spendyourself.org

Form my heart oh Triune God according to your Word
Form it for your purpose, form it for my good
Form it in your image, may every heart beat be
A pulse of heavenly glory, on display in me

Form my Heart oh Father, to listen and obey
To always seek your loving face, and never go astray
To trust your faithful promises, and trust in all your plans
To walk beside you faithfully and always hold your hand

Form my heart Oh Jesus, to trust in love divine
To know my sin was placed on you, and your righteousness is mine
Let your atonement change my heart to daily die for you
Make my life a sacrifice in all I say and do

Form my heart Oh Spirit, make me pure and true
Make my life shine forth a light reflecting all of you.
Deform me from this world, take out my heart of stone
And give this beating heart a rhythm that moves for you alone

Two things happened to me as I watched Katy-Grace come into this world last Sunday night…  first, I started crying as I watched my wife labor and struggle in pain as the nine month adventure came to a conclusion, and secondly, I seriously started thinking about buying a real big gun… Yes it is true… We have another daughter.  Katy-Grace Elizabeth Iverson became Newark’s newest resident March 1st, at 7:17 pm. Kimbely started having contractions sunday morning and we went to the hospital that evening. An hour after arriving and four pushes later weighing in at 7 lbs 15 ounces of pure joy Katy-Grace surprised us.  Kimberly was 99% sure baby iverson #3 was gonna be a boy and she was right about the other two… (Iverson’s like surprises)  When I saw the lack of male reproduction organs I  was blown away…”We have a baby girl!”  ”We have a baby girl!” I found myself repeating.  Kimberly just kept saying… “A girl?” Its a girl?”   Yes she is a girl and these last few days have been so joy filled as we have started to get to know this little one we have waited so long to meet.

DJ and Trinity love her and are doing a great job adjusting. My mom was able to use frequent flyer miles and come from Japan for 12 days to be with us and help during the sleepless nights and dirty diapers (Double now)  Our community has been amazing.  So many people have stepped up to run the ministry while I spend time with my family and so may people have cooked or offered to cook for us.  Mrs. Bush made me some awesome fried chicken last night because she knows how much I like my Newark Fried Chicken, there’s nothing quite like Newark soul food… we feel so loved and so supported by our community and I am very encouraged.  I feel like they are welcoming another member and more than ever feel like this mission  field has become home.  I love the way my son is growing up and the things he gets to experience here.  I am thankful in a weird sort of way for the ways he gets to see and experience the very real brokenness and effect of human selfishness around us but I love even more that he gets to see redemption break forth like the dawn and watch our community become the type of place that any parent would want to raise their kid.  My mom always said that was the hardest thing; raising your kids on the mission field. But she also said it was the best thing and I wouldn’t trade it for all the material comforts we lacked.  The beautiful light of the Gospel shines its fiercest in the darkness, and I am convinced all the more that I want my kids exposed to that light above anything else. I want them to see the hope held out in God’s promises… What hope there is indeed.  Kimberly was so terrified of the thought of having to feel the full pain of childbirth. She has a low tolerance of pain and when we entered the hospital that night and were told the baby was ready to come and there was no time for an epidural I knew she was gonna need supernatural strength.  As we prayed for strength (She squeezed the living daylight out of my hand) I saw a fierce hope burning in my wife’s eyes.  She knew her suffering was not in vain, that her labor would bring forth life, that pain would birth a new beginning.  It was that hope that gave my wife strength. It was a deeper Hope behind the physical hope. its the same hope that continues to drive us forward here in Newark as hard times keep rolling and the fruit of evil within us and around us becomes more and more apparent but less and less powerful.  I am seeing more and more the need to daily connect to Jesus and hear his promises whispered in my ear; to hope in the labor of pain he endured for my sake, to set me free from the womb of my sin that would seek to hold me captive.  1 Peter 1:23 says this: For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.”  I am wondering how much I really believe that and how much I am really hoping in it.  Experiences that Katy-Grace has given us so far this week have made this promise more real and more necessary.  We have been born again… we have been given new life that can never be stripped away no matter how broken this physical world may be.  No matter how much pain we must endure, no matter how far our economy falls, no matter how corrupt a culture can become, no matter how much people disappoint us and we disappoint ourselves and others; there is hope in the promises of God.  The new birth brings fresh life. Those promises motivate us to keep going, to keep pushing; throwing off the sin and doubt that so easily entangles and running with joy and endurance the race that God has set out before us. May we all lean and trust in His strength alone; hoping in the enduring city, the timeless promises, the glorious redemption birthed within us through Jesus Christ the LORD.

