19th November 2023 Infill Service

Good morning everyone. Really good to be here. My name is Debbie.

I guess that's my introduction. I'm from Sri Lanka. Really nice to be

here in the midst of God's presence, and it's amazing to know you can

come many many miles away, I still feel at home in God's presence.

So thank you for the lovely worship. And so I've been asked to preach

and to share about the work I do. And I was mulling this in

my head, wondering which one I should do first, and I thought,

maybe the first two is to actually talk a little bit about the work that

I do in Sri Lanka, and then we'll go on to what I'm hearing

a bit about from God's word. Is that okay? So in two thousand

and eight, two thousand and six, I started an organization by the name

of Child Action Lanka and Child Action Lanka an organization that was started for street

connected children. And when we say street connected, it me children who either

live on the streets or their parents work on the streets, so they spend

a lot of their time on the street, or if not, their family

situation is such that without any intervention, they'd be the next group of people

on the streets. And this is something that actually if somebody had told me

this, you know, I don't know when I was sixteen, seventeen twenty,

and I would have probably said never in a million years. I was

raised. I was raised by Christian parents, lived in a very sheltered life.

My parents were pastors, and you know, people who'd drank a lot,

or who were into prostitution and things like that scarred me so much that

I would never have seen myself anywhere close to them. And when I was

in Bible School in Canada, I remember lady called me and she said,

you're going to go back to Sri Lanka and you're going to work with children.

You're going to work with prostitutes and drug addicts and that's going to be

a massive part of your life. And through that you're going in revival to

Sri Lanka. And I thought to myself, I think she's got it all

wrong. That's not me right. But many years after that, when child

Actionlanca was born, today, when I look back, that's exactly the group

that we are working with. And it's been a journey. I think God

has a way of showing us things step by step. It's sometimes good he

doesn't show us the whole whole thing together, because had he shown that this

is what Action Nanka was going to look like in twenty three, I probably

said no, thanks, not my thing. But he only started with,

you know, just giving us eight children, eight children off the street.

It was Carrie. I mean I remember standing up because we started out in

a little basement. I used to stand on the steps for about five minutes

thinking how am I going to go in there and face these kids? It's

just so rough. I remember my background is I lived in church. Basically

I come out of my bedroom and I was in church, right, and

for me thinking how do you face these people? They're just going to beat

me up now, I'm really scared. Right, That's where we started out

and today Child Action ANCA has grown from there to working with over two thousand

children across the country. And it's I always tell the team, it's just

an amazing privilege to be able to be part of their lives because I feel

like God's given us the opportunity to be front row audience to seeing their lives

being transformed. So in Sri Lanka, because Sri Lanka is mainly a Buddhist

country, we're not allowed to do a lot of you know what we say

the God talks. But basically I've found, you know, Child Action Anca

has been able to go into places that normally, as a church we wouldn't

be able to take a Bible and go into get beaten up badly, trust

me, it's bad, right, But we've been able to go into tambles,

into mosques, into all these places and reach out to them, actually

taking God's love to them a very practical way, going away there to serve

the children and then they open their hearts out and say who are you?

Why do you do this? And that's been an amazing opportunity for us to

be able to take Christ's love to them. Now, after all these years,

we've seen children who've actually accepted Christ, been able to you know,

go on with God. And it just reminds me of was it Brother Lawrence

said go out into the world and you know, speak God's word or eventualize

and if you must use words, and this has been one of those,

and it's been taking God's love to them in very, very practical ways.

And that's what we do at Child Action Anca. Can I have the next

slight please. So when we started out, we started doing many things.

Maybe the next run place. Sorry I'm being a pain. I wanted When

we started out, we used to do many things. We used to go

from building houses to cleaning up wells to you know, doing so many things

because we saw the need for you know, working with these people. There

were it was an unlimited pool of needs in there that you know, if

you felt drawn to when you wanted to make something happen for them. But

I think as time went on, we realized that there were some things we

were good at and sometimes we needed to real build pous on. So we

began to work with ediation, child protection, health care, and nutrition.

