matt chandler

drew and i have been attending the village church for the past several months. it's much closer to our house and somewhere we already feel at home.

over thanksgiving, the preacher (i just can't call him a pastor...i grew up saying preacher...sorry. it's the church of christ in me!) had a seizure thanksgiving morning and was rushed to the hospital. they found a tumor in the frontal lobe of his brain and had scheduled a surgery for just one week later. after a 7 hour surgery friday, they had removed all of the tumor. matt was doing well and recovering in icu. they should find out this week from pathology if the tumor is cancerous.

this past weekend was the first weekend in the new building. the village church had bought an old albertson's building in flower mound and transformed it into their new building. very strange being there with no matt chandler to preach the first sunday, but it was still amazing.

before the sermon, they played a video of matt addressing the congregation. you should really watch this. what an amazing servant of the Lord. and i've also attached his latest blog entry on the church website. it's so comforting to have leaders at such peace and without any control over the situation. incredible to be this new to the church and able to see how the eldership/leaders deal with such a tough situation.

please keep matt chandler and his family in your prayers!

here's a link to the video...the blog post is below. http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/blog/hvpastor/

My Heart is Full....I am Thankful

The last seven days have been some of the most interesting of my life. I have felt anxiety, fear, sadness and a deep and unmovable joy simultaneously and in deeper ways than I have felt before. I am grateful for this heightened sense of things. Today at 10:45 a.m. CST I will have a good portion of my right frontal lobe removed. I head into that surgery with a heart that is filled with gratitude and hope.

Here are some of the things I am thankful for in no particular order:
I am thankful for the thousands of you who have prayed and fasted for my health. It has brought far more tears to Lauren’s and my eyes to receive this kind of attention from the Church universal than this tumor has.
I’m thankful for health insurance because I’m guessing they aren’t doing my five-hour surgery for free!
I am thankful that I have deep, real friendships at The Village with Michael Bleecker, Josh Patterson, Brian Miller, Chris Chavez and Beau Hughes. They have been such a comfort to me and my family this past week. Pastors should have good friends on their staff. It’s risky but worth the risk.
I am grateful for the men of God in my life, namely John Piper who taught me to hold my life cheap and to join with Paul in saying “I don’t count my life of any value or as precious to myself if only I might finish my course and complete the work that He gave me to do to testify to the Gospel of the grace of God. I’m nothing, I just have a job. God keep me faithful on the job and then let me drop and go to the reward.” Without this strong view of God’s sovereign will, I’m not sure how you don’t despair in circumstances like mine.
I am thankful for my wife Lauren. “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.’” “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”
I am thankful for my children. Audrey the Beautiful, Reid the Valiant and Norah the Joyous. Being a daddy to these three is one of the greatest joys of my life.
The privilege of seeing and appreciating all of life through the grid of a heightened sense of my own mortality.
I am thankful for brilliant doctors and surgeons who have been given a real gift by our great God and King to repair things as complex as the brain.
I am thankful for The Village Church. If there is a place that loves Jesus more, takes sanctification as seriously and wants to see the lost love the great King deeply I am unaware of it. These last seven years have been a spectacular joy!
More than anything else I am grateful to my King Eternal, my Lord Immortal, for my God invisible. He alone is God. All Glory and Honor, Forever to You O God. I am overwhelmed in these moments by God Himself and the assurance of a future inheritance of a Kingdom that cannot be shaken and where all things are made new (Hebrews 12).
Christ is All,
Matt Chandler