Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 11, 2016 | Expresso - Rosalie Wenger

Transcript

October 11, 2016 | Expresso - Rosalie Wenger · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:01
SPEAKER_02: I want to thank all of you for coming this evening to hear Valerie and me speak.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: We each have different stories of faith and life journeys, but we know God is the equation in all of that.
0:11
SPEAKER_02: He is the balancer and he gives us life.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to recognize two of my three daughters who are here tonight.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: Elena is here, Elena Sanchez, and she is married to Israel.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: They live here in Topeka.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: And she is the owner of Glass Lantern Photography and Little Sparrow Photo Props.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: And she has a daughter named Ellie, who's four, and Oliver, who's two.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: And Rebecca is also here tonight, and she works at Security Benefit.
0:39
SPEAKER_02: And she has a dog, a beloved dog named Bella.
0:43
SPEAKER_02: My middle daughter, Renee Hall, lives in Evansville, Indiana, and she couldn't be here this evening.
0:50
SPEAKER_02: She's married to Justin Hall, and she has a son who's three years old named Landon, and a set of little girl twins that are 14 months, and she's a very busy mama.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Well, I've attended most of the espresso meetings, and I've always enjoyed hearing the speakers share their stories.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: I know everyone has a unique testimony, and it's only by God's grace that we can have a story of faith.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: I need to have this up high so I can.
1:22
unknown: Okay.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: That's great.
1:26
unknown: Okay.
1:30
SPEAKER_02: Jeremiah 31, 3 says, God says, I have loved you with an everlasting love.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: It's miraculous that God sought a bashful, thin girl in Kansas to be one of his beloved children, and that is me.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: In some of his sermons, Pastor Jim has mentioned a poem called The Hound of Heaven.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: This is a 182-line poem written by Francis Thompson in the 1800s.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: This poem describes how God relentlessly pursues us with his demonstration of grace, just like a hound would.
2:26
SPEAKER_02: Newton has a population of 15,000 and is the home to many conservative German residents.
2:32
SPEAKER_02: From the time I was two until I was 11, we lived in a multicultural neighborhood near the railroad tracks and with a flour mill that was a block long.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: Occasionally, men who hopped the freight train stopped by our house and our neighbors for food and money.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: My mom always gave them something to eat and put a gospel tract in the lunch sack she gave them.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: I had one brother, John, who is five years older than I am, and we used to play together in our backyard where he built elaborate bridges, roadways, and tunnels.
3:03
SPEAKER_02: We also had a playhouse that my dad built.
3:05
SPEAKER_02: Each of us had our own side and our own entrance, just like a duplex.
3:12
SPEAKER_02: Finances were tight in our home.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: At that time, my mom was a full-time homemaker.
3:17
SPEAKER_02: But my parents provided a rich legacy with books, music, education, and most of all, a spiritual heritage.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: My parents, who had been Christians since their teen years, wanted to equip their children with a wealth of Bible knowledge, prayers, and learning to be in the world but not of the world.
3:37
SPEAKER_02: One of the spiritual tools I remember learning when I was a little girl, there aren't very many pictures of me when I was little.
3:44
SPEAKER_02: I was about five or six at that time.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: Was the wordless book.
3:49
SPEAKER_02: Has anyone heard of the wordless book?
3:52
SPEAKER_02: And it also, uh Sandy Balaka called it the gospel worm.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: And she made it out of pom-poms.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: But this uh this is kind of an old school evangelism tool.
4:02
SPEAKER_02: But it worked for me.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: It had four pages, black, which represented sin.
4:06
SPEAKER_02: We all have sin, Romans 3.23.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: The second page was red, which symbolized Christ's bloodshed for us.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: The third page was white, and your sin shall be as white as snow.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: And the last page was gold, which stood for the streets of heaven and eternal life.
4:23
SPEAKER_02: The cover was green, which stood for growth as a Christian.
4:26
SPEAKER_02: My Sunday school teacher said, Our hearts are black, the sin.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: But Jesus offered a way to a forgiven heart through a sacrifice of dying on the cross.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: And I was a very literal child that just looked at everything with big eyes, and I thought my heart was black, and I really did believe that I was a sinner and I knew that Christ had died for me.
4:47
SPEAKER_02: And I accepted Christ in my heart more than once, just to be sure.
4:53
SPEAKER_02: I also had um some unique opportunities to grow as a Christian in my young childhood.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: One was called Bible Release Classes.
5:02
SPEAKER_02: And when I say this to people nowadays, they look at me in disbelief.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: This was a program in the public elementary schools in Newton, where kids were excused from their class once a week, and we walked as a group to a nearby church, and there we studied the Bible and we learned verses and songs, and this is where I learned a lot of my memory verses.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: And to my knowledge, this program is still in existence in Newton today.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: I also wanted to emphasize the sacrifices of my grandparents.
5:33
SPEAKER_02: Spiritual freedom was especially cherished as my mom, her parents, and some of her siblings were born or had come from the Ukraine in Russia and had migrated to the United States in 1924.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: They were born in a little village called Mariabal, which is in the Malachna colony.
5:52
SPEAKER_02: Today that would be 50 to 100 miles south of Kiev.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: A lot of the people that had settled in Russia originally came from Germany along the Volga River, but they went to Russia with the promise of the wheat that was there.
