desperation

DESPERATE? DON’T PANIC!

(May 13, 2023) Mama Lava caringly shares a great truth…

Desperation will cause us to do crazy things! I have an embarrassing, but poignant, case in point.

Remember when Covid first hit? I saw an opportunity to do something I’d been wanting to do for a long time. I would begin baking my own bread. Not only would it be healthier than the alternative, but it would also save money and trips to the grocer. If you remember, the lines outside stores were long and cold, as they allowed only a few people in at a time.

I already had the ingredients I needed. Well, all except one. I needed yeast.

But… my grocery store didn’t have any. I realised many people were thinking like I was, spurred by the fact that bread had become difficult to find. The shelf was completely bare, and there was no assurance it would be restocked any time soon.

I went to Amazon for yeast. Also sold out? Interesting! I looked at my Sam’s Club (warehouse club for wholesale prices on top brands) app. They didn’t have any either. I started to panic a bit.

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HEEEEELP, HOLY SPIRIT!

(December 07, 2022) Robert McQuillan shares…

I was warned decades ago when I first attended Friday night church prayer meetings about a ‘longwinded “Mrs XYZ”’ – that ‘She’ll go on and on, praying all around the world about everything and forget to stop and let others pray!’

Spiritual prayer
When we encourage people to pray, Maureen and I point out that we don’t have to pray long prayers. God will hear us, even if it’s only the shortest prayer! He sees our circumstances, knows our concerns. We simply be sincere, ask in Jesus’ name and trust God. Trusting means leaving it with Him, never trying ‘to take it back.’

The Holy Spirit, third person of the Godhead, is our helper, and will bring God’s answer. We tell folk our own prayers are sometimes brief… with our thoughts and spiritual eyes on Him! Merely ‘Help, Holy Spirit’, even ‘Heeeeelp, Holy Spirit.’ Sometimes just a desperate ‘Heeeeelp!’ Now that really rocks their boat!

No, we’re not being irreverent, dishonouring God, misusing Jesus’ name, and belittling the Spirit! Our hope is in our heavenly Father whom we know deeply in our hearts, and that He loves, His spiritual children.

Spiritual S.O.S.
Such a plea is a spiritual S.O.S call! When there isn’t time for a long prayer, that unless God moves quickly, immediately, all will be lost. It’s a little child’s cry from the heart, a ‘Daddy’ wail as it were.

Paul wrote, ‘Because you are His children, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. He is the Holy Spirit. By His power we call God “Abba.” Abba means Father’ (Romans 8:4NIRV). Complete Jewish Bible reads… ‘Abba that is “Dear Father.”’

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RUNNING OUT OF FUEL IN A SNOWSTORM

(January 24, 2021) Mark Ellis shares how a snowstorm led to a pilot’s salvation…

‘I was a God mocker,’ says Mark Rose, founder of Genesis Alive, and author of Last of the Long Hunters, a story of the pilots who fly the Alaskan Arctic.

Raised in the secular Seventies, completely un-churched, he had no room for God until he ran out of fuel in an Alaskan storm, miles from his destination.

Rose learned to fly at 16, and by age 22 had become a bush pilot who helped take care of a fleet of helicopters that worked on the Alaska pipeline. ‘My ego meter was on 101,’ he admits.

Low on fuel
One day he flew some hunters to the upper part of a large river on the Arctic. But on his return flight, carrying one passenger, several things went wrong.

First, herds of caribou had moved in, covering his first and second choices for a landing spot. Then he began to run low on fuel, so he called ahead for a weather check at the small airport near Kotzebue, on the Baldwin Peninsula.

‘Come on in, the weather’s fine,’ the FAA flight service operator told him.

Rose decided to take the chance that his fuel would hold out, but then weather conditions changed dramatically. ‘I ran into a snowstorm at night, and I couldn’t see the terrain, so I had to follow the grey ribbon of river below.’ In the days before satellite weather imaging, the man had given him bad advice.

‘All my options were evaporating as fast as I could fly.’ (more…)