The Power of the Word

This week has been a wonderful ministry week- even if its been not so good on the home-front (I've had a poor sick vomiting Tim on my hands).

After 6 months of trying I've got to meet up to read the Bible with two Mum's who became Christians in the last 12-18 months. One of the surprises I had was how hard it is to pin a Mum down for coffee and Bible study- even when their child is in Day-care or being minded by someone else. Mum's are so busy even when the kids aren't there, it can be hard in their minds to justify the "luxury" of sitting down with someone to read the Bible.

But I wanted to share one story in relation to one of the Mums.

She became a Christian through someone else- about 4 weeks after I met her and she started coming to church. It was really exciting. And then her 1 year old daughter, who had been living with her mum, came to live with her.

Life became (quite understandably) crazy, as she got re-used to being a full-time Mum, and a functional single one at that (her husband works in another country and only can visit once in a while).

I really wanted to encourage her in her faith but she didn't feel up to coming to church or Bible study or Bible reading or anything.

I was despairing a bit- how could i help her in this difficult stage, and convince her that it was important?

I was trying to work out how best to encourage her one day when myself, her and her daughter went out for lunch. She was really stressed and so I pulled out the Bible and read the bit in Philippians about not being anxious and praying and I explained how this helped me when I was stressed to remember that the best thing to do when you are stressed is to pray and hand it to God. She liked it so much that I copied it out on a piece of paper with a nice picture for her to stick up on her wall.

And as the months progressed she kept talking about how much it helped her, when she was stressed she would look at the verse and remember to pray, and remember God was working in her. She used it so much she learnt it by heart and every week or so she would have different things she had learnt from it that she wanted to tell me.

It was excited to see even a few verses of the Bible changing someone life.

Now we are actually reading the Bible together once a fortnight. It's so exciting seeing how hungry she is to read the Bible and to have God change her to be more like Jesus.
Yay! Praise God for great ministry weeks.
love B