Lighting Up Our City Video 5: In Step With the Spiritનમૂનો

I have moved numerous times throughout my life. Each time, I leave good friends, my community, and a home I love. Then I must start over in a new place and rebuild my life again. It isn’t easy. In fact, it’s quite painful, and I shed many tears.

One of our moves was from Iowa to Arizona. After years of moving and starting over, I was tired of moving and grieving. I told my husband that I wasn’t going to hang any family photos or make new friends because we would just move again. My heart was closed to what God had for me there.

But God intervened and led me to a ministry for women who, like me, have moved a lot and must let go of the past and start over again. The first time that I met with this group of women, I felt understood and knew that I had come “home.”

When I shared my feelings of grief and loss, they listened compassionately because they had experienced these things too. I felt solidarity with these women. They heard my fears, concerns, and doubts. They shared their own experiences and described how God met them in their need and provided. It gave me hope and community. It changed my life.

Don’t we all respond best to those who listen and understand our situation because they have walked through something similar? There’s a reason support groups are so effective: we get to share our experiences and the hope that we now have on the other side of them.

As God places people in our lives, we need to look for the place where our experiences might intersect with theirs. Then we seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance for what to say and how to respond. He will give us the words to say, “For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Matt 10:20).

So, let us each seek opportunities to minister to others, following the direction of the Spirit and speaking the words that God gives to us. It could change a person’s life.

By Teresa Baumbach