So these were the areas we began to focus. I'm a very firm advocate

for education. I feel like education is a very important thing. Education can

break that cycle of poverty. And so because of that, what we thought

is we need to make sure that these children get educated. And so in

terms of education, we started providing them with all the different aids that they

need, where they would then come into our dropping centers across the country and

where they would be able to access free education with us. But at the

same time, we also realized. You know, we've had many children who've

gone into college, who've gone into you know, amazing trades, who've done

amazing things. But there's also some of them who have come from so much

of hardships and so much of bag like with a lot of baggage on them.

For them to be able to focus on things beyond that is really hard,

and it's been a process of having to give them a sense of holistic

education. It's sometimes having to you know, amazing people like shou have been

coming from twenty eleven to strint out that she came the first time she came

and actually lived with us for six months, even called danngy and everything.

But I don't know that didn't stop us. She still kept on coming.

But you know, people like have come been with the children, been spending

time listening to their stories, helping them through. And some of those children

that she started out with, now you know, they've grown up, they've

gone into the world, they've started doing amazing things themselves. But it's also

being able to create that sense of holisticness, that that sense of platform where

you can give them other opportunities beyond the books, to be able to be

able to have something where they can bring value into the world themselves and where

they can look at their own lifestyle and so the next place, yes,

so this is this is one such opportunity. In September, Sri Lanka was

able to be represented at the Street Child Cricket Work Cup that happened in China

in India where our children from Child Action Nancay represented Sri Lanka out there and

it was it was an amazing opportunity of being able to create that platform for

them to go out to India, to be able to play with nineteen other

countries from around the world as street children coming out there and you know,

it's it's one thing. These children are all from different parts of the country,

so they're from different centers, don't speak the same language. It was

interesting to bring them together and they'd start one sentence in one language and end

it in another language. What are you doing? Yeah, it was amazing

to watch the confidence it built into them knowing that you know, they were

the chosen ones. I mean this, Yeah. I think the boy from

from this side, the second one, he was one day, I remember

he was just seated in this hall and he was crying and I said what's

what's wrong? And he said, you know, my school didn't accept me

to play cricket. And if you know a little bit about stri Lanka,

you know, cricket is almost a religion. It's something that you know,

I know there's Christianity and all them, but there's cricket, right, And

he said, you know, my school didn't accept me to play cricket.

They actually let me out of the team. They said I wasn't good enough.

And today he said, I'm captaining this team and my team won.

And he said, you know, I can't believe I had this opportunity,

and I think it's one of those. But also, you know, it's

not that easy to get these children from the streets onto a plane. That's

a process, right, So we ended up having to look for birth certificates.

To get a birth certificate, we had to look for parents. We

had to get parents married who didn't really want to be married so that we

can get the birth certificates, so that they can get a passport for them

to get on their plane. Right, And it was a whole process in

itself. People, you know, we had to look for children were choosing

their own surnames. They had to find their own dates of birth. We

created dates of birth for children because you know, when they give you the

medical and they say, you know, you were born roughly around this time.

Because they didn't know their age, they didn't know whom they were born,

where they were born. They had a lot of fun picking out their

own birthdays. Right. That's how much it took to get this team out

India, and you know it was it was where they also played cricket,

but they also worked on child rights. We's all really like you know,

where they work with other countries and identifying these are the things as street children's,

street connected children. These are our problems, these are our issues,

this is what we're going through. We need to do something about this.

And this group they came back and they said, oh, we need to

work on birth set because father children. We need to make sure that others

don't have this problem. So now guess what. The other day they said,

you know, we've got an idea and I said, oh great,

can we meet the president? I'm thinking, right, how do we make

this happen? But that's how much a confidence they come back with, thinking,

you know, sky is a limit I can meet who I want to.

I can talk to who I want to, I can make a difference.

And these are children, you know, who literally lived on the streets,

their parents worked on the street, They've had a rough life, something

like that could help transform them. And I think, just like on those

times when I watch them on the ground, sometimes it just sometimes it was

very heartbreaking knowing what they were going through and they what their backgrounds were and

what they were going to go back to, but just seeing them being able

to stand through. This has also been proved to say, you know that

bringing that level of education can break that cycle for them, can help them

think differently. Next one, please, Yeah, So this is another component.

