Unusual Times of Refreshing

We have been having unusually beautiful weather for August. At least in my opinion it has been nice. Maybe you prefer it a little hotter. While I think my favorite times of the year for Southern Illinois are late spring and early fall, I do like living in a area that has four definite seasons. The variety is great.

We have seasons in our lives. I even see churches experiencing cycles. Most of the time if you hang on during a low time, you will see another great time come in the church again. (Of course there are a lot of factors that could prevent such from happening.)

In our spiritual lives we experience times of dryness, discouragement, and REFRESHING. I am thankful for those unusual times of refreshing. Sometimes they come during revival meetings. Sometimes they come during regularly scheduled church services. Sometimes they come during times of private prayer. Whenever they come, aren't you extremely grateful?

I mentioned earlier that last Sunday, we would probably have several come to be baptized. We had a nice surprise that morning when our church attendance was 101. That may not seem like much for many who are reading this, but it is good for us. We have had more than 100 on several occasions, but we always had a goal planned for those days. This time, no goal was set. All those folks just showed up. We were having a picnic afterwards, and I'm sure that enticed some, but still it was a refreshing surprise.

I also knew that we had several who could be baptized because of the recent numbers of professions of faith that we witnessed. Still, I usually ask those who could be baptized if they were indeed planning on doing so. This time I did not.

We had two other churches join us for this special day: Ezra Church of God, where my daughter and son-in-law attend, sent three young people--all who had been saved at Camp Jericho. One of them was at the camp of which I was privileged to be the camp pastor. God's Tree of Life Free Will Baptist Church in Pittsburg, IL also brought two men to be saved. Altogether, we ended up with fourteen. That was a nice surprise too. I baptized the people from Unity and Ezra (Ezra is currently without a pastor) except for two who attended unity. Those two young ladies, Katie Simmons and Melanie Simmons, were baptized by their dad, Randy Simmons. Bro. Charles Bowers from God's Tree of Life baptized the two that came with him--One of those was Bill Simmons, Bro. Randy Simmons' father. It was a good day.

Those two surprises, the attendance and the number baptized, were refreshing.

Other nice times of refreshing, though, are the times when the Lord decides to meet with us in unusual ways or when He decides to give unusual blessings.

When have you experienced unusual times of refreshing? When has God surprised you recently? How has He pulled you through something that you just did not know how you would get through?