RELIANCE ON GOD

A friend and I had the honor of experiencing a K-Love Cruise for five nights at the end of January this year. K-Love is actually a Christian contemporary Radio Station that hosts different events including concerts and cruises. It truly was the best experience to have a cruise full of Christians participating in daily worship, listening to preaching, viewing amazing artistry by a speed, finger painter (hopefully next week’s thoughts!), amazing concerts by different Christian artists each night and even meet and greets with all the musicians!

In case you know any Christian musicians, we ended up seeing the likes of Mac Powell (Former Third Day lead singer) & the Family Reunion, Building 429, Big Daddy Weave, Crowder, Tauren Wells, and Mandisa to name a select few.  I’ll just share a few of my pictures with them!  😉

     

Big Daddy Weave                                               Tauren Wells

 

Nicole C Mullen                                                  Micah Tyler

 

 

Crowder                                                        Mandisa

 

I’ll share one funny story with you…well, I hope you will get a chuckle out of it!  We flew down to Miami the day before the ship set sail and stayed at a nearby hotel. In the morning we went to catch a shuttle van that would take us to the port.  There were several people there, some going to different ships, so we ended up going in two vans.  We were standing next to a family of three children, a grandmother and parents.  They ended up getting on the other shuttle from us but at the end we overheard the gentleman saying his back was hurting so he was trying to stretch it out.  I’m not sure where it came from but suddenly he had a type of guitar and case on his back.  I said to my friend…gee, I wonder if it’s a musician we don’t know of that might be on the cruise.

The first night of the cruise during the Building 429 concert, my friend leaned over to me and said, “there’s the guy from the hotel!”   I looked on stage and said, no…I really don’t think so.  At the hotel he had a baseball hat on backwards, looked like he had hair and looked younger to me.  The guy on stage was bald and somehow just looked older to me!   A few days later we saw the “guy from the hotel” near a Cafe on the ship. I still insisted it was not him and my friend was sure it was. So, quite out of character, she whips out her phone and brought up her picture of her and the Building 429 guys and says, “Is this you?”  Well, sure enough it was!   

 

Building 429–Yes, there is the hotel guy with his arm on my shoulder!

 

The next day I ran into him and explained that we were the gals from the hotel…trying to redeem our craziness!  I got to share that story with a photographer that I had a few times when getting our pictures during the meet and greets. It ends up he was the person assigned to assist the Building 429 people. He was very kind and at least agreed with me that he looks much different while wearing the backwards baseball cap when not performing.  We got a good laugh!

 

My personal photographer, Keerin

 

 

When we were flying home from the cruise we ran into some issues with our flights.  Delays all the way around to some extent, mostly because of the partial government shut down and the polar vortex that hit most of the country the day before our return fight. We learned that many flights around the Chicago area were cancelled the prior day making flights even harder to reschedule the next day.

Our flights both ways were two legs. Our first flight leaving for the return trip was delayed about three hours but still allowed time to make our connecting flight for the last leg.  We had seen we would be leaving our 70+ degree weather from the cruise and returning to about 2 degree weather (even colder with the wind chill factor) closer to home but at least the planes were still flying.  We figured we would have to “de-ice” like we did on the way down.

Beautiful sunset from above the clouds! Glorious!

 

Once we landed at the last leg about 8:45 pm  we received notification that the 9:45 pm flight was cancelled supposedly due to the snow, though it was not snowing at all!  We had seen that an earlier flight to our final destination was delayed too and was leaving at 9:45 pm….very strange!

We waited in line to see what options were available and the best we could do was get on a stand by list for a 8:00 am flight in the morning.  This was my first experience with a stand by list!  We believe we were actually 6th on the list, on a not too big of a plane, so didn’t hold too much hope for that flight in the morning.

 

Browsing a handy list of nearby hotels that the ticket person gave us we called to check availability and see what our “distress” rate would be.

