What If He Returned Today.....

As I sat at my kitchen table this morning, rather than sitting in my "usual" place facing the kitchen cabinets I found myself sitting in a chair facing the window that looks out upon the playground below. Almost immediately, the view that I had seen many times before in the past 2 months since I moved here overwhelmed my heart and mind.

Above the apartments were small wisps of clouds and the Lord pierced my heart with question after question: "What if Jesus were to come this very moment? Would the sound of the trumpet reverberate throughout this circle of concrete buildings as the thunder of a storm always does? How many of those behind the windows would be alongside me as we rose to meet Him in the air? Would the sounds of the wailing of parents whose children simply vanished before their eyes echo off those same walls?"

I have prayed daily for the people around me, but today, rather than reciting the same words of petition to see people saved, the words, and my heart, were different. The playground outside my window was the first place the Kharkov missionary team, then led by Mick Stockwell, held a backyard Bible club and outreach for the new church start that is today New Hope. Today, I prayed that the seeds planted in the hearts of the people so many years ago, those seeds that have lain dormant in their hearts and minds, would begin to come to life.....to take root.....to bear the fruit of repentance. Today, I prayed not out of habit, but out of a heart burdened for the 98% to 99% of the people around me who have perhaps never had a prayer of faith spoken for them to the One who has loved them before the foundation of the world.

It was no "accident" that I then turned to read in "Heart's Cry" by Jennifer Kennedy Dean and found myself confronted with a chapter titled "Stand in the Gap", followed by the scripture: "'I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land...'" (Ezek. 22:30). May my heart continually be "listening" for the words of my Lord to pray for the people outside my window! May I never grow weary in coming before His throne for those who do not yet "see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, (that they might) turn and be healed" (Isaiah 6:10) and receive the free gift of His grace, mercy, and eternal life!

"Experiencing God"

"How can I know when it's Him speaking to me?" That was the question posed by my friend N...... We've now met 3 times in my home to discuss the Bible, faith, and now "Experiencing God." She's a Ukrainian middle-aged mother of 4 married to a Middle Eastern man who is a member of a muslim sect, and while she believes in God, she has not yet understood that it is only through Jesus that we can have the intimacy with God the Father that we desire.

As we began the first day's lesson of "Experiencing God", and talked about Abraham's response to God's command to "go," the above question arose from her heart. Over the next hour we discussed what that means, and also the necessity of having Christ abiding in us through the Holy Spirit.

In the midst of this, she told me of a problem one of her older son is having in trying to get a visa to go to a European country to study. While he has supplied all the required paperwork, the door seems to continue to be "closed." She asked me if I thought she should go and fight for her son with the officials. (N..... is a pretty "self-sufficient" woman who doesn't have a problem expressing herself when she feels something is not right.) I asked her whose hands she wanted "holding" her son's life.....her's or the Lord's, and at that moment my doorbell rang and I opened the door for my landlady who had arrived.

N...... gathered her things and prepared to leave, but not without spending the next 5 minutes telling my landlady what she had learned from the Lord during our time together. "Do you study the Bible with Linda," she asked my landlady....then went on to explain how we had come to know each other and the times we had visited over the years.

When I had time to sit and think about what had taken place, I could only thank the Lord for what He had done not by words, but by the penetrating power of His Word! Please continue to join me in praying for my friend, and my landlady, to both enter into personal, intimate relationship with the Father through salvation in Christ!