Week 2 At Cannon Beach

Prayer Team,

Well, we're back in Cannon Beach Oregon this week and it's been great! Ian Leitch, of the Herald's Trust in Scotland, is the conference speaker and has been giving some really encouraging messages about "TheReasonableness of Faith in Christ". He is a Bible teacher and an evangelist who teaches apologetics at several Bible schools in the US and inEurope. Sometimes it's really good to remember that God created us with a logical mind, and he's not asking us to throw it away so that we can have faith in him. He simply asks us to approach Him in faith, then His truth will satisfy our spirit AND our mind.

Our Tuesday night concert was a blast and we have had a really strong response from many individuals who have been encouraged by our ministry during this week.

My family has been able to join me for the week again, and it's been areally fun time for me as a parent to see my children thriving under the children's ministry here. My eleven year-old child seems to be coming into that stage of life where he is beginning to make some real life changing decisions of faith for himself. My nine year-old is just having a blast playing with so many really good kids that she's met here. She's quickly gone hoarse both weeks we've been here because of all of the fun. I love it because if I ask her why her voice sounds so funny she always answers very matter-of-factly in her tiny little muffled voice, "I blew out my pipes, yelling too much!"

Grandma has been visiting us here yesterday and today and she bought my 7 year-old a picture Bible. He carries it everywhere and shows the pictures to everyone he can get to listen to him. He seems so very proud of the fact that he's got a bible that he can understand and even read himself, with beautiful illustrations of the bible stories. Part of me feels a little bad for the people in the Coach House (the snack shop/ diner on the conference grounds), because they are his little captive audience, and he can be a little hard to understand. But, I have to tell you that something inside this father's heart hopes that this is a foreshadowing of things to come for him. I hope he always feels the boldness to approach others with thefact that there's a God in heaven that loves us so much that he made a way for even us, tiny little humans, to get to know him and to comprehend in some small way his deep love for us. I hope that as he grows that the true illustrations of the Bible, painted by the very words of God, will become a source of comfort, healing, course correction, and encouragement to him, as they have been for me.

I was called upon to sing a special song with my guitar for this morning's service, and I thought of my children and their excitement for the things ofGod. I thought about my own earliest memories of the conviction of God as he called me into ministry as a small boy. I also thought about Ian Leitch's messages dealing with the simplicity of the message of Christ as it confounds the wise. One song leapt out to me, and even though I had prepared to sing a different one, at the last minute I changed my mind.

Can you guess what song would speak to the simplicity of child like faith and of a God who has gone to great pains to approach us in such a way that we can all grasp his message?

I sang:

Jesus Loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Doesn't that song pretty much say it all?