Hope Center Reunification Ceremony
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· 3 viewsReunification Ceremony for Greg Wilson at Hope Center Pelzer
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Your Life is Profitable to Us
Your Life is Profitable to Us
For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right, I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus, appeal to you for my son, Onesimus. I became his father while I was in chains.
We don’t know exactly why, but we do know that Onesimus was running from a past he wants to escape.
Most of the men that make their way to Hope Center are desperately trying to escape a past that has kept them enslaved for a long time....
Greg, you know all too well the power of addiction and how the enemy wants to destroy a man and his family.
But like God somehow leading Onesimus to the Apostle Paul’s door, the Holy Spirit found you and connected you here with us....it was not an accident…I believe it was God’s divine purpose.
Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me. I am sending him back to you—I am sending my very own heart. I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place. But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will.
By his divine, God had made Onesimus into a new man…or better, as I often tell the men each week at Hope Center…Onesimus finally discovered the man of God that was always there by God’s grace, just covered up in a heap of fear, pain, hurt, and addiction.
The name Onesimus means “profitable”…it was a common slave name and a kind of hopeful omen that somehow the slave would bring good fortune to the owner.
But I want to say to you today Greg, that you and PROFITABLE.
You have been profitable to us at Beech Springs Church.
You have been profitable to the men at Hope Center.
You have been profitable to Jake and the leadership at HC.
…AND NOW your family needs you once again....
The man that God has made you to be is profitable to Amy and Barrett.
For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother. He is especially so to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
Amy, I actually know a little bit about the hurt and pain that addiction can cause a family…it’s true that Satan wants to destroy the family.
I’m sure you’ve spent many days between anger and brokenness and desperation.
But I want to tell you today, that God is not done with your family.
The work of the Holy Spirit is a mystery…Somehow I don’t think everything is about sin, as much as it is about the process it takes to finally get us to realize who we were created to be....
It just might be that it tool all this time and all this process to help you Greg finally realize, you are God’s son and there is an anointing on your life to be PROFITABLE to your family and to your community and to your church.
[Have Jake, Eric/Gena, HC Leaders gather around Greg, Amy, and Barrett]
Prayer of Reunification