Last month...

Last month when I wrote the prayer bulletin, we'd not yet sprung the surprise on Olivia that I was going to Ireland and that she was coming along - so, I didn't ask you to pray about it so as to keep the secret.  God, of course, was faithful and gave us a great Dad-daughter time.  The trip was an intercession trip with Operation Capitals of Europe so our agenda was almost completely planned out for us.  That's nice in the sense that we didn't have a lot of decisions to make and were able to take advantage of group rates for things, etc. 

There is, of course, much to see and do in Ireland that we didn't even touch on and one just doesn't go to Ireland in January for a tourist visit (not exactly the best of weather generally - and not for us either!).  So we're ready to go for another visit and even then, I'm sure we'll need to keep going back! I intend to blog about it but until then, you can at least check out some pictures on our gallery.

IT work at school continues to advance significantly.  I can really see new levels of effectiveness in what we're able to accomplish with technology in the school both in teaching and administration.  We've a LONG way to go (and much of that is because I'm only one person) but I'm really excited by the advances we've made recently.  So, many thanks for your prayers in that area.

This month...

• Christian Education Conference - This is my only prayer request this month.  Why?  Because we still don't have a venue! The conference will attract about 300 people who will be descending into our Alsatian valley the weekend of the 24th-26th of February.  How did we get to this point?  Well, this conference has been hosted many times here and those who request the municipal hall did what they had always done and received the same affirmative response as always that we could have the hall.  Then in December the local mayor's office said "no", the hall was booked and all of the sudden this looked like this was shaping up to be an "open-air" meeting in February! 
  
  Our pastor's wife has been looking at all the surrounding communities and we even considered our church building but nothing has worked out.  So she decided to go back to the mayor's office and press the issue of why they said "yes" and then "no".  She had an interesting conversation with an assistant and then was able to schedule a meeting with the mayor.  The mayor promised that they would discuss it this coming Monday night (Feb 6th - morning in the States).
  
  What is interesting is that this is a different local government administration from the last time that this conference was held here. There was a good relationship with the last administration, but the relationship seems to be non-existent with this new mayor.  Curiously, one of the themes of this year's conference is how our Christian Schools can be of service to their respective communities.  Personally, I think God's up to something here to bring this school into a new level of connection with the community and I believe that the devil is none to excited about that.
  
  The organizers here have peace about a solution for the venue problem - even though we don't see it yet.  Still, I believe it would wise to:
  
  1. Pray for this meeting Monday and for favor with the city council
  2. Pray for and bless the authorities of Guebwiller, France
  3. Pray for God's provision for the venue for this conference
  4. Pray for God's blessing on the conference at the end of this month

Until next month!

David

Our village invites residents to decorate their windows for Christmas and this year I signed up and did a Ps. 23 theme. I covered a tree with sheep, candy canes, snowflakes, and the first 3 verses on paper ribbons to remind passersby of the goodness of God. This newsletter will catch you up with us in the same vein...

The LORD is your shepherd, you lack nothing.

It seems that I don't feel a lack until God is ready to provide it. Whether it is home renovation or a haircut, just when I reach the end of my rope, He provides for it. We've lived with one high performing desktop computer all these years and it has been adequate until recently. With my approaching 50th birthday, and the invention of the tablet computer, my soul began to feel the void that this device could fill. I wanted something light and portable of my very own without having to wade through all of David's virtual clutter, but the iPhone was too small. Olivia was also fed up with her limping machine and started encroaching on our time on the desktop. During the holidays, while Noah was home and David was not working at school, it came to a head when we were playing musical desk chair almost 24/7! I let David know that "the cobbler's children needed new shoes" and waited for provision. It came flooding in from many sources just after Christmas.

So last week, my husband surprised me w/an iPad, Olivia got a new laptop (that she will share when we travel) and with Noah back to school, life has become very serene in the evenings! 

He makes you lie down in green pastures, He leads you beside quiet waters, 
He refreshes your soul.

This verse is a good image of our holidays. It started with a great Thanksgiving hosted by the Richards. Though Rachel stayed in Indy this year, we had a sweet time with guests on Christmas eve, with each other on Christmas Day, and then we welcomed 3 different friends of Noah's in the following weeks of his vacation time. We refreshed ourselves with lots of outings that we haven't had energy, money or time for in the last several months. (And if French films are shown near you, don't miss Untouchables -  a blockbuster here that is full of hope and joy and has the power to annihilate any traces of racism in your heart.)

He guides you along the right paths for His name's sake.

We continue to seek God about marriage ministry here. Our pastor is asking us to keep working towards this and as we initiate discussions with the Love After Marriage leaders in the States, we come up against the same French hurdles - translation of materials, a poverty-mentality, and fear of transparency - in order to come up with enough couples in leadership nationwide who are willing to be transparent, can afford to attend, and have a workbook in French! Only God can pull this off, and when he does, it will demand our full-time focus. We need the timing to be right, with so many other things pulling for our attention. In the meantime, I take solace in the Sozo ministry that is healing individual hearts so that ministering to their marriages will be more effective.

Even though you walk through the darkest valley, you will fear no evil, for you are with Him; His rod and His staff, they comfort you.

