What a blessing to have friends like you who are holding us up before the Lord day after day as we remain in a place of such great need. Thank you so much for all your prayerful support and encouragement – we need you! Cora’s condition has continued to get worse, so we need your prayers more than ever so we can keep our eyes on Jesus and keep trusting Him for deliverance. In Psalm 107 the same verse is repeated four times. It says, “’Lord, help!’ they cried in their trouble, and He rescued them from their distress.” As we cry out, “LORD, HELP!” please pray that His rescue will come very quickly.

Earlier this week the Lord spoke to Cora about something we would like to share with you. Recently she has been experiencing more and more pain. In an attempt to alleviate some of the pain she took a medicine the hospice doctor had given her. But both times she took it she became very nauseous. In distress she asked the Lord what was wrong and He reminded her of Isaiah 30 where Israel went to Egypt for help rather than waiting on and trusting in the Lord. (see vs. 15)

Now you all know Cora. She would never do something like that on purpose. But her need was so great she felt she had to do something to make things better without really asking the Lord’s permission. For most people this would probably be okay, but as my best friend shared with me awhile back, “While life is like boot camp for most of us, Cora seems to be going through extreme training like the Green Berets!” Oh how true that is, and how very hard it is for Jenny and me to watch her go through it. But we’re still believing the results will be good.

This situation reminded me of two people in the Bible. The first was Saul in 1 Samuel 13:8-14. It is easy to see that Saul was wrong in offering the sacrifices to God instead of waiting for Samuel to arrive. But we have gained a new appreciation of how very hard it can be to keep your confidence in the Lord and not act on your own when the pressures are so great. Please pray for yourselves and us to have the wisdom and strength to trust totally in God and wait for Him to act.

The other person I thought of was David. The Psalms are taking on greater meaning to me through this time as I see how David kept his trust in God and refused to take things into his own hands or give up in situations that were extremely bad. One particular example of this is in 1 Samuel 24:1-7 where David refused to touch Saul even though Saul had been hunting him down to kill him. No wonder David was a man after God’s own heart!

“Oh Lord, help us to honor You by maintaining our trust in You when we pass through the deep waters and fiery trials of life. Enable us to hold on to Your promises in Isaiah 43 that You won’t let us drown or be burned up. We know Your Word is true, but in our human weakness we will fail unless You strengthen us by Your Spirit. Thank you for hearing our desperate cry in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”

And again, thank you for standing with us. We love you and need you. Please keep holding my Cora up before the Lord until we see God’s victory in this situation.