But basically health and nutrition wasn't my main focus. My focus was get

them educated, they can get off the streets. But one thing we found

was children actually coming hungry to us. I remember going to one community,

a new community that we were trying to start a center at, and I

was asking the children what did you eat? And they looked at me like

I was speaking some other language because I found out that they hadn't eaten me

two and a half days. And then I realized, oh my god,

Okay, before we give them any form of education, we probably need to

help feed them. So every day at our centers we make sure that children

receive a meal. They receive one hot meal, at least little ones who

are with us for morning they get breakfast as well. Some of them get

a packed meal to take back home with them. So today we've done four

hundred and eighty thousand lunchers. This is not breakfast, this is just the

lunch. We do breakfast as well for some of the children. But also

making sure that children out of malnutrition, children out or you know, their

growth is stable, things like that, to make sure that they're in a

better place to receive education and to be able to get out of the life

that they live next. Please, So at Child Action Lanka, there's many

projects and I don't want to bore you this morning with all the work that

we do, because I think you end up falling asleep. Yet you have

to come out sometimes to Sri Lanka to have a look at it and then

hopefully you get your head around it. Yes, Julia, even online as

well. Please feel free to come out to Sri Lanka. But among the

many projects that are currently we're running about sixty eight different projects and out of

them, I thought i'd pick a few of my favorite projects. I'm not

sure how much of Sri Lanka news reaches you, but last year we were

brought up as a bankrupt economy and because of that, it really affected the

country. It affected the children we work with, and I would say it

affected actually mostly it affected the children who were who were right down there at

the lowest level of children. And for them, one of the things was

that malnutrition levels peaked up in the country, and so we were taking care

of children in our center. But one day, I remember just coming out

of office, one of the moms she just came and she said, you

know, it's been a long time since I was able to afford a cup

of milk for my child. And that got us thinking, and we thought,

okay, maybe we start giving cups of milk. And you know,

it's not such a big thing, a cup of milk, but in Sri

Lanka, I became a luxury item. It became something, you know,

because they were importing milk. Milk became so expensive. It was really really

hard for people to have just a cup of milk. And so as a

result, what happened is we started giving cups of milk to children at our

centers. Now they went to their schools and started talking about this, and

school said, can you please bring a couple of meat to our school as

well? And so we started taking cups of meat to school and then you

know, all the principals said, you know, this has brought children back

to school, children who dropped out during COVID, who've gone on to do

jobs out there. They've started coming because of the cup of milk. This

is brilliant, you know, can you do more of it? And so

then we were thinking, oh, how much are we going to be able

to do and we set ourselves a target. We thought we'll do maybe ten

thousand cups, right, but as you can see today, it's gone up

to seventy thousand cups. We've gone on doing ten thousand cups per district.

And then we had Sri Lanka's largest insurance provider come around and say, we

really like what you do, but we don't think it's very sustainable. This

idea doesn't work because once you finish ten thousand cups in one place, you

seem to move somewhere else. What happens to these children there? And so

they said, what we would really like to do is we would like to

provide children with a long term solution. Can be joined with you and let's

provide meal to all the children in different schools across the country, in different

districts. But every year of one student, we're going to be providing the

meal for the next ten years. It's like whoa, okay, right,

nice idea, let's see how how weid about that through. But because of

that, it's become one of my favorite projects. And we've seen, like,

you know, so many schools opening up for that and because of that,

you know, children going back to school, so it's been amazing.

Yeah, next please this don't play the video business alone. But this is

also another project that's one of my favorite projects. It's because it's called the

mobile School, and there's one of it in austri Lanka so far that's with

us, but it's also in many other countries. And the mobile school is

an informal education tool. So basically it looks like a box on four wheels,

but once you open it up, it opens about six meters long and

it's got different educational activities on it, so you can take it out to

communities. So what we do is we take it out to communities where the

children can't reach us, they can't come to our centers, but we can

take education to them. And the good thing about it is that when we

take it out to them, you know, it's not only the children who

come around. Sometimes the dads come around there watching. Sometimes you know,

moms come around. They're talking about their problems, they're talking about what they're

going through. It's a good opportunity for our staff to be able to meet

with them, find out what's going on in their lives, what's going on

in their backgrounds, and how we can work with them and what we can

do for them. So mobile School is an education tool that we take out

into the communities, whereas the centers that we run up places where children come

to us. And the next one please. So this is a project called

RAP. RAP is a project that it stands for Women Rising against Poverty and

the funny top you see me wearing this is one of the one of the

products made of the women of the RAP project. So basically what we do

is we ask people to donate they're old stories to us and then we upcycle

them into other projects. We make table runners, laptop covers, all kinds

of things, cushion, cows, key tags, a million different things.

