My wife Connie and I have been nurses for over 40 years and strive to live a Christian life in all that we do. However, our spiritual life was led by our human nature, until February of 2019.
Pastor Don MacLafferty and his daughter, Julie, held ten days of prayer and revival at our church. Our lives have not been the same. God has performed miracle after miracle in our lives. Through the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual “heart surgery,” God has helped Connie resolve over 35 years of bitterness towards her father. She claimed the promise of Ezekiel 36:26–27 that God would give her a new heart and put a new spirit in her. This resulted in a commitment to live a Spirit led life and a bold resolve to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord blessed us with another miracle in resolving 40 plus years of guilt, pain and bitterness between Connie’s parents, and brought about further healing in our family.
Very quickly our lives changed in other ways. While on vacation in June of 2019, I found out that my job was being eliminated. After much prayer and asking God to show me His dream for our lives, I took early retirement in July. Connie also retired early in December of 2019.
We had a burden on our hearts to know how we could serve the Lord for all He had done for us. We prayed that He would give us guidance in how to share and teach others to serve Him and become disciples for Jesus. He impressed upon our hearts the urgency of His soon coming, that the harvest is great and the workers are few (Luke 10:2). He convicted our hearts to go into the harvest to reap souls for His kingdom.
We were returning from our second series of meetings and training with Pastor Don MacLafferty in Canada, when God confirmed His calling by providing a divine appointment on our flight home. Pastor Don had just finished a book Discipling the New Generations.
Seat Changes
The night before our flight, during the online check-in, I noticed that our seats for the final connecting flight were not together. I made the changes to get our seats side by side. However, when they scanned my boarding pass in Atlanta, a separate boarding pass printed out and I was told that my seat had been changed. I was one seat ahead and across the aisle from Connie. She had two open seats beside her.
God knows the whole story before it unfolds. “His understanding is beyond measure” (Psalm 147:15 ESV).
As final boarding was approaching, a man that I recognized and his wife came down the aisle and sat next to Connie. I got up, greeted them and renewed our acquaintance and introduced him to Connie. Then I returned to my seat and began praying. Connie didn’t know it, but the reason that our seats had been separated was for a divine appointment God had arranged that was about to take place (Psalm 139:4). I kept praying and observing from a distance.
During the 22-minute flight to Chattanooga, Tennessee, Connie was able to give her testimony of the recent miracles that had occurred in our lives and her family’s lives, the burden God had placed on our hearts, and the urgency of Jesus’ soon coming. She told him of our discouragement in trying to share with fellow believers of our belief that the harvest is great and the workers are few, and their seemingly lack of sincere interest. She explained how God had convicted our hearts to go into the harvest to reap souls for His kingdom, and that we felt called to share and teach a book written by Pastor Don on discipleship called, “Discipling the New Generations.”
God had placed beside Connie the Georgia-Cumberland Conference Director of Children’s, Junior and Youth Ministries. He opened his schedule planner and stated: “What are you and Don doing the weekend of February the 8th? I would like for you and Don to come and have a booth and present Discipling the New Generations in a breakout session at the Children’s Ministries Convention that weekend.
God is so good, amazing and worthy to be praised. At our booth we made connections with leaders from North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and we gave out more than 100 books.
Connie and I had prepared for our breakout presentation for weeks. We spent much time in prayer and in the Word. The Holy Spirit blessed in more ways than we dreamed. In our prayers we told the Lord that this breakout session was His presentation, we were following His direction, and that we wanted Him to do the speaking, not us.
It was Sabbath evening, and we had said to the Lord that if only one person that needed to hear this presentation attended that we would be fine with it. Ten minutes after the scheduled start time we had three in attendance. We pulled our chairs close to them, had prayer, and stepping out in faith started our presentation. Within a matter of minutes, the room was full. Connie and I taught how to use the book. We expressed how we wished we had been able to discern the voice of God at such an early age as did Samuel. We shared our testimonies of God’s miracles and leading in our lives.
The Holy Spirit moved on hearts as we neared the end of our presentation. One lady in the audience stated, “This book is an answer to prayer.”
We witnessed the power of the Holy Spirit in tearful eyes as we made a passionate plea for children, youth, schools, and families to go and disciple the new generations.
We closed with with the following quote: “There are those who for a lifetime have professed to be acquainted with Christ, yet who have never made a personal effort to bring even one soul to the Savior.”1
Call to Action: Be a Laborer for Jesus
Dear friends, time is short. Will you take a few minutes to open your heart to God, and ask Him to give heart surgery (Ezekiel 36:26–27) and ask Him to give you divine appointments to labor for Him?
“Then He [Jesus] said to them, ‘The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’”
Luke 10:2
Unless noted otherwise, scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
- Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, California: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1898), 141.
