I Tim. 4:12 Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
 	Our text this evening is one that is very dear to my heart for a number of reasons. My intent is not to give expression to all of them at this point, but rather to focus on one aspect of the graciousness of the Lord in bringing this passage of Himself and His plan and His purpose home to Laura and myself. This will be a bit different from my past times, sharing with you, but the Lord has placed someone very dear into our hearts. He has placed Himself, through His wonderful and comforting Holy Spirit into these hearts of stone, and made them to be hearts of flesh and blood. His work is not done, but it is becoming more and more evident as each day passes.
	I have no doubt that there will be difficulty in sharing what the Lord has been doing of late, because of the very nature of how He always, effectively, faithfully, and gloriously makes everything perfect in His plan and purpose. And, as we are all aware, that often means a bitter end to what we hold near and dear in our own lives. I am continually being brought back to the wonderful passage in Galatians Chapter 2, verse 20. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. The Lord has been very gracious in so many ways, most of which are far beyond my comprehension, yet they are so very real and majestic as He shows Himself in all His Love, Comfort, and Glory.
	This evening, I would like to give expression to my friends and to my family in Christ of how the Lord has been very active in blessing Laura and me in a very wonderful manner. I think that this falls into an aspect of giving Glory to God in the midst of the assembly of God for His name’s sake. While I will be concentrating on specific elements of our household, I wish it to be very clear that everything is stated with the intention of bringing glory to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the only element of our lives, of any life, worthy to be expressed from our hearts unto others. He must be the focus, period.
	As parents, the Lord has blessed us, with two diverse bundles of joy, true joy in Him. Each is a story of the creative majesty of God, but this evening, I would like to concentrate on what the Lord has done, in His infinite wisdom, in and through Leah, our youngest. For almost eighteen years, He has blessed us with the living opportunity to daily seek His face and His strength and His Love and His patience and His kindness with this precious gift from His heart to us. He has given our family and others, a slight glimpse into His heart of Love, through our daughter. Now, least my fatherly opinions sidetrack the glory of God, the same can be and should be said of every child that God has placed into our lives. All children are the wonderful gift of God to their parents. And every child should serve to cause parents and grandparents to seek God’s face and His ways of being everything in every way that God desires unto each of these wonderful lives. Leah is not unique in that fashion, nor any more special than any child of God’s creative hands. 
What I would like to share is a bit of what we have learned as God has manifested Himself to us in dealing with Leah. He is the focus of what He has done and is doing through our daughter with us and with others. He has shown us that He has all things well in hand, with regard to every aspect of one’s life. Leah is a living testimony to this fact. As the doctors are amazed that she has lived this long, even lived at all, so are we truly amazed at how the Lord has sustained and established Himself in and through this vital, young lady. He has done a perfect work, as He always does. There have been so many people who are sorry about Leah’s condition, and offer condolences to us as her parents. They are fully appreciated and absolutely accepted in every expression of love. Yet, when one considers just how much He has accomplished in and through her life, it is readily apparent why she was created in her earthly imperfection, yet with her spiritually-minded aptitude toward God. She has always truly and whole-heartedly loved the Lord. 
I remember that time when the Lord put it upon my heart that I needed to talk to her about Jesus Christ, and how excited she got as she accepted in the Lord into her heart. She was of an age and intellectual state when I knew that she understood what she was doing. The Lord placed it on my heart to sit with her after we got her ready for bed. I pondered how to mention what was on my heart concerning the need to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as her Savior. She wrapped her arms around my neck tightly and gave me a hug and said “Daddy, I love you.” That was the opening I needed as I began to talk to her about the love of God. She was so open and already so sure of His love. All she wanted was to love Jesus with all her heart as He loved her. 
From our earliest recollections, we remember her love for the Lord in song and praise. She always had a desire to be in fellowship, to sing and to pray. Sunday was and still is the Lord’s Day, and it is the one day, now, when she will willing suffer the painful ride to and from church, in order to be with the Lord’s people in prayer and praise. It is so difficult to move her and for her to sit upright in her stroller, yet she does not want to stay home on Sunday mornings. There is much that I have had to learn in this regard. My attitude has often been changed from that of an obligation to go to church, to a willing desire to go to church by the example of my daughter who delights in being in fellowship with the beloved ones in Christ. 
