Slaying the Giant by God's Example

I cared for a man with Parkinson’s Disease for three years, he was a true man of God. We read his favorite Bible Story “David and Goliath” countless times while we were together in fact it was the last thing I read to him before he passed.  As I returned to the story for the hundredth time this morning the words just jumped off the page to show me a pattern in David’s life. Proof that God’s word is living and active and never returns void. (OR--I guess this could be proof that I'm a "slow learner" :0)

As I was asking God to help me see where I should go today and asking Him to show me the path HE designed for me to take while leading this ministry, He showed me His design through David in 1 Samuel 17.

David was an unlikely candidate to win a battle against a giant.

•  People thought we were nuts when we told them what the Lord had laid on our hearts. In fact, I’ve no doubt that some of our readers still think we’re nuts! It’s all good because I like nuts.

 David recognized the need.

•  We educated ourselves on poverty, our community, possible solutions.

 David answered the call to arms.

•  We chose “active obedience” to the call rather than “armchair prayers”

David attempted to fight the battle in the traditional way by wearing the Kings armor but discovered the battle could not be fought because he was weighed down with ill fitting armor.

•  We discovered the traditional approach to feeding hungry people would not work for the specific battle we were given to fight.

David went into the valley to face Goliath

•  We ventured out into the community to size up our giant and meet it face to face.

 David looked the giant in the eyes and said, "I'm going to defeat you, the Lord's help is all I need, HE will deliver you into our hands".

• WE PRAYED, we walked neighborhoods, we met residents, we prayed some more.

When Goliath drew near to meet David, David RAN to meet the giant.

• After hashing and re-hashing the process…we decided to “just do it” and scheduled our first event on August 13^th, 2010.

 David defeated the Giant.

• Forever Fed to this day has held 6 events and served over 750 meals .

David carried Goliath's head around to give glory to God and show what God had done.

• While this website is really great, Forever Fed still needs your help! Please help us spread the word about the work of our ministry and help us raise an army of people to help us slay this giant each and every week!

There is a certain reality to the story of David and his life as he sought God’s own heart. That reality is that David fought numerous battles with an army of warriors fighting beside him throughout his entire life.  While he had some less than stellar moments and a few failures and personal losses along the way, David continued to seek God’s and he chose to fight the good fight!

Thank You so much for your generous support, prayers, and many hours of service! We cannot fight this battle alone. Please continue to support Forever Fed with your prayers, gifts, and service. This battle is not ours, it is Gods.  We are simply his soldiers being sent out to do a job here on Earth. We have a very busy schedule this fall and we need every prayer, every dollar, and every helping hand we can muster to fight the good fight!

I’ve said before that I’m not sure anything we ever do here on Earth impresses God, because He’s God, creator of all things. But I do know that everything HE does impresses me!

I pray that you will choose to fight the good fight and I encourage you to glorify God with you’re your life!   

Glory Days my friends, God truly has it all!

Facing the Boredom of Poverty

Facing the Boredom of Poverty

As I am driving to the Monday Outreach I participate in each week in Canton I’m becoming more aware of the familiar faces and families congregating along the street. I see a familiar young mom on the side of the road by her stroller and she’s wearing that “I’m so very bored” look on her face. The day workers who have not been hired for the day are leaning against buildings and not really talking and they have a fairly fearsome scowl on their faces. Perhaps they’ve simply run out of things to say to each other by 11:30 in the morning.  That scowl used to intimidate me.

I feel for these people, many of which I call friends. They are bored and there’s nothing more boring than not having cash. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t do anything, you can’t afford to see movies or go out to eat.  You can’t turn on the television for a hundred different reasons.  You can’t call someone on the phone because you can’t afford the minutes.

As it turns out, a large part of your day is spent just sitting around being bored. Now if you are a parent you’re probably saying, “Well you could read a book, or take a free class, or go help someone with their work, or clean your room!”  But the reality of being short on cash and long on time is that there’s just not much to do.  

I’ve been helping at this Monday outreach for over a year and I’m just now seeing the fruit from my attempts at relationship building. I spent some time talking to a gentleman named Juan. Juan has been to a few Forever Fed outreaches and on the days he’s not working he comes to the Monday outreach as well.  He’s met each member of my family and asked after each one today. Juan makes a point of asking what their names are and he’s really attempting to remember them. He’s curious about my Sons who attend College and asked if my Husband was working today and about what type job he does. 

It wasn’t long ago that Juan was living in the woods behind a store. Today he has a “place to live” and he even has a dog too! Juan says his dog helps him stay happy because it’s very lonely living on your own with nothing to do. Today Juan smiled as he proudly pointed out a woman nearby and told me, “That lady right there, she’s my neighbor!”  Juan is proud of his accomplishments, this is a good thing. In the back of my mind I’m wondering if Juan will be able to pay the rent on his place when the work thins out this winter, I hope he’ll not have to sleep outside again. There were several weeks in January and February that we served over 150-200 men on Mondays in the cold harsh weather who lacked work and many were sleeping outside.

