By Mary Spence
I was watching a video recently about being in God's will. Pastor Trent on Instagram talks about how both Simon and Jonah heard from God. He told Simon to throw his nets to the other side. After an entire night of catching nothing, same bait, same net, same boat, nothing changes. Simon was obeying God. Jonah on the other hand went the other way. He heard from God and went in the opposite direction. But God did not abandon him. He went with him on the path he decided to take. First, I wondered how Jonah thought he was going to hide from God? Did Jonah think God could not see him? Then I remembered when I lost my brother. He died suddenly, at age 43, alone in a motel room. I was devastated. At that point in time, we were not speaking to each other. Mark had been my “ride or die”my whole life. We were born less than 2 years apart. We drove each other crazy. No one else knows how to push your buttons like a sibling. But he also came to my rescue when I was in trouble. He knew me better than anyone else. We had the same experiences growing up, celebrating wins and suffering losses together. Mutual wounds and scars covered both of our hearts. When he died, I too, hid from God, just like Jonah. I retreated back into a corner of my couch, wishing it was me instead of him. Once the shock finally dissipated, I was angry, so angry at God. But God knew all of that and He still came and comforted me. I was not strong in my relationship with Him at that time. I viewed Him as a distant, stern father. I had not experienced His love personally yet. But I was about to… He sent a pastor to me to say "God is a God of bedside salvation". My brother was not a believer yet. He had been to AA meetings and heard about a greater being but had not declared his faith. He didn’t go to church. We had talked about God and I told him what I knew. He talked with my husband about God while they hunted together. I heard this pastor say that he believed that Jesus gave a person right up until the end, their last breath, to choose Him. And I knew. I began to feel the weight of Jesus' arm across my shoulder. Slowly I became aware of the ones around me suffering this horrible loss too. And I felt a comfort I could not explain. Instead of my heart feeling like it was irrevocably broken, it began to beat again. I got up, I showered, I somehow put on clothes and I began to move forward. When it felt like I just couldn't do it, He did. I was aware of His presence in a way that I had never felt before. It is true that He cares for the brokenhearted. When I hear about the prodigal son returning and the father gathering up his garments and running to his son and gathering him in his arms and kissing his face, I know. Because that is how Jesus embraces me. Because I've seen it. I've felt it. When people say that God is there in the deepest valleys and on the mountain tops, I can shout Amen! I experienced Him so much more personally in my deepest valley that I was never the same after. He is there for the good, for the miracles and our victories. But He is so much closer to us in the valleys… in the deep loss, in the paralyzing grief. In the places where you think you are completely alone. Look up. He is not only there, He is holding you. Take hold of that hand, friend. He can bring comfort, peace. He desires His very best for you and He sees you. Wherever you are hiding, even in the belly of a fish.  Yo Yo given to Miss Valleria and passed down to me from another missionary.
Children at the 2025 Sports Camp learned to use it! By Linda Hokit Spoils of His Word-October 16, 2025 Linda Hokit Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years…while Isreal moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old. I am as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I am just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that that the Lord promised me that day. Joshua 14:10-12 (NIV) I love the passage in the Bible where Caleb in his elder years says to the Lord, give me the hill country! In another translation says, “…give me this mountain” and in another, “…give me the high country.” Caleb is not seeking a rocking chair. He wants to be used to rebuild a nation. He wants to use his skills and stretch. How many of us ask for the difficult tasks as we are going into our retirement. Don’t we usually lean into ways to relax? Not Caleb, he wasn’t thinking relaxation. He was thinking service. Let me share with you about people I have known who accelerated their service when they could have just rode a wave into the sunset. During Sports Camp I was able to tell the children about a missionary in Alaska who served in a village in western Alaska called Kiana. Miss Valleria served many years there and then in Fairbanks in a church ministering to Alaska Natives. I got to work with her in her retirement years after she moved to Anchorage where she did the same. In Anchorage, there was a hospital for Alaska Natives where she served many years as a chaplain. She did not leave her post in Anchorage until she felt she had finished her race and was able to go south to spend her last years with family. Many people came to know the Lord through her ministry and became strong Godly, leaders in their community. Please pray for Kiana. It was one of 40 villages impacted in some way by a typhon that hit Alaska recently. Pray also for the churches in impacted villages who will play an important role in rebuilding homes lost. Another missionary who remained busy in her retirement years was Louise. She taught me what I know about teaching Conversational English to foreign-born peoples who settled in Alaska. She learned from the person who started the work which became foundational for Conversational programs now established nationwide. Both Louise and Lillian taught students and other instructors well into their elder years. The story I want to share is about Lillian is how she taught Grandma Tucker to read when she was more than 100 years old. Grandma loved the Lord so much she used to open the door of her little cabin at sunrise because she was expecting Jesus to return and she did not want to miss His arrival. When her husband died, she could not read scriptures each morning as they had done. So, she asked Miss Lillian to teach her to read. The first word Lillian taught her was “Jesus”. Since Grandma Tucker was nearly blind, Lillian traced the letters in her palm and used a large magic marker to write “Jesus” in large letters so she could see it. A few days later Lillian went for a follow up visit. She saw the word “Jesus” written all over the house in indelible marker! Grandma had literally encircled herself with God’s presence! That same day, she showed Lillian how she now read her Bible. She opened it and ran her finger along the page until she saw “Jesus”. Then she happily said, “Jesus”. She repeated this over and over because Jesus was enough for her! Valleria, Lillian, Louise and Grandma asked God for the high country, the hill country, the mountains. They climbed until they saw their Savior. Their example fuels me in my own retirement. I challenge you to ask for the high country no matter how old you are!  By Rebecca Vickery
