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We're praising God for…
Work done last month on our motorcycle,
all covered under warranty!
A three-day, all-expense-paid, personal
prayer retreat at Living Water Retreat Center January 24-26.
No phones, no TV, no computers, no distractions. Wonderful
weather, cold and clear. We put aside our agenda as best we
could to simply rest in the presence of the Lord and to hear
Him speak to us. We left with renewed peace, realizing once
again that although many questions in this life may remain
unanswered, we can still declare joyfully and truthfully,
"Lord, we may not understand You, but we trust You!"
New hours at Frontiers. We are both
working from 7am to 1pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and
from 8 to 5 on Wednesdays. Karen also works till 1pm on Thursdays.
This allows Karen greater involve-ment in the ministry including
being on the roadside together. The new schedule also allows
Emil to attend Pastors' Prayer at our church on Thursday mornings.
Thank you for your prayers for us!
We're asking God for…
Guidance regarding the home group
we have led for the last year and a half. We are taking the
month of February off to pray about whether to continue and,
if so, whether to take a new direction. We've thought about
making it a prayer night for the neighborhood, putting a "FREE
PRAYER HERE 7-9 pm" sign outside of our home every other
Friday night. We want to make sure it's God's idea, not ours.
A new motorcycle! Our present one
has way too much "down time" to be our main ministry
tool. We feel God is directing us to get a Goldwing, which
is the best traveling bike for pulling a trailer. Emil can
picture it in his mind: bright red with yellow flames and
the words, "On Fire for God!" on the side and "Free
Prayer" on the back!
Divine roadside appointments that
bear fruit.
An increase in our support base.
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Loron Cook…
one of the pastors who ordained us in December, passed away
on Monday, January 12, 2004. He is deeply missed. We dedicate
this newsletter to him and will be forever grateful to him
and his wife, Bertha, for their faith in us and in this ministry.
- "Thanks, I really needed
that!"
Roadside Report from Emil
How would you feel if you never had
any one to pray for you, didn't even know any one who knew
how to pray for you in difficult times?
"Lord, You know my brother's a drug addict. I have all
kinds of people from church praying for him, but no one has
ever offered to pray with me for him," she prayed as
she drove. "Lord, could you please send someone who has
the faith to take my hand and pray with me for my brother's
deliverance?" The lady related this to me when she stopped
for prayer. "I turned the corner and there you were!"
Another stopped to meet a person
who had the "guts to sit by himself on the side of the
road with a sign!" When I asked her if she'd accepted
Jesus in her heart, she responded, "I refuse to go there."
I said, "Ok, but why?" She was tired of people beating
her up with Jesus and she just couldn't bring herself to let
Him in out of fear that she would do something wrong. She
turned out to be New Age. Throughout our 30-minute conversation,
as I told her about the love of Jesus, she repeated, "I've
never heard this before." When I got to pray with her,
she said, "I feel intimated." "Because of the
traffic?" I asked. "No, because I feel like I'm
going to cry." I said, "Go ahead and cry! I cry
when Jesus shows up!" The Lord said to tell her it's
okay to cry because that's how He made her. And to get rid
of the one in her life who's saying she's not to cry. She
began to cry then and said, "I really needed to hear
that." I gave her a New Testament and asked her to read
it for a week, not as a book of rules and regulations, but
as a love story from Jesus to her; and then to come back when
she's ready to receive the Lord. She said she would.
A homeless man stopped me and asked
if he could bum $2. I gave him the dollar in my wallet and
asked him if he knew Jesus. He said he did. I asked how he
ended up on the street. He told me that when he came home
from the army, his wife had become a prostitute, and he couldn't
deal with it so he left. We began to talk about forgiveness
and I mentioned to him that when bad thoughts come into his
mind, he can ask Jesus, "What's the truth?" And
the Lord will immediately speak truth to his mind. When we
finished talking, he began to walk away. But he stopped in
the middle of the street and stood staring at me. Then he
yelled out, "Is what you said about Jesus telling me
the truth for real?" I said, "Yes. The devil can
only lie to you but Jesus is the spirit of truth, and by the
truth He can set you free." He clenched his fist like
he grabbed something in the air and said, "Thanks, I
really needed to hear that."
Every day I start off with the same
prayer, "Lord, I'm out here representing You and if You
don't show up, we're BOTH gonna look really foolish!!!"
And thank You, Jesus, He's shown up every time and given me
the words to say.
