those gereckes

A timely reminder...

2009-01-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

As I was reading this morning I came across the familiar passage of Israel fleeing Egypt and coming to the Red Sea. As Pharoah approaches God gives Moses the admonition to "wait upon the Lord, be still and God will fight for you". I know that God will take care of us and at just the right moment move us across the next step of our journey.

five days and counting.....

2009-01-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

I remember watching the Olympics this summer and seeing the marathon. So much of that race was run through the streets of Beijing but the final lap finished inside the stadium amongst the crowd. I feel like right now we are just circling the stadium, waiting for permission to enter, running continuously and frankly we are exhausted. I mean can you imagine pushing three kids as you run a marathon. In all honesty though this would almost be easier if I didn't know what God is capable of and that if He desired I could get a phone call tonight with an offer on our house. I think mainly we just feel like everything is on hold and we don't really belong here anymore.
As the time passes however God is shaping my heart to be in Portugal, my desire is to be there. It's almost like when you have to trudge through thick mud and it takes such effort just to pick your foot up and move forward only my foot won't come up, and no matter how much I lean or strive I am still stuck.
I know God is sovereign, and I rest in His will for me and I am do have great peace knowing that He is in control and that if we are delayed it is an act of His present and future grace towards me, but i would be lying to you if I said I was happy with it. The way I tend to think is in the physical world. Because I don't see anything happening on my house, I think that God is being passive or not acting by not doing what I consider to be the desired outcome. He may be actively keeping that from happening however, not for bad but for good. I say this and I know this and I believe this with all my heart, and yet I yearn for Portugal. I long to move forward and to complete this process that has taken us almost three years now, but I will wait. And when it is time I will be the most excited person on that plane; and yet I will be sitting there as I take off already missing my family and friends and hoping that I used this time that I am now bemoaning wisely and in a way that brought glory to my Father and allowed Him to accomplish whatever it is that He wants to do in me and through me while I wait.
I am starting to understand what Jesus meant by saying do not worry about tomorrow, for today is enough. I am finding the key for me is to have peace in today, enjoy His grace today, and to seek Him today and then whatever occurs tomorrow rest in the fact that We will walk through it together.

The surprise that wasn't

2008-12-25T09:23:00.000-08:00

Well, He did it again. We had a couple come through our house on Sat. and they turned around and made an offer on Tues. and signed a contract on Wed. I've heard that in comedy timing is everything and I am starting to think the same holds true for our walk with Jesus. God had given us peace about staying around for a little longer than expected and then as soon as He brought us to the place of being satisfied in Him alone, in His grace He met our needs again.

the waiting is the hardest part....

2008-12-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

I hardly think that Tom Petty was talking about serving the Lord when he sang that song but I find it so applicable to our situation. We had finally gotten to the point where we thought we could stop telling people "we think we will go at this time" and be able to put some definite times to our schedule but here we are again still in the same waiting phase. I have been praying asking God to further confirm our call through the process of selling our house and I am hoping that He does that by beating the odds and selling it soon but I have to remind myself that He is no less God if He chooses not to.
I feel almost like school is possibly being extended throughout the summer and having to wait to experience the next phase that He has in store for us. I hope that we are as thankful if He has us wait as if He were to send us tomorrow and that our appreciation and love for Him is not found to be dependent upon circumstances but that is much easier to say and think than it is to feel and live out. I am thankful for His grace in this time and the fact that He does know what we are feeling since His Son was made human and experienced all that we do. I guess that's just one more reason to celebrate Christmas.

2008-12-12T18:43:00.000-08:00

I sacrifice nothing.....

