[MD-Sligo] Monthly Messenger

Wed Jul 26 16:53:23 UTC 2023

Monthly Messenger for July 26, 2023

Hi, and welcome to the June 30 edition of our Monthly Messenger! Instead of a quarterly newsletter, we’ll be sending you a quick one every month. We invite you to share your prayer needs and concerns.
If you or someone you know needs to talk to us, please call 507-369-6861. You may opt to send your prayer requests to 2god4joy at gmail.com. If God puts it on your heart to donate to us, please go to our website at www.mynvm.com and use the PayPal donation button. Thanks very much!
We hope you're having a great summer so far! Temperatures are soaring into the 110's for us here in Arizona, so we're spending a lot of time in the cool indoors!
Tomorrow our apartment will be undergoing an extensive pest-control fumigation. This means that we had to clear everything out of our cupboards and off our shelves and desks. It almost felt like we were packing up for another move! This also means our electrical outlets will be losing their covers sometimes today. That's why this Messenger issue is going out now, and why our Friday podcast was posted a couple days early (more on that later).
We have had to do a lot of packing and adjusting to the loss of everything that's normal in our home for a few days, but God has really sent a lot of help. One of our friends is the chief of maintenance at our church, and he just happened to have an empty trailer available. He helped us remove most of the stuff that was cluttering up our living room floor, and he's storing it at our church until pest control has done their job. One of his friends will even be coming to help us unpack. What an amazing boost of help from God!
Please pray that this fumigation treatment goes well. We're both praying that this won't have to be repeated anytime soon, because preparing for it is no fun at all!
Also, please continue to keep Timothy's potential job in your prayers. We have sent out a request for one final document three times, and we're still waiting for it to arrive. It's been a few weeks since we sent our last request, and hopefully that's a good sign!
Please pray for us regarding our nursing-home ministry. In other miscellaneous needs, please pray that we'll continue to get easy access to transportation, and some more volunteers to help us out.
The first part of Laura Echevarria's interview is now posted on www.mynvm.com! Laura is the press secretary and director of communications for National Right to Life, a famous pro-life organization. Mrs. Echevarria discusses how she became involved with them in this part of the interview. We'll be posting the rest on August 11!
Our next podcast interview, which will come out in the second half of August, is coming up on August 1. We'll be talking with Shawn from Underground Railroad, Inc. (undergroundrailroadinc.org). Shawn will be talking with us about the horrors of human trafficking, and how his organization is helping to fight this extremely dangerous trend.
You can find our podcast in a number of ways, but perhaps the easiest is by going to mynvm.com. If you have an iPhone or other Apple device, the Visions of Love Podcast can be found on iTunes. Ir if you have an Amazon Echo device, ask our dear friend Alexa to play our show for you! It contains Christian music provided by myself on the recorder/flute and my wife on the keyboard, as well as some interesting interviews I'm sure you will enjoy.
For people on the go, subscribing to our newsletter is another option, as it is a short read. This can be done near the bottom of our website, www.mynvm.com.
I'll end this newsletter with a short devotion which I posted on our site 7 years ago. It contains quick stories from both my own and Timothy's lives. Enjoy!

Standing On Tables and Talking to Mannequins

"So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law."
--Galatians 5:1 (NLT)
You've probably heard the old saying, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Think about the people or things you stand for in your life. You might be standing for a great cause, a rock star or a sports team. But we find these things aren't enough for us, and we keep shifting our loyalties around because we aren't standing on any solid ground.
Once when I was about 5 or 6 years old, my dad and I were touring a historic fort in Minnesota. Keep in mind that I've been totally blind my whole life. Of course, I didn't always take that into account when I was five years old. I was getting pretty bored, so I decided to explore. I found a nice hard surface, so I stepped up onto it and started walking around. The hard platform turned out to be a low table. My dad was talking to his friend, so he didn't see what I had done. A minute later, I suddenly stepped off the edge of the table, and I found myself lying on the ground. I had bumped my head on the way down, so I was crying when my dad found me. My little fall off the table brought our tour to an abrupt end.
We often think we are standing on a secure foundation, but it's only a matter of time before we fall, just like I fell off the table. Good causes are sometimes motivated by guilt and don't last, and fame is fleeting.
Here's another perspective to illustrate our opening verse. Timothy remembers visiting a store when he was in first grade. He could still see a few things at the time. He thought he saw someone in front of him, so he went to talk to her, only to learn a few minutes later that "she" was a mannequin.
In our lives, we are not only in danger of falling from lofty or elevated positions of freedom in the world. Some people find that in spite of everything they've accomplished, they are just as dead inside as that mannequin. This is why Paul tells us to stand (or be planted) in the liberty we find in Christ. For while the Bible says there is pleasure in sin for a season, we often become enslaved to the things that we thought freed us. For example, you might go out and experiment with street drugs. At first, like a lot of people, you might enjoy the thrill and think they have expanded or altered your mind. But after a while, you would become a prisoner to them, always wondering when you were going to get your next high.
In contrast to this, the Bible tells us of a true freedom which has a firm foundation in Christ's love. This freedom brings joy and peace, and allows us to serve others in love. It also allows us to be set free from our empty good works, as Christ works in us to transform us into His image.
The idea that freedom is nobody telling you what to do or how to think is an illusion, for we are all servants of a particular master. We can either choose to serve and be enslaved by the world, or we can serve and be freed by Christ. Do you want to serve the world and its illusions, or do you want to serve God's son, who gave His life for you and wishes to give you a new life of freedom?

Thanks again for subscribing to our mailing list, and God bless you!
Stephanie Burdick

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