Road Blocks . . .
Just got word from Pastor 7 that the mother of the little boy we have been praying for since Monday has decided to keep her son. We have also learned that this mother accepted the Love of God through Jesus Christ this past Sunday and is now gathering her strengthen from him. Over the past few days she has received peace where there once was none and we must understand the Road Block for us to adopt her child is the restoration of the family God intended. The Road Block is God’s Will bringing this mother peace and this child his mother full of the Love of Christ. Praise God for his perfect will and his perfect timing. Praise God for Road Blocks!
Nikki and I will still have the opportunity to help this little boy and this mother . . . see every Monday night for the past year Ken and I have gone to the Garden and spent time Loving on the women and children. We have gone every Monday night to teach bible study to the women and children that they can know and experience the Love of God and the life transforming power that comes when you surrender to all God intends for you. Not only is your life changed in Christ, but your family is changed. We will continue to Love God through Loving this family as God restores them to the family he created them to be.
Thank God for Road Blocks!
Do you keep praying? pt 2 . . .
Of course you keep praying . . . 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says we are to always pray. The thing is – if you have already prayed and asked God for something or asked God for direction with regard to something and it shows up, then should you keep praying about doing it? No . . . your prayer should change for his guidance as you walk through and for him to block any path which is not of him. You continue to pray for his will to be done and for him to be glorified.
As we are looking at the potential of Loving God through Loving this little child it lines up with the prayers we have prayed before. Now we can sit around and continue to say let me pray about this once the situation arrises or we can begin to walk out in faith with the prayers we have already prayed and continue to pray for God’s will to be done and for him to be gloried. We can pray for this mother to know the presence of the Lord and be guided by his hand and not and emotion or a sense of desperation. We can pray God’s blessing over our children as they have an unbelievable chance to model the Love of Christ to someone else. We can pray that God will have this mother keep her child if she feels through God’s strength she can raise it.
OR
We can tell Pastor Seven we need to pray about this (even though this is just the way we would have dreamed something like this to happen) and possibly miss the opportunity to be the hands and feet of God to this mother and child when they need us most. While we are off in our prayer closet they may be at the end of their rope.
We do continue to pray but we must GO forward and pray as we GO because we were prayed up when the opportunity came up. The key to serving the Lord is always being ready.
Do you keep praying? . . .
Last night I was at the Garden preparing to teach the regular Monday night bible study Ken and I do when Pastor Seven shared with me about a mother who has a desire to give her sweet son (pictured below) to a loving couple. Seven and I continued to talk when I shared with him, “Nikki and I will take him”. This is actually been a prayer of ours for a while now. We have talked about adoption but felt we will not adopt in the conventional method. With all of the work I do in the streets of Atlanta and the number of times I come into contact with mothers of young children who feel they have no hope, we have felt God would send us an opportunity just like this. So here is a picture of me and this sweet little man . . .
Now comes the time to GO for it – to step out on faith and step up and Love God through Loving Others as yourself. Do you keep praying when God sends the answer to something you have already prayed? What if it is big? What if it is going to really mess with your life? How about letting God be God and trusting if this is his desire he is the one working it to be in the first place.
I think we will roll with the last, “surrendering to God being God and letting him work out the details” and if it doesn’t work out then it must not be his will for this time.
“it’s like the gospel right there” . . .
take time to watch this video – be challenged, broken and ask God what he would have you do in your own life. you will the hear the guy speaking on the video say at one point, “it’s like the gospel right there” . . . man he summed it up well.
God has really been messing me up through many different things lately and this was just another one of those occasions.
NEXT is NOW! . . .
Today I was introduced as the Outreach Pastor at theVine a church in Braselton who seeks to connect the world to God through Jesus Christ. As Outreach Pastor my primary task is to facilitate and equip members and regular attenders to Love God through Loving Others. It is not my task to tell the church what to do but help them discover the passion and abilities they already have and how those can be used to connect the world to God through Jesus Christ.
I am off the hook excited about this. Much of what God has done in me over the past 10 years of ministry has prepared me perfectly for this and I can so see how my life leading up to salvation was such a marker for this time of leadership.