We love you all and praise our covenant God that we have so many wonderful people to share this exciting news with.

May God Bless you and keep you as you bring Him glory and bless others.

14-16In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, he brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse. 2 Cor. 2:14-16 (The Message)

Dearest friends and family,

The lingering of the curse is so evident on earth, even during Christmas. Amidst the joy of celebrating Immanuel, there is a fog of unbelief, a stench of God-hatred, and great inner darkness hidden behind the Christmas lights, cheerful songs and present giving. For instance, our thawing out Christmas turkey got stolen off of our back stoop Christmas day,  the recovering homeless alcoholic who frequents our house at least three times a day goes and returns to his vice just 20 minutes before Christmas dinner at our house, and then curses us all out at the dinner table; the homeless man living with us decides to go back to drugs and steals my father-in-law’s laptop in order to be able to purchase his next hit.  Yes, the fall is real, the desperate need for love, the desperate need to justify existence, doesn’t really go away, even during a holiday… That’s Newark, that’s where we are…. That’s our world, the planet that each of us live on.

I have never been cursed out for giving presents until now. It came as a shock as the women laid into me… F-word after F-word, right in front of my whole family.  Our extra double stroller was loaded down with presents and 5 of our youth stood next to us carrying more bags of presents as we prepared to go deliver the last batch of the 1400 presents Safe Haven was able to give out this Christmas to the community. The last two weeks had been a whirl-wind of giving, an amazing overflow of generosity from so many of the churches, schools and individuals in our network of support. I couldn’t believe how many kids and families got blessed this Christmas. Over 1400 presents given out!!!!   Three different christmas programs, serving hundreds of kids and adults, blessing them not only with presents but more importantly with the good news of Immanuel, of God with us….   I saw so many mothers, who weren’t going to be able to get their kids anything for Christmas, cry for joy as they received bags and bags of gifts. It was so beautiful… a little taste of the Kingdom….  a hint of hope for a hopeless community…  a song of joy in the midst of urban sorrow… JOY TO THE WORLD, THE LORD HAS COME…..

but not for E’s mom. E’s mom was mad because her kids were getting more presents than her. E’s mom was upset the F——-n pastor didn’t have a special gift for her with her name on it…. It broke my heart to hear her say those things, it made me angry that my kids had to hear that language, but it also opened my eyes to a reality of the human condition that so often gets forgotten in the midst of holiday hustle.  The fact that our hearts desire a present with our name on it more than we could ever know… More on this later…read on.

As most of you know, 80% of our church is kids and teens. They keep coming… keep bringing their friends….  and now seem to be bringing their parents  Ministry is exploding, God’s love net has grown bigger and more and more souls are getting caught in it. The Gospel is going forth into this community with power and is snatching these precious kids out of the fire and breaking generational curses. God is using these kids to have a high impact on their families.  A few weeks ago Nafisah, a sweet little 3rd grader who never misses anything at church and always brings her offering (she shows me each Sunday before worship), had a severe asthma attack and was in the hospital for 3 days. Her friends came to worship service telling me we needed to pray for her. We did pray for her and after service loaded up my car and went to visit her.  It was awesome… I have never seen a kid smile so big at me as I walked into her hospital room with 5 of her friends.  Her mom was amazed, and just stood there in shock as we gathered around and laid hands on her and prayed….  afterwards I had the opportunity to deeply share the Gospel with her mom and invited her to come to our church, a spiritual hospital in our community.  Another seed was planted in another parent. That seems to be the story. Mom’s and grandmas are starting to show up on Sunday morning, they are hearing the Gospel message, and it is moving them into the Kingdom as it moves us.