As well, I went to many of our men’s meetings because she would not let me stay home. She had to go. She would get so excited when it was announced that Monday was another men’s meeting, and I couldn’t keep her from it.  While she was able, up to last year, she was a mainstay at the men’s meetings, rarely missing one, fully enjoying the fellowship of song in Christ with the men. 
She also attended two youth group meetings each week. Sundays with the worship in the morning and the instruments of praise in the evening, and Mondays with the two youth group meetings and the Men’s Fellowship were her favorite days of the week. She rejoiced in the love of Christ with all; young and old, male and female, it mattered not as long as the Lord was being glorified. 
Our fellowship is not the only group of people to whom Leah has been a testimony of the One, True and Living Christ. As the Lord is my witness, it seems that she has truly done all that a person in the love of Christ can be called upon to do on this earth, and at such a young age, and with such physical limitations. Yet, it is directly because of those physical limitations that the Lord has been able to show Himself over and over again. There have been so many people to whom God’s love has been expressed in the heart of Leah. The medical profession has been greatly blessed with the opportunity to know just how mighty God is. There is no medical reason that Leah has been alive these past years, except that God has deemed it fit for her. The doctors, and there are large numbers of them, have been witness to the miracle of God’s love. Leah never hides any of the grace of God. She told all of them about the Lord and, when she was able, she would sing with all the depth of her soul of the love of God in their waiting rooms, in their offices, and in the hospital. She told them of the love that was in her heart. She hugged them, and she prayed for them. 
This had an effect on many of them, and especially on her neurologist. She is a wonderful Jewish woman, who has been witness to the love of Christ. During last year’s hospitalization, with Leah on life support, this doctor made the statement that she doesn’t usually believe in prayer, but she is praying for Leah. Then, after the Lord brought Leah back to us, this doctor confided that she was suffering from cancer and asked us to keep her in prayer because she knows that God listens to us and to Leah. 
This same witness held true with the nurses and the office workers. During that same hospitalization, a young nurse, whose husband was away in the navy, listened to the praise songs that we played in Leah’s room. We spent time talking about the songs that she remembered from her childhood when she went to church with her parents. Jen, the nurse, was there as we would pray with Leah and she would listen quietly. When she did awake from her coma, Leah would give Jen hugs and sparkling-eyed smiles. 
This was typical of Leah as there was none to whom she withheld the love of God. And, what was so incredible, they listened and they marveled. She was so honest and sincere in her love; they had no choice but to accept the love of Christ that she so freely expressed. They didn’t necessarily understand, they didn’t always acknowledge it, but they couldn’t help but be touched by Christ as He loved them through Leah. 
Even today, it is very clear in our house that it is only because of the perfect plan of God that Leah is still with us, at this time. If she weren’t, we would not have had the recent opportunities with several people whom the Lord has brought into our household to care for our daughter. These people are in desperate need of the love of God, and through the current situation with Leah’s deteriorating health, they have become witnesses to the glory of God that is being established through His loving kindness in keeping our daughter. Her daily nurse, John, has spent hours in conversations with Laura and me about the Lord. We have dealt with the fact that God created Leah perfectly, which is my wholehearted contention, now. He can’t accept that a loving God could create a person in such a physically impaired situation. It has given us hours of opportunity to give expression to the fact that God so loved us that He gave us Leah, just as He so much more abundantly loved us that He gave us the perfect gift of Jesus Christ, His Son. We had the opportunity to stand with John, as his marriage seemed to be disintegrating. He recently made the statement that his marriage is now working out because of our prayers and our stand in the Lord with him, the same stand that he has seen in Christ on Leah’s behalf.
There is a young man who spent the summer with us, in caring for Leah, who needs to come into a living relationship with Christ. I pray that the months spent with our family, as we looked to the Lord for our every need and for our every strength, will be part of the planting of the Lord in that heart, so earnestly seeking after truth on an intellectual basis. He is currently away at school, but we still talk to him regularly and he is asking us to keep him in prayer. 
These are but two of the various individuals who have come to our home to be of service for Leah’s physical needs, yet have been witnesses to their own spiritual need. It is amazing how the Lord works to His own Glory through willing vessels. Through Leah’s earnest love and need to hear the praise music of God, these souls have been forced to listen to the CD’s of Leah’s favorite praise songs over and over again, and witness her utterances of joy and praise as the Lord’s name is mentioned in song. 
