sharingtheloveofChrist


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Friday, September 23, 2011

Women's Ministry

Women’s Ministries




It doesn’t matter if you are 18 years old or 85 years old, God wants to reveal His love through your life! Many times, we overcomplicate this idea by thinking public ministry, like teaching a class or serving in an orphanage, is the only way to fulfill that calling. However, I believe each of us finds incredible fulfillment when we allow God’s love to flow through us in practical ways every day—impacting the people around us.

I myself have been dealing with this for about three years now, ever since losing so much of my hearing. I thought, I will just wait on the Lord to open up a door of ministry for me. After about two year I felt that I should move into the only avenue I could think of ministering without having to hear; Computer!

Since then I have started a blog for my site and joined FB Blogging and notes with encouraging devotionals.

God has called me to be an encourager, the anointing for this ministry has been on my life since 1983 and I thank God for it. I am still open for more but it will be God’s calling and not mine. Also, I have met people from all over the united states that I would never have met without them reading my blogs, I made them public for that reason.

For those of you who are stay at home mothers, God has a calling to ministry on all of your lives; Just open up and allow God to love and minister through you when you can.

He doesn’t expect more from you than He has equipped you for.

I found that there is no excuse for not ministering, just open up and start looking for what God can do through you.. ”



It is all about proximity. We simply need to ask ourselves, Who has God placed in my life? Your family? Friends? Neighbors? Maybe even Co-workers? We can be certain God wants us to minister to our families, but we can also be confident He wants us to positively influence other women! Each of us shares the same call—to minister to the women in our life.

Ministry to women is relational! As we live in full devotion to God, He will give us opportunities to reveal His love in life-changing ways. Who are the women God wants you to connect with—, your neighbor, your hair stylist? It can be as simple as writing an encouraging note to a struggling friend, spending an hour getting to know someone’s story, or helping an aging neighbor with a household task.



Know that God will reveal His love through you! You can make a difference in the lives of the women around you as you give them the simple gifts of presence, understanding, compassion, conversation, and example. God has given you an assignment to relational ministry. As you allow God’s love to flow through you, you will meet the needs of others and at the same time discover the fulfilling life you were intended to lead!

God bless you and your ministry,

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Exciting faith

God, Forgive Me Lysa TerKeurst

(Proverbs 31) web site
“…and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” Isaiah 58:10 (NIV)

Have you ever seen the social injustices of the world and felt they were too big for you to make a difference? I have felt that way. So instead of doing something—even something small, I did nothing.

Recently, several friends and I spent almost a week living at the Dream Center in Los Angeles. The Dream Center is a converted hospital run by Pastor Matthew Barnett and his church, Angelus Temple. It is a 700 bed facility that is a homeless shelter, a drug rehab, a healing place for those rescued from sex trafficking, an education facility and a ministry hub for over 120 outreach programs to help people in need.

I went as a woman in ministry. I went to help meet needs. But I quickly realized I was there as a woman in need.

A woman who needed God’s reality to fall fresh and heavy and close and real and too in my face to deny.

Because sometimes I find myself talking about God so much He becomes an identity marker but not an identity changer in my life.

Having God as an identity marker is nothing but a label, a language, and a lifestyle. I’m a Christian. I talk like one. I act like one.

But having God as an identity changer is something so much more. It’s lavish abandon to who God is and who He’s made me to be. Holding nothing back.

Only lavish abandon to God can do what I saw at the Dream Center.

It’s what changed the ex-gang member with eight bullet hole scars into a Jesus loving servant. So gentle.

It’s what changed the ex-prostitute into a counselor for girls being rescued from the streets. So pure.

It’s what changed the ex-drug addict into a loving father teaching his son how to be a godly leader. So integrity filled.

What in heavens has been holding me back?

Seriously. What has been stopping me from absolute lavish abandon to God? I need to know.

I’m desperate to figure it out.

So, I asked Pastor Matthew—a man who lives this lavish abandon, “Aren’t you afraid sometimes? You run a facility where you have to raise half-million dollars a month—a MONTH! Do you walk around with the weight of that on you all the time?”

And his answer cracked my heart wide open. “No. When you experience God the way I’ve been experiencing God for 17 years, you stop being afraid. I’ve seen too many miracles.”

Oh. Tears. The woman who doesn’t cry was flooded with a crack in the dam of her soul.

My. God. That. Is. It.

Pastor Matthew lives our key verse from Isaiah 58:10. He spends himself in behalf of the hungry and oppressed. And honest to goodness I’ve never seen someone so happy, so positive, so on fire for the things of God. Like our verse, his light rises in the darkness.

He sees the miracles therefore he dares to be part of them.

I can’t say the same about myself and I’m challenged by this.

I’ve stopped positioning my life for miracles. In an effort to never make God look bad, I’ve sought only that which I can carefully measure and predict and manipulate into being.

God, help me. God, forgive me.

If I truly want to be a woman who lives by faith, I must live a life that requires a little bit of faith. Fresh faith. The kind that changes everything. The kind the Dream Center is built upon.

I want to be part of the miracles happening at the Dream Center. And I’d love to invite you to join me. Dare to dream sweet friend…read more about this simple but profound opportunity below.

Dear Lord, I want fresh faith. The kind of faith that positions my heart to experience you. I don’t want to be held back. Even if it’s in a small way, I want to be available and willing to help those oppressed. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Having God as an identity marker is nothing but a label, a language, and a lifestyle. I’m a Christian. I talk like one. I act like one. But having God as an identity changer is something so much more. It’s lavish abandon to who God is and who He’s made me to be. Holding nothing back.



Isaiah 58:6-8, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.” (NIV)