"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance….” Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 A singer/songwriter in 1959 leaned heavily on the Bible for the lyrics of his song Turn! Turn! Turn!, which The Byrds would make popular in 1965. To everything (turn turn turn) there is a season (turn turn turn) and a time to every purpose under heaven. I grew up listening to the words and it was only after I became a believer and started reading the Bible that I realized I recognized the words in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. These were words of wisdom. The world borrowed them to sing along. As human beings, most of what we experience is change, and yet the more things change, the more things stay the same. I have been in a season of great sadness and deep sorrow in my soul. I have described this season as harder than any I have ever had to endure. Lately, however, I have felt strongly that God has been nudging me forward. The shepherd of my soul has been leading me on. All the while my Savior leads me…. I find him most gentle in his leading, and as I take my first steps out into a world that marches on even as my heart is reluctant to move forward, I find this gentleness a deep comfort to my soul. He does not chide me, you foolish child, stop doubting and believe. Instead, it is more like, in subtle (and yet not so subtle) surround sound, I hear echoes of his message. Jesus came to set the captives free, but I have been a captive of my own sadness. The weight of decisions that are not my own weigh heavily upon me. And yet, I still believe in the same God. I still believe that Jesus is the same yesterday today and tomorrow. In Isaiah 61, he meets me. He reminds me of why he came: (1b-3a) He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. Jesus came to comfort me. He bestows on me a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of despair. Three different places I heard the same message this past week. You have allowed this sorrow to take over your existence. Come out of the dark. Come up out of your long mourning. And so I have stepped up in my garments of praise to feel the light of Jesus again on my face. The warmth feels good, and I have felt lighter for it. The weight and heaviness of sorrow lifting after what feels like a very long time. I feel hope and gladness entering to the recesses of my space in a way that it was hard to imagine a week ago. I lift my eyes up, up to the heavens. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord. The maker of heaven and earth. I have been invited into patience. Can I trust the Lord of all things to do what is right? Internally, and externally, I can say, of course I can. I brought these things to Church with me on Sunday and I waited on the Lord. We got to see a man gratefully and willingly get baptized, and my heart quickened. Look at what the Lord can do! The sermon echoed the same refrain, look at what the Lord can do. The Pastor invited us to reflect on what the Lord was speaking to our hearts and I said, “Ok Lord, what do I do with this?” And the words of a familiar Psalm stirred up in me. “I waited patiently on the Lord, and he turned to me and he heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.” Psalm 40:1-3(a) Oh friend, I don’t know what season you’re in. Maybe you are doing great, or maybe you, like me are steeped in sorrow. The Lord invites us on to fellowship with him. Though the sorrow may last for the night (a season) his joy comes with the mourning. May your mourning be turned to laughter. May your sorrow be turned to joy. May you have a thousand things for which to say, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is with in me, bless His Holy Name. Invite the Lord into your season, and you may find that He invites you into deeper fellowship with Him!  Unless you become like a little child! By Joyce Pelletier 2 Corinthians 6:18 “And I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,” says the Lord Almighty. Growing up in the forties and fifties was difficult. Oh, I know there were many times in the history of man that were difficult. We seem to cling on to what we know. So, I guess my aim is the growing up years following the Second War. Twenty years later came the Waltons. It was a time so many of us related to. It was coming out of a Depression, and then coming back in so many different trends, music, relationships. We lived in a small town of about 6,000 people. Everybody knew everybody. There were no strangers. Life started to come alive again. Yet, from where we came, there was those who had a lot of and those who didn’t. So often I felt so alone. I was raised with hand-me-down clothes, and I was okay with that. From the time I could remember I was at church. It our Catholic church, each summer we had our own type of VBS. We heard about Jesus, each Mass had a story about Jesus that had special meaning. As a child of 5 when I went to church with my brother, I knew I had to behave, sit still and listed to God’s Word. Sad thing is I don’t recall any of the stories, other than Christmas and Easter. My favorite time was Midnight Mass when I’d sing in the choir. Our principle of our local school had a tenor voice that you never forgot. He’d always sing O Holy Night! I’ll always remember that as being something important, but I didn’t grasp it until the past few years. Brent’s message this past week brought the truth I’m come to love and grasp. It’s a message I’ll never forget. Going back and remembering that solo of O Holy Night gave me a starting point, that keeps pulling be back. Galatians 3:6-7 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Sons into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba Father’. So you are no longer a slave, but a child and since you are a child, God has made you also an heir. You are a child of God. He has adopted you into His Kingdom, welcomed you with a love that will never be taken away. The gift he has given us cannot be and will not ever be destroyed. Things may get tough and even ugly at times, but He never leaves your side. I am so very grateful for knowing this truth. When I do wrong, He’s ready to help me back into the right place with holy forgiveness. Thie reality has given me such hope and Joy. I am a child of God and that is all I need. |
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