It's a girl + more!

Now that I have your attention in a somewhat mean and funny way, it is a girl. It's not a girl from Poland, not a referral, and probably not that funny to most of you. We finally sat down at the computer as a family and looked through the list of children on the World Vision website and let Ryleigh pick a child.  She decided that she wanted us to sponsor a little girl.  We found a little girl named Lindsay who lives in Bolivia and shares the same birthday as Ryleigh, July 7th of 2006.

Just think for $35 a month, we can give this little girl and her family clean water, medical supplies, school supplies, and exposure to the Gospel.  All that for the amount of money we spend to go out to dinner at a decent restaurant.

On the adoption side of life, nothing happening.  We are just waiting. The last time we heard from our agency, they guessed May or June. So, here we sit. We did receive an ornament this year as a gift in the shape of Poland and we hung a stocking up for them this Christmas as well. So our child does already have a few gifts waiting for them. It's hard to explain loving someone you have never met, never seen, don't know their name, gender or anything, yet we do.

On a side note, we have been having some great Sunday's at Cynthiana Baptist.  We have been challenged to get out of the church, be the church, and take the church to people. You can't help but feel a little guilty when we look at all we have and how little most of the rest of the world has. I pray that our church develops a heart for missions and not just a head. We can talk a good game, but when you look at our church history, our members lives, and our checkbook, are we really committed?

We have been established as CBC for going on 144 years.  I wonder, in that time, how many people have we sent to the mission field?  What kind of global impact have we made?  We have done well in our "Jerusalem", but what about our Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth? Have we been, and are we being an outreach church?  Are we committed to reaching lost people? Based off the popularity and attendance of our Sunday nights and visitation programs, I'd say we are not committed as a church body. Matthew 28:19 and Acts 1:8 were not given to us by Jesus himself as options, but commands.  It's time that we as Christians and as a church open up our lives, our hearts, and our check books to do whatever it takes to see lost people come to Christ.  Lost people can't come Christ unless they hear about Him.  It is reported that about 1.6 billion people have never heard the name of Jesus and that 95% of the worlds population lives outside America.  When we are broken and our eyes truly opened to the vastness and lostness of the the world around us, only then will we stop playing "church games" and get serious about missions.

John Piper said, "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever."