For the last few weeks we have invited you to be a HOPE PEDDLER. We are ramping up to throw out the lifeline to families and friends in our immediate neighborhood and the Northern Kentucky and Tri-State region. For me, this is a throw back to another me and another day, having worked with young people who had ever reason to live but were on a pathway of destruction. Today, it is not just youth who become a statistic, but it is a wide spectrum of our society that is opting to dance with the devil. It is called the bane of our time. Bane means: a scourge, a plague, a nightmare, a blight, a cross to bear, a burden, thorn in one’s flesh, bitter pill to swallow, affliction, trouble, misery, woe, tribulation, pain. Strange, is it not, that a cross to bear is chosen to describe what this bane on society has become.
So what is Hope Over Heroin all about? Seeing that the Opioid pandemic in America is something that causes great annoyance, something typically poison that causes death, HOH is full frontal assault on this problem. If the pulpit is silent, sin runs rampant in the streets.
To begin with, it is not just hope over drugs that is presented. It is the “Hope of the World” that is being presented. We are at war with the futility that leads men to synthetic existence. What is hope, anyway? Hope is a feeling or expectation that something good is about to happen. It is an aspiration, a desire, a wish, an expectation, ambition, goal, design, or a plan. Our hope is stronger than a pipe dream. It is the belief that what God says will happen, will happen. I memorized this line many years ago form a stanza from a Charles Wesley hymn:
Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees
And looks to that alone,
Laughs at impossibilities
And cries, IT SHALL BE DONE.
TRUE STORY: In 1972, I was led by God to minister in a public school. I had been there for a few days when a staff member of the school, without my knowing it, had chased me down the major hallway that led to the principal’s office. Just as I was going into the office, she caught up with me and was going to give me a piece of her mind (her brother had been killed by a drug addict, and she was not happy that we were there to help the students). She was hurt and angry, and all the while her job was to try to help the students. I did not know this at the time, but God touched her heart as He worked His wonder in the hearts of parents and youth. Fast forward twenty years. I am preaching in Houston where the church had put my name up on their marquee. Mrs. Blair saw my name and knew that it could only be me. She came to the meeting that night, and we renewed our old acquaintance. I shared with her the testimonies of some of the young people, and she had kept in touch with many of them herself. She was a wonderful lady who loved youth, but her love for her work was almost lost. Her faith had been renewed by our obedience to just do what God called us to do and follow our God Given Passion.
This is our prayer for the first weekend in May. Please join us, and if you can, sign up as a volunteer.
THERE IS HOPE, AND YOU CAN BECOME A HOPE PEDDLER.
I BELIEVE IN YOU!
Pastor Cleddie & Gaynell