Monday, October 19, 2009

Praising God

One of the guys on staff here at the Youth Center, Tolentino, came down with Yellow Fever about two weeks ago. It’s a pretty serious disease and when he was younger his older brother died from it. Yellow Fever, true to its name, turns your body yellow and gives you a super high fever, among other things. Tolentino’s fever was so high that for days he wrapped himself in a cloth and every 5 to 15 minutes poured a bucket of water over himself just to keep cool.

On Thursday he was sitting in front of his house with all of the people who had come to see him. They were all talking about how bad he looked and how serious the disease was. Tolentino listened until he couldn’t take it anymore. He asked everyone to leave him alone for half an hour. He went inside the house, shut the door and started singing praise to God. Tolentino has a big voice, so when he sings, you hear it. Everyone outside starting telling Tolentino’s family that the disease had affected his brain. After singing for about 10 minutes he started praying. He prayed for the rest of them time and then the fever left him. He stood up, went outside, and started eating for the first time in days.

Since then he’s been gaining strength. He was in staff meeting this morning giving praise to God for healing him. He said that as he was sitting there listening to everyone and thinking about how sick he was he remembered that God knows the number of our days. He could choose whether he was going to sit there and feel terrible before he died or if he was going to sing praise to God. He chose to praise God with everything he had left and leave it in His hands.

After hearing that testimony this morning I just had to share it with you. I don’t always choose to use the time that I have to worship God. When I’m faced with difficult situations many times I focus on the situations instead of taking time to push everything else aside and focus on God. I think it’s in those moments that true worship happens. When we say to God, I don’t know if I’m ever going to make it through this, but I know that my purpose here it to worship You, so I’m going to give you what I’ve got.

1 comments:

Katherine Jacobs said...

What an awesome reminder! Thanks for sharing this story!