New Friends

Resting Alone I rest with mixed emotions tonight. It's been an incredible two weeks. We spent the last two weeks serving with mission teams from Mississippi. We were literally all over the city serving and spreading God's influence. We saw over fifty people make first time professions of faith between the two weeks, baptized ten this week and thirteen last week. We gave away thousands of expressions of God's love, looked evil in the eye and triumphed in many ways. We packed up our church's belongings and prepared to move out of our Main Street location, we built walls at the Heffner building and did a dozen other construction projects there including an awesome sign out front. New Friends But here's what's hard. I met people I really like. When you meet new people you really like and then they leave you, it's really sad. I met people with a heart that beats with the same beat mine does. 

This seemed to be one of the constants the last two weeks. New Friends leaving Now it's over and we are praising God for all He did. Still, some of these people I will not see again until we are worshipping God together at the tree in heaven. We may cast our crowns down together. We will give Him praise and in some amazing way that begins now, fifteen hours apart, our praises are united because of the character of the one we praise. Just the same as I sometimes feel inadequate to praise Him and He helps me, I now feel inadequate to let them go, go back home to their families, to their sports teams, to their jobs, to their friends back in Mississippi, back home. New Friends lost to time... This hurt runs deep. In a way that I can not explain it makes me feel lonely. However, in my loneliness I always find comfort.

 I am comforted by my family that stands by/with me. I am comforted by my church which is small in number but powerful in God's power. I am comforted by the ache in my butt muscle that came back while I was running my home run in my last regular season at-bat in our last regular season game, which we lost, by the way. I am comforted by the thought of the rainbow that stretched across East Toledo seemingly from the Heffner area to the Northwood Baptist Church Building area where we will be meeting for a couple of months. It appeared in the sky just as we were finishing cleaning up the block party that was our last official event on Main Street. I am comforted by the thought of a future slightly more populated with professing Christians and Christians actually living for Christ as they should. 

Comforted Most of all, I am comforted that I am not alone at all. I know in whom I have believed and I know that He is able to keep until that day, that which I have entrusted to Him. Jesus is with me although it does not appear that He will do the miracle of freeing me from using the spell checker and who cares anyway. 

The spellchecker works fine. To the mission teams: To the mission teams that are leaving to go back to normal, if, I hope, changed lives, we will miss you more than you can imagine. God be with you every step of the way and reach for New Heights in Christ every day! Don't worry about me I'll be alright. See ya at the tree! Dan Stevenson newheightsfellowshipchurch.org Think Again (A book to buy...)