Cristina’s Precious Treasure Box

Cristina’s Precious Treasure Box “These people do not even know us, but they care about us!” marveled Lucia, as she smiled at her five-year-old sister, Cristina. Cristina’s story, featured on the One With Them website, deeply touched our hearts, when we read that she had been orphaned and wounded in June 2011, during the fatal shooting of her parents and 13-year-old brother. Almost two years later, Cristina is finally doing much better. Recently, an Open Doors member visited Cristina and her sister, bringing letters of love and encouragement. Opening up one colorful card after another, she waved one to her older brother, exclaiming, “Look Arnulfo, how cute this one is!” Turning to her sister she added, “We have many who love us!” Arnulfo shared that Cristina has a box which she calls “my treasure,” where she keeps her favorite cards. Sometimes, her sister Lucia cannot find her because she is hiding in a special place where she can look through all her cards. This is a huge improvement. After the attack he shares, “She had stopped talking and her mood was not good. Due to serious bullet injuries in her arm,she had nausea whenever she ate.” Eventually, Cristina’s older brother sent her back to pre-school, which greatly helped. “Now Cristina once again has a sparkle in her eye, and a beautiful smile,” the Open Doors staff member added. “She is talking again and can eat without nausea. Praise God!” Despite physical therapy, Cristina has not fully recovered the use of her injured arm. In addition to medical assistance, Open Doors has been able to extend other practical support for Cristina and her family. “We can only be grateful to know how much our God loves us,” her brothers exclaimed. “We think it’s wonderful to have a great family that prays for us!” One With Them Be One With Cristina as you pray for full healing of her arm. Also pray for God’s ongoing comfort and emotional healing for Cristina and her siblings, as they slowly recover from the shock and consequences of this trauma.   5/8/2013

I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts. (Ephesians 6:22)

“I Begged Them to Leave My Girls”

“I Begged Them to Leave My Girls”

Deborah’s life will never be the same, following the traumatic events of 2012. Within a few months time, Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group, killed her husband and son, and kidnapped her two daughters.

The horrific evening began like any other, Deborah’s two young girls raced up the path to greet her as she returned from a long day at work. Inside their home, her husband, Shettima, was preparing a children’s Bible study for the evening prayers at church. Setting down her belongings, she took a bucket to draw water from the village well for the evening meal.

While she was gone, armed young men arrived at the entrance to the compound and waited for her to return. “They followed me inside the compound. I tried to alert my husband, but they overpowered me and forced me to lie on the floor. I heard my husband who was watching through the window praying, ‘Father, today I will come to you, please receive my spirit.’” The attackers fired four shots, killing Shettima.

Deborah, convinced that her last moments on earth had also come, asked the Lord to receive her spirit. As she prayed, her daughters, who had been hiding, came running towards her. Deborah was helpless to stop the men as they grabbed the girls, aged 7 and 9, and dragged them from the compound. “Looking up to the heavens, I cried for help at the top of my voice, but did not get a reply.”

Three months later, the nightmare took another horrific turn as extremists forced their way into Deborah’s home and murdered her son, her last remaining child.

One With Them
It was one year ago, on April 25, when Deborah’s life was turned upside down. Still struggling with the trauma, devastation and grief, she longs to know if her daughters are still alive, and holds onto hope that she will see them again. Be One With Deborah as you pray this prayer:

Father, we know that You are the God of all Comfort. Please wrap Your arms of comfort and peace around our sister, Deborah, especially today as she relives the terror, grief and devastation that began one year ago, today. Bind up her broken heart and bring her the joy of Your presence in the midst of her pain. Nothing else can bring comfort; she needs to experience Your presence today. Please protect and rescue her little girls from the extremists who took them. Nothing is impossible for You, so we ask that the Boko Haram rebels would release them today. Restore this remaining part of Deborah’s family to each other, we pray! In the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.

One With Them CHALLENGE
Please write a message to Deborah today. Assure her that you are praying for her and that she is deeply loved.  

 

4/28/2013

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
(Psalms 147:3)

 

FORGIVING GOD

Forgiving God
by John Loren & Paula Sandford www.newsongfellowship.org

One of the most strikingly overlooked aspects of our faith is our need to be reconciled to God. We seem to think that we should never be angry with God because He of course does not deserve it. More importantly we think that there is no way we could forgive God because He has not done anything wrong.

We forget how many times we have mistakenly held things against others who never did what we thought they did, and yet we needed to forgive them. Forgiving them did not mean that they had done something requiring forgiveness, only that we needed to clear our own hearts. Just so in the matter of being reconciled to God. He is not to blame, but that did not keep us from pouting at Him, and it must not keep us from forgiving Him.

The early church had little confusion about “forgiving” God. St. Paul wrote incisively about it, as a command (see 2 Cor. 5:18-20, NKJV). Note that Paul did not only say, as we may expect, “reconciling the world to Himself,” as though all that was needed was that He should forgive us. It is true that He did need to forgive us; He accomplished that in Jesus Christ. Here, however, the context makes it clear St. Paul was speaking of both sides, God forgiving man and being reconciled to man, and man “forgiving” God and being reconciled to Him. Paul says, “We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.”

We suggest you tackle reading both Job and many of the psalms with an eye open to the honesty of their cries before God. Try Psalm 88 for honesty of description; this is how far I have sunk, Lord, “I am set apart with the dead …whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care” (v.5, NIV). Read Psalm 44:9 for honest complaint, “But You have cast us off and put us to shame” (NKJV) or Job, contending with God (see Job 13:3, 15, 20-24).

Job's complaint is the cry of everyone, of our own spirits before God, if we only knew it. Every one of us has stored resentment against God. It is not very acceptable to think angry thoughts at God, so we won't admit we have them. But they are there.

It is this hidden storehouse that serves as access to demonic powers to defile us. Defilement from outside, from people, from things, or from devils, cannot lodge in us unless it finds interior fertile soil. Here is the soil of birth for all manner of evil in all of us, these hidden thoughts that, after all, God is unjust and uncaring-and we may say, “At least for me, whatever He may be for anyone else-or He would not have put me here in this situation of my life and left me in it! It isn't fair!”

Perhaps the most basic thing we can do in prayer ministry is lead people into prayers of “forgiving” God and being reconciled not only to Him but also to being who they are themselves. Every person needs to accept being what God has created them to be.

Have you accepted being who God made you to be, or do you hold deep-seeded resentment toward Him for not making you like someone else or placing you in a different family or circumstance? If so, take time today to meditate on His Word, forgive Him and yourself, and embrace His love, plan and purpose for your life.

Adapted from God's Power to Change by John Loren & Paula Sandford, copyright 2007, published by Charisma House. In this book you will learn how to heal your inner spirit and the spirit of each person to whom you minister, so that you could relate in wholeness and worship God in total abandon!