We Need Your Prayers

As some of you know, my dad was diagnosed with cancer around 6 years ago. It was primarily in his spleen and that's still where 80% of it is located now. It's swelled a lot and is pressing on his stomach, making it hard to eat and severely weakening him.

After years of chemo, this Wednesday at 3 o'clock he's going in to have his spleen removed. It's a pretty serious surgery and he really needs your prayers. Specifically he needs your prayers against infection after the surgery since his cancer has left him with a very poor immune system.

My mom, my brother, I and the rest of my family would really appreciate your prayers as well. I know I'm pretty scared at the moment. I'm holding tightly to Jesus right now, as is the rest of my family. He's brought us this far, and I know He'll continue to complete this good work that He's started in us.

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." -2 Corinthians 4:17

That just happened!

I just can't get over all of the amazing things that I got to see take place last night at church. So I thought I would throw a recap up on here since I want you all to rejoice in what the Lord is doing, not to mention that this blog is in major need of an update.

First of all, Sayan comes from a Muslim family and has been one her whole life...until Wednesday night at Fusegroup. She was told the Gospel by her awesome small group leader, Leslie, and accepted Christ that night! Yesterday she got baptized.

Back in November, we challenged our students to start inviting people that they know need Jesus to Fuse. Joe Harwood took this to heart and starting bringing David Wilson to church. David hadn't been to church since he was three but on December 7th he accepted Christ! Now he and Joe are tag teaming all of their friends and evangelizing their school together.

David got baptized last night and was able to get his mom (who hadn't been to church in over 30 years) and sister to come watch and they both accepted Christ last night too! His sister has been to Fuse before and was invited by Jessica Harwood. I think the highlight of the night for me was seeing Jessica dancing around the atrium singing, "She stood up! She stood up!" about her friend accepting Christ.

During the part of the invitation where you're not supposed to look around, I looked around and saw one of my other students, Ashby, raising his hand in the back! I'm ran up to him after the service to hug him, and I can't wait to call him this week and talk about it with him.

All of that, plus I got to see tons of our students getting baptized. The Lord is so good and faithful! I can't believe I get to be a part of all of this!

A Man of God

Sorry I've checked out on blogging for the past couple of months. I haven't been as connected at the hip with my computer lately as I've been in the past, so I'm having to remind myself to update this sucker. Anyway, on to the good stuff.

So I was reading 1 Kings 13 tonight and I got to thinking about the man of God it talks about. I'd recommend that you read 1-10 so that this stuff makes sense. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Good stuff right?

It's always been easy to envision this story going down by God appearing to this guy and telling him to go to the king of Israel and tell him that his enemy's kid is going to grow up and go all ritual sacrifice on him. Don't eat anything or drink anything until you get back and make sure you don't come back the same way.

But now I'm fairly confident that it didn't go down this way, and here's why: he actually did it. I just have a hard time believing that the above sales pitch would really make him giddy to go to the king. God knows how much we can handle and only lets us in on just so much. I think God's a bigger fan of faith than He is information.

I'm thinking the situation probably went down a little more along the lines of God telling this guy to leave town and head towards Israel. When he started to pack some food and water, God told him that he wouldn't be needing any of that. On his journey God provided for this guy who was probably getting pretty stinking hungry by the time he got to his destination and at one point told him, "make sure you come back a different way."

Once he reached his destination, God told him to head towards the palace and when he reached the doors, told him what he needed to say. After God had been providing for him for his trip to the king and having seen first hand how faithful God is, it probably wasn't as hard to say those things to the king.

Here's what pumps me up about that story (as accurate as it might or might not be): I think I'm on the same path. All I know as of right now is that I feel led to head to Europe for a month. I'm not sure why and, to be honest, I'm not even 100% sure where yet. It pumps me up to think about the fact that God might have something so huge in store for me that if He told me right now, there's no way I'd do it. He just might have something so big in front of me that He's got to take me around the world to prepare me for it or even to bring me to it. It's so exciting to think about the fact that I might be in the same position that someone who was only known as a man of God was once in.