Author Archives: Markus

From 700 Million to 7.2 Billion

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from 700Right now we are at a world population of about 7.2 Billion people. We also printed so far 6 Billion bibles. That means just by looking at the numbers that there should be a bible in almost every household. But we all know that this is not true. Many of us have 2 or 3 bibles and I believe some of those printed bibles have been thrown away. But lets say 2 billion people in the world have a bible, why do we still have only about 700 Million (I got this number at a recent mission conference) confessing and practicing Christians?

2 years ago I had a man come up to us in the coffee shop wanting to know more about Jesus. He was recommended by someone who saw Jesus active in our lives. That man checked me out for many weeks with hard and strange information and questions just to see if I would still love on him after knowing those things. After he was certain about that, he wanted to start a bible study with me, and eventually gave his life back to God.

You see in that story that it is not enough just to give people a bible or invite them to church, first we have to show them by the way we live, what it means to be a son or daughter of our father in Heaven. But how? Its simple, we need to follow the 2 commands Jesus has given us: Love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Keep loving a neighbor and show kindness even if all you get back is anger and hate. Keep inviting them to your home, even if you never got an invite from them. Always be generous in your love for them so they can start seeing a generous and loving father. Be real with them about your life; don’t try to make things look better as they are. It will help them to do the same with you and shows them that you don’t put yourself above them and that you don’t have to be perfect to come to God. When we start to have true relationship with people around us and live the way Jesus called us to live, I guarantee you that they want to know more about their loving father and then they want to read there bible and go to church with you. And that is the moment when the number of Christians will go up. That is the moment when we go from 700 million towards 7.2 Billion. If you think about it, that would mean each Christian has to reach 10.3 people with the good news during their life time. How many people around you don’t know the good news yet? I guarantee you, that you will find more then 10.3. So lets all work together to get the great commission done.

Hey our friend

We hope you had a wonderful week. Jen and I had an evaluation meeting to share with different leaders about the ministry and get input. It was a really good time as usual.

Please join us in Prayer for more door openings for our game night. Sadly the restaurant we used to have it at, got sold and we have to find a new spot. We will have it at our house till we find a new spot but it will be more limited on space.

Thank you for all your prayers and financial support. You are a blessing to us!!

Markus and Jen

How to have hope despite circumstances

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How to have hope despite circumstances

In 1.Corinthians 13.13 Paul talks about 3 things that will remain and one of them is hope. Since there are only 3 things, there must be a real significance in those including hope. Why is that? It is because hope helps us to keep going. Have you ever met a person that was deeply depressed and didn’t see hope, feeling hope again. It changes the perspective of that person and slowly helps them to get out of depression. So hope is really significant. But what generates hope in your life? Is it the moment when you get an increase in salary? When you find out that the worst you thought of was just something small? Is it maybe when a bill was lower than we thought it would be? There are many things in our life that can generate a moment of hope. That is good and we need those kinds of hope boosters, but reality is, that those won’t bring a lasting hope. Have you ever thought about for how long you were hopeful after an increase in salary? 1 month, maybe 2 months? But eventually you come back to square 1 with feeling hopeless because it is still not enough to cover all the old bills as well as the new ones we accumulated.

016But when we look at our father in heaven we can actually find true hope, a hope that will not go away. Think about Noah and how he saw the rainbow; that moment was such a huge sign from God for a great hope for the future and gave Noah hope. The hope of God will change our perspective and it will just fill us so much that there are no more places for hopelessness. When we lay our hope foundation in Him it will change the perspective of our life. In Jeremiah 29.11 it talks about plans God has for the lives of his people.

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

When you look at this verse you see that when we follow the plans of God for our lives they will lead us to a hope and a future. But to find that  we need to shift our focus away from the hope boosters and shift it to Him. I’m not saying with that don’t accept hope you get from a salary increase or any other thing, but don’t let this be the foundation of your hope.

Reflect back on your life and see what used to bring you hope. Asses what hope came from God and was lasting and which one was just a short term hope brought in by things. When you addressed that ask God to help you lay a true foundation of hope in your life based on Him. I promise you, it will change your perspective in life.

Hello our friend

We hope you had a week towards many restored relationships. How did the questions from last weeks blog challenge you the most? Share it with someone close to you.

Last week we were teaching in the DTS School which was wonderful. Our hope is that each one of them got a deeper understanding of His father heart for them. Pray that God will keep speaking to each one of them more intimate in the weeks to come. We also had all the normal ministry things going on and it is so great to see how God keeps on working in those. We feel blessed to have a great team of people. Keep praying for a great openness for the gospel in this season to come.

