Recent church experience

I have been hesitant to post this because of those who would critisize it as 'hearsay' since I was not present for the second part of this, but I feel it is important to record for future reference for those who know the truth of the situation.

On Sunday, April 11, Kevin, a man in our church, stood up during a quiet moment in our church service and shared that all during the week he felt God impressing upon him that there were 3 people in our congregation contemplating suicide. He shared that God made it clear to him that one of them already had a bottle of pills they were planning to use. He went on to speak words of encouragement to those people, and then we prayed for them.

The next Sunday, April 18, our pastor let us know that during the prayer time after service, a person came forward and admitted that they were the one with the pills.

To me, this is a reminder that God will never quit trying to get through to us. He loves us deeply and gives us signs and wonders all the time to try to get our attention. Do we recognize them? Are we listening and looking for them? Do we know God well enough to recognize his voice - to tell it apart from all the other voices we hear, our own - others - the enemy's?

Faith Like Potatoes

This is an amazing movie. It is based on the book about the true story of a family in Africa. If this does not inspire and confirm the power of prayer, I don't know what can.

http://www.faithlikepotatoes.com/Faith_like_Potatoes/Faith_like_Potatoes.html

Wish I had time to read the book. I'm guessing it is even more compelling than the movie.

Imagine if we all trusted and prayed that completely...

Contemplation

I've been having trouble coming up with another post. I'm finding that it's similar to when my husband asks what I talked about with whomever I just spent an hour talking with on the phone. We talked about a million things for that hour, but I can only tell him a few highlights.

So far I've written about a few highlights. But every day, all day, I'm having a conversation with my Father and friend. There are so many things He his doing in my life, in our lives, on an on-going basis that I'm finding it difficult to articulate, to communicate the detail of it. Just like I couldn't repeat the hour long phone conversation word for word, so I'm finding it hard to repeat the perpetual conversation we have every day.

What I find is that the more I let go of things, I mean that internal need to feel in control of things, the more he is free to work and make things happen. And he makes things happen so much bigger and better than I imagined they could happen. Just yesterday we had an appraisal done on our house. I had been asking God for a certain figure for the house to appraise at. Then I realized I was trying to control things again. So I let go and simply asked that the appraiser see what He wanted him to see, and that the number be whatever it needed to be to accomplish His plans for us. The appraisal came in $100K more than expected! If I had continued asking for the smaller amount, I may have gotten what I asked for, but not what I needed.

Could it have gone the other way? What if the number turned out to be much lower, thereby 'ruining' my plans? That is the risk, isn't it? Trusting that the answer He gives is what is best for us. Being confident that His plans are better than our plans.

You know, it really is more peaceful. I wonder if that is part of the Peace of Jesus. When I trust in him, and give him control, I am at peace inside. When I am in control, trying to make things happen the way I want them to happen, I am axious and stressed inside. I think I'm becoming addicted to the peace. I'm finding it much easier to give him control, and am recognizing much quicker when I'm trying to take over.

I'll work on trying to communicate the 'smaller' details more often. But for now, know that if posts are infrequent, it's because I am only finding words to effectively communicate the highlights.