When God makes more than one way.
One of the overarching themes of our work with CarePortal has always been the idea of CONNECTION. In fact, my team has an ongoing joke that has resulted in a “swear jar” type of game around replacing the word “delivery” with the word “CONNECTION”… we don’t make deliveries, we make connections with families. We aren’t amazon delivery service, we are Christ followers who connect the world with the real hands and feet of our savior.
And we have some AMAZING stories of connections that God has made for us! We’ve made lasting, life changing relationships with some of the families we’ve served in the past. We’ve invited families from our neighborhoods into our churches and built community with them! God has granted us so much favor in this area, that sometimes we mistakenly define “connection” in those terms. “Did we build a meaningful, long term relationship with this family?” And while, yes, that’s a beautiful outcome, I wanted to take a minute to share some other REAL and meaningful types of connections.
PRAYER TEAM. As we continue to serve, I’m more and more aware of the impact our prayer team has on our ability to connect. Prayer Team… you are not gonna believe what happened to me this week!!! At the end of a routine “make arrangements” TEXT conversation, I said “Is there anything we can pray with you about? We have a prayer team who is committed to you, would you like to pass anything along to them?” And this sweet mom said, “yes, I need forgiveness.” The spirit of the Lord led me to that moment so I could reassure her that she was forgiven the moment she asked for it! Through a TEXT conversation I was able to lead a young mom to the feet of the Lord, typing out my prayers for her to read and repeat… all because YOU have been praying for this ministry and YOU offer committed prayer time to the families we serve. In this way, you connected a beautiful family to the church and to Jesus (with out ever having met her).
PHONE CALL CONNECTION TEAM. Often times needs are met financially. We pay bills or we use amazon delivery to do the “grunt work”… but that doesn’t mean we can’t CONNECT with the families we serve. Our PHONE team commits to following up with prayer and encouragement any time a face to face meeting can’t take place. I can’t tell you how often our team reports that just the sound of a friendly voice gave comfort to a struggling family. Something miraculous happens when the stress level reduces in a home, when support is offered and love is evident. Don’t discount the power of these “over the phone” connections.
MOMENTARY connections. Even when we are able to make face to face connections with families, we often find that that lasting relationship fails to flourish. I wanted to encourage those of you who have been out in the community, week after week, but not seeing families run toward the church or be receptive to an ongoing friendship. I’ll never forget ( a few Christmases ago) when we served a man struggling to buy presents for his girls. He’d battled addiction, was in recovery but filled with the shame of his current situation. When our team showed up with gifts, we prayed something like this prayer out loud for him, “Thank you, God, for this Dad who is doing the hard work it takes to keep his family together. Thank you for the opportunity to support the hero of this family! We ask you to give him strength, and wisdom and endurance for the road ahead. You have placed talents and gifts in him that this family and this community and our church NEED! Bless him with the ability to use them. …etc”. At the end of our short prayer this dad was in tears. He said, “that’s not how I expected to be treated by the church”. He thought we’d judge him and instead we were “cheering him on”. In that moment we redefined for this man what the church was, and what a Christian looked like. I never spoke to this young father again, but that connection was 100% real and meaningful!
Listen, If we can connect a family to the HOPE we have in Christ… If we can lend dignity to an otherwise undignified situation… if we can, even for a moment, connect with another human being on equal ground and change THIS DAY, then we have made a powerful difference in our community! Those long term friendships are few and far between… but these faith building, hope inspiring, world view changing encounters can be daily occurrences. God’s spirit is always ahead of us, arranging things and softening hearts… if we will only be open to the moment.
If you’d like to join our prayer team, our phone connection team or our face to face team we would be so thrilled to have you!
As always, May the Lord bless your generosity with abundance and joy that you can’t contain! ~amen
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