When it's too late...

Sometimes because of our decisions we miss out on God's best for us. It's not that He doesn't want to bless us... It's just that the window for that particular opportunity has closed.

What God calls us to do always requires faith (Hebrews 11:6).  And when we respond in disobedience instead of faith, we don't get to see the results that obedience would have produced.

Read Numbers 14:39-45

In this passage, the Israelites disobeyed.  Then they decide to make up for lost time, and obey God "after the fact", even though He told them it was too late to see the blessing for obedience. The results were disastrous!

I was supposed to go on a mission trip between my first and second years of Bible school. I didn't go (read: disobeyed), then asked God for forgiveness.

He forgave me, but every time I would talk with God about what I should have learned there or what connections I should have made there, He was silent. One time I felt Him speak in my heart that I would never get to know what I missed until I got to heaven. That blessing only comes with obedience.

Had I obeyed, maybe I would have discovered years earlier that I was called to be a missionary and a lead pastor. I could have been better prepared for what God had called me to.

Who knows what would be different today?  I just know that I don't want to make the same mistake again! Let's be like Caleb and obey the first time (Numbers 14:24)... And obey immediately!

Stop Spamming My Blog!

I just confronted another blogger that thought the way to increase traffic to his website was to keep commenting: "You are invited to visit my blog" on our Perrin Family Blog.  This is an excerpt from what I emailed him...

While I understand that you would like me and our other readers to visit your blog, this is a guaranteed way to keep people away from your blog.  In a sense, it is a way of hijacking our blog and our readers, and this is not acceptable.  And our readers are the type that would never visit the blog of someone that posted such things, so it's actually counter-productive.  

The best way to get someone to visit your blog is to make comments that add value to the discussion... this generates interest in the author of the comment and what else they might have to say.  One way we have attracted new readers is by posting interesting comments on other blogs that pertain to the subject matter.  This communicates respect to both the author of the blog and to their readers.

These "Visit my blog" comments are unrequested and unwanted (read: SPAM) that I end up deleting each time.  Please refrain from commenting on this blog again unless you have an actual comment that adds value to the discussion...

If you desire to create an audience, you have to give them a reason to visit your blog (great content), and generate traffic based on personal relationships and thought-provoking comments on other blogs.  Seth Godin has some great thoughts about this on his Blog.  In one post he writes, "Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk."  Absolutely true!

Write it out yourself!

Deuteronomy 17:18 NCV

Here God commands the Israelite kings to write out a copy of His teachings for themselves.  I wonder how many of the kings actually did it.  It would have been much easier to have someone else do it... or just not do it at all.

This is yet another practical way that God gives us to help keep our hearts close to Him: take a verse or passage of Scripture that means something to you and write it down.  Then keep it with you and look at it throughout the day.

Or you could do what my wife did... she just wrote it out and taped it to her mirror.  One time she even wrote "NO COMPROMISE" on her bathroom mirror in lipstick.

Whatever it takes, we have to get these principles down into our hearts so we can serve God and live the life He has planned for us.

Still amazed!

Easter Weekend at Watermark

I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that we saw 43 people make a commitment to give their lives to Christ on Easter weekend.  AMAZING!!!  It's even more amazing when you think about the fact that this is more "salvations" than most European churches experience in their entire existence.  That brings the grand total of new believers since we started our church six months ago to 54!!!

The Saturday before Easter we had an Easter Egg Hunt (normal in America, but not in Germany) with 3500 eggs!  Before the kids got started we had a little program for the kids, complete with "The Story of Hearts" by our friend Geni Brooks.  It is incredibly effective at presenting the Gospel message to kids.  At the end of the program 35 kids and 5 adults raised their hands and prayed with me to commit their hearts to Christ!

Our Easter service was a home run!  One young lady gave her heart to Christ.  Then we had an Easter Fair with 20 booths, prizes and an evangelistic clown (who shared the Gospel story as she made balloons).  She prayed with two more boys... what an awesome weekend!

None of this would have been possible if it hadn't been for our amazing team and our generous partners!  We appreciate all of you more than you know!  Now more than ever we see how fruitful a missional church for the unchurched can be.  Of course all of this takes finances... if you would like to be a part of helping reach Freiburg, Germany - a city of a quarter million people with less than 1% Born Again believers - you can click on this link to go to our secure PayPal donation page: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=NFCSJ9JSG58E4

Spring

Spring is my favorite time of year.  Winter is usually cold and dark in Germany.  The days are extremely short and dark.  But, in Spring and Summer, the scenery is so beautiful in the Black Forest, and this part of the country is known to be the sunniest (and therefore, the friendliest) part of Germany.  

