Changed By Love

Changed By Love

Following the Lamb wherever he goes… Revelation 14:4

God’s People Are Here

We have met some of the nicest people here. Almost every house we have looked at is owned or has been shown by a Christian. We have met Christians and seen Christian bumper stickers every where we’ve gone. I commented on this to one of the homeowners whose house we looked at, and he said, “Oh, yeah, Jesus is Lord here.” I was amazed! I liked the sound of that.

Last night we were invited to the home and family Christmas party of a wonderful couple with an amazing ministry of giving homeless and troubled people a temporary home while God is dealing with them. Many people who have stayed with them have ended up getting saved. They let us come to their beautiful home and soak in the decorations and trappings of a family Christmas for the night. They heard my message and called me right back and invited me without stopping for a moment to think about it. They just knew that they wouldn’t want to be in a hotel with 10 children at Christmas time, so they blessed us with a change of scenery and a change of diet. Their names are Morgan and Joyce Ilgenfritz. Morgan even came to pick half of us up in his van since we turned the rental van in Tuesday.

They told us bits and pieces of their story, but then they gave us two books that have been written about them. And they gave us a book that their daughter-in-law wrote. She has 16 children. So, guess what I’ve been doing today? I’ve been reading about these amazing people who opened their home and hearts to us.

They have had 411 different people stay in their home over the past 30 years. The books about their ministry are called I Was A Stranger and… by Anthony J. Bachman and Divine Appointments by Bonnie S. Grau. They call their house the Lighthouse. It is a house with 19 rooms that God gave to them through Joyce’s job as a personal nurse to an elderly man who happened to have a huge house and a very bad disposition so that no other nurse could handle him. He asked her to move into his house with her family and take care of him as long as he lived. It was a very trying time, but it ended up providing the means for the ministry they would have for the next 30 years. God just sends people to them. They never advertise or try to get anybody to come to them. Their story is full of divine appointments and God’s provision as they obey Him every time He tells them to reach out and help a needy person He puts in their path.

They told us they weren’t afraid of large families because they have a son who has 16 children. They told us a little about them. In fact, two of the 16 children are living with them right now. One is 22-year-old Hannah who is attending nursing school at the college 4 blocks from her grandparents’ house. So she is able to save money and spend lots of quality time with her grandparents while getting her education.  The other is Esther.

Joyce was a wonderful hostess and gave us gifts for our children even though she had only heard of us one hour before we showed up at her house. Morgan was a generous host, too. We enjoyed our time with them. The kids have been playing with the puzzles they gave us and writing with the Christmas pencils and eating the yummy food they sent with us.

We watched a movie with them, “Christmas Child” by Max Lucado. It was really good. Megan Follows and Stephen Curtis Chapman were in it. Then Joyce loaded us up with gifts and Morgan took us back to the hotel. What an amazing couple with a wonderful ministry!

I Am So Blessed!

I walked into Walmart tonight and heard “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” playing on the speakers. It hit me that I am still not in a house or able to do any of the traditional things we do for Christmas
– and it’s almost Christmas! Tears came to my eyes, but I didn’t let myself get too upset. There are several things that keep me from giving in to self-pity. The news that a Facebook friend and fellow homeschooler lost her young son in a tragic accident Sunday makes my situation seem like the most blessed place I could possibly be in. Safe and sound with every one of my children healthy and whole and close to my heart.

A friend told me about some troubling attitudes in her sons that have hurt her deeply, as they are directed at her personally and make her feel like her family considers her a mean, angry, hateful mother. That, combined with the distressing housing situation she has lived in for the past year, took her to the edge tonight. I prayed with her and reassured her, and again realized that my situation is a blessing from heaven.

I have gotten messages from several people asking about our housing situation. We still haven’t heard anything from the owner of the house we would like to rent. The man who is renting the house called today to ask if I had heard anything from him yet. I told him I hadn’t, and he said that he had an email from him that said he was looking at several applications and he would let him know what he decided. The wonderful man who is currently renting the house has gone to bat for us and told the owner that we would be good renters. He is even willing to move up his moving date so that we can get in as soon as possible. He is waiting to hear from the owner or us and he will call his moving company to come and move him Saturday instead of the previous moving date of Dec. 22nd. He is willing to do this to get us into the house sooner, even though it would cost him a couple hundred dollars more.

Surprise! He’s a Christian, too! He’s Asian. I’m not sure what country he is from, but I never would have assumed that he was a Christian. But he asked me if we were a Christian family. He thought we were, even though we never said a word about it while we were looking at the house. I guess he could just tell. So he has been doing the best he can to help us, his brothers and sisters in Christ, to get into the house. It really touched my heart when I realized what he was doing and was willing to do for us.

