Is it possible that God is blessing me beyond anything I have ever expected? YES. Just when God closes one door, (one I have been trying to go through for years)....HE opens different doors in the most unexpected beautiful places.
If we could see what God sees...we would see that HE has beautiful things planned for us. The key is...we have to be looking, listening and ready for God's plan to be revealed. We do this through obedience to HIM, even when we would rather live for ourself.
Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, "We have seen REMARKABLE things today."Luke 5:26
Wow… being back from Citiweek: 2010 for 24 hours now...it almost seems like it was all just a dream.
There were so many REMARKABLE situations; I would love to write about each experience in order to share the excitement with everyone I know, as well as to have in writing the details so I will never forget.I chose the word remarkable because “awesome” is over used; “wonderful” seems too light and “crazy good” is just not strong enough to describe the past six days I spent with 122 High school students and leaders from Woodside Bible Church in the city of Detroit.
{Someone has a dream, a thought, a conviction, one person alone typically can not make a dream come true, a thought become reality or a conviction become a blessing}
Is it possible that God can use me to help HIM?He has allowed me to be an instrument in HIS orchestra [a large group of musicians, whose members play a variety of different instruments]An orchestra is made up of many different instruments that make beautiful music.Yes, the instruments can play alone and sound okay, but when they are put together the music is much more powerful. This is how I see my experience last week in Detroit.
{Powerful:Remarkable:God Ordained}
God is the composer of the “music”, our pastors are the conductors, and the leaders are the principal players {the lead player of each orchestral section who is required to guide the section} The students are the section players {members of each section}. If we stretched this word picture to include a performance we would add to the cast of characters, ticket takers, concessions, custodians ect...each on our own makes a noise but together we make a memorable moment in time. God’s orchestra performed and it was amazing.
I will be posting some individual stories of how God's purpose was fulfilled in the days we spent showing love and giving hope to Detroit.
Who in their right mind would take 100 suburban high school students to Detroit?What kind of high school student would want to take a week of their Summer vacation to go to Detroit?How many high school students do you know that would go into a stranger’s home and clean their basement that was littered with animal feces, dead mice, broken furniture, thick cob webs hanging everywhere and to top it off the basement flooded with all of these things on the floor?Let me answer these questions for you.
The STUDENTS of Woodside Bible Church and their “not always” fearless leaders, that sing this line from a song called “Our God” by Chris Tomlin, “If our God is for us who could ever stop us?” with passion. The most selfless, hardworking, non-complaining, loving, kind-hearted, gentle and faithful teenagers attend WBC.These are the students I am privileged to know, spend time with and serve God with.
{God is so good to me}
Some of the highlights from the “D-Town Driven” team will be shared in this blog but there are many fascinating stories from the other three teams that were serving in Detroit as well.
Our team put together 50 brown handled bags filled with food, water and a sweet hand written note, our students donated all of the items.We decided that we would pass out the bags any time we saw a homeless person, and let’s just say we could have past out 50 more bags.There were many situations during the passing out of bags that were memorable, like when we saw a man in a wheel chair going down the street and two of our students hopped out of the bus and gave the man a bag, Keith, he smiled from ear to ear, like he just received a birthday gift.Then there was the man sitting on the steps of a church, two of our students jumped out and gave him a bag, and as we were driving away he was waving saying, "thank you" and asking for another one to give to his wife.Then there was "Regina" sitting on the corner and not only did our students give her a bag, they got to sit and chat with her for a few minutes.This is what is so amazing to me, teenagers that could be at home in their clean comfy homes, hanging out with their friends at a coffee shop are excited to share food, conversation and the love of God with people they have never met and will probably never see again.There is only one explanation for this kind of selflessness, Jesus.If anyone ever questions whether God is real and working miracles in the 21st century they should meet some of the high school students I know.It’s a beautiful thing to see teenagers moved by the Holy Spirit to serve, love and worship.
{It’s remarkable}
"Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it's needed Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you." Hebrews 14:1
Painting the garage: this was a hot, hot day by 11:00 AM it was at least 90 degrees and the humidity was about 90%.Marianne, she is a “hoarder”, she had piles of junk in three different spots on her property, and every seat in her car was filled with stuff except for the driver’s seat.She also had a collection of bracelets, rings and a key chainaround her wrist that had at least 25 old keys on it.When we asked her if she wanted us to throw away the old broken glass leaning on her garage, she was quite firm in saying, “NO, don’t throw anything away.”Our students scrapped, sanded and painted the whole garage, cleaned up her yard, pulled weeds and made her yard look much better.When we were leaving she told me her car wasn’t starting, so of course one of our students was excited to help her. We tried to get her car started and when it didn’t start she asked for a ride to the corner repair shop, so we dropped her off and I am pretty sure if we would have had the means the kids would have taken up a collection and bought her a new car.
{Love others as you love yourself}
On Wednesday night we attended a church in Detroit, the pastor was great and he said something that just made me smile, God is so cool how He puts things together for us. The pastor made this statement, “We need to stand on the shoulders of other believers.” Well, as you can see in the picture, the day before we heard this pastor, while painting the garage wedid not have a ladder so our students used their height and strength to lift each other up on their shoulders to finish painting the high spots of the garage. How can anyone deny that God is at work orchestrating the lives of believers when you see teenagers doing an act of kindness and a pastor they don't even know mentions that exact thing they did in his message the next day.
{There is no coincidence, only a well orchestrated plan}.
More stories to come.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Birthday Week Begins:
I am staying up right now even though I am exhausted from a wonderful week of serving God in Detroit because I want to be the first person to wish Courtney and Lindsay, "Happy 21st Birthday".
