How It All Began

I sit here this morning amazed and in awe at what God can do when a small group of women begin to pray.  That is how the GodlyGirlfriendGroups had its beginning and look what God has done!

In the beginning...
It all started in May of this year when our women's group at church, finallly admitted to each other that our group was not as healthy we knew it could be.  We wanted to reach out to all the women  of all ages in our church and community, but no matter what we did, they just didn't come.  At our meeting in May, we had a heart-to-heart discussion among ourselves as to what we could do, and frankly came up blank. So...we decided to pray.

Gee, ya think we could have done that first, but I guess we thought we were expected to do His work for Him - you know:  God helps those who help themselves.  We all know that quote is NOT anywhere in the Bible, but for some strange we all get to thinking that it is.  We had finally gotten to the the place where we admitted that we were powerless to fix our group and that we needed God to step in.  So we prayed.

The Skeleton 
At that meeting I knew that God wanted me to lead a study on Proverbs 31, but that was about all I knew.  Over the summer John (my wonderful and handsome husband of almost 40 years) and I took what amounted to a 2 month road trip in our car around our beautiful country.  Needless to say, I had a lot of time to pray and listen and knit.  That's when bits and pieces of this began to come to my attention.

One night near the beginning of our trip, I laid awake praying and God put  the skeleton of the whole plan together for me. It was like the bones were scattered on the ground around us and He began picking them up and placing them together until they formed a complete skeleton.  "Wow!", I thought, "this is a plan that will work to be able to reach the women of our church and community!"  There was a lot of detail to remember, so I asked the Lord if I should write it all down.  He let me know that I didn't need to worry about remembering it, that He would take care of it.  So I just left it all in His super-capable hands, letting Him be the keeper of it, and went on to enjoy my wonderful vacation.

A Living Plan
We arrived home from the last leg of our trip on August 6, and on August 7 the journey began.  I began getting together with girlfriends about the different aspects of the plan and what part they thought they might have it in.  As we talked and shared I realized that God was putting muscles and tendons and blood vessels and organs on that skeleton.  Right before my eyes I began to see those dead bones take on flesh and come alive!  This just happened in the natural course of our conversation with one another as the Lord sat with us, using each of us and our unique gifts and insight to piece the whole thing together as girlfriends.

By August 14 (7 days later!) we had a working plan for GodlyGirlfrendGroups.   When I stood back and looked at it, I realized that it was God's incredible answer to our prayers back in May.  This is far greater than anything any of us had thought of or even dreamed of.  A group built on Girlfriends meeting together to share our lives and our love for each other and for our God.  Who would have thought of it?  Only our Heavenly Father could have known!  I want to thank you , Father, for all of it - AND for all that is to come.

I see now that back in May we thought ,  I realized that God never intended for us to fix it.  He had a plan already in place and was just waiting for us to ask.  His intention all along was for us to  put our hearts and hands and feet to His plan to reach the women He so loves.