With my back to the road one afternoon, praying for a man,
a car approached with guys screaming at me. I heard a loud
bang, and something hit the ground 6" from my right foot
and ricocheted away. I realized I had just been shot at. The
Lord said, "You fear things that you can see, but the
thing that should have terrified you, I had covered. Now let
the rest go." He gives me the road, the spot, the time.
How can I fear?
My prayer is Psalm 119:74, "May
those who fear You rejoice when they see me, for I have put
my hope in Your word."
- Kruse Auto Auction
By Emil
I was offered a vendor's spot at
the Kruse Auto Auction, a stone's throw from the main stage.
There I sat among glamorous displays with two camping chairs
and my frumped-up FREE PRAYER posters. Three ladies got so
excited they actually stopped and prayed for ME!
But the majority of the people who went by read the signs
and, immediately, their heads went down and their eyes focused
on their shoes. I began to take note of the number of people
who did this in the 5 hours I was there.
On my ride home, I said, "Lord, what just happened back
there? Person after person staring at their shoes the moment
they read my sign and not looking up until they reached the
next booth?" The Lord said one word, "Conviction."
I wasn't a threat but the power of my God was.
I didn't have an opportunity to pray
for anyone, but the Christians I met were thrilled with what
I was doing when I told them about the ministry.
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- What's In a Name?
By Karen
We quickly found our room and unpacked,
threw on our winter coats, and eagerly took off for the creek.
We had looked forward for months to hiking the creekside trail
where we had spent many hours on previous retreats. We started
down the familiar path and within a few feet ran right into
a sign: any further and we'd be trespassing! How could this
be? Everything we wanted to see was down that path! Reluctantly,
we turned and walked the other way-and sure enough, we soon
came upon a similar sign in that direction, too. Our sense
of freedom had shrunk to a tiny ½ square mile area,
and I fought feelings of "fenced in." Boundaries!
"Bikers with Boundaries."
When you first heard this name, did you instantly understand
its
meaning? We didn't! Although we embraced it as coming from
God, we frequently wondered about it. "What exactly does
it mean?" we'd ask each other and God. Moral boundaries?
Physical borders? Biblical parameters? Ripe "harvest"
conditions? One hot September afternoon, I was sure they were
seasonal…set by weather patterns that include "cool"
and maybe even "cold!"
Or maybe you "got it" immediately!
It all came together for us just this week in II Corinthians
10:13. Paul's words jumped off the page at us. "Our goal
is to stay within the boundaries of God's plan for us."
Wow! That's liberating!
Rick Warren says it well in his book, The Purpose Driven Life:
"The word boundaries refers to the fact that God assigns
each of us a field or sphere of service...When we try to overextend
our ministry and reach beyond what God shaped us for, we experience
stress." That explained a lot about our emotions lately.
When we stay within His boundaries, we soar like an eagle!
But when we overextend ourselves, we crash! He continues,
"Satan will try to steal the joy of service from you
in a couple of ways: by tempting you to compare your ministry
with others, and by tempting you to conform your ministry
to the expectations of others. Both are deadly traps that
will distract you from serving in the ways God intended."
Conforming is the temptation for
us. We want our donors to feel they are a part of a ministry
worthy of their investment. But in January Emil didn't get
on the roadside as often as he wanted to and felt he "should."
Yet he was daily obedient to what God was asking of him: several
hospital visits, answering a neighbor's questions about God
one afternoon as he was preparing to go out, delivering clothes
to homeless shelters, hours in prayer, hours on the phone.
I believe God said that Bikers with
Boundaries would be multi-faceted. As we take another step,
He'll unfold more. We revel in the adventure ahead of us!
And we welcome the restrictions that keep us from things to
which we're not called.
As Emil wrote in his journal: "You
showed me, Lord, that every day, You set boundaries for us.
We can continue or we can grumble about how unfair it is,
or we can accept the limits. I want to push the limits of
everything you have before us, but I don't want to go past
that which you've ordained."
CMA Chaplaincy
Saturday, February 7th, as our last
official meeting as Chaplain of the Desert Disciples. The
Lord said it was time to lay the chaplaincy down and to take
a bigger step into Bikers with Boundaries Ministries. We came
to this conclusion through much prayer; it was confirmed by
several people in CMA who said they weren't surprised as they
had felt it coming. I truly loved being chaplain for this
awesome group of people. Karen and I will continue to belong
to CMA and to ride with the Desert Disciples.
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