2008-11-14T21:01:00.000-08:00

November 10 -2008
Father, the reason that I am awake at four and now reading Your word at 5 after running is only attributable to You. I wake with excitement and with the phrase "I sacrifice nothing" on my mind, my heart and my lips.
Sacrifice is a term we throw around a lot in the United States, but one I am not sure we understand. Especially today as believers we talk about freedoms lost, lives restrained or persecutions endured. Do we really lose freedom when in Galatians 6 Your word states, "if the Son has set you free, You are free indeed". we gain freedom in Jesus, freedom over sin, death, bondage, fear, selfishness, pride, anxiety, vanity and mostly ourselves. to view the Christian life as a lack of freedom is to turn our eyes back while on the plow and attempt to bring our habits and issues of the past into our relationship with Christ. We are set free from those things to purse Jesus as it says in Hebrews 12:1-2. We are set free to be who God has made us to be and finally have the power and the will to carry it out.
Some of us may also look at the Christian life and say it is restricting, that we feel restrained. Please let us not insult God by saying His purpose for us and knowing Him is in any manner less satisfactory then our existence without Him. how lazy and superficial we are. The way seems narrow at times but I would contend that to feel restrained is to attempt to apply the teachings of Jesus to our lives without knowing the real Jesus personally. Jesus is the reward. If I go overseas and gain only Jesus and depth and intimacy with my King and never see fruit from the seeds we plant, I gain the world. To gain Jesus takes surrender, obedience and trust that He is the price. Without faith it is impossible to please God. We must believe that He is and that He is able. We sacrifice nothing because in the end, when we count all things as loss compared to knowing Him, what of those things is comparable to knowing Him? To sacrifice implies that we five up something of greater price for something of lesser value for a greater good. In Jesus we give up something of lesser value to obtain Him who is eternally profitable with the promise of obtaining an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in Heaven for us personally...(1 Peter 1:4).
And is ever persecution a sacrifice? The question may seem foolish, naive or ignorant. How can the loss of family, reputation or even our lives not be considered a sacrifice? Again I would contend we must look to the end result to see if sacrifice is appropriate. As I leave my family, a career with potential, a neighborhood I love full of ministry, and the prospect of raising my kids in the greatest nation on Earth, am I sacrificing? Please don't refer to me in that sense, for again my Lord promises to go with me and take me deeper into the knowledge of Him in so doing. i am finally beginning to understand when he writes in Phil. 3:7-8 that all things are loss compared to knowing Him. Jesus makes my sacrifice impossible because there is nothing I give up that when compared to knowing Him is not counted loss. I want so badly for this to be descriptive of me all the time but I find it waning easily.
I sacrifice nothing to follow Jesus because he promises a far greater reward than i can earn without Him. I may suffer; from loneliness or rejection, persecution or depression, but may it never be considered a sacrifice for my Jesus suffered the same and how can I know Him and not follow in his path of life. How can i ask him to walk me through my life and not expect that to include me walking through paths on His? And if these trials can bring me closer to Jesus, increase my depth and knowledge of Him, then I rejoice, counting all things as the apostles in Acts 5:41 as a privilege to endure for the sake of the Gospel.
Thank you Jesus for being so great a God, so worthy a Lord, so majestic a King that we can say with confidence that the promise of You and Your presence leaves the possibility of our sacrifice not only unlikely, but impossible.

As an addendum I'd like to state that I understand this is the ideal and I fail to live it so many days, I have fleeting moments of thinking this, feeling this, but living this is too many times foreign to my actions. Just as Paul said, not that I have allready attained this, but that I press in to the grace of Jesus and strive toward the upward call of Christ and find that it His grace is sufficient to encourage us to follow Him and find Him alone to be our greatest treasure and reward.

A good quote

2008-09-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

I was once told that anything you want to say that is really important has probably already been said by someone else and most likely in a better fashion than you. Here is my proof of that statement.

"'Not called!' did you say?
'Not heard the call,' I think you should say.
Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face -- whose mercy you have professed to obey -- and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world. -- William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

And then.........

2008-09-11T16:32:00.000-07:00

Well, the day we have been waiting for has finally come. We found out on Tuesday morning that the Board of Trustees of the IMB has voted and approved us for possible service to Portugal. It's funny because you wait and wait for that vote and then get paperwork in the mail stating that you are still not appointed but rather "recommended for appointment". It makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. No really it does.
One thing nice about the whole process is that as people find out what you are doing it is a very easy segue to having a spiritual conversation about what they believe. Especially at work with both co-workers and customers this has proven to be true and some of the conversations have been really interesting and eye opening.
Lately I have also been listening to a sermon series on Ecclesiastes by Matt Chandler, whom I highly recommend. It's pretty thick and after each one I feel the need to put on William Hung just to lighten the mood a little bit but at the same time incredibly necessary I think. Solomon is not really the life of the party when he starts his book by stating all of life is meaningless four times. Real chipper man. Again it makes me want to both laugh and then cry. Johnathan Edwards said that he made it a point to think often of his death to help him live his life the way he knew was good and right.
I don't know what caused it or when it happened but I can look back and see how God has shaped my perspective by allowing me to focus on the eternal rather than the temporal and I am grateful He did so. 2 Cor. 4 states that what is seen is temporal and what is unseen is eternal. Solomon's whole point is that everything in this world: pleasure, money, power, wisdom, relationships, all of these things are meaningless vanity if not seen and lived through the eternal perspective of Jesus Christ. This sounds so harsh at first but it is true. What is the point of money if all you do with it is store it up and die. If I don't lead my kids closer to Jesus and view them as a blessing from God it is meaningless to even be a father. All my efforts and energy will be in vain if in 100 years I and them are dead and the world goes on unaffected.
Anyway, really uplifting post I know but I think as we get closer to leaving God in His grace is giving me the proper perspective. It is for Him alone that I live and breathe and serve. I am thankful that He has allowed me to think of my end before it arrives.

