“Take Care of the Needs of Others”

About a month ago, while praying on my couch at home, I heard I ‘voice’ (not audible, ‘heard’ in the back of my head) which I have come to recognize as the Lord’s voice say, “Think less about your own needs.  Think more about others’ needs.  You take care of their needs and I’ll take care of yours.”

Soft, confident, authoritative.  Not dictatorial.  Loving.  Friendly. Knowing. 

As usual, it said a lot in a little.  Here are all the things it said to me (in addition to the direct and obvious message):

•  It reinforced the idea that as a Christian, I must die to myself.  (John 12:24, Luke 9:23)
•  It reinforced the idea that the time I spent worrying can and should be replaced with action to meet the needs of others, and that it will render the worry useless.  (Luke 12:22, Matt 10:19)
•  It helped me to trust more in the Lord’s promise to...

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

To read more stories like this, click the link "Sound of God's Voice" below this posting, in the Categories area.

Rose cremated with body of Father Jack Trese emerges from furnace virtually unscathed

(this blog has grown up and is now a full website.  Please go instead to www.wtness.org.)
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Less than a week after his death on Oct. 20, 2004, longtime pastor of St. Columban Church in Birmingham, Michigan, the beloved Father John (Jack) Trese, was cremated.  A rose was put onto his casket by parishioner Kevin Degen, and the button to start the process was pushed, with much grief, by Jack’s longtime friend, Sister Mary Fran Gilleran, IHM, president of the IHM congregation in Monroe, Michigan.  Also in attendance was Pat Lynch, president and co-founder of the Clawson, Michigan site of Lynch & Sons Funeral Home.  Pat saw the rose go on.

Pat Lynch, Funeral Director

Father Jack Trese

About three hours later, after the furnace had burned its contents for that time period at 1700 degrees Fahrenheit, Pat Lynch was in attendance for the removal of the ashes.  He said to me by phone on Oct. 13, 2012, “When I retrieved Jack’s ashes from the crematory, I saw the very same rose that had gone in.  It was virtually unscathed.  It’s never happened before that I’ve ever heard of.  My reaction?  It was unbelievable.  Remarkable.  Quite a beautiful thing.  I don’t recall who else was present at the time, but Sister Mary Fran was not one of them."

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

The Shirt Story - God Rewarded Generosity

This happened in 1993.

I had been trying to hold out before buying any more business shirts for work, but all of them were starting to show fraying around the collar and thin fabric at the elbows. So I told my wife Mary I wanted to go shopping on the weekend to get ten new shirts to replace the old ones. At $30 a shirt, that would be about $300. She said OK. 

Just before the weekend we ran into some friends from another church we hadn’t seen for a while. We had several minutes to chat, so we caught up with all that had happened in the past several months. The husband admitted they were in lean times. He had lost his job, and he had borrowed a computer from a friend to work on resumes and cover letters since he couldn’t afford to even rent one. Then he said, laughing, that the Lord was trying to teach him patience, because the computer’s hard drive broke while he was using it and he didn’t want to return it to its owner in this condition, but it would cost him $300 to repair it, and he didn’t have $300. 

   

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

-Bill Schaef, Royal Oak, Michigan

Young mother feels personally forgiven by Jesus after cheating on her husband

It started out with me being pregnant with my daughter. Before my daughter, I ended up having 8 miscarriages. So I never really got my hopes up about the one that was about to come to me. Before I knew it and the doctor gave me the clear, I was due in June of 2010. I ended up having a healthy baby girl. After I had her, I was diagnose to a disease that most women get right after having a baby. It was called post pardem(sp) disorder. I had really crazy thoughts about hurting myself, and wanting to even hurt the precious little baby girl that my lord has blessed me with. I had really evil thoughts. And I'm still married (and still am to the father of the baby). At this point I had really bad depression, and more evil thoughts kept coming across from me. I didn't want to tell anyone I was sick, or even if they knew I was acting different. So at one point I did mention to my husband that I couldn't be trusted alone with my daughter, and then he knew something was up. I went and got help from the doctor and that's when I found out what I had. After that I started to secluded myself from my husband and my daughter. LIke I didn't even want to be around them. I didn't even want to be around my own family because I felt like a completely stranger to myself. Like their was another person created inside me. So I started to talk to my husband's best friend completely out of the blue while I'm still fighting this disease. I ended up meeting him for a lunch. And we slowly started to talk more and more. And then things led to one thing and another. And I ended up having a six month affair, because I created this fantasy of a whole another life with this man, like I said I felt like I wasn't even in my body. Like another personality was created. I was hardly home, and then one day, I started to go get help, and get on medication. Because my husband wanted me to. So once the meds started working, I started to find myself feeling a little better, like I wanted to be around my family again. Like I was finding the old me.

Then I realized what I was doing was wrong, and I ended the affair with the man and...


(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

-    Rachel T    9/12/2012