Is anything too difficult for the Lord?

As I was reading through Genesis 18 today, I was struck by Sarah laughing at the Word of the Lord. She thought it impossible, and almost silly, for God to give her something so amazing. An heir which He had promised long ago. To her, the renewed promise of a child seemed to come too late. She had longed for a child in her early years. She had no doubt wrestled with God on why, if Abraham was promised heirs, did she not have one? She had even tried to speed up the process, and made Hagar have a son with Abraham. She thought she could hurry the process and get on with the promise. To her, the promise of the heir and blessing was more important than the process. So her response to this long awaited promise, was nervous laughter. God waited to answer her personal prayers in a completely different way, and at an unexpected time.

How often do I laugh at the provision of the Lord? How often do I completely miss the provision of the Lord because it isn't in the form I prayed for? How often do I try and "hurry up" the Lord and fix the situation on my own? So far, church planting is really challenging . However, I believe that the prayers Matthias and I have prayed are being answered. Honestly, where we are in the process of church planting is extemely trying. We don't see how in the world we will find a house in Central Austin, in the next 6 weeks. We have no idea how we will meet hundreds of people to start the church. Over the last week, I started to question our circumstances and found myself "laughing" as Sarah did. My flesh wants to hurry up the process to get on to the promise of a new church plant in Austin. God accomplished everything in Sarah that He desired in His perfect time, for His perfect glory. I long to not question the circumstances, but always believe God for who He is, not what He does or how He does it.
Thanks for all of your prayers!!! Andrea

Milestones

Well, we are now in January of 2008 which means that we have about 8 months until we are to launch our new church.
In order for that to become a reality we will have to see God's miracles over these next weeks and months.
Some of the critical milestones we need to see happen in the next 4 or so months are the following:

1. Prelimiinary Launch Plan and Budget by January 15th
2. Missional Core at 10 people by February 29th
3. 100 Prospects by March 31st
4. 200 Prospects by April 30th
5. 50 Gatherables by May 31st

This means that our small team of core members will essentially immerse itself in the community in every possible way. Meeting neighbors and mechanics and waiters, and hair-dressers and teachers and people at the gym and people we do service projects with and... Well, I think you get the idea. We believe that God has prepared people's hearts in Austin to receive his love, our job is simply to find those he has prepared and be a conduit of that love to them. Sounds easy enough, huh? Well it is not and it includes finding a lot of people who are rather hostile to that love! So pray for our team to be faithful in sharing Christ's love with the people we come in contact with and to be connected with the right people to see this city reached with the good news of God's love and mercy.

Another New Message

Hey guys -
I told some of you how I had to speak at one of our Hill Country Churches down at the University of Texas with 3 hours notice a couple of weeks ago. Some of you have asked about that sermon.
You can find it at http://www.hcbcut.com/sermon_podcasts.php if you are an itunes user you can go to itunes and look up HCBC UT.
It is the message from Dec. 16th titled "Advent: LOVE"