Church Sending us off to The Hospital

After I spoke this morning, February 1, our board chair came up and asked a few others from our congregation to pray. I had five points in my message and each one took one of the points and weaved it into their prayer. It was a very touching moment to our service this morning. Below are the people and the prayers that we offered up to the Lord:

Our board chair Calvin Fei came up and said, “As you know, Pastor and Koyce will be going to Stanford quite soon and we want to have a special time of prayer so I have asked several members to join me in prayer and please, please pray along with me if you would. Lord, heavenly Father, we praise you for who you are. Lord, we don’t know exactly why Pastor is going through these trails with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, we really do not understand that but this we do know Lord, from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. And Lord, we know that you are righteous and you will bring the victory out of this situation. We pray for your special protection around Pastor and Koyce. We pray that you are their fortress and their hiding place. And yet even more, we pray that you will wrap your feathers around them. Help them to experience your love and closeness during this time. We also pray that we as a congregation can be an extension of those feathers Lord, that our prayers will actually be felt by them and our love and our actions will show that love. And for that, we will give you the glory.”

Then Clayton Ross, chair of the pulpit committee when I came to the church a little over eight years ago prayed, “It is so good Lord to know that you always do what is right. It is so good to know that you work all things together for good to those that love thee and are called according to your purpose. Here is a couple that has long ago committed themselves to serving you in whatever way you called them to. And then they committed themselves to us when we needed a Pastoral couple to come and stay with us. Thank you Lord for their commitment. May we gladly renew our commitment to them, to pray for them, to offer them our support, to see what their needs are and help them to meet those needs. Lord, we are people who tend to forget our commitments. May we Lord be fully devoted to this couple for your amazing glory.

Gail Bradway, one of our prayer warriors at the church prayed, “God, Pastor and Koyce have enemies that are looming very large right now—cancer, fear, discouragement and weakness. But the psalmist had the same fears and the same enemies. And he said, ‘My enemies turned to you and ran and stumbled unto you God and then they fell on their faces.’ So that’s what we are asking for Pastor and Koyce that these enemies will turn to you and run and they will stumble on Almighty God and fall on their faces and the reason we are asking this is because the psalmist went on to say, ‘I am thanking you God with a full heart, I am whistling and laughing and jumping for joy and I am writing the book of your wonders and singing your song High God, full of praises because of what you have done. Amen.’”

Then a good friend and a faithful servant Esther Bishop prayed, “Dear heavenly Father. We want to review your compassion as we heard in the message today. And I am thinking that in Lamentations you say, ‘Your compassions never fail. They are new every morning’ and your faithfulness is so great. In Exodus, you told us that you are the compassionate and gracious God abounding in love and faithfulness. In Psalms, you tell us that as a Father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those that fear him. And I am thinking now back to the Old Testament as the Israelites were in Egypt, how you heard and saw the suffering and how you had compassion on them and you came to their rescue. And I also thought about how in the New Testament when Jesus walked this earth, he had compassion on all of those around him, the masses. He saw their suffering, he saw their hurts, he saw their sickness. And Lord, we think again how he was merciful and gracious to them. I think that each one of us can look in our own lives and our journey of life and see the roads with its turns and twists and we can each one testify and review and remember your compassion to us. And now Lord, we also think of Pastor and Koyce and how many times they have told us how compassionate and gracious you have been to them through their walk through life together through many twists and turns. So here now Lord is another hairpin turn and a very serious one and we just commit them to you and we know that you are not going to change now and that you are going to be compassionate and gracious, thankful and loving and you will be there for every step and every turn. And we just pray that the people surrounding them, their caretakers, their doctors, everyone that they deal with also show them such love and compassion. And we also pray that our church will step up to the plate and will just surround them with love, compassion and our prayers. And we know that you have promised to never leave us or forsake us.”

Then Ken Mindrup, one of our leaders and one who speaks the most for me when I am away prayed, “Lord, we are so thankful for these choice servants of yours here. Lord, we do look back and see how you have provided for them and how you have provided for us and the witness you have given us to watch, to show the authenticity of what they believe and the authenticity of their God. And Lord, we thank you for that example and we thank you for allowing Pastor and Koyce to walk through this and the ability for us to learn and grow in our faith to be strengthened because of what we see here. Lord, we know that you have a future and hope as Pastor even said in his last point and we are excited to see what you will bring in that. And we pray for his testimony and his witness even there at Stanford as he is there and as he walks through this and the lives that will be touched. Not only the lives that they have touched here in this congregation but the other lives that will be touched even through this process. We thank you for that. And Lord we pray that we may grow and grow in our love toward you and our thankfulness toward you and toward Pastor and Koyce. So we thank you for the opportunities as examples to show our faith and our trust in the future and hope that you have for us and this church. We thank you for this in Christ’s name, Amen.