I was encouraged by God Himself today. I was praying this morning, asking Him where I should read. It seems recently I’ve heard numerous times about how difficult it is to get a job here in Ocala. Yesterday I spent a good 6 hours online applying and looking for opportunities. So, I was just talking to the Lord about it and I believe He hinted to Psalm 27, which is one of my favorites anyway. Here are a few excerpts for anyone feeling discouraged:
When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the Lord will take care of me. – vs 10
Now, I will never actually experience this in my lifetime because I have been blessed with some of the most encouraging parents in the world. But I think what King David was trying to do was relate a feeling. I think the feeling of your parents turning their back on you would be one of the deepest hurts and most painful feelings to bear. David was trying to say, when the whole world falls apart, when you feel like no one is behind you and no one has your back…even your own parents…THEN the Lord (who is your Father) will take care of you.
Wow. What a heavenly Father we have! David goes on to say this:
I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. – vs 13
Here is where the FAITH aspect comes in to play. I don’t really know what David was going through, or what you are going through. But when we put our faith in God and believe that He wants all good things for us (James 1:17), I think it opens a door for the Lord to shower us with blessings (see James 1:6).
Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord! – vs 14
…but we cannot do this without patience. Time after time we pretend to understand and comprehend God’s timing, and time after time it proves to be a difficult task. And yet, in hindsight, it has always been perfect.
Do you believe it? I do. Maybe I’ve had to remind myself more often recently, but I do believe God will provide because it is a little something we call a promise.
He is good, all the time.
Here is an excerpt from my daily devotional Jesus Calling:
Try to stay conscious of me as you go step by step through this day. My Presence with you is both a promise and a protection. My final statement just before I ascended into heaven was: ‘Surely I am with you always’. That promise was for all my followers, without exception…The way to stay on the path of Life is to keep your focus on Me.
Let’s not forget that we do not have to, nor are we supposed to do this life alone. Jesus promises is He is with us and even better, in us. I need to remember to turn to Him with the difficult and even the mundane situations.
He doesn’t want to be a part of our life.
He wants to BE our life.
So, I’ve been doing a study on my name…well, sort of. I decided to study Aaron in the Bible and see what kind of guy he was. I’m learning something I believe they teach in Sunday school, but it’s lead to a chain of thoughts that is proving to be very challenging. Now, I’m still working through these thoughts, so bear with me.
Aaron, as we all know, was Moses’ mouth (Exodus 4:14-17). Moses got all self-conscious and what-not and complained to God that he wasn’t a good speaker, so God decided to use Aaron as his mouthpiece (you can read from the beginning of chapter 4 to get the whole context). None of that was new information to me, again, I learned all that a while ago. But what I either forgot or never heard before was how much Aaron was actually involved. Initially I thought this “mouthpiece” thing was just for when Moses went to Pharaoh, but it was so much more than that. Aaron was the one who performed the miracles in front of Pharaoh, he was the one speaking to the children of Israel, in fact, he was pretty much the physical voice of God to the people. It was like a chain of command – God spoke to Moses. Moses spoke to Aaron. Aaron spoke to the people.
I think what I’m learning most from this is how much Aaron and Moses had to be a team. They both had to be following God, they had to be obedient to everything the Lord said, and they had to be completely HUMBLE. Aaron’s humility came because he was waiting to hear from Moses. Moses’ humility came in the fact that Aaron was the one up front. I think so often in leadership these days, there is competition, or people fighting for the limelight. There was no room for competition in this situation. Both were trusting and relying on each other to do/say exactly what the Lord was leading them to.
This applies to me so directly right now! I desire to do BIG things. I want to see a generation catch fire with passion for reaching the lost. At times it’s hard for me to find people on the exact same page as me and I very much feel alone in this quest. BUT I’m learning about how much I need other people with the same passions but different talents.
Aaron couldn’t have done it without Moses. Moses couldn’t have done it without Aaron.