6:07
SPEAKER_02: But with the rise of communism, many freedoms were suppressed.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: My grandpa was also a minister and he continued to preach.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: Soldiers came to his house one day and asked where he was.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: My grandmother had hidden him in the attic and said he was not there.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: He was also roughed up a bit by soldiers.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: Finally, the time came when they could leave Russia and they wanted to come to the U.S.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: They took a train to Berlin and from there they went to Holland and they were they aboarded a ship called the Mazdom and it was part of the Holland America Association.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: They were on a voyage, it was not a luxury trip at all, it was a freighter, and they were on the in the ship for a month.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: When they landed in Old Mexico, there were so many immigrants coming into the U.S.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: that they had to stay there for two years.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: And one of my uncles was born in a mud hut there.
7:03
SPEAKER_02: And today he is 92.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: In 1934, they all became U.S.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: citizens.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: A scripture verse my mom's family has claimed is in 1 Samuel 7.
7:15
SPEAKER_02: In this chapter, the Israelites were in a battle against the Philistines.
7:20
SPEAKER_02: Samuel prayed for God's protection.
7:22
SPEAKER_02: The Philistines lost the battle.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: My family's verse is 1 Samuel 7.12.
7:28
SPEAKER_02: Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shin.
7:33
SPEAKER_02: He named it Ebenezer, saying, Thus far has the Lord helped us.
7:38
SPEAKER_02: The Hebrew name of Ebenezer means stone of help.
7:41
SPEAKER_02: It is an acknowledgement of God's bountiful breath, blessings, and help in our lives.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: The hymn, Come thou fount of every blessing, second verse is, Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come, and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Rebecca will sing the first two verses of this hymn after I speak.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: As a child and as a teen, I look forward to my family's Christmas celebration every year.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: There were my grandparents, twelve aunts and uncles, and eighteen grandchildren.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: Every year, grandpa, whose name was Grandpa Clausen, he spoke every year about the Lord's blessings and goodness.
8:19
SPEAKER_02: One year he spoke for 30 minutes about a short little verse called Mark 737, which says, People were overwhelmed with amazement.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Jesus has done everything well.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: The people were speaking of Jesus and his healing power.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: My grandpa was such a witness of his faith and trust in the Lord.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: He had left behind family possessions and a career in Russia.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: Later, his wife died in 1935, leaving seven children in Kansas.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: He came to the U.S.
8:49
SPEAKER_02: penniless and he wasn't allowed to teach.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: Eventually, he was able to own a grocery store in a small town.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: And he also set up his three sons with grocery stores in small towns.
9:00
SPEAKER_02: One of them is mentioned in Ken Berry's book, Artie and the Awesome Apple.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: And Ken's wife, Alita, used to go to my Uncle Benny's store as a teenager.
9:10
SPEAKER_02: Something significant happened to me in the fourth grade that made me feel insignificant for a long time.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to join the Girl Scout troop that was in my class.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: There were three girls who wanted to join, but only room for two.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: The decision was made that the existing Girl Scout troop could vote for the two girls they wanted in their troupe.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: Where was Juliet Lowe?
9:34
SPEAKER_02: She's the founder of the Girl Scout.
9:36
SPEAKER_02: I went to school the next morning hoping to hear the outcome.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: No one spoke to me or told me anything about the outcome.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: Finally, at recess, I asked someone, and she told me that the other two girls had been selected.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: I went into the restroom to cry for a few minutes.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: But my mom arranged me to be in another troupe where there was room for me.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: This experience planted a seed of doubt as to how much God really loved me.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: I still believed the Bible, and I knew he loved me enough to die for my sins and to give me eternal life.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: But how much did he really love me and did he love other people more than me?
10:13
SPEAKER_02: As I reached adulthood, this experience had some positive outcomes.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: First, I cherished God's love to me and choosing me.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, it gave me empathy for those on the periphery and reaching out to the lonely or someone new to church or school.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: Recently, a friend mentioned a book called Uninvited by Lisa Turkhurst.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: Its subtitle is Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely.
10:41
SPEAKER_02: Stop feeling left out, but believe that even when you are overlooked by others, you are handpicked by God.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: The more fully we invite God in, the less we will feel uninvited by others.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: I was egocentric enough to think I was the only one who had ever been or felt left out.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: As I talk to women, I find most of us have had similar experiences.
11:06
SPEAKER_02: When I was 15, I hoped to be in a group at school called the Usherettes, and they ushered at games and concerts, and it just seemed like such a nice organization to be involved in.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: Girls served their junior and senior years and were selected after an interview by the current Usherettes.
11:23
SPEAKER_02: I prayed earnestly that God would give me this opportunity, and I was confident he might because I had prayed so earnestly.
11:31
SPEAKER_02: At the end of the school day, the names of the ten girls were read over the intercom.
11:36
SPEAKER_02: Thirty girls had tried out, and twenty did not make it.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: I was not selected, and I was crushed.
11:42
SPEAKER_02: I was disappointed in God, and I felt he had left me down.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: I had a lot to learn about prayer and discerning God's will.
11:50
SPEAKER_02: About a week later, much to my surprise, I found I'd chosen to be in the a cappella choir.
11:56
SPEAKER_02: Was not expecting this at all.
11:58
SPEAKER_02: And in college, I was in a women's ushering organization where they had no interviews, no voting.
12:04
SPEAKER_02: Anyone could join.
