Reunited & It Feels So Good

[This post was written on January 1st, but we're just now getting around to posting it.]
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It's hard when teams leave. Especially when they are your long-time friends.

The Virtues left today. We had a great time while they were here.

"The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; May the name of the Lord be praised!" Job 1:21

There is an emptiness that is felt every time someone leaves, when their presence is no longer with you. It's very much like the emptiness that people walk around in everyday because the presence of God is not with them.

It reminds me of why we are here.

Most of the time, time will help you to not be so aware of the emptiness. But when you think of it spiritually, it's devastating. The longer people are without hope, without faith, without love and without Christ, the more they become unaware of the absence that exists in their lives.

It helps me deal with the emotions that are felt every time a team, new friends and old, leaves. It gives me purpose in the pain and that is what God wants from our trials, for His purpose to become more and more clear. Trials produce...

They produce pain in our flesh and in our souls. However, they also produce perseverance and strength to continue on in the faith. If we can please God with our faith, then every trial that we face is worth the smile it eventually puts on His face. And we sense the worth He has placed on us when we make Him happy, and we are satisfied in Him.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. - (James 1:2-4)

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. - (Hebrews 11:6)

The other side of this truth is that when we see someone we love after a long time has gone bye, we are at that moment aware of how much we missed them. We don't always realize it once they have been gone for awhile, but once we have entered each others presence again, we wonder how we weren't painfully missing them all along.

We are here to reunite people with their Creator, the God they have forgotten. We want them to be revived by His presence, and we will face many trials in order to make this happen. The seperation from our friends and families in the states is at times, very, very, hard to deal with, but purpose gives us strength and God sees us through everyday.

A friend I grew up with lost his wife to an auto accident the other day on I-95 in Jacksonville. He has 4 kids that just lost their mother. He himself just lost his best friend, and the person that he could face life's trials with at any moment has been taken from him. Now that's painful. That's a real trial. There are people who have trials far worse than what we are facing in almost any situation. It doesn't make our feelings go away, but it helps us to exercise self-control and to put things in to perspective.

In any trial we must try to find a purpose for it, and the best place to go is to the Word of God, and to the Father in prayer. Eventually, we will see a purpose even if takes some time, but meanwhile, we have to trust that God is sovereign and that "all things work together for good" according to Romans 8:28.