We are finally becoming the family community Church my grandfather envisioned when he first walked into this building 5 years ago and replanted this church.  Out of the 90 or so that came to worship last Sunday, only 8 drove here… God is working.  It is awesome to participate in what He is doing, and even though it is hard, very hard sometimes, we love it and feel privileged to be here and engage the enemy in this war. My heart continues to echo what I tell teams that come through and help serve here. “Newark does more for me than I could ever do for Newark.”

That is the point of this email, not to just give a ministry report or try and raise the funds we need to continue in 2008, but to give each person actually reading this a hint of the amazing joy and sanctifying power held out in the gospel and manifested so clearly through the Christmas story.  I have been thinking a lot about E’s mom this morning. its 4:30 am and I haven’t been able to sleep.  I keep envisioning her face filled with anger, her lips moving quicker than the curses she was saying….  ”Why do you only give presents to the kids, what about me, where’s my present, why don’t you have one for me?” She has 5 kids, She’s 27, no husband, no love, all her kids are in gangs, (the oldest is 16).  Later that night (Christmas eve) as I was walking in my front door I saw her lingering on the corner. I called out to her and she ignored me, but I kept calling her name, asking her why she was so mad, telling her I wanted to talk about it.  Suddenly we were face to face again, but this time it wasn’t an angry face I saw… it was a face full of sorrow… She apologized for her hard words earlier… she explained what she was feeling, how hard her life was, how much she hated it. I explained that I would have loved to give her a present with her name on it, but that our sponsorship comes from others and the reason her son E got so many presents is because we have his name on our list that we send to people who want to sponsor our program.  I told her we wanted her to become part of our family, because in our family everyone gets presents with their name on it.  It was a great pathway into the gospel and as she cried and I shared about the greatest present of all, as I shared about Jesus, the gospel amazed me once again…

Oh how my heart is like that of E’s mom.  I want the benefits of the Father, but don’t want the Father.  I want the benefits of the cross but don’t want to surrender my life and take up my cross. I want a present with my name on it, but don’t want to surrender my name to the book of life, don’t want to give it to God.  And when I don’t get as much as others, when my life doesn’t go the way I want it to, I curse God, and so quickly turn away and forget what He has done.

Every Christmas we all curse God out in our obsession over ourselves… and this is happening not just at Christmas.  How quick our hearts are to think that God owes us, that He is our own personal lottery and that he exists for us and to satisfy our addiction to ourselves. Why do we do this?  Why do we curse the very giver of life by living so selfishly, so materialistically, so obsessed with stuff, with positions, with success, with security…..  Why are we so afraid to enlist in the family of God and walk the pathway this little baby born in a manger walked so willingly in order to save us.  Why is my heart not more moved by the Christmas story? Why do I forget what it is really about? Mornings like these I feel such conviction in my heart. Moments of ministry to people like E’s mom are actually moments when the gospel is being actualized in my heart, where it is becoming more and more a reality, a consuming love-force that drives my innermost into a state of worship and amazement, of utter astonishment at the pure grace and truth knit together in human form in the person of Jesus.  Immanuel, God with us, God with skin on, God becoming poor, God dying in our place, God sacrificing Himself so that our name might be on His list….  If that isn’t good news, a sweet aroma, a beautiful song…. then I don’t know what else is… If that can’t motivate us to love Him with our heart, soul mind and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves, then what else can…?  What else can…?

May your heart dear friend be filled with the joy of this message as we enter into 2008. May all of our hearts drink deeply from this fountain and may we all actualize and hope all the more in the the promised blessing held out in the Gospel,  that we might be a blessing to others and a sweet aroma, rising to God, for His Glory and for the joy of the nations…

For the King and the Kingdom,

Danny and the Safe Haven Crew

Attached to this email is an end of year appeal letter to help us raise the support we need to continue this vital ministry into 2008.  Please take the time to read and pray about becoming a Safe Haven Supporter if you are not already.  Please pass this email and letter on to others, we are at a point in the ministry where our support base must grow. We need more prayer and a larger network of people committed to partnering with us and giving financially toward reaching these kids and their families

Visit us on the web

Iverson Family site - http://www.fromscarlet.com

Safe Haven Site - http://www.newarksafehaven.com

ONLINE DONATIONS

Danny’s cell: 862-215-2940, email: fromscarlet@mac.com

Kimberly’s Cell: 862-452-8688, email: flawedbutforgiven@yahoo.com

Address (Our home and office)

483 Ferry Street

Newark, NJ 07105

Dear Family and Friends,

You’ll soon be receiving our Christmas email update written by Danny, so for this Christmas letter you’ll simply be receiving the ponderings of a mother’s heart.