Thank you for joining us in Prayer as well as financially. You are a blessing to us!! May God bless you richly.

Have a blessed week

Markus and Jen

What is the Devil really after? Part 2

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What is the Devil really after? Part 2

Last week I explained with some stories of the bible what the devil is really after. Today I want to look at how it looks like in the modern world.

But let’s start by looking back 200 years. The world was industrialized and instead of families working together on the farm the father goes to work in the factory. Many times he gets home exhausted from the day at work and doesn’t want to really invest into his relationships. That starts breaking down respect in the children for their fathers. They don’t see them most of the time and when they see them they are exhausted and don’t want to spend time with them. But for a child it is important to get affirmation from their father to grow up with a good self-esteem. But how do they get it if Dad has a hard time to be fully there. Now that generation grows up and tries to prove every day that they are good enough. But some do it in a way that it will take them even further away from true relationship. Some People in San Francisco actually live at work and just go home for sleeping. How do you want to have relationship if you never have time? So again the enemy throws a lie into the life of the people that value comes out of what we produce. Look at today’s society, every 2nd marriage ends up in a divorce. Why? It is because the enemy is in the business of trying to destroy relationship. Today we are the most connected in the whole history of mankind, but many people don’t even know anymore to have face to face relationship. It’s easier to put something on Facebook then actually sharing with someone face to face. We start believing that we have so many relationships, but how many of those are real? How many of those people would come to your house if you need some help?

broadwayOne last one: Pornography. When you look at that 14 Billion industry, it tells you something about our society. Sex was created for marriage because of relationship and intimacy we share there. It was created as the closest intimacy we can find. But with more and more people addicted to porn it takes them away from that deep intimate relationship. It gives them something counterfeit and at the end people are feeling worse than before. I read a statistic that 93% of boys and 62% of girls are exposed to porn before they are 18! Many young people are addicted to this lie and it makes them grow up in a way to not understand what true relationship means (if you know people that are trapped in it and want to be free, this website has some great resources and help http://xxxchurch.com/ )

So when we look at sin, we see: the issue with sin is actually not sin in itself, the issue with sin is that it cracks down in relationship and starts to separate and isolate us from our Father and also from other people. We get this feeling of guilt in us and then we are afraid of God and what he will do to us when we tell him what we did. When we are isolated we are an easy target for even more of his lies and eventually for his destruction. The enemy knows that.  He destroyed his relationship with God the day he wanted to become God, and pride took him over. But instead of fixing his relationship by repenting, he chooses to take as many down with him as he can.

I hope you start seeing the picture. Relationship is the key thing that the enemy is after. Let’s all do 3 things.

  1. Let’s pray for our relationships. If we see something in our own relationships with God or people lets pray for restoration. Also let’s do that if we see something in other people’s relationships.
  2. Let’s fix our relationships. If we did something wrong lets repent if someone else did something wrong to us lets forgive. Let’s start restoring relationships.
  3. Let’s be someone who gives relationship. Let’s build relationship to people that live right around us, or people we know that don’t have any true friends. Let’s invite them into our life and into relationship. We will help them by that and destroy the plans of the enemy to isolate them.

Let’s do this together and take as many people away from Satan’s plan and bring them back to a loving father.

Hey our friend

We hope you had a great week and had a chance to think about the last blog and your relationships. We are writing those blogs to encourage and challenge all of us in the body of Christ to grow in our faith and our relationship with Him as well as our neighbor.

During our last week we had many meetings to move things forward in different areas of the ministry. We are moving into a new season with streamlining the ministry to be even more focused and effective as well as moving towards the new name. We meet with a coworker who is working on our web and presentation stuff for the ministry and things are really starting to come together. Keep praying that God gives us time in the process to get things done.

Please also keep us in your prayers since we are teaching in the DTS School this week on the father heart of God. Pray that God will really encourage and challenge the students as well as connect with His father heart in this time.

Thanks for all your Prayers.

Have a blessed week.

Markus and Jen

What is the Enemy really after Part 1

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What is the Devil really after

Question markMany times I got words of encouragement as well as prophetic words from people about the significance of the ministry we are doing and teach to others. One morning I woke up and started to totally understand why. Let me start this week to go through some situations in the bible to explain.

