Living the Gospel

There is not a day that goes by that I don't pray for our friends Fabio and Alyssia to put their faith in Christ. They have become so dear to us, and I want so much for them to understand how much God desires to have a personal relationship with them.

In the past month we haven't been able to hang out with them because of commitments Fabio had at work out of town. It's also been in the past month that Cody and I have been knee-deep in the hardest place we've ever been in personally. God is working so much out in our lives, but it's also just really, really hard.

This past week Cody has been fasting, and wouldn't you know they called to see if we could come to dinner. We said we'd have to hold off this time, but Hannah could come over to play with Alice. When Cody went to drop her off, Fabio was so concerned for him and for us. We had decided that we would share as openly as we were able with them, and use the opportunity to demonstrate to them how we're trusting God to provide true, lasting healing.

In what Cody shared, Fabio was really stunned at the depths of which Cody was going to hear from God. (Ironically, his words were, "You are such a good person for that doing this" . . . what a great opener to share how just the opposite is true, and that is why we so desperately need God!) The rest of the evening was filled with spiritual conversation and ended with Fabio wanting to read the Bible. He and Cody are going to get together this week to start talking about it. Praise God! We trust that God will speak mightily to him through His Word.

One of the central issues Fabio is struggling with is how the church (the Catholic Church) can know the motives of people's hearts, thus being able to declare them "good enough" for heaven or not. What a great question!

We also learned even more about the still continual influence of the Church. I had mentioned in a previous post about how they had just enrolled Alice in catechism. We were honestly shocked because we had never heard them talk about church before. We learned that parents feel "forced" to do catechism because of the ramifications for their kids when they grow up. For instance, one day if Alice wanted to get married in a religious service, she would have had to have gone through catechism.

Please continue to pray for this precious family! Please pray for the Holy Spirit to be working powerfully in their lives. Pray against the schemes of the enemy to distract them from pursuing God's truth. Pray for their eyes to be open to the God who wants to know them personally.