Tuesday, February 22, 2011

One Step at a Time

I made a birthday cake for my granddaughter this past week. I found a recipe in one of the magazines that said it was the only cake recipe I ever needed. I decided it was worth a try and so bought all of the ingredients. There were numerous steps. The flour and baking powder and salt had to be sifted and set aside. Then the eggs and butter needed to be beaten until smooth and creamy. Step by step I progressed until the batter was poured into the parchment covered pans. Then all went into the oven and 45 minutes later out came three beautiful layers of yellow cake. Chocolate frosting completed the job and wha-la! Birthday cake! And yes it really is the only cake recipe I will ever need!

Most great projects are accomplished step by step. A cake is a fairly simple project, but producing and filming sixty-six DVDs and eleven workbooks was not.
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By October 2004 all of the teaching had been filmed and the Old Testament books completed. But this was just a little more than half of the steps that were needed to complete the total project! We still had twenty-seven New Testament books to produce. Every DVD needed a special opener, something that would grab the attention of the viewer. Kelle and Shane would have a tremendous amount of work to do in order to come up with ideas for twenty-seven creative “grabbers’, and then produce them. Plus we wanted a new theme song and video clip that would introduce the New Testament.

And then there was the music. Twenty-seven music videos had to be produced. Vocalists needed to be found, music chosen and sets arranged. Much of the background music needed to be replayed and recorded, and some even needed to be written! Licenses for each selection needed to be obtained and some of the music required more than one license.

We did not have one testimony filmed for the New Testament books. In the beginning it was really quite easy to find the right story because we knew personally many women who had great testimonies but as we progressed, that became more difficult.

About that time Navpress told us they wanted the entire collection completed by June 2005. We had about eight months to finish the work. It was a massive undertaking and of course always there was the question of money. Would God continue to provide? Could Soteria come up with the creativity needed? Could we find the right music and testimonies? And could we possibly take on such an enormous undertaking and complete it in such a short period of time? There were many steps ahead of us and with each step an unforeseen outcome.

One thing for sure, God’s ways are not our ways and He alone orders our steps. By June 2005 our partnership with Navpress had terminated when sales did not reach the numbers they had hoped. In a very short period of time we had to completely organize and establish a sales/marketing company along with the continued work of production. We prayed and followed hard the steps that God laid before us. And quickly a company began to emerge called Big Dream Ministries which included a Customer Care Director (Dorinda Hathaway), an Office Manager/web site coordinator (Jodie Mannion), a Board of Directors (Sally Shriver, Linda Sweeney, Eleanor Lewis, Robin Rosebrough and myself), a Warehouse Manager (Rosemary Nelson) and a Product Assembly Director ( Franna Luther). As for finishing the entire sixty-six book collection? It would take another year. The last set of DVDs arrived in the warehouse on June 23, 2006.

All projects require one step at a time. But as one follows hard after God, those steps must first be His. We seldom know where He is going but it is His steps we follow, one step at a time, and those steps prove to be the very best!

Uphold my steps in Your paths,
That my footsteps may not slip.
Psalm 17:5

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Birthing the “Baby”

She had taken thirty some hours to come into the world and then at last, she came screaming into the doctors waiting hands. She was bathed and swathed and brought to me and I looked at that baby in my arms and one of the first things I thought was “I wonder who you will grow up to be?” I think most mothers experience some of this same kind of feeling. I was enjoying the present (I was still numb!) but I already had an eye to the future. After all no one has a baby so they can keep it a baby. They have a baby so it might become an adult …and in some ways move from baby to child to…well…friend!
And if all of our hopes and dreams are realized we mothers pray that our children’s lives will amount to something that really makes a difference for the world! Birth is hard but it is only the beginning and with it comes an eye to the future.
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August 2004
Our contract with Navpress was signed and now the work began. We sent all of the VHS masters to them for reproduction along with the manuscripts for the eleven workbooks. I received six possible designs for the workbook covers but after looking at them I found I liked a portion of four of them. I talked to the design man and told him what I liked and about an hour later he sent me a compilation of those four designs and it was beautiful! We were all thrilled with the cover design and so one more detail and decision was made.