As I reflect on this past year, nothing brings me greater earthly joy than thoughts of my family.  Danny has such an enthusiastic love and playfulness toward his children, and a way of cherishing and supporting their mother so that she can excel in serving them. Daniel Josiah, a vibrant, perceptive little boy who loves life, and play, and his “Da Da”, “Ma Ma” and “Thhsths” ( “Trinity”-all his unpronounceable words, end up sounding like this).  He loves playing wrestling with his own built-in “ooohhh”  “uuuh” sound effects and over dramatize motions of being thrown to the floor, as well as reading (MANY) books, helping mommy cook and clean, getting whisked off with Daddy to “work” in the youth center, and hanging out with “Brrr” one of the guys who lives with us.  Miss Trinity Kathleen is the sweetest, most darling girl to behold.  She willingly flashes a huge, dimpled grin to anyone who comes up to talk to her. She has a lot to say back, as she coo’s and makes delightful noises in response.

Being a stay at home mom not only allows me to spend all day enjoying and training and molding my own children, but I also get to work alongside Danny as he works out of our home.  Proverbs says “the wise woman builds her home” and this is the high calling the Lord has put on my life, as a wife and mother.  As I prayerfully seek the Lord’s strength, wisdom, and creativity to do so, our home becomes a “character molding center” not only for our immediate family, but for all who are welcomed into it as part of our life and ministry. As we pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done”, our desire is that our family and home would be a place of that Kingdom coming for the world, and more immediately, our community, to see blood-bought sinners, dwelling together in covenant unity, and love, often falling, but ever rising again by the strength of our Lord. As we ‘work” on our home life, we provide something not just for ourselves but something our neighborhood kids long for and need to see, as well.

In October, the local high school had open house for parents and guardians.  We planned to attend to see how “our” two boys, Vernard (17)and Brian (18), were doing.  News got out, as we got ready to go , several more teens stopped by so that they could go with us.  We ended up having to take two different cars and had many more teacher conferences than expected, as each teen wanted us to go in and check with their teacher so that we could hear a report on them…even if they weren’t expecting a good one. We had a great night with the teens, with our little kids, and with the teachers, but at the same time my heart was so sad.  It was touching that these youth were so eager to have us, their “surrogate” parents, talk with their teachers, notice their progress, or encourage them where they were struggling, but I had to ask “Where are their parents and why don’t they care?”.  As we went to drop off one of the kids at the local YMCA (where his mom was staying because they had recently been evicted) I reflected on how much these kids long to be part of a family, one that cares to notice when they excel or even  when they don’t, but need encouragement, or even discipline to do so.  How thankful I am, that Danny and I are not the ultimate source of family for these youth.  Jesus Christ, Lord of Heaven and Earth, came to be born into a frail earthly family, so that we, and each of these teens, could be born into a heavenly, eternal Family.  The family of the Dad who dies for his children, instead of abandoning them; the Father who lovingly disciplines, instead of ignoring them out of apathy and selfishness, the Brother who seeks to share all the inheritance of heaven, instead of the mother who would rather buy cigarettes or stuff than provide for her child.  What a stark contrast.  What a glorious hope. This is what Christmas is about. A Savior born.  A hope fulfilled.  A family created.

Let earth receive her king.

