That was for This: Marisa's Story

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Marisa & Brian Moore

This is my young, beautiful, godly friend Marisa.   She is a sweet, gentle soul who loves the Lord, His Word, and her family.

I met Marisa in a Moms' Bible study/prayer group I was with several years ago.  And I fell in love with her!

Apex moms group

Marisa is a hard-worker.  She has four children ranging in ages from 8 months to 8 years.  Just take a look at her delightful little cherubs:

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Don't you just feel like grabbing them right off the screen to hug their adorable little necks?  Yet, as all moms know, those four precious kiddos, especially at those ages, would be a handful for any young mom.  But not only that, Marisa is homeschooling!

Let's just say, she's busy...and, I would image, tired!

Oh, to have a break!

Wait!  It's Saturday night and that means CHURCH! Ah, church, with its peaceful, uplifting hour or two of praise & worship and its nurturing from the Word. Surely, Marisa will have that much needed break as well!

But one such Saturday evening church service, the Holy Spirit had other plans for Marisa.  And she shared it in a comment on a previous blog post.  These are her words:

...I can find myself striving and striving some more to be what I think I should be, but it is ultimately Him in me that brings about any good.

And He is SO good to enable us to act upon the prompters He places upon our hearts.

One Saturday evening I had a distinct urge that I should go volunteer in the church nursery even though I hadn’t signed up for that particular date.

When I told the hall coordinator I could serve she started crying.

Her husband’s unbelieving parents had come to the service that evening and my offer allowed her husband to be free to sit with his parents during the sermon.

Does that amaze you, as it does me?  Here this young mom, who so deserved that much needed break, in a very real sense, died to her own self-interest.  Why would she do that?   In order that life could be offered to someone else.  She may not have even been thinking along those lines.  However, she followed, what I like to call, the Lord's Holy Nudge,* rather than her own self-interests and legitimate need for a time apart from kids.

She found to be true what Paul had written centuries ago,

[We are]...always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. 2 Corinthians 4:10-12 NASB

Only eternity will tell what "life" might have been birthed as a result of Marisa's responding to the Spirit's Holy Nudge.*

What about you and me, my friend?  Are we following those inner promptings?  They may not be our imagination, but rather the Spirit's call to die to our own convenience, comfort, interests, so that the Lord's life can be birthed in another.

If we do, we can experience, in and through our lives, the outpouring of the indwelling life of Christ:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 12:24 NASB

fruitful vine

*More about the Holy Nudge in our next post.