Wising Up in Houston

Hey, Dear Ones! Thank you so much for praying for the launching of our Houston Spring Bible study! God brought us a fabulous group of women and, even more vital than that, He brought us Himself. We sensed Him there from the time we arrived to pray over the empty sanctuary. God constantly reminds me when I'm so tempted to beg Him to show up that He is the initiator of all things faith. He is the One who invites us to Bible study. Not the other way around. Our part is to, in turn, invite Him to come in power and do whatever He pleases.

I love my Houston home girls like crazy and last night, to our great delight, God further blessed us with at least 500+ newbies. I asked those who'd never been to Bible study with us before to raise their hands and God took our breath away with their response. We were ecstatic. I've told our group before that if we don't have new women come and join us, we need to ask ourselves why our love for Christ and His Word is not more contagious. Our Tuesday night group is the neatest mixture of women. Extremely varied. Every denomination. Every kind of background. Young to old. Getting increasingly colorful which means so much to us. I love them so much, just as I'd have the joy of loving you all the more if I got to study with you face to face every week.

We are thrilled about the new series God is giving us. "Wising Up" is a topical lecture series on the Book of Proverbs. We hope to hear from God about all sorts of themes over the next eleven weeks like friendship, marriage, business, managing money, parenting, and the like. We launched last night with inspired words from Proverbs 4:7 - "Wisdom is supreme! Therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding." We established that we are not coming on Tuesday nights to study wisdom. We're coming to GET IT. And God's the Only One who is giving it. We have been asked a number of times if this will be taped and released publically and the answer we believe is yes. We are taping this series in house this time and it will be published through Living Proof Ministries because it doesn't have any written work with it like those we do with my buddies at LifeWay. LPM will prepare a study guide for it but this one will intentionally not have homework. (The next homework I'll write is for the study of Esther over the course of the next year.) I hope a convenient thing about the Proverbs series on wisdom will be that the audio tapes and DVD sessions will be released individually as well as in compilations of similar themes. I think the target time to begin releasing the earliest sessions is early summer but I'm not sure. Keep posted for updates there. My staff is in charge of that part of it. And, of course, every single bit of this is a ministry plan based on our best understanding thus far. Only God can bring it to pass and we only want Him to do that if the series glorifies and pleases Him.

You guys are so sweet for caring and praying about our local Bible study. We wish so much we could be under the same roof with you, worship before God's Throne with you, seek the heart of Christ as one, and serve you face to face. Oh, how blessed we'd be! But the relationship we have with you even at this long distance is delightful and tremendously satisfying. We are truly sisters. I'm just crazy about you. Jesus is everything, Beloved Ones. Let's follow hard after Him.