The Gathering Place Where Family Matters

Through a very rough period of time in her life, Karen wrote with conviction and purpose. As she grew sicker and sicker, her writing became less and less. Come with me to a very powerful and pointed two sentences Karen managed to write. Think of His Word with me, won’t you?

In 2008 on April 25th and 26th Karen spoke at the ladies’ retreat of the First Baptist Church of Lagrange, Ohio. I believe she used as an illustration something we had talked about and I often used in my preaching. I’m eager to share this with you.

What is our aim? What is the purpose of my heart when I speak to people? Please allow me to share a tiny bit of one of the paragraphs Karen shared concerning our words.

On a warm day in July of 2013 I preached a message about our awesome God. The message was entitled, “The God Who is Ready to Forgive Me.” It was based upon Deuteronomy 4. As I was reading through one of Karen’s Bible study journals, I discovered that she had taken notes of the message. In fact, she had taken such very good notes I could preach from them today! What I really enjoyed is seeing her application of the message

My sister Kim was telling me about an illustration she used when she was teaching boys and girls in her Sunday school class. She was teaching them about our words. Little tubes of toothpaste were given to the children and they were allowed to squeeze the contents onto their papers. Oh how they enjoyed this! Then she gave them toothpicks and told them to use these to put the toothpaste back into the tubes. Obviously it didn’t work so well. Wisely she used this as an illustration of our words. We really can’t take them back, can we? “Karen’s Notes” speak of this today. Thanks for stopping by.