12:05
SPEAKER_02: And it really was a lot of fun.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: And we all had the like dresses too.
12:10
SPEAKER_02: Well, years later, Psalm 66, 19 and 20 became special to me.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: But God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer.
12:19
SPEAKER_02: Praise be to God who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me.
12:25
SPEAKER_02: And that verse means a lot to me.
12:27
SPEAKER_02: Around that same time, I was agonizing over the fact I'd been a Christian for 10 years, I was now 15, and I really didn't understand the role or who the Holy Spirit was.
12:37
SPEAKER_02: My mom directed me to Romans 8, where she says how the Holy Spirit helps us to pray, He helps us to understand scriptures, He helps us to want to grow and to love Him more.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: He knows us better than we do.
12:52
SPEAKER_02: And He knows the unconscious, unspoken needs of our heart.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: When I was 17, this is my senior picture.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: This is back in the day when you got to you uh board trape and um you could wear a black with a V-neck, or you could wear um lace like I had, or you could wear feathers or or fur.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: It was kind of the end thing, but it's I think it's not anymore.
13:21
SPEAKER_02: That is my natural hair color, too.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: Um and I still have that necklace.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: When I was 17, a Christian neighbor lady gave me a Phillips translation of the New Testament, which I began to read.
13:35
SPEAKER_02: I had grown up with the King James Bible, which is a more formal translation.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: The Phillips illuminated some scriptures for me and gave me a renewed zeal for reading the Bible.
13:45
SPEAKER_02: Um I found that this was a book that I could understand, but it could understand me.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: But James 1, 1 and 2 from the Phillips, when all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don't resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: Realize they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: I had previously thought when problems entered my life it was a punitive measure, or I had done something wrong.
14:15
SPEAKER_02: In high school, I decided I wanted to become a registered nurse.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: I thought I needed to decide this by the time I was 16 what I was going to do the rest of my life.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: So I pursued those studies in my hometown.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: As a student nurse, we were asked to interview our patients to obtain a medical and a personal history.
14:33
SPEAKER_02: It was intimidating at first to ask all those questions and to walk into a patient's room and initiate this conversation while you took their vital signs or even gave them the bed bath, people you had never met.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: I was very shy as a child, but learning the skills of meeting a new person and beginning a conversation with them helped to overcome that shyness.
14:53
SPEAKER_02: Now I enjoy meeting new people and learning all about them.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: And often I find myself in the role of the listener.
15:00
SPEAKER_02: During my college years, I had opportunity to hear Corey Tenbroom, who came to Kansas to speak, and Elizabeth Elliott at an Urbana conference in Illinois.
15:10
SPEAKER_02: And I also went to a Canvas Crusade conference in Kansas City, in which we were sent out in twos to share the gospel.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: That was a little intimidating.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: After I became a registered nurse, I attended Sterling College for two years and received a degree in psychology and a minor in biology.
15:27
SPEAKER_02: I had a wonderful college experience there.
15:29
SPEAKER_02: I was on a worship team consisting of four or five students.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: We went to church in small, we went to churches in small towns where we took charge of the worship service.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: I wanted to be a psychiatric nurse, and so I moved to Topeka in 1975 to work at the Mineger Foundation, which was a renowned private psychiatric hospital.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: I came here only knowing a few people.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: My brother John, who lived here in Topeka with his wife and still does, wanted to be certain that I would be safe.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: He made sure the apartment manager was trustworthy and that it would be a good apartment to live in.
16:04
SPEAKER_02: I didn't get off work until 11 30 p.m.
16:07
SPEAKER_02: and sometimes I went out for coffee afterwards.
16:09
SPEAKER_02: Do you all remember poor Richards?
16:12
SPEAKER_02: So sometimes I wouldn't get in until quite late.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: I never had any problems with safety there then, but I always checked the environment around me before leaving my car to go to my apartment.
16:24
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 77, 19 says, Your pathway led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: He can lead us safely through our problems, even along a pathway we don't even know is there.
16:40
SPEAKER_02: The first six months I lived in Topeka were lonely.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: I didn't know very many people, and it seemed like most people wanted to go out and partying, and um and the co-workers were a lot different than college students.
16:52
SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to only date Christians who had the same goals as me.
16:55
SPEAKER_02: That meant not having as many dates.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: Taught me to depend on God and trust Him for the outcome.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: I mentioned that God had protected me when I um got off work.
17:05
SPEAKER_02: But there were a few experiences where my safety seemed at risk in the daytime hours.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: I took a uh 16-year-old patient from Meningers for a walk, and that was very common to do.
17:16
SPEAKER_02: Um the campus was at Sixton Gauge, and it was a beautiful campus, and it was not unusual to take someone for a walk.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: Um all of a sudden he picked up a large stick and said he wanted to hurt me.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: He was a big guy for 16, and he didn't have but he didn't have any prior violent tendencies.
17:34
SPEAKER_02: I prayed so hard he wouldn't hurt me.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: There wasn't anyone around.
17:38
SPEAKER_02: And then he immediately dropped the stick.
17:40
SPEAKER_02: And it was more than a stick, it was a kind of a branch.
17:45
SPEAKER_02: Another time I was coming home early in the evening.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: It was summertime, light outside, and people were outside my apartment building.
17:52
SPEAKER_02: I started to head up the stairs.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: I lived on the third floor, and it was an interior entrance.
