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July 21 Coffee Church Highlights

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July 24, 2013
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I’m still loving our current summer series, Age of Kings!  I am enjoying reliving the stories of the different kings in the Bible and how they weave into our lives today.  Chris spoke on Ahab from the Old Testament at Hazel Dell and Matt Bumala spoke on Herod from the New Testament at Battle Ground.

Pray for our Deaf Church as they are at camp this week!

We took our staff out for Snow Cones on Sunday for staff meeting.  I’m not sure that is the group of people that need a sugar boost right before they need to sit down and accomplish things…Just in case you were wondering, Pina Coloda is the BEST flavor.

A young man accepted Christ on Sunday.  One of our other young men had invited him because he’s in a pretty desperate place in his life right now.  God meets desperate people!  When was the last time you were desperate to meet with Jesus?

Speaking of meeting with Jesus, www.youversion.com can help you start a Bible reading plan.  It’s a great resource to kick off your spiritual growth.

If you attend North Creek and aren’t tithing, my challenge to you is to try it for six months.  I believe that you will be blessed by giving and holding on to your money so tightly is holding you back.

Here’s part of what will happen when you give to North Creek: We’ll have a thriving Youth Ministry in Battle Ground and a better home for our Hazel Dell Campus.  These are our limitations at each campus currently and our budget is tighter than a hipster’s skinny jeans.

By the way, the Battle Ground campus is looking SHARP!  Thank you to everybody who has painted, weeded, thrown out trash, raked, and planted to make it look great.

KidCity is in the middle of a competition between the boys and the girls to see who can give more to missions.  That means my kids are making me do a ton of work to have a garage sale…how can I say no to that???  Here’s a hint if you’d like to help North Creek kids out: the girls outnumber the boys in our church 3 to 1.  If you are a fan of the underdogs in life, hand cash to a K-5th grade boy.

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE our volunteers?  We have dedicated and amazing people who pour into our church and community ALL the time.  I love your hearts, your smiles, and your partnership!  YOU are making a difference!

We start collecting school supplies this week for various Clark County schools.  As you are shopping, please pick up some extras to share with needy kids!  High needs items are: Crayola (Battle Ground schools only allow Crayola) broad & thin markers and Crayola colored pencils, book covers, Elmer’s glue sticks, self-contained pencil sharpeners, and cash to offset various needs.

Have a great and really hot week!  Be blessed!

 

 

 

The Generosity Ladder

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July 19, 2013
Ministry
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I’m currently reading a book, The Generosity Ladder, by Nelson Searcy.  Generosity is one of my main goals for my life, so I often read books about this topic.  Mark and I happen to also be reading the book of Malachi right now, so it’s the double-whammy of God’s voice on this topic!

Even though Mark and I have always been faithful givers, I still feel like the fear of generosity can sneak in and get a grip on me, so I frequently go back to the basics and remind myself of the promises of God.  I bet you are in the same boat, so I’ll share with you some of my devotions and reading on the topic.  Hope it helps you as well!

In Malachi 3 it says,

6 “I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7 Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.

“But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’

8 “Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.

“But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’

“In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the Lord Almighty. 12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty.

I love the “if-then” statements of God.  He says that if I bring the whole tithe to his storehouse, I can count on Him to see that I am taken care of.  Does that mean that He won’t put my faith to the test at times?  Sure He will, but I will just proclaim right back to God what He said!  And if He will do all of that for just my tithe, how much more will He do when I lay it ALL before Him?

Here is one paragraph of The Generosity Ladder that I appreciated: 

Fears-are-stories“Fear keeps people locked in the lie of the scarcity mentality – the idea that the more you give away, the less you will have for your own needs.  The only way to break out of the trap of that lie is to take the first step in faith: give an initial gift and get on the [generosity] ladder.  As much as Paul understood the struggle we have with ourselves, he also knew that following God’s commands and principles was not something to be left to feeling.  Sometimes we just have to decide to get started with what’s right, no matter how we may feel about it at the time.

Emotions are fleeting, but God’s truth about his plan for our financial lives is timeless.”

Such a great last sentence!  I cannot base my decision making on emotions…true generosity will ALWAYS make my stomach tight…probably because that is the point.  God wants us to step out in faith so He can show up in our lives in miraculous ways!

Also on my reading list on this topic for the week was a great blog on what our tithes could do to the world.  Here’s the LINK if you’d like to read it as well.  It’s almost unbelievable what world our children would grow up in if we just got this one principle nailed down in our lives and churches.  Well, I’m dreaming for that future, how about you?

Be blessed!

 

 

July 14 Coffee Church Highlights

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July 16, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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What an awesome weekend!  Josiah preached on King Josiah at Battle Ground, I preached on King Jehoshaphat at Hazel Dell, and Jim preached on Solomon at the Deaf Church.

I had a great time preaching on Jehoshaphat!  I came in to writing my message knowing very little about him and left Sunday having him as one of my favorite Bible characters.  That’s the awesome part of really diving into the Scriptures and learning about someone who served God thousands of years ago.

KidCity is in the middle of raising money for missionaries!  They are having a contest between the boys and the girls, so if you’d like to help out, give a kid some money on the way in the door! The Battle Ground campus got painted last week with some new landscaping.  It looks AMAZING!  We still have the portable to paint, but we are well on the way to having everything done there.  We spent about $1500 on supplies above our regular monthly budget, so if you’d like to give to that, we’d sure appreciate it.  Thanks so much for helping us be good neighbors in our community and taking care of what God has given us.

On that note, we are praying for a permanent home for Hazel Dell.  Would you pray with us?  Waiting is SO much fun…ok, maybe not.  Not at all.  Not even a little bit.  Awful waiting…

I hope you are enjoying your summer!  I love the sun, I love the different schedule, and I love the opportunity to have BBQ’s with friends.  Take the time to have some friends over this summer and grow your relationships!