And the care and concern that I feel from so many who read my status updates on Facebook and who read my blog has been a blessing that helps me to stay full of hope and faith that God is with us and loves us. He is showing His love for us through His people in so many different ways. I feel your prayers, and I’m strengthened by them. Thank you so much. Thank you for the messages letting me know that you’re praying for us and for the encouragement to my faith. I know that God is up to something wonderful. I can’t wait to see what it is!

It’s All in the Timing

Please pray with us that the timing of our getting a house and getting our stuff moved out of our old house will all work out so that the rental management group can find someone else to rent our old house right away, like by Jan. 1st.

We all came with Gary, hoping to find a house to rent within the first week, because Pennsylvania is 14 hours away from Mascoutah. We still only have one car, and 800 miles is a long way to drive back and forth. Our stuff is still waiting in the house for us to give Nelson the go-ahead to load it up and bring it to us.

We found a house we want! Please pray that we hear good news from the owner real soon – like today!

A Word of Wisdom that Won’t Leave Me Alone!

I have been seeing Philippians 4:6 everywhere I look since that day that we prayed about whether to sign a 6 month lease in Mascoutah, and the Lord spoke the words “Philippians 4:6” to me. That was specific revelation to me; it was a word of wisdom, which is one of the gifts of the Spirit.

Now He just keeps reminding me of that word of wisdom almost every day! I read an article in the Believer’s Voice of Victory magazine for Dec. 2010 by Marty Copeland about falling in love with Christmas… Again. Smack dab in the middle of the article was the verse Philippians 4:6. She chose to quote from the Amplified version:

“Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God.”

She applied it to the hustle and bustle of the holidays and the financial pressure of buying gifts for everyone on your list. She even mentioned the stress of trying to figure out the best gifts for each person on your list.

All of that can certainly be stressful, if we let it. So can not knowing where you’re going to live for the next month or year or how much money you’re going to have to spend on hotel rooms before you finally find a house to rent or whether you’re going to spend Christmas in two hotel rooms with ten kids!

It CAN be stressful, if you allow it to be. The key is to not allow it to be stressful. I am learning to be content in all situations. I have been through some stressful, make that traumatizing, situations in the last 5 years or more. But God has given me peace in the midst of the storms. Recently, the situations we’ve faced haven’t been as drastic as the ones we faced back in 2004 and 2005 (actually most of the 2000’s), but I have had more trouble keeping my peace through them.

I have allowed the stress to overcome my peace. I don’t know why I did that, but I’m grateful that God started wooing me back to seek His face. As He did that, I heard Him calling me, and I answered Him. I started intentionally seeking His face. I found worship songs that took me into His presence and played them over and over again. I read from my notebook that the Lord told me to keep during our Journey of Fire. It is full of verses that God highlighted to me and told me to write down, so that I could read them over and over again and draw strength from them. They have helped me to regain my peace as we go through the current storms and trials. I got into my Bible, and the Lord spoke to me through the old, familiar verses and some that were new to me.

I have learned that I can’t rest on my laurels. I successfully kept my peace through the ordeal of living by faith with no income for 5 years and losing our home, so I thought I had the “faith thing” down. But I found out that I have to stick with it. I have to keep doing the things I did then to keep my faith so strong that anxiety cannot overcome my peace.

One thing that eats at my faith and steals my peace is hearing negative words, especially spoken by those closest to me. When I’m in close contact with someone who doubts and fears, it is very difficult to stay full of faith and free of anxiety.

So remember, you are affecting the people around you. Stay in faith yourself, or you will be tearing down someone else’s faith. Watch your words. Speak the Word and what God has told you. If you don’t have a sure word from the Lord, spend time with Him. Seek His face. Ask Him to speak to you. Ask Him for specific direction.

Then when He tells you what to do, obey Him with no fear or doubt. Sometimes He lets you wait a while with no real clear direction. Just wait on Him. Spend time with Him. That’s what He’s really after anyway. He loves you and wants you to spend time with Him. Can you believe it? The Creator of the Universe wants to spend time with you. It’s true. Look at the great lengths He went to to establish a relationship with you so that you could come into His Kingdom and into His presence. Don’t let Jesus’ sacrifice be wasted because you don’t understand what He procured for you. Find out all that salvation, your personal salvation, entails. It might be more than you think.

This post is included in Women Living Well Wednesdays.