Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Six People, Six Helper, make 12 Together for the Glory of God.

We saw Six people this last sunday downtown. Not too many. We took the time to do a bible study on the book of John. It's three questions long, and you can participate by going to this website: The Pirate Preacher's Discussion on the Book of John Have fun answering the questions. If Orlando is going to change, it is going to change by the grace and power of God as God's people proclaim and act out the word of God.
Some prayer requests:
That we faithfully proclaim the word of God.
That the guys we saw last week get the work they need to find a place to live. Several had work, but needed it to not rain for a few days so they could do it!
Pray we can find a permanent place to meet downtown or in some area where there are homeless people. Also pray that we can find something to do with the homeless here in Lakeland, cause they be here too!!!
Thanks and God Bless,
GB HOYT.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Today and Last Week...

Ok, I feel like I can give an accurate account of my life last week and the few weeks before. On May 21st my wife and I got some scary news. She's pregnant and due early October, and the Dr. said the baby had fluid on her lungs. He said that this could be because of a hernia in her diaphram. Kelly (my wife) and I were scared. We were also prayerful. We decided to tell our family and friends, and soon a lot of people were praying for God's will to be done. I spent some time in God's word, and reviewed the story of the man born blind. The people in Jesus' day wondered at a person's maladies and thought many times that they were due to sin either in the life of the one who suffered or in the life of their parents. This is a common and typical response I think. I know I was kinda feelin' that way. You want to play the "if only" game. Well Jesus' response was interesting, he said that neither this man nor his parents sinned but it happened this way so that God could be glorified. I thought about that for a minute and remembered that in Romans we are promised that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love the Lord (Romans 8:29). These ideas floated around in my head, and I began to become confident that somehow God was going to get a lot of thanks for this, and even if we got bad news, God would work it out to be something good.

We were scheduled for an appointment to see a leading doctor in fetal surgery, and a lot of people were praying for us. Thursday, we went to Tampa to see this doctor, and they took a full sonogram. I didn't know what to expect but I was confident that God would be there, and that he would take care of things. For some reason I kept expecting them to say things looked fine, even though there was no reason for such an expectation, everything I had read about so far suggested that the problem our unborn child was having was a serious problem that would require surgery, and could have some grave consequences. The Doctor who saw us came in, and did little sonogramming. The head guy came in and looked over her shoulder, and then she gave us the good news. There is nothing wrong. There is no fluid on our baby's lungs. Everything is good.
Thank God that He is good!
Your question for the week is, Does God still work miracles?


G. Brandon, Kelly, Katie, and Emma (current working first name for lil' bit)
bid you grace and peace!