Mud and Baptism

Mud Filled Office - David & Ruben

Cleaning Up - Elizabeth & Ruben

Easter Street - Made with Sawdust

Ruben at Raul's Baptism

Raul

Pretty Awwesome!

Praying

Eating

Singing

Elizabeth & Olivia - not our puppy or our (cute) baby

Day in the Country

 

 

Kids at the River

 

                                                     
                                                        At the Village

                                                 Sharing Tortillas

                                                       Cute Baby Pigs

                                             Until they grew up and became a Gang

                                                     Inside a Cave

                                      Marshmellow Roast at the Village

                                              Elizabeth & Peaches

                                                With Friends on a Trip to a Village

                                                       Wood Stove

                                                                Us Ladies

                                                                 Bull

                                    Baby Donkey

 

Iguana

 

                                                               David

                                                       Eliz-a-Art

Some Goings On

 

 

 

 

It's a jungle out there!

                                                          Ruben Working

                                                              A House

                            Around the Bridge and Through the River We Go                 

                                                             A Church

                                          Elizabeth with our Adorable Neighbors

                                             David and Friends

                                            Greg and Ruben at the Office

                                                    Independence Day Girl

 

                                                  At the Lagoon

Gospel Integrity

Have you ever heard the comment, "God hates the sin but not the sinner."?  I heard this the other day, not for the first time. I know it was intended well - with love, however, I could not shake the wrongness of this seemingly innocent, well meaning, statement. 

There is abundant evidence in Scripture of God's hatred for sin and for His wrath against the sinner.  This all consuming anger against the wicked is written about, prayed for and prophesied for the eternal future of all who will not obey the Son, Jesus Christ.  There is not anywhere, any statement that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that God somehow will punish sin apart from the sinner himself.  He will justly punish the sinner; the actual person, for eternity.  There is no way you can read Scripture and fail to understand that fact.

John 3:36 states, "whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."  The wrath of God remains on people, not on their sin.  In the abundant evidence that God does not simply hate sin while loving the sinner, the best, most compelling and most self crushing evidence is the Cross of Christ.  The Cross, this place of salvation and freedom and love and sacrifice is only all of that because a man, The Man, suffered and died on it.  He suffered the wrath of God for sin.  If God is wrathful toward sin but not the sinner, why could this cup of wrath not pass from Jesus, the perfect, holy, Son of God?  How could God have been pleased to crush His Son?

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."  God, in love, gave His Son.  But what did He give Him for?  Did God give His Son to us so he could walk around and heal people and teach us good things?  God gave His Son to die.  It is not as though God needed or wanted a human sacrifice to quench some sick thirst for blood.  There is a reason that bulls and goats or your dog for that matter, can not please God as a sacrifice.  The reason is that God's wrath must be poured out on sinners.  It must be poured out on the sinners because that is where hateful sin is - in sinners.  Bulls and goats and dogs are not sinners but people are.  God gave His son to be a substitute for us.  Jesus is the substitute sinner. Never knowing sin, He becomes, voluntarily, the man with the most sin ever.  Jesus did not simply take all the sin of His people and put it in a lock box and throw it off the edge of eternity.  Jesus took our sin on Himself.  He took God's wrath.  He was hated, beaten, mocked, shamed and crucified as a criminal.  He took it, He died - not invisible sin apart from man.

Romans 5:8 God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  In love, God hated.  In love, God crushed.  In love, God punished the Man with the most sin; the only man who never sinned.  It is Jesus' death that makes Him our Savior.  In His resurrection He is our Everlasting King.  Without God's hatred for sin poured out on the sinner, we have no Savior or salvation, but only fantasy.  Jesus' death for our sin, for my sin, is a fact that occurred on the person of Jesus.  A fact more painful than I can ever know, thankfully. It is a fact that is inescapable, as it should be.

The implications of seemingly innocent, erroneous statements about God and His Gospel are huge.  In the desire to make the miraculous understandable to natural thinking, we are bound to blunder if we go beyond what is written.  Let us be careful that our zeal for God's Glory in Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, is greater than our zeal for man.  We think in error if we think we can win a soul to God by "helping" him to understand things that are hard to understand with niceties that don't jive with Scripture.  The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.  Don't mess with the Gospel!

The next time someone tries to tell you that God hates the sin, but not the sinner, kindly point them to Christ crucified and ask them to explain how God could have misunderstood so badly.  I mean this very much with love but it is the kind of love that hates a lie.  This is the kind of love that we need, that I need, more of.  May the fear of God and the fire of His love guard your hearts.

U.S. Visit and My Rooftop Garden

We took tons of great photos when we spent time in Colorado.  These are just a few of the favorites. 


Enjoying a horse ride with Chad & Kendra

David, Chad, Ruben Kendra & Elizabeth - it was a fun day!

Kids and the Dog

Is she Cute or what!?

  


At the Ranch

 

Did we tell you it's a Dog Ranch?

Honorary Grandparents

 

                                                                   
                                                               Up on a Mountain in Colorado

                                           With my Beautiful Sister, Her Family and Our Mom

                                        
                                          Our Gracious Hostess, Best Encourager, Faithful Supporter and Just Good Friend.  You can tell we like her alot!

                                    We had Some Great Walks and Rides in the Woods
                                        

                                             Lake Dillon Colorado

                                          Riding the 4 Wheelers - the Highlight for our Kids!
                                         

                                         They just Call him Cowboy Dave

 

                                      Our Princess

We told some of our U.S. friends and family about our rooftop garden that we have here in Mexico.  The house we rent does not have one square foot of yard, it's all just house, so we kind of made a "yard" on our roof.  We enjoy it so much that we thought we should post some pics for you all to see.

  This is not actually on our roof, but in the patio.  However it looks so pretty right now, I had to post a picture.

This was the First Pineapple we ate. They take a long time, almost two years.  For a gardener from the North this was a very happy moment!

This one should be ready in a few weeks.

Flowers Everywhere.

                                      Strawberry Patch

Row of Pineapple

                                          More Flowers