But it helps a woman to be able to have that sense of independency,

to be able to have an income to feed her children. It prevents them

from going through domestic violence, It keeps them safe, it helps them look

after themselves. So how it works is that we have the sewing machines that

are center. Most of the women, not all, but most of the

women who are part of these are generally women headed households, so their husbands

are either in prison or they're not alive or you know, they're going crazy,

and so sorry. Men are good, but sometimes and so what they

do with this is when they create the products, we help them sell it.

So this time from my thirty seven killos of luggage that I brought thirty

one killos, all the stuff that I brought made by them that we brought

here and we were selling at different places. And out of that what happens

is one third fee goes towards their normal day to day income where they can

feed their children take care of their children, and the other one third goes

into a saving school and another one third goes towards swing paying for the sewing

machine. So once they finished paying for the sewing machine, it also enables

us to then provide another woman with employment because we can buy another machine.

But with the money that they said, once they go to their homes,

it also make sure that they have a little bit of money to start up

their own business out of it. And so it becomes their little you know,

savings keying for them. But recently I was talking to a group of

women who merely finish paying for their machines, and then they were saying,

you know, it's great that you know, we'll pay We'll pay up the

whole thing for the machine, not a problem. But can we just keep

on staying here and not take the machine back home? I said, why

would you do that? And they said, oh, we get to talk

to each other and we're hanging out. And I said, yeah, but

you all your own neighbors, you get to you know, still talk to

each other. And no, but we had to be at home. This

way we can get out of home. It's a nice chance for us to

come here, sit and talk. And what I realized is they created this

sense of you know, a little a little group among them where they had

this little you know, counselors. You call it group therapy, but you

know, they're almost created that sense of belonging there where you know where they

were, they were talking about each other's problems. They knew the answers when

mom one mom was sick or her son was sick. You know, they

would finish her targets as well, so that because of that they wouldn't need

to worry about payments and all that. So there was a lot going on

between that I didn't realize what was going to be. And these are some

of the products that they create, but so many more, and they're constantly

designing new things and and it's been amazing to watch watch how the project has

gone through. But those are some of the things that we do, right.

So when I put this slide on, somebody asked me, what are

you trying to show a fairy tale here? But this is actually the bridegroom

here in this picture. He was one of our first students and he's one

of those boys who actually studied on the street lights, got through his exams

really well. We put him into a good school to go in for his

A level exams, and we couldn't actually disclose his identity to the school because

they weren't accept him among all the posh students there. So we when we

used to go for our parents teacher meetings. At that time, I was

young, right, didn't have so many gray hairs. Now I covered them

with blondes, right, But at that point we were my husband and I

we were like among the youngest parents there and we were pretending to be his

parents, and so people would look at us wondering, you know, did

you have him? And you were like really little of us the story in

this boy. But because we were able to keep his eyes y a secret,

he was able to go and take on school leadership. He became captain

of the cricket team there. He ended up becoming a prefector of the school.

He got many prizes, he did really well, and today he's living

his life completely off the street. He's making millions, actually much more than

I do anyway, and you know, he owns a lot of prime property

in Colombo. He's doing really well. And that's just one of them off

the street. And it's been many of those little ones that we've been able

to be able to be a part of their lives and see the transformation.

I think Sue was saying how she remembers the first time and she came and

she remembers him there, and she remembers the process of talking to him,

and you know, the things that he went through. And she reminded me

of an interesting story of when he went into this school where the others said,

don't hang out with us, because if you do, they'll know you're

from the street. So you need to keep quiet, and you know,

know that we are there to support you. And that's the kind of support

he had to be who he is today. Next Place. So these are

all the centers we have across the country, working across from north to the

south and east to the west. But we've been able to spread our wings

working with children across the center and makes place. Yeah, so very often.

You know, one of the things that we're looking at is to see

across these different centers how we can actually enable the community now to start getting

involved in owning the development work that we've been doing. We've been doing it

for a long time, but we don't want them to be to create that

sense of dependency and feel like without us there will be nothing again. So

because of that, what we do we work with them to make sure that

they can contribute towards the developments. So things like this, the little charity

shop created by the women themselves, you know, where they sell things.

