All Glory to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!!! Christ the Savior Church blessed us today with their youth group, good food, fellowship and fun. Thank you so much for committing to coming once a month to serve His kids and to come along side of MMUTB. All of you have enriched our lives.
Several youth and parents of St. Jude’s Church from the south side of Indy came today and sorted and hung up clothes. Thank you very much.
A big Thank You to Little Caesar’s Pizza for their donations this past year. Thank you Joyce for picking them up every week.
We are so very blessed with the wonderful volunteers that God has brought to us for His purpose.
This week’s chapter “taking out the trash”. The woman of shame is so used to carrying around the trash, it’s familiar, in some ways it’s comforting because she knows it well. Then He says “will you give me your trash?” Her head draws back, what could He mean? “Give it to Me. Tomorrow. At the landfill. Will you bring it to Me?”
She thinks to herself, how could He know the things He knows about me? His invitation hovers, she tries to dismiss His words but can’t. And how could He know everything about me and still be so kind?
That night she has wonderful dreams of playing in the field of flowers as a young girl. In the morning, she wakes and wonders if He meant it. With hope just barely outweighing hopelessness she turns toward the edge of town. Others are walking in the same direction. A man who smells of alcohol, a teenage girl walks a few feet ahead, the woman of shame hurries to catch up. The teenage girl volunteers an answer before the question can be asked. “Rage. Rage at my father, rage at my mother. I’m tired of the anger. He said He would take it.” She motions to her bag of trash, I’m going to give it to Him.” The woman of shame nods and they walk together.
He sees your burden! The guilt, binges, blowups, compromises, regrets, to retract words that hurt someone, wanting to take them back and can’t. The weight of weariness pulls us down.
We don’t want anyone to know the ugly in us, but many times it’s hard to hide. Only He knows the dark places in our hearts that we don’t want anyone to see, we don’t even want to look at them. He knows what’s there and wants to heal us and to give Him all our garbage so He can transform us from the inside out.
One day we will have to account for all the wrong we’ve done. One day all of us will stand in judgment. He wants your burden! He offers the invitation to give it all to Him.
Next week’s chapter, “good riddance”
I was very emotional reading this chapter and elaborating on it. I tried to convey time is short. Don’t wait, give Him your garbage, because every day we pick up more and we have to lay it down to Him or that bag of trash gets heavier and heavier. I told them that I’m asking for forgiveness all the time, all day long. “yes, Lord it’s me again, please forgive me.” He hears from me a lot.
When I was done with the chapter, I grabbed a bag of trash and drug it around and asked them “do you want to carry this around everyday? And everyday put more in there? Give it all to Jesus, He wants our guilt, our shame, our disappointment, our regrets, our heartache, all of it.”
After I got done with speaking, I broke down, my heart aches because I want so much for everyone there to give their lives and trash to Jesus.
I went up to hug Big Mike and he said “that was powerful”. I had to step back. I said, “what?” He said again, “that was powerful”. I asked him if he was kidding and he said “no, I meant it”. WOW! Trust me, the folks that come and volunteer that know Big Mike, this is huge. I tried to give him another hug and he was telling his girlfriend, “get her off of me, get her off of me.” He is quite the character. He’s the one I put my hands on and plead the blood of Jesus over and he calls me a “freak job”. I never even knew he listened to what was being said. Thank YOU JESUS for touching lives, all glory and honor to You!!
Before the message and lunch, I made the mistake of telling our friends that we were having Christmas for them. They must have called or texted (yes, most have cell phones) everyone they knew, because we had people we’d never seen before. We only made up 80 bags for men and 20 for women. I told the crowd, the ones we minister to every week and we know who they are and homeless get in line first. We had over 120 people in there, we are used to 60 – 80 every week and our guys and gals are very respectful and know the rules. It’s the others that showed up today that caused havoc.
To get some kind of control in the room, I started yelling (yes, my ugly came out). Remember the story above… saying things that you can’t take back… Unfortunately having to yell at folks made me feel really bad. I’m flawed. I’m confessing my sin to God and to you my brothers and sisters. Please pray for order at our luncheons.
A new guy named Dewawn came up and asked for garbage bags, he’s in an abandoned house and needs to get the trash out (how apropos). I gave him 4 garbage bags. I told him I was sorry he had to see my ugly come out by yelling. He told me he was ministered to, by my yelling. Yes, I looked at him like “what?”. He said, “if God can use you with your flaws, maybe He can use me too.” I told him that God CAN use him and wants to use him. He told me that people need the Holy Ghost not the friendly ghost. AMEN
David (the scrapper) thanked me for getting order in there. He’s from a small town and he felt like Opie from the Andy Griffith show coming to the big city of Indianapolis. He said he was sitting at the table and praying for us. He is a light of Jesus to us.
Prayer request: Don Don, Dave, Brother Bill and MMUTB. Bless all of you.
Kathy Albright,
Executive Director