The day I left to visit Rick (see last blog article), I received a lengthy letter from a young minister I met in a crowd a Tulsa Workshop ago, but don't really know. He poured out his heart in need of encouragement to hang on and hang in there. That was in the morning. When I went to Rick's office that afternoon, he was telling me about a young preacher who had emailed him from Indiana with exact needs. When I came into my office this morning, a voicemail awaited from a middle-aged preacher in a nearby state with a similar message.
I have some good news and some good news. The good news is men are in ministry. The good news is men like Rick, and Chris Seidman, and myself are pedaling as fast as we can with desire to help.
I'll happily do what I can to encourage such hearts. To any such men or women reading this, it would work best for you to email me privately at trush@memorialdrive.org. This works better for me, rather than phone, as I can get to more people in less time. Now let me give you Rick's home phone number.....817-......only kidding!
Here's what I would want to say to each of you regardless of whether you are on top of the world or buried by it. God knows where you are, is crazy about you now, and will offer His resurrection power for your work....Romans 8:11, II Cor. 13:4. Now you may not stay in that spot long, but you won't waste the valuable lessons God has in store while you are there.
Your work is not difficult because you drew the short straw. It is your opportunity to give up...as we all have at some point...in order for God to get to show His stuff. To His and for His glory....He shows up when all Lazarus situations are buried.
Psalm 46:10.
5 comments:
Thank you.
Glory to God!
Jason
I can't tell you how many times I looked at the help wanted ads (preaching and other) when I felt overwhelmed, underappreciated, useless, and generally all the other feelings that lead one to give up. However, things really began to turn around when Terry came here for a meeting (thank you Terry). The lessons he taught were just what I needed and have been a great encouragement to me. I went from frustrated with leadership to appreciating them (and they have not significantly changed but I have). I went from looking for a way to get out of here without too much damage or harm to my family to looking forward to working with this congregation into the future (and they have not changed much but I have). I went from challenging in the deepest caves of my heart what God is doing or can do to praising God and wondering what He is going to do next (and He sure hasn't changed at all but He has changed me). I'd be happy to mail these lessons to anyone for free (as long as Terry doesn't mind). If you are very discouraged as Terry wrote in this post, there is hope! Thank you Terry for these lessons, your follow emails and encouragement to me after the meeting, and your blog which has added so much fuel to my fire this summer especially.
A funny story to go along with this post:
We have a church sign. The letters go into a tray that can be removed, brought into the building, the letters changed and the trays returned.
I took the trays off 2 weeks ago and they were filthy and full of dead bugs. Early this week I washed them off and cleaned the sign. After the trays dried the next day I put a new message on each side. One side says "Did you fail or just give up?" The other side says "Love never fails or gives up."
When I went to put the trays on, I discovered I put all the letters in the tray upside down. The trays only fit one way so I could not just turn the tray over to fix the problem. I huffed and puffed and took the trays back into the building and decided to fix it the next day.
I was telling a friend about the mistake later and began to laugh when I realized the message on the trays and what I had done! I decided to fix the 2nd side (Love never fails) and I put the first side on upside down! Now we have an upside down sign that says "did you fail or just give up." I can't wait to hear the comments and tell the story!
James....anything you've gotten from me which would help others is fine with me if you send it on.
Tell readers how to email you.
Blessings my friend.
If anyone would like a copy of Terry's lessons from a meeting he did a few years ago here, email me at quincycoc@sbcglobal.net. Thanks!
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