GROVE WOMEN LIVE // Summer Song Vol. 3 // Week 2

Good morning, ladies.

It is Tuesday, June 16th.

I cannot believe that we are halfway through the month of June.

And we are in our second week of our summer song series.

And this week we're gonna look at the great hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

And um this is one when I saw it on the list, when Missy had sent the list, and I saw it on the list, I thought, hmm, I think we did that one before, but I didn't go back and check it out.

So Sunday, when our pastor was sharing his thoughts on um this song, he even mentioned that this is one that is on repeat.

And so I did go back and look, and I actually am the one two years ago that talked about this song that shared what was on my heart.

But just before we get started, just an example of God's faithfulness.

Um, what I shared today, I could not have shared two years ago.

And so God is faithful not to leave us in the same place, just to keep working in our hearts and growing us.

So hopefully, if you were with us two years ago and you um experienced a Facebook Live or our church service where we talked about this hymn, Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

I hope that you can say the same thing that what you could share about God's faithfulness today is not what you could have shared two years ago.

That um he just has been just shown you how great his faithfulness is just over these past two years.

So let's open up in prayer and then we're gonna get into scripture, and then I'm just gonna share with you what is on my heart.

Dear God, we're um blessed to be back again with our summer song series.

Dear God, we're just so thankful for this great hymn and the truth that you gave us.

And dear God, I just pray um that our hearts would be open, that our minds would be open, um, and our hearts would be open just to hear from you today.

I just pray um that every woman listening right now or later will just be able to see how faithful you are and to see your faithfulness in her life.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Okay, so I want to start with um the scripture that this is based off of that um was shared with us during church on Sunday.

And it's Lamentations chapter three.

I am going to read 22 through 26.

It says, Thy faithful love of the Lord never ends, his mercies never cease.

And as I read this, if you think about the words of the song, you're going to see some familiar words and familiar phrases in these verses.

Great is his faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh each morning.

I say to myself, the Lord is my inheritance, therefore I will hope in him.

The Lord is good to those who depend on him, to those who search for him.

So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.

So I just want to look at a couple of um the verses from the hymn.

We're not going to look at everything, and just kind of give some thoughts about those before we go on.

So the very first verse of the hymn says, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father.

There is no shadow of turning with thee.

Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.

As thou hast been, thou forever will be.

And those last two lines, thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.

As thou hast been, thou forever would be.

This is probably the rock, the mountain, the boulder, however you want to look at it, the foundation that I put my faith on.

That God never, ever changes.

And ladies, you know, with us, you know, some of us, depending on the season, our families may not even know when we get up in the morning what they're gonna deal with because we can change.

I mean, different life just affects us different ways.

We are ever-changing.

Um, but God never changes.

And and I always hold on to the fact that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And the God of Daniel, the God of Esther, the God of David, the God of Paul, the God of John, all of these great heroes that we read about in scripture and how good God was to them and what he did, that is our God.

He never ever changes.

So that to me, just that um that truth is huge.

And then the verse that says, Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth.

So just think about that pardon for sin.

If that wasn't true about um our Father, about the God that we serve, if he didn't send Jesus to be our pardon for sin, we would not even be having this conversation today.

And then it says, peace that endureth.

And to me, it's not just, he doesn't just give his faithfulness, is not just a peace that endures, but it's a peace that transcends all what we would think is humanly possible peace.

It's peace in times that we should not have peace.

It's peace in the midst of all kinds of chaos and trouble, but we know that he is peace.

He is so faithful in that way.

Then it goes on to say, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide.

And ladies, I don't know if you have experienced this, but just knowing that Jesus is with you, that is just all that you need.

That is the cheer.

And it's not cheer like rah-rah, you know, go you, but it's cheer like comfort, contentment, just having that inner joy that he can bring.

And then to guide us.

Um, how often have you been through the day or the week?

And and you might even reflect, or even at the moment, you're thinking, I think that's a nudge of the Holy Spirit to do this or to say that, or to not do this, or or not to say that.

Um, he's always guiding us.

He he uses his word to guide us, he uses um just doors being closed and being open to guide us.

He uses mentors and friends that we might have in our life that might give us words of wisdom.

He uses all of those things to guide us.

And then it goes on to say strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

And when I think about that phrase, strength for today, notice it doesn't say strength for a decade or strength for a week.

It says strength for today.

And ladies, you know sometimes that strength, we need that removed minute by minute.

It needs to be renewed just continually.

Sometimes that strength's not even there for a day.

