"LORD, How are they increased that trouble me! Many are they that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in GOD. Selah. But THOU, O LORD, art a shield for me, my glory, and the lifter up of mine head." Psalm 3:1-3
Dear Praying Friends and Family,
John Mac left just a few minutes ago, heading down to Mobile to see his little sis. Please remember him in your prayers as he travels, and please remember my brother Joe in your prayers. He's had a severe headache this week and is seeing the doctor sometime today. He doesn't usually have headaches so i'm concerned about him. Joe is a faithful reader of these Friday emails, and such an encouragement to his little sis. Thank you for your prayers for him.
Thank you for your prayers for my friend Shirley Wenzell during her battle with cancer these past few months. Your prayers helped sustain her and her family through a very difficult time. Shirley won her battle with cancer and the LORD healed her completely last Sunday night. Shirley was 75. Shirley's grandchildren arrived from Colorado an hour before Shirley died...another special blessing the LORD did for their family during this difficult journey. Wednesday we celebrated Shirley's life with a small gathering of family and friends at the funeral home, and then at the graveside. Shirley's son-in-law read her favorite passage from Psalm 121, while her daughter, granddaughter and friend shared about her life. Johnny shared a short message from the Scriptures, and then Shirley's grandson, Zac, play "Amazing Grace," on the violin. Afterwards, the family gathered at our family restaurant for a feast of shrimp, ribs, barb q pork, fried oysters, catfish, sweet potatoes, slaw, hushpuppies, topped off with ice cream. It was a sweet time of getting to visit with Mishel and her family celebrating her Mom's life. Since Mishel has been here since before CHRISTmas, she and I haven't had a lot of chances to visit because she has been faithfully caring for her Mom and trying to keep up with things at her new home in Nebraska. She became Mrs. Todd Phillips about a week before she came down here to stay three months ago. Since her Mom is gone, Mishel will be returning to Nebraska this weekend with her husband. After a brief trip to California to see her stepson graduate from boot camp in the Marines, where he accepted CHRIST as his LORD and SAVIOR, she is looking forward to returning home and continuing her life as Mrs. Todd Phillips. GOD has been so faithful to carry them through this difficult but sweet time with her Mom.
But thou, oh Lord are a shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head
Thou, oh Lord are shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head
My glory and the lifter of my head
Thou, oh Lord are shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head
Last weekend, I was studying for our "Detoxify or Die" class that meets on Sunday night before worship service. I was reading about a doctor in Florida who used Glutathione Shots to help Parkinson's patients. I looked up his website and found this video showing the benefits of Glutathione in Parkinson's patients. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
When i watched the video, i was overwhelmed with emotion, as GOD brought to my remembrance what HE has done in my own life with glutathione and the wonderful treatment that i have been blessed with to restore my health. When i was so sick, barely able to walk, think, and nervous as could be, there seem to be no hope after i went to doctor after doctor trying to find help. One person close to me said, you are just going to have to learn to live with what you have. It would have been easy to give up when day, after day after day, year after year, there was little relief at times. Somehow through the darkness, and desperation of my health problems, GOD helped me to hang on when things I could barely walk, and breathing was getting more and more difficult, along with a very great discomfort throughout my gastrointestinal area. I went to many doctors, a Harvard trained urologist at UAB, rheumatologists at UAB and in Huntsville, endocrinologists in B'ham and Huntsville, nutrtionist, and even Dr. Julian Whitaker in California...no one seemed to be able to give me lasting help.
Many are they increased that troubled me
Many are they that rise up against me
Many there be which say of my soul
There is no help for him in God
Though the fire was getting hotter, and my symptoms worse, and I continued to cry out to GOD for deliverance, HIS grace was sufficient and HE helped me to hang on until HE brought deliverance. HE gently assured me, that though i couldn't see HIS what HE was doing in the midst of my suffering, HE had a plan for allowing this into my life. HE could deliver me if HE chose too.
