Update on LBT Plans

Our family is going to Chicago next week to have interview with the staff at Lutheran Bible Translators. Following those discussions we will have a clearer picture of whether or not we will be moving on from Emmanuel in Kettering to a year of graduate school at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics in Dallas TX this summer.

Our family has spent the last month reading from the Bible together each night and I am finding that it is the most meaningful time we spend together each day. Additionally, it is building in each of us a love for the word of God, and a need (or felt need?) for the word of God. I think this is important, because if we are not in a place where we have begun to see and grasp and crave the importance of God's word in our normal every day lives, we have precious little to keep us motivated in translation work, providing the word for others. But if our desire to provide the word to others is rooted in our own conviction and practice that the word is an integral part of normal life, day to day life in the Christian walk, we will be building on a solid foundation.

Praise God for his continued work in our family's life! More coming real soon.

The Power of Vision

My devotional time has had me in the book of Nehemiah focusing on how God birthed a vision in him and used that vision to advance the kingdom of God for His glory.

The Bible says that it is God's will that we be sanctified (1 Thessalonians 4:3), that is, God has a vision for our lives, and a crucial component is that we grow in Christ-like-ness in order to advance the kingdom of God for his glory. Sanctified is fancy church language for 'be set apart' or 'be designated' for God's purposes.

Having a vision for your life is like having a new pair of glasses to look through and using those lenses to evaluate what we're doing with our lives. There is amazing clarity that begins to develop when we evaluate EVERY activity and aspect of our life to determine how (or if) it fits into that vision God has for us. In addition, there is even greater clarity that develops when we develop a vision for various aspects of our lives, such as career, finances, spouse, children, and ministry. Do you have a vision for these areas of your life? Have you evaluated that vision in light of time in God's word and prayer? You are not your own, (1 Corinthians 6:20), therefore your vision is not your own either, it is part of a greater vision that God is working with the goal of reconciling all humanity to Himself.

Do you see things around you that create a tension between what is and what should be? Poverty and hunger in our inner cities, Emptiness and listlessness in our suburbs, declining morality in our nation, the influence of media over our nation's youth, rampant medical crises in third world countries, the disturbing parallelism between churched and unchurced people: Do these or any other things around you tug at you and cause tension in you? That could be labor pains of a vision God is birthing in you. Pay attention to it. Feed it. Pray about it. Read Nehemiah 1 to see what he did with the vision God gave him.

God has been working a vision in me these past months, and I've wrestled with a number of aspects of life. I've made what some would consider to be dramatic changes in my home. I will discuss some of these in coming days. That's probably enough for now.
Rich