Teachers of Good Things - Part 4

TEACHERS OF GOOD THINGS P4

Transcript

00:00:01 Rev. Michele Owes

Welcome back. Welcome back to Teachers of Good Things. This is Rev. Diana Cherry and Reverend Michele Owes. We are just sharing with you from our hearts the things that we believe God desires for us to share with you. We left on Isaiah 30:18 in our last podcast. We talked about how special it was that a holy God waits on us so that He can bless us and be kind to us. And this time we want to talk about the “B” part of that verse, which means that we also must wait on Him. I will start by reading the scripture and then we will get into the details.

00:00:41 Rev. Owes

Isaiah 30:18. And therefore, will the Lord wait that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you, for the Lord is a God of judgment. Blessed are they that wait for him. Now we're going to be talking about what it means for the Christian to wait on the Lord.

We are also supposed to be of good courage while we wait on Him. We have learned at From the Heart Church Ministries that waiting does not mean doing nothing. Waiting doesn't mean sitting back and saying God is going to do everything. But waiting is a special honor and a privilege. Because we know that during our time of waiting, God is doing some wonderful things that we may not know. Oh, take it away Mrs. Cherry

00:01:38 Rev. Cherry

Yeah, waiting also implies like when we go to a restaurant. Mm-hmm. And we have someone to serve us. So, while we're waiting for answers from God, remember to stay in the service of God wherever you go. If opportunities present themselves, be a bold soldier for the Lord. That is waiting on the Lord.

If there are issues, just be assured that God has the answers, What we must do is not lean to our understanding and try to solve things our way because God does have the answer. We just have to wait and be patient.

Can you imagine what it's like after being married for 21 days short of 50 years, to go to the hospital with your husband to have a simple procedure and he doesn't come back home? And you're like, God, what happened? You have to wait for the peace of God that passes understanding to come in and to fill your heart and minister to you. You must wait. You'll never get answers as to why. The why is not even important. But you will have to wait on God's assurance that all is well. It's not the end of the world.

00:02:58 Rev. Cherry

My husband left me and went to heaven, but I'm still living. Every day I live my life with an expectancy of what God's going to require of me next. I try to stay in tune with His will for my life, and so I live with much expectancy. The important thing is that when he speaks, I have to hear. To hear, I must be teachable because He is going to say things that I don't want to hear. I'm like, are you kidding me? But we have to patiently wait knowing He is God.

00:03:38 Rev. Owes Amen to that.

00:03:47 Rev. Cherry

And He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. While we're waiting on God, seek Him, serve Him. Be the best that you can be, and do the best that you can do. God will answer those prayers and those concerns. Michele, what does it mean for you to wait on the Lord?

00:04:06 Rev. Owes

We're turning the tables, alright. My husband and I had just returned from Egypt, a beautiful trip, and we came back to the United States the day before the borders to the country were to close. We were very careful the entire time we were away. We were in masks. We had Lysol wipes. We cleaned everything. We almost cleaned the whole airplane. People were asking us for Lysol wipes on the plane and at the resort where we were staying in Egypt. We cleaned it up with Lysol. We made sure that we were very careful. We came back to the country that we live in, and we were the only people wearing masks. The entire International Airport in this major city was without masks.

We were the only two people wearing masks. People were coming in droves from all over the world. But long story short. In less than seven days, a strong, beautiful.

00:05:19 Rev. Cherry

Man. Handsome.

00:05:21 Rev. Owes

Handsome but beautiful to me, inside and out. He had a beautiful personality and was a wonderful person. He went into the hospital and on the 7th day he was gone. This is a man who took no medications and had no illnesses. And so, you know, people talk about pre-existing conditions. He didn't have any of those. And when he went to the hospital, there was no expectation that he would not come home. This is waiting upon the Lord. I got the call that morning to tell me that my husband had coded and that they were working on him. She asked me if I wanted them to continue to try to revive him. I said absolutely! Do whatever you can do to keep him alive, this is my husband. She said, okay, he's back. I could hear the heartbeat sound in the background that his heart had started again. And then I went to my closet. I said Lord, she asked me a question and I just answered it, but I didn't ask you what your will was

for my husband. I'm only saying my will. I said God if I have overstepped, I pray that your will and my will are one today, I hope it's the same. But it wasn't the same. I got the call a few minutes later, once I said, Thy Will Be Done, that he was gone. I had to just adjust.

00:07:03 Rev. Cherry Wow. My Lord!

00:07:11 Rev. Owes

I had to adjust to the fact that my God loved me still, though my husband was gone. Adjust to the fact that he was God’s creation, not just my husband. He had every right to bring him home. My husband had labored to his reward.

I had to wait on the Lord to fix me to get me where He was, not to the pain that I felt. I had my very first panic attack. I didn't know what a panic attack was. I never had one. It was like I forgot to breathe. And when I finally did, breathe, it was something. I never experienced that. It was a complete shutdown of mind, body, and soul.

