On Mothers’ Day, one of the words given at the front of church really resonated with me for a friend of mine who was going through a very rough time. She is on a journey of faith and very open whenever I talk and pray with her. So I wrote the word down and took it round to her later in the day. She was very moved, and it was clear God was speaking to her.
So let’s be open to not just assuming Sunday morning (or any meeting) things are only for those in the same room, but allow God to speak in a wider way.
We were at the beach on bank holiday Monday. We had enough money for the car park and our bank cards, but there aren’t many ATMs at the seaside, the shops were far away and we wanted ice creams for 3 hungry teenagers! We had (and we counted twice) £2.98, enough for 2 ice creams.
We searched down the seats of the car and the glove box etc for that loose change. No money. One of the teenagers offered to go without an ice cream, which is in itself a testimony of God’s grace!! I had wondered about praying and looking on the ground, bur then I gave up and went to sit down on a grassy bank.
To my surprise, two pound coins were lying on the grass where I had decided to sit: enough to buy a £1.50 ice cream for each teenager, and an extra 50p blessing for the one who had given up his ice cream.
One of the mums at Bubbles had been ill with a bleed on the brain, and we’d prayed for her in our Bubbles prayer time. So when she came early one week, we let her come in and sit down while we were setting up. I sat and chatted to her and asked how she was. She told me she was pregnant with her third child, but things weren’t going well. She was being sick constantly to the point of collapsing, so she was going into hospital every week to be rehydrated. Baby wasn’t growing properly and the doctors were very worried about the pregnancy. I asked if I could pray for her and she was really touched and said yes.
Two of us prayed for her, declaring life over the baby. We prayed that the sickness would stop and that baby would grow properly. She said she felt ‘goosebumpy’! A few weeks later I saw her at Bubbles and asked how she’d been. She said she hadn’t been sick since we prayed for her, and that the day we prayed, she walked down the road and felt baby kick for the first time! She had just had a scan that showed baby was growing totally normally, and she was totally well. “Praise God!” I said, and she said, “yeah!”.
We have an awesome God!!
One of the teachers at school where I work had asked myself and another Christian to pray for her unborn baby. It was early on in the pregnancy and she’d had a scan showing that part of the digestive system was developing outside the body and so the baby would need early surgery and have to spend the early weeks of life in hospital. This was a huge shock, and had taken the family a while to come to terms with. Added to that were practical implications - their oldest child is at school and would need picking up etc., while mum would be at the hospital with baby.
Well, we started praying for a miracle and got back to work today after the holiday and my pregnant friend excitedly told me that when they’d had a subsequent scan there was absolutely nothing wrong the baby!! Apparently the hospital had made a mistake and the scan had been wrongly interpreted!
This is just another step for my friend along her journey to really knowing Jesus. God definitely is at work!
This is a testimony about “God-incidences”…
A few weeks ago I met a guy (“A”) and his friend at Copacabana, a salsa club. After dancing with his friend we came back to the table and A said, “I’ve just scared your friend away.” It turns out they had been talking about God and she’d just gone to the bathroom as I came (she’s a Christian; he’s got some strange beliefs…). He brought God up, not me, so this gave me an open door to ask about his beliefs and talk about God.
Here come his so called “coincidences”:
1) It turns out that same morning A had just started reading a book about God.
2) He’d smiled at someone in the park who “coincidently” is a missionary in UK and told him about God.
3) A was talking to my friend about God.
4) We were talking about God.
5) His sister was at Copa’ and said hi to him, her friend said hi to me and when he asked how we knew each other we said, “from church”.
6) He met another girl who’d arrived quite late and they got talking about God too!
He made a passing remark of “where’s my invite to come to Church?”. He couldn’t actually come this week but his friend did and has been coming since.
A’s “coincidences” don’t end there. A couple of weeks after, he met a Christian guy at Copa who invited him to Church! He’s been going to Platt Church with his daughter ever since.
The funny thing is, the guy who took A to church is a really good friend of mine who I’ve NEVER seen at Copa. A – I think God is trying to get your attention!
One of my friends at work was telling me this week how she loves testimonies but they never have them at her church - so I told her about our little blog!
Anyway, this little story is more of a ‘Did you know…?’ or ‘Take every opportunity.’…
I use our library quite a lot and a few years ago found out that if they haven’t got a book you want, they have a budget for buying new books recommended/requested by the public. I’ve quite often asked them to buy good Christian books (two in the last couple of months!) and after I’ve read them, prayed that God will direct other people who don’t know him yet to read them and so come closer to Jesus. What a great opportunity - let’s get involved in our local libraries!
I’m in my final year at university and am doing the customary job search in preparation for next year, and I decided to apply for BBC and ITV’s graduate schemes. I applied for the BBC and made it through the first stage which I was delighted at. The second stage was a verbal reasoning test which I thought wouldn’t be too much of a challenge, but after doing the test online it went really badly. The so-called ‘easy’ questions at the beginning were harder than I expected and I simply had to guess at the latter half of the questions because I had no idea. As I guessed at answers, I prayed “God, please make these be right!”.
That morning I had found out that ITV wouldn’t be running their graduate scheme this year which meant I was only applying for the BBC. I felt quite despondent at how the test had gone, aware that in the space of 15 minutes I might have ruined my chances of progressing to the next round. I felt God put the song “Who has made the world turn?” that we sing at Vinelife into my head, and then the sentence “I’ve got it sorted”. This made me feel better although my doubting Thomas side was not convinced. Two minutes later my housemate asked me “What’s that song we sing at church with the line ‘Who has made the world turn?’”. I told him and before I knew it he was playing that song throughout the house and God simply said to me: “Need I say anymore?”.
The other day I received an email saying that I had passed the verbal reasoning test, to my delight.
I just want to tell you about a miracle that happened yesterday. My husband’s last job ended on 28th Feb, his next starts this coming Monday. He is on job seekers allowance of £76 a week for this 2 weeks. I got a phone call yesterday at work asking me if I could deliver a project management course today at Salford Uni to Masters students - I’d been recommended by a work colleague. I did, it was fun!
Here’s the great news: they are paying me £750 for the day!! Oh my goodness, God’s plans ARE to prosper me not to harm me, to give me a hope! The course went really well and they’ve now asked me what else I could deliver for them! God meets our every need, in sometimes completely unexpected ways; I could not have imagined this happening, ever.
The men came to measure up for our new carpet the other week. As he came into the lounge to write-up he spotted a Christian book I’d been reading. “I’m just about to get that from Amazon!”, he said, and explained that he had seen the author on YouTube and thought he was excellent. I said the book was very good and when I next go in to pay I’ll be asking him if he’s read it yet and what he thinks! I don’t think he’s a Christian yet, but is obviously getting closer.
Good news - it seems like God has healed my dodgy knee, which has been playing up from time to time for a few years. It has been painful for a few weeks recently but during worship last week I felt something like liquid being poured into it and now the pain has pretty much gone. I was talking to one of the worship team afterwards who said that Bill Johnson had mentioned at the Harrogate conference that knee cartilage seems to get fixed wherever he goes. It looks like they might have brought some of that back with them!
