Thank you once again so much for all of your prayers! Below are the links to our latest prayer update.

Late Summer 2010 E-zine

These past couple weeks have truly plunged us into quite the adventure! It’s interesting how God often leads us to related Scriptures as if He know what lies ahead. Funny how that works, huh! One of my interests in the Scriptures lately revolves around the Spirit’s work of leading in the believer’s life. I am currently reading through a related book on this subject. The title and premise of this book curiously grasped my attention. Apparently according to the author’s research, Celtic Christians previously referred to the Holy Spirit as the “Wild Goose.” While I am not exactly sure of the validity of this tale, it’s undergirding principle I believe is somewhat valid and often overlooked in Christendom today. We often neglect the role and logistical capacity of the Spirit’s work today in fear of slipping into some extreme unbiblical teaching on the Spirit. While the afore mentioned subject could encapsulate much writing on a myriad of subtopics, the one of my particular interest currently is the guiding role of the Spirit in the everyday lives of **(continued from 1 page newsletter)** believers. As a hunter or hunting dog may encounter quite the adventure following after a wild goose, I believe Scriptures’ teaching on the Spirit’s guiding in life often bears an uncanny resemblance. It’s not that God is on a mission to plunge us into life of “Indiana Jones” adventure to which maybe we can’t currently relate, but that our submission to His leading may often seem like an adventure. I think this truth is often not just neglected, but completely forgotten and misunderstood. I’m not saying that we all need to go out looking for the most adventurous choice and go for it assuming that God is in it just because it seems adventurous. No, what I am saying is that we don’t often treat the Spirit’s leading seriously and if we truly did, many of us would experience or maybe even realize His often unexpected ways of guidance throughout life. Biblically, we often neglect a submissive and discerning attitude toward the Spirit’s guidance throughout our everyday lives. When Christ walked this earth, He continually directed, taught, encouraged, and rebuked His followers. As He left back to the Father, He promised God’s Spirit would come to continue His function in His physical absence. Do you see it? We live in this Spirit fulfilled age where every believer personally has the indwelling of the Spirit. Just as Christ ministered to His followers in the Gospels, so the Spirit today ministers to modern day followers of Jesus. Jesus taught His followers to ask in faith their concerns and requests regarding guidance in life and really for anything. We have the awesome privilege of asking the Father in faith for His guidance predicated on our relationship to Jesus and answered and enacted through the earthly ministry of the Holy Spirit. Oh, how I know I am so often naive or oblivious to the Spirit’s work in my life! May God truly drive us back to a Biblically-centered understanding of His work in our everyday lives through His Spirit.

Allow me to share our most recent experience with the Spirit’s leading. I pray it will serve as a personal example that may help as some form of encouragement to you. It all started as I continued calling churches for support-raising meetings. Our fall schedule was filling up very slowly. At this same time, we also began looking seriously into “Travel Nursing” positions. In the need to fill the demand of nurses at various hospitals throughout our country, there are several contract nursing agencies that hire nurses to temporarily fill in these nursing gaps. Well, particularly interesting to us was the availability of these positions throughout Alaska. So after praying and seeking counsel, Laura applied to one of these companies. She began receiving Alaska job openings generally lasting around 13 weeks. The only problem initially revolved around a little thing called a state nursing license! It was quite the fiasco, but after several weeks Laura finally secured her Alaska state nursing license. During this license acquiring process, a few jobs had come and gone. So, we continued to wait on God’s leading in the matter. As I continued calling, our fall schedule remained mostly open. As a scheduled missions **(continued here from 3 page E-zine)** conference in Denver drew near, Laura received 2 calls for Alaska job openings. One located in Bethel and the other located in Wrangell. Additionally, there was one previous opening in Anchorage. To make a long story even longer, we earnestly sought God in prayer and listened to godly counsel in the matter. So now at this point we are well into the missions conference when we get a call that the Wrangell position is filled, but Bethel’s is still open. Now, you have to know that Bethel is the exact area where we are praying about initially entering full-time. Needless to say, Bethel seemed like the perfect choice. Bringing this story to a close, Laura received another phone call toward the end of the missions conference week in Denver. I can still recall the phone ringtone and seeing the (907) Alaska area code. The call was regarding the position in Wrangell. Apparently, the medical facility determined they needed another nurse for a 8 week assignment. Obviously, this was a crucial time for prayer as we sought God’s direction in this decision. Questions flooded our minds. Could this be why our fall schedule is so open? Could this be the job for Laura even though it is in a totally different part of the state? Why would God send us to an area where we are not looking to minister full-time? It turns out that the Bethel position remained open, but bypassed Laura’s resume’ in search of someone with a little different qualifications. Remember the whole first paragraph regarding my recent study on the Spirit’s leading. All of these calls came in literally as I was reading and pondering through God’s often unexpected leading and the faith it takes to follow Him even when it doesn’t make much sense. Wrapping up the story, Laura secured the job in Wrangell and we pulled an all-night drive from Denver back to Chicago for our last-minute plane flight to Wrangell. By the way, the airline tickets were another confirmation of God’s leading…He blessed us with an incredible deal!

So here I now sit in our hospital-provided apartment writing this as I look out across Wrangell’s turquoise harbor and surrounded evergreen mountain backdrop. I can’t help but smile at the wondrous, sovereign leading of our God! Laura is enjoying her job here and gaining Alaska nursing experience. We are delighted to connect up with the Baptist church here in town, while we also work on building our 2011 support-raising calendar. While we don’t yet fully comprehend God’s reasons for sending us here to Wrangell, it is crystal clear to us that His Spirit prodded us along as we leaned on Him in total faith amidst our apparent lack of understanding. Why am I sharing all of this? Because I firmly believe that God often delights in bringing His sovereign leading to bear on our finite, independent minds. We as the redeemed in Jesus must bring ourselves back to a submission to the Spirit’s role of guiding throughout life.