declare The Lewis Family. Campus Outreach Thailand

28Jan/090

junk drawers

We are moving out of our church's missionary house and into Sherry's mom and dad's house until we leave for Thailand. As we do this we are needing to go through absolutely everything we own and decide if we will be storing it at Sherry's mom and dad's, taking it to Thailand, giving it away, selling it, or throwing it away. Although it is not a fun process, it is very helpful seeing what we need and what we don't. Things accumulate

How often do we clean house with our hearts and souls? What do we need to store, give away, or throw out? Psalm 119:11 says,  "I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you". Are we storing God's word in our hearts to fight sin? I find it interesting that if we store His word in our hearts we will have less room for the junk, the sin. Hebrews 12:1-2 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,...".
We have the opportunity to accumulate within our hearts promises, praises, love, peace and so many other great things. But we can also accumulate bitterness, pride, selfishness, lust, hate, insecurity, greed, worry, and many other destructive things. What will we do? Will we confess our sin to God and one another and find freedom, rest, and hope? Or, will we remain weighted down with our junk that acts like treasure as it leads us only and always to despair, hopelessness, and destruction?
Let's not wait till the spring. Clean house today.
19Jan/090

It’s everywhere.

A good blog from resurgence.com

Sexual Sin is Everywhere

A 2006 report on NPR said that 80 percent of Americans are sexually active by the age of 20, and only 20 percent of women marry as virgins. Furthermore, cohabitation has increased 72 percent between 1990 and 2000, and the cohabitation rate increased ten-fold between 1960 and 2000. Fully 41 percent of Americans will cohabitate at some point during their life.

Many people who attend Mars Hill Church come with sexual sin in their distant or recent history. This includes unmarried people who have been guilty of fornication, as well as married people who have been guilty of adultery. Thankfully, Jesus died and rose to forgive such sin, thereby enabling us to put these sins to death in our own lives by His empowering grace. Furthermore, according to Scripture, one of the defenses against sexual sin is getting married (1 Corinthians 7:1–2) and having frequent and free marital intimacy so that sexual desires have a holy outlet.

Read more here.



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