Thanks, God!

This morning, in my time with God, I praised God for:

• My beautiful and expanding family.
• A warm and good meeting with New Albany's Mayor yesterday. She wants to meet again and talk more...
• An open door to dream about how to serve people through some of the programs of New Albany's parks and recreation department. I enjoyed a good lunch meeting with Noah, a director there yesterday. Pray for good opportunities to love the thousands of kids and families in NA parks and rec. department programs in practical ways.
• A GREAT conversation with my neighbor, Gary. A few times a day, Gary stands outside his house enjoying a smoke. In God's timing, it seems like several times a day, Gary steps out of his door at the same time I do. We've had a lot of interaction recently. A few weeks ago I told Gary we were starting Sunday gatherings in our house. Last evening, we started talking again and he asked how our church is going. The conversation that followed was rich-- I was able to learn about some of his background, how he had been hurt and turned off to church through some legalistic, finger pointing, huffy religious people in his past. This was a wide open door to share with him about ClearView's name, why we exist, and that our principle goal is to love people to see Jesus for what He really is (presenting a clear view). I carefully shared that the Bible does have standards for our lives...but they are given out of love and in the motivation of what is God's best for our lives. I invited him and his wife to join us some Sunday and told him I'd love to talk with him sometime about beliefs he sometimes contemplates. He said he'd consider my offer. Would you pray for Gary and Kristen and the hundreds of thousands of people in northeast Columbus? Pray for ClearView and other Bible-teaching churches to love these people to Jesus.