We have to keep going to God and asking him to renew that strength.

But he does give us strength for today.

And he doesn't give us strength for long periods of time only because he wants us to depend on him.

He wants us to continually go back to him and seeking that strength from him because he is the source of that.

And then when it says bright hope for tomorrow, I often think I don't know how people can do life without the hope of Jesus.

Um, there's good in this world, but there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of bad, there's a lot of evil, there's a lot of chaos, a lot of trouble, a lot of all the things that um could take away your hope if you didn't have hope in Jesus.

So hope for tomorrow, like that, we've got to have that hope in order to be able to go on.

And then finally it says, Blessings all mine with 10,000 beside.

And you know, ladies, no matter what we're going through, no matter what we face, there are still blessings that we experience in our life because God is a faithful God and because he is a good God.

Um, another reference, scripture reference that I want to share with you is in Isaiah.

And it's verses one and two.

It says, But now, O Jacob, listen to the Lord who created you.

O Israel, the one who formed you says, Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you, I have called you by name, you are mine.

So listen to this next verse.

When you go through deep waters, I will be with you.

So it doesn't say if you go through them, it says when you go through them.

So you're gonna go through deep waters, you're gonna go through stuff where it just seems like you can hardly even move the water so deep that you can hardly make it through.

But God says, I am with you.

He's faithful, he's going to be with us.

Then it says, when you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.

We're gonna go through rivers of difficulty.

And if you lived any amount of time, which we all have, you know that you're gonna go through difficult times.

You're gonna go through trouble.

And just the image I have in my mind is going through water, walking through water, and the water being right up here to my nose.

It's just as high as it can go without me drowning.

But God says you're not going to drown.

And then it says, when you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up, the flames will not consume you.

So just reading that, just assurance and just encouragement to know, yes, we're going to go through these things, but God is going to be there with us.

And he's not, he's with us, he's not gonna let us do it alone, and he's gonna make sure that we're okay.

Maybe not the okay that we would like to be or what we consider okay, but he has a plan, he has a purpose, he's a good God, he wants our best for us, and he's gonna make sure that we are taken care of, and he is going to be very faithful in that way.

Um, I don't know if you all grew up like I grew up, but um, the church that I grew up in, and I'm talking when I was a young girl, really up through high school years, we had church services three times a week.

We went on Sunday morning, we went on Sunday evening, and we went on Wednesday night.

And periodically on Wednesday night, we would have a time where people could share a testimony.

And most often those testimonies that were shared were just hard times that people had been through and how God had been there for them.

In other words, how he had been faithful.

And you know, I don't really remember the words that were said, but even as a little girl, I can remember that's how I really learned about the faithfulness of God, of how He gets us through these hard times that we go through.

And circumstances, our circumstances, don't change his character, it doesn't change his faithfulness.

And, you know, as a young child, I really didn't have difficulty that I went through, not, you know, compared to what you do as an adult and as you as you live life.

But I just can remember how hearing those encouraging words made me feel and how it let me know no matter what people went through, no matter what experiences in life that you have, that God is going to be there, that He is going to be faithful.

So, what I want to do with the rest of our time today, I'm gonna go kind of go old school, like we did back then, and I'm talking like back in the 70s.

Um, and I'm just gonna share a couple things of examples of God's faithfulness.

And these are not things that I've experienced over the past couple years, these are things that I have experienced over the last 14 weeks.

Um, so just you know, three a little over three months, three and a half months.

And I know that we probably could even share God's faithfulness from yesterday or just even last week.

We don't have to go back very far to see how faithful God is because he is faithful to us every single day.

And these um, what I'm gonna share with you, not everything has a happy ending because God doesn't promise us a happy ending.

He promises us to be faithful, he promises to meet our needs, he promises to be there with us as we go through these hard times.

So um, probably a couple years ago, a dear friend of mine, her, she was her future daughter-in-law at the time, daughter-in-law now, but she said to me on more than one of case more than one occasion, I'm not religious.

And I have an issue with the word religious um just because I don't even like to think in those terms.

I like to think that we follow Jesus, we're disciples of Jesus, not that we're religious.

But I know when I hear that from people that what they're saying is God's not really a part of my life.

And the fact that she said it more than once to me just really stuck with me.

It bothered me, it concerned me.

Um, it's something that I have prayed about, but she made it very clear that God really was not a part of her life.

Now, let me say before I go on, I do not know what her relationship with Jesus is now.

I am not judging, I'm just stating what was said to me and how I have seen God faithful in this situation.

