Something very interesting happened this week at church.
To the untrained eye, it likely passed completely unnoticed. However to those clued in, there was a moment during our Sunday morning service that was quiet poignant.
A gentleman (long time member of our church) walked down to the front during worship and knelt with his hands and head high.
I am sure most here have seen that happen quite often. It isn’t really an odd thing in particular. In most instances in any Pentecostal church it would pass with barely any notice.
One might even say it should happen from time to time. He certainly didn’t cause any scene. It wasn’t obnoxious. He didn’t draw any attention to himself.
But what was so interesting, what was so powerful about that few minutes has stuck with me. The impact to me personally has been quite profound.
Bob is from another country. He came here several years ago to go to college and has always been perfectly legal in his residency in the USA. He is a very good student and a fantastic Christian. I have been blessed to call him friend. About 6 months ago he met and fell in love with a nice young lady in our church and they got married. During that process, he had to update his green card status as he married a US citizen. During the meeting with immigration, however, he was arrested! Evidently he had been mailed some request for information on his status that never got to him. He had moved and the mail was sent to his sisters house (who is a legal resident here), and she mistakenly did not forward the letter to him.
Bob, just a month or two after his wedding was locked up in a holding facility waiting to find out if he was going to be deported back to Africa where he is from. He was released last week and Sunday was his first day back home. When Bob walked to the front of the church and knelt in worship, I could not help but realize that this wonderful man had not only been locked away from his family and loved ones, he had been separated from any form of church that reflected his belief system.
Not once in all the months he was being held, was he able to attend a Pentecostal church service. Not once was he allowed to worship God with believers of like precious faith.
In thinking about that, I realized we have lost something in America.
I remember as a kid in the 1970’s we heard many times about fellow Christians “behind the Iron Curtain” that could not even lift their hands to worship. We often heard about those that persecuted for their faith. It was real to us. It was near to us. We all lived with an awareness of how precious our ability to worship God was.
Even now there are places like China that remain difficult for Christians to be Christians, but I fear that somehow, we have lost our connection to the reality that there are people all over the world that are precluded from worshipping God with the freedom we take for granted.
WE ARE A BLESSED PEOPLE. Take some time today to reflect on how blessed you are to be able to worship your God with freedom and without restraint. And take the time today to pray for your brothers and sisters who are not so blessed!
__________________ If I do something stupid blame the Lortab!
This post gave me a cold chill as I read it. There have been three nights recently that I've had the same dream about being in a church service in a church that is unfamiliar to me-- and men dressed in military uniforms walk into the service and order us to leave. I have awakened each night at the same point in the dream, where the men are barring the door and putting boards over the windows of the church. I've gotten out of bed and kneeled down beside my bed to pray. I'm not sure what the dream means...I've never had one quite like that before.
That's an awesome story Ferd, and I am glad you shared it!
People might take this the wrong way, but I am very thankful to live in a country where we are not forced to worship. (like some strict muslim countries for example).
I am very thankful for religious liberty!
__________________
"I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool,
and all His works must be contemplated with respect."
Thanks for sharing this - We have taken our religious freedoms for granted for a long time. I feel that we are living in times where we could see them taken away and many people are so asleep spiritually they would never realize it. I pray that America can shake herself awake before it is too late. I fear that this will not happen.
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