(When anything short of a miracle won’t be enough!)
Dear Family and Friends,,
When I first met Bobbi my life was confusing to me. I didn’t have even one true friend, and every time I tried anything, I failed. I was having a hard time believing in God and trying to forgive myself. I was trying to make up for all my failures by working for God.
I’ve never understood what she saw in me, but she loved me and believed in me—even when I didn’t believe in myself.
We sure had a lot of adventures together, but I want you to know the most important way God has used her in my life. I watched God make a miracle out of her. I decided that if He could make a difference in her, maybe He can make a difference in me!
I hope as you read this that you will discover “if God can make a miracle out of us, He can do the same thing for you!
Thanks for reading.
WHEN YOU SEE GOD MAKE SOMEONE YOU KNOW INTO A MIRACLE IT GIVES YOU HOPE! I once read of a man in the Second World War who, when in the middle of a battle field, with bombs and bullets flying all around him, was forced out of his safe position. He got up, ran across the field and jumped into a large hole. When he caught his breath he noticed he wasn’t alone in the hole, there was a man standing there holding a crucifix and screaming, “How do you make this thing work?”
If you are trusting in a cross, a church, a Bible, a parent, or a person, your trust is misplaced. Maybe you’ve tried to live up to what you think a Christian is, but, because you don’t have Christ, you have tried to live your life in your own strength, and you feel empty and incomplete. Authentic Christianity is having a relationship with God and having Him live in and through you.
Consider the little girl who walked with her grandfather every morning in hopes of seeing his prize roses in bloom. After several disappointing mornings, the grandpa was awakened from his nap to the sound of his little granddaughter crying. He looked down to see her tear-filled eyes. In her hand she held one of his prize roses all torn apart. She looked up and said, “Grandpa, I couldn’t wait so I tried to blossom it myself.”
Those who know me best know that there have been times when I’ve tried to blossom my own life, marriage, or family. I’ve had to stand before God like that little girl, with my heart, marriage, and home broken. I’m glad our story doesn’t have to end with our failure because God wants to work in our lives!
A LOVE STORY:
I love the fact that God started working in our original parents at CREATION.
-God says in Genesis 1:26-27 that we are created “in His image.” We were intended to rule, to dominate, to be fruitful, and to multiply. God created us to be like Him, to be loved by Him, and to love Him in return. He created us to worship Him here and spend eternity with Him.
I love that God started working on us as individuals at PROCREATION,
– Psalm 139:13-16 teaches us that God started working on us at conception, when the sperm hit the egg. While we were in the womb God had already started making us into His image.
I hate the tragedy of human history when each of us sinned.
-We turned from God and tried do things our own way (Romans 3:10, 3:23). When each of us sinned it destroyed God’s original intention for us which was to make us into the image of God. Ephesians 2:1, 8, 12 tells us that we became spiritually dead, living like the world, ruled by Satan, disobedient, separated from Christ, excluded, strangers, without hope, without God.
I love it when the love of God invaded our world through RECREATON.
-Jesus came, not to restore what we had lost, but us! Ephesians 2:4-5 says, “But God, is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when He raised Jesus from the dead.” When Jesus becomes our Savior and the Holy Spirit moves into our hearts, we become a RE-CREATION!
- Ephesians 2:1-3 tells me what I was without Jesus.
- Ephesians 2:4 tells me how Christ saved me, “But God.”
- Ephesians 2:8-10 tells me how He is making my life brand new!
We begin to see Him working through everything in our lives to make us a prepared person for a prepared place! He begins to blossom us!
WHEN YOU BECOME A CHRISTIAN AND GOD BEGINS TO MAKE A MIRACLE OUT OF YOUR LIFE IT GIVES OTHERS HOPE THAT GOD CAN CHANGE THEM TOO!
My story:
I’ve had the joy of watching a “blossoming miracle” for 52 years) years. Let me explain where great people come from. The following are excerpts from a letter I wrote to my children.
A letter to my children:
I bet you think your mom must be superwoman, not just a super woman, but SUPERWOMAN! Where did this miracle come from?
- She was a little girl from a fatherless home whose mother was tormented by fears and doubts.
- Her teenage years were filled with loneliness and she never wanted to go back to a high school reunion because all those lonely memories.
- She was a girl who thought she was ugly because of her complexion or a thousand other reasons.
- She married a difficult man and has stayed married for forty plus years.
- She gave birth to five children in six and one half years who grew up to be five teenagers all at once.
- She had her mother live with her the last years of her life.
- She has been the wife of an often-depressed man and she is your loyal friend.
- She has been a church planter’s wife (who often moved), a minister’s wife, and the Director of Recruitment for a Bible college.