I was trying to figure out from that moment, you know, where is my life without my husband? Right. But the beautiful thing was that God was waiting for me to recognize that He was with me before I met my husband. He was the one who kept me with my husband and fixed me to stay in the relationship. I didn't know how to be a wife. I didn't know anything about marriage.

00:08:16 Rev. Cherry

Right, right.

00:08:26 Rev. Cherry

It was God who fixed me, changed me, and made me adaptable to the call that was on my husband's life. I appreciate the wonderful life that he allowed us to have, to see people come to Christ because of the commitment that he had to teach the gospel. I had an opportunity to organize and get life in a place so that he could obey God and not worry.

00:08:46 Rev. Owes

I had to wait on the Lord. Every day, just every moment as he changed everything in my life. Everything. Some people lose their husbands, but they get to stay in the same house, go to the same church, and stay in the same neighborhood. But God moved me across states, changed my job, and my ministry ended. Everything changed.

00:09:23 Rev. Cherry

Right. Health insurance. That was my biggest shock. It was like today I have no health insurance.

00:09:31 Rev. Owes

Mine too. I thank God that you called me to tell me what you did about your insurance, although I couldn't do the same thing because I wasn't old enough. Medicare and Medicaid didn't want to hear from me.

God was waiting to be kind to me. He was waiting to help me. As soon as I could get beyond the issues of my grief and get to where I remembered that God created me and not me myself, that I was the sheep of His pasture. I was His.

He was going to lead me to the place that He so desired for me. Before that, it was, where do I go? What do I do? What? What now, God? Because everything changed in a moment, in a day. And I'm out there. Then I asked this question of Him. I said Heavenly Father, what is it that you need from me that you had to derail my entire life to get?

00:10:39 Rev. Cherry

My goodness. What a question to Him.

00:10:40 Rev. Owes

Yeah, I was saying, it must be big. Because this is a lot, you know. Now we are in this.

00:10:45 Rev. Cherry

I think this is a part of it. You are left alone. I didn't have that same experience. None of us have the same experience. We have the loss, we have the pain, we have the hurt. But none of us have the same experience. I mean it's a complete rearrangement of your entire life. And one of the things that my husband said to me before he left about a month or two before he left, he said, Dee, if anything should ever happen to me you should be able to maintain our same standard level of living. I said John, why would you even say that to me? Nothing's going to happen to you. I had no idea why he said it. I had no idea if he was joking. I just, I don't know. I don't know. Still why he said it, but that is one of the most comforting things that he could have said to me. I know what we did. I know how we lived. I have just been doing what we did and going where we went and enjoying my life as best I could without him.

00:12:02 Rev. Cherry

There is something else. I think that God has orchestrated this thing. We are to help further what is to come. Yeah. I think the wonderful deposit that He's placed on the inside of us. You know, we didn't sit alongside our husbands all these years taking notes for nothing, right?

00:12:22 Rev. Owes

Right, right. And we do so want to share so that your hearts, can be as full as ours. One of the things my husband said to me was, you know, should anything ever happen. This is where everything is. He specified the drawer, the room, and the folder. I remember thinking must you do this now? Right?

00:12:48 Speaker 1

When he passed, I went to look for things. The Lord spoke to my heart, why are you in here? He already told you. I went to where he said and everything that I needed was right there. One of the first things he told my children is if something happens to mom and me, the first thing you do is call the church. Call the Bishop and he'll be able to help you with what to do. When my husband passed my son called the Bishop.

00:13:21 Rev. Cherry

My goodness, I didn't know that.

00:13:23 Rev. Owes

When I called Bishop, he already knew because my youngest son called him. He called Bishop because his dad said if something ever happens, you call the church, and my son had the number.

Right. He went to school there. It was God, preparing us for everything and every moment. We did not know what was to come, but we've not lacked any good things. God has not withheld any good thing from us.

00:14:22 Rev. Cherry

I'm so thankful for the trust. I looked at the will and trust after he was gone and this piece of paper, this big book that I have shunned for so long, is now real, and it's relevant and I am now the trustee. That was my shocker. To just be responsible, you know.

00:15:08 Rev. Owes

Yes, yes. One of the things I learned after the loss of my husband is that one of the greatest gifts in life, save salvation in Jesus Christ, is the opportunity to love and to be loved by someone. What a precious opportunity to care for someone in the stead of a holy God, and that He can trust you with their life, and He has trusted your life with them.

They and God can keep you straight in the process of the years and the days that you are together. God reminds you that they are not just your husband or your children. This is a life that I have entrusted to you.

00:15:49 Rev. Cherry

You work in my stead, so don't tell them what you think. Tell them what I said.

00:15:56 Rev. Owes

What a blessing! Alright, well that is going to bring us to a close on our 4th podcast of Teachers of Good Things. We hope that your heart is being warmed as is ours. We thank you for the opportunity to share some of the issues of our lives. We want you to know that being a Christian does not mean everything is going to be easy. But it does mean that you have a God who will wait on you, who is waiting to be kind to you because he loves you.

00:16:30 Rev. Cherry Yes, absolutely and he gives us the grace to endure. We love you. See you on the next podcast.