Category Archives: Markus and Jen News

Isaiah – what a prophet can teach us

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This week we are talking about the old testament prophet Isaiah. Be encouraged by his life!

Hi our friend

Another week went by and we hope yours was awesome!! Even if you don’t have good memories about it, remember the good things that happened, because each week has those too!!

Our week here was full of special moments, one was an even a once in a lifetime moment. Our friend that we meet in our neighborhood got her citizenship after 7 years and we got to go to her special ceremony for that. It was a wonderful moment where 1255 people from 100 nations became citizens. It’s wonderful to walk alongside people so that at one point you get to celebrate with them such a milestone. Also during the week, Jen was prepping words for a video series for a 21-day challenge on loving our neighbor which will start with our church soon. We also had a celebration on Valentine’s Day for neighbors where we celebrated friendship and community. It was a wonderful time for everyone. Through many times of eating together with neighbors and meeting together, we deepened community in a simple way. What a great week!!

Let God guide you like Isaiah and speak His heart to the people around you through His love!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

Fasting

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This weeks blog is about fasting. Fasting is often seen as hard but often we forget about the blessings of it. Be encouraged and inspired by this video blog!

Hi our friend

We hope you had a wonderful week!! If we would have to put a headline on top of ours, it would be community. On Wednesday we hosted 2 of our church friends for dinner which was a lot of fun. Our church small group also met for the first time this year in our house and then we had our bi-annual review and evaluation meeting with all the ywam leaders. On Saturday one of our neighbors was inspired by us and hosted a lunch and movie time at his house. It was wonderful. At night we had a dinner event with the boys and girls club and on Sunday we hosted a little event at our house to watch the Oscars together. Besides those, we had all our normal weekly things going on. And somewhere in between Jen and I had a date night. What a great week.

Look at your life and see what things have a hold of you and then come up with a plan to fast them and let God help you in it!!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

What Joshua can teach us about asking God for guidance

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In this weeks blog we are partially looking at an important man in the Old Testament, Joshua. Be encouraged!

Hi our friend

We hope you had a super week!! Ours in San Francisco was exciting. We had dinner with a friend from the neighborhood which was encouraging. Then we prepped for our time speaking at our church on Sunday which went really well. We got a lot of really good responses of people that they felt inspired to love their neighbors. On Saturday we had our neighbor brunch which literally filled our table up to the last seat and I had to put a little chair up at the corner. That is a good problem to have! Sunday night we got to watch the Superbowl together with our church family and our San Francisco team was in it, but sadly they lost. But it was still a wonderful time! with dinners a neighbor brunch we hosted that filled up every seat around our table, speaking at our church and a Superbowl party with our church friends. It was such a wonderful time.

Remember this week to ask for Gods guidance not just at the beginning but all along the way and at all major decisions.

Have a blessed week!!

Markus and Jen

Whatever you focus on affects you

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Today our blog is about focusing our lives on the right thing and how that brings hope.

Hi our friend

We hope you had a wonderful week!! Our week was busy in a good way. We had our quarterly meeting with other ministry leaders from the bay area and it was encouraging as usual. We also were able to connect in a deeper way with our community here. A very good week. And Jen and went out on a date night together which was really fun.

Remember to look at your thoughts and the things you focus on and make sure to focus on Jesus!

Have a blessed week!!

Markus and Jen

All my life you have been faithful

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Recently I was listening to a worship song called Goodness of God. One of the lines is “All my life you have been faithful”. I love that truth in that line that God is always faithful.

But In a world where we see unfaithfulness and betrayal all the time its easy to fall into a pit and start thinking and believing that God might not be faithful either. We might look back at our life and look at the moments of failure and hard times we went through and wonder Is God really faithful? Maybe we started to believe a lie: Because we got sucked into the world and started being faithless we blew his faithfulness and now He might not be faithful either anymore.

In 2.Timothy 2.13 it says: If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for he cannot deny Himself.

So Paul makes a clear statement about God here in Timothy God will and cannot deny Himself. He will always be faithful. We see that through the whole bible how even people failed and things in the world went wrong, God was still faithful and stayed true to his promise. So when we look back in our life, we have to look with the truth of this statement. We have to look at the moments in our life where we feel God hasn’t been faithful and ask him to show us the truth about this situation. If he doesn’t show us anything about a specific case we have to come back to the truth He cannot be unfaithful.

When I look back at my own life I see moments where things were really hard. There were times were I was bullied in school were friends walked away from me, God never did. He was right with me in those hard moments. Why did those things happen then you might ask. People have free will and make choices. Some of them affect others in a bad way. But even when that happens God is still right there with us and he is still faithful. He is faithful in the good and bad moments in our life.

We want to encourage you to look back at your life and first see all the clear moments where god has been faithful in your life and write them down. Then after you did that,  go in Prayer together with him to the places where you believe he hasn’t and let Him speak to you. It will change your life!!

Hi our friend

We hope you had a wonderful week! Jen and i enjoyed our vaccation and are back starting this week. Sometimes we all need a break and this one was so refreshing for both of us. We hope you got a good break too recently!!

Remember this week to look at your life and write out the moments you remember where God was faithful and ask him about the ones where you think he wasn’t!

Have a blessed week!!

Markus and Jen