The voice on the other end of the phone line said, \u201cGod wants us to minister to you and your wife.\u201d It was a voice that I had not heard in many years, but it belonged to one who had re-connected with me on social media. My wife had just undergone her second major surgery in less than a year, and while insurance had paid the majority of the cost, the remaining \u201cco-pays\u201d were still a bit overwhelming, especially on a retirement income. We had dipped into our savings until there wasn\u2019t much left to dip, and still the bills arrived. For most of my life I have been more of a \u201cGiver\u201d than a \u201cReceiver.\u201d I understand, and in fact, enjoy, the joy of giving. I find it to be one of the ways I can attempt to be Christ-like. However, when Jesus said, \u201cIt is more blessed to give than to receive\u201d (Acts 20:35); surely He did not intend to diminish the joy of receiving. While being a bit embarrassed to admit we needed it, we joyfully received the \u201cministry\u201d gift from our friends from years gone by. I don\u2019t often quote the Pope, but in an interview with Italy\u2019s \u201cLa Stampa\u201d newspaper, Pope Francis said, \u201cGod never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving.\u201d I\u2019m praying today to be as capable of receiving as I am of giving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The voice on the other end of the phone line said, \u201cGod wants us to minister to you and your wife.\u201d It was a voice that I had not heard in many years, but it belonged to one who had re-connected with me on social media. My wife had just undergone her second major surgery…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}