Saturday, April 17, 2010

God's Abundant Provision

As fantastic as the turnout was for the retreat, the reality is that there are a lot more women who would love to participate but cannot get away for that kind of event. Robin has a great desire to bring the retreat to them, and God has been opening doors to make that possible. Her idea is to have a scaled down version of the retreat here in town in a few months, with a volunteer team coming to provide daycare, and with everyone spending the night in thier own home. For this to be possible, though, she needed a core group of women who attended the retreat this past weekend to step up and commit to helping lead the other retreat. We began to pray for God to provide 6 women who would make that commitment.
Sunday afternoon at the end of the retreat, one of the Gudalajara women challenged the women to prayerfully consider making this commitment to work alongside Robin to reach other women. She encouraged those who felt led to come to the front and verbalize this commitment they were making to God. It was quiet for a moment, and then one woman stepped forward and echoed the words of Samuel as she boldly proclaimed, "Here I Am." Within seconds another woman stepped beside her and repeated the proclamation. It was such a beautiful moment that brought tears to my eyes, and those tears multiplied as the number of women stepping forward continued to multiply.

When the women stopped stepping forward, Cherry reminded them of the seriousness of making a covenant with God and urged them to take it very seriously. She gave them the opportunity to step back if they were not serious about it. Nobody moved. As she prayed over these women and the commitment that they were making, we were all in awe of God's provision. He did not provide 6 women. He provided 17!


As they stayed after the commitment time to write the names and phone numbers on a list, some expressed their nervousness that God was calling them to lead when felt they had so little knowledge and/or ability. I knew how they felt. Please pray for these 17 women and for the upcoming retreat that will take place this summer.

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