As well, for many years, her physical therapist and her entire family have become witnesses of the great love of God in working with Leah. They are part of the body of Christ, but have never been able to reconcile the love of God in the terms of Leah’s condition. They are now caught up in the reality of the working Love of God in their own family, as He is bringing about a complete reliance on God alone to get them through the trials and tribulations of growing, teenage children, and aging, ailing parents. Through the years of seeing how the Lord has dealt in our entire family through the trials and strife that have been ours with Leah’s on-going decline in health and abilities, that family has seen that God is Great and Mighty and Loving and Comforting, and able to provide for every need in His over abundant grace. These are some of the people who have been affected in the medical aspects of Leah’s condition, who may never have been so exposed to the love of God, but for the witness of this young girl in her physical calamity.
Then there are the ones in the education field who have been witnesses of Christ in having Leah in their lives and in their classrooms when she was able to go to school. So many teachers and aides have been brought into the presence of the love of Christ in their classrooms in a manner that would otherwise be unacceptable. We still have contact with numerous teachers from her time in school. They ask about her and one of her former aides still visits her on a weekly basis. Leah never ceased to talk about the Lord in their classes and sing songs of Christ. We were constantly getting questions about the lyrics to the songs that she was singing and we were told numerous times about the way Leah loved to talk about how she went to church on Sundays and praised the Lord. Whenever the subject of favorite things and likes would be brought up, Leah always mentioned the Lord, the Bible studies, the Sunday praises and playing instruments at church on Sunday night. We were constantly being told that everyone in class would know that Leah went to church on Sunday and the youth groups and men’s meeting on Mondays to praise the Lord, because she would talk about her praise meetings with such excitement and determination. It seems that this is the only manner in which Christ can be brought up in today’s classroom, and she never missed an opportunity to do so. When Leah would go into one of her comas, or miss school for extended periods of time, we would receive regular inquiries from her teachers, aides and classmates. They came to visit her at the hospital and at home because they missed her love in their midst, an expression of the love of Christ Jesus to this world.
Another group that has been witness of the Love of Christ in Leah is the many friends and neighbors whom the Lord has influenced, through her, in His wondrous Grace. When Bekka, our oldest daughter, was playing soccer, we used to take Leah to the practices and to the games. The whole team fell in love with her and made her an official member of the team. If she missed a game or a practice, we would be bombarded by many of them as to her condition. The coach and his wife still ask about her. She won the hearts of those players and parents with her bright smile, her enthusiasm, and her constant expression of Christ’s love.
	Another example rests with one of the young ladies who has become part of the youth group. The two of them became friends through their adaptive PE classes in elementary school, and have blossomed together with the Lord making inroads into her family as well. Our neighbors across the street became enthralled with Leah and went out of their way to make her 16th birthday an extremely memorable one. The children wanted to do something very special for Leah. Why is it that so many people are influenced by the love that is in Leah? It is because that love is pure in nature; it is the heart of Christ. There is no prejudice in the way Leah deals with people. It matters not who anyone is, all are deserving of the love that the Lord has instilled in Leah. She is open and loving and kind to all. She makes no distinction of person; all are worthy to be loved in Christ. Those who have come to know her, love her, love Christ in her. She has become a magnet of His love unto others. They may pity her circumstances, but as they grow to know her, and the One Who lives His life out from her, they cannot help but want to get to know her in greater depth. She is a witness of the truest form of God’s unconditional love. It matters not what the circumstances of the people that come into Leah’s life, they are all worthy of the Love of the One Who indwells her, and she makes that truth freely known to all.
	And, this love goes beyond those who personally come into contact with her. My fellow workers, Laura’s fellow workers, our friends have been greatly affected by her love, even though they may never have met her. Partly because of our witness of how wonderfully we have been blessed by her, despite her condition, but mostly because the Lord has worked an increasingly deeper love in our hearts after Him through His dealings with her. We are learning to give expression to Him whenever we are asked about Leah. There is a quiet confidence that all is well in His Hands in regard to Leah, and we have become more settled in the fact that she is the way she is because that is God’s greatest expression of love to her. I spent some time with my school nurse recently. She gave expression to the fact that Laura and I are an inspiration because we are so willing to take care of a child in Leah’s condition. I mentioned that we are blessed beyond measure with Leah and that the Lord makes all abundance in her care. That is a testimony that I treasure in my heart, day after day.
