Forgiveness

There is something about the week after a conference that is very unique. You have just been built up with messages and fellowship all day every day for a solid week and then boom your back to your missionfield. You sometimes wish that it would be so as easy as just looking at someone and smile and they would instantly get this deep satisfaction that we hold so near in our hearts because of our relationship with Christ. And yes we can say that our countenance is important but we also have to open our mouths. But where to begin when your heart is so full with these deep revelations from God's Word?

Matt preached in service on Wednesday night here in Berlin. You can listen to his message online here (ggwo.de). But I just want to write down some notes that I took during his message and share them. He spoke on Matthew 18:21-28 in light of Pastor Schaller's last message at EuroCon about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a choice. Forgiveness doesn't give back what you have lost.

We cannot go around humanity and say that we are never hurt because we forgive.

We are real human beings with real hurt and real pain. Forgiveness isn't pretending that nothing happened, but it is choosing to live in love. I have to choose to live in love.

Choosing not to live in love puts us in prison in our minds.

Thinking about ourselves brings us into prison.

Three things happen when we live in prison:

1- We have no capacity to receive from God

2- We have no capacity for relationships

3- We filter everything through our situation

Years can go by while we are stuck in this mental prison where we don't make a choice for forgiveness. I have been forgiven so much. I have no right not to forgive.

80% of the time when someone is offended the offender has no idea it even took place.

When we live in un-forgiveness we refuse the voice of God.

God shakes things in our lives to get rid of things that shouldn't be there. When God shakes our lives we can hang on to the things that need to be shaken out because we are not willing to hear from God. God's kingdom can never be shaken, and we have to receive from that unshakeable kingdom.

We live in grace and receive the Word of God and it enables us to forgive. We cannot trick ourselves and pretend that we forgive someone when we haven't, it will come out later. Man cannot trick his own heart. There is no middle ground, we either forgive from our heart or we do not.

Missions MARCH

Marching for Germany at EuroCon 2011

What an amazing two weeks we just had! God poured out to us with our friends and body members around the world. We had visitors in Berlin last weekend, Emily's friend Michelle stayed with us for 5 days, and we also had Pastor Steve & Jean Marie Andrulonis visit that same weekend and held a marriage seminar at the church. We then left Monday morning for Budapest and just returned to Berlin yesterday completely filled with encouragement, joy, and rest. (Well maybe not so much rest physically due to many late nights of raps and laughing but rest in our hearts-absolutely). Our time in Budapest at EuroCon 2011 was amazing and we will be blogging later to share some of our favorite messages and thoughts that really stuck with us. But for now, as we enjoy being back home in our apartment in Berlin, we want to share with everyone photos of our friends and time the past few weeks. Enjoy! And we hope you come next year!

The day Michelle arrived she served a pancake breakfast to Lisa & Thea

They thoroughly enjoyed their American breakfast

Such a treat to get to show my friend around the city and spend time with her

Jean Marie's visit fell on her birthday so we grabbed a special coffee time with the birthday girl

Michelle and the girls at church Sunday morning

One of the many raps during the relationship seminar weekend.

Apparently people LOVE to talk about relationships :)

Upon our arrival in Budapest we were warmly welcomed by the Quirk family who opened up their home to us for the entire week. This was the view of the city from their home.

Missions march day at the conference- we proudly marched for Germany along with 2 people from the church in Heidleberg.

My new friend from Kyrgyzstan who spoke Russian and German and my other friend from Russia who speaks English and of course Russian- how fun to get to talk to these girls!

Post service rap on stage about forgiveness

Last night of the conference- worship service after prayer for healing. A really special time.

My Finnish friend Johanna!

Our awesome friends living in Budapest Ryan & Krista

This pretty much sums up the end of our weeks...

Grace in Bible School

We LOVE our Bible school! The students that come regularly are amazing. Some are moms, some are students, all with different stories but all sacrificing their time to hear the Word. On top of that they are the coolest bunch of people you could ever put in a room together. After class yesterday we wanted to see how many languages we could write the word "grace" in. Each student wrote the word in their own language, and some in a second language they also know.

Here are the languages shown below (going down the left column and then the right)

English, French, German, Spanish, Greek, Persian, Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Italian.

Our students with their teacher (Matt) & translator (Pastor Stephan)

Here's a little video clip from Sunday morning church service.

This is Edwige, she's from the Ivory Coast and singing in French.

New Team Member!

We are so excited to introduce our newest team member! Many of you may know this couple on our team Adrian & Olessya, they are our two awesome friends and team members who we lived with for a while last year before moving into our apartment. Two weekends ago they welcomed their first born, Jayden, after 3 long days of labor. He is 11 days old as of this morning and quickly becoming the most popular guy around.

Olessya at her baby shower the night before she went into labor!

Adrian & his new son!

Jayden :)

Holding him at 1 day old! Such a snuggle-bug!

Visit from Poland!

There are two things that are huge encouragements to us here. One is having visitors, two is getting mail. When people take the time to come and see you, or write you an email or a letter it is a million times more encouraging then you can imagine. It really reminds us we are not alone. I think Satan's biggest pit that he wants us to fall into as believers is loneliness and a sense of being invaluable. I think that's why God gave us the body. Even though we know we are not alone because we have Christ in us, we still get the constant physical reminder of God saying "I'm here" through the body.

That said, we were blessed to have visitors last weekend from the church in Warsaw, Poland. They came to Berlin for their family vacation and we totally enjoyed getting to know them a little.

Matt, Stephan and the Knechciak family

Pastor Maciej preaching Sunday morning