Looking back, I believe that all the gains we made last March at the marriage seminar were to hold us together for the turbulent months that followed with David's declining health. How wonderful it is to have my husband back, with new and improved emotional and physical energy available for us again (as long as he stays away from raw cauliflower!)

He prepares a table before you in the presence of your enemies. 
Despite the above mentioned setbacks, serving good food continues to be my favorite way to bless others. I volunteered to donate dessert for 60 at this year's teacher Christmas banquet. Lucky for me, the French appreciate small portions and I had it covered with 2 pumpkin cheesecakes and 2 pecan-date tarts, both new taste sensations for them!

He anoints your head with oil; your cup overflows.
Olivia was spoiled for her Sweet Sixteenth birthday this month: We bought her some clothes, took her out to eat, and then presented her with a card announcing that she was going on an 8-day father-daughter trip to Ireland! (We tried to capture the moment here.) She's visited a lot of countries, but this has been her dream destination for a long time. They will be attending teachings on the spiritual history of the land at a YWAM base there and then intercede on-site in Dublin and Belfast. (David will get to hook up with an old friend from his Up With People days one evening as well!) If you feel led to pray for their trip, the dates are Jan. 22-29th. I will also relish my week alone w/no one to worry about except the cats!

Surely His goodness and love will follow you all the days of your life, and you will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
I am now living this out concretely with my new toy: the only worship music I listen to now is from the International House of Prayer live and archived on the internet from Kansas City and it cannot be downloaded easily. Living in a house with thick walls and lots of closed off rooms meant that I could only worship in our den, sitting in front of the desktop, which is very limiting (and distracting) for a housewife. Now, my favorite worship troubadours follow me all around the house! No more housework in silence, long sleepless nights, or neighbor negativity invading my kitchen! "Practicing His presence" just got a lot easier!!

Happy 2012! Angela

We had a great Christmas (missed you Rachel!) and ushered the New Year in with a worship tabernacle at church.  It's just been a nice vacation break…so good that I couldn't remember what day of the week it was today…pretty rare for routine guy like me!  We're also particularly thankful for an unexpected gift from our French church that covered the replacement of one of our refrigerators that had just breathed its last.

I think 2012 stands to be an auspicious year if for no other reason than for the elections/regime changes in several countries in the world (I know of at least the States, France and China and of course North Korea that just happened).  Then there are questions about finances, etc.  Times of transition are such key times for the Lord to accomplish much in our hearts and in redemptive history.  May He and His will have complete preeminence!

Last month...er...last year

• Friend in a coma - I really want to thank you all for praying for Tim.  He came out of his coma and came home half-way through December, about a week earlier than expected.  The applause that erupted when he came to church was soooooo sweet!  If you think about him, pray that God would get maximum mileage out of this shaking experience at this crucial age of his life.  God is so good!
• Christmas visitors - Seth (Noah's buddy from the States) has been having a really good and eye-opening visit.  He came laden with some Christmas goodies and will be returning with some fun stuff for his family as well.  We'll cram some more sight-seeing in tomorrow before he leaves Wednesday.
• College application - Seth helped get Noah's application in and now we're waiting to see what the school says, but it's nice to get that out of the way!

This month...

• Christian Education Conference - Technically, it's in February (i.e., I'll be asking again!), but this month is prep time.  Each year there is a Christian Education conference held for French-speaking Christian Schools.  This is virtually the only source of input and encouragement for Christian teachers in France.  The conference is held in different locations each year and this year it's here!  It's been hosted here before, but this year there is a challenge.  We just found out before Christmas break that the venue where it was to be held is NOT, after all, available.    So it's back to the drawing board fairly late in the game to find a venue to host 300 people.  Our church remains a possibility, but that comes with its own challenges, such as ongoing construction (a good thing that it's progressing, but disruptive for hosting a conference).  So, we covet your prayers for discernment about the venue and grace for all the administrative effort needed to prepare for the conference.
• School IT work - After several years of trying, I finally got our internal server switched at school over Christmas break.  Obviously, the real test will be when everyone returns to school this Thursday.  Please pray for a smooth transition and rapid resolution to any problems encountered.
• Marriage ministry - We want to see this happen, but we've got to get some items translated for it to move forward.  We can verify translations, but not being French, we can't initiate them (we'd screw it up too badly - easier for them to work from scratch than to fix our poor translations).  So we really need another French couple to be willing to join the effort and we need French native translators for translating the materials. Please pray for God's people in this effort and God's timing as we continue to dialog with the ministry leaders in California.

Many, many thanks for your prayers,

David

What's a "backstory?"

Most of you probably already  know, but I remember that the first context I heard that term mentioned in was in gaming (though wikipedia gives it a broader definition).  It refers to the over-arching narrative that has been crafted around the action of the game that can give the player more understanding of what's going on strategy-wise (the "practical" value of the backstory), but it's also a tool that facilitates a more immersive experience in the game.  Depending on how alive the imagination is of the gamer, they can really enter into what they are doing and what they are experiencing in the game. It enhances the experience.

