Blessed are the merciful
Friends and Family ...
We're not going to bury the lead. After over two years of growing our friendship through emails, texts, and video calls, we were honored to host Pastor John Kiroka at Church in the Square (CITS) this month. Pastor John lives in Kajiado County, Kenya. He was in Chicago with Kait TenHarmsel (one of our former members) and their organization The Humanity Share (THS). They were raising support for women's education and clean water projects in East Africa. We'd love for you to learn more about their work and consider supporting them.
Pastor John preached at our gathering on October 9th. Reflecting on Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful" ... he spoke to us about mercy. He shared stories about how he's seen and experienced the mercy of God personally and in his community. We've had the joy of witnessing the strength and love of his community through THS these past few years. God is at work in the over 200 churches which Pastor John oversees. The Lord is breaking generational bonds of social and spiritual oppression and meeting their basic needs. We grateful to God that we are friends!
There's a reciprocal nature to mercy. God is brilliantly merciful toward us. And Jesus says, the merciful will receive mercy. In our Romans study (yup, it's still going strong) we've just learned that the mercies of God are the primary impetus for our worship. "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Romans 12:1). Mercy shows up at our conversion. In love God withholds our ultimate consequence. Jesus died for us. We also experience God's mercy every single day ... in things like the meals, texts, hugs, and prayers of our brothers and sisters. We sense God's mercy through all of you too! We are grateful that as we ministry to our neighbors in Logan Square and beyond, you are remembering us in your prayers. That's God's mercy to us!
Though we've continued to navigate Romans, we recently took a couple breaks that were really impactful. Back in May when our Elder for Teaching and Vision was on sabbatical, we hosted a guest teaching series. John Helveston, Danny Lopez, Steve Laughlin, Steve Coble, and Brian Dye all shared their love and God's Word with us. In September we explored the invitation of Sabbath. We opened to John 15 and Jesus invitation to "abide in my love." Along with Jesus' words we used Marva Dawn's book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly as a guide to learn more about the gift of rest. Rest is a great mercy of God. Dawn explains, "A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us––not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives" (p.4). We definitely encourage you to read her book if you haven't already.
God has also demonstrated his mercy to us this year in the form of new elders, deacons, group leaders, and staff members. Fresh perspective and energy is wonderful, but the real gift of these new team members is experiencing God's hand on our church family. We've also had new members join the church and families welcome new children!
He's equipping us.
He's taking care of us.
He's growing us.
And that's all by his mercy.
As you pray for us, please ask the Lord for wisdom. We're working on making our reading guides available through print. We’ve covered books like Philippians, Mark, 1 & 2 Samuel, and Lamentations already. We’re hopeful these will help CITS as well as others open the Bible daily and understand God’s Word better. We’ll keep you posted once those are available. Also, our deacons are exploring the food and housing needs and existing resources in our part of the city. During the pandemic we were able to help a number of our neighbors with food and rental assistance but now we’re curious about the Lord's will in supporting our community long term.
We think of you often, and thank God for you. You indeed are an expression of God's mercy to us. Our love for you finds verbal expression at the start of Paul's first letter to Thessalonica when he wrote, "We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3).
With mercy, love, and gratitude …
Your brothers and sisters at Church in the Square
