"Things We've Learned" (Introduction)

        This is the introduction to a series. The other posts can be seen here
1. God's Sovereignty
2. Prayer
3. Community
4. Contentment and Sustaining Grace

    Many of you know, yesterday, Kate left the country to go to London and Ukraine with my family and their church. While this will be a hard week of separation, it also threw a bit of a monkey-wrench in our “three blogs a week” commitment (which we failed at last week, sorry). I love to write, but I will have a final and be starting a new organ system while Kate is gone, so that’s a little much for me to balance in my schedule. After Kate returns, my family will be here as well, so blogging won’t be the first thing on our minds. We talked about different options and what we decided to do was to spend time together, writing and talking about the things we have learned through trials since we’ve moved to Israel.

            Things have not been easy for us here. The point of this post is not to list and detail all things we’ve been through, since most of you are already familiar and we’ve written about them before. We truly treasure our dear friends and family and the support they’ve shown us, as even common problems are compounded by our distance and cultural transition.

            In this time, however, the Lord has used these difficulties to refine us. He has helped to form our thinking on many different issues, and has helped us to appreciate the many graces we have been surrounded with. These lessons are not new, or groundbreaking, but our experience with them is both of those things. God is growing us into maturity in Christ through these trials.

            While we are still learning from these things, and still seeking to understand more, we have chosen four areas in which the Lord has been teaching us. It is our desire to share these things with you over the next two weeks. We hope and pray that these things will encourage you, regardless of whether you are going through difficulty or not. This has been a formative time for us in our understanding of community, God’s sovereignty, prayer and sustaining grace. We hope this window into our lives will make our fellowship that much sweeter when we are with you again.