What If Marriage Was Not Designed To Make Your Happy...

But instead designed to make you holy. So many people enter marriage and family life thinking that happiness will soon follow. But the statistics don't lie...the majority of new marriages end in divorce and of those marriages that do survive only a small percentage rate their marriage as "happy." What if God's primary purpose for your marriage and family life was not to make you happy? I know in our culture that sounds like blaspheme since everyone "deserves" to be happy. But maybe part of our problem is the perspective we carry into marriage, home, and parenting life.
My wife and I will starting a new series this Sunday that tackles this subject head on. Over our 11+ years of marriage we have not been exempt from struggles, problems, and difficulties that have tested our commitment to each other [most of the time I'm the primary source of testing instead of the one being tested :)]. Over those years we have been on a journey of spiritual growth and have been forced to look at things from a different perspective. A number of books by Gary Thomas (Sacred Marriage, Sacred Parenting, Sacred Influence) have been really beneficial for us on this journey. During this five week series we will be talking about the truths that have changed our way of looking at home and marriage. I hope you will join us.

Another Awesome Baptism Celebration

This past Sunday was a great way to end the summer! We had our summer ending Baptism and BBQ in the church courtyard. What made this baptism extra special is that Andrew (our youth pastor) was able to baptize two of the teens from the CORE program. I remember it was just about 3 years ago that a few of our church families stepped up their financial giving to allow us to hire Andrew full-time. This was a big stretch for our small church at the time but God has really blessed. These baptisms as well as previous ones were a direct result of time and energy that Andrew and all the volunteers in CORE have invested!