After five years I still can't tell that story without crying.
Posted on 04/04/2007 10:15:14 AM PDT by Quix
Beautiful. I must commit this to memory.
Confession and repentance, through you the Spirit works and you set a great example for us all.
I was just reading an interview with Bishop Thomas Olmsted in our diocesan newspaper,The Phoenix Sun which was delivered late yesterday. Bishop Olmsted has now been our Bishop for 40 months and that event was what occasioned the interview. What a wonderful,holy and humble servant of God he is. We are so blessed.
Great as he is and I could go on for pages,the reason I'm commenting is that the Bishop said that he starts the day with the prayer you posted Mark, the Prayer of Abandonment. I will post it again here because it truly is beautiful.
Father,I abandon myself into your hands;do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do,I thank you;I am ready for all,I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this,O Lord.
Into your hands,I commend my soul;I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,for I love you,Lord,and so need to give myself,to surrender myself into your hands,without reserve,and with boundless confidence,for you are my Father.
In the interview he talks about the efficacy of prayer,that one particularly,and ends that section with:
When we remember the event that changed all of history---Jesus' death and resurrection---prayer helps us to listen again to that Good News,and to surrender ourselves to join Jesus in participating.___
I could go on forever about our brilliant,holy and humble Bishop,but I will just say,I have cut out the prayer and will start my day with it also,you all may see some remarkable changes in me. If you don't,I probably overslept or my senile lapses kicked in that morning or something.
LOLOL! *smooch*
Will you guys please knock this off?
Here is a confession. I did not start the original 'one another' thread with any kind of altruistic motive or Christian love in my heart. After reading hate filled posts directed at every type of Christian all day, I decided to to start a thread that would show them all how petty they really were. My original intent was to humiliate them with the Word. I had an I'll show them a thing or two attitude. I had the same holier than thou attitude that I preached against.
I never expected that thread to go anywhere, but then God showed up. He sent all of you and others also, to encourage me to help me and to unite to take up His cause of Christian love. It was your posts that softened my heart and made me realize that the "one anothers" I had posted were indeed true and it was you who led me to change.
So you see it was you, more than myself, that is to thank for what is happening. The Holy Spirit working in and through you has changed me. I am humbled by your attitude of Christian love that you chose to share with me. I thank you all for being the salt and the light that I so desperately needed.
If we are going to give credit where credit is due, we must thank God for sending the Holy Spirit to show us all how to interact with one another according to His will. For if it is not a God thing, then it is nothing.
Don't ever think that what you do cannot make a difference. You changed me and you can change others.
Go and do and be blessed all you anothers!
My wife Priscilla grew up in a very religious family. Her father was the pastor of an very conservative independent Baptist church. When she was three years old she fell into a campfire and her legs were badly burned. Even today her legs are covered with large purple scars and are badly misshapen with many large indentations where muscle once was.
Her father's church was one of those where everyone wears the best of the best. She says that it looked like an Easter parade every Sunday. So even though she was terribly embarrassed by her unsightly legs, her parents insisted that she always wear a dress to church. Even wearing hose did not help hide the scars. And she was teased and humiliated unmercifully. This continued all the way up until she left home and she stopped going to church.
I was not church people so when we married she was kinda glad that she would not have to go. When our youngest daughter was about 13 years old she started going to church. She loved church and convinced her mother to go with her. Priscilla went with my daughter every Sunday and Wednesday to church and she was always dressed very nice in her best dress slacks.
After about three months, some women from the church that had befriended Priscilla told her that it was not appropriate to wear slacks to church and that she should start wearing dresses. This brought all of her old memories of humiliation back. She stopped going rather than face all of that again. For weeks on end she would cry every Sunday morning and Wednesday night.
Five years ago my granddaughter brought me to Christ. (That is a whole other story) I knew Priscilla's viewpoint on churches and so knew exactly what she would say when I asked her to go to church together for the first time. She said, "find a church that will let me wear my jeans and I will go." I had already found a Bible based church that had casual dress so I told her come on let's go. We put on our best jeans and left for church.
When we arrived at our church, we noticed first thing what the dress code seemed to be. Business casual for men and dresses for the women, some in pantsuits. The only ones wearing jeans were all under 21. But the way we dressed seemed not to concern anyone and they seemed very accepting of us.
