Monthly Archives: February 2015

Fruit in all seasons

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Fruit in every seasonAllisa treesLast Sunday our friend Alissa showed one of her paintings at church. It showed trees in a winter world bearing fruit. First I was thinking fruit in a winter season that doesn’t make any sense. But then thinking more about it, it made perfect sense. God calls us to be fruitful in every season. Remember the story of Jesus and the fig tree in Mark 11.12-21. The tree didn’t have fruit and Jesus was upset to the point that he cursed the tree not to carry fruit ever again.  When we look at that example we see that we are called to have fruit in every moment, even if it is out of season. But how does that work? I think sometimes we believe that we can only bring fruit if we are perfectly positioned, if everything works well, if we have all the knowledge and money needed and we are at our best. If that would be true we would never bring any fruit. The bible talks about that when we are weak we are strong.

As an example: When you go through a hard season in your life, don’t hide, instead be real about it. Through that you are actually helping others to do the same and you are both able to pray for each other and help each other. I agree with people saying that you can pull each other down in a situation like that, but if that happens I would ask you the question where did you put your focus on. If we would hide we literally would not bring any fruit, and we would bring ourselves down. But if we are real about it, God can actually bring fruit out of a situation by bringing healing to both people that stand with each other.

So seeing fruit in each season doesn’t mean that each fruit looks the same. In certain seasons you might see many people being saved by you ministering to them. In others you might just lay a seed and see little progress in their lives. But let me tell you each of those processes or fruits are important. So its important that each moment of our life we are walking in that truth.

Our lives always have to reflect the one we follow and our eyes always have to be on Him.

When that happens it is impossible to not bring fruit. We want to invite you to think about areas in your life were you have to refocus to bring fruit.

Hey our friend

How are you doing? Send us a quick update on your life. The last week here has been exciting. We had a German night at our house which was a lot of fun and a great encouragement group. It was great to see how people could help each other and bring each other hope. This week on Tuesday we are sharing with our DTS about how to use the things they learned in their own communities back home. Pray that God will guide them and gives them perseverance to bring more of the things he taught them to others and so that they could grow as well.

Thank you for partnering with us! You are such a blessing!!

God bless you

Markus and Jen

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