Miracles from Heaven: extraordinary true story now a movie

The remarkable true story of a young girl’s faith, hope and healing, this movie may well be the first faith-based film finding critical acclaim and a mainstream audience beyond church-goers.

Little Annabel Beam had not been well for most of her early years. At five, doctors finally diagnosed her with two rare life-threatening digestive disorders.* 

“She would pretty much live on the sofa, with a heating pad on her stomach,” her mother Christy explains. As Annabel’s health continued to deteriorate, she lived with chronic pain and spent far too much time in hospitals. The darkest moment came one day as Christy sat by her nine-year-old daughter's hospital bed. The little girl turned to her mother and said, “Mommy I just want to die. And I want to go to heaven and live with Jesus where there's no more pain.”

Annabel had stopped fighting, and Christy felt she had nothing left to give.

“However much my faith had been tested and I'd questioned Him,” she says, “at that point I just turned it over to God.”

They needed a miracle. One week later, on December 30, 2011, they got one.

While the majorly crazy miracle of Annabel's healing drives the story, the everyday miracles—and the stellar performances and direction revealing them—transports viewers raptly along to the faith-affirming conclusion of death bringing capital-L Life. Perhaps especially if you, like Christy, find your faith wavers in the dark gorges of our journeys.

Master’s Book Store in Haliburton carries both the movie and book, as does Amazon and other retailers.  
_____________________________________
*pseudo-obstruction motility disorder and antral hypomotility disorder

Open arms and hearts in Haliburton Highlands join in Canada’s welcome to refugees

A refugee sponsorship committee has been put together from members of our community and parish, with plans to sponsor a refugee family some time in the spring.

It is amazing to hear of all the volunteers offering such diverse gifts as driving, advertising, fund-raising, providing help with finding health services, and teaching English. Donations are already coming in.

Outfitted in new winter coats and clutching their yawning 16-month-old daughter in the wee hours of Friday morning, a Syrian refugee family on the first large government flight began their new life in Canada—or, as they call it, ‘paradise.’

"We really would like to thank you for all this hospitality and the warm welcome and all the staff—we felt ourselves at home and we felt ourselves highly respected," Kevork Jamkossian told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "You are home," Trudeau said. "Welcome home."

—from Allison Jones of The Canadian Press

If you would like to donate (eligible for a tax receipt), you can do so online at Canada Helps, or with a cheque made out to St. George’s. Please include “refugee sponsorship” on the memo line.

To learn more about The Haliburton Refugee Sponsorship Committee’s goals, ways to donate, and upcoming meetings, click on the link above, or here for their Facebook site.

What are the common characteristics of growing churches?

A recent report on church growth and decline could prove to be a treasure trove for leaders seeking both facts and ideas.

Kirk Hadaway, chief statistician and researcher with the Episcopal Church, compiles dozens of contributing factors in the piece, and Victoria Heard, head of church planting and congregational development for the Diocese of Dallas, has
done an excellent job crystallizing his work down to what she considers the essentials. Heard assumes first a “robust proclamation” of the Nicene Creed,  and then presents a six-pack of fundamentals. 

1. A kingdom road map

2. The children go up front

3. Sunday school still works

4. A culture of learning for adults

5. Hospitality that counts

6. Add a service, stir up the sound

You can link to her excellent and challenging full article here.

The power and lasting effect of Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes

Operation Christmas Child honestly does bring hope and joy to children in desperate situations around the world through gift-filled shoe boxes as well as the Good News of God's love. It's such a simple way to be part of a hands-on missions project while focusing on the true meaning of Christmas—Jesus Christ.

If you have the slightest doubt that such a small gift helps or has much if any effect on a child receiving one, please take a few minutes to watch Damaris’ story:



As Damaris explains, you cannot impact one child without impacting her or his family and wider community: the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.

Boxes from Eastern Ontario go to children in Africa, Central America, South America, needy Caribbean countries, and the Ukraine.

You can find more information on Samaritan’s Purse and its Operation Christmas Child here.

Being changed to be community and world changers

By Louise Sisson

The Highlands were blessed to have Dr. Steve McEvoy visit area churches and teach on fulfilling the Great Commission. He was brought to Haliburton by Sandy Stevens of Put the Word into Action Ministries , a local charity aiming to strengthen and encourage the Body of Christ.

Steve pastored Shepherd’s Heart Prayer Centre in Truro, Nova Scotia for 13 years and now heads up Steve McEvoy Ministries. He also teaches leadership skills to both government agencies and the business community. His seminars are totally scripture-based, even though he cannot use the Bible as a reference in business settings. If you ever get a chance to attend one of his workshops/seminars, I would encourage you to do so.

St. George’s, Lighthouse Pentecostal and Lakeside Baptist churches partnered with Put the Word into Action for various of the seminars, and members of all local churches were invited and encouraged to attend. Although I had been a Christian for many years, Steve took passage after passage of scripture and opened them up to a whole new dimension. For me, it was a life-changing revelation.

The first seminar held at St. George’s (Standing Close to God) emphasized that Jesus did everything required so we can enjoy a relationship with God. He always stands between us and God so that God does not see us as sinful. When I sin, which I will do, it is my responsibility to stand back up, turn to God and receive the forgiveness He offers. This is a new day in my walk with God. We are worthy!