We went down to the baggage office at the airport to see if we could get our luggage as we had checked our suitcases. (Yep…I always overpack!)  Much to our surprise they said there was a 3 hr minimum wait for them to properly retrieve our bags!  Being that it was already 9:30 pm, we did NOT request our luggage.  Getting to a hotel and trying to find a little something to eat  was more of a priority!  Thankfully we saw some people ahead of us get some snacks from this office so we asked if we could have some since we had not really eaten much through the day.  The airline gave us each a goodie bottle of toiletries too since we had nothing with us. (I will add the little fold up toothbrush was kind of cute!)

It is funny looking back at this picture once we finally got to the hotel for the night….somehow we are actually smiling though we didn’t quite feel like that inside!

 

So happy to have a goodie bottle of toiletries for the night!

 

To top it off, my friend was actually sporting a cold with sneezing and runny nose which started that morning!  We just really wanted to get back home and be warm!

 

Since when we headed out on our trip originally we were going to much warmer weather down south, we brought lighter coats with us and left our winter coat in the car at the airport for when we returned. A winter coat would not have fit in my suitcase!  🙂  Thankfully my friend at least had a lighter hat and gloves with her to warm her a little bit.   We were tossing around different options of ways we could get home IF we were not able to get on with our stand by tickets.

When we got the news of no luggage for the night, there we were thrust into below zero temperatures with the wind chill, with only a light coat on our back, our few snacks and the toiletry goodie bottle for the night!

 

I was thinking there was a Bible verse that mentioned “take only the coat on your back…” and wanted to check it out more after returning home; it seemed like we would be able to relate!

Indeed researching further, this is the story I was reminded of that night….

Jesus called together his twelve apostles and gave them complete power over all demons and diseases. Then he sent them to tell about God’s kingdom and to heal the sick. He told them, “Don’t take anything with you! Don’t take a walking stick or a traveling bag or food or money or even a change of clothes.  When you are welcomed into a home, stay there until you leave that town. If people won’t welcome you, leave the town and shake the dust from your feet as a warning to them.”

The apostles left and went from village to village, telling the good news and healing people everywhere.  –Luke 9:1-6 (CEV)

 

Can you imagine what it must have felt like to be one of the twelve apostles?

–To have complete power over all demons and diseases just like Jesus?

–To tell everyone you meet about God’s kingdom?

–To be able to heal the sick?

–To be sent out with NO suitcase/food/money or even change of clothes?

–To know that sometimes you wouldn’t be welcome to stay in a home?

 

It sure seems like some scary propositions in my mind!

 

 

 

Have you thought about the fact that actually YOU and I are just like those first apostles?

 

With Christ living in us and us reflecting Him in this world, we too are sent to….

...have power over demons and diseases in Jesus’ name

…need to share the good news about the kingdom with all we meet

…go wherever with whatever God calls us to even if it with just the clothes on our back

…know that sometimes people won’t accept the Christ that we share with them.

 

May I encourage you this week, like Peter who obeyed the angel of the Lord when he was in prison, to…

“Get dressed and put on your sandals.” Peter did what he was told. Then the angel said, “Now put on your coat and follow me.”  –Acts 12:8 (CEV)

 

In case you are wondering about the ending to our return home story, once at the hotel we were tossing around different options of how to get home if we were not able to get on a flight; we were really doubting being 6th on the list that we would get on that first flight.  Taking a bus or renting a car were viable options we were considering.

We decided to trust the Lord to help work it all out in whatever way that night as we went to sleep.  He had already filled the whole time from start to finish with so many blessings; He would get us through this too!

We were up early the next morning to find that once again the flight was delayed two hours so we waited a bit before heading back to the airport.  It was a lot of waiting for an attendant to come to our gate; only a 1/2 hr before the flight was scheduled. We saw at that point we were 4th & 5th on the stand by list along with a 6th person also waiting.

Much to our surprise the first three people did NOT show so the three of us there were all able to get on that flight!  It was still frigid cold but things worked out favorably with being able to fly back to our point of origin; oddly enough the actual flight time was a mere half hour!! We were very thankful that we were able to then drive the hour and half from the airport back to our homes in daylight vs the midnight drive it would have been!