It also helps them then become part of it, where they start paying towards,

you know, maybe for a trip that the kids are going to.

They won't expect money from us, but they say, we can do it

now, and it gives them that sense of empowerment. So that's a little

bit about what we do. And if you have any questions I'd be very

happy to answer them for you later on. But please feel free too,

and if you want to look us up, here's a little more information on

who we are. But thank you very much. Right, so, if

you do have any questions, I'll answer them for you later. But I'm

also aware that the clock is sticking and so right, so we're going to

go to listening to God's word. Oh I have to speak, don't it

right? Yes, I'm going to speak because but you know, there is

a lot in doing, a lot about what we can be doing. And

I was just thinking, you know, I've been doing this for a while

and today when I'm speaking to you, I'm actually speaking to myself as well

as it's for you, it's for me. And I was thinking, you

know, when I said yes to speaking, I thought I'll pulled something out

from my orders, and I saying no, I want you to listen,

something that would come fresh for the day. And listening to God gets sometimes

a little hard and icy out there, and you're sometimes caught up with a

lot of things, and there's too many noises, and sometimes, you know,

we're so drawn to all these noises around us that it comes to a

place where you're really straining to listen, and that brings a sense of tiredness

and a sense of weariness. And sometimes you just sit there and go,

I'm tired. And I don't know how many of you have that feeling of

I'm feeling really, really tired. It's not a physical sense I I'm tired,

but it's a sense of inside you. You start looking and going,

I'm really tired. This journey has tired me. I'm weary. I've got

this sense of fatigue inside me. And you know, I can sleep,

I can sleep another ten hours a wake up, and I'm still tired.

It's because you start looking at your life and you go, you know,

I've done all these things, and is it actually worth what I've done?

Is this journey worth it? Have I got to a point in my life

I feel it's worth it? And I felt like that was something God was

speaking about. You know, look where I think. We're coming to the

end of a year. It's that time of year when we start making new

lists for next year. I don't know, I always create these lists.

I don't get through half of them, right, And you start looking and

going, you know, okay, these are the things you kind of take

count of what's been going on in life and you will accomplished next year and

all these things, and you start thinking, as well, you know,

is it worth what I'm doing? Am I making a different runs out there?

Is my life adding any value to anything? And this is this is

where I feel like, you know, God wants to reach out to us

today, and I'm not sure how it works, you like, you know,

God's got to sit out to those of us who feel like I'm really

not sure. I'm looking at my life and I'm feeling like I'm just really

really tired. I'm not sure it's even worth it. All the fights I'm

going through, all the you know, things. I'm facing everything that's been

thrown at me. Why why am I putting up with this? Is it

even worth it? Do I need to be going through this? And I'd

like to I'd like to take you through a scripture in the Bible, my

chapter fourteen. I think maybe the next time. No, yeah, yes,

yeah. And here he talks about when Jesus was in Bethany, reclining

at the table in the house of Simon the Leper, a woman came with

an alasta jar of very expensive pervenal. She broke the jar and poured the

perfume on his head. And then what happened subplicently to one another? Why

this waste of perfume? And here she was? She brought this woman.

She appeared from somewhere. I was trying to work out exactly who this woman

was, because it says there was a woman. She didn't really have a

name, and she brought this jar perfume. And in those days people actually

invested into bottles of perfume. That was like an expensive thing, so it

was sealed and you couldn't open it unders you broke it, and it meant,

you know, she brought this. She heard Jesus in this place.

She decided to bring this air. She broke it, which means she just

laid it all out there and she just poured it on Jesus. And there

are other people there where Jesus was. He was invited for dinner to Simon's

place, and here they were looking and thinking what iste? Sometime I know

it's not even other people, but sometimes many think it's going to be starting

might be thinking, you know, did my life have I got to this

point home? Point? Like it? Does? It not make sense anymore?

And that begins to bring a feeling it's not worth it? And I

speak a few people here who I feel is very very specific to you.