Finally

2008-05-22T17:00:00.001-07:00

At last, I have been delaying writing anything on here until we had gained significant progress in our process with the IMB to get overseas. We are excited to finally reach the completion of our paperwork. We have a couple more interviews during a conference in two weeks in Richmond, VA but so far everything has gone very smoothly. God has truly blessed the process for us and gone before us in every step along the way giving us confirmation and peace that can only come from His presence.
We have a job reserved for us in Porto located on the northwest coast of Portugal. It is a city of nearly two million people but only two percent have come to know Jesus personally. Though it is a different culture and has a different history the people of that city have the same need for salvation as we do here. Many of them have likely never heard the beauty of the pure grace of the Gospel of Christ and have attempted to reach God through a sense of works or merit that can never satisfy their need of relationship with Jesus. Please pray for us as we run the last lap of the application process only to begin the marathon of missions. I am so thankful that we serve a God that desires to be known by us and is willing to die to make that possible. I pray that if you don't already have that relationship with Him you will soon. God is willing and waiting to welcome you home.

And there there were 5....

2008-01-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

Calvin is here. He came in screaming on December 27 and has been pretty quiet ever since. Henry and Lily both adore their baby brother and Lily calls him "my baby". The biggest adjustment has been juggling time for the three of them and trying to make them all feel as though they are receiving the attention they are seeking. Hank and Lil really have done well, I think because they are both so young and don't know life being any different. Cristi has done a remarkable job taking care of the three little gremlins and maintaining order in our house. School starts up this next week and I feel guilty about looking forward to it so much, more for the quiet time by myself than the intellectual challenge, please.

2007 - Year in Review

2007-12-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

What a year it has been. Most of you know by now that Cristi is pregnant, again, and due here in the next couple weeks. I am not sure we really know what we are getting ourselves in for but we've managed to fool enough of you this far so we thought we'd press our luck and go for number three. We are both excited to see just who this child is, what his or her personality is going to be and how he/she is going to be different from the two older siblings. Henry and Lily are both very excited, especially Lily as she has been talking about the baby in her belly as well.

Cristi has been working up at our churches pre-school two days a week and has enjoyed the break from being home everyday. Hank and Lily have had a blast going to school and have come home singing songs and quoting bible verses they learned. Henry really has a great memory and it is neat to see him remember information that will benefit him down the road and help him know his Father better. We kind of figured he would be able to do it because of the way he has memorized every animal at the zoo and is the only three year old I know that can tell you what an okapi is. They have both grown up a ton this past year. Henry potty-trained himself practically in a couple days and has learned how to play games on the computer. Lily adores her big brother and will do anything to make him laugh or anyone else for that matter. She is definitely our little comedian and is very effective.

I am still with Ozarka doing sales and delivery and that has gone well. There are late days mixed in with some short ones so it evens out overall. On top of that I started seminary this past semester and just finished my finals this weekend. I don't know if I have matured since college in respect to education but it is so much easier to be motivated to study and go to class when I can see the purpose and plan behind it all.

Most of you already know we have been working with the IMB (International Mission Board) for about a year and a half now pursuing going overseas as missionaries. We finally have some dates and are targeting leaving the states in March 2009. I think we have both felt every possible emotion as we have gone through the process and finally come to the realization that we aren't going because of a love for any certain people, but rather because we are falling more in love with Jesus and because of the deep love that He has for ALL people. It is really amazing that we can know a God that cares about us intimately and personally enough to seek us out and lay down his life to have a relationship with us. God has really made that truth fresh to me this year and I hope I never get used to it.

I hope this letter finds all of you doing well. We are going to try to keep this updated regularly to keep in touch with everyone, especially with our plans to be overseas in the next year and a half. We love you and look forward to hearing from you soon.

The Gereckes

Christmas Cards

2007-11-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year again, Christmas card time. I remember getting cards growing up and I loved to read them and see what was going on with each family. We moved around a bunch so many times it was our only time to hear about what was happening in the lives of some of our friends that we had moved away from. It's also interesting to see what people included or viewed as priorities enough to share on that one or two pages that was supposed to encapsulate a whole year. Sometimes it fills up fast and others you feel like a high school kid trying to cram a five page paper into ten. It's kind of sad that most of the time all you get now is a picture. I guess we have more ability to keep in touch all year long than earlier but oh well, all we are doing is trotting out our cute kids for one more year so I guess it doesn't bother me enough to do much about it. We'll see if that changes.