So, fast forward to about maybe four weeks ago, five weeks ago, she was diagnosed with cancer, just out of the blue.

Um, she had found the lump, she had mentioned it to her doctor like months ago.

It was, my understanding, it was kind of foo food.

Nothing was done about it.

Finally, about a month ago, she had a biopsy, it was aggressive cancer.

Since then, she has had surgery, and she is facing five months of chemo and then five more weeks of radiation.

So she's got a long road ahead of her.

But as soon as she found out this diagnosis diagnosis of cancer, she reached out for prayer.

I I saw a post on Facebook, and even though Facebook has many issues and we could, you know, argue the pros and cons of Facebook, thankfully we have Facebook for what we're doing right now.

But she did reach out for prayer on Facebook.

And right then I just thought, God, you're faithful.

Like, you know, someone who basically in a roundabout way told me, you know, God's really not part of my life.

But here, you have not stopped working in her life.

The first thing she thinks of is, I need prayer.

And to me, that is just a huge example of God's faithfulness.

God continually pursues us.

Even those of us who follow Jesus, he continually pursues us and wants to transform our lives and change our hearts.

But to me, that was just a huge example of God being faithful.

And I know as, you know, as a human, that if someone kind of said, I don't want anything to do with you, the last thing I'm going to do is to pursue that person.

But God's not like that.

He is faithful.

He wants to spend eternity with all of us.

And he died for all of us.

He didn't die just for a couple people, he died for everything.

You know, it says, for God so loved the world, the whole world, people who were before, people who are now, people who are to come.

So to me, that was just a huge example of how faithful God is.

That He doesn't stop pursuing us and He He never wants to not spend eternity with us.

He wants us to all be eternity with Him.

And then another example of His faithfulness, and this kind of you might think, oh, I don't know that that's showing God's faithfulness, but it but it did to me.

Many of you know that I work for a faith-based nonprofit.

And we were very blessed the beginning of May to get a new warehouse.

And it has been a need for years, but the right one didn't come up, and it didn't come up, and you know, we would we would find one and then someone else would get it, and it was just a whole thing.

But God blessed us with this wonderful warehouse that is probably a little over two times the size of what our old one was.

So what we do is we provide food for students who face food insecurity.

So during the school year, the weekend bags that they take home to help supplement their food over the weekend.

So if a student would need food over the weekend, obviously these long breaks of school, they also need food.

So Christmas break and spring break, and then during the summertime, we also provide food.

But in that case, it's a box of food that could help supplement a family of four.

So last year our we had to pack a little over 9,000 boxes.

Now we physically do not pack them.

We have volunteer groups that come in, we have wonderful volunteers, businesses, churches, just our regular volunteers that come in to help us.

The issue was we had no room in the warehouse for the boxes.

So we had to, if we pack 600 boxes one day, the next morning before our next packing shift started, we had to get those 600 boxes out.

And God was so good.

He blessed us, he has blessed us with trucking partners.

And if you know anything about trucking, you're gonna know this is huge.

Who will truck these boxes to the schools for us for free?

They don't charge us.

Most of our trucking partners do not charge us.

So the fact that that went like that last year, like we made them, they went out, we made some more, they went out.

It was this continual flow, this in-and-out flow, which was wonderful.

That right there, we knew it was a blessing.

We knew it was a God thing.

We knew that God was blessing us by doing that.

So when we moved to this warehouse where we had more room, we still thought we would do the same procedure.

We would make them, we would get them out, and we would just keep that cycle going because it worked so well last year.

Well, it didn't work like that.

Um, we're using the same trucking partners, they're still doing our trucking for free.

It's still such a blessing.

But you know, God said that he will provide our needs.

He didn't always say he would provide, he doesn't say he'll provide our wants.

Now he does at times, but that's not what he's promised us.

So this year it's been a little different.

We still have gotten the boxes where they need to go in a timely manner.

But our trucking partners have not been able to do it just the next day and to get things out before we pack more.

But you know what?

We don't need that.

And to me, that shows God's faithfulness.

He's faithful to meet our needs, not necessarily our wants, but he's faithful to meet those needs.

And to me, that just shows, you know what, God, you are faithful.

You're not, you know, when we have a need, and we did have a need at one time this year that we needed to get some boxes out, and a trucking partner came through.

But God meets our needs, he doesn't just meet our wants, and he will at times, but to me, that just shows his faithfulness.

That shows he's not changing.

He said, I will meet your needs.

He doesn't say, I will meet your wants.