“Yet to all who receive him, to those

who believe in His name, he gave the right to become children of God”

John 1:12

An adopted Child of the King,

Kimberly (and the Iversons)

P.S.  If you are currently not on our email update list, please send us an email and we’d love to add you.    fromscarlet@mac.com

www.fromscarlet.com

In moments when your life comes really close to ending God seems to pull things afresh into perspective and gives you a deeper sense of His glory and purpose for your life. Last week there was a shooting in the nearby projects and a bullet missed my head by 2 feet.  It was a close one and Kimberly and I are praising God that our kids still have a father. Here’s the whole story. Last week I was going into the nearby projects to pray with  someone from our church and I was standing in front of our van when a fight broke out about thirty feet away on the corner.  All of the sudden I looked up and one of the guys had pulled out a handgun and began shooting.  His target was running right towards me and bullets were flying.  Fortunately (Not for my van) the gangster firing missed his target and my head. I took a nice pic of the bullet hole, kind of a reminder of God’s faithfulness. Man, it is good to be alive. Man, we need God’s grace in this place. Stuff like this happens all the time in our community and it has to stop.  The anger, violence, and disregard for human life is crazy and reveals how much our fallen world need a Savior. Since the accident many supporters of our ministry have been asking if we are going to leave… We have asked that questions to ourselves and God seems to be giving us a definite answer. How could we? There is already so little light in this dark corner of our country, and there is already so few who are here fighting this war for the hearts, souls, and minds of these inner city kids who grow up seeing this evil first hand. How can we leave?  When we came here and felt the call we knew it would be hard and we had to be willing to give our lives in every sense of the word so that the hearts of these people may be changed by God’s grace. That calling has been confirmed all the more through this adventure and Kimberly and I see that God has His hand even in this and we feel more protected than ever since we are  in the center of His will.  We also feel that the enemy of our souls really does not want us here and is doing everything He can to try and discourage us.  God has been using Safe Haven in mighty ways to bring kids and teens to Himself and there is definitely a war going on.  I feel we are right on the edge of a huge break through and that this ministry has all the potential to explode and be used by God to redirect the course of hundreds, thousands, of urban kid’s lives.  This email isn’t just a praise report, but a call to each of you to join with us in this battle by praying for us.  Oh, how we need your prayers.  The war rages all around us and we need strength. We are reminded that the Lord is a Shield about us and our Glory, the Lifter of our head. He is sovereign and in control and it is such a joy for us to participate in this part of building His Kingdom.

This past weekend 16 guys, our Urban warrior group (pic Below) went to Battlecry and saw God do some powerful things. On the way home, one of the guys I disciple who has been highly recruited by the gangs said “If I hadn’t met you I would either be dead or in jail. I thank you for that.”  We continued to talk about life, and His faith and the many struggles he faces in trying to live for Christ in the project he lives in.  He opened up, I got to see really deep into his heart and got to see the work the Holy Spirit was doing in Him.  I realized that I would dodge a thousand more bullets in the name of Christ just for that experience. My heart rejoices at the work the Lord is doing and the countless other stories of redemption happening in the midst of this spiritual wasteland that the church as a whole has abandoned.  What a glorious Kingdom we labour for and what a blessing it is to be able to participate in planting Gospel seeds in the hearts of these precious kids.

A Call for help!

One of the girls that Kimberly has invested in is named Kanniyah. She is a precious second grader who is growing so much in her faith and really excelling in school too.  It has been awesome to see her grow and her whole family (minus the dad) join our church this past Easter. They have been coming faithfully for 2 years now and Mrs. Dent has brought all those kids all on her own with only a stroller. This family is experiencing some serious hardships and testing right now and we want to try and help them as much as we can.  There are five kids in the home, 4 of them under the age of 4. (She just had another baby a few months ago)  Her husband got sent to jail last month and she has just been dropped from welfare. They have nothing and no one to turn to besides the body of Christ. As you know, Trinity our church is a mission church and extremely poor. We are doing everything we can to help her but we fall short in meeting many of the financial needs she is facing such as paying her rent.  We want to show her that the body of Christ is there for her and we are asking if you would pray about giving towards our deacon’s fund to help The Dent family during this difficult time.  Please do pray about it. Even if everyone on this email list just gave $20 we would be able to pay her rent for the next two months while we try and find other ways she can generate an income.  I am working on trying to get her a job and she has found someone who will babysit so she can work. It is very tough in this area to find work so please pray for that as well.  If you would like to help please send a check to 483 Ferry Street, Newark NJ 07105 made payable to Trinity Reformed Church (write “The Dent Family” in the memo) If you would like to write a note or a Bible verse to encourage them that would be great as well.  Mrs. Dent is really trusting the Lord and we are amazed at the faith she has even despite her hard circumstances.  She is trying so hard and as our sister we feel strongly that it is the job of the body Christ to help bring her up and meet the many physical needs of her family. It is our job, as the church, even more so than the stupid godless man-made welfare system. We are asking you to rise to this challenge with us and help in any way you can through your prayers and giving.

