Thursday Morning

Thursday morning

We had a wonderful worship time together last night as Dana led our worship and Ellen Vaughn spoke. She is using her book “Radical Gratitude” as the basis for her talks this week. Tonight was about obstacles to being radically grateful. Not sure I got them all down but some are: being unsure of your relationship to Jesus; jealousy; self-focus (pride). Sometimes we get caught up in doing, doing, doing; worried about checking off our daily quiet times, witnessing, etc (and those things are very important) but our spiritual health is determined by what God has done for us and not on our own performance. She referred to the book which many of you have read “Transforming Grace” and said that Grace is far more huge than we often think about.

Some people she mentioned who have had much grace in their lives were Joni Erickson Tada who has had so much to deal with in her life and now has breast cancer. She mentioned Mother Teresa and said she met a woman named Sister Mary Margaret (or vice versa) who said of Mother Teresa “little people change the world”. She also mentioned Corrie Ten Boom who was able to forgive the Nazi guard only by the grace of God.

Ellen talked to us a lot about real repentence and many aspects of real repentence.

She talked about Marty Janko (?) who was a prisoner in Lebanon for 1 ½ yrs and how he survived his ordeal only by the grace of God whom he felt was with him all the way. He says he was guarded by the peace of God. I want to read more about his story when I get home.

In Matthew five she shared the story of the woman with an issue and the fact that we are all women with issues that we need to allow God to heal in our lives.

Dana finished our time by singing “Rescue”. She is a blessing to all of us with her sweet spirit and beautiful gift of singing and playing guitar.