New Song-Revival

***It sounds better if you listen with headphones. Enjoy!

Faith vs. Pretending-Collin's Corner

Lately I have been thinking about the difference between faith and pretending. I understand that many of you can draw the lines between faith and pretending very clearly, and many of us might wonder how are they similar at all? Over the past few weeks I have been confronted with the issue of sin(no surprise!). I have encountered people that have seemed to say that if we just believe we aren't sinners anymore we won't sin. Or that if we just believe we aren't sinners that will take care of the sin problem. This is where I started to think about the difference between our faith and pretending. To pretend is usually to pretend to be something you are not. Reality has no place in pretending. But our faith is faith in what God has spoken to us in His word as fact. Faith isn't wishful thinking. It seems that faith is the faith to believe what God has spoken about us IN SPITE of who we are. Faith is the faith to be honest about who we are and yet all the more honest and sure of who God says we are. I am still processing these things, so please join me in this. I would love to hear what all of you think. Again I think that when the New Testament writers use terminology about "new creation" and "identity in Christ" I believe these things whole-heartedly, BUT I don't think the N.T. teaches that just because our "new life" is in Christ, we won't sin anymore. It seems that the new testament is addressing an identity issue. Our identity, in reality we are truly sons of God. Positionally justified and whole in Christ, and yet continually being sanctified into the image of His Son. These two things go together and aren't in opposition to each other. So when we just try to pretend that BECAUSE the N.T. says that we are new creation that we won't sin anymore, I believe this will have a huge hinderance on the heart change that the Holy Spirit wants to do in us. John Owen said (in my own paraphrase): "The more we understand the reality of our sin, to that degree will we understand the beauty of God's grace." It's true. The more we are honest about ourselves and our sin, the more we can be sure of and have faith in the far-reaching love of Christ. There is a solid faith in who Christ says we are in spite of our sin. That's amazing. Yet there is also a call to be honest about this sin, SO THAT we can see the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit at work in us to change to become more like Christ. I am sure this is a bit random in some places, so I apologize, this is just something I am processing. Feel free to comment or email me what you think. There are plenty of N.T. verses that talk about our new identity and yet the amazing reality that we are being sanctified in Christ and through Christ to be more like Him. So let's not pretend to be something we aren't, but have faith in the God who has spoken over us a redemptive word in spite of who we are.

Healing Ministry of the Local Church-Collin's corner

Hey everyone. I have thought about taking the concept of "Collin's Corner" and add it here to our normal blog. The first reason is because the "Collin's Corner" page isn't a blog format, so it would become this long page of text...it would be pretty hard to read and also find dates when things are written. So what we will do is put it into this blog format but next to the title of the blog we will add "Collin's Corner" to indicate that it's going to be a blog post with things that I am processing, reading, things of that manner. So today I wanted to share a little bit of my struggle with healing. Since I became a Christian I had wanted to be able to move in this spiritual gift of healing. We can talk about whether my motives were pure or not later;) Even to this day living in a culture that is full of idolatry and believe their idols have power,I have often prayed for God to show his power through the external miraculous signs and wonders of the Holy Spirit. This post isn't to quench this yearning, because Paul says in 1 Cor 14 to "earnestly desire" spiritual gifts. I believe God has and will continue to manifest His power through signs and wonders such as healing. In Acts we see this happening and also we see that this is a prayer that the disciples had as well (Acts 4:30). I believe this is something we should continue to pray for and seek, as Jesus demonstrated in His 3-fold ministry. There are two thoughts that I have had about this aspect of the Christian life. The first is that in 1 Corinthians spiritual gifts are given as the Holy Spirit wills. He chooses and endows people with the one He desires best. Not all will prophesy, not all will speak in tongues, etc.(1 Cor 14). Continuing with this thought, I think we usually read 1 Cor 12 & 14 through the lens of personal gift/experience, whereas Paul is addressing the church as a whole, so the church as a whole had these gifts in the church. If we look around the body of Christ today we can see all the spiritual gifts in practice. I have posted the link on this blog because I believe the author has a great point when he begins to discuss how the church has a many different types of healing ministries given by the Holy Spirit: mentally, physically, spiritually, etc. Are people being healed emotionally? Spiritually? Psychologically? These are all manifestations of the ministry of healing by the Holy Spirit. I thought this was a great thought. Ok, now my 2nd thought:

I was discussing my frustration and desire with my pastor about wanting God to move this way and he said something that really opened my eyes. He said that, "God desires us to step out in faith ,and we should pray for these signs and wonders to happen, but the greater prayer I think we should pray for is for revelation. That people would have revelation to see Christ as the Son of God." This is such a great point. It says in 2 Cor 4 that people are blinded by the God of this world from seeing JESUS as the glory of God! They aren't blinded from seeing the miracles, but they are blinded from seeing Christ as the glory of God. I want to add that the Holy Spirit uses these signs to glorify Christ as the Son of God. So living in Taiwan what if God healed my friend? He could believe, but he could also say that he just wants God to heal him again, and if God does that why does he need Jesus? What if my prayers changed from God doing signs and wonders, to GOD open their eyes to their sin, their knowledge of who Jesus is, what He requires and what He has offered everyone through the cross! A spirit of revelation to have their eyes opened to who Jesus is. In the gospels we see people who saw signs, loved Jesus as the miracle worker, but didn't love Him as the Savior. Let me know what you think about this. Blessings!

