Refreshing Our Spirits With Scripture

 3.5- From a small town. Who ever heard of Port Neches, Texas. (Larger than Ladonia or Bugtussle).We we got to travel and teach from Cape Cod to San Diego. She had a desire to teach kindergarten students, even harder God's special students, 4th and 5th graders, even harder prisoners in prison. Training, herding cats, raising a husband, and kids and helping with grandkids. 76 years old and collecting papers to impact prisoners in solitary confinement for 13 months. Sheila in 1985 started a mail ministry to prisoners. About two months ago I met a man at church who said her devotion articles and cartoons along with Rick Atchey's sermon notes and ministry from Jesus had kept him alive. "Those cartoon were received caused me to laugh when nothing else could." These words to me by someone who been transformed by reading encouraging words in a hard place. When i told this brother who had walked me to my car from the church building that my wife had helped with these cartoon

 3.4- Joy is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God. When we are in step with Spirit of our maker there is a steady joy. It was experienced by Stephen as he died for trying to persuade some people to receive the Amazing Grace of God. As he died he said, "Please don't hold this sin against them." He looked up to heaven and saw Jesus standing. Indeed the joy of the Lord is our strength. Acts 7. 7  Now the high priest said, “Are these things so?” 2  And  [ a ] Stephen said, “Listen to me,  [ b ] brothers and fathers! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in  [ c ] Haran,   3  and He said to him, ‘ Go from your country and your relatives, and come to the land which I will show you .’   4  Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in  [ d ] Haran. And from there, after his father died,  God  had him move to this country in which you are now living.   5  But He gave him no inheritance in it, not even a