OCTOBER 2023 NEWSLETTER

                                                OCTOBER 2023 NEWSLETTER

ROBERT LINDENBERGER

 

God is good all the time; all the time, God is good!  Amen?

        I didn’t go fishing today.  My devotional time went from one hour to three hours.  I was searching about what to do and where to live.  I was sitting at the table outside, and the wind was blowing, and as I was reading, the wind blew something out of my prayer journal.  I was about to finish and go into the house.  I went over and picked up the piece of paper that blew from the Journal, and here’s what I read: WHAT’S MY PURPOSE?  “I felt so useless,” Harold said, “widowed and retired, kids busy with their own families, spending quite afternoons watching shadows on the wall.”  He often tells his daughter, “I’m old and have lived a full life.  I have no purpose anymore.  God can take me anytime.”

           One afternoon, however, a conversation changed Harold’s mind.  “My neighbor had some problems with his kids.  So, I prayed for him,” Harold said.  “Later, I shared the gospel with him.  That’s how I realized I still have a purpose as long as people haven’t heard about Jesus, I must tell them about the Savior.”

 

      When Harold responded to an everyday, ordinary encounter by sharing his faith, his neighbor’s life was changed.  In 2 Timothy 1, the apostle Paul mentions two women who have likewise been used by God to change another person’s life: the life of Paul’s young coworker Timothy, Lois.  Timothy’s grandmother and his mother, Eunice, had a “sincere faith,” which they passed on to him.  (V.5).  Through everyday events in an ordinary household, young Timothy learned a genuine faith that was to shake his group and became a faithful disciple of Jesus and, eventually, his ministry as of the church.  It has.

 

      No matter our age, background, or circumstance, we have a purpose – to tell others about Jesus.

                                               KAREN HUANG in OUR DAILY BREAD

     

      Did you know medical studies have proven that worry attacks the central nervous system, circulatory system, and digestive system of our bodies?  I am living proof that it is true.  A few days ago, I went to the doctor, and my blood pressure was way off.  Why?  Because I was going through circumstances beyond my control, I worried instead of praising the Lord.  Because of that sin (worrying), I am paying the consequences and continue to ask the Holy Spirit to help me to hold up Jesus so He can draw men/women to Himself.

 

      Noah was exposed to threatening experiences.  He could have worked himself to death; after all, he survived the equivalent of a nuclear holocaust.  While Sandy’s ghost story is conjured up in our mind that a picture of Noah is a quick, folksy, old zookeeper with a plump, rosy-cheeked wife.  He was, in fact, a very strong, courageous man of character and faith.  Who could have been tremendously traumatized by the most abundant catastrophe in history. 

     

       Surely Noah knew the paralysis of fear and the total paranoia award, but he also knew by experience that the God of the storm is also the God of all comfort, able to calm the fears as he kept his faith in God and his focus on God.

 

      Oh, I would like to be a Noah.  Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.”(Genesis 6:9, NIV).  Noah was right with God when everyone else was wrong.  Noah was blameless among the people of his time when every other person was to blame for every kind of evil.  Noah walked with God when the entire world was bottled in chains with both his footsteps and ran away from God.  Yet Noah’s attitude seemed to be competent.  It was as though he considered the whole world to be crazy.  While he was the only one with the same exclamation point, he received much-needed strength and encouragement from his wife and three sons, but his confidence came from what God had to say.  Noah listened to God as he walked with God, cultivating the awareness of His Presence.

 

This newsletter has no address because I have no address after the 30th of this month.  I am waiting for a bed to open in a nursing home and will be there for 90 days.  Then, I will have an apartment for Assisted living.  I covet your prayers and want you to know that Jesus loves you, and so do I.

                                                                            HURTING, but PRAISING GOD.

                                                                                                          BOB