17:56
SPEAKER_02: I was aware that a man had entered the building.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: All of a sudden he was behind me and he grabbed me.
18:02
SPEAKER_02: And I was, you know, my heart started pounding.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: I was I was very afraid and totally unexpected, but I was also angry that he had grabbed me.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: I turned around and I yelled at him and I told him to get away.
18:16
SPEAKER_02: I know you can't believe it, but I did.
18:20
SPEAKER_02: And he had a very frightened look on his face.
18:24
SPEAKER_02: This is true.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: And he took off down the stairs, and I ran up to my apartment and locked the door, and I could look, I could see him leave.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: I had already started working at the uh United Methodist home as the assistant director of health services, which is now our cab.
18:42
SPEAKER_02: I worked a traditional 40-hour daytime shift with weekends and holidays off.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: The administrative assistant was around my age, and she uh her office is where the big copier is now in the cab.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: And she went to a church where there was a big singles group and she invited me to come.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: She was the social chairman, and eventually I became the co-social chairman.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: I was put in charge of big events.
19:04
SPEAKER_02: I came from a small family.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: I'd never done anything like that before, and and now I sometimes do like to plan events and I learned to be detail-oriented.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: Then I became the director of health services, which involved more responsibilities and being on call.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: During that past year, I had dated a few guys, but I decided that God needed to direct my dating life, even if it meant not dating.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: In January of 1978, I asked God to turn over that area of my life to him.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: It was very difficult to pray that prayer, but so freeing.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: In the meantime, another single gal and I started meeting weekly.
19:40
SPEAKER_02: We went out for lunch, and then we uh would park in, she would we would be in her car, which she parked on College Avenue, and we would pray.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: At first it felt a little funny to be praying out loud in the car in the daytime, but I got used to it, and I had a prayer journal, and we prayed for uh nursing staff shortages, and I had um a hidden negative attitude towards a new supervisor, and that attitude changed too, and we became friends and worked well together.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: Um, so I learned that prayer could change attitudes.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: Before I thought you prayed for things you wanted, you know, things that were concrete that were uh you could grasp.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: And I learned that prayer is, you know, it's abstract and it's invisible things, and it's about attitudes.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: God met a financial need when I was renting a two-bedroom apartment.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: I had previously had a roommate and she decided rather abruptly to move back to New Mexico.
20:32
SPEAKER_02: So I was now paying her share as well.
20:35
SPEAKER_02: I had an$80 car premium payment coming up in a week, and I didn't have the money.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: And I prayed and I said, God, I don't deserve uh this, but I I do need to make this payment.
20:45
SPEAKER_02: And as soon as I finished praying, I remembered that I had an existing checking account from my hometown, and every month I would get a statement, and I would just sort of toss it aside and didn't really even look at it.
20:57
SPEAKER_02: And then that's what came to my mind, and it was$80 in the checking account, and I took it out immediately.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get a drink of water.
21:13
SPEAKER_02: I know God wants us to proclaim his name and how he works in our lives.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: I was attending a weekend conference at the church I had just started attending.
21:22
SPEAKER_02: On Friday evening, the speaker told us that on Sunday evening he wanted us to share how God had impacted us over the weekend.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: My heart began pounding, and I knew I was supposed to share.
21:33
SPEAKER_02: But public speaking terrifies me.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: And here I am.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: By Saturday afternoon, I was thinking, no way am I sharing on Sunday evening.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: I had convinced myself I didn't have anything to t to share.
21:46
SPEAKER_02: On Sunday afternoon, I called a friend and asked her if she could meet me for dinner about the time the conference was starting.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: I was thinking, if I had if I had something on my calendar, then I couldn't go to the church conference.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: I was a Jonah.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: I didn't have to go to Tar, I didn't have to go as far, but after she and I had been seated at the restaurant, it was the Howard Johnson's on Topeka Boulevard, I laughingly told her I was skipping the evening service.
22:17
SPEAKER_02: She worked at Manninger's with me, so she knew about these things.
22:21
SPEAKER_02: She immediately stood up and said, Rosalie, you go to the church now and share your testimony.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: I'm leaving.
22:30
SPEAKER_02: And she did.
22:32
SPEAKER_02: All I could do was, you know, we I don't know if we'd even ordered our food yet, but I headed towards the church.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: I was a little late.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: I don't like to be late.
22:40
SPEAKER_02: They were singing, Oh, How He Loves You and Me, which was a new song that was introduced that weekend.
22:45
SPEAKER_02: I just loved that song.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: Well, I went to the microphone and I told how the weekend had impacted me.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: As I spoke, I felt such joy and I felt the Holy Spirit's presence.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: It was life-changing.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: 2 Timothy 1:7, for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.
23:05
SPEAKER_02: Jim mentioned that in his sermon Sunday.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: My friend and I continued to meet for prayer weekly.
23:10
SPEAKER_02: We prayed about my relationship with Rick, whom I met in April of 1978.
23:14
SPEAKER_02: Rick and I continued to get to know one another, and we announced our engagement in April of 1979.
23:21
SPEAKER_02: One year after we met.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: We were married on October 26, 1979, almost 37 years ago.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to get in a picture of my parents because I didn't, they're on each side of us, because I didn't have a picture of them.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: And we don't we don't really have a lot of family pictures.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: At that time, Rick was working six days a week, and I was on call almost every weekend and every other evening, and it was hard for us to find our niche at the church where we had attended.