The backstory to the Gospel of Luke

Imagine my surprise, having only a gaming context in mind for this word, to hear it come out of the mouth of "learned British theologian" NT Wright. In the this talk that he gave in 2010 as part of the British "The Big Read" project (various churches in Britain all reading through the same portions of scripture during the season of Lent), Wright gives the "backstory" to the Gospel of Luke.  It is vintage NT Wright - especially since he's all about "narrative."  It brings together many of his best themes and lays a rich foundation for approaching the reading of the Gospels (and indeed the Bible) but with a focus especially on the Gospel of Luke.  When he used the term backstory it really made me think of what a backstory does in gaming and how that applies to how we engage with God and His Kingdom and this incredible vehicle of communication that He's given us called the Bible.  My impression is that we are all too often stuck in the posture that I had with games.  I didn't bother with the backstory or anything else that is really necessary to engage with a game and plumb its depths as an immersive experience…and so it wasn't. 

Knowing and appreciating the backstory is a complete game-changer!

Last month...

For those of you for whom our pair of "negative newsletters" last month was too much, you'll be glad to know that though we've passed into December, I'm still in the Thanksgiving spirit about November!

Here's what I'm thankful for (some of which you prayed about last month...obviously!):

• Carte Vitale - After receiving the right-to-work with our 10-year residence permits in early 2009, my free-lancing IT work permitted us to use the French national health insurance and dump our uber-expensive private care (which didn't cover us well anyway!).  Those who are "in the system" are supposed to have a "health card" (Carte Vitale) that is presented to doctors and at the pharmacy to directly bill the national health insurance, leaving you only your percentage to pay.  We got the coverage quickly but it's taken us 2 years to get the card.  So every time we paid something we paid full price and then had to send in forms for a percentage reimbursement...which was annoying both to us and to the health care providers who have to fill them out.  Consequently we were thrilled to get our cards this month...especially Angela who did all the paperwork these years!
• Employment - Before I had the right-to-work, the school where we volunteer had looked at how they might be able to offer me a "job"  in order that I could actually get the right to work - an administrative nightmare that would have been expensive for them as they would have had to have paid the employer's social security charges for me.  That was dropped a while back and never revisited.  Just this month, the school offered to let me charge them the 150 euros that we pay a month for Olivia's schooling as an IT consulting fee.  The net effect is that instead of paying 150/month, I list that 150 as income.  This is a blessing in that, though I pay taxes on it, the amount that I had been receiving from the occasional computer repair had dropped to about...well...nothing.  This allows me to have an income to declare and benefit from what those taxes pay for.
• Electric Bill - Our electric bill is a fixed-amount direct withdrawal from our account each month with an annual adjustment to reflect any over/under payment.  Imagine my surprise this month receiving a letter stating that our fixed bill was reduced by 25 euros a month!
• Health - I think it simply took about 2 months to feel normal after my operation and now I can say that, yes, I feel normal again! 
• Church renovation - Elevator work has finally begun!!!!!  Visible progress!!!
• House of Prayer - Angela and I have finally got a 2-hour slot settled in our schedule each week to worship and pray at church.  That's good, but then our friends the Richards are there for 4, 2-hour slots a week and finally our pastor's wife and son are doing two more 1-hour slots a week.  Again...visible progress!!!  24/7, here we come!
• Marriage Ministry - Our report to the elders of our church of the LAM marriage workshop we attended last spring has sat on the back burner while we all worked on other things and waited to see if other French interest would develop elsewhere for translation, etc.  Nothing visible has happened that we're aware of.  So this month our pastor spoke with me and asked me to set a goal, even if it's a year out, and begin working on making something happen for marriage ministry in our church.  He feels (and I agree) that it's important to get a date set and that we drive towards a specific goal.  So I've started the ball rolling with a goal of hopefully doing something next fall.  We're not far yet, but it's the official "go!" that we needed.
• Tech discipleship - At church I had asked a man in his 30's if he would be willing to work with me on the sound/technology ministry at church with the idea of him taking more of the responsibility.  Initially he had said "yes" and much time had passed before I could get back to concrete steps to move forward.  In the meantime he's had to pull out.  That was very discouraging to me.  Among our sound techs, we have one young man who is quite mature for his age and serious about his commitment. I decided to ask him if he would be willing to take on this extra responsibility, but I wasn't sure if he really wanted to or not...but he very enthusiastically said "yes!"  Of course the ball is in my court now, but I'm excited again to move forward with that.

This month...

• Friend in a coma - On a serious note - last Friday night, a young man (23?) in our congregation, Tim, had a car accident and broke his leg...significant but not life-threatening.  Then, however, some fatty cells from the marrow in his leg bone got into his blood stream (which apparently is not unheard of in this type of injury) and made its way to his lungs - a pulmonary embolism.  He started having trouble breathing and began to have a fever.  The end result is that to stabilize him they had to put him into an artificial coma where they could control the amount of oxygen he gets and let his body heal.  There were some dangerous moments.  He is still in the artificial coma on a respirator and could be for another week or so.
  
