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Ministry Encouragement Podcast – Episode #056 7-24-13
Rev. Jim W. Hollis, your Host and Executive Director of Proactive Ministries (www.proactive-ministries.org)
Email Jim: jim@ministryencouragementpodcast.com Ministry Office: Smyrna, GA, USA: (770) 803-9988
Hello to each of you and welcome to Episode fifty-six of the Ministry Encouragement Podcast. If you are here for the first time, a special word of greeting to you and hope you will choose to subscribe and download our other Episodes over the past year. For those of you who are already part of our community, you are much appreciated. Thanks for taking your time to share in this ministry community.
Today I will be talking about several topics. The main theme is:
How to trust Christ when we are weary of waiting with no apparent answers
Our text is: John 14:1-9, New International Version
A second area I want to share today is:
The epidemic of parents in pain with their adult children
These two topics are clearly connected. After 38 years of ministry, in consistent travels all across North America, I am witnessing a major increase in the number of parents with adult children who are living somewhere between agony and perpetual pain of the soul over a steady string of struggles they are facing with their adult children. Brokenness is the new normal. Hope is amazingly low. The time spent in counseling and psychological therapy sessions are often coming up short. Families struggles feel endless.
And far too often even if parents in pain are part of a local congregation, there is really not much support from their church in any organized way. It is largely up to the individuals and families to seek solutions on their own. Moreover, there is a lack of ministry settings where major struggles can be shared and discussed that ongoing support can result from these sessions. Often we can walk away as parents in pain. Parents of adult children who are suffering represent an enormous number of persons both in and beyond local churches today.
What are we to do as Christ followers today? How can we respond when we have friends, relatives and co-workers who are going through these valleys so dark and deep? We turn to God and pray for the power and transformation to fall upon those we love. And there are times it certainly feels in our spirit like, “Too little, too late.”
IF you are one of the millions of parents in pain today, I would love to hear from you. Please send me an email sharing your prayer requests about the struggles in your life and family. Are you feeling a lack of hope? Have you seen the same cycle over and over again with no signs of things being transformed? Do you and perhaps your spouse, feel pretty much alone in this valley?
We are forming new Ministry Groups in these months in order to give parents in pain another place to discover true community and be able to share with folks who have “been there and done that” – some of whom are still very much in the struggles. Others have found paths to transformation and many have learned how to cope with the things that we cannot control.
We are doing some of these Ministry Groups online – others in local communities across North America. We also offer prayer support for the struggles we have been discussing today. Please call with your prayer concerns or requests. And we hope to soon offer some online Webinars which will address the epidemic of struggle faced by so many today.
There will be very FEW of us that have not experienced this pain, are in the midst of this struggle or know someone close to us who is going through the storm now. Would you share with them this Episode of our Ministry Encouragement Podcast that it may be a new source of hope and support for them? That’s a ministry that many of you can do well to live out being an Ambassador of Hope and Reconciliation. When we’re in the struggle and height of these storms, our circles of support can seem incredibly small or non-existent. There is help, hope and encouragement.
Feel free to send your emails to me at: jim@ministryencouragementpodcast.com OR leave a private Voicemail on the blog page you are reading, on the right hand side, using the “button” with your mouse and microphone on your computer. These come directly to me. For prayer support, you may call our ministry offices in Georgia at: (770) 803-9988. We’d love to hear from you!
Until next time, lift up your hearts in the Presence, Power and Grace that Christ offers everyone of us. And please keep me and those in our ministry Staff in your prayers as we seek to be agents of transformation and hope through Christ all across North America.
In Christ,
Jim
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