23:48
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps God didn't want us to put roots there, otherwise we would have stayed there.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: We needed to be in a place where we could grow.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: We visited TBC in August of 1980.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: Most of the congregation was attending the very first family camp, which newly hired Hank Nelson was leading.
24:05
SPEAKER_02: Another pastor was preaching, no one spoke to us, but we felt this is where we needed to be.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: And the second Sunday we were there, I met a co-worker from the health department, and she introduced me to a lot of people and got us involved.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: We were also invited to attend a Wycliffe Associates Banquet.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: I had always kind of been hands-off on missions a little bit, but we were um we were encouraged to go to the banquet and we developed a passion for missions, and then we were the mission secretary at TBC for 10 years.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: Well, we had been married for about 15 months at that time, and we when we received a check from a friend, and she said it was a late wedding gift.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: Several evenings before we had attended the Wycliffe Banquet in which we pledged to give a certain amount of money monthly, and it was called a faith promise.
24:56
SPEAKER_02: The check from my friend was the exact amount that we had pledged to give, which we didn't even have that much money.
25:04
SPEAKER_02: So I talked to her later about it.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: She said, and I knew she was very missions-minded, and she had been prompted by God to send that check.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: Example of God's provision.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: I was doing on time.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: A few months before we began to began attending TBC, we moved to our current home, and I did start the new job as a public health nurse at the Picashawnee County Health Department.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: Rick had been thinking about starting his own business.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: He has a degree in landscape design from K State.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: He was planning to resign his current job in March when he would start his new business.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: Somehow his boss heard about his plans and immediately fired him, and this was one week before Christmas.
25:45
SPEAKER_02: At the time, he didn't even give him an explanation or anything.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: It seemed so unfair, but God's timing was right.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: At that time, I had been working for the health department for seven months.
25:57
SPEAKER_02: For some reason, on my last timesheet, we recorded, we put our own time, did our own timesheets.
26:03
SPEAKER_02: I only recorded 40 hours on my timesheet instead of 80 hours.
26:06
SPEAKER_02: It was a mistake.
26:08
SPEAKER_02: When I received my check, it was only half the amount.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: And they said it could not be corrected until the next pay period.
26:14
SPEAKER_02: And right after that, Rick was fired.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: We were concerned about our monthly expenses.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: One December morning, a few days later, following a few days of snow and ice, a young teenage girl was on her way to school.
26:27
SPEAKER_02: She skidded into Rick's car, which was parked on the street.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: Her dad was an insurance agent.
26:32
SPEAKER_02: Since he didn't want her accident to be on her record, he wrote a$500 check to Rick.
26:37
SPEAKER_02: That was the amount we needed to make up the difference from my paycheck, God provides.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: During the three months before Rick started his business, he was able to find various jobs to help with expenses.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: It also gave him time to plan his new venture, which really was going to take a lot of time.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: He started a business called Cambridge Lawn and Tree in March of 1981, and he was blessed to have TBCer Lon Swift as his business partner for many years.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: They met here at TBC.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: Later that summer in August of 1981, we were delighted to find out we were expecting our first child.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: We announced it to everyone, family and friends.
27:15
SPEAKER_02: It was even announced over the TBC pulpit.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: A few days later, I knew that I was having a miscarriage.
27:21
SPEAKER_02: And I was shocked.
27:22
SPEAKER_02: I thought that would never happen to me.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: We were supposed to go to family camp the next day, but the night before I miscarried.
27:30
SPEAKER_02: We thought we shouldn't go to family camp, and it was a wise decision.
27:35
SPEAKER_02: Several days later, I received a call from Libby Rosen, my doctor's nurse.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: She asked me if I had what they call an RH negative blood type.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: Only 15% of the population has this.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: And I have it.
27:49
SPEAKER_02: I have an RH negative.
27:51
SPEAKER_02: And I knew that my husband has RH positive.
27:54
SPEAKER_02: Well, she said that within 72 hours after you have a miscarriage, you have to receive a ROGAM injection or else antibodies will start building up in your bloodstream and make it more difficult for future pregnancies.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: Well, I knew that I would have to get it when I was pregnant, but I didn't know about the miscarriage.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: And now it had been 68 hours.
28:13
SPEAKER_02: She came over to our house and gave me the injection.
28:16
SPEAKER_02: And I was still grieving a lot, but Libby was so supportive.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: She had lost a baby a few years ago.
28:23
SPEAKER_02: What I learned from that experience was it never hurts to say you're sorry to someone going through something.
28:30
SPEAKER_02: Don't ignore it, don't minimize it, and don't rationalize it.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: And I received a lot of kind notes from some ladies when I had my miscarriage, and I also have tried to do that myself to other people.
28:43
SPEAKER_02: Several months later, we found out we were expecting another baby in August.
28:47
SPEAKER_02: In my sixth month of pregnancy, I began to experience symptoms of pre-eclampsia.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: I quit my job on May 17th, and I had to be on bed rest.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: I used that time to learn 12 memory verses from the topical memory, navigator topical memory system.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: After a month of bed rest, when I was only 30 weeks into my pregnancy, it was medically necessary for me to be admitted to the hospital immediately.
29:12
SPEAKER_02: My blood pressure was very high, I was seeing black spots, and I was I had many other serious signs and symptoms.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: I was placed in a darkened room with padded bedrails in case I had a seizure.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: I never did have one, but even though I was in a diminished mental and physical state, I felt God's presence in that room and in the nursing staff.
