Did You Get His Letter?

Hello, brothers and sisters! When was the last time you wrote a letter? When you write a letter, you don't only think about what you want to say--you think about who is reading it. You think about how they may understand what you are trying to say. This brings us to our first Blog--the Gospel of Mark!

Who was Mark writing to? Of course, to us . . . but at that time who was he writing to?

Matthew wrote to the Jews, always proving that Jesus was the Son of David. Luke wrote to the Greeks, those surrounded with legends and man-made gods. John wrote to those doubting that Jesus was God in the flesh. 

Mark was writing to the Romans, to help the great church in Rome to hold to the truth! He was writing to a people who lived under the control of an Emperor. Mark was wanting to introduce them to another Emperor--one that did not lord over people, but a servant of all!

This book is all about what we should be doing. This book does not focus on the sermons of Jesus or primarily his teaching--this book is about what he was doing and what his disciples were doing.   This is good for US!

There was a time in Kiev when we had a similar focus! We may not have understood deeply why, but we were busy!!  Baptizing, discipling, teaching, training! No degrees, no seminary, even before some had read the whole bible they were leading groups of people! This was a great moment, but there was a call to go deeper. We needed to go deeper with our roots, deeper in how we motivate one another!

The challenge for those of us who have gone deeper, is not to leave behind the simple obedience that we had at first. It's great that we now have a foundation for our obedience, but we can't lose the obedience! Mark will reintroduce this simple concept to us. This is good news!

Praying for Paris

Welcome to the capital of France, a city with over 12 million people! The Paris church was planted in 1986 by a team of disciples from Boston. Last year the church in Paris saw 7 new disciples baptized! Please pray for God to bring more open hearts to the brothers and sisters.

This coming weekend there will be a French retreat where they are expecting 300 people in attendance. Pray for God to stir the hearts of the Christians, and fill them with the Spirit so that the great country of France can hear the Gospel! Pray that God will raise up servants and put it on their hearts to reach the hearts of many!

See you tomorrow . . .