The Shepherd's crook

God took the Israelites out of Egypt in one night, but it took Him forty years to get Egypt out of the Israelites!  (I will confess in Heaven to J. Vernon McGee that I stole that thought from him.)

My conversion experience was quick. Having never heard His Name before, the Gospel came as a wondrous shock! One Sunday morning, in a small gathering of a half-dozen adult Christians and a couple dozen young people, there it was: His Name. "Who is He?" I asked the young speaker...and He told me. "He is God and He loves you."

The half-dozen adult Christians in this little group were members of a large downtown church who sincerely wanted to tell the Kansas University students about Christ, but the "green fruit" young people wouldn't come to their church. Of course not! Mr. Nelson and his daughter Beth had been invited to be on the National Youth For Christ Board of Directors. ...so God gave them an idea!  Go to the YFC rally in Kansas City on Saturday nights and bring back the speaker to address young people on Sunday morning. They rented a nondescript building just off campus and were on their way to reaching young people from no Christian background, like me, for the Kingdom of God.  One invitation by phone call from a girl I knew and my Egypt was left behind!  I couldn't wait to get away! My family and my boy friend of three years were fearful that a cult had kidnapped me, brainwashed me and I was forever owned. They were partly right. I have been "owned" since that Sunday morning in 1947 by Jesus who bought me with an expensive bride price: every drop of His blood.  I would never return to Egypt.

My boyfriend became my husband/partner who fled from his Egypt too and together we fought the world, the flesh and Satan, suited up in our holy armor, side by side for sixty-two years.  Now, as a widow I must stand on my own two feet. Ted is not here to absorb the mistakes in judgment I may make. For instance, another unpredicted snowstorm came barrelling in a couple of nights ago and is still "barrelling". I have a half-mile of sorta-gravelled road between my house and the pavement. I'm thinkin': "If I have to rush out for some emergency, it's going to be a long, cold walk"! ...so I crawled into my four-wheel drive Honda and ploughed through foot-high snow, cutting a track. At the corner the fish-tailing that can scare the livin' daylights out of a traveller began. ...no time to stop, so I crept on ahead, swerving, steadying, swerving and steadying. The reality that I am alone hit me in the stomach again, but the blow is softened by reminders of a lifetime of Red Sea experiences when my Heavenly Father provided a way out when there seemed to be none.  Twenty minutes later I arrived safely back in my garage and spent the day in my bed, logs blazing in my bedroom fireplace,  both cats curled up snoozing by my side and reading my Chronological Bible, colorfully expanded by J. Vernon McGee's "Through the Bible" insights.  I remember when he was preaching this series over radio, praying that the Lord would let him finish it before he was carried home by Jesus. ...and He did. J. Vernon had cancer. Just as it took over his body, he finished writing the series!

What do I want to finish before I hear Jesus "comin' for to carry me Home with His low swingin' chariot"?   Oh, I would like to get the rest of Ted's printed devotionals on our website: 12stoneslegacy.com. You can dial up what we already have there.  Some of his devotionals were recorded in his own voice while he could still speak clearly.  I haven't been able, emotionally,  to  handle going through all of his messages that are typed and handwritten, waiting  in the filing cabinets. Son Jeff will come from Sacramento when I am ready to plunge into that heart-warming and heart-wrenching experience.  I have a few tapes of his sermons, but most were left at the churches we pastored and sadly, were discarded.  Should you have any tapes of Ted's messages, please send them to me. I will transfer them to the  12stones website.

As for my stuff: I would like to republish on the web a couple of books I wrote many years ago; ...one, for young people: "Four Ways to Choose a Husband" based on the Ephesians 5:21-32 marriage blueprint,  and the other,  "Give Him His Gate" (...not "Give him the gate")  based upon the guidelines for the Impossible Woman of Proverbs 31. ...then I just want to keep on studying and teaching His Word. 

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are wonderful days as I meet in scripture with three different groups.  All are either enroute on a hair-raising, track-cutting trip down a snow/mud covered road, or they soon will be.  Time after time, they will think they are heading for a ditch and their Shepherd will hook His crook around their ankle, and pull them back before they plunge over the abyss, land "cast",  upside down, unable to right themselves. Each week now their armor is building stronger. Years from now, if the Lord has not gathered these wonderful people to Heaven, they will remember their little group where they spent two hours each week, bonding together, strengthening their muscles for the warfare some of them are fighting already. Are you making a safe place for the people all around you who are surrounded by poisonous snakes, can't find a fresh drink of water anywhere in their desert, and there's nobody telling them they are loved?   If you have always had a "safe place" you won't understand how lonely it can be.

...and soon all of us will be in our permanent "safe place". "...because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in His presence. ...therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweights them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." II Corinthians 4:14-18

                                Hymn of the week: Oh, How I Love Jesus

There is a Name I love to hear, I love to sing its worth
It sounds like music in mine ear, the sweetest Name on earth.

It tells me of a Savior's love, Who died to set me free
It tells me of His precious blood; the sinner's perfect plea

It tells me of whose loving heart can feel my deepest woe
Who in each sorrow bears a part that none can bear below.

OH! HOW I LOVE JESUS! OH HOW I LOVE JESUS!
OH! HOW I LOVE JESUS BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED ME!

Love, Jo