29:33
SPEAKER_02: My condition continued to worsen, and on Sunday morning it was determined that I should have a C-section, and that's when Rebecca was born.
29:41
SPEAKER_02: As they were wheeling me into the operating room and I was going to have general anesthesia, the doctor told me that I would not have this problem in future pregnancies, and that was such an assurance.
29:54
SPEAKER_02: She was born on Sunday, June 13th.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: But the time they were wheeling me in, it was about 11 a.m.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: And the TBC congregation was praying for us.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: We only had one service back then, and Rick and I could feel those prayers.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: Because I was so weak, I didn't get to see her until she was 36 hours old.
30:11
SPEAKER_02: They took me by wheelchair and I looked into the glass windows of the NICU, and she was two pounds 15 ounces, and she was 16 inches long.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: Rick demonstrated kindness and love to me that during that whole time.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: I was not a beautiful sight.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: I had long hair and it was, I couldn't, I was too weak to comb it.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: It was just like a wasp nest.
30:34
SPEAKER_02: I had I had swollen lips and I was just, I had something called pitting edema.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: You could just see the fluid.
30:42
SPEAKER_02: I'd look down at my legs and I think, having an out-of-body experience.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is not a young mother.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: But he um he never let on, you know, that I looked differently or anything.
30:53
SPEAKER_02: He would he stood guard outside my hospital room and would uh only let a few people in at a time.
31:01
SPEAKER_02: I was in the hospital for 10 days when I came home.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: There was a welcome sign, a welcome home banner on our front porch.
31:08
SPEAKER_02: Well, God provides friends at the right time.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: When Rebecca's weight dropped to two pounds, seven ounces, which was 10% of she had a 10% loss.
31:17
SPEAKER_02: I asked the pediatrician about her prognosis.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: This does have a happy ending.
31:24
SPEAKER_02: He wasn't unkind, but he was direct.
31:26
SPEAKER_02: He said there could be some complications.
31:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, later I went down to the NIC nurse NICU nursery, and I was looking at her, and I was very downcast with the news I had just received.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: Just then a friend and her young son came by to visit.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: She brought a wind-up lamb that plays, Jesus loves me.
31:45
SPEAKER_02: I told my friend what the doctor had said.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: My friend Bonnie said, Rebecca is one of his lambs.
31:52
SPEAKER_02: Those words immediately comforted me and have on other occasions that we are all his lambs.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: Abraham Lincoln once quoted a prayer his mother said to him every night, Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: Bless this little lamb tonight.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: Be thou with me through the darkness, wake me with the morning light.
32:12
SPEAKER_02: Rebecca continued to thrive, gain weight, and came home a day early with a weight of four pounds and eight ounces.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: That was considered that you could be dismissed, discharged.
32:22
SPEAKER_02: She was in NICU for six weeks, and by that time I had completely healed and I was able to take care of her.
32:49
SPEAKER_02: So I'm so grateful for Libby's intervention.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: I also wanted to emphasize how God answers our prayers not in the big things but the mundane things.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: And our girls had uh rabbits as pets, and we knew that the female, one of the female rabbits, was going to give birth.
33:05
SPEAKER_02: In um in the female rabbits, they have a 30-day gestational period.
33:10
SPEAKER_02: And shortly before, a couple days before birth, the fur on their chest starts thickening by a hormone.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: We're so glad we don't have that.
33:30
SPEAKER_02: You never know how these jokes are gonna fly.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm not naturally funny like Connie.
33:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, anyway, we knew that birth was imminent because the fur on her chest was getting thicker.
33:50
SPEAKER_02: And I had read in a in a rabbit book that you need a wooden nesting box.
33:59
SPEAKER_02: And we had we had no nesting boxes, we had cardboard boxes, but the rep mother rabbit does give birth in the box, and then she raises her children in there, her rabbits in there until they're weaned.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: So you need a good sturdy box.
34:13
SPEAKER_02: Well, on Monday night I prayed, I asked God to provide a box, and then a wooden box, and the next day was trash pickup day on our block, and I was going down the block close to 10th Street, and there was a chest of drawers.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: It had five drawers.
34:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, I looked around and no one was watching, so I just I took three bomb three drawers.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: Several days later, the rabbit had her bunnies, and she had about four or five, and I think we kept some of them as pets.
35:01
SPEAKER_02: James 4 2 says, You have not, you have not, because you ask not.
35:10
SPEAKER_02: All right, now on a more somber note.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: Got a segue here.
35:16
SPEAKER_02: On on Wednesday, June 1st, 1994, I had a life-changing event.
35:21
SPEAKER_02: I found something that I never thought that I would found.
35:23
SPEAKER_02: I found a lump in my left breast.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: I told Rick, but I didn't say anything to anyone else.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: Maybe I I think I was hoping it would go away.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: But on our way to church the following Sunday, I prayed that if we broke into small groups of just ladies in our Sunday school class, then I would share it with my group.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: We only broke into groups just a couple times a year.
35:44
SPEAKER_02: Well, we did that Sunday, and so I shared it with my group of ladies, and um it helped me.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: I'm a private person, and so to share something like this was pretty big.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: So it helped me to be more open about it.
