Be a Bridge

        “Sing, O barren,
      You who have not borne!
      Break forth into singing, and cry aloud,
      You who have not labored with child!
      For more are the children of the desolate
      Than the children of the married woman,” says the LORD.
                                                  Isaiah 54:1

In 1889 I found myself sitting outside the Medford Gospel Mission watching the people going in and out, my heart aching and asking the Lord, “What can I do?” After all, I was raised in the church, in a Christian home by two parents that loved and served God with all their hearts. I was never abused, never went hungry, and always had a warm meal and a clean bed. I have a husband who loves God and loves me, two grown children serving God with their wives, plus grandchildren that love Jesus. I found myself pondering, ”What brought me to the door of a homeless shelter?”

Driving home after a morning service , I heard myself saying without thought. “If I don’t get somewhere where  I Can lead people to  Jesus I am going to dry up and die. The fact of the matter was I had already dried up and died. Died to all my old preconceived  idea’s of what a personal relationship with  Jesus was. I thought the more I did the more spiritual I was. My experience with serving the Lord was one of performing. But I had just come through a season of doing nothing. Oh not by choice, but from the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing through my life and fanning a  flame, blowing out all the wood hay and stubble and finding I had nothing left.  As a young girl I saw two of my friends who were not welcome in the Church , lose their lives 6 months apart one to drug and one to suicide  and it put a deep resolve in me  to see people come to Jesus. I know I had won more people to Jesus in my life time than most but here I Was a 50 years old striped and barren  aching to bear fruit for the Kingdom in the form of new babies. This desire compelled me, it grove me, I was in spiritual  pain from the reality of the lost and dieing. As I was driving into town  from our country  home one day, the spirit of the Lord spoke to me saying “if you want to see people saved you will need to be where they are.” That meant moving to Medford Oregon form  the  Applegate Valley. I thought oh no this is a trick. Twenty five years earlier I had told my husband as we sat in our home in Santa Fe Spring California “ I will move to Oregon with you if you promise me we will never live in Medford.  But at that moment the Lord change my heart. He has a way of sneaking up on me at unexpected times. This was one of those times.


“Enlarge  the  place of your tent, and let  them stretch out there curtains of there dwellings:  Do not spare:  Lengthen you cords and strengthen our stakes,  3. For you  shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendents  will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited.”
                                                                   Isaiah 54: 2-3

The biggest surprise to myself and others in this journey called my life is that someone who’s life style and life choices were so different than the people of the streets, would end up living and ministering among then. But some where along the way of being broken and striped. I found my vision moving outside the walls of the Church. Those that had the greatest need were not making their way through the doors. The need to see people come to Jesus began to compel me. As I read the Word my heart was stirred by words like called, sent, go, and the voice of the Lord saying “I am taking your ministry out of the Church and  into the streets“. I had no idea how that would or could happen. What did I know about the streets.

Not long after we had been ministering at the Mission, I began to realize how wide the gap between the Church and the streets really was, and  began inquiring of the Lord, “how do we bridge that gap”. One way was to be effective. If we who had come to the streets by way of the Church (not by way of the streets) could be effective in the ministry to those who’s shoes we had not walked in, then we could begin to see those desolate places inhabited. If the homeless, the drug addict, the alcoholic, the prisoners could receive and be healed and experience the message of redemption and freedom and be disciple by someone who had not walked in their shoes, it would dispel one of the biggest lies the enemy has use to separated and divide the Church from the streets and the street from the Church. We have bought into the philosophy of the world that tells us we need to separate into our little groups ,the alcoholic’s all together, the drug addicts together. We find the foundation of our fellowship being weaknesses of our flesh and identifying ourselves with our past life. Therefore we believe we can not fellowship with those who are not of like background. The foundation for our fellowship is Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So when I am ask how can you relate to those you minister to and they to you.  I have simply come to understand that our common bond and place of fellowship is at the foot of the cross. We all were separated from Christ by sin, It doesn’t matter what sin. Sin is sin. What does matter, is that we were all lost and now are found and saved by the same grace  and going to the same heaven, where there will be no separation. According to the last of  Eph.4 and the first of  Eph. 5 we are all called to forgive the way we have been forgiven and to be imitators of Christ as we love the way we have been love, no matter where we came from the call is the same and we all get their the same way. Let us be a bridge form the Church to the Streets and for the Streets to the Church, in Jesus name, amen