Heartwarmer

Heart Warmer

By Kevin Molloy

Harvey was a deeply devoted pastor of a small Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in a small town in upper New York State. Things were not going so well for him in his church congregation, and he knew what to do about it. As he and his dear wife prayed and brought everyone in the congregation before the throne of God, he went over all of his experiences.

He questioned his actions whether they were the right thing to say or do. He lived his life holy and righteous before the Lord, but something was wrong because the church was not growing, and even started shrinking he thought.

I am going to pray all day until I get an answer to this problem he agreed with his wife and they started to pray this early Saturday morning.

“Lord, why am I seeing a decline in church attendance?”

No answer!

He prayed every aspect of this prayerful petition that he could think of that morning. He started at 6 am and was not freed from the Spirit until 4pm in the afternoon.

He cried and wept bitterly for his congregation that day and said to the Lord, “if I do not see some new blood in this congregation then I guess this means that you want me to retire.,” he stated emotionally to his Father.

That night he renewed his pledge that if the Lord did not send him “new blood” he would consider that a call to retire from doing the work of the ministry. After all, there were other young pastors that needed a good place to pastor. He was just getting tired.

The next day early before everyone came to Sunday morning services a new family came to the door and surprised him because his back was turned to them, and they wanted to bring in their brood of kids …all six of them without making any noise.

Startled, the pastor asked, “What are you doing here?”

“That’s a strange thing for a pastor to say,” remarked the young man to his wife. “We must have come to the wrong place he said to his wife.

“No, no, no”, said the elder pastor, “You are exactly in the will of God.”