Thank you Lakeside

Hey everybody

Just taking a few minutes to reflect on these past few months before I head into a new chapter of my life in Montana.

Thanks. In the last few years of going out and returning from the missions field, Lakeside Community Church has been a home base for me.

The congregation has welcomed me back on several occasions and has given me opportunities where I can serve Christ with them. Upon my most recent return from bible school in Taiwan I was entrusted with the privilege to lead worship for our church. This, being my passion, has stretched and challenged me in making worship something real; to help create an atmosphere of gratitude and broken desperation for Jesus to be increased in our lives. The times we as a band shared on wednesday night practices were a spiritually rich time for me. I think we collectively learnt that worship is beyond the music aspect but goes right to our heart motivation. We can so easily sing a song on Sunday morning but never allow the message of the song to characterize our lives. I feel I, as well as the band, have really benefitted from open discussion and authentically engaging in each others lives. This open and broken atmosphere is, what I feel, makes an effective, God honouring group. Pride has a way of puffing ourselves up in our own estimation and really restricts us from seeing the brokenness of our human condition. It has been when I've really come to terms with my own bankruptcy and desperate need for God that I've found myself crying out to him with a pure heart. Paul teaches in that 'when I am weak, he is strong' and that 'his power is made perfect in weakness' yet this goes against the mentality of our culture. It's survival of the fittest! One of the greatest comforts to us is that God is not looking for perfect people who have it all together. In fact he is looking for someone WEAK enough to use so that what he DOES use us we will know for certain that this was not a product of our own smarts or ingenuity but HIS grace and power.

Thanks again. To the church who has been faithfully invested in my spiritual growth and financial support thus far in missions. I am looking forward to further partnership and expecting that God will reveal more to us as we follow his call to 'seek and save the lost'.

I hope you'll be able to follow along with me in missions as I do my best to update you on what God is teaching me.

I would also love to hear from you guys so please shoot me an email sometime!

I will try and shoot another blog out once i'm settled in to the base and show you some pictures of where I'll be living.

"Dwell in me, and I will dwell in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much fruit. However, apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:4-5

Because of Christ

-Jer