May God Bless each of you as you seek His face daily,

For the King and the Kingdom

(Continued from yesterday)

The wages of sin is indeed death.  That is what our sin stores up for us.  When we sin we are borrowing from hell while on earth, that is, we are living outside of fellowship with a Holy God. In our sin we have absolutely no fellowship with Holy God. From birth, no, in fact, from conception our souls are fallen and naturally disinclined to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. The default mode of our sinful hearts is to try and make ourselves God and to put ourselves above our neighbors at any cost. The infinite sinful capability of the human heart means that we have an infinite balance that we owe hell. God created a debt collector named death who bears His wrath upon us for our disobedience. Death is the collector, the one who lays claim on our souls. Because of the fall, we are born with a debt that has compound interest, a debt that has been passed on to every generation and is ever increasing. Just one millisecond of not loving God with our heart, soul mind and strength disqualifies us from heaven and puts us in debt to death. We our born into a fallen world where we are incapable in ourselves to even love God for a millisecond with our heart, soul, mind and strength.  All the laws that follow the greatest commandment just put us in more debt cause we can’t keep them from the heart. In the end, death and hell has claim on our lives because we can’t pay them back. We are completely bankrupt and in such eternal debt that all we can do is give ourselves over as eternal slaves to death and hell.

But the aggressive grace of our savior is shown at the cross, where in an instant all sin debt to death for the children of God was paid in full.  The balance in Hell’s ledger was completely wiped clean. The wrath of God stored up for sinful man in hell and by death was completely satisfied.

The light of Christ bears with it the fullness of God’s wrath and the fullness of His mercy.  As that light of God’s Love shines into our hearts, or as Romans 5:5 says, is poured into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit (Galatians 4:6) it shows us that our sin was placed on another and that His righteousness is placed on us. It shows us that even the darkest sins of our heart, the ones we know about and the ones that we don’t even know about; the ones we have said we are sorry for, and the ones we have yet to repent of or haven’t even actualized, were placed on Christ.

He infinitely bore the punishment for every sin that could ever overflow from our infinitely sinful hearts. His sacrifice and death on the cross completely paid the debt we owed to death.

This is good news for sinners such as me. It is joy inflicting news for the person like the tax collector in Luke 18 who comes before God begging for mercy.  For those that ignore the letters from the collection agency, those that can’t and won’t admit that they are in debt to hell and that their lives will be claimed by eternal spiritual death; for them the gospel is foolishness and a waste of time.

(Ok, more on his thought. I still feel it isn’t complete all the way. I’ll blog some more next week on this same passage.

Been studying John 15 and am learning a lot.  How I want to abide more in Christ.

“4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. 9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:4-11).

It is impossible for me to accomplish anything when I am doing it apart from being connected to Christ.  I automatically think that the primary goal of the branch according to this text is to bear fruit. But when you look really closely you se that the focus of the branch can not be to bear fruit. If that is the focus then the branch will fail miserably. The primary goal of the branch needs to be to just live. The primary goal of the Vine is to bring the life to the branches.  The primary purpose of a grape vine being planted in the first place is to bear fruit for the Gardner or planter of the vine.  God’s purpose is to bring forth fruit for His glory. Jesus said he was there to do His father’s will; to become the life bearing power for all those branches that were to be connected to him.  Our primary purpose as branches is just to live.  If we focus on bearing the fruit and not abiding in the vine that brings us life, our fruit has no life to it.  It is plastic and worthless.  If it isn’t fruit that comes from abiding in Christ, then it isn’t fruit at all.

