TAK Article: Living

TAK Article: Living

It is good to be back in the Netherlands again!

There have been many good things that have happened to us in the last two months, though, I promise I will not share all about them right now. Today, on Valentine’s day, my wife and I are celebrating our three-year relationship anniversary! As of today my wife and I will have been in a relationship for three years!

While the last two months may be quite outstanding with things to share the last three years have been even greater!

During these three years we’ve been able to learn how to live out our lives together in a way that brings glory to God and shares His love with those around us. After all, that is what we do.

Love God and Love Others

What do the greatest commands of the law mean to you?

When a man asked Jesus what was the greatest command was in the entire law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy of the Bible) He replied that it was to love God through everything that we aspire to do, everything that we think about, everything that we are, and everything that we actually do – as well as showing love to our neighbors as we would wish to be loved.

What do these commands mean to you? Are they on your mind? Do you think about them before you act?

As followers of Jesus Christ we are all called to expand His kingdom. There are no safe zones in our hearts where we may hide from God or off-limit places in the world where His kingdom and His law (the greatest commandments of the law) will not go.

How do we wish to do that? Where do we want to go?

It is far too easy for us to become entangled in cares of this life that do not matter; also, if they are cares that do matter, we spend too much time worrying about them. Everything that we need we can trust God to give us.

I want to see this happen through discipleship.

Over the next while my wife and I will be settling down in Cascade, Idaho. We finally have our visa, which God has made possible in perfect timing, and we can now move back into our apartment. That said, I’m no longer only looking forward to a place to settle down anymore. I don’t care for it and I pray that my heart would not grow overly fond of any comfortable apartment. My heart is fond of Jesus Christ and I wish to turn as many hearts to Him as possible!

Cascade is a good place to do this, I know the language of everybody there for a change and I have a place to live where I can invite people over for dinner with my family. Yes, that may not seem like much, but I am a follower Jesus Christ – He will provide me with anything else I need.

I want to talk with people, I want to encourage friends, I want to meet in groups, I want to discuss the Bible and Jesus’ life, I want to gather around food, etc…

Throughout our history these are the things that God has used to change people from who they were to who God desires them to be – to sum it up, this is living out discipleship with Jesus and others.

We need to realize that the greatest medium of God’s grace is our lives.

Every aspect of our lives is another way in which God can reach somebody who does not know Him yet! Further than that, every aspect of our lives is another way we can encourage each other to love God even more!

Valentine’s Day

Today, many people are celebrating the emotion or feeling of love – I admit that I know very little about this specific holiday, but for my wife and I it reminds us of the day that we began our relationship. It was a very special day for us.

We committed ourselves to love each other and seek out marriage together.

Three years later we are married and have a beautiful little son that is walking around and threatening to tear apart the entire house!

That process has taken a lot of God’s grace and committed love from both of us as well. It is the same way when we consider our relationship with God – He will give us the grace that we need to become the son or daughter that He desires us to be and we need to commit ourselves to loving Him. We do this with our entire lives.

I pray that each of us would reach out to others with our entire lives as well!

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom

Het Koningsfeest

As close as I can tell, that would mean “The King’s Party” in English.

I really was rather uninvolved with this whole thing, but I did have my parts here and there: mostly pushing my wife and her ideas out into the open a little bit at a time. It all started back a few weeks ago while we were visiting the C3 Church in Enschede, the Netherlands.

We were standing around after the service and wondering who we should talk to next. We had already met a Dutch missionary to Indonesia and learned some more of what YWAM was doing there. Still, we were a little bit hesitant to strike up a conversation, but someone else was a little bolder than us. One of the ladies turned and introduced herself, her name was Dorien and soon we found that she was a YWAMer too! She was the leader of the Bible study group leaders for the Navigators student association in Enschede.

Before long she asked what we were doing and I shared about my work with Mission Adventures. I also mentioned one of my wife’s ideas about having a dinner for the homeless people around Enschede. Dorien was very excited about this and said that her group in the student association wanted to do something like that too.

Within a few minutes the idea sprouted into a plan, together it was possible for the three of us to have a date, a building, and helpers for the night.

