Letters While Separated: Weekly Compilation
We know not everyone has social media, so each Friday all the letters from the week will be compiled on the blog. Thank you so much to everyone who has submitted letters. We all can agree it has been such a source of encouragement!
(Scroll to the end for directions on how to submit your letter- we want to hear from YOU!)
Dear Mars Hill Family,
Ten years ago, I spent forty days searching after God’s heart in a fast. The fast included a strict diet of food that God used to help me see my joy was found in things other than him. My fast also included a separation of time from social media and TV. I was amazed by how much extra time I had and also frustrated by how I longed for watching shows or my spending time mindlessly looking at others lives on social media. God used this time to remove clutter from life so that I can see my need for him. My heart was unmasked and I enjoyed fellowship with God like never before. This time of sweet fellowship brought great joy and also tore things from my life that were deeply rooted idols.
One of the truths that God taught me during my fast was found in Genesis 3:8; “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Do you see it? Humanity’s first instinct was to hide ourselves from the joy of the creator with his creation. I spent years foolishly thinking that in certain areas of my life, creation was a good substitute for the Creator. When creation was stripped away I saw my foolishness and the goodness of walking fully exposed to God.
Now ten years have passed and just like my garage after a good cleaning, much clutter has entered my life again. I am starting to recognize that God has brought me to another season of fasting from my normalcy. For the past week and half my schedule has come to a screeching halt. I no longer transport kids every night of the week to a sports-related activity. I am not rushing out the door to another meeting. I am being forced to have times of quiet and pause which is causing me to see clutter that I have used to hide myself from God. The Bible refers to this clutter as sin. So I hear God calling my name in the garden again, he is calling me to remove certain things that I have been hiding so that I may be free to enjoy Him.
Over the past few weeks, I have had the privilege to watch a team of servant leaders in our church reach out to many of you. We have been calling to check on your physical well-being during this time of crisis, but many of you have shared pain that is not related to any physical sickness. This time of uncertainty is causing many of us to recognize that our hiding places in the garden are not as good as we thought.
May I encourage you the way that I was encouraged by a loving mentor the first time I was heading into my fast from normalcy ten years ago? I was told, “Mark, it is time to die to the boy that you are in some areas of your life and become the man that God desires you to be.”
I so deeply desire that you, too, may have the freedom that God has for you when you walk with him unashamed.
Look at John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Steal, kill, and destroy, does that sound like your life right now? Jesus came so you may have life and have it more abundantly. This life is attainable when we are willing to stop foolishly thinking that we can hide our brokenness from God and accept that we are deceiving ourselves with this notion that we can find joy when we are hiding.
So today, do not look at this time as an accidental annoyance from your life, but a gift that God has given you as a pause from your normal so that He might allow you to find new joy in Him. Come out from wherever you are and let God begin to restore you!
For His glory,
Mark Rudd
Dear Church Family,
"The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” John 1:35-38
In a women’s bible study years ago, the leader challenged me to consider what my answer would be if Jesus looked me in the eye and asked, “Why are you following Me? What are you seeking?” That evening, I wrote my response in my prayer journal: I am seeking a life that is relevant. I fear that I was probably proud of my answer, feeling it was admirable and highly spiritual. However, many times over the ensuing 30 or more years since I wrote that, the Holy Spirit has gently reminded me that “being relevant” is not my purpose in life. In fact, our current study of the book of John at Mars Hill has reinforced over and over again that the glorification of God is what we should seek, and that Jesus glorified the Father through perfect obedience. And yet, I continue to struggle with what glorifying God through obedience actually looks like.
How does this relate to the current Covid-19 epidemic? Well, there’s this: I have discovered that I am a “non-essential” in my workplace. Two weeks ago, I was entering a busy season at work, with meetings, conferences, presentations and projects galore. In my little work world, I was, in my own estimation, at the peak of my relevance. Then, the pandemic had the audacity to interfere. Every time I crossed something out on my day planner, that big “X” symbolized a little bit of my relevance slipping away. I am “working from home” today, but the phone calls and emails have trickled down to nothing. The work I was doing two weeks ago seems unimportant, even frivolous now. My relevance was, as it turns out, a mirage.
