyle and toward God. My unwillingness to submit to the Lord and accept his good purposes for me made it all the more difficult to hear his voice or receive his comfort.

I found myself at a crossroads.

Clenched Fist or Open Hand?

God was allowing the difficulty of church planting to sift me, to bring the issues of my heart to the surface. I realized that if I didn’t address these things, my marriage, my family, and my own heart were in danger. God was refining me, cleaning me out, and teaching me dependence rather than self-reliance. I could continue my attempts at controlling and relying on myself, or I could submit myself in dependence on him.

I chose to submit. I found myself agreeing with Peter when he spoke to Jesus: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). I chose to trust him with my heart and let him do — through church planting — the work he needed to do in me.

As my posture changed from clenched fists to open hands, my heart softened toward God, toward Kyle, toward those we were trying to reach, and toward the unique calling of church planting. Instead of a stubborn hindrance, I was finally becoming a vessel God could use.

Strengthened with Might

This does not mean I remain perfectly submitted to God. It means that I learned to earnestly guard my heart and trust his gentle pruning. It means that I recognize how the gospel must daily grip my heart so that I will not go careening off into people pleasing or discouragement.

My fellow church planting wives, God is for you, and my prayers are with you as you fulfill the calling he has placed on your life. I pray that you would allow God to keep your heart tender toward him and toward those he has called you to. Let us continue to labor together for the gospel alongside our husbands with great faith, joyful sacrifice, and service. “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … , that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:14–15).

by Christine Hoover

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