So to me, that just showed the faithfulness of God.

And then the final thing I want to share with you is just what has been going on in my personal life the last 14 weeks.

On March 8th, um, I had gone to church, I came home, um, changed my clothes, and went for a walk like I always do every Sunday after church.

And the place that I was walking has a lot of hills because I I like to walk hills.

I think it's good training for if I'm doing a race or whatever.

And I don't run races, I walk races, but I, you know, go at a pretty good pace and I need to train the hills in order to be able to do the races that are around this area, just because we have a lot of hills.

And um this one hill I was going down, I probably had been down it hundreds of times just because I walk at this place a lot.

And it is covered in moss, and I know that, and I'm very careful where I walk.

But on this particular day, I slipped.

I I don't know how I slipped.

God allowed that to happen.

And when I landed on my hip or my leg just the right way, it resulted in a spiral fracture of my femur, a fracture of my femur.

And of course, I didn't know at the time what it happened.

I tried to get up, could not get up.

Fortunately, I don't ever walk without my phone, normally because I'm always listening to an audio book or a podcast or something.

Um, so I had to end up calling 911.

Um, like I said, I'm at this place all the time.

So I was able to tell them exactly where I was, how to get there.

Um, they had to come with a gator and a backboard because, of course, where I was, they couldn't get the ambulance down there.

And um just the fact that they came so quickly, that was God's faithfulness.

The fact that I knew exactly where I was, that was God's faithfulness.

And just as they were about ready to put me on the backboard, which at the time I said, please don't move me, which was a stupid comment, but I just knew the pain was going to be so severe.

Um, just about that time, I hear someone come up from behind me and I heard him say, Mrs.

Ford.

And I looked, and it was a former Student of mine.

He was one of the paramedics.

And, you know, it not that he helped the pain or took away the pain.

And I was being taken, the paramedics were doing a great job.

They were so kind and just careful with me.

But just knowing that someone there had a relationship with me, that they knew me, like I see that as God's faithfulness.

I mean, he just in a in a time where it could be really scary, he brought someone there that I knew.

And to me, that was, you know, such a blessing.

And I was so thankful to God for that.

And then the paramedics just not taking me to the closest hospital, taking me to a hospital where they knew I needed to go with the kind of injury that I had.

That was huge.

That was God's faithfulness.

And then just through this season of rehab that I've been through, I've never been through rehab in my life.

I really didn't even know much about physical therapy.

But, you know, my surgeon even said, he's like, your bones look good.

You're going to be fine.

He's like, it's going to be a long journey, but you're going to be fine.

And he said, this the physical shape that you're in is going to help with this recovery.

And that's something else that I just, that God has, you know, blessed me with a strong body and one that's able to do what I need to do with therapy.

And God has been faithful with where he led me to go to therapy.

I'm at a place now that I didn't even, I guess I saw the sign on the outside of the building, but I didn't know anything about it.

I have the best therapist that I just love.

Like I really look forward to going to therapy two times a week that I go just because I see that it's working and God has not healed me, but I, you know, he is healing me.

And I trust that I'm going to be back to where I was, but he just has been faithful through everything.

And um one of the biggest blessings through all of this just has been the prayer, the prayer for the community or from the community, the prayer from friends.

When I had gotten to my room the day that I had gotten to the hospital, when I got to my room that night, I knew I was going to have surgery in the morning.

I contacted two people to pray for me, one of them being Missy.

And I just knew that that, like to me, that's what had to be done.

I needed prayer.

Prayer, because prayer can, you know, you've seen the saying that prayer changes things.

Prayer does change things.

Going to God, I wanted people to be interceding for me.

So that has been huge.

Um, the next day when I um got back to my room after surgery, there was my son.

And the wonderful thing about that is I hadn't seen my son for almost two years because he lives on the West Coast.

And, you know, we talk every week and we FaceTime and we do all the things, but there's nothing like being able to give your son a hug and just to be able to be right in the same room with him.

So God was so faithful in that.

Like I never even expected him to come, but God was faithful and he brought me encouragement and um just blessed me so much in that way by having my son, you know, he took the red eye on Sunday night, and then he was here on Monday when I got out of surgery.

And then um, probably the biggest, the biggest lesson that God has taught me through all this.

He's taught me so many, and we just don't even have time to go into that.

But the biggest blessing that I have received, and the and probably the biggest lesson that I've learned is to accept help.

And when I had gotten to my room on Sunday night, knowing there was surgery the next day, I just knew that the Holy Spirit was telling me, Laura, you're going to need help.

