Reading

I just finished "The Mysterious Benedict Society". It was so good and I'm going to read the second book soon. Any ways... this is my next book. And I'm totally going to finish it this time! Now I'm accountable to the few people that read this blog and I have to finish it. It's an amazing book, but certainly not an "easy" read for me. I think this is going to be my new book rotation; an easy kids' book/fun fiction and then a more difficult book. We'll see how it works.

In God We Trust

Africa blog #1

So... we finally made it to Malawi. After 36 hours of travel we're here! We've only been here for a few hours and God has already started something in our hearts. The second we walked into the football stadium and saw everyone dancing and singing we started crying. There's just something about the joy that these people have. Their thankfulness and praise ushers in the presence of God in such a powerful way.

We sang "Save Your People" tonight and they went crazy! Everyone was jumping up and down and singing as loud as they could. We're playing again Saturday night and Sunday. Thanks for all your prayers and comments... we appreciate it so much.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow. Love love love!

-jack

Planes Planes & more Planes

I'm off to Africa via London! YAY!

peace!

-jack

Christian the Lion

I love it!

New Band Blog

We just started a new band blog. Check it out HERE!

Colossians 3:15

Me and Whit are trying to memorize Colossians chapter three. Scripture memorization has never come very easy for me, but Whit brought up the challenge and it's going pretty well. Any ways, I was reading through and I got to the fifteenth verse:

"And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful."

The second I read that scripture I just started to meditate on peace. What a beautiful thing to think upon... the peace of God reigning in our hearts. But then I started to hear gun fire, bombs, and crashing debris. I visualized the most bloody, violent, and vehement battle scene one could imagine. And I felt God whisper to me... "This is your heart."

We're so hard on ourselves. We make Satan's job so easy. He probably just sits back and watches us wage war against ourselves. We hurl accusations at ourselves and inflict injury and punishment all within the confines of our heart. And we usually don't sop there but start firing at others. Pretty soon we're in a state of lovelessness. Not loving ourselves near as much as God loves us, and not loving others near as much as we love ourselves.

The cross, the grave, and the resurrection was the ultimate peace treaty. God crushed violence, accusation, and sin; freeing us to be at peace with Him and ourselves. We have to understand that we are loved beyond our understanding. The perfect love of Jesus, and that alone, will bring peace to our hearts.