Find people with the same heart. Join them. Celebrate each others gifts. Advance the Kingdom.
Well, it has been quite a minute since I’ve updated, mainly because I’ve been waiting until everything was confirmed so I could let you know all the details. But it is official, I’m moving to Ocala, Fl in the next couple weeks. Since YWAM was over I’ve been praying about where I felt like God was leading me, and my good friend Chad called me up with an offer to move down there. So last I just spent a week down there with intentions of checking out the church and seeing if it would be a place where I could continue to grow. The church is great. The people are great. I had the privilege of meeting with the pastor for breakfast and we had some great convo about Ocala, and where there church is at. I definitely feel like it is a place where I can be invested in, and invest my time in others. Which is possibly something I’ve been missing. I’m excited about the size of the church, it runs around 350. In the last couple years I’ve been in churches of 50 and churches of thousands. Now, please don’t overanalyze my post, I know that numbers don’t mean anything. Just personally, I’m excited to get in a church of medium size and find out where I fit in the body.
My goal is to serve.
Whatever that looks like. I don’t want the limelight, I just want to be a part of a body serving the Lord in every way possible.
Thank you all for your prayers and support over the last year of my life. It has been an incredible journey, and I’m excited to continue on this journey in a new location. I will definitely continue updating this blog on a regular basis. The last few months have been crazy, moving from one place to another. It’s been a blessing.
I would covet your prayers next week as I am heading down to Texas for a week.
Feel free to let me know how you are doing. Love you all.
I would appreciate some prayers for the next week. I’ll be leaving tomorrow to go down Gainesville/Ocala, Florida for the week. I’ll be meeting with my friend Chad and we’ll be talking about what we feel God is leading us to do for our next step in ministry. I’m excited and nervous and a bit anxious. I know it’s silly, but a lot of my future hangs on this week. I know God is completely in control, but my humanity fogs the lens sometimes. Thanks for your prayers.
Love. That’s what it’s all about right? I ran across a great reminder this morning and I wanted to share it with you.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:14-19
I know there is so much more to be said about those verses, it’s jam-packed with goodness and truth, but I needed a quick reminder this morning of why we’re here. Loving God. Loving People.
I’m back in Atlanta now, but I don’t know for how long. God has opened up a opportunity for me down in Florida that I am continuing to pray about. I can’t give you the details now because, well, honestly I just don’t know the details. It would be a new ministry with my best friend Chad and his wife Ashley. I’ve known him since I was 8 and he’s been a great friend. We have been involved in 2 church plants together where we led worship and led the high school class, and now he is down in Florida leading worship for a great church. He’s an incredible musician and writer and loves God with all of his heart. I will tell you more about the ministry when I go down to see them in the next month or so. I would covet your prayers about this situation. I desire to be nowhere other than where God can use me at my fullest potential.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to meet with as many people as possible here in Atlanta. I would love to sit down with you and talk about the journey I have been on in the last couple months. Feel free to email me. You can go here to get my email. Either way, I would love to hear how YOU all are doing.
Thanks again for your prayers. You are laying up treasures in heaven. I love you all.
*Update*
This conversation just happened on Facebook. Look at the times, God is so good.
Anonymous September 1 at 1:48pm
can you pray for us to see a financial release. thanks
Aaron Coury September 1 at 2:29pm
yeah definitely. let me know when it happens.
Anonymous September 1 at 2:54pm
it just happened. someone just called us and said that they wanted to wire us $2500 dollars. I am amazed…
Aaron Coury September 1 at 2:55pm
unbelievable. God’s pretty ridiculous. now i will thank him for you.
We arrived yesterday at the YWAM base, and I must say, I have missed the beauty of this place. The peacefulness, the quiet, the nature.
We’re debriefing for the next few days. Today we talked about the lecture phase of the DTS and tomorrow we will talk about the outreach phase. It was a good day today, just pretty relaxed and I got to get outside and do some mowing. Weird how you can miss physical labor, but I have.
