Having been through several hurricanes while living on the coast of Texas, I am aware of the great need in a devastated community.  What happened in Joplin is unfathomable.  Yet in the midst of all their heartache we can be a help.  One of the greatest things we witnessed in the aftermath of hurricanes was the outpouring of compassion from outside our community.

Joplin is only an hour away and we can touch their lives through the hands of others.  I have been in contact with two different groups who will be on the ground in Joplin.  The NW Arkansas food bank has recommended a ministry that we can work with that will be taking items to Joplin this week.  They have been making daily runs to Joplin to hand out items that have been donated by good people from our area.  They are delivering the items to the affected people and their neighborhoods rather than setting up a trailer and making them wait in line to get things they need.

ITEMS NEEDED right away:

Hygiene items: Toothpaste and Toothbrushes, Combs, Hairbrushes, Soap, Shampoo, Germ-X, etc.

Baby Items: Diapers, Diaper Wipes & Baby Formula

Towels & Washcloths (New or Used)

Please bring these to church by tomorrow evening.  Our ministry contact will come by and pick them up to deliver on Thursday.

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We will also be working with the Section 1 Assemblies of God to get items to Joplin next week.  Our section has been in contact with the Joplin section and we will be working closely with them and Convoy of Hope.  Joplin’s AG churches were hard hit. One church was completely destroyed and several others sustained major damage. 

Items that are needed by Wednesday June 1st:

bottled water
canned food
dry food
clothing
shoes
personal items(toiletry, etc.)

Please drop off at the church by Wednesday, June 1st.

There is also a place to donate to Convoy of Hope online: Click Here to Donate. Or you can give at the church and we will forward the money to Convoy of Hope or the Joplin Section of the Assemblies of God.  The church will be sending an offering to the church that sustained a total loss.

Thanks for your help and sacrificial giving.  God honors us when we have compassion on others.  Please continue to pray for all those affected by this horrific disaster.

This spring has been wet!  Storms have come and gone.  Some severe, some just rain.  I love thunderstorms.  From the clouds that they make, to the sound of heavy rain on the roof.  Call me crazy but I love the sound of hail crashing down on the roof or hearing it ping off of metal.

Many people do not have this same liking for storms.  Especially when it comes to spiritual storms.  The storms of life are often hard to bear.  They blow through our lives and sometimes we wonder what hit us.

The truth is, they make us better.  Storms in our lives are meant to leave us stronger.  The more storms we face the easier it is to weather them.  I remember as a child being terrified of thunder and lightning.  I would run to my parents side when the weather would get bad.  Now, however, its different.  In my lifetime I have been through 4 hurricanes and probably a dozen tropical storms and depressions.  Storms don’t seem to faze me as much.

The more we face the hardships of life, the more we lean on Christ and know that He will see us through.  The storms may hurt and the pains may sting, but through it all we endure by the grace of God.

I read this morning in Proverbs 20:30, “Blows that hurt cleanse away evil, As do stripes the inner depths of the heart.”

Storms and trials have a cleansing effect in our lives.  The floods many places are experiencing right now, find the debris moving down stream.  Sometimes God uses the storms to move the debris from our lives and make us more like Him.  Weather the Storm. God is a refuge and strength.  A very present help in time of need.

Charlie Peace was a criminal.  Laws of God or man curbed him not.  Finally the law caught up with him and condemned him to death.  On the fatal morning in Armley Jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death-walk.  Before him went the prison chaplain, reading some Bible verses.  The criminal touched the preacher and asked him what he was reading.  “The Consolations of Religion,” was the reply. 

Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he read so professionally about hell.  Could man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow-human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall? Could this preacher believer the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor? Is a man human at all that can say with no tears, “You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings”?

All this was too much for Charlie Peace. So he preached.  Listen to his on-the-eve-of-hell sermon.

“Sir,” addressing the preacher, “if I believed what you and the church of God say you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worthwhile living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!”

Excerpted from Leonard Ravenhill’s Why Revival Tarries.

Saturday, Josh, my dad and I went for a hike to one of my favorites trails in NWA.  With all the rain we have had, I was excited to get out and see if the creek bed that runs through the trail would be full.  When we got to the creek bed, it had water coming into it from Beaver Lake, but the bed itself was dry.  Turns out that this is a dry bed that never runs with water. 

Flowers were in bloom, trees green and the trail was beautiful.

on the way home from Little Rock yesterday, Sonya and I drove through Petit Jean State Park.  This is one of the most beautiful places in the state of Arkansas.

I know I need to lose weight but am slow at getting back to my exercise routine.  This cartoon made me feel better and perhaps gives me an idea.

As most of the Christian world knows, David Wilkerson, pastor of Times Square Church in New York City and founder of Teen Challenge, passed away last week in a car wreck.  David Wilkerson has been a hero of mine for many years.  He was never been enticed with fame and fortune and modeled living a godly life throughout his time on earth.

If you have followed David Wilkerson much through the years, you would come to understand the suffering that he and his family endured.  From bouts with disease to other hardships.  Yet through it all he was consistent in his faith.

Wilkerson’s funeral was today and Steven Strang, Charisma Magazine editor, shares the following story from the memorial service.  It deals with the question of why we must suffer.

Strang writes:

“Once two of his teenage grandsons, who were going through a time of questioning, asked him, “If there is a God, why is there suffering?” Wilkerson, who obviously had far more life experience than his grandsons, admitted he didn’t know the answer any more than they did, but he noticed that often those who complain the most do the least to help the hurting—and he would rather be busy with helping those who suffer.”

What a convicting answer to that question!  Wilkerson didn’t say that to deflect his grandson’s question.  He replied that way because that is how he lived his life.  Helping the hurting in New York City.  Walking alongside those who suffer, even when he himself was suffering.

There are few men in this world like David Wilkerson.  My prayer is that I could live a consistent life such as his and leave my mark on this world just as he did.