Tuesday, April 16

Fire-Hot Love

Mark: Surgery Results -- from Pastor Jeff King

The doctor is very pleased with the way the surgery went.  Right out of surgery, Mark was
able to talk, communicate, interact with complex ideas, understand the gospel, father his children, husband his wife, ask us to read Psalm 100, and speak God's truths to others. God and His angels were looking after Mark and granting us our desires and more on this front. For this, we do not hesitate to give God praise!

Spiritually, I say in all earnest that God has His obvious hand on our dear brother and sister. Mark and Anna possess a fierce, undeniable faith. For me, walking with Mark and Anna closely for the last several months of this unfolding tragedy has afforded me front row seats to a man and a woman who are being given abundant daily grace to walk in faith and grow in Christian maturity through the most intense physical trial I've personally seen a person endure.

Throughout this trial, Mark has shown me more of Jesus than I can express. His fierce love for the Lord has consistently overflowed to his family, doctors, and passerby's to his life, increasingly.  If ever there was a time in a person's life to be self-centered and consumed with the things on his own plate, it would be now. Instead of being self-consumed, I've seen Mark pour himself out in service for others, prayers for others, concern for others, and love for others.

On top of all this, Mark's lion-hearted love for Anna and his children has been equally fierce. I've seen in Mark what Solomon penned, “For love is strong as death, jealousy as fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.” (SOS 8:6-7) To see the look in Mark's eyes when he talked to Anna in the initial moments of waking up from surgery is to see a man with fiery love for his wife! Such love could never be faked or produced by man. This love comes from none other than the fires of God's steadfast unrelenting love!

Anna too is being given peculiar grace! Anna fiercely loves Mark. That is undeniable! Her honest, deepest desire through all of this has been that Jesus would be honored, exalted, and treasured. Anna has expressed a yearning that “Jesus would be seen as worthy.” Oh that we would all possess that kind of tender, vigorous, real, desperate, honest, fierce, gripped love for our Savior!

Mark and Anna, we love you guys and will keep praying that God gives Mark many decades to proclaim how worthy Jesus is of our praise and worship. May God increase our affections for Him as He has certainly given you a fire-hot love for Him and for one another. Thank you for pointing us to Jesus so well through this trial! We will keep praying hard on your behalf!

3 comments:

  1. Speaking as a family not intimately involved with your family, we can't thank you enough for allowing us into your lives and we can't thank the Lord enough for the honor to come along side and pray for you during this most difficult time. His tender Grace and Mercies are beyond comprehension and His ways not ours. I can't help but think of Pastor Saeed who is in the Iranian Prison be beaten an tortured for his Faith in Christ and yet I sit and watch the Healing and Loving touch of his hand upon our own child. We truly serve an AWESOME and LOVING God who is in the finest of details in our lives and gifts the hands of man with the ability to microscopically cut away at cancer in Mark's Brain. Our hearts rejoice and we will continue in Prayer for full recovery and for the His Glory to continue to be made manifest in and through your lives.
    Blessings
    Angelina and Family

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  2. Hey how are you guys? Can we have some updates?
    Keep Praying
    Loves
    Iris

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  3. Thanking God that He is at work in your family and lives. What a blessing you all are to a watching world!

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