Three months later Priscilla and I were to be baptized. The whole church gathered at a park on the lake for the occasion. Before the baptism everyone being baptized was asked to say something about how they came to Christ and how they came to our church. Priscilla told them that she had always been with Christ and related the entire story, scarred legs, blue jeans, how only her family has ever seen her legs since then and that was why we had chose this church. Many were moved by her story.
We moved down by the lake to be baptized. While everyone who was getting dunked that day was wearing a bathing suite and a tee shirt, Priscilla was wearing a swimsuit and blue jeans and I knew she intended to be baptized in those jeans.
When it was her turn, Priscilla started to go into the water but hesitated and took off her jeans. My jaw dropped. For the first time in 23 years she was letting someone, everyone see her legs. That day my wife's purple scarred misshapen legs became the most beautiful things any of us had ever seen. There wasn't a dry eye in the house.
The next Sunday when we walked into the church Priscilla started crying and sobbing so hard she couldn't talk. I finally got her to calm down enough to tell me what was going on. She told me to look at everyone. I did but still did not understand. She said, "look they are wearing jeans." Sure enough I looked around and almost every person there was dressed in jeans. Priscilla had found acceptance among God's people.
Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God.
To this day we are referred to lovingly by other church members as "the blue jean couple."
It’s like shedding a very great burden to begin reading things like this on the FR Religion Forum, replacing the tone that had come about and which I am relieved is—at leasy for this moment in time—being set aside for the true meaning of grace and redemption. That grace and redemption is that God loves us and that we are to be the ambassadors of His love to others. We can’t do that effectively with rancour and bitter disputes.
Mark, you have made my day.
= = =
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
THANKS TONS.
we are exhorted to come out of ourselves in order to open ourselves in trustful abandonment to the merciful embrace of the Father
= = =
I resonate emphatically with that. Thanks.
And, yes, PRAISE GOD FOR Behind the Lines for getting us off and going on this redemptive, fruitful track.
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD.
Praise God for His faithfulness to give us layers of the onion—increasing insights about our own flawedness and the strength in Him to face such laycing such before Him and our breatheren and sistern!
Thanks for your kind words.
Plenty of truth in that! LOL.
Now, where to find that refined gold that defines convincingly for all the different congregations just precisely what will matter so little then! LOL.
It is worth repeateing. Well worth it. Thanks.
OH, DEAR!
A virtual smootch!
You don’t know how easily and deeply I blush—whether there’s valid reason, or not. The Chinese students always got such a kick out of it and loved triggering it in a myriad of ways.
If I knew how to do html backgrounds, I’d give a virtual blush but I’m also deficient in that department.
I’ll send my brotherly smootch through your hubby or on your virtual hand! LOL!
LOL. ROTFLOL!
PRAISE GOD! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
Sounds like something God would do, alright!
Wonderful confession and testimony. Praise God for your example. Thanks enormously
LOVE YOU DEEPLY, DEAR HEART.
PRAISE GOD! PRAISE GOD! PRAISE GOD!
The nail pierced hands become jewels.
I think this thread should have required tissues with almost every post. More tears for me on this thread than all the others together for months and months.
PRAISE GOD!
Loved that whole church in jeans. Sounds like a Jesus church, for sure.
PRAISE GOD! [tears].
Hey, Angel-Gal—anyway we can issue virtual tissues on such threads? LOL.
OOOOOPS. You don’t know how many times I had to backspace and redo your screen name today!
Some grooves are deeper than others, it seems.
Sorry.
LUB,
SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BLESSED BY YOUR WIFE’S TESTIMONY. AND THE EXAMPLE OF THE CHURCH!
After five years I still can't tell that story without crying.
And not one tear of rage in the bunch. It has been a long time since I haven't felt like a stranger in a strange forum here.
Have you looked at the other threads posted today? I haven't been through them all, but there isn't much animosity going on today. I have seen several friendly jokes aimed at one another, but few that were blatantly hostile.
May be the haters are still occupied by threads posted earlier than today. May be something else. : )
Why not?! Here are some virtual tissues, virtual {{{hugs}}}, and virtual *smooches*!
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