God does not give us more than we can handle!

Sometime late fall of last year our neighborhood kids next door were not coming to our Good News Club and I did not even see the kids playing out in the street. Matt and I decided to pay the parents a visit to ask about the kids and to tell them that we have missed seeing their kiddos at our Tuesday night club.

After talking with the mom we realized that they were struggling financially and were very stressed. The kids would go for about an hour to our neighbors across the street and then come to our house. For this, they would pay the kid who was taking care of them $10. We had a feeling that it had something to do with that, so Matt and I talked about this before going over and decided that if it was a financial problem, that we would take their kids early. We were both dying to ourself...in my flesh I did not want to do this, but I knew that these kids souls were more important than that hour of rest/dinner/preparation or whatever we needed to do.

The kids, ages 3, 6, 9, started coming earlier and boy they had energy :) It was such a hard time because a lot of the times we were getting ready for dinner or for the evening and the kids wanted to play. I had to pray lots for the Lord to give me grace to do this. I will admit that sometimes I had a really bad attitude about it, but I never told the Lord to provide another way for the kids. I only asked for His grace. God always did give us the grace needed. Many times the parents brought their kids earlier than we had agreed to and they would sometimes pick them up close to 10:00 pm!!! These were some very hard nights.

This past week we realized that bowling was over for the parents so the kids are now coming at the same time that the other kids come. I can't tell you how amazing that was this past Tuesday :) I could only thank our Lord for His goodness toward us. You know, He never gives us more than we can handle. I was glad that I never complained and truly I did not even realize it until that evening. What a great God we serve! He gives us all that we need to be equipped to serve Him. I love that serving God does not mean that we have to go to another country, although this is good and some people's calling, for us it has been the calling to serve God in our neighborhood, at work (for Matt), the body of Christ and everyone that we come in contact with.

Thank you Lord for using us to be your tools so that others can come to have a relationship with you. What an honor it is. You do the work...we are just willing vessels. May Your name be glorified!