What should I do with the vacated slots on my calendar? Will I use the extra space created by this unprecedented event to learn to glorify God in little ways? In quiet ways? In ways that do not get recognized by others? I pray that I will. My prayer is that, during this time when the noisy, hectic trappings of my daily existence, those things that I rely upon to make me feel relevant, have been stripped away, I will learn to hear and heed the invitation to love God’s glory more than my own. And when the calendar starts to fill up again, and the phone rings and the emails chime, I pray that I will remember what –no WHO --I really seek.
-Amy M.
Dear Church Family,
We started this cancer journey again in October of 2019. It seems like a long time ago now. I say “we” because cancer doesn’t just concern me. It affects just about everyone associated with me; my wife, my kids, my grandchildren, my extended family, my church family, my friends, etc. You see what I mean? And I say “again” because, as many of you know, I was diagnosed back in 2004 with stage 3 Esophageal Cancer that, by all medical reasoning, should have taken my life about 6 months after the diagnosis.
As we began the journey in 2004 God gave me a clear word that the cancer was not going to take my life. It came from Psalm 118:17, “I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.” I had been praying diligently for the Lord to tell me if I was living or dying because I didn’t want to go through chemo, radiation, and a massive surgery to remove my esophagus if I was just dying anyway. When I came across that verse in my daily Bible reading, I knew it was God’s answer to my prayer and we stood on that answer. The doctors are all amazed that I’m still around but we serve the “great physician”.
God has not given me that same word for this journey. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to die from this cancer, just that God has not specifically said I’m not going to die from it. We are all going to die one day unless Jesus returns. But the word God has continually placed before me is Psalm 34:1-3, “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!”
I love it that this passage has a lot about “me” in it but ends with “let us exalt his name together.” That is how the Lord wants to use the difficulties we all face in our lives to bring honor and glory to himself. It starts with me individually but needs to flow to the others around me.
I need to recognize that God is good in all circumstances. He never changes! I need to verbally communicate His goodness, His glory, to others who are humble enough to hear it. (At Mars Hill recently, we’ve heard a lot about those who were not humble enough to hear the Word speaking directly to them.) I want my very essence to boast in Him, not in me or even in the blessings I’ve received from Him, but just in Him. And I need to encourage others to do the same.
So that is what I want to do with this letter. I want to encourage you in these difficult times of quarantine and toilet paper outage to Bless the Lord, praise His name continually, let your life boast in Him, and be humble enough to hear from Him and be glad! Let’s magnify Him and exalt His name, never losing sight of just how good He is even in the midst of difficulty.
Dana has a chalkboard on one of our walls in the kitchen that is for anyone to write on. The line at the top of the chalkboard reads; I’m Thankful For…. Maybe this would be a good time for you and your family to sit around the table and just share the things for which you are grateful.
Dana and I are grateful for all of you and for the support you have shown us through this battle. We battle on!
Blessings!
Mark Powell
Dear Church Family,
Because of the pandemic, a weekend in which I had planned to run errands, have dinner with friends and play with grandkids, turned into a very solitary few days of reflection. My only visitor was a caterpillar that tried to crawl from a bush onto my shoulder while I was sitting on the back patio reading. I watched it for a long time and wondered how many little things I miss because I am so busy.
In my reading I learned a new phrase: qui vive.
When a sentinel guarding a French castle in days of yore cried, Qui vive?
your life depended upon your answer - the right one was usually something like "Long live the king!" Nowadays, the term is most often used in the phrase on the qui vive, meaning "on the lookout."
I hope to be qui vive for Clarence the caterpillar (and yes. . . of course I named him), when he becomes a butterfly — another one of God’s miracles that I take for granted and often times miss. May my answer to “Qui vive?” always be “King Jesus.”
-Tana and Clarence
Dear Church Family,
What a wonderful time to be a child of God. While the enemy wants us to believe that our hope rests in this world, we know, by the Word, that our hope is only in Christ.
We miss all of our friends. I miss chaotic Sunday mornings. The kids of Mars Fairhope running and playing in the gym. The constant “buzz” of fellowship. There’s a lot of little things that I miss and I know will soon return once this wave of sickness is gone.
