Judy A Knox

Dewdrops of Grace

How Many Apples in a Seed?

IMG_1282Robert H. Schuller once said, “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.”

This is mind-boggling when you really think about it. Seeds are one of my favorite objects in the natural world that illustrate spiritual truths. Each seed is like a tiny computer, containing within it all that’s needed to produce a complete plant. Planted in the right conditions, it will sprout and grow. Some seeds can lie dormant for years, but when they’re finally planted they will grow.

While contemplating this, I thought about an Andrew Wommack teaching tape that had lain dormant in the back of a drawer for fifteen years, until 2006, when Ashley and Carlie Terradez borrowed it from Carlie’s parents and popped it into the cassette player in their car. The truths on that tape came alive in their hearts and minds, and changed their lives. Their new understanding of the Bible, and of the true nature of God, led to the miraculous healing of their terminally ill three-year-old daughter, Hannah. Since then, the story of Hannah’s healing has blessed and encouraged millions of people.

Ashley and Carlie are now part of Andrew Wommack’s ministry, and Carlie runs the weekly Healing School where thousands of people have been healed of all kinds of sicknesses and infirmities, and have then gone on to minister healing to others. It would be impossible to count the lives that have been changed since that tape was planted in Ashley and Carlie’s cassette player.

Actually, the tape was more like a piece of fruit, and each truth contained on it was a seed. Ashley and Carlie’s hearts were the good soil that enabled the seeds to produce a bumper crop. And those fruits contained seeds that produced more and more fruit.

We could take the analogy further back to the ministry partners whose financial support enabled Andrew to produce and distribute that teaching tape. We never know how far reaching our gifts into the kingdom may be. How encouraging! “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Galatians 6:9).

Video: Hannah’s Healing

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Not Just a Pretty Stack of Folders

IMG_1165I just made a trip to the office supply store for a new set of folders and two boxes of my favorite ballpoint pens. Don’t they just make you want to get busy and organize something? I love office and school supplies. They evoke the feeling of that first day of school every year during childhood when I would carry in a big bag of brand-new pencils, notebooks, rulers, paste, and other goodies, and then arrange them neatly in my new desk. (Never mind how the inside of the desk came to look after a few weeks.)

The reason for this most recent purchase was the need to corral the mounting stack of papers that keeps growing on my work table. Tired of riffling through piles, muttering, “I thought I put it right here,” I decided to whip those papers into order by categorizing them into labeled folders. I am aware that like the supplies in my childhood school desk, everything won’t stay put in these folders. There will be escapees, strewn hither and yon about the house.

No matter how foolproof my system may seem, when life happens, not every piece of paper will make it to its folder. And then there will be all those bits and pieces that don’t quite belong anywhere and up in the folder labeled “miscellaneous,” which over time will become fat and hard to find things in.

But the thought that hit me as I took the new supplies out of the bag and stacked them on the table was that no matter how appealing they look, they’re not doing a thing for me unless I unwrap them and put them to use. They have no value until I do something with them.

So it is with the many gifts God has give us – talent, money, time, resources, and information, as well as spiritual gifts. They’re not meant to be put up on a shelf and admired. He intended us to use them, and to enjoy using them to bless others. He says, “As each has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). So let’s be aware of the blessings God has given us and look for ways to pass the blessings on to others.

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The Cranberry Papermaker

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