You're going on a journey where you're feeling it's not worth it, you know,

people like Actually, I'm being very hesitant to say this because I'm very

careful in what I say sometimes, but this morning I had a very strong

sense that there was a word for somebody. I'm not sure whether you're here

in person or whether you're here online, I don't know, but it might

be a name like Ernie or are you or somebody like that. I'm not

quite sure. But what God was saying is you know that time of shame

is over and you need to rise up because you need to because the time

as this and I feel like God wants to encourage you this morning that it's

it's enough because we've been seated down there, seated at time to take stock

of what's been going on, trying to think is it actually worth it?

What have I been doing. I'm just really really tired. It's just enough.

It's been going on and on, one after the other, one after

the other. I finished one than facing starts, I finish that something else

starts. I'm constantly having to face this thing. And it's not even other

people this time, like in this story, we know, you know,

she brings his bottle of perfume. She pulls it there on the Jesus and

people are saying people around, It wasn't people around and saying a waste.

Sometimes, you know, we're good at learning how to block add leable out

and kind of saying no, I need to you know, look, I

need to for God. I need to trust God. And this is all

about my journey with God. But beforetimes that we stand in our own way

and we sometimes end up being the people are down at our own lives and

what a waste. I've given the tears of my love, the waste I've

laid everything for God, a waste my you know, the best of my

whatever, what a waste I get. I've sacrificed so much for God,

I've given so much time. Just what a waste. It's it's nobody else.

And sometimes it's just because you know, we've come to this, it's

now fare. There's more scripture that I'd like to read, Luke, chapter

ten, and this is this is intrinching things. I'm just not going to

do the usual other side of the story where we talk about, you know,

the two sisters Mary and Martha. And in terms of Mary and Martha,

we always talk about how Mary chose the better in life, and here

it says as Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to

a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. And sometimes

we do need the Martha's. I know we talk about Mary being the example,

but we do need the Marthas to open the door and be the practical

person around to think through, to strategize, to plan, to make sure

it's going to happen, because we can't just wait for Mary to sit at

the feet of Jesus. We have to make sure there's Martha's around. And

she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to

what he said. This is amazing. But Martha was distracted. It says

she was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came

to him and asked, Lord, don't you go? And sometimes I think,

you know, we're doing so many things and we do need the Martha's

I mean, I'm a complete Martha, right, but sometimes you get to

that point to turn out and say, God, don't you care. Don't

you see I'm doing all this. I'm doing this, this, this,

this for you. And here I am. I'm going through so much in

my life. I'm going through this, I'm facing this, I'm fighting these

people are doing this, and people are saying that, and you know,

I'm struggling. And this was basically Martha. She was coming to Jesus and

saying, Jesus, it's easy for you. You just seated there. My

sisters seated at her feet, at your feet. That's brilliant. Here I

am struggling with this and that and the other going on in my life,

don't you care? And sometimes when we are stuck in that, in that

place of you know, we're facing so much going on around us. In

the Bible, here says Martha was distracted. And sometimes we get so caught

up in the distraction we come to a place of blame and we begin to

blame. We begin to blame everybody around us. We begin to name God

here. I'm so tired. I've been doing this and this and this from

seven in the morning, from six in the morning, I've been doing this

for you. You don't seem to take notice, you know. Whereas their

sister Islah seated there the feet of Jesus happily, everything seems great. And

sometimes, you know, we need the month at times to be able to

make things happen. But we also begin to get so distracted and start looking

at ourselves, start blaming ourselves and looking down. It's not fair, this

is not right. There's so much going on. Why is it just me?

And we look around at everyone else and they, oh, okay,

it's all right for some people. What about me? And I believe you

know, that's the place where God says, you know, Mary has chosen

the better place. I think the words later when it goes. Mary has

chosen the better part. Because Martha is saying, ask Mary to come here

and help me. Ask Mary to come here and be with me. She

can't stay there at your feet. This is not right. Why do I

have to open the door. I have to prepare everything for you. I

have to make sure everything's happening. I need to keep all the balls up

in the air and make everything balance. Why not Mary? And Jesus said

few things are needed, or indeed only one maybe has showsen what is better.

