Every week we take new members into our 12-month Spiritual Recovery Program. A week ago we graduated a record 6 men who had come in together and one year later graduated together – a Helping Up Mission first (I did mention in my 3/11/09 blog that we graduated 7 one week – but 2 of them were from our Graduate Spiritual Recovery Program). As I was listening to each one share his personal story, I couldn’t help but think about the new guys sitting in the room who were hearing all this. It was inspiring. While every story was unique, they all shared the same message. I finally realized I needed help; I connected to other people who were positive in my recovery; and if I can make it, anybody can!
Helping Up Mission specializes in being a place for a man to sit still and listen to God. While we try to help in so many other ways as well, the bottom line is that this is a time to just sit still, shut up and listen to what God is saying. He has been talking to us all along, but we have just been running so hard that we couldn’t hear Him – or at least we tried runing so hard because we had heard Him and didn’t want to do what He said. Either way, now we are listening and the message is coming through loud and clear.
Then, once we have heard what He said, we need to decide if we are going to do it. Happily, so many men here say yes to God. Our Program is far from perfect, each member of our staff has his own issues that he is dealing with, and our clients still have a long way to go. But we see and hear God at work in our midst here every day and it encourages us to just sit still for a little longer.
Thanks to many of you who stand with us through prayer, donations and volunteering your time. While everybody gets discouraged from time to time around here, there are so many wonderful things we see happening, you just can’t stay discouraged too long. So just hold on and don’t let go!
Sincerely,
Pastor Gary Byers
Spiritual Life Director