  I went to visit him today with his father and we prayed together over him and spoke life to him.  This is a precious family to us and Tim is a young man with a tremendous destiny in the Lord before him.  Please pray for his complete and rapid recovery and for the peace of God to flood his family.
• Christmas visitors - During Christmas break we will welcome a friend of Noah's, Seth, from Indianapolis for a visit.  This will be the first trip for him out of the country and he's excited as are we.  This will certainly give our Christmas break a different feeling than just the immediate family.  We're looking forward to showing him our world.  Please pray for Seth's safe, uncomplicated travel and everyone's health to facilitate a good connection with him and good Alsatian Christmas sight-seeing!
• College application - Christmas break will also be the time when we need to get Noah's college application completed to be submitted in time for scholarship consideration.  Please pray wisdom for us to get it all done well and favor for Noah for scholarship consideration.
• Continuation - Well, with all these blessings of November, the ball is pretty much in our court to keep on keepin' on!  So we appreciate your prayers for: worship ministry, Sozo ministry, technology ministry, marriage ministry, etc. 

You are permitted to drink eggnog and eat Christmas cookies while praying!

Blessings,

David

I think our definition of a "dream world" and "living there" needs some serious remedial aid…and I think I just got some!

My eldest, Rachel, just gave a talk recently that has inspired and challenged me to live in a dream world.

Read it and be drawn in!

This is what I shared with some awesome friends at Encounter Indy, Nov 14, 2011.

Contemplation
Tonight, I just want to talk about beauty. If you know me, I always want to talk about beauty. When I talk about beauty, I'm really talking about God.

We hear a lot of what feels to me like disqualifiers about God — when we say He is indescribable, incomparable... that isn't very satisfying to me. It almost sounds like an excuse not to contemplate God. The other thing that can happen is using biblical words without the vivid experience of what we're talking about. "Beauty" is a word like that. In my opinion, one of the reasons for that is that beauty has to be qualified. If you were reading a novel with a female character, and she is described as beautiful and nothing else, that is pretty unsatisfying. Because as we know, there are as many different kinds of beautiful as there are people. And God is all of them. His beauty is worth examining in detail. I don't think He wants to maintain an unknowable glory. He made a world full of His character, His attributes, His great ideas.

Define "world"
"World" is another deceptively small word and we gloss over it. What was birthed out of God includes the idea to create each incredible person you know (think about them individually to get the full effect.) It includes every thought and idea needed to build a cathedral, or an airplane, or an iPhone. Out of God came the desire to tell stories as vividly as possible, and now we are making these immersive films. Fashion came out of God. Cooking came out of God. Vibrating waves came out of God. Some of them vibrate at the speed of light, and we can see them as light. Others vibrate more slowly, and we hear those ones. And when we put sound waves together in certain ways, they mysteriously provoke the most amazing heart responses. God is beautiful!

Co-creators
The Creation is a freaking God-sized playground that He adores, and made us perfectly to love and enjoy ourselves in it also. Don't you love that God made sound waves, but He didn't write the music and play it to us? He let us have that fun. He hid diamonds and sapphires in dark, dirty rocks and watched us go sweat to get them out and adorn people with them. This applies to everything, whatever you're into. Our Dad's Creation is still unfolding through us. We're sons of God, inheriting His studio, His practice, His greenhouse, His workshop. It's epic. If you wrap the entire record of human history, creativity, invention, travel, and experience, the joy and fascination contained therein is too much for us to experience in an 80-year lifespan. We who are reconciled to God don't have to worry that enjoying life too much is somehow idolatrous. It's our nature to see our Dad in everything, and our calling to partner with Him to run the family business, which is the universe... both the physical and spiritual realm. God is ready to be experienced in every thing that He made. Embracing God, for us, also means fully embracing His creation. We aren't going to be separated from it; even when Jesus comes back, we are ruling and reigning with Him over the same systems that He set in place when He made the world.

No more separation
We can feel God's presence so much more when there's no more artificial line between what is spiritual and what's not. That division is pretty huge in a world that's afraid of God, and sometimes I still feel it brushing against my toe. Like when I say that I'm "high on life," I will wonder for a second if I need to be finding my satisfaction in God more. Not necessarily. I'm high on the good life that He gave to me for that purpose — to be good. That was the criteria for His whole Creation, right?

When I feel like life is distracting me from God, that is usually just because I haven't been acknowledging Him in it. I'm overlooking the best part of whatever is capturing my gaze a little too exclusively — that this gift is yet another token tying me to the present-tense love of my Dad.

Seven Longings
IHOP KC has a great teaching on seven longings of the human heart. They are:

To be enjoyed • To be fascinated • To possess beauty • To be great • To be intimately known without shame • To be wholehearted and passionate • To make a deep and lasting impact

God gave you these. The blueprint for your life, your design sounds pretty much like the most awesome people you can think of in history. There's safety and anchoring in dreaming big. It keeps us in touch with our identity and gives our hearts the momentum of hope. God gives desires so that He can meet them forever. You are absolutely free and strongly encouraged to desire things that cannot take place in the next 70 years, because you are immortal. Even if your body dies, you do not, and you're getting a reboot — virus-free — of your body right away. You've conquered death along with Jesus, your new body can't be touched by it.

