The Gospel in Action

Yesterday evening the Lord gave us a special blessing. We didn’t have a church meeting planned, so we attended Community Baptist in Bradenton where one of my friends from undergrad attends. We hoped to schedule a meeting there for later this year, but when Joshua called the church, Pastor Golson told him that Community’s missionary schedule was booked through April 2009 and that the church wasn’t scheduling for beyond that yet. However, he did offer Joshua a personal meeting while we were in this area, so he and Joshua met casually about a week and a half ago.

We were looking forward to the service last night. A Frontline missionary who assists works behind the former Iron Curtain was scheduled to speak. However, there was a mix-up somewhere, and he didn’t come. About ten minutes before the service was supposed to begin, Pastor Golson approached Joshua, told him what was happening and asked him if he could fill in. After processing the initial shock, Joshua answered yes.

Providentially, we had all of our presentation gear in the borrowed car we’ve been driving. So we were able to quickly throw our display up. And also providentially, the only thing we didn’t have with us was a sermon outline. This made Joshua feel, as he put it, “a bit furtive.” But what an opportunity to trust the Lord for His enabling!

Joshua was quickly able to reverse engineer an outline for the sermon he uses with our presentation from my little sermon notes journal, and the Lord gave grace to help him remember the illustrations and applications that I didn’t record.

We are praising the Lord for answering our prayers! He is ordering our steps, going before us, operating on His schedule—not man’s, and giving grace for all the ministry opportunities He gives us. What a great God we serve!

Earlier this morning, I was having my devotions out of 1 Corinthians 12:8-11, considering what different spiritual gifts look like in individual lives. When I came to the gift of faith, God brought to my mind how He has been giving Laurel and I this gift. God has been building our faith by allowing us to face challenges and then consistently displaying His power to overcome what seem to be insurmountable obstacles.

For example, this month, we were only able to schedule one meeting. When the meeting was scheduled several months ago, I had hoped that we would be able to schedule several more meetings in Florida during the same month. But despite my best efforts, the Lord granted no additional meetings.

As we were driving down to Florida for this month’s one meeting, we wondered what God might have in mind for us. Perhaps the church will take us on for regular support. Perhaps someone in the church will join our team. Perhaps someone really needs to hear the message. Perhaps someone in the church will faithfully pray for us.

The church ended up giving far more than we have seen any church of its size give. In one meeting, God gave a month’s worth of provision. And in addition to meeting our material needs, God has allowed us to meet with other pastors and to set up several meetings for later in the year and for next year. Most of this was done during time that would not have been available if we had other meetings to go to. We do not ever know what God has planned. But we know that we can trust Him. That trust is a precious gift to us. It’s what we cling to. It’s His gift of faith.

As I write this, Joshua sits under a shade tree in my grandparent’s Florida lawn calling pastors and wearing two hats. The lime green ball cap keeps the sun out of his eyes, and as he says, “fits his head nicely.” The straw hat belongs to my five foot seven inch grandfather and doesn’t fit so nicely. But perched on top of the ball cap, it protects Joshua’s ears from sun burn.

Joshua’s pragmatic use of the two hats looks odd, and it makes me laugh. I think to myself, “It’s at least a two hat day.”

As a child one of my favorite books was A Three Hat Day by Laura Geringer. In the book R.R. Pottle the Third has a schmourgesboard collection of hats. ” He loved fur hats and fireman’s helmets and felt hats with feathers tucked in the bands. He loved top hats and tiny hats. He loved silk hats and straw hats and sailor hats. He loved berets and bonnets and bathing caps and bowlers”(8). You get the idea.

Each day R.R. Pottle determines the number of hats he will wear based on his mood. One day he feels so sad and so lonely that he dons not one, not two, but three hats to cheer himself up. And as it turns out this eccentric habit leads him to find true happiness when he finds the perfect wife (of course a hat lover) in the (where else but the) hat section of a department store.

I’m under no delusion that the source of true happiness can be found by walking around town sporting a column of hats on my head or even in my wonderful husband. I have a much more perfect source of joy: my heavenly Father. And as my creator He knows me so perfectly. And because of this perfect knowledge, He knows better than anyone how to care for me and how to cheer me.

I’m still grieving the loss of my baby, and better than anyone else, the Lord knows and understands the heaviness that seems permanently lodged in my chest. Perhaps that’s why he let me get a glimpse of my husband’s two-hat day. It made me laugh. And the laugh was healing.

