Yes One Can

Numbers.  I’ve never been particularly good with them.  Even as a child in school, dealing with numbers wasn’t a favored task.  However, using numbers is a huge part of every person’s life.  They’re a source for many various types of information.  Some of which is good, some bad, often indifferent.  Statistics are used every single day to give people all over the world all sorts of information about all sorts of issues.

Numbers can be great when they tell us our favorite sports team just won a game or give us some other information that’s considered positive in our minds.  However, they can also make us feel bad, such as when we’re dieting and the numbers we see on the scale aren’t what we wish they were.  They can also fool us and deceive us.  They can even hurt people in need.

How can numbers hurt people in need? Quite simply, by making us feel that our efforts are worthless, and by making us feel that one person surely can’t be of that much help when the number of people in need is so very great.

Studies have shown that people will care, and therefore do, more for the plight of one child, than they will if the need is for a large group of people.  In our minds we can grasp the needs of a single family much easier than the needs of an entire country.   It seems that the larger the number in need is, the more numb our minds and hearts get.  It’s easier to depersonalize larger groups.  We can more easily  justify doing nothing when we feel that the need is so great we can’t personally fix it.  We often say that there is strength in numbers, but when it comes to poverty, larger numbers don’t give us strength at all and instead actually give only a sense of hopelessness.  .

However, in the Bible, God plainly tells us that even only one can accomplish much.  One can indeed save many.  One has saved all who care to take His offer of salvation as their own.

When the disciples brought it to Jesus’ attention that there were large numbers of people that were hungry and in need of food, Jesus told them simply, “You feed them.”   With faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, one can truly make a difference in the lives of many.  With Him helping us, we are capable of doing so much more than we could ever imagine.

You are one and yes you can make a difference.  All you have to do is choose to follow Him.

Read Full Post »

Sharing – Battle Cry by guest blogger Matt McGowen

I’m going to share a blog post from Matt McGowen, the Senior Field Coordinator for Make Way Partners.  Please read and then share his blog post with everyone you know and let’s help them get this high school built for these kids!  Thank you in advance for reading it, sharing it, for donating, your prayers, anything  and everything you feel led by God to do for these children.

Battle Cry by guest blogger Matt McGowen 

If you’d like to learn even more about how God is using Kimberly L. Smith and Make Way Partners to bring Hope to many who would otherwise not have much, if any, please see my blog post for the contest to win a FREE copy of Kimberly’s book, “Passport Through Darkness!”  Thank you!  God Bless!

Read Full Post »

WIN a FREE Book! ~ ♥

If you’ve read any on my blog, or even more so if you’re a friend of mine on Facebook or Twitter, then you know how touched I’ve been by Kimberly L. Smith’s book, “Passport Through Darkness.”   Her book has started to literally change my life.  It’s changing the way I look at everything in life, including the simple things like having running clean water. I’ve always taken running clean water for granted.  It’s been there since birth and I can’t imagine not having something so seemingly simple. But there are those that do not have running water, that do not have clean water, that have to walk miles to get even dirty water.

Because of it’s impact to those who read this book, I want to see as many as possible read it.  God is using Kimberly L. Smith to open eyes to see needs that are there.  Jesus very clearly tells us in Matthew 22: 37-40 that we are to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind and that equally important is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We read that in our Bibles, most people know those verses well, but what does it look like in a practical way? Kimberly gives us perfect examples in “Passport Through Darkness” of exactly what that can look like.

So here’s the deal –  Kimberly and her organization Make Way Partners will give away a copy of her incredible book to the person that shares this blog post, and/ or my blog in general,  the most (the particulars of how this will work will be at the end of this post).  You can keep the book you win or you can give it to someone else and change their life, either way you will be helping to make a difference for the Lord.  Listen… The more we share this information, this incredible story of love, the more people will be made aware of the great need that’s out there and the more people will be changed and thereby helped.    I am going to run this contest from the second it’s published until Thanksgiving Day (November 22, 2012).

Contest Rules:  To win you simply need to share, share, and share this post and my blog in general,  everywhere – via email, Facebook, Twitter, word of mouth, and so on… JUST SHARE and when you share, ask each and every person to comment below or to email me at LetsSpeakGently @ gmail . com,  and let me know that you’ve shared it with them.

The person who shares it the most will be the winner and the winner will be announced on my blog on November 22, 2012.  Please come back here to look to see if you’ve won around the time frame of 7:00 pm EST. 

Please, above all else remember – Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. James 1:27   This contest is about sharing a story about what it means to do exactly what this Scripture tells us to do and how doing so not only changes the people being helped, but also how it changes the lives of the helpers.  It’s important – God says so, let’s help others “hear” this story.

Read Full Post »