Turned to just the right hymn

Not long after the posting of Oct. 23, in which I felt led to “Take [more] care of the needs of others”, I was attending church at St. Columban in Birmingham, Michigan.  Our church music director Bob asked us to turn to page 628 in our Gather hymnal.  I grabbed the book and opened to a random page, and was surprised to find that it was page 628.  When something that unlikely happens, especially in church, I tend to pay attention.  I feel that the Holy Spirit may be trying to get me to notice something. 

Micheal Joncas

The hymn was “No Greater Love” by Michael Joncas.  The lyrics start with these words:

There is no greater love says the Lord

Than to lay down your life for a friend

It seemed to me that it was a reinforcement of the message I reported here on Oct. 23:  Set my own needs aside, and look out for others more than I currently do.

(Read the rest of the story on Wtness.org)

God Showed Himself in an Unexpected Way

In December, 1986 I was out of a job, and I prayed intently that God would help me find just the right job. I felt confident that He would, because surely He’d have to agree this was my most pressing need. As it turned out, He must have thought there was another need more pressing: letting me know He really exists.     

Here is one of several coincidences that occurred during the several months I was unemployed:

I wanted to find out if any Human Resources positions existed at the large corporate offices of Perry Drugs in Pontiac, MI. Perry was getting good business reviews at the time. So, I drove there one morning, picked up some company literature and asked at the front desk if I could talk to someone about potential opportunities in the training or organizational development departments. The lady gave me a standard address to send my resume to, and politely bid adieu.  

Frustrated, I walked outside into the parking lot, and decided to ask the first person I met what the Perry working environment was like, so I could at least come away with something. The person I stopped was the Manager of Training and Development! I was elated when she gave me her card and asked me to call her the following Monday, when she’d have time to talk. The coincidence was invigorating, and I thanked God.

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

“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

What's the point of all those Padre Pio miracles?

This posting is about Padre Pio, the 20^th century Italian monk who by all accounts had a very close-knit and active relationship with Jesus.  His life was marked by willing personal sacrifice and hundreds of miracles. Some of the things that happened are so unusual that his biography reads like fiction.  But according to hundreds of witnesses and recorded statements from people whose lives were converted by interaction with Padre Pio, these things really happened (I’ll mention some later in this article).    

If you believe what was reported about Padre Pio, there are a couple of ways to react to such a story.    

1. “How curious!  How fascinating!  This is a great conversation piece.  When I’m done with this story, I’ll search for other oddball stories, like how a restaurant just set the world record for making the world’s largest cheeseburger.”
2. “There must be a reason these things happened.  There must be something God wants us to learn from Padre Pio’s life, and I want to find out what that is… (right after I finish my cheeseburger… I got a hankering for one).

I finished my own large cheeseburger, so I decided to really think about the ‘meaning’ behind his life.

Let me first catch you up on who this Padre Pio is, and why he’s attracted attention for years.

A rare photo of the stigmata on Padre Pio's hand.

• Lived in Italy from 1887 – 1968.  (Alive while I was alive, which makes him more credible than some middle-ages dude... there are photos and videos after all).
• From an early age behaved well, loved God, followed the rules, kind to others.
• At the age of five, began to have spiritual ecstasies and apparitions, including visions of the Blessed Mother Mary.  But he didn’t report them to others until years later “Because I thought they were ordinary and happened to everybody.”...

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Source:  Padre Pio, Man of Hope by Renzo Allegri, Published by Servant Publications, 2000.
Two (of many) websites about Padre Pio:  Biography of Padre Pio.  A few Miracles of Padre Pio.  

Scientist convinced God heard his prayers

-- Didn't find God through Scientific Evidence --

In 1999, I had just gone through a divorce, and knew I would not be able to take care of my son while working a night job.  I had worked in the inpatient psychiatry wing at Providence Hospital for 30 years.  So I quit the job in April and started to look full time for a job as a teacher.  I had interviewed in a number of parochial schools.  Shrine, St. Benedict, some others.  After two months without a bite, I panicked.  I applied for a summer camp teaching job at Roeper School for the Gifted in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and got it.  Science teacher (my specialty).  At the end of the summer camp, on its last day, a friend asked me where I was working in the fall and I said, “Nowhere”.  It was unnerving to say so.

I called home and found a message on the answering machine from Eton Academy in Birmingham, and I called them back from Roeper’s campus.  Evidently they had remembered me from one of the gratis science presentations I had put on in my spare time for them... 


(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Jim Kaczor, Birmingham, Michigan

Tell her "God hates mommies and daddies” (what?!)

Graham Cooke

[Graham Cooke] tells the story of being invited to a church in England. Following the Sunday morning service, the pastor invites him to his house for dinner. When he arrives at the house he is introduced to some of the church elders as well as to a young lady whom he is told is soon going to be sent out by the church as a missionary to China. Following the meal, the pastor then asks if he would pray for the lady. First, however, the young woman shared her vision for China and what she hoped to be doing. It was then time to pray. Immediately [Graham] bowed his head, and the Lord spoke a clear word into his spirit. "Tell her I hate mommies and daddies." This man has a good sense of humor and thought to himself, Sometimes I detest this gift. Why can't I be a teacher? The Lord, however, kept impressing this thought upon his mind, "Tell her I hate mommies and daddies."  

He then shared some valuable insight into the "prophetic" realm. He said, "the mind receives information , the spirit receives revelation, and the mind and the spirit don't always agree." The
Bible says, "the natural mind understands not the things of the Spirit of God, because they are foolishness" (see 1 cor. 2:14). And his mind was saying, "this is foolishness. This doesn't make sense. Why should I tell her that You hate mommies and daddies, and I'm not going to embarrass myself by saying that You hate mommies and daddies. I can't."

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)