The reason that this is my favorite season is not only the weather and flowers, but Easter! Jesus’ birth is celebrated at Christmas.  It’s a wonderful time that I feel we have really turned into something other than a celebration of Jesus.   But, Easter….it’s a celebration of just Him and what he did on the cross for us!  Not only did Jesus live a perfect life day after day, year after year, but after 33 years of this perfect life….he gave it up for us!  At Easter, he paid the ultimate price.  God paid the ultimate price for us, the riff raff of society. 

Jesus was beaten beyond recognition of even looking like a man- so we could have healthy bodies.  His blood that poured out at the cross was to make sure that we could be forgiven….that we could experience the unbelievable joy of being in the very presence of His father!  Jesus knew that if he sacrificed himself for us, that it would produce a harvest of believers that would span the course of time.  

On Easter, we celebrate when Jesus rose from the grave.  When he rose, he gave us hope!  I LOVE THIS SEASON!  It makes me cry every time I think of Jesus’ sacrifice and the joy in His resurrection!  He layed down everything for us…so that we could enjoy everything that God had given to Him!  That’s what the season means for me.  

People are so open to the things of God at Christmas and Easter.  Let’s tell everyone we know!   

Robin

Watermark Easter

We are going to have a huge Easter egg hunt and festival (carnival) for the at-risk kids in our neighborhood this Easter.  We are going to tell them about what Jesus did for them through eggs, juggling, carnival booths, clowns and balloons. Our church is in the middle of what we would call "the projects".  There are so many cultures represented in this area because of the large immigrant population. I can't wait to see what God will do with this outreach!

Free Bible Study Discussion Guides!

A few years ago Robin and I wrote a series of Bible Study Discussion Guides for a local church in Bonn, Germany.  The small group program at this church had become basically teaching groups (old school Bible studies).

In an effort to revitalize the small group program, we started writing our own curriculum, which was translated into German.  The purpose of these Discussion Guides is to both build relationships and learn spiritual principles.  The result was better than we expected!

We have an entire year’s worth of weekly Small Group lessons (52 lessons) in 4 main themes (including 26 lessons on Spiritual Disciplines). And we want to give them away for free.

Click on this link to download the free Discussion Guides (zip file): Small Group Discussion Guides (English)

The inner voice

Last Sunday Robin lost her keys at the church building.  This is very bad because we have our vehicle, house and building keys on the same keychain.  We did a search of the building before we left to try to find them… no good.
Then I went back a couple more times during the week to look… still nothing.  I even did a thorough search of the building and grounds (even places Robin wouldn’t have gone)… STILL nothing!  All the while, we were praying and asking God to show us where they were.
We concluded that someone must have either stolen them or taken them accidentally.  But when we asked our team, no one had them.  NOW WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
Last Sunday when I was first looking, I had this random thought to go through the trash and look for the keys.  But no one wants to do that… that’s just nasty!  If I felt this about looking under the refrigerator, or going through the kids room toys or something like that, no problem.  But going through the trash?  No thanks!
Robin often puts her keys on the coffee table in the church (while we’re cleaning up after the service), and there is a trash can at the end of the table with an open top.  At the end of the service we just wrap up the trash bag and toss it in the container.
It’s my son’s job to take the trash bags to the container and to put the container out on the curb for trash pickup on Monday morning.  Last Sunday he took the trash out to the container, but he forgot to take the container out to the curb.  I ended up having to buy two special garbage bags from the city to put the trash in so we would have room for this weeks’ trash.  I was pretty frustrated… such is life with a teenager in the house :-)
I still had this nagging thought to go through the trash (which wasn’t taken away last weekend) and look for the keys.  I was ready to give up looking last night when this thought came to me again… this time very strongly.
I went out and dug through the trash (YUCK!)… still nothing.  Then in the last trash bag I didn’t find anything.  But I felt I should just shake it up a bit more and feel around the bottom of the bag to see if I could feel anything even remotely resembling keys.  To my surprise (and joy), there they were!  They must have fallen off the table into the trash and no one noticed.
It was the Holy Spirit all the time trying to get my attention.  If I had just obeyed that voice the first time, it wouldn’t have been so time consuming or gross.  And by showing us where they were He saved us hundreds of Euros (car keys are expensive to replace because of the chip inside them).
We have to get better at hearing and obeying this “voice.”  God wants to lead and direct us, but we have to be open to the different ways He uses to accomplish this.
When you don’t know what to do, the best answer is to just get quiet and pray.  God is always speaking.  He wants to reveal Himself to us, and to answer our questions, whether it’s for lost keys or something much more important.  But we have to be in a position to hear.