And you know, at the end of the day, the takeaway of

this is, you know, we need to do the math things. Those

things need to get done. But it comes from a place of sitting at

Jesus's feet. And the more we begin to sit at his feet, it

begins to bring that oil of refreshing in our lives, and it makes life

a little easier, takes away that sense of fatigue, It takes away that

sense of tiring because you start doing less in your own strength and more in

His strength. And sometimes, you know, we're so busy, and I

know the modern world, I mean, this thing's called phones. What a

pain? It makes people be able to reach you all the time across all

time zones, right, and you get these one hundred and fifty emails saying

it's urgent. So the word urgent has lost its importance anymore. Right,

You get this thing called what's up that people can then call you if you

haven't replied, right, complete nuisance. And because of that, our world

has got so crowded with so much that it's a luxury to have a little

bit of time to sit at the feet of Jesus. It's such a luxury

to have a little bit of silence, to close everything off and say,

you know, that's enough. To the point that we constantly what's it?

What's it? The little hamster? Is it? Is it a hamster that

runs on that wheel and it's forever running, It's going on on and on

and on right none stop. I think sometimes we are these little hamsters caught

up on that vel. And then you're going, I'm so tired, this

is enough, But I can't stop because of me is turning and if I

stop, what's going to happen? And there are these moments that we have

to end up stopping and going I'm waiting to hear from God and it's okay,

and I feel some of us just need that that permission to go.

It's all right to stop. It's okay. It's just going to say I'm

going to stop till I hear God next, because this fight is not worth

fighting. What I'm going through isn't worth feeling. I've given it all to

God. There's so much going on, I can't cope with it, and

it's okay for me to just sit at God's feet for a bit. I

want to be that Mary for a little bit. I know Martha is important.

We sometimes don't think Martha is the good guy in this picture. There's

so many Martha things that we do every day. Sometimes we just need to

be a little bit of Mary and so that, you know, God's refreshing

comes over us. Sometimes it gets really, really hard, and sometimes we

struggle so much because we're running dry. There's so much of dryness that it

becomes a friction to be able to rhyme. We can't do it unable because

come into a place I'm not be a really bit tired. I can't be

unable to the presence of God. And that comes as a relative sitting and

defeat of Jesus one of the hardest things because when you see there are print

into your mind, Oh what about this? Who you've got that, do

a reminder for this and don't do them at least for that. And this

is just general. How often works said that things become a lot easier.

You begin to respect. He begins to see that I have funny app on

my phone moone and one day justly but it checks your blood pressure and I

thanked up for a whole week. Founded the weeks I was able to the

this. I was able to see my pressure on start was actually really low.

It was a good law and it said yes level and there's a leaden

time I was working, I have done a lot of said you're a cheek.

I don't know whether the pass right or wrong. But I know something

that used to sit they got and these the sense of looking is what I'm

doing is my life worry? You know? Should I continue doing this?

It becomes more meaningful and sometimes tragling. Maybe there's a lot going on.

I know, I know if I feel that, you know for us there

must be so much going on in our life. And yet you take with

God? Should I sit at his feet and go? You know, God

here. I just want to listen to you. I just want to hear

from you and that that little bit every time. Yeah, and I want

to encourage you whatever battles you need to matter. Like I told you at

the beginning, to my so much as I'm pretty, and it's very different,

and I lo pleaziers as, I'm very encouraged with that. But whatever

we are facing, I think at the end of the day, you know,

don't let it bring you down. Don't let that sense of weariness get

over you. So then bring a sense of depression. You start feeling low,

you start feeling you're useless. It's not it's it's not worth it anymore.

But the more you decide to Okay, I'm going to just give this

a chance. I'm going to just sit at Jesus' fate. I want to

hear what God has to say about what I'm going through. I want to

know what he has to he has to say on this. I want to

know what he's thinking and his perspective. The moment we turn and switch into

that, you begin to see things in a completely different light. The places

you feel like you had no strength to stand up, you begin to see

how he sees it and it gives you new strength. And I want to

encourage you this morning. You know, take that time and it's hard,

it's hard, but you know looking for that time, that maytime is really

really important to be able to get over that sense of you know, it

brings value into what you do. It starts making you see yourself in a

whole new light. It gives you a new strength on that journey. And

I pray God will bring it into this season in your life, whatever it

is you're going through. And like I said, you know, I felt

like this was something not just for me, but I felt like God wanted

you to hear. And whatever it is you're going through, I believe God

was to bring a sense of refreshing almost into your wanting to bring that driver

of reshing your life. And if you open your hous that I believe God

will do that. Fay Arms