Matt Chandler is the pastor of the Village Church in Flower Mound, TX, north of Dallas/Fort Worth. Because he's a pastor, perhaps some readers will yawn at this verbiage: Matt loves Jesus.

He really does love Jesus. It's not perfunctory or staged. It's not schtick or a spiel. Matt is a servant to a King, a disciple to a Master, a son to a Father. His fondest ambitions are not the human-fabricated benchmarks of "success." Matt is not about building an empire, he's about growing the Kingdom.

Last week, after Matt experienced a seizure, doctors diagnosed a brain tumor. The doctors scheduled the surgery for today, Friday, December 4. Read what Matt Chandler wrote at his blog prior to the surgery.

Excerpts:

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.”

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Please pray for Matt,  his wife Lauren and their three little children.