Yes.

I've been sharing with people a lot lately about the reality that inviting people into a relationship with Jesus, inviting people to Community Group, inviting people to dinner often ends with a very familiar word... "no." That sound pretty discouraging and honestly it is. As a Christ-follower I am passionate about sharing my faith in Jesus with people but constant rejection can be hard to overcome. You get tired of being told "no," even if you understand the reality that they are not rejecting you, they are rejecting Jesus.

Thankfully, God knows the amount of "no's" we can handle. Honestly, I've been discouraged lately and wondering if I would ever hear that beautiful 3 letter word in response to any invitation again. Kelli and I have been reevaluating our Community Group as it seeks to find an identity. We decided to add dinner to our group this past Sunday and see what happened. We still opened the word and prayed for each other, but we invited people to share a meal as well. As we called & invited people that have been a part of our Community Group we were amazed at the number of "yeses" we heard on the other end of the phone.

In all we had 6 yeses in addition to the two of us not to mention the 10 kids that would come with those yeses! When Sunday night finally arrived we had 2 "yeses" turn to "no's" (reality & the testing of our faith), but God brought the right people. We ended up with 7 total people at our group (1 new face & 2 that we haven't seen in a long time) and 8 kids! We dug into God's word, and were all stretched and challenged. We took a big step forward in becoming a "community" of believers. The group that was there will probably never be "best friends" but we can live in biblical community together. All it took was the willingness of people to say "yes."

Thank you Jesus for the "yeses."