Because you all, I was at a point where I could do nothing.

I I I just literally couldn't do anything.

I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything for some time.

And even then I didn't know how severe this injury was.

But God just told me, you're gonna have to let people help you.

And growing up in a time that I did, um, you were just taught you do things on your own.

You don't depend on anyone else, you take care of what you need to take care of.

And there's some good to that, but there's that fine line between being responsible for yourself and pride.

And I think I had way gone over the line on the pride aspect as far as accepting help.

And it wasn't just accepting help, but it was accepting help without guilt.

Because if I had to ask for help or if I had to accept help, I always felt guilty because I felt like I should be able to do it myself.

And that's pride.

And I just, God just reminded me, um, I get so much joy out of helping other people.

And I know many of you all do too.

And He just told me, Lori, you're taking joy away from people by not allowing them to help you.

And I did allow people to help me.

I allowed them to bring meals and just to come and set with me.

And I have a dear friend that I walk with regularly that, you know, even in this time when I'm really not able to walk, and my walking is like one mile and 27 minutes, which is like double the time that I normally would walk, um, she will come and walk with me just so I have some normalcy to my my daily life.

So just, you know, I just see God's faithfulness in so much.

And even though, yes, I wish this hadn't have happened, but it did.

And God allowed it, and He is sovereign and He has total control.

And I cannot question the reasoning for that.

But I will say, I have seen His faithfulness in these areas that I just mentioned to you that I would not have seen if this hadn't have happened.

So I don't know that I'm at the point where I can say, I'm glad it happened, but I'm glad that I've seen the faithfulness in God in all these other areas and that um he continues to work in my life and to transform my life.

So I just I'm I share these things just because I know when I hear what God has done in people's life, it's encouraging.

And I want you to be encouraged, and I want us just to realize just how faithful God is.

Even if God isn't faithful in the way that we want him to be, in the way that we think he should be, he is faithful, and we just need to look for that.

Um, before I give us our challenge for today, and we close out, I just want to mention this book.

It's called Anti Got Up.

If you want to read something encouraging that just talks about God's faithfulness, it's by Courtney Prae Duke.

And I had gotten this probably a month or so ago, and I just read it this weekend.

And oh, you all, this book, what she went through, the struggle, the hardship, and just how faithful God was and how she relied on that faithfulness, it is so encouraging.

So I would highly suggest that for anyone who's a reader and who has time to read.

So, our challenge for today, um I'm almost finished with the study by Kelly Mentor on 2 Corinthians.

And I read this last week and it just really stuck with me.

And so let me share this, and then this will tie into our challenge.

Um, she says we can all take a page out of Paul's evangelism and discipleship playbook here.

Sharing what God has done in our marriages, friendships, child raising, jobs, health, etc., especially during times of weakness and vulnerability, is one of the most relatable ways to share our faith.

And that just really struck me.

Just sharing our everyday life with people is just a great way to share our faith.

So here's my challenge to you, based on that.

Share with somebody how faithful God has been to you.

And an easy way to do that.

So often when we see someone, we'll say, Hey, how are you doing?

Now, I don't know that we really want to know how they're doing, but you all, if someone says that to us, let's let them know how we're doing.

And even if it's not, you know, a great day, if you're just like, oh, I've been rushing around all day, I got up late, let's put a but God in there.

But God, and then share about his faithfulness.

Or, you know, I'm really struggling with this, but God.

What a great way to share his faithfulness to other people.

So I would just challenge you to find a way to share God's faithfulness.

Now, if you do it the way that I just suggested, if someone asks how you are, um, they may not be asking you anymore how you are, but just let's take every opportunity we can find and just share how faithful that God is.

So normally we always close with prayer, but I want to close with a psalm.

And this is Psalm 117, it's just a couple verses, and this will be like our closing prayer.

We'll read the psalm for that.

It says, this is Psalm 117.

It says, Praise the Lord, all you nations, praise him, all you people of the earth, for his unfailing love for us is powerful.

The Lord's faithfulness endures forever.

Praise the Lord.

So, ladies, just keep that in mind.

His faithfulness is always there.

He's not going to change.

He is the same and he is going to be faithful.

It may not look the way we want it to look, but he is faithful.

Next week, Missy will be back with us at 8 o'clock on next Tuesday, and she is going to be sharing what's on her heart about the song Miracle Child.

So, ladies, I hope you have a great day.

Look for those opportunities to share God's faithfulness, and we will be back with you next Tuesday.

Bye.