Navpress designed a marketing packet, along with the packaging for the product. A date was asset to send out 50,000 marketing packets to churches and individuals across America. The baby was ready to come into the world!

But while we waited for the birthing we found we were having trouble with the delivery. We were out of money and we owed $16,000.

We can understand how those Israelites complained in the wilderness even after God had done so many wonderful things for them. They simply forgot. A couple of days pass and I am convinced the human mind can forget even extravagant answers to prayer. And so we all began to get nervous as we cried out to God.

While we were in this time of grave concern (I could use the term panicked anxiety but I do not want to sound so unspiritual), I had lunch with my friend Darlene. After lunch she had to go to a luggage store to buy a new rolling suitcase and asked me to come with her. She made her purchase and as we were leaving she stopped, went back to the cashier and returned rolling a second suitcase, the most wonderful deluxe suitcase I had ever seen. “You need this”, she said, and handed it to me. I protested but she stood firm. She wanted to buy it for me because she KNEW I needed it. The truth is I DID but it was not in the budget. “For you, she said, “From God”. How she was aware of this need I do not know but it was a fabulous gift and such a generous act but more than that it was assurance that God knew what we needed and could provide.

The next day, once again the mailbox was empty…no checks from donors, nothing. I wrote “We are standing on shifting sand when we want to stand on the Rock!” Two days later we received a check form $6000. Later that week we received $1800 from a foundation and then Navpress called and said they were freeing up $8000 and with that we had all we needed. Soon after the baby was birthed, the marketing packets were sent on their way and the completed product arrived at the warehouse! The baby was here and now we waited to see what it would “grow up to be”.


Isaiah 66:9
Shall I bring to the time of birth and not cause delivery? Says the Lord

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Power!

Sometimes I think we Christians throw out the word “pray” like we have no idea the great power that is behind it. And so we are quick to say, “Would you pray for my neighbor’s dog”, or “Would you pray I have a good day” or whatever. If we have prayer requests in church or small group, we feel like we have to come up with something even if it is absolutely inane and we ourselves don’t find it important enough to pray for it because it makes us appear spiritual. But the truth is, prayer is power. It is engaging the God of the universe to move on behalf of what we are asking for.

I have become very careful about what I ask people to pray for and if I am not fervently praying for something I don’t ask any one else to pray for that either. But if I do have a prayer need, then I go to people I am convinced understand that power and will approach the task as the “holy occupation” that it really is.
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And so in May 2004, I had a huge prayer request and I knew exactly who to approach. Julie Lord is probably the most dynamic prayer warrior I have ever known. Now in her seventies she has the mind and body of a thirty year old and a heart for God that seems ageless. She and her husband Bob have managed to raise five extraordinary children who are devoted to God and serving him greatly in various areas. Now her grandchildren are following the same path and great grandchildren, though still young, I feel certain will follow Christ with the same fervency as the previous generations.

Julie had been on my prayer teams since the beginning of our Big Dream. Every week she would show up to pray and she kept a journal of those prayers and the powerful way God had answered them. So now we needed that power to help us finish the filming for The Amazing Collection. We had twenty two books left to film and we had decided that it would be financially astute to do them all within a week’s time.

It was a huge undertaking for the teachers and placed a great amount of pressure on each one of us. All four of us were feeling like we were under constant attack as we were being hit in different areas (our weakest area!) and were reeling from the stress. Preparation for four or five teaching sessions demanded every waking hour. So I decided it was time to bring in the BIG GUN. I called Julie.

And so on filming day, Julie was by our side, encouraging, praying, and bringing our minds back to the truth of Scripture. Then as each one of us stepped on the platform to teach, Julie went into a nearby room all alone and came before the God of All and brought us to the Throne of Grace.

So then what happened? God answered. As each teacher took her place, the Lord began to speak through her. Eleanor. Linda. Margie. Me. Calm, mind sharp, words flowing, cameras running….and then before we knew it the week was over and the last teaching session was complete.

My journal records, “We have completed all of the filming and it has gone smoothly, the best we have ever done. God heard Julie’s cries for us! I am so grateful to God for her!”

The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man
makes tremendous power available (dynamic in its working).

James 5:16
Amplified Bible