So it’s time for me to be dreadfully honest with you. While I am now very comfortable working with homeless and/or needy people from different cultures there was a time when I felt like a square peg in a round hole. I used to be one of those people who drove through the crowds of people on the street with one eye on the people and the other on the windows and door locks of my car. I was so far outside my comfort zone always jumped into doing tasks that needed to be done and rarely greeted the individuals I served. Over time I've learned how to greet people properly and discovered the importance of treating people with dignity. I learned that a smile is a universal language.

 Today as I drive into the same neighborhoods I’m smiling and waving at familiar faces and those people are smiling and waving back at me. I see my own growth as a huge accomplishment and it’s the end product of taking time out of my busy life and deliberately attempting to get to know some of God’s precious children.  Today I’m just like Juan and I’m proudly waving at my new found neighbors I’ve discovered in Canton.

The reality is these folks are not leaning up against buildings and plotting their next “break in” or government overthrow or child snatching event. The real story is that for the most part, they’re good people just waiting for the chance to be hired for a job and they’re hanging out together because their bored.

The next time you pass a group of guys hanging out in a questionable neighborhood and you go to lock your doors and roll up your windows, remember this. They are God’s children every bit as much as you are and they’re simply trying to make a way in this world. We are all one in spirit with different fleshy coats on the outside. I pray that we’ll all learn to look upon others not with looks of disdain or fear but with the eyes of Jesus filled with love and hope.

Forever Fed is so much more than a ministry that provides meals to needy people. We set the stage for ignorant people like me to sit down and mingle with folks they would not normally approach. We serve Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and everything in between. Our events are a chance for those who are experiencing hardships to get out and do something constructive with their families and friends. We are bringing Church congregations together in service that would normally not even talk to each other, and we are all learning what common grounds we share rather than focusing on our differences.  

Come out and join us today at Liberty Hill Church’s campus on 141 Railroad Street in Canton and take a meal with your neighbors at a table set with love and dignity. We hope to see you there! 

We're Raising an Army!

We’re raising an army in the fight against hunger in North Georgia!

In the story of David and Goliath the Israelites and the Philistines assembled on opposing hills while David and Goliath went down into the valley to fight the battle. In the same way, Forever Fed is choosing to fight hunger in North Georgia.

We’re asking you to support our army of volunteers and fight this battle with us.

You can have a huge impact by becoming a monthly contributor for our Ministry! We need an army of people to support our efforts by making a monthly tax deductible donation on the left side of this page AND you can join up for as little as $10 a month. 

Forever Fed’s short term goal is for our team to be in motion and actively serving food on a weekly basis and we had hoped to achieve that goal by October 2010 but as you can see, we've already surpassed that in September!

Your support will help us purchase food, supplies and equipment needed to help us fight the good fight. Below is our list of equipment needs we’ve identified beyond our obvious needs of food, serving supplies, gasoline, etc.  

• ·         Independent 501C3 status—In process $1400
• ·         Outfit present truck with refrigerator/freezer $1200
• ·         Insulated Catering Boxes for transporting food $750
• ·         Rectangular Insulated Drink dispensers 5gallon containers $300
• ·         Drawer storage for the truck (locking drawer tool box )$400
• ·         Tables x 10  $500
• ·         On-going Printed Promotional Materials
• ·         Large 8 Burner Event Gas Grill $450

Forever Fed’s long term goal is to have our own commercial kitchen (Estimated $4000/month including rent, utilities, and insurance) where we can prepare foods to be transported and served to those in need. This will make us less reliant on area restaurant donations to supply our cooked meals. We also hope to purchase a 24 foot fully mobile kitchen. This mobile kitchen will allow us to go to any location we desire and serve healthy food to people in need and will be utilized for disaster relief as well.

Slaying a giant issue of hunger is a huge task, but through David’s hardships told in the Bible, we also know with God, all things are possible!

A Blessing in the Face of Poverty

This morning I’m sitting on my deck listening to the world wake up. I’ve a nice hot cup of coffee with my favorite creamer and I’m watching the hummingbirds come and go from their feeder. I love starting the day this way, I am so blessed. But I wonder how Ed starts his day.

This is the story of Ed yet another face of poverty in North Georgia.

I met Ed last night at Forever Fed’s Canton outreach. Ed is a tall and lanky “country boy” with a care worn face, and a heart that is still hurting from the loss of his father 2 years ago. His father was very ill for years and Ed cared for his dad and saw to his daily needs. When Ed’s father passed away Ed was in a bad predicament, he was jobless with no source of income.

Ed is estranged from his family because he has a long history of alcoholism and is very honest and non-apologetic about his past. A few years back he met some Church folks that prayed for him to be delivered from his disease and he’s been clean and sober ever since. He smiled as he told me it’s a miracle that he doesn’t even want a drink anymore! Each week those same people and pick Ed up for Church service on Sundays and sometimes they even hire him to do odd jobs around the Church. Ed seems to have a good support system and friends that truly care about his well being.

 Ed considers himself a rich man. He’s a 50% owner of his father’s home in Canton which has been on the market since his father’s death.  He’s proud of his home and his partial ownership of it, it’s the only thing of value he has with the exception of his dog. But in my eyes, Ed’s financial future looks a bit bleak.  