Sunday will be my last day here at YWAM and I’m not sure if that has processed yet. It’s been such an incredible time of growth and new revelations and new truths. How do you just end something like this?
Please pray for continued direction in the immediate future. I’m trusting God for finances and continuing to lay out my steps in front of me.
If anyone would like to get together and chat about all that God has done in the last couple months, I would love nothing more than to meet with you face to face and talk. You can post a comment on here, or email me at haaronc@gmail.com. Hope to hear from you soon.
We went out last night to the “alternative district” of Chicago last night. It’s very close to Wrigley Field and is home of numerous bars and clubs. Things don’t really start happening until about 10pm or so, so we left around 9:30. Unfortunately, it was raining for about the first hour we arrived, so we spent that first hour just walking and praying for the people we would meet.
OUR GOAL: To encourage people that they are loved and valued.
We specifically we targeting people who looked like they were having a rough day. This area of Chicago is also known for it’s prostitution of both male and female, and so we really felt like they were who we were supposed to offer value to.
We went with about 60 roses all tagged saying, “You are loved and valued!” Obviously we were hoping to get opportunities to share the love of Jesus with them, but we believe just the simple act of giving the flowers was *planting some sort of seed.
As I said earlier, the night started out slow, and there were numerous times we just stopped and asked God for direction. We were really relying on Him to direct our steps to the people He wanted us to see. The first flower we gave out was to a lady in a Seven-Eleven. We passed the store and I saw her in the window working. So we decided to go in and see what happened. When we got in the store she was in the back and it took her a few minutes to come out (which was slightly awkward standing there with 30 roses in a convenient store for no apparent reason), but when she came out she was in her civilian clothes, she was on her way home. We offered her a flower telling her we saw her from the street and wanted her to know that she had value.
I can’t describe her smile to you. You missed out because you weren’t there, but it was beautiful.
It was enough for us to know that God was behind what we were doing. So we continued on encouraged and energized. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about every flower we handed out. Firstly, because I don’t remember. Secondly, we don’t have the time. But I do want to highlight just a few more things that happened because it will encourage your faith and hopefully your prayer life.
The week before we had been there and I had noticed a few transvestites, and as we were on our way to the area I said a quick prayer that we would see them. Probably three-quarters of the way through the night we did. We were walking down a street and they were coming down the opposite side from an alley. I got super excited knowing that the Lord had allowed out paths to cross. I felt like the Spirit was calling out directions for us, so I did my best to listen. They ended up just stopping on the corner and we made our way over to their area. I felt like the girls on our team were supposed to give the flowers and talk to them so Akram and I just walked passed and waited a few steps away. Our girls said one that one of the girls’ face just lit up, and she ended up being the key for us in being able to hand out flowers to about 6 other girls. It was awesome to be apart of. We have no idea what that did in them but we believe it brought them a little closer to God.
The last story I’ll share is a quick one. It was nearing 2am and we only had three flowers left and we were making our last walk down the street that would take us to the bus stop, I knew we weren’t supposed to take those flowers with us, and so I said a quick prayer out loud that went something like this, “God, please send them our way.” Almost immediately, a guy dressed like a girl storms out of a door about 10 feet in front of us. Akram quickly handed her the flower telling her that she is loved. We were all blown away.
How amazing is our God!?!
At the end of the night none of us had shared to gospel, no one had given anyone lessons on church history, no one had been told they were sinners…but we believe that that area got to see a little bit of God’s love. Our goal was not to take them from A-Z last night, it was to take them from A-B, or wherever they were at. Little things combined make a big difference.
Do some little things to show God’s love today…and tomorrow…and the next day.
*pun intended
This absolutely makes my brain mush:
He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord, and He will pay back what he has given. – Proverbs 19:17
Go ahead an try to wrap your head around that one…
