Month: May 2009

Living in Community

Posted on May 13, 2009

This week has been a great week for us to experience the grace and power of Christian community. Since I returned from Dallas we’ve had a steady stream of prayers, texts, calls, and helps. In addition to what I listed above, our City Group has served us with abounding grace. Chris is cooking a meal for us tonight, Dodsons are watching our kids for a brief anniversary weekend getaway, the Nixons took our kids yesterday so we could sleep and have some time to talk this trial through, to share our reflections on how God wants to change us through all this.

It’s been remarkable to watch how God has steadied Robie through a scary time, how she is reprioritizing things for the kingdom, and to simply enjoy my most wonderful, precious, companion, friend, wife and mother. I’ve been challenged to trust the Lord with everything from my wife to our church, to fight impatience with grace, to soak in Scripture, to love freely, to live my faith out loud more.

Today is our 9th Wedding Anniversary and man has it been an amazing 9 years! So grateful for Robie. She loves me so well, serves our family so faithfully, and has followed, supported, encouraged, and counseled me through one of my greatest challenges, starting Austin City Life as a very imperfect, broken, limited man. From sewing to running, Robie lives life uncorked, overflowing in joy and creativity. Man, my life would be so boring without her! I love you, hon!

Here’s to nine years of remarkable grace, joy and adventure…and to a community of grace focused on Jesus and living out his mission!

While you are at it, check out Dallas Willard on technology and community.

Robie's Health

Posted on May 12, 2009

For those that are wondering or have not heard, we had another scare with Robie’s health last night. While I was in Dallas she called to say that she had lost peripheral vision and some of her line of sight vision. This has been accompanied by some head pain. Doctors told us to send her in for a MRI scan. We drove back (read=Justin Hroch) at 2:30am and received the good news that the scan was clean. Doctors are urging her to see a neurologist, suggesting it may be MS. We’ve read and heard about severe migraines causing this and are hopeful that is the diagnosis.

So, we’re wiped and grateful for all the emails, texts, and phone calls. Robie is resting and her vision is back to normal, thank God. A special thanks to the Klebs, who stayed with the kids while I was in Dallas and Sam took Robie to the hospital, where he stayed with her till I arrived around 6:30am. We’re grateful for the news and support we’ve had. Times like this drive you into the Lord who alone is our Strong Tower and with whom we are safe. Nothing like you wife’s life flashing before your eyes to drive you to prayer and deep gratitude for her. Come what may, we are together hoping in the God who designs even the scariest times for our everlasting good.

How to Keep the Gospel in Your Community

Posted on May 10, 2009

In an effort to deepen our church in personal and communal gospel living, we will be working through Tim Chester’s You Can Change this summer. We have cast vision and trained our leaders on cultivating communities that speak the truth in love to one another. However, it has become apparent that we also need to equip our communities to help one another live in the gospel. When someone shares a pattern of sin or a false belief they need to be encouraged or challenged by someone else in their City Group to believe what is true, to live in the pattern of grace. I believe You Can Change will help us do that. Here are a few reasons why:

  1. It is about Gospel-centered change: “The secret of gospel change is being convinced that Jesus is the good life and fountain of all joy.”
  2. It heads off Gospel-distorting approaches to change: 1) Proving ourselves to God 2) Proving ourselves to others 3) Proving ourselves to ourselves.
  3. Personal Change Project: Every chapter includes Reflection Questions for discussion and a Personal Change Project that helps us identify an area of sin in which we need gospel-centered change. This a powerful process.
  4. Ten Key Questions: Each chapter raises an important question that leads us through the process of gospel-centered change. See Table of Contents here.
  5. It emphasizes Faith and Repentance as key to change: “We begin the Christian life in faith and repentance, and we continue the Christian life in faith and repentance.”
  6. Chapter 7 changed me on the spot: “If you let any of those gods down, they will beat you up. If you live for people’s approval or your career or possessions or control or anything else and you don’t make it or your mess up, then you’ll be left feeling afraid, downcast or biter. But when you let Christ down, he loves you still. He doesn’t beat you up; he dies for you.”

Read chapter five free. Also, Tim and Steve Timmis will be releasing a book on The Gospel-centered Life in about a month. Tim’s newest book Ordinary Hero releases Friday.

John Murray on Propitiation

Posted on May 10, 2009

On Sunday we examined the Atonement, lingering on the idea of propitiation from Romans 3:25: “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” To “propitiate” is to absorb, appease, or placate. On the cross, Jesus absorbed God’s just wrath that should have been absorbed by us. Is God’s wrath at odds with his love? John Murray helpfully states:

The propitiation of the the divine wrath, effected in the expiatory work of Christ, is the provision of God’s eternal and unchangeable love, so that through the propitiation of his own wrath that love may realize its purpose in a way that is consonant with and to the glory of the dictates of his holiness. It is one thing to say that the wrathful God is made loving. That would be entirely false. It is another thing to say the wrathful God is loving. That is profoundly true. ~ John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 31