Permanent fixture
This blew me away when I first realized it. I'm a permanent fixture in Creation. You're a permanent fixture. When God designed you, He decided that your spirit, what you carry and reflect and express, needs to be ETERNAL. This is total legitimacy: the fact that you exist. If you didn't come out of God and make Him amazingly happy, you wouldn't exist.

Designed
God's a designer. A designer is anyone who is driven to make things as appealing, beneficial, and high-performing as possible. You, along with every part of creation, are appealing, beneficial, and high-performing.

What does this mean? For one, it means your body is a product of the top designer. Who is so awesome that He even made your body come together perfectly in a process of lineage and genetics (which has its own massive value and beauty). This is like designing a Rube-Goldberg machine that paints the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Girl with a Pearl Earring in succession. So your body is the very best container for you that there could be. And we won't always understand that until we see our bodies free from every last effect of sin, but you're free and strongly encouraged to start thinking that way now.

More of what it means to be well-designed and back in union with God: what you do naturally is right on the money.

Philippians 2:13
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to act for His good pleasure.

This has been hugely changing me. Most of my life, I've been someone who's really concerned about not making mistakes. I was afraid to do anything if I didn't think I could do it well.

Once I learned about hearing the voice of God, I got a clue that the Holy Spirit was there to help me always make the right choice and say the right things. But I still had such an external perspective on Him. And I was frustrated a lot of time because it was really hard to get myself into that place where I was hearing the Holy Spirit clearly and was willing to be obedient. I would hear people talk about how often and how easily they heard and followed the promptings of the Lord, and couldn't figure out why it didn't seem that easy to me. I was really used to listening to the enemy second-guessing things I wanted to do. There was always an excuse, a reason I heard not to talk to that person, or say this or that thing... even if my intent was loving, I decided that it could possibly be taken the wrong way, and so I wouldn't take the chance.

I tried to pray and work my out of this fear of initiating with people for years. It was not fun.

But as I've been starting to sit back and soak what the verse says, that God is inside me, active, not even fighting back a sin nature for me. The sin nature is dead and gone, and God has all the room. I can therefore have a lot more confidence in being who I am, following "my" instincts. Trusting that ideas I have are from God. Let me give some recent really simple examples.

I've noticed that I tend to remember random people's names — first and last names of people in my classes at school that I don't even really talk to. But if I said "hey" to them in the hallways, I would never use their name because I was afraid that I maybe didn't have it right and would embarrass myself.

I know how awesome it feels when a casual acquaintance remembers your name. Now I've acknowledged that God gave me a good memory, and I can use that gift confidently to make people feel special by using their names. I try not to second-guess myself anymore with that.

I can rest in God's total power and authority in me when it comes to time management. I know that I'm a responsible person who is not prone to laziness. That's how God made me. I no longer worry about how I'm spending my time. Sometimes I'll have the urge to go play piano for an hour. Or take a nap. Or go exploring in the woods. Or spend an hour deciding what to wear, because its fun. If we were robots, nothing like this would be allowed to come before the activities that have deadlines or put money in the bank. But we're not robots, or slaves... we are children of God. Time serves us, and while it's a resource we learn to manage, it's also infinite and in God's control. He has no problem adjusting time in our favor. We are also complex, multifaceted creatures. There are infinite areas in which we can grow and be blessed. The value systems of the world are too limited. They don't always reflect who we are. Realize that God gives peace. God encourages real rest, real fun... if you look at the schedule of work, rest, and fun that he set in place for people in the law, it sounds awesome. The drive to get ahead no longer owns you when you realize you possess everything. Orphans have to earn everything they get. We are sons with favor who inherit. We step into the good works already prepared for us to do!

When it comes to "ministry," which for me has been a lot of playing on worship teams, I've noticed that God works through what He's anointed me to do, whether I feel it or not, whether I do it "right" or not. The proof of this that I usually get more comments afterwards from people about how anointed the music was on the days when I feel like it sucks. My responsibility is to let out what's inside, not to critique and control it - because God, the AWESOME God is working through me - being myself is honoring and giving glory to Him.

When I give prophetic words, I used to get nervous about giving a word unless someone gave something similar, and I could piggy-back off of it. It was faith-building to have that confirmation, but then I realized that I didn't need to fear a word that sounds vastly different from what other people are delivering. Why? Because God gives us so much dignity. He has words for a person, and He gives each person who is ministering to that person a unique message to deliver. Speaking to each of us uniquely is one of the ways that God honors us. Even in preparing for tonight, I had to trust that what I wanted to talk about is the same thing that He wants me to talk about, and that it's valid, even if I've never heard anyone else give a similar message.

Finally, I can find peace in whatever season of growth that I'm in with the Lord. There was a time several years ago when I used to get up early and walk out the vineyards to watch the sun rise. One thing about the early morning sky is that it changes continually, but you don't notice that unless you look away for a moment. I'll never forget the parallel Jesus showed me about spiritual growth: like a sunrise, every second is different, but every second is beautiful. Every season brings greater light. We go from glory to glory. Our journey into greater revelation and intimacy with Him is a gorgeous display from start to finish. Oh wait, except that there is no finish. This is the sunrise that just gets more and more mind-blowing every hour!

