The Past Month

Well here goes my attempt at catching up on my ravings over the past month. It has been crazy to say the least. The best way I can describe how things have gone down over the last four weeks is that I have not run or had a home cooked meal in that time frame. It has been nuts and Becky asked me Sunday on the way to church if this week was gonna be normal. Not sure I know what normal is but here's hoping this week looks more like it than the previous four. Anyway, here is my attempt to catch up on my blog:

• We have moved into a new house and are daily reminded of God's hand and grace in our lives.
• Moving is fun. It is also stressful and exhausting especially when you do it with 3 kids under the age of 5.
• Change and lack of structure has been hard on my kids and has probably stressed them out as much as me and Becky.
• The way that Mike and Irma B. love me and my family is truly astounding!
• Becky Suiter is AMAZING!
• Moving my family and my church and traveling out of the country all in the same month was probably not the best idea.
• God has reminded my a lot in the past four weeks, "My grace is sufficient for you"!
• Missions is the key to church growth. It is not my preaching! It is obedience to God in giving and missions. God will bring the increase.
• It is a great privilege to partner with GO Ministries and with Francisco Feliz in order to provide physical and spiritual nourishment to Batey Cuchia in the Dominican Republic.
• God is presently challenging me and expanding my idea of what in means to be involved in missions. This hopefully will have great impact on our church and the Kingdom of God as a whole as Crossroads is obedient in giving and going.
• It is amazing the difference that $2,000 makes in the life of a Dominican pastor.
• It was so invigorating to meet like-minded American pastors at the GO Ministries Mission Conference. God has burdened so many for the same things that He has burdened me with.
• For all the things that Crossroads Church does wrong, we are doing most things right and God is blessing because of it.
• The timing of God is perfect!
• What is man that God is mindful of us!? The love and grace and humility of our Savior is truly unfathomable!
• We met in our new building this past Sunday with an attendance of 124! Did that really happen?!
• The two weeks leading up to Sunday in which we were trying to get everything ready was CRAZY! A BIG thanks to everyone who helped! Couldn't have done it without you all!
• Still much work to be done and am exhausted by the mere prospect of it.
• I am buying me a motorcycle! I gotta have an out and its all I could think of. If you have any other ideas, I would be more than happy to entertain them. Don't say a nap or a book. I am not that kind of guy!
• If I could pick two words two describe the past four weeks, I would pick BUSY and GRACE. I used to think that I knew what "busy" was until the past month. You take all that has been on my plate and then you throw 3 kids under 5 in the mix and "busy" has a whole new meaning! Sleep has become a luxury and I am beginning to think that is going to be the case until Mary is at least 5 or 6. Whew, we got a long way to go. I have been blown away this past month by the grace of Almighty God! In the midst of the most busy, stressful time of my life, God's amazing grace has come shining through in every facet! The house, the ministry, the new church building are all expressions of God's grace to me. He has also been teaching me so much about how to manage busyness and leadership in the process of a busy ministry and family. His grace has truly overwhelmed me as much if not more as my busyness has this past month. I am so grateful to God for the grace that flows to me through Jesus Christ my Lord! Without grace, the busyness would be empty and deadening!
• That's all for now. I will try to pick up from here as the days roll on. There has been SO much more to blog about but I don't want to bog you down or me down. So, I just hit some of the high points and will try now to start fresh as I try to get back on track with everything in my life including my blog.

Overwhelmed

I am so overwhelmed! It is crazy! I really don't have time to blog but I want to check in really fast. There is so much going on in my life right now that I didn't know doing this much was even possible. The crazy thing is that everything that is going on is all good stuff. But too much of a good thing can still overwhelm you I guess. Well, I gotta run back to the new building. We have lots of work to do before Sunday. I'll try to do a list blog on Friday about all that has been going on the last two weeks so I can catch everybody up with the ravings of a running rev. Later everyone! Keep me in your prayers!

Celebration of Ministry Partnerships Conference

I am headed back to the Dominican Republic tomorrow. This time, I am going for the GO Ministries Celebration of Ministries Conference. It is an event that GO does once every four years to celebrate all the ministry partnerships that God has put together and all the work and ministry that has gone on over the past four years. It is also an opportunity to meet everyone involved in the ministry. There are going to be 178 of us there from America, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mongolia. It will be great to meet like-minded pastors and others who are involved in the same kind of mission work that we are involved in. It will also be great to meet all of the GO staff and local pastors and missionaries who are doing the work in their home countries.