I cried unto the Lord with my voice
And he heard me out of His holy hill
I laid me down and slept and awaked
For the Lord sustained, for he sustained me
GOD in HIS perfect timing answered the prayers of HIS saints for me. HE lead me to doctors first in New York, through a phone appt. with Dr. Sherry Rogers, and then to Texas, with Dr. William Rea, and eventually Dr. Katherine Henry who did know what was wrong with me. I am so thankful that HE has blessed me with doctors who knew that I was struggling from pesticide poisoning, and immediately began treating me with IV's with glutathione and other nutrients, among other treatments, such as sauna therapy and oxygen therapy, and learning to rotate foods i was allergic too. My ability to be able to walk without discomfort melted away...among other symptoms as I learned that i was basically allergic to life. I started learning the slow process of how to deal with that, and heal my immune system. I continue to work on that, and probably will until I am completely healed with i go home to be with the LORD JESUS. I continue to take the IV's every couple of weeks, as my body continues to heal. I have been guilty of not being grateful for having to take the IV's:). But watching the video, reminds me of how very grateful I am for the ability to be able to participate in life again without being so uncomfortable. For now, i'm going to rejoice and be glad that GOD has provided me a means to lives a pretty normal life and taught me so much through the process, things that perhaps HE is calling me to pass on to others who suffer as I have.
But thou, oh Lord are a shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head
Thou, oh Lord are shield for me
My glory and the lifter of my head
Last week, i received my admittance package to the University of Alabama in Huntsville. If you've been keeping up with these Friday emails, you know that I feel the LORD may be calling me to return to nursing school to work on my Nurse Practioner degree, after i finish my senior year of nursing at UAH. This is an amazing journey for a gal who has struggled so much with her thinking and so many other areas of my health. But as GOD continues to restore me, i sense HE is restoring me to help restore others who have suffered as i have. When i went to the mailbox and saw the big white envelope with UAH on the front of it, i smiled, and i was happy, even though as John Mac says, "Everyone gets accepted to UAH." When i opened the package, my happiness turned to concern as I started reading their vaccine policy, for the school itself, and then others for the nursing school. When you have struggled as i have with the immune system, thinking processes, and other areas, taking vaccines is not something you want to have to do. There are just too many question marks there with the aluminum and mercury added to them to make them work better, and as a preservative. John Mac didn't help matters when he kept saying, "Mom you're going to have to take vaccines to go to nursing school." I kind of kept it in the back of my "worries" over the weekend, and really knew if GOD wanted me to go back to school, HE was going to have to move this "mountain" for me and make a way for me. HE didn't disappoint me and Tuesday when i spoke with the man over the nursing department and explained to him my health issues, he didn't think it would be a problem to not take the vaccines, especially if I had a note from my doctor explaining why she didn't think it would be a good idea. He said that i don't have to even worry about that until I get accepted will be around May or June if I do. I attended open house for the nursing dept. last night at UAH and was so impressed with the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff and students...it was definitely a good experience. I even got a refresher course on how to take blood pressure, which my family can tell you, i needed:).
GOD still seems to be confirming that this is the path HE wants me to take with almost everything i read in the mornings in my QT. Some of this morning's passages from Springs in the Valley that spoke to me are:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge HIM and HE will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you." Psalm 32:8
"And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left."Isaiah 30:21
"If YOUR presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in YOUR sight, I and your people?" Is it not in YOUR going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth." Ex. 33:15-16
I am trusting the LORD's presence and favor to go with me and direct my steps. If this is HIS will, HE will show me HIS favor and grace. If not, that I will clearly know that too. On days that i don't feel too well, i say to myself, LORD are you sure you want me to do this? GOD encouraged my heart from a reading from Springs in the Valley last Sunday morning, and I pray that it will encourage your heart too to be obedient to whatever GOD is urging you to do for HIM:
"Up...is not the LORD gone out before thee?"Judges 4:14
GOD has guided the heroes and saints of all ages to do things which the common sense of the community has regarded as ridiculous and mad. Have you every taken any risks for CHRIST? -Chas. E. Cowman
"Have I not sent thee?" Judges 6:14
GOD knows, and you know, what HE has sent you to do. GOD sent Moses to Egyp to bring three million of bondmen up out of the house of bondage into the promised land. Did HE fail? It looked at first as if he were going to. But did he? GOD sent Elijah to stand before Ahab, and it a bold thing for him to say that there should be neither dew nor rain: but did he not lick up the heavens for three years and six months? Did he fail?
And you cannot find any place in Scripture where a man was ever sent by God to do a work in which he ever failed."
-D. L. Moody
Had Moses failed to go, had GOD
Granted his prayer, there would have been
For him no leadership to win;
No pillared fire; no magic rod;
No wonders in the land of Zin'
No smiting of the sea; no tears
Ecstatic, shed on Sinai's steep;
No Nebo with a GOD to keep
His burial; only forty years
Of desert; only forty years
Of desert, watching with his sheep.