New Music

Here a couple of songs that God has given me to write and recorded on my laptop, hope you all enjoy! It might take a few minutes to load so please be patient!Also due to the recording you might want to listen to these songs with headphones/earphone for your listening pleasure:)

Happy New Year!

We hope everyone is enjoying the new year! We recently celebrated 2 years in Taiwan! We can’t believe we have already been here for that long. These last two years have definitely been a huge learning experience, as much about ourselves and our family as the Taiwanese culture. God has done so much and we are so grateful. We have built many relationships here, we have had many opportunities to share the gospel with people, andeven been given the honor of having a church in our home. These people have truly become some of our closest friends. Please keep praying for these people to know Jesus!

We are also expecting baby #2! We are so excited about this and we know that children are truly a gift from the Lord. Allison is doing well and she is trying to rest as much as she can to keep up with Hannah, who is SUPER active. Hannah is growing so fast and LOVES to talk. Half the time we don’t know what she is saying, but we just pretend like we do. Hannah must take after her Daddy because she loves to sing and dance while listening to music. Every time she hears music she will stop what she is doing and start dancing. She has some pretty sweet moves. It is so cute!

Collin’s Chinese study is also coming to an end. He will be graduating from the laage learning program at theend of this month! We are so proud of Him! He has worked so hard. We know all his hard work will pay off. We have actually already begun to see the fruit of his labor. He has been able to preach and share the gospel with so many people in Chinese! That is such a huge accomplishment and we thank the Lord for giving Collin the ability and the gift to learn this language!

So with that said some of you might be thinking what is our next step. Well, we are so excited to say that we will be staffing the School of Biblical Studies (SBS). Collin actually did this school here in Taiwan in 2007. The SBS is a 9 month course where you learn to study the Bible inductively. Collin will be teaching different books of the Bible, translating, and discipling students, and Allison thinks that she gets to do the most fun part.. which is hanging out with the students and watching God transform their lives through His word! We are super excited about this next step and we know that we are going to learn so much! We will be giving more details as we move forward in this next step.

Thank you all for your love and support. We couldn’t be doing this with out each and every one of you. May God bless you all!

Jesus came into the world not to Give bread, but to BE bread...

Recently I got the opportunity to listen to message with the title being the same as this blog title. This message struck me in many ways. If you think about the title, "Jesus came not to give bread(mainly), but to BE bread", what are some of this first impressions that you get? For me when I "stumbled" upon this message, it was during a time of some struggling in my heart. In our church we want to be very intentional with reaching out to the poor and needy. As we continue to pray for strategy and ways to do this, we have only had a "few" opportunities to really go and do some outreach. Because of this, in my heart, I have been saying ,"this isn't enough". Even though on Sundays people are hearing the Word of God preached, and joining in worship, I still had this frustration in my heart that we weren't doing enough. When I looked at the title of this message something broke inside of me. I had been placing more emphasis on the giving of physical bread, than on the teaching of Jesus BEING the ONLY bread we need. As I listened to this message God began to convict my heart in different ways. I began to see that ev I was looking to other things to satisfy my "hunger" than Jesus. Was He my bread? In a consumeristic culture that wants to use everything to fit "our needs" Jesus calls us not to use Him to just fit our "needs", BUT to BE EVERYTHING we need. HE didn't come to just "give bread", help us, give us a better life, BUT to BE our bread, to BE our Life, to be everything. Jesus says this is John 6, a few chapters before in John 4 Jesus say's He's the water. Again He shows us that in Him, is all that we need, and ever will need. If we are "thirsty" the problem isn't with the water, but it's in our hearts. Let Jesus be our bread, and water. Jesus tells us not to labor for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternity. Jesus goes on to say that how we "work" for that eternal food, is just to believe in Him. That's it. So we have two choices: we can labor for food that perishes, OR we can believe and receive eternal lasting food. God began to remind me again, that's it's when our bellies are full that we forget Him, not when we are hungry. In the OT God says it was when the Israelites were full and blessed that they began to forget God and take pride in their own strength. My prayer is that God would keep us NEEDY! Again that Jesus would be our only bread, and that we wouldn't get distracted by all the other things that are crying out for our attention and affection. I would encourage all of us to begin this week, to ask God to be our Bread. Begin to look at your life and ask, what things, events, ministries, etc am I using to satisfy my need for Jesus? Are we looking at the gifts more than the Giver? God gives us gifts so we can focus our worship on the Giver, not on the gifts. These are just a few questions that can lead our hearts to begin to treasure Jesus as our Bread, and our water.

Here's the message if you want to listen to it:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/jesus-came-not-to-give-bread-but-to-be-bread

baketball ministry

Untitled from Amy Marie Borchers on Vimeo.

Hey guys this is a ministry that we're involved in here in Taiwan. We've been doing this for about 4 months. We go every Tuesday and Friday night to the courts for about 4 hours to be with these guys. Every Tuesday night we have a time of sharing where we will buy drinks for whoever will come and listen. This is what you are seeing in this video. Out of this ministry we have seen guys come to our church and taken an interest in the gospel. Also, as Brent mentioned, are going to do a series on true manhood vs. false manhood. Pray for us!