I am currently using the rightnowmedia resource. I am walking through Ps 119, taught by Matt Chandler. It was approximately one year ago that I was walking through this Psalm in my morning meditation. Funny how we forget things. I guess God wants to remind me of the truth in that Psalm. From what I gather, this psalm was written over the course of Davids life. The highest highs and the lowest lows. There is so much to learn from his trials.
With that, the same can be said of our own trials. We all will walk with a certain “limp” as we exit battles and enter new ones. But, in all things God is faithful. I am reminded of Psalm 23. He goes before me!
Blessings to all who read this! May you know Gods peace.
-Joe
Dear Church Family,
I miss gathering with you.
I am grateful for technology and our faithful leaders but Sunday was not the same. I miss singing with you and laughing with you and squeezing you in hugs (remember those?). I miss drinking coffee with you and looking across the auditorium to see you grouped together talking and smiling and praying and carrying one another's burdens. My introverted heart is learning in brand new ways that we were not made for isolation.
I'm also learning on deeper levels the wonder of the intentional paradoxes of the Christian life.
For me, the last few weeks have been simultaneously full of joy and hardship. Joy and celebration as my boyfriend and I got engaged, bought a house, and dreamed of the ways we would be able to love and serve people through it all. And then hardship and tears (lots of tears) as I had to tell people at work their hours (and source of income) were being cut, and then more hardship as my bosses had to tell me my hours were being cut and I became another one of the thousands of people in our world right now without a job.
As I've been prayerfully processing these things and trying to lean into each situation in order to more clearly see the God orchestrating it all, I've come back again to a faithful lesson: none of these situations are ultimate. Rather, each paradox is preaching a sermon.
The circumstantial hardship—financially, emotionally, and otherwise—is not ultimate. It is not eternal. It will not last forever. Not because I'm banking on this pandemic ceasing and everything going back to "normal," but because, better yet, this difficulty awakens in us a deeper longing for all the sad things to come untrue and all the wrong to be made fully and forever right. And one day, by God's grace, it will.
The circumstantial joy—relationally and otherwise—is not ultimate. It is not eternal. It will not last forever. Oh, joy will last forever, but not the kind tied to circumstances. There is a true and better joy awaiting us and, wonder of wonders, it's available to us now through Christ's atoning work. This joy is one that supersedes and extends far beyond engagements and weddings and houses and jobs of this earth and reaches into the glory of the faraway land we were made for. One where beauty and home are brought together in the person and work of Jesus Christ and, while we now only see through a mirror dimly, one day we will see our heavenly Groom face to face and our hearts will not explode but expand by the grandeur of it all.
Until then, I long to taste and see in deeper measure the grace of God reaching to us right here, right now, in every detail of our fractured and hurting lives. It's there. Can you see it?
There is a profound mercy that comes through crisis. It awakens our hearts and allows us tofeel what is always true: we are gloriously out of control of this life and in desperate need for a Savior to rescue our rebel hearts and stabilize us beyond the shifting situations of this world.
And in His mercy, our Father has provided such a Savior. And He is better. He is better than the deepest hurts and the greatest joys we experience in this temporal life. He is better than heartbreak and excitement, incomes and marriage, homes and family. Jesus is better than nothing and better than all.
And we are safe in Him.
"The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms." -Deuteronomy 33:27a
Underneath everything, all our joys, sorrows, and heartache, is our good Sovereign. Dig into it all and find rest in His sufficient arms of grace.
As we've been learning together, He is our good Shepherd. He will not leave us to the wolves. He fought for us. He fights for us. And He loves us to the end. We can trust Him. The Judge of all the earth will do right—He can do no other.
May He find us faithful to His unchanging mission of knowing Him and making Him known.
He is worthy.
-Sophie M.
Submit your letter and pictures to tricia@pomh.org. Be sure to include your first name (we will not use your full name), how this pandemic has affected your everyday life, things that have been hard for you, and things that you have enjoyed from this time. Include scripture and other resources that have helped you.
Letters will be edited for formatting purposes.
Parents, if your young child submits a letter, please include their age. If you choose to include a photo, please choose one that doesn’t show their face. Some ideas might be to show them doing their schoolwork, examples of a craft they made, or action shots of them playing.