Since we departed from Greenville, SC for our first trip to churches in the Midwest in late February of this year, we put over 7,000 miles on our car. Just last week, during an oil change, I commented on how wonderful it was for the car to go and go without needing any maintenance. Throughout our travels, we were praising God that He had shown Himself faithful through giving us a dependable car.

But after our drive to Florida for a meeting near Fort Myers, God gave us a different way to see His faithfulness displayed–a dysfunctional car. In response to the “service engine soon” light that appeared on our trip to Florida, we had our car checked at an auto parts store, outside of Tampa, only to be told that either the computer has gone bad or many, many other things have gone bad. While we could have very easily responded faithlessly by become distressed, God gave us the grace to trust Him.

We have already seen His faithfulness displayed through our dysfunctional car. God brought us safely to our destination. And then God provided a car (thank you Eddie) for us to use while we are in Florida. And if the dysfunctional car makes it back to Greenville, there is someone there waiting to help us fix it. Right now, we don’t know how much the repairs will cost, but we do know that God is faithful, so we don’t need to worry.

We’ve exhausted our list of personal contacts. Some of the churches we’ve visited have given us referrals which we are pursuing, but for the most part I have entered into the icy realm of cold calling.

About seventy percent of the cold calls made to the churches with which we have no connection involve me talking to machines, never to hear from a real person. The remaining thirty percent is broken up between those who are not interested, those who aren’t willing to talk to someone they don’t have a connection with, those who don’t have any room to schedule us, those who don’t have the funds to have missionaries in, and those who have not yet completely ruled us out yet.

People with whom we have some kind of connection seem to be more interested in learning how God is leading us to minister to neglected and abandoned youth in Romania. Please pray that God would send individuals to refer us to additional churches or other individuals who will be interested in hearing about the future Romanian ministry. Many of the obstacles are still there with referrals, but they are overcome more easily with a connection.

We are praising God for His shockingly lavish grace. Ephesians one says that He has given us “all spiritual blessings . . . in Christ.” Through Christ, eternity offers us more than we could ever hope to attain for ourselves and is enough to boggle the mind. But in addition to promised future blessings, we are seeing Him provide for our physical needs in this life as well.

We have visited five churches in the last two and a half weeks, and in each church God has given us both spiritual and physical blessings. We know that we are not worthy of all that He is doing for us, but as His children we count it to be his gracious and promised provision, and we pray that we will be His faithful servants.
Here are pictures of the four churches that we have visited most recently.

We should always give thanks to God for keeping us safe during travel, but when we heard news earlier this last week that an area we traveled through was hit hard by tornadoes the day after God brought us safely through, we praised God with even greater thankfulness for His protection.

Last week was a particularly lean week for us during which God was testing our trust in His care and provision. With many calls, few people seeming to be interested, and expenses rolling in without hope of income, we were praying that God would give us grace to overcome the discouragement that seemed to be settling upon us.

We sent off our Jan/Feb prayer letter this past weekend. And people must have started praying for us. $2,200.00 came in (covering the needs mentioned in the previous post) and eight meetings were scheduled. Eight meetings! In one week! That has never happened before. This brings us up to 24 scheduled meetings for 2008 (counting the two behind us already). By the end of the week, we were shaking our heads in wonder as to how we ever could have doubted during the previous week, and we were rejoicing at God’s faithfulness through it all.

We are gearing up to present in several churches in the Midwest from late February through March. One of the churches has indicated that they do not have a data projector. This means that we will have to purchase one. The recommended model costs $1,200.00. This necessary purchase is providing us with an opportunity to rest in the Lord. With no regular income as yet, we are very leery of making such a purchase. Additionally, the initial supply of 100 DVDs is almost expended, and the next batch of 501 (the higher number brings a lower per unity price) will cost just under $900.00. But if the Lord would have us purchase these tools for His glory, then He will provide.

Please pray that we would trust the Lord to provide.

We had the privilege of presenting the ministry that God is directing us into at two churches this last week—Community Baptist Church and Bethesda Baptist Church. The presentation at Community was not as well attended as most of their Wednesday services. The poor weather conditions were probably the cause. In any case, for a first presentation things went rather well. I felt a nervous awkwardness and fell flat on my face walking up the steps to the pulpit before preaching, but there seemed to be an interest and receptivity among the people that was a blessing to us.

The presentation at Bethesda went much better. The nervousness of the first presentation seemed altogether absent. And the Lord gave a liberty to present His word with confidence. We were a little disappointed that only twelve people attended the service, but it was a small ministry, and the people who attended were probably among the most faithful in the church. The Lord encouraged us with the hope that they will pray for us.