Help Take the Gospel to the Nations

The following is from Real Truth Matter's website, updating you on the magazine (and all the countries it has been downloaded in!) and asking you to prayerfully consider making a $10/month recurring donation to help take the Gospel and proclaim the name of Jesus to more people in even more countries. Please read, be encouraged, and prayerfully give. 

Thank you for your prayers for the magazine- God is moving! I am so humbled and thankful to be a part of His redemptive work around the nations. God is so good! 

It is exciting to see what God's been doing with the new RTM Magazine. Thus far the iPad app has been downloaded in the U.S. and around the world in countries such as Sweden, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, Canada, the Philippines, South Korea, the UK, Indonesia, and even the closed country of China. 

Even though we've invested a lot of work into the creation of the magazine, it doesn't feel like work. We are simply watching God bring to pass what He has called into being. 

We are moving forward with the second issue, and we want to make it available to as many people as possible. To do so, we'd like to lay out before you a vision on how that can be accomplished. 

As of right now, the app is only available for iPads; and even there it is limited. The magazine is not available in the Apple Newsstand, and the app has to be re-downloaded with every single issue as the current app will not automatically update. 

We can publish the magazine digitally where it will be available on all smart phones and tablets. It will not be limited to just the iPad. Additionally, it will be accessible through the Apple Newsstand where it can be viewed as digital magazines were intended to be seen. The cost to do this will be $500 a month, which includes all fees required for Adobe and Apple to be digital publishers. 

We believe this is how God is leading us in publishing the magazine. It is not a nicety but a way to get teaching, testimonies, and the Gospel in the hands of as many people as possible as easily as possible. 

In seeking God for His provision for the magazine, we sense His leading in asking others from the body to be a part of the magazine with us. If the Lord leads just 50 people to donate $10 a month toward the magazine, the need will be met by our Father through the body. We are asking that if the Lord so leads that you would set up a recurring donation of $10 a month in order to make this resource accessible to more people. 

We are all partners in the spreading of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this is one way in which you can see that partnership fulfilled. We do not make our specific needs known when it comes to our day to day operations, but it is often easier to get involved when you can see how your support is being used specifically. 

You can set up a recurring donation through our website, and together we can see God take something as simple as a digital magazine and spread the name of Jesus Christ around the world.

Monday Morning Munch No. 9 - A New Name

Growing up there were a number of titles I wanted to be known by at some point in my lifetime:

Olympic gold medalist
Wife
Mom
All American
Magazine designer/editor
Kroger cashier (...I had big dreams)
Sports journalist

But now that Christ has invaded my life and I bear His name I only want to have one title:

A beggar.

Not just any beggar, but a beggar of souls.

I am no longer content to sit idly by while the people I love (and the ones I haven't met yet) speed through their one life, wasting it on the failing promises of this temporary world.

John Piper proposed this to Don't Waste Your LIfe's readers:

Of course, we do not use the word cool to describe true greatness. It is a small word. That’s the point. It’s cheap. And it’s what millions of young people live for. Who confronts them with urgency and tears? Who pleads with them not to waste their lives? Who takes them by the collar, so to speak, and loves them enough to show them a life so radical and so real and so costly and Christ-saturated that they feel the emptiness and triviality of their CD collection and their pointless conversations about passing celebrities? Who will waken what lies latent in their souls, untapped—a longing not to waste their lives?

This is what God has called me to do for not just the middle and high school girls at my church, or my classmates at school but everyone I encounter.

I want to not just be the friendly girl who is known by her "bubbly" and "sweet" personality. I want people to know me as the one who loves them enough to tell them the truth. I want to be known as a beggar of souls.

"Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell; I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell." — C.T. Studd

Brothers and sisters, we are ambassadors for Christ. We have been given a new name, a new life, a new heart and a new part in this world. We are to proclaim the Gospel with our lives and our lips and love deeply, give freely and forgive in the same manner that Christ Himself has loved, given and forgiven us.

I pray we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God and exercise zeal with wisdom, boldly sharing the Good News of the Gospel with everyone around us - it is the power unto salvation for those who believe.

But how will they believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? ... Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:14-15, 17)

Be a Beggar

""'Not called!' did you say?'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world." — William Booth, 

Do we really grasp the gravity of the gift we've been given? We have been given life. Life. We were dead and now we live. Why do we not share that verbally with others who are dying?

My encouragement for you (and me) is to prayerfully watch for opportunities to speak life to others around you. Whether it be your spouse, kids, neighbor, fellow church-goer, classmate or complete stranger, speak life to them. Be obedient and leave the results up to God.

He will use it. He will use you.

Go. Speak. Share. Love. Give. Send. Serve. Obey.

May the Lamb of God receive the reward of His suffering,

 

I am not, but I know I AM.

Up until today, this week has had a discouraging twinge to it. Nothing "bad" happened, it just wasn't one of my favorite weeks. I couldn't really put my finger on it until last night after True Beauty when I once again came face-to-face with an earth-shattering revelation.

I'm not called to be the Holy Spirit 2.

Shocking.

The girls in True Beauty (I would abbreviate but I don't want to be misunderstood as talking about Tuberculosis) have so much of my heart and I want them to come to know Christ so badly with a burden that intensifies with each passing week. They are at the age I was when God in His mercy began opening my eyes to the fact that morality does not equal salvation, and my only hope was through His heart-transforming handiwork.

I want these girls to experience that same thing. I want them to see God as more than a supreme being with wrath and justice and I want them to see Jesus as more than a storybook figure. They are the very source of life, acceptance and love they so desperately crave.

As I was praying for them last night and confessing to God my discouragement at their lack of conversion, He gently and lovingly reminded me of my place. It's not on any sort of throne or really large thing above people- it's on my knees. It's on campus at Murray. It's at press conferences, in the newsroom, and in my column. It's in the classroom, kitchen, and craft room, teaching these precious girls about Him. It's not my place or duty to save, it's my place to speak the truth I've received and leave the details to God.

God's infinite and gloriously sweet grace never fails to humble and leave me amazed and awestruck at His love- He loves me! Me. Why, I don't know, but His Word says He does and I believe His Word. It was His relentless love that sent Jesus to the cross and it is that same love that sends the Holy Spirit to convict us. What mercy! He could let us continue on swimming in our sins, selfishness, and seclusion from Him, but He brings us back and continues shaping us into the image of His Son.

Wow.

Today in True Beauty a few things went "wrong." The hot water handle broke off while the water was going which resulted in a phone call to my dad and buckets of water on the counter before a pair of pliers finally shut the water off.

So exciting.

The girls were working on making invitations to their final project in the craft room when I walked in and was immediately shewed away. "Don't come in, don't come in!" They squealed.

The next thing I know they tell me to go look at my door. This is what I find...

I may or may not have teared up a little.

Okay, fine. I cried.

Then as I was going through the pictures from the day I found these...

Before I knew it little rivers were running down my cheeks again. It was just so sweet and completely unexpected. I love these girls so much.

Please pray for their hearts. Pray that they will not have temporary behavior modifications to please me, their parents, or anyone else, but that they will have soul transformations. Pray that God protects them and saves them while they are young. He did it for me, He can do it for them.

Depending on His Spirit,

Christ's Call to Follow in His Footsteps

This is real. Please take 4.5 minutes to watch this video by K.P. Yohannan