Category Archives: Markus and Jen News

The importance of Context

The importance of contextWe have another very relevant video blog for you about the importance of Context! It has a great importance in todays time to truly understand! We hope it inspires you!

Hey our friend

We hope you had a great celebration for Easter remembering the love of God! We had a wonderful time  with a big Easter brunch at our appartment and showed Son of God. We pray that neighbors and people in our community experienced his love in a new way. The Catholic Church in our neighborhood did a lot of outreach during the week to share with people about Easter which was amazing! Pray with us that many will find him and fall in love with him. He is just the best thing and nothing in this world will ever be able to take this place!

We wish you this week that all of us will be more and more able to see things in the right context!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

Easter 2018

easter 2018A few years ago I read a biography from the life of Brennan Manning it was called “All is Grace“. In the book it talked about his life in an honesty I rarely ever heard. He talked about his alcohol addiction and how he missed the funeral of his Mom because he was drunk. He was preaching and sharing and encouraging many people during his life with this message of grace that God would take a drunk like him, even while he was still failing over and over again, and extend grace. One of his famous statements was: “God loves you unconditionally as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.” That statement shows us very well the heart of God and the deeper meaning behind Easter. Romans 5.9 puts it like this: God demonstrates his own love for us in that the Messiah died on our behalf while we were still sinners.

Celebrating Easter every year is a reminder of the grace each of us receives daily from our loving father. God did the hardest thing possible so that all of us can experience grace. A grace that is undeserved and unconditional. But also a grace, which has the highest price possible. It doesn’t matter where we are at in life; God is saying you are so valuable to me that no matter what you did, I want you back! I love you my daughter, my son. I made a way that you get grace and not what you deserve. This is the power of the cross. This is the outcome of Jesus rising from the dead. This is the power that can transform lives yesterday, today and tomorrow! This is the power that gave hope to a hopeless alcoholic like Brennan Manning and a Paul who persecuted Gods children! Let His power touch our lives in a new way too in this Easter time!

But let’s not just keep it for us! Since we received this grace, let us also extend grace to others. Let us especially in this Easter time show people how grace was extended to each one of us no matter where we were at in life and that it will be extended to everyone else who believes in Jesus! Let’s bring that message of hope!  Have a blessed Easter

Hey our friend

What is new with you friend? We hope you are doing well! We are praying that you get new revelation of God this week in your bible reading or times with him in this Easter week!

For us it was a pretty normal week. Jen is almost recovered from her cold which is awesome!! Im still on my way to full recovery, but I’m also getting there!! Now we are getting ready for Easter. We will probably watch another Easter movie with neighbors at our house which will be awesome! There will also be different events in our neighborhood from the Catholic Church to share with people about Easter. Its such an important time in our faith. Thinking about what Jesus did for each one of us shows so much of His love! May it be a real encouragement to you too!

Try to share with someone this week what Easter means to you!! Have a blessed Easter!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

Belong before belief

Belong before beliefSo this week we have a video blog for you about the topic belong before belief. We hope it inspires you!

Hey our friend

How was your week? We hope great! Ours was just ok since Jen got sick again with another cold and by the end of the week I got sick as well. This winter it has been bad here for many people with getting sick over and over again. Please keep us and our neighbors in your prayers for quick recovery! We also watched a little dog for neighbor friends while they were gone. It was amazing to see how it opened doors for conversation.

During the week I had a board meeting and we had the last led prayer walk of our students. They all did a great job! Like I mentioned last week the skater school is graduating. Pray for them for their time after that each of them get plugged in well and keeps growing in their faith. I also had a board meeting which was a good time. Thanks for being part of our team!

Make sure this week to love on a few of your neighbors and think about how neighbors can belong more into your life!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

Where do you put your trust?

where do you put your trustA while ago a good friend of mine gave me a new bible as a gift. It is a study bible that has study notes from a jewish perspective. It gave me a deeper understanding of the things Jesus was saying and doing through his life. Its amazing!!

You might wonder why would I mention this. So recently I was reading Matthew 19:16-26 which talks about the meeting between a rich man and Jesus. It comes down to the rich man asking about what good thing he must do to go to heaven. This sentence is very significant in understanding the power money can have over our lives. The rich man probably worked hard and did a lot of things right to come to the place where he was at. He put his life into it. His understanding now became that by him doing something he will get something. So he thinks that out of his strength or might he is able to do good things and by that earn his way into heaven. So the risk of being rich is that you start thinking that your money can fix all things. That is also what the world tells us. Have a lot of money and you can get the big house so you can rest after a hard day at work, a vacation to restore your body, best health care so you never have to worry. Pretty much you are in control. But then where is the trust in, that? If we trust money to fix all our things where does Jesus and God have a place? In the Jewish bible that I got the word faith is often translated as trust. So having faith actually means to trust. When Jesus challenged the rich man to give away everything and follow him, he couldn’t do it. It would have meant to give away everything he trusts in. So it was pretty much impossible for him to go to heaven. But that is actually not just limited to very rich people, this can apply to everyone that puts there trust in money instead of God.

So When I read that story it does 2 things 2 me:

  1. It challenges me to honestly ask myself the question where is my trust in? Yes all of us would say of course it is in Jesus. But if you look a little bit deeper and honest could we all still say that?
  2. It gives me a greater compassion for people that are rich. Its easy to look up to someone rich and be jealous of what they have. But instead we should actually have compassion and a true love for them. Our lives should reflect to each of them how good God is and how much he cares for us and that it is safe to trust Him. We need to be a true friend to rich people not with an alternate motive.

Of course, the chapter doesn’t end with that hopeless verse that its pretty much impossible for a rich man to go to heaven, no that wouldn’t be Jesus. Jesus always has a solution. The story ends with this: With men its impossible but with God all things are possible!! Let us remember this!! With our God nothing is impossible!!

So ask yourself this week honestly those 3 things:

  1. Where is my trust in?
  2. Confess and repent of where you put your trust in outside of God and ask God to help you to trust him from now on in that area!
  3. Be a true friend to someone who is rich so they can see the love of God in your life and how he is trustworthy!

Hey our friend

We hope your week was amazing!! We had an awesome meeting of many ministries in the bay area. It was amazing to see how many ministries are represented outside of ywam and how many churches. We are also looking out for a new meeting spot in the neighborhood since our old one just closed last week. Please pray with us that we find the right location! Last week YWAM’s skater DTS came back from there outreach and they will be graduating this week. Pray for them and their time of transitioning out of DTS and back into their homes. It can be hard to leave a strong Christian community behind and stand on your own.

Make sure to ask yourself the 3 questions above!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

What is the Devil really after? Part 2

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