Twenty one years....whoa, seriously it seems like it was maybe a month or two ago that I was blessed with a set of preemie twin girls. The tiniest babies I had ever seen and I was responsible for them.
What I have learned the most from having twin girls....God does answer prayer, not always how I expected Him to but God has always comes through.
Courtney and Lindsay both love the Lord and have a great understanding of God's purpose. I am so honored to be their mom.
Today I am trying to figure out what is important. I can't do everything I want to...so what is most important. Cleaning...sleeping...reading...studying God's word...what does God want me to do today?
Luke 5:26 Everyone was AmAzEd and gave PRAISE to God. They were filled withAwE and said, "We have seen REMARKABLE things today."
It's settled...I am going to look for REMARKABLE things today.
God teaches us in such interesting ways, but does he really teach us the principle of prayer through Little League Baseball?I think so.I have always looked at God’s answers to prayer as either yes, no or wait.But I have to admit that there have been occasions that I was certain that my prayers weren’t even received.
The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us, but that we will hear Him.
~William McGill
Sitting in the stands week after week, eagerly watching as my sons take the bat and step up to the plate, my heart gets anxious and I begin to say a little prayer, this is how it typically goes, “Lord, please let him hit the ball.”Or “Lord, please let him get on first base, a hit would be nice but if he gets hit with the ball and it is not life threatening, I’m ok with that to.”How desperate is that?Well, this year God answered my prayers for Chad quite a few times, he had more than one game saving hit, and he had his best season ever.God had different plans for A.J this season.My prayers were answered but not in the typical way, not the boring and possibly painful way I prayed but in a super natural, creative, exciting, memorable and I hesitate to say but there was just a little, “in your face” edge to this answered prayer.
Hernie Harwell I am not, but I will give a little play by play that leads to this obvious answer to pray.Last game of the season, the big championship play off game, last inning, last up to bat for the “A’s”, (A.J's team) there are two outs, one man on 2nd base, the score 11 to 12 A.J’s team was behind by one run and yes, you guessed it, my boy is up to bat.I can’t even imagine how his heart must have been pounding, he by his own admission was in a “slump” he had not hit the ball in about 5 games.
So, here I go, “Lord, please.” strike one.
“Lord, are you there?” strike two.
“LORD, I’M SERIOUS.”SMACK.A line drive right through two outfielders…. the game is tied.A.J’s coach begins to scream, “Run A.J…run”.YES! He ran all the way home with a two run hit.
A.J’s team met him at home plate with a hero’s welcome; his hit won the championship game.
I am very competitive and I like to win and I like my kids to win but winning a sporting event has never brought tears to my eyes.This game was no exception, I did not cry because of the win, but I still cry at the love that God showed my son and I through this story.See, I told you the end of the story the beginning of the story started a year prior.
In the prior season I had the misfortune of witnessing a Little League coach verbally humiliating a child during a pre-game warm up and a parent humiliating a child on the same team, the same night.
Mark 9:37
"Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me."
The details of the story I will write about at another time, but the gist of the story is, I protected a child and God honored that.I reported the situation to the league president, the coaches and parent were reprimanded and it was put on record, along with a note stating “the Fillmore boys were never to be placed on this coaches team.”But it was not that easy, to give you a sense of how twisted adults can be especially the ones I was dealing with now, I was actually asked, if I knew whom I was dealing with?Yes of course, I knew the people involved very well, their children go to school with mine, but that was not going to stop me from standing up against evil.When it comes to protecting kids, it doesn’t matter to me who you are and I am pretty sure that the message got out loud and clear.
You are probably beginning to figure out what makes this story so meaningful.Yes, A.J’s winning hit was perfectly placed and perfectly timed. The team that lost at the hands of A.J’s winning hit, was coached by the arrogant and evil bully that I turned in the year before, and because God is in the details, it was the coach's son that was pitching. God waited for the perfect time for A.J to make the big hit, and not by coincidence was it hit to the team with the mean coach, no God planned it that way, God was making a statement, "Do what is right even when it's hard." As you may also guess A.J did not really want me to turn in this coach last year, because he does go to school with a lot of the kids on that team, but I just could not let this slide past and in the end A.J understood how important it was to try and stop children from being humiliated.
The very man that humiliated that little boy last year, was humiliated by the kid whose mom stood up to him. In my humanness I could definitely come up with this scenario but I don't think I had the nerve to pray that God would humiliate this man, it killed him that his team lost and that it was A.J that hit the ball.
A sad side note to this story, the boys on the losing team were crying, and when A.J asked them why, they said their coach/dad was going to yell at them. Yell at them? As if they did not do their very best. Wow, how glad I am that my Father doesn't yell at me when I am doing my best.
I can just see my loving Father watching His little creations playing baseball and enjoying it as I do but knowing all along, that one hit was going to be the example I needed to remind me that my God is concerned about all the details in my life, even the seemingly unimportant ones.Week after week God heard my prayer for my son to be a successful hitter, but would I have recognized God’s involvement had A.J gotten a hit every time I prayed that prayer?God is so awesome; my words can’t really explain the joy I feel when I recall how thoughtful God is of me, how He loves me and how He wants to be included in every part of my life.
John 17:21-23
"...that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
I have had many experiences in my life that God is clearly a part of. Modern day miracles: healing, providing, loving, changing, caring, fixing, replacing,arranging and more. And I feel that sharing these stories can be encouragement for others to look for God in their everyday life.