When we are in Him we will bear fruit.  The primary goal of the gospel in our lives is not to bear fruit but to remain connected to the true life in order to live. When we are connected to Him we have life and we will bear real fruit that will last. It means being satisfied and delighting completely in Him. He is the only source of life and joy. He alone brings strength and hope.  He alone encourages my heart and brings me fullness of life.

When we are abiding in the vine we display the fruit of the spirit. Genuine, Christ-glorifying, joyful obedience to God. When we abide in the vine and are in Christ  we are empowered to bear His fruit.  Our righteousness flows from Him, and it is in Him that we begin to display the fruit of who we already are in Him.

Good quotes about this passage

Charles Spurgeon:

“We are plainly taught in the Word of God that as many as have believed are one with Christ: they are married to him, there is a conjugal union based upon mutual affection. The union is closer still, for there is a vital union between Christ and his saints. They are in him as the branches are in the vine; they are members of the body of which he is the head. They are one with Jesus in such a true and real sense that with him they died, with him they have been buried, with him they are raised; with him they are raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places. There is an indissoluble union between Christ and all his people: I in them and they in me.

“Thus the union may be described: “Christ is in his people the hope of glory, and they are dead and their life is hid with Christ in God. This is a union of the most wonderful kind, which figures may faintly set forth, but which it is impossible for language completely to explain.

Oneness to Jesus is one of the fat things full of marrow. For if it be so, indeed, that we are one with Christ, then because he lives we must live also; because he was justified by his resurrection, we also are justified in him; because he is rewarded and forever sits down at his Father’s right hand, we also have obtained the inheritance in him and by faith grasp it now and enjoy its earnest.”

I am seeing more than ever that the Church of Jesus Christ is indeed a family.  It is a family that is under the Lordship of a powerful Father, and a family that will love and even die for each other.  On Sunday October 1st, one of our family members here at Trinity Reformed Church went home to be with Dad. Her name was Laura Rieger. A mother, a wife, a friend and a servant to the Most High God.  She was like a second mom to me, and it wasn’t just because she fed me all the time before I got married to Kimberly.  No, she was the type of woman who could not help but show motherly love, and the type of woman who you always felt safe around.  Yes, there are times when family feuds happen in our church, just like in the home. And sometimes mothers always have to be right, but in the end they just love you, even if you don’t always agree with them.  Laura has three precious children, Meagan (11) Anthony (15), and AJ (20). She loves those kids so much, and as she grew closer and closer to Jesus I got the privilege of watching the love increase exponentially.  They are going to miss her a lot. So is her husband John.  God used Laura so much to bring John to Jesus, and now John is a deacon in the church and a powerful man of faith.  I love that guy so much. Its hard for him right now, but He is trusting the plan of God and knows that his Father in Heaven writes the best stories. Why God called Laura home, I don’t know. I have been wrestling with it a lot in my mind and have been thinking all kinds of thoughts. In my heart I have this strange confidence that she is full of eternal joy and truly worshipping God with none of the barriers that this world always put in the way.  Her sicknesses and pain that she always suffered from, I know now are gone. I think the thing I am most happy about is that Laura gets to see the end of the story.  She was a part of it and now her role in it is complete, and she has seen the end and the full measure of the Glory of God in the story of redemption here on earth. I must say that I envy her.  This morning after breakfast I lay down with my son on my chest to help him fall asleep, and I got a picture in my mind of her hugging me. She was a wonderful hugger, and anytime I saw her and didn’t go up to her and give her a hug I got a scolding.  Well, in this day dream I got one last hug from Laura, and it was a special one.  It felt like she was right there. God I miss her.

I love being a dad. it is one of the greatest things next to be married to the most amazing woman in the world.  Daniel Josiah is such a blessing and I am so excited about this new baby due on May 8th. yes, that is right. God is giving us another kid.  We are so excited.  Daniel Josiah is excited too about being a big brother.  He has become a very interactive Child.  The two of us have really been connecting well. he is always so excited to see me and hang out.  We will sometimes just play together and wrestle and laugh for hours.  He is such a joy.  I am so excited for my sister Sara-Beth and her husband Eric. They just had a baby girl named Noa.  She is so cute.  You can check out her pics at http://nollmtw.blogspot.com