Miracles and Wonders
A new church home
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When all of this started we hadn't been to a church service, other than a funeral, in
almost 20 years. When we were first married we joined a wonderful Southern Baptist
church in Bloomington, IN and attended regularly until we finished school and moved to
Chicago. We planned on finding a new church home there, but there weren't many
Southern Baptist churches to choose from, none of them were close to our apartment,
and even on Sunday morning the traffic was sufficient to take all the joy out of going to
church. So before we knew it two years had passed, we still hadn't found a church
home, and we were moving again. At our new home, we talked about finding a church
but we were no longer in the habit of attending services, so we procrastinated and
before long we were moving yet again and the pattern continued. So we never actually
decided to stop attending church. We were planning to start attending again ... soon ...
for twenty years. I'm not sure, but I think that may set some sort of record in the
category of "pitiful excuses".
Throughout those twenty years we had maintained our personal relationships with God,
sometimes stronger and more prominent in our lives and sometimes less so. Needless to
say once we received Deb's initial diagnosis our prayer lives immediately changed, and
we began to study the Bible with renewed interest and dedication. We also knew that
we wanted to begin attending church again, but we recognized that Deb was unlikely to
be able to do that during her treatments both because she would rarely be feeling well
enough sit through a service and because she shouldn't be exposed to so many people
while she had a weakened immune system. But as soon as we received the news that
she was cancer free (and I mean on the drive home from the doctor's office) we made
plans to start visiting churches the next Sunday.
We knew how important it would be to find a church the suited us, where we felt like
we fit in, and where we enjoyed the style of the worship service and the way that the
pastor delivered his message. So we planned to spend several months visiting all of the
Southern Baptist churches within a reasonable distance from our house, and since we
are now living in the south again that was a pretty large number of churches many of
which we had been driving past for years without really noticing them.
The first week we started with a church where I had attended a men's fellowship a few
years ago at the invitation of one of my friends from work. I didn't remember much
about the church, but it seemed like a reasonable place to start. So on Deb's first
Sunday in remission, we walked into the north campus of Hickory Grove Baptist
Church and everything about the service seemed to be aimed directly at us. The songs
were full of praise and one of them made a reference to trees that reminded Debbie of
her dream; the drama team performed a skit entitled "PUSH: Pray Until Something
Happens" in which one person alone was unable to move an obstacle, but a prayer team
moved it easily; they showed a video in which a song about the power of prayer played
over scenes of destructive storms, natural disasters, and cancer statistics; and finally
Dr. Brown preached a message about prayer that described exactly many of the things
that we had learned about prayer over the prior five months. We both wept in our seats
as the message touched us over and over again.
Following the service, as we walked to the car, I told Debbie that I had wanted to
answer the invitation and join the church but I didn't step forward because I thought we
should talk about it first. She replied "So did I", and we knew we were home.
almost 20 years. When we were first married we joined a wonderful Southern Baptist
church in Bloomington, IN and attended regularly until we finished school and moved to
Chicago. We planned on finding a new church home there, but there weren't many
Southern Baptist churches to choose from, none of them were close to our apartment,
and even on Sunday morning the traffic was sufficient to take all the joy out of going to
church. So before we knew it two years had passed, we still hadn't found a church
home, and we were moving again. At our new home, we talked about finding a church
but we were no longer in the habit of attending services, so we procrastinated and
before long we were moving yet again and the pattern continued. So we never actually
decided to stop attending church. We were planning to start attending again ... soon ...
for twenty years. I'm not sure, but I think that may set some sort of record in the
category of "pitiful excuses".
Throughout those twenty years we had maintained our personal relationships with God,
sometimes stronger and more prominent in our lives and sometimes less so. Needless to
say once we received Deb's initial diagnosis our prayer lives immediately changed, and
we began to study the Bible with renewed interest and dedication. We also knew that
we wanted to begin attending church again, but we recognized that Deb was unlikely to
be able to do that during her treatments both because she would rarely be feeling well
enough sit through a service and because she shouldn't be exposed to so many people
while she had a weakened immune system. But as soon as we received the news that
she was cancer free (and I mean on the drive home from the doctor's office) we made
plans to start visiting churches the next Sunday.
We knew how important it would be to find a church the suited us, where we felt like
we fit in, and where we enjoyed the style of the worship service and the way that the
pastor delivered his message. So we planned to spend several months visiting all of the
Southern Baptist churches within a reasonable distance from our house, and since we
are now living in the south again that was a pretty large number of churches many of
which we had been driving past for years without really noticing them.
The first week we started with a church where I had attended a men's fellowship a few
years ago at the invitation of one of my friends from work. I didn't remember much
about the church, but it seemed like a reasonable place to start. So on Deb's first
Sunday in remission, we walked into the north campus of Hickory Grove Baptist
Church and everything about the service seemed to be aimed directly at us. The songs
were full of praise and one of them made a reference to trees that reminded Debbie of
her dream; the drama team performed a skit entitled "PUSH: Pray Until Something
Happens" in which one person alone was unable to move an obstacle, but a prayer team
moved it easily; they showed a video in which a song about the power of prayer played
over scenes of destructive storms, natural disasters, and cancer statistics; and finally
Dr. Brown preached a message about prayer that described exactly many of the things
that we had learned about prayer over the prior five months. We both wept in our seats
as the message touched us over and over again.
Following the service, as we walked to the car, I told Debbie that I had wanted to
answer the invitation and join the church but I didn't step forward because I thought we
should talk about it first. She replied "So did I", and we knew we were home.