You give and take away

This morning we have learned that our friend Derek Loux has passed from this life to a better one. His life has not ended, it is lived now in the presence of God who is Eternal Love.  Death has carried him to the One he longed for. He sees reality as it is. He dwells in the presence of our life giving  Creator, The Greatest Intercessor – Incarnate Word, and in the shadow of the Comforter. He was ready, we must wait.

About two years ago, during one of the worship briefings Derek was sharing with us that he really does not want to be remembered as a “worship leader”, but as a father to the orphans. During these last two years especially he put all of his love, time, energy and care to fulfill this primary calling in his life.

We are left with a huge gap, unanswered questions, shattered expectations. His passion and love speeded up the fulfillment of his destiny. The Almighty has decided, it is time. From a human perspective, it looks like he has just started…and he has not finished….and we want to scream out loud: What was the point?

From the heavenly perspective, he was done here. Trusting this is hard.  And there are no words to express the anguish. This is earth, not heaven. We will suffer, we will die, we will live again.

For the next decades we will remember him. His awesome wife Renee and their ten kids (eight of them adopted) will have many Christmases and Easters without their daddy. And as he talked about widows and orphans, he changed his life so many times in order to help them…now we have  a chance to practice how we listened to him reading and singing and crying over Isaiah 58.

Father, You give and You take away, blessed be Your name.

He has the best worship team now and the greatest multitudes of those who loved to the end. What do you see, Derek?

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imagine

Another awesome spot from CatholicVote.com, made Grassroots Films. I can not get enough of  it…

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3 families living true religion

External religious worship [religion as it is expressed in outward acts] that is pure and unblemished in the sight of God the Father is this: to visit and help and care for the orphans and widows in their affliction and need, and to keep oneself unspotted and uncontaminated from the world. James 1:27 (Amplified Bible)

Tracie and John Loux

This is Tracie and John Loux with their kids. John is…something else… besides that he is a great musician and worship leader, Tracy keeps it all together… she is also an artist, a mom and a friend. Two years ago they’ve adopted Elia. As of today, they are in Kiev, Ukraine, adopting a boy, Aiden and a girl from Ukraine. Here is Aiden (special need child) and their little girl, waiting for mommy and daddy:

Read their story on their blog From the Heart (anyone wanting to follow their adoption journey can email Tracie at tracieloux@gmail.com for permission to read their blog), pray for them and give abundantly .

Donations for Tracie and John Loux here

Derek and Renee Loux

This is Derek and Renee Loux, pioneering an Orphan Justice Center here at IHOP-KC. They have 2 biological and 7 adopted children, 4 of them adopted very recently, 3 of the recently adopted boys from Ukraine are special needs kids and need immediate medical attention

The Loux Family is their blog and this is where their recent adoption story is covered.

Donations for the Loux Family Adoption Fund here.

Chuck and Jane Koth

This is Chuck and Jane Koth family with their 3 biological and 10 adopted children. Few months ago they adopted 3 girls from Ethiopia.  They started The Children’s Legacy organization.

Donations for the Children’s Legacy here.

I am asking you to consider supporting these families in any possible way you can. This is true religion.

Adoption not abortion

I watched “Lake of Fire” last night. Over 150 minutes of controversial, extreme, disturbing, intense, unsettling, provocative and revealing opinions, pictures, scenes from life, dialogues, criticism, discussions, demonstrations, concerts. Both “sides”, pro-life and pro-choice are pictured, although from a narrow (in my humble opinion), “media -minded, picked to provoke” perspective. It does not depict “pro-life” movement justly, concentrating mostly on one organization. The power of black and white images depicts the reality in a sobering way.

In this documentary you will find a lot of “talking heads”. Somewhere there you will hear moving testimony of Norma McCorvey (legendary Jane Roe from Roe vs. Wade ). You can read about her story on CNN here. There is one very bizzare scene from a concert of some wanna-be-music-band, where one of the women is singing basically naked (at about 1h 20min into the movie, for about 4 minutes if you want to skip this part). After somewhat strange appearance, one of the band members shares:

“How many babies are there now who are not loved, who are not taken care of…and we do have abortion… and we still have them… all these people who are against abortion, if they want to take all those babies, bring them up and love them… that would be wonderful… in the perfect world that would be the most beautiful thing, but… as it is, it’s not gonna happen…these fundamentalists are the same people who a lot of times are bigots, they would never have a black child in their home…why are they not adopting all the kids out of the orphanages… I see homeless pregnant women on the streets… go and pick one up… take her home, take care of her.”

Later on, another woman continues in a similar way:

“If they would care, they would do something different. They would be by the doors of the orphanages, and they would go in there and literally take every child in there home with them. If they really and truthfully care, instead of standing outside the abortion clinics, intimidating women, they would take these women in their arms and say: come home with me, let me give you shelter and time to think.”

This raises a very serious question, which must be addressed. At IHOP-KC we have a few families who are literally doing just that: adopting babies, which were ones considered to be aborted, but had found families ready to take them in, or adopting children who are already placed in the orphanages. I am full of reverence toward those who have been given grace to serve in this capacity. They are the ones who are becoming the voice of the church, according to James1:27 (NIV), accepting the responsibility of an “adoptive family” to those who otherwise would be neglected or killed :

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

The very end of this documentary is worth sitting through the whole 2.5 hours. You have to see this to the last minute. It will change you.

Caution: vivid graphics, scenes with nudity. Absolutely only for adult audiences.

If you are Netflix subscriber, it is available at “Instant watch” tag.

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