Unexpected Blessings

I was thinking back the other day of when my family was on itinerate for the second time. We were raising our support to Davenport, IA, and it had been a long summer. We had been on the road the entire summer and I was cranky. I missed my dog, my bed, my friends...everything that felt normal to me. The last thing I wanted this hot summer Sunday night was to spend another evening with people I didn't know and smiling and acting like I wanted to be there. We pulled up to this particular church and immediately we realized that we were not in a great part of town. The church building was so run down. The walls on the inside were a pea soup green color with water stains all over it. The carpet was so worn in places that you could see the sub floor underneath. The pews were not even padded! They were the hardest wood pews I have ever sat on and the place just smelled awful! The service started and the music was just horrific. They sang the slowest songs ever written and of course, they had to sing every verse to every song. I was miserable.

Our family got up to sing a couple of special songs and the faces we sung to were just blank. No emotion whatsoever. We might as well have been singing to an empty room. It was terrible. They didn't even clap or say "Amen" after we sung which I had thought was so rude. As we got settled as best as we could on those hard wooden benches I leaned over to my mom and said, "I hate this place. We will get no support from these emotionless snobs. We should have never come here." I told you I was cranky. I just didn't want to be there.

My father gets up to preach a sermon I had heard about 100 times that summer. I knew the sermon word for word. The only good thing was I knew when it would be over. Thinking back now, I don't even remember what sermon he preached that night. I think it was on Philemon. But I will say I do remember my dad preached his heart out. It was one of the best times he had preached the sermon. After dad preached he led the church in the invitational. No one came to the altar. I was amazed. Here my dad preached a great sermon and no one came to the altar. I knew these people's hearts were made of stone. My father then turned the service over to the pastor and after a few announcements he asked for the ushers to come so they could take up the offering for us. But something was different about this pastor. He was weeping. He told the church how he believed that God has sent our family to their church for a reason that night. He had been so discourged lately and the Lord spoke to his heart while my father was preaching. He felt like our family was going to do great things in Iowa. He explained how he and his family had been struggling financially. He then pulled out a $20 bill and said that this was the last twenty dollars that they had which was to be used for gas later on that night. He then ever so gracefully placed it in the offering plate. I started crying. I felt ashamed.

See, I was still fighting my parents about moving to Iowa. I just didn't want to go and I had a bad attitude about it almost the entire time we were on itinerate. But this church changed my whole outlook. I knew then that I was wrong in judging this church by the way things appeared. Nothing is what they appear and just because the church was run down and in a bad part of town didn't give me the right to say I hated it. I was so humbled that night and for the first time I felt God leading us to Iowa. I knew that there were people hurting who needed us. I realized then that there were people who were dying and going to Hell if we didn't go and tell them about the amazing gift God gave us. If I didn't get the right attitude in my heart we would never be able to do God's work faithfully.

I'm so thankful that God gave me this unexpected blessing. It was one that changed my life forever.