Logan County LOVE the start

    I am blown away how little things grow.  A plant starts out as a little seed, like a tomato seed.  Have you seen one of those things?!  They are so small and thin it is hard to imagine that one little seed can grow and produce a huge ripe tomato.  (Can you tell I am ready for summer and some BLTs!)  This is how Logan County LOVE started, a couple little seeds (love God, love people, in word and actions) .  
   My friends and I met through a service group here in town and decided to start our own little group, after the one we met at dissolved.  (This is a huge lesson to me that its not always a bad thing when something doesn't work out the way we thought it should.  God can bring a bad situation into something really good.) 

   Logan County LOVE is a different kind of group.  We saw that there are a lot of ministries in our community doing a lot of good in the love of Christ; and we want to help them succeed.  We support other ministries in the area, like Genesis Project, Logan County Food Pantry, various church food pantries, Mosaic LC, and etc.  Our group then and now strives to be hands and feet; to help and serve those in need in our community.  Serving in the ministries in our community that are reaching out.  We are a pretty practical group as well we meet at Mc Ds and have break through ideas happen at home and at walmart of all places.  A conversation that started in our Lincoln Walmart became a launching point for the Logan County LOVE facebook group 
 http://www.facebook.com/groups/CommunityNeedsLoganIL/

   We have started out really small doing garage sales for New Beginnings Thrift Shop and working at the Logan County Food Pantry.  Informing each other about what we were doing individually and supporting each other on what we were doing as individuals.  Then Kat came up with a great idea of doing a free meal.  However we had nowhere to have this meal, or any money but our own to donate.  If you are familiar though with God and His ways..He always makes a way.

Ask, Seek, Knock

    Matthew 7:7-12⁷ “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

   ⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! ¹² So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

 

Another member Kathy attends St. John's United Church of Christ and they have a full kitchen. So we decided to ask them if they would allow us to have a free monthly meal at their church.  Sometimes you just have to ask!  They gave us the go ahead; so we have been having the 3rd Saturday Meal there ever since.  It is so cool how God makes things fall into place.  

why Beautiful Feet?

I love this verse in Isaiah 52:7

How beautiful on the mountains
   are the feet of those who bring good news,  
who proclaim peace,
   who bring good tidings,
   who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
   “Your God reigns!”

and Romans 10:15  ¹⁵ And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

One of the main reasons I love it to be honest is the part about the feet.  Feet are usually not the most beautiful part of the body! Ha ha and most of us would rather not show off our feet off or think of them as very beautiful.  Its weird that God uses this verse to speak to me because my feet are a mess.  I have huge bunions on both of my feet  and they mess up the direction of my toes. Its great trust me...they keep me from wearing girly cute shoes because if I do my feet hurt so bad I can barely walk.  Learned that the hard way at a couple weddings.  By the end of the wedding I was in agony thanks to my goofy feet, and the next day I limped around my house chasing Abi it was great...

   My feet are only beautiful though because of the good news I carry.  I'm sure actually that God really does think they are beautiful cuz He is cool like that.  The good news I carry; God has made a way to peace with us through His perfect Son Jesus or Yeshua Ἰησοῦς  however you want to say His name. The verse is overused but hey its true John 3:16-18 the message version 6-18"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. 
      
    This is the good news I carry with my beautiful feet. God came to us; all we have to do is trust in Jesus and what He did for us on the cross.  If you are unfamiliar with the story I encourage you to read all of the book of John for the whole picture.  Summarized though Jesus (God in flesh/perfect Lamb of God) died on a cross tortured to satisfy the wrath of God the Father for the world's sin.  My sin, yours, everyone. But then here is the good part HE ROSE from the dead!! Death could not hold Jesus God in the flesh!! The Good News is He didn't just die for nothing.  He died to set us free from our sin so we can be with Him forever.  And so we can really live a fulfilling life here on earth in His love. John 10:10 ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.    

   So God calls my messed up feet beautiful. And I like that.  He has redeemed my most unusual feature by giving me His good news to tell.  We can have a relationship with the living God who knows us inside and out.  Its the best most beautiful life changing news I have ever heard.