- At this moment she is working full-time for a Bible college, ministry leader at Real Life Ministry, continuing her education, and a Red Cross volunteer.
I’ll bet you’ve asked “HOW DID SHE DO IT?”, “HOW DID SHE KEEP UP?”, or thought, “I MUST NOT BE MADE OF THE SAME STUFF SHE IS.”
You don’t remember the hard days.
When we were newly married, it seemed to me that she was afraid of everything. She would stand in the driveway crying when I went out of town because she was afraid something would happen to me, or that something would come up and she wouldn’t know how to handle it. She was afraid to have people over to the house unless I was there because she thought “I don’t have anything to say,” and “They aren’t here to see me anyway.”
There were difficult years when she had so many babies to care for or when her health was broken, and her emotions were on the very edge. You don’t remember when the church stepped in to provide meals and housecleaning. You may not remember when she was very close to emotional exhaustion. You don’t remember when the doctor told me that she had leukemia and we might lose her (Jim was nine, Melissa eight, Joni six, Angela five, and the Melody was just three). Those were difficult times. Our marriage was stressed and our finances were strained.
We certainly have had our share of troubles, but somehow we made it one day at a time, one bill at a time, one problem at a time, one health crisis at a time, one job change at a time. We persevered through babies and diapers, chicken pox and mumps. There were lonely days when she sacrificed her own education to get us all through school, and she waited while I ministered to others. She put her needs aside to help with my problems and needs.
She went through times without friends (or no time to spend with friends), through children not finding friends (or finding the wrong friends), through the heartaches of no adults to talk to because of babies to care for, and through your difficult teen years when you sometimes thought only of yourselves. She worked hard to provide clothes for a growing family and persevered through the rebellion of children (and all of us living with the consequences of their choices).
She suffered through the death of her first grandchild and through the silence and withdrawal of a daughter because of an abuse she knew nothing about. She sat on the bed with you many nights trying to answer the unanswerable and trying to help you see that the most important thing you can offer people is friendship. She struggled through conflicts—when she stood as a buffer between you and my anger and frustration. There were so many times she focused on her family’s needs and tried to shield us from noticing her many needs that went unmet.
After she helped all the children through school she started college and at age 65 she received her Dr. Of Ministry.
WHAT A WOMAN! HOW DID SHE DO IT?
What do you see in Mom now? Superwoman? Super wife? Super Mom? Super friend? Super minister’s wife? Super worker? I think God sees her just as she is, His faithful little girl, Bobbi, who He has been blossoming into the image of His Son Jesus.
HOW DID SHE TURN THE WORDS OF THE BIBLE INTO TRUST?
My most constant memory of your mom is that no matter what time I’d get up, she was already up. Not to watch TV or clean the house, not to prepare the clothes or cook breakfast, not to have a few moments for herself. She was up early to spend time with her heavenly Father, to cry out to Him in her need, to write (journal) to Him of her concerns. Whether in the middle of a crisis or a time of peace, she ran to Him who promised that He would make all things work out for good, to look to her source of strength for the coming day, to talk to Him about you and me, and to just spend time with her most constant companion, her heavenly Father.
Over the years of spending time with her heavenly Father I’ve watched a girl become a woman because she allowed God to meet her needs. I watched God give her hope and strength, to pull her together when she was falling apart. She trusted God to help her weak husband to become a man of faith. She trusted God to help her with too many bills and too little income. She trusted God to work on her unfinished children who were often selfish and rebellious, often ignorant of her own needs to be appreciated and loved, whose children most often didn’t even notice the things she did for them. She could get through because she believed her God was right there working, and He would keep His word to her.
IT’S NOT THAT YOUR MOM IS A GREAT WOMAN… IT’S THAT SHE HAS A GREAT GOD!
Well kids, I hope this letter doesn’t make you feel like you don’t measure up, or like you don’t have the right stuff to follow in her steps. When Jesus becomes your Savior, He wants to blossom you into a miracle.
“Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?” (Proverbs 31). I didn’t find her; God grew her up right before my eyes. She has become a miracle, and I’m watching our family become a miracle, one day at a time. It wasn’t that she tried hard and made it happen; she let go and let God!
I have had a wonderful grandmother and mother, but I can say with the writer of Proverbs, “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world, but you, Bobbi, surpass them all.”
A PROJECT TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN BECOME “A MIRACLE IN THE MAKING:
HER FAVORITE SCRRIPTURE IS ROMANS 8:28-29
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.”
- Please take a moment and list the weaknesses, trials, and difficulties that you are facing.
- Reread Romans 8:26-37 and identify how the Lord has been working in your life to increase your faith.
- Read 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 and identify the lesson Paul learned from his sufferings.