Sickness, Babies & Bucks!

I have been sick this week and each day has been similar.  I wake up and feel like I am getting a little better and by the end of the day I revert to my childhood impulse of wanting to cut my nose off (I only had that impulse when I was sick just in case you wondered)!  It was so bad last night I even took a friends "top secret/home remedy" advice and put vick's vapor rub on my feet ;-(

While this week has been nonstop busy for me, one real highlight was this morning when Jim Duer asked our staff team to meet and pray with a family who has custody of a seven month old baby!  They were going to a hearing to see if the court was going to terminate the parental rights of this babies birth parents so that they could adopt this beautiful little boy that they have been looking after for most of his life!  This kind of stuff has a special place in my heart as I was adopted!  I am not sure if my birth parents were into any of the things this little babies parents are (drugs, jail, etc) but I do know that being part of the home I grew up in was a huge blessing!  All through my life people, when finding out I am adopted, have asked, "Have you ever wanted to 'find' your 'real' parents"?  That has always made me smile as I have always known my real parents!  They are the people who I have always known, who have always been there for me, supported me and believed in me!  Little baby Andrew my prayer for you is that you would be as blessed as I have been and get to have great parents!

If you even see people wonder out loud or grumble about putting money into church planting and hear them say something like, "there are so many existing churches that could really use that money"...push back on them for me!  They obviously believe in church planting themselves (if they go to church) as all churches were planted at one time or another!  Challenge them to add up everything they have (in terms of how much money it would cost to buy today)!  Pews, chairs, sound equipment, etc!  Then ask them how they would be doing if they had to buy even a portion of that all at once and still keep everything else going!!!  Having just started a weekly gathering and buying even just the first wave of things we need...it is extremely expensive yet utterly necessary (would you go back to a church that had no place for you to sit)?

So what in the world do these things have to do with each other?  Feeling sick, seeing the pain in the eyes of a couple who may loose a baby they have received as their own, the stress and expense of starting "weekly church".  They are not worth the fight if there is not the daily walking with each other and with God that results in changed lives and a changed community!  Thanks God for working in my life, for allowing me to see and help with your work in others & the wonderful ways you make it all utterly worth the while!