When God created us, He created us for relationship with Him and other people. When the devil came to Adam and Eve and tempted them with the fruit, what was his intend? He wanted Adam and Eve to be removed from the garden, but way more important, he wanted to put a crack into the relationship between them and also between them and God. Then the next one is Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel cause of jealousy. He was jealous that his brother seemed to have a better relationship with God and instead of working on his, he rather kills his brothers and destroys it. What does Cain say in the moment when God asked him where his brother is, am I my brother’s keeper? Let’s go further to the Tower of Babel. The enemy encourages people to strive for the same as he wanted, to be God. So they build a tower to heaven to show that they are greater than God. They don’t remember that God gave them everything and loves them so much, no but they want to overpower Him and be greater. God stops it and I’m sure he was sad about how he had to do it, he gave each of them a different language, which makes relationship even harder. If you can’t understand each other how can you have a great relationship.

Another example is David. David commits adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers. That day 3 things happen. He breaks the marriage to his wife, as well as the marriage of the soldier. He also brings a crack into the relationship between him and God. David tries now to fix things but his fixing doesn’t work and 2 people have to die, the husband of the woman he slept with and her child that was conceived through that situation. But after the prophet came to him, he repents with all his heart to fix the crack in his relationship with God. I believe that repenting heart was the reason God called him a man after his own heart.

But now let’s go to the new testament. Let’s look at Judas. He was a great friend and disciple of Jesus. He walked with Him during pretty much his whole ministry time on earth. But then the enemy tempted him with money and he accepted and he betrayed Jesus. Of course this created a big crack in their relationship. Later on, in the Apostles ,often the enemy attacks relationship through different theology and that kept going pretty much till today. He uses something that can be good and drives it between us to destroy our relationships. Now these were some examples from different stories in the bible, but I think every story of sin in the bible is going against relationship.

Read the Stories I described on the top and get your own picture of the importance of relationship. With the next Blog I will talk more on how relationships got attacked in the last 200 years and what we can actively do!

Hey our friend

We hope you had a great week. Sadly I (Markus) caught a cold and was sick in bed for a few days. The great thing was that it wasn’t on super busy days! Please pray with us for the work since we are working on a restructuring in one of the areas. Thank you so much for your Prayers.

Have a blessed week

Markus and Jen

Have Grace and give Time

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Have Grace and Time

Over the years I meet many new believers that had a huge excitement for there faith. But sometimes I saw them again a few years later and in some way they almost lost their faith. There are many reasons why that can happen, but I believe one of it is the use of grace and the time we give the person.

2012-12-24 08.32.23Let me explain it with this example: Imagine your whole body is surrounded by a thick layer of ice. Now the sun comes out and touches the top part of your body. Slowly the ice starts to melt and you are free. But it takes time for the ice to melt. It doesn’t help if we as bystanders stand next to you and scream that you are a terrible person and that you should have not been in the ice in the first place. What does it do to you? It lets you forget about all the melting that already took place on your body and you might move into the shadow ashamed for the ice instead of celebrating that the sun freed you.

I think that is sometimes true for us as Christians as well. When we meet new believers we expect them to be sin free. We expect them to get rid of all the bad in their life in 2 hours. But reality is it takes time. We need to give people time to grow. Of course we don’t want them to be stuck in there sin for the rest of their lives, but does it really help if we tell them all the time all the things they do wrong. Most of the time they will be discouraged and would actually stop sharing with us. But what about we start to encourage them in the things they do right? What about we have grace with them and give them time to grow?

It will as an example do 2 things:

  1. When we encourage in what they do right, it shows them that we really care about them and our relationship with that person will go deeper. We actually celebrate their successes with them. That will grow trust and open up doors for us in the future to speak into their life and to help them grow but it also gives us another great friend.
  2. When we walk alongside people and have grace with them in times of slip up, we show them more of Jesus and how He deals with us. It is also a good reminder for each one of us that we make mistakes as well.

I am not saying with that that we should ignore all sin in the lives of new believers. No what I am saying is to help them grow but in a way that actually helps them to grow. We need to learn to help people, but in the right time. We need to give people time to grow, and that is different for every person. How do we know the right time? We know it by letting the Holy Spirit guide us. Let Him guide you and be a part in raising up strong followers of Jesus.

Hey our friend

We hope you had a wonderful week. Looking just at the first 2 weeks of this year I am just amazed how much God keeps increasing our favor in this work by just opening greater doors.

Our new DTS Students arrived which is amazing. We look forward to see how God will use them in North beach as well as later on in there hometowns. Please keep them in your Prayers. Please also keep praying for the safety of the police in North Beach.

Thank you for standing with us in this work!

God bless you

Markus and Jen