Marriage Encounter Success
July 25 – 27 was a tremendous time with pastoral couples, as we explained how to have a sound marital house. Our focus was on seven principles that cultivate a marriage that not only stays happy, but a marriage that can do what God has called that marriage to do and to become. We all need to be reminded that marriage is primarily designed to make us holy more than to make us happy. The marriages that we have had to counsel all have the same fundamental problem, they fail to take their character weaknesses to Christ in repentance and ask God to change them. Marriage is the best place where God can reveal the things in our life He wants to change and character that He needs to develop in our life. The real issue is that when the pressure of marriage reveals our secret sins, we must not blame our spouse, we must call it what it is and ask for God’s transformational power in our lives. As a follow up to the marriage encounter we will be leading a group of about 12 couples and teaching them to become marriage mentors for their church.
This Saturday I start discipling four men who have agreed to help me develop a discipleship track that helps believers become missional within their own city. This idea was born out of a class that I took in seminary with Dr. Mark Hausfeld. Dr. Hausfeld has a tremendous heart for the cities of the world and has ministered in several cities very successfully. Something was imparted in me as I sat under his mentoring and let him share with us the burden and call of God that he has in his heart for inner cities. I am excited about developing this kind of training because I know that it will change my heart and that it will be a thrilling because it will change us and we will see it develop into a training track that can be used throughout all of Southeast Asia. As the course develops I will blog about it and invite your input for each lesson and experience.
In two days our youngest son Gabriel and his wife Dawn and our precious little granddaughter Sailor will be with us. Of all of the things that we have had to leave behind in the USA, that we miss the most, it has been our family. We miss all of our sons and daughter-in-laws and those wonderful grandchildren. Having some of them here with us is very special.