-J.R. Miller
Our might is HIS ALMIGHTINESS
"In all the world I have no one but YOU. Help me to follow YOU, even though it seems impossible. Help me to trust YOU as much as I long to love YOU."
-Hannah Hurnard, Hinds Feet on High Places
"Everything is possible to him who believes." Mark 9:23
"It is one of the lovely things about the MASTER we serve, that HE is so willing to use in HIS service dwarves as well as giants, and feeble folks as well as champions."
-Hannah Hurnard
"Are you called to help others? Do it with all the strength and energy that GOD supplies, so that GOD will be glorified." I Peter 4:11
Oswald Chambers devotions from My UTMOST for HIS HIGHEST have daily been a great source of encouragement to confirm the path GOD seems to be leading me down this past month http://www.christ.com/devotional-oswaldchambers.html.Just pray for me to have a surrendered heart to the LORD, and I will follow.
A few months ago, before the LORD got me into choir (and that is what happened, i wasn't planning on joining but i sure do love it!), the choir sang a beautiful song called, "Thou, O LORD." I had never heard it before, but it was one of those songs that just stays with you because it exhalts the LORD through singing HIS WORD, and puts courage in your heart. Tuesday morning i spent a wonderful time listening to the Brooklyn Tabernacle choir sing this song, along with several others on You Tube, that just lifted and glorified the LORD and strengthened my heart so much. "Thou, O LORD," is directly taken from Psalm 3 and it is just as true today for GOD's children as it was when the Psalmist wrote it hundreds and hundreds of years ago. GOD is your shield and mine, and HE is the the glory and lifter of our head. Just look back over your life and see how very faithful that GOD has been to love you and provide your every need, and to take your messes and make something beautiful out of them, to take your sin and give you CHRIST's righteousness when your trust HIM as your LORD and SAVIOR. HE want us to trust HIM when our world falls apart, that HE has a plan and purpose for all that HE allows to come into our lives. Listen to the words of this beautiful song, sung by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir and may your heart soar with courage and strength in YOUR SHIELD, YOUR GLORY and the LIFTER of YOUR HEAD "Thou, O LORD," http://www.youtube.com/
If you don't know CHRIST as your SHIELD, your GLORY and LIFTER of YOUR HEAD, HE invites you to come to HIM today asking HIM to forgive you for your sins, and trust in HIM and HIM alone to save YOU. HE loves you and me so much and wants to be YOUR SHIELD, YOUR GLORY and the LIFTER of your HEAD.
I love you too, thank you so much for spending this time with me. May the LORD use some of HIS WORDs to encourage and strengthen your hearts where HE is leading and guiding your paths to glorify HIM and accomplish HIS plans and purposes. I appreciate your encouragement and prayers so much for all that GOD is doing in our family and our loved ones. John Mac continues to study for the test to enter med school. He will take that the end of May...in the meantime, we are enjoying having him here at home, and eating many meals together! Hannah Beth is studying hard at Mobile and made 97 on her Microbiology test today. So very thankful for GOD's help to her and her hard work. She has several tests next week and a paper due before spring break next weekend...thank you for your prayers for all of us. I welcome the opportunity to pray for you, thank you for giving me the opportunity to pray for you and your loved ones.
With all HIS love,
mitzi
P.S. We are having a Spring Praise Concert the last Sunday night March at First Baptist Church in Athens...and the choir will be singing "Thou, O LORD," "My Help," and many other beautiful and encouraging songs of Praise to our great GOD. Come and join us for a wonderful night of worshipping and praising HIM . We're not the Brookyln Tabernacle choir, yet, but we are getting there:). Don't forget the Women's Conference the third weekend in March at FBC, Athens, I would love to have you come and go with me. GOD bless you!
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"A believer longs after GOD- to come into HIS presence-to feel HIS love-to feel near to HIM in secret-to feel in the crowd HE is nearer than all the creatures. Ah! dear brethern, have you ever tasted this blessedness? There is greater rest and solace to be found in the presence of GOD for one hour, than in an eternity of the presence of man."
-Robert Murray M'Cheyne
"With lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Jeremiah 31:3
"New Jerusalem"
TaRanda Greene with the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir
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