What uncommon things do we want to become common?

Things like:
our children having mutual love and respect for each other.
our teenage children having love, honor, respect and obedience for their parents.
us continually becoming better friends and lovers.
our family totally trusting God in all things and putting our faith in Him to fulfill his promises.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Quenching the Spirit

By Creg

The weekend after our trip to Arlington we had a show in Fredericksburg. We enjoyed the results of our pre-show prayer so much that we prayed it again, hoping for another spirit-filled adventure. While we were setting up, James, in the booth behind us, kept asking us religious type questions and I was intrigued. I had felt the Spirit leading me to him just as He led me to Windy Kai's husband the last show. When I found out James was a missionary, I was sure that God wasn't leading me to him, because missionaries don't need any encouragement from me, do they? So I spent the whole weekend trying to find out who God wanted me to speak to, sure in my mind that it wasn't James because missionaries have it all together, don't they?

I found out that he had been to Russia several times to help plant churches there and now he was selling those 5-in-1 Russian nesting dolls that you put inside of each other. He brought some back from his travels; including a set of the Beatles, one with presidents, a lot of sports teams, and much more. I was fascinated by the detailed artistry on the smallest ones, which were about the size of a half a pea. Do the painters spend all day squinting?

Sunday afternoon when the show was almost over he came over to our booth & just started talking about his life. A couple of years earlier his wife got cancer & he didn't handle it well. When she recovered she took their 4 kids & left him. She then called all of their supporters & told them lies about him so they would cancel their financial support. He had no family, no ministry, and no hope.

The Spirit led me to a man in desperate need of friendly encouragement & I blew it off because I thought I knew better. That's called quenching the Spirit.

Forgive me Lord.
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1 comment:

  1. thank you for being so honest with yourself and with all of us readers. being a mom of a missionary - i will tell you, they need encouragement. they are doing what you are doing just in another culture so ask yourself do you need encouragement. they are no different than us!! matter of fact, they may need MORE than we do. thanks for your heart being so open to listen to the Spirit -- we are all learning to obey!!

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