Share from your week; where have you seen God at work?:
Kari – Good morning everybody. Unfortunately, I watched the news the other night and I don’t do that very often but, once in a while, I feel I need to see what’s going on in the world. It was of course very discouraging, there was the rising of the Covid cases, the Taliban and all the political stuff; the heat wave…. So, I had received this booklet from some friends of mine who had been missionaries in South Africa; they got stuck here and now they have become missionaries down in New Mexico working with the indigenous peoples down there. Anyway, they had sent me this through their missionary support group – What We Can Learn From Tree Stumps. So, I thought - I’m going to start doing this, I kind of need a new thing. It just really spoke to me. One of the things it talked about was persevering prayer. It says – Persevering prayer for people, places and cultures can most certainly be used by the Lord. It brings the scent of water into a situation that appears to be a totally dead stump, resulting in unexpected and surprising new growth. So, that really spoke to me and encouraged me; I just really thought God was talking to me.
Pastor Brett – Amen. Thank you, Kari.
Fred – I had a little medical procedure and I haven’t gone through many of these where they actually knock you out. I was freaking out a little bit about it. And when they wheeled me into the room, right before they were going to put me out, the doctor reached over and said – Do you mind if we say a little prayer before I start? And I was like – Oh yes, that felt so good! I was so excited, just the thing I needed at that moment; letting me know that God was with me right at that moment.
Pastor Brett – Yes, oh my goodness, that’s amazing! Awesome, and everything went well… So, Praise God!
Wendy F. – My God Sightings are medical-related, as well. About a week ago, I had to go into the ER. I had some heart issues and they got pretty out of control and I had a heart rate of 170 bpm for about 4 hours; they had to shock me out of it to get me back to normal. So, my first God Sighting is that God let me live right through that. Because bodies are amazing and they can endure a whole lot more than I realized they could. Then my second God Sighting is – with that came up a wonderful workup to try to diagnose me; it looks like I have the most benign version of heart issues. Which is an incredible God Sighting to be blessed, if you have heart issues, to have something that is unlikely to kill you just sounds glorious. So, I’m just full of gratitude this week.
Wendy. So glad it was not something more serious, oh my goodness. Praise God! Wendy Pursinger says - Your work is not done! You are not called home!
Mimi – I have a plant of Wendy’s that I water every morning. From the crook of the plant that holds it up, I was watering and there’s this tiny little spider; I’ve never seen a spider so small. He has spun a web that is just beautiful and I would be careful to water around him. Every day the wind would come and blow his web apart and he would be back the next day building it again. I saw that day after day after day. And I thought – What a commitment to himself and God who made him. That if we could be blown away every day, would we have the courage and the belief in God that he will help us if we just keep on building our web, instead of going down in defeat? And I thought – How wonderful that God makes His creatures and allows us to benefit from their experience down to the tiniest one. And I thank God for all the creatures on the earth.
Pastor Brett – Amen. Thank you, Mimi. That was so beautiful, wow. Yes, I get so discouraged when my web gets blown over; takes me a while to get back up. Thank you for the lesson from the spider, Amen.