![Old](http://www.apostolicfriendsforum.com/forum/NewBlueDefault/statusicon/post_old.gif)
08-13-2007, 12:14 PM
|
Shaking the dust off my shoes.
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Nunya bidness
Posts: 9,004
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steadfast
I guess my first thought on your post here is... 'Simply amazing'. My second thought is 'Just Coop doing his thing again'. However, my third thought is more reasonable...that being that you deserved an answer on this one.
First of all, I and my congregation have spent hours in prayer. Prayer is already a vital factor that has already been interjected into the situation.
Secondly, I guess I'm as happy as any true Pastor who loves from the depths of his heart would be to see someone he loved shot, dragged out of a car, forsaken by so called 'friends' and left for dead. Coop, there is sincerely no way you could ever understand that because you've never had a Pastors heart.
I'm as happy as I was when I was dragged out of my yard by the Police Chief to go find a young preacher who had shot himself through the heart leaving his wife and two week old baby wondering "Why?" I knew why. A Young girl had just called and confessed to me minutes earlier about the affair she was having with this man.
Happy?
About as happy as rushing to the scene of the accident where I held a backslidden girls hand while they tried to cut her out of the car. They did. It was just about 5 minutes too late, though. How would you have turned, Coop, to tell that Momma and Dadddy standing behind you - righteous to the core - their little girl died as a result of a car wreck she caused by drinking?
Happy?
I guess I'm as happy as I was running back into the room of a lady who had been given up for dead a year earlier that promised she would come to God if we could only get God to raise her up. Her repentance seemed as sincere as any I had ever heard as I prayed for her healing. God DID heal her and she DID come out of the hospital. In that entire year she never darkened the door of our Church.
I got the call and ran as fast as I could to her hospital bed where she was screaming, "Pray again! Please pray again!" I did pray. In fact I begged God and it was like praying for a watermelon... and she died with my hand on her head begging the whole time "Hurry... do it again just like you did last time." But this time it didn't work.
There! Now you have three more (among far too many more) 'terrible testimonies' to explain to you how 'happy' I really am.
Coop, you obviously don't know me - or really know a true 'Pastor's heart' - or you could NEVER have thought I was gloating in their tragedy. However, I've come to accept as a sad fact of being a Shepherd that if you love deeply you will, at times, hurt just as deeply. Today I just 'hurt' a little more vocally than I did a few days ago.
Finally, the audio was there for a specific reason: hopefully someone ready to keep walking in iniquity will listen to it and say, "You know, it may not be worth the price I may have to pay to keep walking even farther away from God."
Thanks for your apology.
For what it's worth, I've stood on streetcorners preaching, too. I called it outreach.
P. S.: I'm glad you don't have hate for me.
|
Brother, we know and understand your intent in starting this thread. No need to explain.
|