35:57
SPEAKER_02: God's timing is always perfect, and I called the doctor's office the next morning to schedule an appointment.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: About ten days later, I had the lumpectomy under general anesthesia.
36:06
SPEAKER_02: As I was just waking up, the doctor came in.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: I didn't have any family there, and he told me it was malignant.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: And then about a month later, I had um another surgery, it was much different back then, but to see if it was in the lymph nodes, and it was in one lymph node.
36:22
SPEAKER_02: My diagnosis was stage two invasive ductal carcinoma with one lymph node involvement.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: It required uh six treatments of chemotherapy, and um I chose to have 42 treatments of radiation therapy instead of having a mastectomy.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: I was only 41 at the time, and I don't think I was quite ready to have a mastectomy.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, my treatment plan began with chemotherapy, and my first treatment made me nauseous.
36:50
SPEAKER_02: There was a medication available called Zofran, it was very expensive.
36:53
SPEAKER_02: Now they use it, I think, for morning sickness and pregnancy.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Well, I told a friend, Pam Wrangstale, I mean I just happened to mention I wasn't here, I just said, there's medication available, but I don't we can't afford it.
37:06
SPEAKER_02: So I told Pam and she told a friend, and that friend told the friend who was actually taking Zofran, and she had just finished her treatments and she had enough pills for me.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: And they were you know not in a bottle, but just uh you cut, you know, take them off from a sample.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: And later I was able to meet this lady, and every now and then we get to see each other.
37:28
SPEAKER_02: So during the season of cancer treatments, I grew closer to God and developed a love for the Psalms.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: On the morning of my lympectomy, we dropped our girls off at a friend's house and she gave me a card with some verses on it.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: And the one verse was Psalm 34, 7 The Lord surrounds those who fear him and he delivers them.
37:47
SPEAKER_02: This has two promises, his presence and his protection.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: Dr.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: James Dobson's book, When God Doesn't Make Sense, was very helpful to me.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: He writes that most of us feel protected for an imagin for a time by an imaginary membrane that shields us from calamity.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: Then without warning, the membrane tears and tragedy may seep into a person's life.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: When this happened to me, I immediately felt the love and presence of God through fellow believers.
38:13
SPEAKER_02: A friend wrote these encouraging words to me.
38:15
SPEAKER_02: Though this is a year of faith-stretching experiences, may it be a year of sweet, intimate fellowship with the Lord.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: You will look back on this and cherish it as a year of grace, one in which you will truly know and experience his hand upholding you.
38:30
SPEAKER_02: Other verses that were helpful helpful to me at this time were Psalm 6819.
38:35
SPEAKER_02: Praise be to the Lord, to our God our Father, who daily bears our burdens.
38:41
SPEAKER_02: In Isaiah 50, 10, who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant?
38:46
SPEAKER_02: Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: In the summer of 1995, following my year of treatments, it had been almost a year since I'd been diagnosed, or over a year, our family took a vacation to California, where we were going to camp out in Yosemite.
39:04
SPEAKER_02: We had just pitched our two tents and had all of our supplies at the top of the mountain, and we started heading down to the valley, and our car kept dying, it kept stopping, and we were in a very long tunnel, and this is on a Saturday, the height of the uh tourist season in Yosemite, and we just kept stopping, and we have to drive, and then we'd cool off the engine and drive.
39:25
SPEAKER_02: And and uh a couple offered to help, and they were originally from Kansas and now lived in California, and they had a tow rope just the right length that we needed.
39:34
SPEAKER_02: And I should say I kept you probably uh they I kept praying throughout that tunnel because we were just kind of going inch by inch.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: Then we ended up in the valley, they took us down to the valley, and there of course all of our other things were up at the top of the mountain.
39:47
SPEAKER_02: Um, we did find a cabin, even though we had our tents up there, we were down here with no way to get back.
39:53
SPEAKER_02: And there was a cabin available on a Saturday night in August at the height of the tourist season.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: We ended up buying a car out in California, left our other behind, and it was in from Merced, California, and we cruised our way home.
40:08
SPEAKER_02: How much time?
40:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm almost done.
40:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: When we returned home, we enrolled our daughters in school.
40:16
SPEAKER_02: I found out that our daughter Renee was going to be in a fifth grade, a very large fifth grade class with a teacher that wasn't as well liked.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: Several of my friends said, You must talk to the principal and see if we could change her mind.
40:27
SPEAKER_02: The principal was a very um decisive woman.
40:31
SPEAKER_02: This is a public school, but and she was a Christian.
40:34
SPEAKER_02: Um so I left her a um on her answer machine.
40:37
SPEAKER_02: I left her a message, and then I I talked to her in person.
40:41
SPEAKER_02: She still wasn't going to change her mind, and my friends said, You still need to talk to her, you need to write her a note.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: So I actually had the note written.
40:48
SPEAKER_02: I went to school, I was gonna put it in her box.
40:51
SPEAKER_02: No, this is not the right thing to do.
40:54
SPEAKER_02: So I went home and I looked at my Proverbs devotional for that day.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: It said, He who answers before listening, that is his folly and his shame.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: Proverbs 18, 13.
41:06
SPEAKER_02: To me, that meant I needed to keep my mouth closed.
41:09
SPEAKER_02: So my next step was to contact the teacher and I asked how I could volunteer in the classroom and be of help to her and explain Renee's learning needs, and um it became a very good year.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: Let's short it up.
