ddc101
03-15-2005, 10:12 AM
I wanted to share what is on my heart this morning.
We have been doing home missions work for about five almost six years now.
We started out in our home with a group that we brought to the main church for service.This was easy.We did not have to do anything but open our home and make snacks and have care group.
Well during this time the Lord began to send people to help in the work.
We love to put leadership training in others.So we began to do so.
Many began to get their lives together and be really blessed in areas
they were so in poverty.My husband even put a bathroom floor in one
families home who were using the port o let at the park across the street.
Slowly we began to take baby steps and rented a one bedroom house to use for service.We had to shout up and down.There was no running around the room believe me.
Next we rented a larger building that we are in now.
With the amount of saints we had we were able to pay the building rent
each month.
People were teaching sunday school and giving faithfully and bringing people to church.
Then one by one they backslid.
Not just changed churches.
Totally into heavy duty sin.
Not just staying home but out drinking and partying etc.
One was even found dead in her home from an overdose.We all wept.
Naturally her family blamed the church for not being real christians.
Imagine that.We took her in and gave her a home,bought her clothes,taught her the bible,baptised her in the name of Jesus
and did all we could but still she stood on the corners selling pills and buying crack.We then had to ask her to find another place to live so we are the horrible ones now.
The load of the bills began to ride upon Brother and I.
Suddenly we had no more sunday school teachers.
The assistant pastor left to marry a woman in another church who divorced him in six months and left him both devestated and sitting on a pew.
The minister of music took a job that kept him out of church so much he totally backslid.When he repented he joined up with a church that teaches false doctrine.
The saints one by one began to be discouraged from this.
What have we done?
We have all the time prayed for them,encouraged them.Fasted and visited.
What is the result?
We have a huge building that has gone up in rent an extra hundred dollars.
We have people who committed to helping pay the rent that have walked off into a life of sin.
We have saints that we won just last year praying and holding up the light.
The nail that really hurt was last week a woman we have baptised and taught and my husband even tarped her roof,encouraged her through surgeries,fixed her water well,helped her mentally insane son to get in church
left without even telling us.Why? We do not have a big enough congregation for her.She wants to go to a bigger nicer church.
I said all of this hoping that someone would see it and realize that they mean alot to their local congregation.
You say......what do you mean?
Who is going to hold up the light of the gospel until those who are afar off make it into the light?
Are we going to let flesh and selfishness and self rule or is the burden of the Lord going to get through to us?
Are we going to be soul winners or just there for the fish and the loaves?
Committment is a thing lacking in churches all across America.
We do not have a big house.
We waited over five years to buy even nice used cars with most of our money going into the work of the Lord.
But now I have to say that the Lord Jesus Christ is blessing Brother Cooper and myself.He is able even though the crowd thins down to lift you up above the shadows.
To those who are ministering today to those who seem thankless remember that you are doing this work for Jesus and he gets alot of thanklessness thrown his way.lv sis.c
We have been doing home missions work for about five almost six years now.
We started out in our home with a group that we brought to the main church for service.This was easy.We did not have to do anything but open our home and make snacks and have care group.
Well during this time the Lord began to send people to help in the work.
We love to put leadership training in others.So we began to do so.
Many began to get their lives together and be really blessed in areas
they were so in poverty.My husband even put a bathroom floor in one
families home who were using the port o let at the park across the street.
Slowly we began to take baby steps and rented a one bedroom house to use for service.We had to shout up and down.There was no running around the room believe me.
Next we rented a larger building that we are in now.
With the amount of saints we had we were able to pay the building rent
each month.
People were teaching sunday school and giving faithfully and bringing people to church.
Then one by one they backslid.
Not just changed churches.
Totally into heavy duty sin.
Not just staying home but out drinking and partying etc.
One was even found dead in her home from an overdose.We all wept.
Naturally her family blamed the church for not being real christians.
Imagine that.We took her in and gave her a home,bought her clothes,taught her the bible,baptised her in the name of Jesus
and did all we could but still she stood on the corners selling pills and buying crack.We then had to ask her to find another place to live so we are the horrible ones now.
The load of the bills began to ride upon Brother and I.
Suddenly we had no more sunday school teachers.
The assistant pastor left to marry a woman in another church who divorced him in six months and left him both devestated and sitting on a pew.
The minister of music took a job that kept him out of church so much he totally backslid.When he repented he joined up with a church that teaches false doctrine.
The saints one by one began to be discouraged from this.
What have we done?
We have all the time prayed for them,encouraged them.Fasted and visited.
What is the result?
We have a huge building that has gone up in rent an extra hundred dollars.
We have people who committed to helping pay the rent that have walked off into a life of sin.
We have saints that we won just last year praying and holding up the light.
The nail that really hurt was last week a woman we have baptised and taught and my husband even tarped her roof,encouraged her through surgeries,fixed her water well,helped her mentally insane son to get in church
left without even telling us.Why? We do not have a big enough congregation for her.She wants to go to a bigger nicer church.
I said all of this hoping that someone would see it and realize that they mean alot to their local congregation.
You say......what do you mean?
Who is going to hold up the light of the gospel until those who are afar off make it into the light?
Are we going to let flesh and selfishness and self rule or is the burden of the Lord going to get through to us?
Are we going to be soul winners or just there for the fish and the loaves?
Committment is a thing lacking in churches all across America.
We do not have a big house.
We waited over five years to buy even nice used cars with most of our money going into the work of the Lord.
But now I have to say that the Lord Jesus Christ is blessing Brother Cooper and myself.He is able even though the crowd thins down to lift you up above the shadows.
To those who are ministering today to those who seem thankless remember that you are doing this work for Jesus and he gets alot of thanklessness thrown his way.lv sis.c