The Power of Forgiveness

The talk this week on the power of forgiveness was a follow up to the previous week's talk on outrageous love. There was a time when I used to give this talk every few weeks; it was almost a year since I spoke at forgiveness in the communities as a full subject.

Outrageous Love

Outrageous is defined as greatly exceeding bounds of reason or moderation. That's what God's love is like, but we sometimes fail to realize it. The talk in the HSI Communities this week was an eyeopener, and although presented in quite a different style from my usual vehemence, touched those it needed to touch.

Communities Meet

Because the new Asian Community in Dubai met at the same time as the HSI Community in Fujairah, I wasn't able to go to the latter very often; in fact I hadn't been there in a couple of months since the new one started. It troubled me, but there didn't seem to be much I could do about it, until somebody suggested I take the new guys with me to Fujairah one day. I mooted the idea with the group and it was well accepted, so this Friday morning, a bus load of us (45 in all) took off to the tiny Emirate. Not only was the session tremendously anointed, the experience seemed to bond everybody closer together, and I figured we'd do this more often in the future. (The picture is of the Asian community in front of the bus that took us there. I think there are a few still in the bus when the picture was taken. We had a guest from the Lebanese community with us.)

Trial of Faith

We continued our talk of last week (Surving Storms) with a deeper look at faith and how God uses the trials we undergo in our lives to grow us in faith. This session was tremendously anointed. I always mean to put up notes of the talks, but there is simply too much on my lap to do so now.

Testimonies

We have begun inviting people to share how their lives have been changed through this ministry and the testimonies have been powerful. I will share some of these here.

Here is Rania's testimony. When I first saw Rania in Lebanon, she was sitting in the front row of the auditorium where I was giving a talk. She had tubes coming out of her, attached to a stand, and I felt my soul hurt seeing her like that. I couldn't help but wonder how our Father in heaven felt and if he would heal her. He did.

And this is what Leena had to share. God healed her of water retention problems, delivered her of a habit of smoking, and taught her to laugh :)