Dreams
Let me share with you some of my dreams. This is kind of vulnerable, because you might think I'm really out of touch with reality. But I really believe with all my heart that our reality has NO limits, thanks to Jesus. So this is my prophetic testimony of how good God is, how big He is, and how fully invited into this reality I am.

Let me give you some background first. Some of you maybe don't know that my parents are missionaries in France. Our family started out living a really "normal" suburban, upper middle-class life in Denver, but then we moved to Europe when I was ten. I've lived in Scotland, France, and Germany, and visited Italy, Switzerland, England, Austria, and a few others. There are a lot of things that Europe really fostered in me. One is an love of history and old architecture. Jesus, who designed me, adores me, and knows more about who I am than I do, knew that I would start to feel really deeply about castles, cathedrals, and palaces by frequently visiting them. They're all over the place in Europe. When I step into architecture that has real grandeur, I feel at home. These buildings concretely put me in touch with my dreams. They were built by people who were not afraid to be expansive. To me, they are tangible expressions of royalty (an intangible).

So my dreams include living in Europe and spending substantial amounts of time in the most beautiful buildings in the world. I would love to share these buildings with other artists of every kind and we'll all disciple people in music, and design, and languages, and what it means to be married to God. I want to be part of a movement producing art and music that is irresistibly attractive because it's full of the beauty of God. I want to see secular clubs blasting the most epic dance music the Holy Spirit will give me. I want to play my violin in cathedrals on a regular basis. I want to be in the cathedrals when the Presence of God manifests in them. When they decide to take out the pews and turn the whole thing into a dance floor. I want to see the people that make the news, make the news with the way they give their lives back to Jesus, one after another. I want to see how the European family of nations, each country with it's own story and personality, grows together in love and gratefulness and awe of God, and their identities sparkle without tarnish of past sin.

Dreaming = Breathing
It's like going to an oxygen bar when we let our souls expand like this and begin to be in awe of redemptive history, what's happening now, and the unending adventure that has been stored up for us. We don't even really have language for the epicness of what we're living in. If you have lots of impossible dreams, you're in really good shape, because God gives these dreams to us in order to one-up them. Toss your mind up as high as you can and you won't be able to get it over God's head. This is the best. Having someone so much greater than us. We can trust in His bigness. We need bigness. We don't have to be afraid that life won't be as cool as we hope it will be. It will most certainly be cooler. You can bet it all on our Beautiful Dad.

"Consider it pure joy, my brethren, when you face (terrible, horrible, no good, very bad) trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

If your kids were born after 1970, you are probably familiar with an award-winning children's book resembling my title. Being a children's literature fan, I couldn't resist borrowing it to describe where my last newsletter left off (as if that wasn't bad enough.)

But let's start on a happy note: (In late Sept.) Olivia and her 4 classmates had a ball in Budapest. Let me remind you that there was only ONE Christian high school in all of France until we opened up a 10th grade class a couple of years ago. Can you imagine how ostracized these kids feel here? So it was a breath of fresh air to hang out with kids from 30 other mainly eastern European Christian schools for 4 days. The English-only leadership conference didn't bother them at all - just warmed them up for my class that started when they got back.

This is the teaching job I've been waiting for my whole life: no discipline problems, only 2 teaching hours/week, and free to create my own curriculum based on a children's book! How I've missed transmitting my passion for books to children here. So I chose The Tale of Despereaux as our text for the first semester, reading most of it aloud, and they are eating it up! I supplement with worksheets I've created to help them see the Biblical truths hidden throughout, while mastering vocabulary related to the world of mice and rats living in a castle. This setting makes remarkable parallels to the Protestant church in France! Read it and weep. As you will see, this class has been one of the few bright spots since I wrote last.

The grand total for Sept.'s gall bladder nightmare (5 consultations, endoscopy, blood work, ultrasound, 2 ambulance rides, laparoscopic surgery, 6 nights, and meds) was under $800! However, David started going downhill again last month and this time the culprit was a UTI. Not wanting to feel left out, I got a yeast infection, my sozo team leader started fighting appendicitis symptoms, and our head intercessor was battling terrible side effects after hip replacement surgery. Hopelessness hit David in a rare attack, and I'm sorry to say that with a well-timed string of migraines, I went down with him! Thank God the Richards were arriving mid-month as reinforcements, providing daily worship/prayer coverage that has helped strengthen all of us, despite Janet's own physical struggle with a broken wrist.

Towards the end of this trial, (which we were not considering "pure joy," my brethren,) my pastor's wife called to ask if I would keep a visiting Australian director in Christian education for a week. I was her last hope, so what could I say? God gave me the grace to accommodate him and his easy presence lifted our morale. But towards the end of his stay, a tragedy hit that brought us down again. I was happily decorating the church to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for our next 4 hr. worship tabernacle. Then my cell phone rang and we learned that a father of 3, whose extended family I've mentioned here before, had died of a sudden heart attack at work. So much for celebrating. The mother of this man and his daughter and nieces all came to worship that night anyway - what a beautiful sacrifice of worship that was for all of us.

