Hello everyone!
On Tuesday of this week we had to put our cat down. My girls were pretty upset... My 4 year old said, “It’s tearing my heart out!”
The “very next day” my girls told their bus driver what happened and she said that her daughter just found a kitty. A couple days latter we picked him up. The whole family loves him! I’ve affectionately named him “Kojak” J Through this all, I’m reminded how God takes care of us, even in the “little things” (Eph 1:11). What a comfort to know that God sees everything and is always leaning toward us in infinite love.
Here’s an overview of what happened last week. My training has been such a blessing!
Summary
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Meeting with Kent Shaw (he oversees Harvest Bible Fellowship for church planting) and Bill Mollinari for discussions regarding launching HBC Joliet
- Sermon review of a classmate
- Researching verses in the book of Revelation for James’ sermon
- Various discussions of illustrations in sermons
- practiced telling personal stories
- practiced crafting illustrative stories
- listened to various well known preachers giving illustrations
- Worked on refining Harvest’s doctrinal statement
- Worked on outlining James MacDonald’s new sermon with him
- Went out with Rick Donald (founding pastor with James MacDonald ) and his wife Lynn to meet with 3 different lay-leaders at Harvest
Scripture
“…he [Jesus] would withdraw to desolate places and pray.”
Luke 5:16
What an example we have in Jesus! What a blessing to be able to read about His life in the gospels. Jesus knew the sweetness of praying to God the Father. He was a man of prayer. He took time to get away from His responsibilities in life so that He could seek God in prayer. In the Greek (the original language that the book of Luke was written in) it’s clear that this is something that Jesus was doing on a regular basis. We could say that Jesus was “regularly” withdrawing to desolate places to pray.
Let’s follow our Saviors example and regularly take time to get away by ourselves to seek God in prayer. God is jealous for our hearts. He wants to reveal more of Himself to us than we can imagine. He wants to increase our joy and peace regardless of our circumstances. Let’s become more like Jesus and seek God more regularly in prayer!