This is a request for you all to please support the brothers and sisters over at Berean Call.
You should sign up for their newsletters. There is so much information, encouragement and fellowship to be taking part in. I recieved my latest newsletter this morning and was just heartbroken at what is happening to Christians put to suffering because of their faith & faithfulness. Here is an excerpt:
In June, North Korean's beastly communist dictatorship executed a 33 year old Christian woman for distributing Bibles, while also imprisoning her 3 little children, husband and parents, in conditions undoubtedly ghastly.
Several weeks ago, mobs involving hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of enraged radical Islamists destroyed several Christian villages in Pakistan, responding to incendiary rumors about Christians supposedly desecrating the Koran. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and at least 14 Christians were murdered, including three Christian women and a child who were burned alive as the radicals torched houses and shops.
We are living (for now) in a time when some of us can freely support the faith. Let's do all we can. The time is already here where some Christians are having to put their lives on the line for their beliefs. The least WE "free and safe" Christians can do is give our support, including spreading the word and rallying around the ministries that are out there.
Be blessed & be a blessing.
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. -1 Thess. 5:11 Peace --Free
Back when I was young, I remember sitting in church and hearing one of the old sisters singing a song that went something like "I just want to tell you how good God is." I don't remember any of the other words - partly because I was young and took everything for granted, including God's goodness, and partly because the old sister hummed most of the song. At any rate, I was thinking about that song this morning because of something that happened.
I've posted on my different blogs about my sorry financial state. It's still pretty sorry, but at church on Sunday, I stepped out in faith and just about emptied my wallet into the offering. I don't know how much it was - maybe eight or ten dollars.
The service was really a blessing because of the testimony of a woman who was visiting with her missionary husband. She talked about how she married him 43 years ago when she was nineteen and he was a youth pastor. She told how she never liked being a pastor's wife because she never felt she had a role that she fit well (she couldn't sing or play the piano and she disliked having to speak before congregations). Then she talked about how she and her husband lost their 23-year pastorship of a church in a place she loved. As usual, when the one bad thing happened, other bad things hit them: divorces and death in the family, etc. Finally, her husband was appointed a leadership role in the mission field. Their new home base: California - where the woman had been born and had never liked and had hoped never to live there again.
The most important part of this woman's message - important because it seemed to be so right for me at this time in my life: We can't always be in the circumstances we want for ourselves, but we have to learn to be whole and joyous in the Lord where we are right now.
She said that she had spent all these years feeling as if she were not really living but just existing ("just breathing in and out," is how she put it), wishing for something different. Then she said that once she realized that, you know what, this is her life, she was able to let go of wanting something else and being joyous in the moment. She said that once she realized that, everything changed for her. She said that these are now the sweetest years of life with her husband and their circumstances.
Wow.
I sat there and thought about how I have been wishing for my circumstances to improve. You know: once Tim and I get a place, once we get "on our feet again," once we have more money.... Well, guess what? We need - I need - to find a way to be more joyous in the place I am right now. I might not live to see circumstances change for Tim and myself. I just need to be here, with God, with joy and with as much as I can bring to be a joy to other people.
This moment we have right now is IT until we get to Heaven and have eternity. There really is no promise of "more," "different" or "better."
That's the first part of what I wanted to tell you. The next part, I won't really go into except to say that God blessed me with a little bit of money. Not much, but enough to cover some of the necessities I usually have to struggle to keep up.
So, I just want to tell you how good God is. I am praying that He blesses that woman for her testimony and I hope it touched other people in the congregation who needed to hear it.
"Are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? And not one of them is forgotten before God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than man sparrows." Luke 12:6-7 Peace --Free