There was a lot of work to be done before the night was pulled off though. As soon as we arrived home my wife started looking into all the places where homeless people could find food, help, and shelter in Enschede. I think it was the very next day that we grabbed a pair of bicycles and rode around the city center searching for the places we found online. We asked whether or not this was a good idea, how best to advertize for it, and if the places could help us. The responses we received were all very good. We learned of a couple new places that we hadn’t found, and everyone was willing to take up flyers when we would bring them.

It was interesting, at this point things were all rough, but they were coming together really quickly. We hadn’t even really met any of the homeless people yet and stilled referred to them as some strange community we didn’t know much about; though, that would change over the next couple weeks.

Yes, mind you, I should mention that from beginning to end this project and process only took about three weeks, plus a couple of days. It had to move quick or else it wouldn’t happen.

We were also able to meet up with Dorien again to see the building we would use for the night. It had plenty of tables, chairs, room for guests, cooking equipment and all for the right price. We also found an opportunity to have the event sponsored by the CDA in Enschede, a Christian political party. Things were looking really good!

About a week later we had made the flyers and began handing them out to the various places we had been to before. At our first stop, Humanitas, a sort of café for people to come get bread and a warm drink, we met a couple of people we would get to know better. One was a young man whose family came from Morocco. Around we went until we also got to a nicer, or more well-funded, place called Tactus, it was meant to be a place for people with drug addictions. My wife was able to talk with another person there who didn’t think he would come; he said that he used a fake heroin instead of the real drug, most of the time the Christian organization wouldn’t give him any help because of that. He was rather burned by the Church on that point.

There were a lot of ups and downs for us as we went around the city center. Sometimes my wife would feel really good about everything, and then would feel down and nervous. Throughout the day the answer was prayer. Each time we were down and needed encouragement our God was there for us.

At this point God had already pulled us out of quite a bind!

On the day that we meant to take the flyers out we heard that we wouldn’t be able to rent the building! Someone else had already got it, but Dorien was already at work figuring out an alternative plan while we took the time to pray. It felt like the sort of thing that I had felt God do before, but I think this was also the first time for my wife to really feel it with something that was hers. So, we prayed, and again God encouraged us to trust that things would go well.

After several hours we found that it did go well, better than we could have imagined it! Dorien was able to speak with the owner and instead of the lower floor we were able to get the smaller floor above our original building (which meant all of our flyers were still good), we were also able to get a charity price of €20 instead of the original €150, and soon after we heard that the CDA would give us €250 for the event! We expected to be having faith for just having the event, but God swapped up the original idea for an even better venue!

Finally, the night had arrived, several of us were finishing up the hall and setting the last tables as people started to come in. The rest had gone out to invite people from the streets, beginning their invitation with, “Do you have a place to eat tonight?”

It was really cool to see; the lights were all low in the old bar, several party light things moving now and then, and as the people came they would throw their arms out to their friends and shout greetings to one another. Dutch people, whoever they are, seem to like small places rather than big ones and they say it gives them a nice close feeling (they call it gezellig). So, of course, almost everybody crammed around the first table until enough people showed up to fill the next table and so forth.

Soon the place was filled with people from the street and people from the student association talking and having a good time. My wife and I were able to talk with the young man from Morocco again. We spent most of the night with him. We were able to serve a three-course meal of soup, beans and bread, brownies and ice cream for desserts, all followed by some coffee for anyone who wished for it.

We didn’t have any big program in the middle, though we were intending on it, but lessons for times to come, perhaps. What made it a success was that the “homeless people”, so labeled, felt like people enjoying a warm meal with other people. Nobody was turned away and afterwards we heard that they felt like they were able to be themselves. It was an open environment where we could get to know each other and make friends. For that, I would say that it felt like one of the best outreaches to people on the streets that I had ever been a part of.

Oh, to add even another blessing from God’s wisdom, the persons who rented the floor below us turned out to be a decent band. We had music right through dinner!

This morning, as I was thinking about how to write about this event and the preparations for it, I felt that God was telling me to read through the book of Philippians, found in the Bible. Chapter 2, verses 3-11, really stood out to me.

I’ll write more about that later, but you should go check it out for yourselves for now.

Thanks for reading!

In Christ,
The Abiding Kingdom