34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13.34-35
During the last week we had a big event going on in San Francisco called “Love SF”. It was a powerful week with 24.7 worship and Prayer for 8 days combined with outreaches all over town. For that event many churches from the city as well from other places in the US worked together. It was amazing to see how much love was shown to each other and I don’t even know about the impact it made on the city.
When you read the statement Jesus made you notice the need of us to live that way. People will not know us by the things we do or the miracles god does through us, no they will know us through the love for each other. This is what the world is longing for being a part of a community that truly loves each other. But how can we become more like that? Here are a few ideas on that!
- We have to look at the things that unite us and not the things that separate us
- We have to be quick in forgiving each other and help each other to grow
- Let’s speak live and encouragement into each other even if we don’t feel like it.
- Let’s do things together so we grow closer together. As an example let’s do a city wide event together with all the churches instead of each one doing their own thing.
Let us change our cities together with the love of God
Hey our friend
We hope you do well!! Last week we had a celebration for Reformation day at our place. We watched the movie Luther and all of us got really inspired by him. His little action changed the world forever. What is the little action God calls you to do? We also had many Prayer events going on with Love SF this week as well as dinners with our neighbor friends. It was a really good week.
Join us in Praying for unity in the Body of Christ to see our world changed and bring greater hope! Thank you for praying with us! You are a huge blessing!!
Have a blessed week!
Markus and Jen
In this video blog we use a garden as an example that growth takes time. We can’t speed it up or we might actually destroy it. Be challenged and encouraged!
On of the greatest traps we can get into is getting stuck in guilt and condemnation. Those 2 have power to hold us away from what God really has for us. They can make us feel that we are not good enough. When we do something wrong, we feel inside a conviction which challenges us to change and ask for forgiveness for what we did wrong. That is a godly thing that is helping us to keep a clean conscience. But how often did we still feel guilt even after we asked for forgiveness. I remember a while ago I made a mistake in putting a meeting in my calendar. That mistake led to me missing that meeting. I asked God and the person, I had the meeting with, for forgiveness but even after that I felt condemnation that I made that mistake. But where did that come from? It didn’t come from the person or from God. It came from the fact that I could not forgive myself for making a mistake. It held on for a long time till but when I realized what it was I asked God to forgive me for not forgiving myself and asked Him to take away the guilt and condemnation. It was so freeing.
Most of us experienced death in our lifetime, if it was a family member, a friend or even a pet. A little while ago a good friend of mine lost his pet do to age. When we talked on the phone and I found out it sounded as if a person died. But that conversation made me understand how deep people are connected to their pets. How deep of a hole they leave when they die. But how much more is it becoming a reality when a person in our life dies. Questions about the after or if there is even an after are surfacing. Many people start to face the reality of death when they experience it with someone they love. For many it is a time of hopelessness and the moment to see how things in life that had so much value and meaning before become pointless.
Over the last few weeks we started playing worship music right in the morning in our place. When we started doing that it changed our perspective on the day and our focus went in a deeper way on the presence of God. We were less distracted from life and things that came at us. Another thing we noticed was that our faith and courage increased to reach out to others in other ways.