41:29
SPEAKER_02: In September of 2008, it was actually on the night we had ex the day of the night we had espresso.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: Um, I received a phone call from my husband in the afternoon, and that's a little bit unusual.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't call unless it's necessary.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: And uh he was kind of quiet on the phone, and I asked him how he was, but there wasn't much conversation, and he initiated the call.
41:51
SPEAKER_02: He said, Well, he wasn't sure.
41:53
SPEAKER_02: So then he I said, Where are you?
41:56
SPEAKER_02: And he didn't know exactly where he was.
41:58
SPEAKER_02: He couldn't quite tell me the address, he knew the approximate location.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: So I thought something is wrong, and he's always steadfast, he's always healthy, very uh self-assured.
42:10
SPEAKER_02: So um I felt calm, but I was figuring out a plan as I drove to pick him up, and I was able to find out where he was, and we decided to go to the emergency room.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: Um he was hospitalized for two days and they did various tests.
42:26
SPEAKER_02: They never could really determine what it was.
42:28
SPEAKER_02: He had had some kind of memory blackout.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it was an amnesia.
42:33
SPEAKER_02: But we are real thankful for God's protection because he had been up in a tree using a chainsaw, and he has no recollection of doing that at all.
42:42
SPEAKER_02: The only evidence we had was the chainsaw was on the ground and the ladder was up in the tree.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: Rick and I have been blessed to be a part of the TBC family for over 36 years.
42:53
SPEAKER_02: Um I wanted to share another picture.
42:56
SPEAKER_02: This was taken in May of 2016, and it's all our whole our daughters and their and their spouses and the grandkids.
43:04
SPEAKER_02: It was um hard to get all of us together at once.
43:07
SPEAKER_02: But I wanted to emphasize um everyone's spiritual journey is unique.
43:12
SPEAKER_02: There are detours, stop signs, various speeds of growth, and we all go about it in a different way.
43:18
SPEAKER_02: In my spiritual walk, I desire to increase in my trust of God and his word.
43:24
SPEAKER_02: I devised an acronym for trust.
43:28
SPEAKER_02: It is to relax under sovereign truth.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: Trust.
43:34
SPEAKER_02: So many times I do not go to the word when I should, and that's where you get trust, and you can relax under his sovereign truth.
43:44
SPEAKER_02: God promises he to hear us when we call out to him.
43:48
SPEAKER_02: Then you will call and the Lord will answer.
43:50
SPEAKER_02: You will cry for help and he will say, Here am I, Isaiah 58 9.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: And this is our little grandkids.
43:57
SPEAKER_02: It's it is hard to get a good picture of them.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: I see Oliver is they're all very sweet though.
44:03
SPEAKER_02: And Oliver does have a little, he's the one on the far right.
44:06
SPEAKER_02: He has a little airplane in his hand.
44:09
SPEAKER_02: I'm almost I'm almost finished.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: Recently I came across I know you're not worried.
44:15
SPEAKER_02: Recently I came across an illustration on our walk in faith during trials.
44:20
SPEAKER_02: Our first response, the first response is little faith.
44:24
SPEAKER_02: Living with our focus from event to event.
44:27
SPEAKER_02: We stop on our tracks for a little while, focus on God, cry out to Him.
44:31
SPEAKER_02: After a period of time, we return to our daily routine, not really growing spiritually in the mundane or in the trials.
44:38
SPEAKER_02: The second response is growing faith, living with our focus on knowing and obeying God from glory to glory, maturing in the midst of trials, and even after they are over, drawing closer to God and desiring a consistent mature walk with Him.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: The second response is my desire, but too often the first response, the little faith versus the growing faith.
45:04
SPEAKER_02: And secondly, I would like to be continuously thankful and to remember his gracious act of kindness and provision.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: Just like the Ebenezer stone I mentioned earlier.
45:15
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 105, verse 4 search for the Lord and for his strength and keep on searching.
45:22
SPEAKER_02: Keep striving to know God.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: I want to close with two quotes.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: First one is a prayer.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: You don't need to bow your head and close your eyes.
45:32
SPEAKER_02: This is from Richard Foster's book, Celebrations of Discipline.
45:36
SPEAKER_02: Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you.
45:40
SPEAKER_02: I place into your loving care my family, my friends, my future.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: I care for them with a care that I can never give.
45:51
SPEAKER_02: I release into your hands my need to control, my craving for status, my fear of obscurity.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: It's got rather formal words, but I think we all want to handle that control and to do what we can by ourselves.
46:09
SPEAKER_02: Then I want to, my last thing is this is a poem mentioned in Corey Tanboom's book, In my Father's House.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus takes your hand, he keeps you tight.
46:21
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus keeps you tight, he leads you through your whole life.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: When Jesus leads you through your life, he brings you safely home.
46:32
SPEAKER_02: Trust in the shepherd, he is there for you.
46:35
SPEAKER_02: Now Rebecca is Rebecca's going to sing the first two verses of Come Now Fount of Every Blessing.
46:41
SPEAKER_02: And the second verse is about Ebenezer, the stone of remembrance for God's protection.
46:46
SPEAKER_02: And Sam will have the word.
46:47
SPEAKER_02: You don't need to you can sing along if you want, but the words are up there just so you can see them.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: Strings of mercy in ever seizing.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: Teach me a sonnet.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: Singles the mountain fixed upon it.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: Until measure, I took.