Pray for me as I go. Pray for the conference itself, that God would get great worship and glory form our meeting and our partnerships. Pray for unity and closeness amidst the awkward language barrier. It will be tough with more than 4 different cultures and languages represented. Pray that God would do a work in my heart and continue to grow my desire to lead Crossroads more toward missions everyday.

I'll be home late Saturday night and I'll see everyone on Sunday! Have a great week!

Are We Really That Different From The World?

I wanted to share a short excerpt from a Phillip Yancey book that I am reading that kinda shook me. The book is entitled Rumors of Another World. It deals with the crazy differences in this physical world that we can see, hear, taste, touch, and smell and the realities of the realm of Jesus Christ. Here is the excerpt:

"All too often, the attractions of the visible world simply overwhelm those of the invisible. Three centuries after Jesus, when the church had already spread throughout the Roman empire, John Chrysostom complained, 'We admire wealth equally with them (non-Christians), and even more. We have the same horror of death, the same dread of poverty, the same impatience of disease; we are equally fond of glory and of rule....How then can they (non-Christians) believe?'"

Our New House!

I can't believe we are really moving into our new home this weekend! It is so crazy how God has worked this out for us. I never in a million years believed that I would be living in a house like the one we are about to move into.

Here is the quick story. We had been trying to sell our house for well over a year. We presently live in 800 square feet and were expecting our third baby girl (Mary, of course, was born in January) and thought we needed something just a little bit bigger. When our house never sold and I/we got to a place of contentment with where we were, then God moved. We had just decided to take the house off the market and stay where we were and just spread out a little bit by moving me and Becky into the living room. As soon as we stopped looking for the next step and decided that God wanted us to be content with where we were, that is when He opened up the new door.

I won't go into all the details, but lets just say that the Suiters are about to move into a house beyond our wildest dreams (four bedrooms and two large bathrooms) and we don't even have to pay for it!!!!! (I'm not even kidding!) A huge "Thank You" goes out to Mike and Irma B. You guys are amazing. Thanks for your friendship, support, and love. Thanks for giving of yourselves for us and for the Kingdom of God. An even bigger "THANK YOU" goes out to Jesus! He is the giver of all good things and I want Him to get all the praise and glory for this move. Sure the Suiters get the benefit, but may all the glory for this move and this house go to Him!

Never Quit on a Monday!

Throughout my ministry, I have heard many pastors say, "Never quit on Monday!" I never understood it until recently and now it is so true with me and this rain doesn't help at all. It seems that the higher my Sundays are (and we've had some awesome Sundays recently!), the lower my Mondays are. I have so much on my plate right, I don't know what to tackle first. Anyway, I once read a Perry Noble blog about the best time to pray for your pastor. He said to always lift up your pastor on Sunday evening and all day on Monday and that is for sure. Please pray for me today as I continue to tread water today (almost literally).

Humilty

Humility is a core value of Crossroads Church. That means it is one of the main things that drives all that we do. But Crossroads Church does not have the market cornered on humility. I believe that humility is the main marking characteristic of a follower of Jesus Christ. Each and every one of us ought to be growing in humility as we are sanctified in our walks with God.

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." Philippians 2:3

If we really believed and lived just this one verse from God's Word, our whole world would change. We think we are humble but we aren't even close. If we were truly humble like Christ, people would be getting saved and needs all over the world would be met. Stress and struggles in our marriages and all of our other relationships would essentially be gone. Humility would and will revolutionize our lives for God's glory and people's benefit.

But we just can't let go! We have to hold on to all that is dear to us and we continue to walk in selfishness. I want so much to live like Christ and walk in humility. I want the people of Crossroads Church to lay their pettiness down and make humility a true value of our church. Let us move toward this. Lay yourself down today and run to Jesus and to others!

Here is another awesome quote from Theresa of Avila (1515-1582) concerning humility. "You should never deceive yourself into thinking you are living in godly humility unless His love flows out of you toward others. Here is the secret: God's love and His humility can never exist in you unless you grow in this state of detachment from everything that is of this world. As long as any created thing has power over you, you cannot 'rule' over it in the love and humility of our King."