Faithful Friday - "Heaven is Rejoicing!"

I could hardly wait until Friday got here to share this with you! It’s been a long week of waiting.  I’ve known since Monday what I wanted to share for this week’s Faithful Friday!

Some of you may recall that Joy and I (and sometimes Luke) love to visit a local nursing home. We have made many friends there and they are precious to us!

Well one man in particular, Mr. C., captured our hearts from the beginning, which has been about three years ago. He served as a cook in the army during the war. He cooked for Patton and Eisenhower! Oh the stories he tells with such passion, and we do love to listen! He is a spunky man with a contagious smile, and Joy claims him as a grandpa and he most definitely claims her. Actually, he claims us all and has our family photo posted on his wall.

Okay, on to my story for today. We try not to let much time get away in between visits. We take little things to our friends that they want sometimes or may mention they’d like to have, and sometimes we just go visit. Sometimes it is just a quick pop-in just to say hi. Sometimes we go and help do the ladies’ nails or help with bingo. Joy has even gone to knitting class with them.  Well three weeks had gotten by since our last visit there. As I said before, life has had us busy, and especially so with the string of birthdays. Well, Joy had a dream that Mr. C. had lost a lot of weight and didn’t know us. This really upset her. When she woke up and shared that dream with me, it was obvious she was really worried. It upset her to the point that she kept telling me we needed to get up there. This was a couple of days before we actually went. So we rushed through school the day I told her we would go (last Thursday) and headed up there. When we got there, we discovered that Mr. C. was indeed very sick and had been in the hospital with pneumonia, but had returned to the nursing home. He was lying in his bed (which he usually isn’t doing unless he’s taking his afternoon nap) and was wearing an oxygen mask and definitely not the full-of-life-spunky-Mr. C. that we knew. But when he saw us, we did get that smile from him that lights up the room, even through the mask! We visited with him, but when we walked out of the room, Joy couldn’t hold back the tears. She was heartbroken, especially because of her dream.  And I had a huge lump in the back of my throat trying to hold back my emotions too.

So we’ve been praying for him. But the thing that really had Joy (and me) concerned was whether he was a Christian or not. We never really knew for sure from our talks with him. But this is the good part!! On Monday, when we visited him, he accepted the Lord and prayed the prayer of salvation with us! This time when we walked out of the room, Joy was smiling (as was I)!

Heaven is truly rejoicing. Can you imagine? Here’s a 94 year old man accepting Christ! So needless to say, we’ve kind of been floating on clouds this week!  :)

“In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:10 (NIV)

“I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” Luke 15:7 (NIV)

We did visit Mr. C. yesterday afternoon and he doesn’t look well. He didn’t talk as much and when he did, he didn’t make a lot of sense. He may very well be in his last days. But one thing we know is that we will see him in heaven! I smile when I think about what he told Joy the day we prayed with him…..he said, “I’m going to get out of here and you and me are going to have us a good ole time”. And you know what, one day we will! It may not be here on this earth, but we will!

This brings me to another point. Speaking of talking to folks about the Lord or witnessing to them, we have been watching a lot of videos of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron (remember the actor from Growing Pains). They are wonderful! If you want to learn how to be more at ease with speaking to people about this and finding the right words, you really should watch these. You can find many of their videos on youtube. They are real life examples of them walking up to folks and jumping right into a conversation (with all kinds of people). It helps with knowing how to respond to the many different replies as well. Just look on youtube for The Way of the Master or go to their website here.  We are trying to watch some everyday. Our goal is to become so comfortable with doing this (which is not in my nature) that it just feels natural to do it and strange to not do it. They make it look so easy!

Another great website is Fish with Trish. She has mini videos that show how you can share Jesus everywhere you go. One is even at the fast food drive-thru. Joy and I did this on Tuesday, and it works and it feels so good! As Trish says, it forces you to not be focused on yourself but to be looking for opportunities to think of others and share! She gives many examples, including even the gas station (we haven’t tried that one yet)! If you want to equip yourself with how to share the Gospel, check her site out!  And I'm not sharing this to say what "we did" because this was a first for us, but I just got to thinking that if people reading my blog from different cities could see this and possibly give it a try, just think how much we would all be sharing God's love and what He did for us!

And that, my friend, is what I’ve been so excited to share with you this week. If you would, please also remember Mr. C. in your prayers. We know he’s ready to go should that be the case, and he’s lived a long full life, but we’d love to have him around a little longer if the Lord sees fit.

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Faithful Fridays was started by my daughter, Joy. It’s just one way to make a point of sharing our Christian faith or an experience from our Christian Walk in blog land once a week. We invite you to participate as well. Just leave Joy a comment on her blog, Doodlebug, letting her know you are participating, and we’ll come visit! And if you just stopped by to read today, that’s okay too and we thank you for that!  Be sure and stop by Joy's blog to expand a little more on this topic.  Our thoughts for Faithful Friday were very similiar this week!   Have a great weekend!  :)

Be Blessed!
~ Tammy ~