Ed lives in a very economically depressed area of Canton in a declining neighborhood of 100 year old clap board homes. To make things worse, he’s had no water or power to that home in many months because he can’t pay the bills. He eats mostly canned foods because he has no refrigeration and no way to prepare meals. His uses candles for a light source and a bucket filled with borrowed water to flush his toilet. The meal Forever Fed provided was the first “hot prepared food” he’s had in a week and he was very grateful for the food as well as the opportunity to get out of the house for a while. Ed took some chicken home with him to feed his dog but he couldn’t take any for himself because he had no safe way to store it.

The coolest thing that struck me about Ed was this. To my eyes Ed is a man living in poverty. He’s got no regular income, no utilities, and his only physical asset is his home and it’s losing value every day. However Ed considers himself to be a rich man. He has a home, he has his dog, he has friends, but most of all he has a God that loves him.

Ed may be struggling financially at this point in his life but he is wealthy in spirit and rich in love. Ed’s God has already delivered him from the disease of alcoholism and provided him with a Church family to love on and care for him. Ed may not have electricity or water but he does know about the power of a living God. Ed’s source of true hope and power is an eternal light and the living water of Jesus Christ.

So I started these blog entries to tell you about the faces of poverty in North Georgia because there are many individuals withsome very large physical needs. What I’m discovering is this.

It would be very easy for those of us who are not impoverished to look with pity upon those who have little to nothing and say what a poor pitiful life they are living. But what I’m seeing is that some people in need of physical resources  are turning to The All Mighty God and he is always faithful in teaching, loving, and caring for His children.

Jesus told us in Matthew 26:11 that there will always be “poor”. Could that be because God has never given up on us? Through poverty some are given an opportunity to seek out God’s help because they have nothing and on the flip side, those that have “things” are given an opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ. In the end, we all win when we are looking to Him.

Most of all, I am so thankful that God is revealing how Forever Fed appears to be one of His ministries where we all come together to meet each other’s spiritual needs!   

One of the Many Faces of Poverty

Over the next week or so I’d like to help our readers get some small glimpses of poverty that exist in our own back yards. I’ve done some research online about the faces of poverty and while I’ve learned much through that research I’ve also come to know that poverty looks different in every community. I’m going to share a few “poverty snapshots” with you in hopes of not only educating the public but also to give the impoverished a voice in the community.

This is the Story of Edgar.

I’ve known Edgar for well over a year and I’ve learned many lessons through him that I hope to share with you over the next week or so. Edgar is homeless and he lives in the woods behind a store and bathes in what he describes as a “spring” that bubbles up from the ground. He does odd jobs at a local restaurant for an occasional meal and stands with the day workers in hopes of being hired. Edgar frequents the outreach I attend each Monday.

Edgar always wears a big smile. It’s the kind of smile that always reaches his eyes. He always greets me with heartfelt hospitality and a warm and sometimes smelly hug.  Edgar claims his life is totally dependent upon the grace of Jesus and that Jesus always provides for everything he needs.

About two months ago Edgar came and wished us farewell at the Monday outreach and he told us he was leaving for Florida where people were nicer and he could live peacefully. He claimed that Canton no longer loved him and that he was tired of being harassed by the police. Edgar had recently been arrested and jailed for various infractions. I can only imagine how that punishment felt to a man who is used to living his life on his own terms.  

A few weeks ago, much to our surprise, Edgar returned to our Monday outreach. When everyone saw him they shouted his name and gave him a warm welcome home greeting worthy of a rock star. When my turn came to give Edgar a hug he hugged me long and hard…in fact the hug grew to be a bit “awkward and improper” because of its length.  When the hug ended I noticed the same smile in his eyes but there was something different there as well. It was a sort of “knowing” that is the product of some life lessons he had obviously learned. 

Edgar was truly happy to be back amongst friends and I believe he has discovered he has a family. At the end of our Monday outreach the volunteers usually circle up and pray together however on this day, for the first time in my year of volunteering, Edgar joined us for prayer. Before our circle prayer began Edgar prayed his own prayer while standing in the middle of our circle and I could hear him thanking Jesus in his own mix of Spanish and English. I could also see the thankfulness in his expression while we waited for him to finish his earnest prayer.  As he opened his eyes he began wiping away his tears. I think sometimes when your heart grows it hurts just a bit.

Since that day Edgar has come and eaten a meal at Forever Fed’s Canton Adventist outreach and he’s been present at each Monday outreach and he always brings his new Spanish Bible with him. When I look at Edgar’s recent behavior, I think I can finally see the beginning fruit of a year's worth labor.

I believe Edgar may have discovered he has a family that loves him unconditionally as evidenced by the warm welcome he received. While Edgar’s life journey has been probably been long and very hard lived I believe his newest love journey is just beginning and I praise God that we were all allowed to be part of his life. 

Most of us wander this earth a bit lost, searching for a purpose to all the craziness we see each day and many never find what they are looking for because they are searching for the wrong thing!

A wandering heart cannot find rest in a safe place to sleep, or a place to bathe,  or even somewhere to eat meals or work. A wandering heart finds a home in the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.  A wandering heart seeks a home in a loving family, the Body of Christ.