Why do I hear sheep and cows?

God has given us multiple opportunities to share with people at churches and small groups lately. This past Saturday I got to share at our contemporary worship service at our church. I shared a message from 1 Samuel 15 that God has used in my life to challenge me. I have shared before that God has really shown me that obedience is the key to pleasing God and not sacrifice.

In the passage in 1 Samuel, God told Saul to completely destroy the Amelekites. Saul spared the King and allowed the soldiers to bring back the best sheep and cattle. When Samuel asks Saul why he could hear sheep and cattle, Saul claims they just brought them back to sacrifice them to God. Samuel explains that God said to destroy them and not bring them back. God wanted the obedience not the evidence of disobedience to become the objects of sacrifice.

It is the same way in our lives. God tells us to do something and we end up doing almost what God wants us to do and then claiming to have been obedient. The very things that we are doing, that we call a "sacrifice" of service to God are actual the evidence of our disobedience.

If God tells you to go on a mission trip, giving the money for someone else to go is disobedient and not pleasing to God.

If God is calling you into the ministry as a pastor or other full time minister, then teaching Sunday School, and being a deacon, or working with the youth- those are all evidence of disobedience and not pleasing to God. No matter how "good" the acts are on their own, if it is not what God led you to do...it is disobedience and not pleasing to God.

Those very acts become the sheep and cattle lowing and bleeting in the background of lives drowning out our prayers and deminishing the effectiveness of our testimony because it is not what God has planned for us.

Don't settle for less than God's perfect plan. Give it all to God and experience the fullness He has for your life.

If this entry seems redundant from previous ones, it is because this is where God has me right now. It is the point of liberation for me and my family and I want it to be for you as well.

Check out the video of Logan and Philip in California. We are getting things ready for the move. We can almost smell the burning trash and fried plantains as we speak!

Kerry

Sweet Time of Waiting

Have you ever been in an airplane that was ready to land but the airport was not ready. They send you into a "holding pattern" which means you fly around and around in circles until the ones in charge are ready for you to land. That is NOT where we are. In that case you are usually tired from the trip and restless from the flight and just ready to get off the plane. We are just the opposite. We are sitting on the runway waiting for the tower to give us the go ahead to take off. We are anxiously in our seats waiting for the trip and the destination that lies ahead.

We have seen so many answers to prayers since our last email.

We asked for prayer for the boys adoptions and things seem right on the edge of being completed.

We asked for prayer for the clinic and everything- that very day a doctor offered a lane of equipment that we might be able to get and use if it is what we are looking for. We were also told about a shipment of glasses lenses that may be available that would give us THOUSANDS of pairs of glasses lenses free of charge to use to make glasses.

The money was made available through some unforeseen profit from our business to buy our solar panel equipment and begin that process.

We still don't see the answer to prayers about the house selling or the other things we are praying about but that does not mean they have not been answered or in the process of being answered.

We truly believe BY FAITH that they are being answered. We may not can see the answer yet but 2 Corinthians 5:7 says we are to "walk by faith and not by sight". So I do not have to see the answer to believe it has been answered. Faith is believing it is so, when it's not so, because God said so. Good enough for me.

Logan and Philip are doing good in California. Pray for Logan, he is homesick. He has 6 more weeks in California and then they have the chance to go on a 2 month foreign mission trip. Right now Logan feels he doesn't want to be away another two months. We would love for him to go because we know God could really continue a great work in his life on the foreign field. But we trust that the Lord is in charge. Just keep him in your prayers.

We thank everyone for the commitments to pray. It really does make a difference and your faithfulness really builds our faith. Thank you - really! We do cherish each and everyone of you that have chosen to partner with us in this adventure in faith.