In the next seminar (Walking by Faith), Steve emphasized the fact that faith was given to us by God and only grows as we grow as Christians. How do we grow in faith? By hearing! How do we hear? Through reading the Word! The development of faith is like a newly-developed muscle; at times it will be uncomfortable. God will sometimes lead us into situations beyond our present place of faith, causing us to turn more intensely into the face of God and forcing our faith to grow. Will we stay where we are or will we allow God to lead us forward? The choice is ours!

The third seminar (Running by God’s Strength) spoke to me in two different ways. Firstly, when God created the earth and all that was in it, He gave immense responsibility to humans—similar to when you give someone a gift, you hand over the accountability for the gift to the recipient. Humanity, through choice, relinquished responsibility to the prince of darkness, and so opened the door and allowed evil to come in. So while we sit waiting on God to do something about the state of the world, God waits for US to take our part and do something about it.

Secondly, as we read in John 17:4, Jesus prayed on the mountain before he went to the cross, saying, “Father, I have finished the work that you sent me to do." FINISHED! COMPLETED! There was a work that was finished before he went to the cross. That work was ‘making disciples’ so that what he started here on earth could continue after he opened the other door allowing redemption for humanity.

Each one of us has been equipped and empowered to work as the Lord’s disciples. I asked myself and the congregation, “Before we walk through that door, have we finished the work that He sent us to do?” I challenged the congregation to help raise up the warriors to fight this battle, starting with our children and young people. Although many of us are seniors, we can put new meaning to the word ‘Gray Power’ if we step out of our comfort zone—in faith!

This is the generation where change can begin. It is time to turn the corner! We are working for the Church of Jesus Christ—not the Anglican Church, the Pentecostal Church, the United Church, the Baptist Church, the Community Church or the Catholic Church—although they may be the buildings we meet in. We have to finish the work Jesus sent us to do!

Revival: Is simple desperation enough?

So many of us pray for, talk about and hope for revival … but what does the concept mean to you, or for you or your community?

We hear stories from history of the great Welsh revival with Evan Roberts, or the Great Awakening with Wesley, Whitefield and Edwards. Modern-day missionaries tell of amazing moves of God in otherwise miserable places such as, for example, Mozambique.

Obviously a key ingredient is to have a felt need to be revived. If we’re comfortable where we are, who or what needs reviving?

The first time this idea whacked me was while listening to the stories of a friend working with Open Doors with Brother Andrew. In visiting difficult areas of the world, he had been struck by the fact of capital-L Christian Life thriving in areas where Christians live (and often die) under severe persecution.

Kevin Turner has me agonizing again over my—our—comfortable little worlds with a powerful article in this month's Charisma Magazine (see below for link*). An evangelist ministering primarily in regions of the globe where the gospel is restricted, Turner reminds us with first-person authority and passion of the too-prevalent sad fact of lack of Life in the Christian comfort zone.

While he addresses the American Church in particular, his points and questions obviously apply for most western churches.

"How is it that God can visit a mud hut in the middle of Africa yet bypass the comfortable sanctuaries we created for Him in our country? ...  Why are other nations experiencing revival and we aren't? Could it be that calamity clarifies while comfort confuses? Calamity is an excellent teacher. It shows us in an instant what is truly important. Our materialism leaves us content without God.”

Turner sees real life and growth in the churches of devastated areas of the world, and like my friend and many others, identifies desperation as the key to revival.

Certainly it is of critical importance, but who among us would invite calamity even with the promise of a magnificent move of God? We can feel desperate for many reasons, and any one of them can be enough to have us begging God for relief. For the affluent westerner it may well be an anguished cry of: “Is that all there is?”

Still, turning to God in desperation, alone, isn’t enough for genuine growth (a by-product of revival, after all) to happen. After Jesus tells us that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, he says, in what we’ve come to call The Great Commission:

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28: 18-20)

They not only help identify felt needs and so ‘catch the fish’, but help clean them up, train them, and release them—revived—into their own spheres of influence to do the same. Neither comfortable Christians nor simple converts can create or even enable revival, but desperate disciples can and do. So to my mind, the 'equation' might become:
Desperation + Discipleship = Revival

* Why Isn't the American Church Experiencing Revival? by Kevin Turner, in Charisma

Vincent van Gogh’s unappreciated journey with Christ

No one viewing Vincent Van Gogh's painting Starry Night walks away unmoved.

But how many know about Van Gogh's abiding faith in Christ? Both his father and grandfather were pastors in the Dutch Reformed Church, and apparently many in the family gravitated toward religion and/or art.

Vincent’s zeal for Jesus grew in his early twenties. Wanting to study theology, he unfortunately failed the seminary entrance exam, so went off to serve as a missionary to coal miners in Belgium instead.

Much evidence exists of his literally pouring out his life in sacrifice and service on behalf of the diseased and destitute. Sadly, and likely a contributing factor to his later psychological problems, even church authorities rejected him for what they thought was his improper dress and excessive zeal.

You can read more in this article by Mark Ellis, and see reprints of some of Van Gogh’s more overtly Christian-themed paintings.