Speaking of relationships, our summer small groups are coming to a close.  We are already dreaming and praying for our fall groups that will launch in September.  If you are interested in facilitating or hosting a group, let Tasha know now by emailing Tasha@coffeechurch.com.

Do you have a heart for prayer?  Do you know that we have a prayer list where you can both get email prayer requests and send your own when you need to?  Just send an email to prayer@coffeechurch.com and we’ll get you signed up!

Thank you for being such an incredible and generous church!  We are so blessed every day to get to pastor and watch this journey of Jesus unfold before us.  Step out in faith in your life.  It’ll be painfully difficult, exhausting, and yet all the while, so thrilling and fulfilling.  I wouldn’t trade the last seven years of church planting for anything!

Be blessed!

Parenting Parallels

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July 12, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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Parenting is a lot like having little spiritual lessons running around your house all day.  I get this opportunity to learn about patience, love, forgiveness, and discipline on a moment by moment basis.  God hits me right between the eyes almost daily as He shows me various parallels between my parenting and how He feels about me…His child.

My girls were disobeying the other day and I screamed to myself in my head (because I’m trying to avoid scaring the neighbors), “Don’t they realize that if they would just OBEY, I would give them nearly anything they wanted!”  It’s true, isn’t it?  Short of going overboard on sugar and danger, their lives would be pretty awesome if I knew they would obey me at every given moment.  If they cleaned up after themselves, spoke well to each other, or were consistently grateful little humans, I would be looking for ways to reward their efforts at every turn.  (I just lost every parent as they sailed off into dreamland…oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful?!?!?!)

Don’t get me wrong, I do feel like I have good kids that I reward regularly, but I have to admit that’s not always reality around here.  Unfortunately, reality around here also consists of a succession of disobedience and punishment.  And the most interesting part is that EVERY time my child disobeys, they know better.  They know when they hit their sister that nothing good is coming next, but they WANTED to get the punch in anyway.  Drives you nuts, doesn’t it?

So, there is clearly a correlation in my house between my children choosing wrong and them being miserable.  I really wish it weren’t so, but I’m a good parent, so that’s the deal.  I need them to be miserable when they sin so that they look around one day and decide to try a different strategy.  And unfortunately for my own sins, that’s the way God has to deal with me as well.  When I do wrong, I can expect the punishment that is coming next…and it makes me miserable.

Now, while I don’t believe there is ALWAYS a connection between hardship and sin, I do think it’s prudent to use hardship as a point of evaluation for our own lives.

For instance, if your dating relationships are destructive, it might be good to evaluate your pre-marital sexual activity.  Are you having sex outside of marriage and breaking God’s principles?  That may be why you feel punished in relationships.  If your finances are always a mess, it may be good to have a real, honest conversation with yourself about what the Bible says about tithing.  If you aren’t giving to God first, you can expect to be miserable.  What about gossip?  How many times have you been bitten by the words you know you shouldn’t have spoken?  The list just goes on and on…

Simply put, misery and disobedience go hand in hand…that’s the rule in my house, and also in God’s.  The best way to get around it is good, old-fashioned obedience to the boundaries of God.  So, dig into your heart and pray about what areas God wants to work on.  I guarantee you one thing: just as we love our children in the midst of our discipline, God loves you as well.  He wants to rip off the shackles of sin in your life and look for every conceivable way to bless you!  So, go pick up your toys, speak well of your sister, and be grateful…and then watch your life fill with joy!

 

July 7 Coffee Church Highlights

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July 8, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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We started our July series Age of Kings and I couldn’t be more excited!  It’s a bit of a history lesson and a Bible lesson all wrapped in one, so it’s a great way to understand the framework of the Bible better.  Josiah preached on King Josiah (very fitting!) at Hazel Dell and Jim preached on King Hezekiah at Battle Ground.

We are blessed with lots of talented speakers at North Creek and in July we showcase many of them.  It makes for an interesting and diverse summer!  I don’t want to miss one!

A year ago this weekend we had three babies born within three days.  So surreal to see them all walking around now with hilarious personalities to match!  I appreciate all of our young families so much because I know what kind of commitment it takes to get everybody out the door on a Sunday!  On the flip side, I also see them developing friendship amongst each other that will last a lifetime.

I hope you had a great 4th of July!  We crammed in two wonderful parties on the same day and ate our way through the afternoon and evening.

I asked 30 different people this weekend to spell Jehoshaphat…no one got it right.  I’m preaching next week at Hazel Dell on this fabulous character, so come and hear about his story even if you can’t spell his name.

We are taking on some painting projects at the Battle Ground campus on Tuesday from 9:30-4:30.  If you’d like to help, we’d love to have you any time!

One of my favorite moments on Sunday was greeting a 3 year old girl at the door.  I told her I liked her dress to which she promptly lifted it up to her chin and said, “I have shorts on underneath so when I do this, you can’t see my panties!”  Best greeting ever!  That being said, do not, under any circumstance, greet me like that if you aren’t three.

Church life is so much fun!  It’s the ups and downs of a family and I wouldn’t trade it for the world!

We are in need of sound and media personnel at Battle Ground.  You can fill out a volunteer form HERE to get involved.  We provide all of the training, so if you are interested, we’d love to have you!

Also, we are overstocking our Kid’s Checkin and Tiny Town Assistants at Hazel Dell in preparation for our Kid’s Coordinator being out for her new baby.  If you’d like to do one of those ministries, click the link above and we’ll get you signed up, too.

Who are you praying for that needs to know Jesus as their Savior?  If you email me at stacy@coffeechurch.com, I’ll pray for them, too.

Be blessed!