Fourth Sunday Archive Page

During our last gathering, on May 26^th, God was present in a way that we haven’t witnessed for a long time. I say that, and then think about how skeptical I get when someone else says that. I will clarify that in this instance, I am not talking about a time when everyone got tingly or necessarily felt something, but in the reports that have come back since then, we can know that God did show up to minister to us. I guess I should go further to say that I don't have any problems with "experiencing" God or His manifest presence. In fact, I have been very hungry to be in a meeting where God shows up in an undeniable way, but that is not the kind of presence that I am working to describe in this case. Here are those reports:

One man came, his wife usually comes too but had to work, and during the musical worship, especially during one particular song, he got a message from God that ‘God would fight this upcoming battle for him.’ He didn’t tell us of it right then because there was so much else going on, but less than a week later he discovered what the battle was going to be. His oldest son took an overdose of Heroin. He probably would have died, but one of his drug buddies stayed with him and did CPR on him until the ambulance arrived instead of running away like everyone else did. That alone saved his life.

During the recovery process, the boy, kind of amazingly, asked his parents to pray for him, and went very willingly into rehab. While all of this was going on, the man remembered the impression that he got from God during that prayer meeting. Even though there were certainly times in the process that this man had doubts and wondered why this was happening, when he would stop and really consider what God had said, he was able to grasp the peace of God and know that everything was ultimately under control.

The story is not over, but the boy is alive, out of rehab and is very probably closer than he has ever been to real recovery.

Another friend of ours, with her husband, came late to the meeting, but God still answered our prayers for her. She is a nurse, and had been having rather severe pain in her abdominal cavity that the doctor’s were having trouble diagnosing the problem. Their best guess at the time was that some of her muscles were not holding things where they should be held. She asked for prayer. We prayed, and from that day to this, she has not had any more pain.

One other thing that happened that was amazing came about by what could only be called divine appointment. We invited a couple that my wife and I met at a marriage retreat, who host a small group cell meeting in their home. The wife works at a local Christian bookstore, and the husband is a long time church organist/music minister.

This couple came to the meeting, and when they walked in, they began to recognize several people who were at the meeting. The most amazing “coincidence” (several things which have happened, not necessarily by luck or fate) was the meeting of this wife to a lady who had come into the store around Valentine’s Day to buy a bible.

The lady had gone to buy a bible because her daughter, eight, had wanted to get her father a bible. The daughter felt that it was important for her father to have his own bible because he, while a churchgoer, was not a believer. In getting her father this bible, she had started a divine chain reaction that had led to her father meeting Jesus.

As the two couples worked out the details of where they had met and what had happened since, the husband who has just recently come to faith, also thought he remembered the other man from someplace else. It turns out that our friend had been the organist at a church for 25 years, and during that tenure, this other couple had gone quite faithfully to that church. They never had really met each other, but within just a few minutes, they had two very strong connections that amazed us all.

Some people say that God is dead, or that he does not interact with his people, but just from this one meeting, even if we had held doubts about our God’s power and love for his people, those doubts were erased and then some.God is awesome.