Our guest wanted to take the school leadership team out to dinner the following evening before he left, but David and I weren't feeling well enough to attend. Disappointed in missing the chance to enjoy a restaurant meal, we were taken by surprise when handed a monetary gift from him after his departure, in US dollars! It is tucked away for our trip back next summer to move Noah over.

Then our terrible, horrible October finally ended… with an alarmingly small support deposit. Enough to eat on, but the bills would have to wait. We had also planned to visit Noah on the 1st, after 2 1/2 months apart. I wanted to celebrate his 18th birthday a month early, while the fall leaves were peaking and the sun was shining. A visit to the Basel Zoo was at the top of his wish list. (And fortunately, I had bought his birthday gift (red t-shirt below) far in advance!) With one glance at the bank acct., David was nixing all expenditures except the gas to get there. A head v. heart argument ensued that the enemy wanted to snowball, but then we got the victory: The HS convicted me of my wrong attitudes in the argument and I apologized. Then I blessed his head while he blessed my heart. Then I laid our plans on the altar. When we arrived at BFA, Noah admitted he had a lot of homework and the zoo sounded like too much to bite off. We smiled at each other and drove to a beautiful park with a pedestrian bridge that spans the Rhine River where Switzerland, France and Germany meet. We fed a bevy of swans, enjoyed an ice cream cone and watched the kids run and jump and climb on every available surface. We got him back early to start homework before dinner and stayed for a free meal at the dorm.

The rest of the week, money trickled in daily: a computer repair job, a small property tax refund, web site work for an old client, anonymous cash in our mailbox, a paypal donation. And the icing on the cake today was receiving our national identity cards for the French health system with a chip that streamlines the processing of any medical treatment!

Here's hoping that we have passed all the perseverance testing scheduled for 2011!!

Love, Angela

Last month...

I'm glad to get October 2011 in my rear-view mirror. My continued surgery recovery lasted another month with more up-and-down periods in my health.  I feel I'm finally at a place where I can live normally again.  The challenges of health and finances have been very fatiguing for us.  We were blessed to have very reasonable hospital bills for my surgery, including the 2nd hospitalization.  We're very thankful for that, but car and furnace repair plus even "reasonable" hospital bills at the same time has stretched us paper-thin.  This, of course, is great fodder for our growing in trust for God's provision, but it also exposes differences in how Angela and I approach finances and that continues to be an area of growth for us.  Thank you Lord for growing pains!

Some of last months prayer action:

• Renovation - Many blessings on the strong young and not-so-young arms that finished the completely hand-dug excavation necessary for the installation of the elevator at church.  The stone-mason should begin work any time now on the "cage" into which the elevator will be installed, which will be the first real physical sign of our building developing into the tool of the Kingdom that we've envisioned.
• IT work - We are in the middle of the 2nd week of our fall break, where I had hoped to make significant infrastructure changes at school.  My up-and-down health, however, meant that I did not get the prep-time necessary to be ready to take advantage of these two weeks.   Consequently, I've put many expectations on the shelf and simply have done what I can.  I've passed through the disappointment phase about it and have felt a peace to simply leave the rate of advancement in the Lord's hands.   So, I am encouraged to be able to connect more with the Lord as I work and not be as stressed to make a certain deadline, as it was simply removed from my grasp.  

This month...

• Financial agreement - Please pray that Angela and I come into new levels of unity in stewarding our finances together. Our roles in day-to-day finances won't necessarily change, but our unity in the stewardship of what God gives us is of paramount importance in this season.
• Worship - During these two weeks of fall break, about 20 members of our church have been visiting Israel for a prayer journey.  As a way of connecting those who didn't go with the team in Israel, we have been having daily worship times at church with a focus on interceding for them. Our friends Rusty and Janet Richards are back in France for another 3 months and have done daily worship stints and Angela and I have done M-W-F stints.  This is the first regular mid-week worship happening since we finished our summer sessions near the end of August.  We know it's vital to resume these sessions on a regular basis.  Please pray that as we resume school schedules next week, we'll find the right worship schedule to resume as well.  Angela and I are excited that we have the health again to do it and excited about growing in our worship unity during these times.  Please pray that we would have the grace to persevere in doing this increasingly together, something that's not always been easy for us.
• IT work - The Lord has been gracious to reveal solutions to me to help me keep moving forward in evolving the IT infrastructure at school.  I'm still arriving at levels of frustration with my own efforts initially before I surrender and let the Lord flow into the situation.  I'm really not satisfied with that. I desire to get to a point where, in this incredibly cerebral context, I would constantly expect supernatural breakthrough.  I really want this to be an experience of regularly pulling heaven down into this technical environment.  I literally don't know what that will look like!   I'd appreciate your prayers to submit my mind and mental analytical patterns to my spirit and that my spirit would be in constant connection with the Holy Spirit in the context of this IT work.
• Sound team - At church, I've been looking for how to move our sound team forward and I really don't see the time in my schedule to do what needs to be done.  Leading the sound team at church is a role I sort of grew into by default but is not one that gives me much life and would love to pass it on.  We were at a point where we thought that we might have someone on our team that we could groom to take the leadership one day.  That's fallen through as that person doesn't have the time to continue on with the team.  So while we now have about enough people, we need to take it to the next step of organization and equipping. Please pray that we find the right person to take this on or the way to structure the team so that this happens without need of more of my time.

