What We Learned

Fremantle as seen from the Round House Tunnel

We left our lives in Massachusetts behind because we felt that God was calling us to serve him in full-time service most likely in an overseas media missions capacity. God has quickened our hearts that serving Him more intentionally is a specific call on our lives, in fact we are even more excited to serve him than when we left. Our Lord has used this training time to really whip us into shape. We feel our spiritual muscles strengthening so that we are better able to accomplish all he asks of us. Our eagerness to please him with a lifetime commitment to sharing his ways has increased exponentially. The Lord took our little flame of interest and fanned it into growing blaze for His glory. We are humbled and happy of heart to serve our Lord.

Thank you again for your faithful prayers for us and your generous support and sacrifices to get us here!

Although scratching the surface on the months of material we have enjoyed here, some of the greatest lesson we have learned are:

Hearing God's voice isn't for super saints or prophets, it's for everyone including you and me!

The number one reason for listening and obeying God is to enjoy an everlasting, intimate relationship with Him.

The world is a spiritual battleground not a playground and God calls all of us to intercede for others, standing in the gap for each other through prayer, our number one spiritual weapon.

If our theology leads us to believe that God is not perfectly loving with unconditional Agape love, than it's time to change our theology.

God is our Spiritual Father and longs for all of us to enjoy him forever.

The way God relates to his son is the same way he wants to relate to us: fulfilling, intimate, intense, trusting, unconditional, present, focused, perfect, friendly, understanding, encouraging, inseparable, etc..

God is NEVER cruel. God's character is to love and he always seeks our highest good. All that he does for us is
motivated out of love for us and for others.

Repentance is a lifestyle (The goal is for the public and private parts of my life to be the same, which requires dragging it all into the light.)

God didn't make us to be angry. God's way is to lay down our rights for his sake and for others. Being “Moody” can be just an excuse for disobedience.

God inhabits the praise of his people, so if you want to be where God is, you can plan to be where he is worshiped.

I don't want to talk about Jesus like he's not in the room with me.

Surrender: offer your body as a living sacrifice and give to God his due. When he leads you to worship ask him what he wants from you and ask yourself what you can give to him as an act of worship. Worship involves sacrifice.

If we really knew how destructive and grieving sin is we wouldn't do it. Sin is a choice. We can avoid sinning by responding like Jesus answering Satan in the wilderness, using scripture to help us. We need to train ourselves not to sin.

Practice “please forgive me” and “I forgive you.”

God is relentless in pursuing people and never gives up on them—so neither should we.

Intercession changes injustice to justice.

We preach, God moves. We pray, God moves. We just do our part and God does all the hard work. We are responsible for our end of the partnership. God does the trickier bits.

The problem with the gospel is that it works. The enemy doesn't want us to be clear about it. He wants us to be fuzzy on the message and lacking confidence to share it. Why? Because it's the power of God to salvation!

The Crossroads clan having a meeting in our classroom

Great Quotes:
“We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.” - A.W. Tozer

“You can stop birds from building nests in your hair, but you can't keep them from flying over your head.” - Martin Luther on the difference between temptation and sin

“We know what to do when we don't know what to do!” - Paul Hawkins

God is so sovereign he declared man's will to be free! - A.W. Tozer

Our next blog will be regarding prayer requests for our upcoming trip to Papua New Guinea in a few days!