More Divine Appointments

There is some heavy oil flowing in our ministry at Trinity Hill.

For a couple years, I have been casting some vision for a holiness preaching conference.  The short version: I go to Alistair Begg’s preaching conference as often as I can, and it is amazing. The content, the examples of solid preaching, and the bookstore! Why don’t Wesleyan-Holiness people have something like that?  The Calvinists get all the cool stuff.  I want to see Wesleyans re-publishing our classic, foundational works in attractive formats.  We were making some strides in getting a holiness conference going, but then the pandemic put the skids on it.  About 6 weeks ago I reached out to John Oswalt, interim president of the Francis Asbury Society and one of the leading voices for holiness.  I pitched my idea, he loved it, but was going out of the country.  He put me in touch with one of the Francis Asbury Society staff members, Josh Hallahan, and it was immediately clear that Josh and I were on the same page.  And most importantly, he knows how to make this work.  Stay tuned—holiness preaching conference coming to Trinity Hill in October.  This is really important: whatever comes next in Methodism better be rooted in holiness, in the experience of entire sanctification.  If it is not, God doesn’t need us.  We were raised up for this.

I can’t quite figure the past 10 days out. The Lord has put me in places with people that will bear much fruit.

But He wasn’t done.  Sunday, there were two young men visiting our early service.  In speaking with them after church, I knew that we needed to talk a lot more.  So we had lunch Monday.  They asked if it was ok if they brought two friends. The five of us met at Tropical Smoothie—been losing my mind about how good that place is.  Anyway.   The four of them from different places came to Kentucky during the Asbury Revival.  Remember that?  Yeah, it is still bearing fruit… which is the point I would make about it.  The Revival was not for the time it was taking place in.  The Lord was not looking for immediate fruit, which is I think what some people were looking for.  No, the Lord was laying out an orchard, a vineyard, something to bear much fruit for many, many years to come.

Anyway, these 4 had come down to see what was going on and realized there is a call to missions in this generation.  Turns out these young folks—in their early 20s—have been missionaries in Turkey for various amounts of time. They want to do some missions exploration and training events for some of the young people who have been called to missions.  Would Trinity Hill be a place where that could happen?  What an amazing opportunity for us to partner for Kingdom multiplication.

Last night was awesome.  We had our Easter Egg hunt, which is one of outreaches.  We saw so many people…church people and lots of visitors.  Some are brand new, some have been a few times, almost all the visitors have come because of VBS.  I had a great chance to talk to so many people, to pray with families.  One of the tough parts, though, is the people who come because they don’t have much to eat, and we’re grilling hotdogs.  Hungry people has become a bit more of a problem lately.  Two results stick out from last night’s Easter egg hunt: buying some groceries for a family on hard times (more about that in a second) and getting a woman and her children, who are new to town, connected to a domestic violence shelter.  Outreach is never as simple as you think.

In addition to the Easter Egg hunt, the young missionaries to Turkey wanted to have a prayer, worship, and testimony service with some of the contacts they made at the Asbury Revival.  About twenty people were in one of our Sunday School rooms.  What a beautiful way to end the night.

Remember my recent post on the Emmaus Training Incident?  I remembered how when I was at the Rock La Roca (a mission church on the northside of Lexington), Dulaney Wood used to give me “walking around money,” some cash I could use to buy stuff for people who were having a hard time.  Chad Brooks and I used to walk all over the neighborhood, witnessing, carrying fresh produce from our garden, praying with grieving mothers (remember Miss Mary, Chad?), buying groceries, doing whatever the Lord required. I felt under conviction that I needed to get back to that.  Or maybe more like, it is just becoming necessary. So Tuesday I went to the bank to get some “walking around money.”  Last night at the Easter egg hunt, a woman and her two children were there.  A friend of the mom saw the event on facebook and mentioned it to her, specifically that we were having food.  Her food stamps had run out and they had not had anything to eat for 2 days. PJ, our children’s minister, came up to me and Jay Whaley.  (Jay was also right there helping out with the fellow who came by the church on Saturday.  One of us needs to stay away from the other or this is going to get expensive.)  I had to laugh when PJ asked if we had any money. Jay gave some, and I reached in my wallet and said, “I get it, Lord, I get it.”

If I had the time, I would organize this post better.  It is jumping around in time.  I could claim it is because I love Faulkner’s novels so much, but, naw, I am just trying to get everything down, to make sense of it.

On Monday evening, the day of my lunch with the kids who are missionaries to Turkey, I stepped outside.  The sun was setting.  It was cool, almost cold. Made me think of the magic time when I was a kind in California.  Summer days were brutally hot.  And then the sun would set and a breeze would come in and the temperature would drop 40, even 50 degrees.  I loved the way it felt on my skin.  So I started walking towards the setting sun. And then I was hit with the heaviest sense of thanksgiving for all God is doing in this season… and all He is going to do as we transition out of the United Methodist Church. It was almost like I couldn’t breathe because my chest was already full.  And here is the most powerful thing…the thankfulness in me was coming from God.  As in, it seemed to me that I was giving thanks not so much to God, as being given what to be thankful for.  It was a kind of joy, like rejoicing with God for the great things He is doing and wants to do.