Ok, that's more than enough to fill your agendas!

Many thanks,

David

The original parts 1 and 2 can be found here for those who are interested:

http://www.sidroth.org/site/News2?abbr=tv_&page=NewsArticle&id=10457

http://www.sidroth.org/site/News2?abbr=tv_&page=NewsArticle&id=10494

Harbinger?

I called this "Harbinger Remix" because Cahn titles his message, drawn from Isaiah 9:10, "The Harbinger" and if you search for Jonathan Cahn or The Harbinger, you'll find plenty of references, sites, videos, etc.  I think this particular 30-minute mix does pretty good justice to the message that he's trying to get across, which is that America's crises from 9/11 to the current economic woes parallel a series of increasingly severe judgments that a defiant ancient Israel faced.  The Harbingers are 9 warnings or omens that Israel faced that, according to Cahn, America is also facing.

I certainly find the parallels compelling and, I too, believe that there are things that the Lord is not pleased with regarding America.  In this particular instance, I would say that I'm in general agreement with Cahn, but do I have two concerns. 

First, this sort of prophetic perspective usually adds weight to the "gloom, doom and judgment" perspective of prophecy that flies in the face of the emphasis on the goodness of God, which I believe is probably more crucial in this hour (all hours?) than dire warnings.  Judgment has its proper place in the character of God and redemptive history, past, present and future.  However, focusing on it and/or not understanding God's heart/motivation behind it (as Mike Bickle likes to say, "God judges to remove everything that hinders love.") can, I think, end up twisting our image of who God is, for us, for others, for His Creation.  Unfortunately, while I'm sure Sid means well, his "style" does more, in my opinion, to stir up this unbalanced perspective of God and of prophecy.

Second, while I think what Cahn has received is from God and his conclusions about the need to repent, in general are correct, I still see the same glaringly myopic perspective of what to repent of that comes out of the mouths of most American Christians: abortion, homosexuality, pornography, etc.  Granted these things need repentance, and, in my opinion they have received a notable quantity in the last 30 years or so.  Consequently, I find it curious that the two specific judgments that are mentioned in Cahn's message, 9/11 and the financial crisis, don't directly point the finger at this traditional triple whammy of sexual sins.  Rather, in my view, they point the finger at the two things that most (right-leaning Christian) Americans don't notice as sin and yet they are the two things that the entire rest of the world sees as America's most glaring offenses:

• Unrelenting empire building/maintaining
• Capitalism in its most predatory guises

The two are quite linked, of course, and the spirit of empire and the spirit of mammon and the predator/victim spirit all swirl together in evil glee to work with one another to steal, kill and destroy as much as possible.  Part of the reason that Americans don't "get this" is that America is a land where individualism and independence is highly valued but these two sins are at their most destructive (and yet most elusive) in their institutional and corporate forms.  The sins become systemic and one can't easily point the finger at an individual and say, "Repent!"  Americans don't yet know how to see American governmental and corporate impact on the world stage and rightly point the finger at themselves and say, "Repent!"  Nowhere is this more evident than in the hyper-polarized political scene in America where pointing the finger elsewhere sinks to new amazing lows with every passing day.  I would wager that the one place where Americans are comfortable grouping people together and focusing on a "corporate entity" is when we label someone "Republican" or "Democrat".

Unfortunately (or fortunately) the Lord looks at both individuals and corporate entities and they both have roles and responsibilities in God's Kingdom.

So, to me, 9/11 is a wake up call about our imperialistic/neo-colonial swagger in the world and the economic meltdown is about our predatory capitalistic appetite in the world…and in those two areas is perhaps where we need to focus most of our repentance energies at the moment.

So, with that rambling preamble, on with the show!

Here's mine:

Day 1  Psalm 1-7
Day 2  Psalm 8-14
Day 3  Psalm 15-18
Day 4  Psalm 19-23
Day 5  Psalm 24-29
Day 6  Psalm 30-33
Day 7  Psalm 34-36
Day 8  Psalm 37-38
Day 9  Psalm 39-42
Day 10 Psalm 43-46
Day 11 Psalm 47-50
Day 12 Psalm 51-55
Day 13 Psalm 56-60
Day 14 Psalm 61-66
Day 15 Psalm 67-69
Day 16 Psalm 70-73
Day 17 Psalm 74-77
Day 18 Psalm 78
Day 19 Psalm 79-83
Day 20 Psalm 84-88
Day 21 Psalm 89-91
Day 22 Psalm 92-98
Day 23 Psalm 99-103
Day 24 Psalm 104-105
Day 25 Psalm 106-108
Day 26 Psalm 109-115
Day 27 Psalm 116-118, Psalm 120-125
Day 28 Psalm 126-135
Day 29 Psalm 136-142
Day 30 Psalm 143-150
Day 31 Psalm 119