Band Together...

After writing my last post about letting God work I happened to read a Joyce Meyer article that articulated exactly what I was trying to say but of course much more eloquent than I could ever dream of.  I hope she doesn't mind but I am going to share a portion of  what she had to say...

Joyce Meyer-  But the humble get the help.  So if your way isn't working, why not try God's way?  All of us would be better off if we'd learn to lean on God and ask for his help.  But as long as we try to do everything ourselves, God will let us.  He won't take care of our problems and worries-our cares-until we turn loose of them and give them to Him.  Either we're going to do it or God's going to do it, but both of us aren't going to.  Now, casting your care doesn't mean you can be irresponsible.  God won't do for you what you can do yourself.  You must do what you can do, and then trust God to do what you can't.  When we humble ourselves and ask for his help, then he's able to release His power in our situations.  It's only then that we can really enjoy life.

This summed up my feelings exactly.  The underlined portions are what really touched me the most.  Especially the line that says you must do what you can do, and then trust God to do what you can't.  We had done all that we could do financially.  Finally, we just turned it all over to God and boy did he provide!  WOW!  He has worked in amazing ways in the last 7 days!

Friday night our friends from Lifepoint church planned and organized a fund raiser that we called Band Together for the Fatherless.  We invited worship bands from other local churches and basically had one huge worship service.  We had 5 bands total including Lifepoint's worship band.  It was the most amazing night of worship and adoption awareness!  In between bands we either showed an adoption video including our own or spoke about adoption.  The cool thing was the feedback from the worship bands.  They loved being able to have the chance to sit in the audience and worship while the other bands played.  Which is something they never get to do.  Also, the fact that 5 different churches could come together for one cause truly showed the unity of God's people.  We heard comments like "why haven't we done something like this before"  to "we should do this next year and get even more churches involved!".  It was such a blessing to hear such positive feedback!!! 

The church took up a love offering for us and they also sold raffle tickets before the concert started.  They collected over $3,800.00!!!!!  But that's not all!!!  My sister in-law Kayla and my brother Matt had secretly conducted a fund raiser.  They bought every bottle at Wal-Mart and passed them out for people to fill with change.  There were all kinds of bottles floating around at our school and I never once saw a single one!!!  They were very sneaky!  My brother's worship band played that night and while they were on stage they presented us with the money they raised.....it was over $2,000.00!!!  I was so overwhelmed to say the least.  There were a lot of tears that night, I'll just tell ya that!  :)

So, from last Friday at the Jason Crabb concert to this Friday at our fund raiser God blessed us with just shy of $8,000.00!!!!!!! 

Just to think that we almost talked ourselves out of even trying to do a fund raiser!  We would have robbed ourselves of God's blessings!  Oh us of little faith was hoping optimistically to raise $2,000.00 maaaaaybe 3 if we were really lucky.  Once again we tried to limit the power of our Lord.  God has been so good to us and he has showed us how much he loves us in a huge way!  Also, there were so many people that showed us how much they care about us and adoption.  People who are friends, family and even strangers that have given because they have a heart for adoption.  They all will be forever a part of our story and the story that we will one day share with Lauren.  

Forever Grateful,
The Ledbetter's