God is good...all the time!

This week has been so crazy! But then, it's Workshop week, so it's supposed to be. :-) Workshop was incredible, to say the least; God was working in mighty ways. So many people worked so hard to make this happen; they did an awesome job. The speakers were all amazing and filled with the Spirit. As many wonderful things as God has done this week, one of them was particularly incredible and I am so grateful to God for what He did.

Shane, our worship leader at Memorial, and his wife Alice had a pretty rough week. Shane had a strange pain in his hand and arm that spread to his other arm, his legs, his neck and basically throughout his entire body. Alice took off work for three days to take care of him. There had been emails sent out to our prayer chain at church, so everyone was praying for them, but I don't think many of us had a grasp of how truly awful Shane was feeling until we saw him Wednesday night. Now, Shane isn't the kind of guy that will complain, no matter how bad he feels; but he was moving pretty gingerly, so we could all tell that he wasn't doing well. He kind of hobbled through the church building, doing everything he had to do to make the Workshop kick-off go well. Prayers continued to go up, because we all knew that in a little while, Shane was going to have to get on stage and lead our worship. I was beginning to wonder if he would even be able to stand, but he went on stage (using a mic stand part of the time because it hurt to hold the microphone) and worshipped our God from his heart, as we have seen him do on so many Sunday mornings. He was so focused on God that you could hardly tell he was in pain at all. As we came to the chorus of the final song of the night, Shane said, "Let's raise the roof!" And did we ever! I'm pretty sure that if you had been standing on the sidewalk outside the building you would have been able to hear the praises lifted up, "Jesus, Lamb of God, worthy is Your Name!" Tears sprung into my eyes as Shane, in spite of all of his pain, stood tall on the stage and lifted both of his hands heavenward in humble praise and adoration of his awesome God. After that, Shane pretty much collapsed into his front pew. The elders, the majority of the praise team and some others surrounded him, laid their hands on him and lifted him up in prayers to God. There wasn't a dry eye in the bunch when they finished. Everyone was feeling his pain, as much as we could, anyway. Then we just stood around and kind of stared at him and Alice. After a while, Shane said it was too weird with us all looking at him and he wanted to go home. I felt kind of bad, but then I realized why we were staring at him: we didn't know what else to do. We had no words to make it better, and we couldn't hug him, because it would hurt; so we just stared.
We all continued to pray, and Thursday night Shane felt much better than the night before. Even so, we were still a bit apprehensive about Friday night, when our praise team was going to lead worship.
Friday night, Shane got up on stage and, before we sang, he talked about God's goodness. He told us how much better he was feeling since Wednesday night, and he gave all the glory to God. What amazed me the most, though, was what he said next. After he said how good God was for making him strong enough to get up there that night, he said, "But I would still say 'God is good' even if I was laying in a hospital bed for the second time this week." What faith! And I know Shane well enough to know that he wasn't just saying that; he really would have said "God is good."
On Saturday night, Shane was on stage again, joking with Terry as they made announcements. This morning, he (Shane, not Terry =D) sang bass with the Zoe group at church. Afterwards, he smiled as he told me that he was completely pain-free today. God is so good! His grace was sufficient for Shane and His power was perfected in Shane's weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).
God has truly blessed our church family and me, personally, with Shane and Alice both. Their faith and trust in God, even when things aren't going the way they might like, is a wonderful example and testimony to all of us. Thanks, Shane and Alice! Shane, it is my prayer that Jesus has said to you what He said to the woman in Matthew 9, "Your faith has healed you." Thanks for your faith, brother! God is good...all the time!