What a wonderful story to share on a Sunday morning. This shows how our Gos is such a miracle worker and wants us to share His story: A "Beautiful" update from our friend and brother Ronnie Wyatt. Last night as a sat in our bible study at The Neighborhood Church (Our House on Oak St). I had a flash back to something amazing that happened in my life many years ago. I remembered sitting outside in Mexico having a “Church Service”. I put that in quotes to make it stand out because it sure stood out to me. It was a service. It was a church. It was out side, because, well, there was no “inside”. The Church was a new church plant in Mexico that had been up and running for a while but still had no building to meet in. I remembered worshiping with these new Christians, who were so proud of their church and so in love with their Jesus. They seemed to have a much better grasp of the meaning of church. They seemed to know that when God looked at “The Church” He saw the people not the building. Their church building was a series of tall wooden post driven into the ground with a blue plastic tarp attached to the top to provide shade. Depending on what time of day and the angle at which the sun was barring down, they could adjust the tarp to different post to provide shade. What really stood out to me was the name of the church. It was called “La Hermosa” which just simply means, “The Beautiful”. Of all the fancy church names I have heard in my life, I could not help but feel just how appropriate that name seemed to be. I could picture Jesus looking down upon the blue tarp and posts and seeing a gathering of people who didn’t care where they were, nor how comfortable they were, they just wanted to draw closer to Him. I could imagine Jesus smiling and thinking, “Now that is beautiful.” That flash back came to my mind as I sat in my crammed living room with 16 other people. We had already eaten a wonderful meal of bbq chicken and rice, green beans, and home made biscuits that my lovely wife had spent all day preparing. A meal that may very well have been the only meal that a few of our friends would get that day. We had already gone through some boxes allowing some of our friends to find some much needed clothes for themselves and their family, but now our focus was on Jesus. As I watched our good friends Jen and Cory Fujimori, from Bellewood Baptist, lead us in songs about God’s “Amazing Love” and how regardless of what it seemed, God is still the “God of This City”, I smiled to see our unchurched friends struggle to sing along. Not that they didn’t want to, they just didn’t really know how, but boy did they try. Some wanted to follow along with the lyrics, some just smiled as Jen sang beautifully. Our rag tag attempt to sing along was, well let’s just say It wasn’t pretty but it sure was beautiful. As I taught about how we must not only receive God’s forgiveness but we must learn to forgive ourselves, I thought about those that God has brought into our lives and into our crammed living room: An out of work handy man who just had to fix a light switch for me before he would even eat. A woman we met when giving away some groceries. A man who showered at our house for two months before he got his own place to live. A 16 year old mother of two, who we were told would never come to church nodded as we talked about God loving us even with our failures. Her mother was with us. She is trying to raise her 16 year old and now two grandbabies with only a disability check as income, smiled with the thought of “moving forward with God”. We had a woman with us who lost everything she had in a fire, including her sister that was living with her at the time. There was a young Asian friend whose family does not want him near us because of how they have been treated by the locals here since coming to America, yet he still faithfully comes to our Bible Study. We have a young man from Central Africa Republic, who has not seen his father in years and whose younger brother died while they slept in the same bed. He said to me a few days ago, “When I grow up I want to work for the FBI or I’d like to do what you do in church.” We have had Kids from broken homes who are constantly forced to choose between their parents. A young 20 year old mother who grew up in 23 different foster homes with no clue how to be a mother herself. We had a man who got one of our invitation cards months ago and finally decided to visit us last week, who really thought he had to show his “invitation card” to get in the door. Not to mention my own redneck family from NC, who seemed to think that God had a good idea when He invited us to join Him in what would eventually The Neighborhood Church. I smiled as I looked across the room. I couldn’t help but feel that in some way as we sang the best we could and talked about a God who loves us and wants us to become who He created us to be, that maybe, just maybe He was looking at us with all of our mess ups, failures and bad decisions, crammed into that living room and He was thinking, “La Hermosa”… BEAUTIFUL. "As He approached and saw the city, He wept over it" - Luke 19:41 The Neighborhood Church: tncsyracuse Phone: 315-876-0558 1012 Oak St Syracuse, NY Our Blog: wyattjourney.blog
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:54:10 +0000
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