Hope

I didn't want to post tonight. I don't even know what I am going to write about, I just feel like I need to write. ... Kind of like the fact that I didn't know why I was supposed to be at church tonight, but I knew I was supposed to come.

Maybe it was to hear about the Lord's heart for foster children. A woman got up and shared about the need for foster parents in Arkansas. I don't remember the numbers (I'm terrible with numbers) but basically it's that the amount of foster kids far outweigh how many foster families are able to take them. Side note about her: she has fostered more than forty kids with her husband as a foster parent as well as having their own five children and adopting one child in particular that they fostered. She wrote a book called "Middle Mom" and I really want to read it. I need to just go ask her for a copy. I kind of know her, I want to know her better. Her son plays on the worship team with me and I love him. :)

Honestly, I didn't want to pray that my heart would be open to fostering. I still don't have that openness in my heart. It sounds messy and difficult and just hard. I want to be open and ready, but I think that my own human expectations... are, well, I'm just not there yet. Help me Lord. Help me to have your heart for kids. Help my husband to have Your heart. Lord, if we need to adopt, I pray that we would do it. If we need to foster, I pray that we would be obedient.

Then our pastor said he felt strongly that the Lord was saying to stop the meeting for that night. We would meet again tomorrow night and everything, but he felt a caution in his spirit that we would not be enamored by a prayer meeting. That we would not forget that it is about the glory of God and not about a meeting. That we would not get lost in ourselves.

So he closed the meeting.

A few minutes later he said, "wait a minute, we have someone who wants to be baptized." A young girl had been waiting for her dad to make it to the meeting so that he could baptize her. It was so beautiful, everyone gathering around and praising the Lord as her father through tears of joy asked her if she believed that Jesus was the son of God and the savior from her sins and she said yes. And he baptized her.

I know that some of you who read this are not followers of Christ. Maybe this all sounds really weird and spiritual. Maybe you are open to that or you have heard of this before. I have seen things similar to this. I have seen healings take place in meetings, I have seen ongoing prayer and people being freed from longtime sins and struggles.

I can only testify for what I have seen, what I know. You can do whatever you want with that, you do not answer to me or any other human.

What I do know is that in His presence is fullness of joy. I know that I would probably be entrenched in sin. I think I would probably be on drugs or an alcoholic, I probably would have tried that stuff and loved it. I would be in love with the television, sexual addiction, food, anything... Or, I would simply be living my life day in and day out, without hope. I know that I have nothing apart from Christ. I write about the Redemption of My Physical Body and Freedom from Sexual Addiction because I want to say what God has done personally in my life.

It's not just some spiritual, abstract thing. It is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross for my sins, for the sins of the world, your sins too, and on the third day he conquered death and rose from the grave. He ascended into Heaven and sent his Spirit to live inside of me. I received His Spirit when I accepted him as my savior. In Him is fullness of joy.