	On another level, I marvel at her acceptance of what is going on in her body. I doubt I could handle all the physical losses of just this past year with the same love of the Lord that she still exudes. This does not mean that it is easy for her. Far from it! She is fully aware of what is lacking, and yet she does not let that interfere with her heart after Christ. She will be lying in her bed, in pain and agony, with silent tears streaming across her face. She knows that she can no longer swallow, that she can no longer eat solid food and enjoy the taste of her favorite treats. Her arm is no longer functioning and is in constant pain. She is blind and can no longer watch those favorite videos or play her favorite games. She is now confined to her hospital bed, daily fighting acid reflux, constantly coughing up mucous from her lungs, trying to breathe through the saliva pooling in her throat, having to be suctioned regularly to keep from drowning in her own fluids and being slowly fed through a tube. All of these things she faces every day, and yet, mention the Lord, begin singing about Jesus, and it all evaporates as she focuses on Him. She is no longer intelligible, but her heart and her soul sing forth praises unto God that have to touch His heart in the purity of her offering. Her face lights up with joy and His love exudes from her every fiber. Despite all the physical lack, there is a spiritual fullness in that kid that causes us to marvel at the great Love of God which so easily and fully transcends what we think is of value on this earth. Hopefully, that is the message that our work mates receive as we daily focus on the Lord in Leah.
Our relationship with Christ has grown exponentially with every hospital trip to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. We know that the Lord is very well pleased with the work that He has done in and through Leah’s love for Christ. Each coma has brought more and more people into the circle of those to whom He is being witnessed. We have received so much love and support from Him, through you, and through her, that we must marvel at the Amazing Grace of God to us ward in Christ. He has made Himself known in ways that are beyond our reckoning. The doctors and the nurses have been amazed that our family can so fully love God and trust Him. They constantly tell us that we are unique because we are not tearing the hospital apart as the weeks pass and we are sitting at her bedside in PICU. Rather than anger, they have been met with love and with patience and with kindness and with understanding, from our family and from all of our loved ones in the fellowship who have come to stay with Leah. They are trained to expect the worse in such stressful situations and to deal with people knowing the strain of the events that bring them into the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. With our entire family, they have never seen the normal grieving process, and they have, on many occasions asked us why we are different. They have expressed their thankfulness that we have not belittled them or angrily attacked them. This has touched Laura and me as we have been in earnest prayer on our daughter’s behalf, because these doctors and nurses more and more become the focus of our prayers, rather than the grief that we carry in our hearts. He is teaching us what is of value, the hearts of those who do not know the love of God.
Speaking of prayer, there is another aspect of the love of the Lord in Leah to which we have been witnesses. She is stubbornly insistent that we include so many people in our prayers each evening. There is no compromise when it comes to lifting up others in prayer every night as we end the day. Loved ones, near and far must be mentioned before she will accept the fact that it is time to go to sleep. When she was able, she would lead the prayers at the youth meetings and in our family gatherings. There is such joy in her as we pray to the Lord. She undoubtedly is heard of the Lord because her heart is so after Him for His sake. She never asks for anything for herself, but always for others. She squeals with delight in Him.  She cherishes the times that we ask her to pray, even today. Though her lips can no longer give expression as they used to, her face lights up and her heart leaps forth in the love and concern that she has for others.  
We know that the Lord is graciously preparing us for the time that Leah’s love for the Lord will be a cherished memory to treasure in our hearts. The time of her sojourn on this earth appears to be in its waning phases. Yet, the Lord has proven Himself mighty in this little heart and body of His spiritual love. In her life, we have been given a wonderfully accurate expression of how our lives should be full of the songs of praise unto God for no other reason than that He is Lord. She cared not about the sound of her praises, or the tune that she couldn’t carry or the words that she couldn’t pronounce. She gave forth with all her heart and being with no self-conscious thoughts of any kind.
As parents, we have learned so much of the gracious and comforting love of God in Christ Jesus through these blessed 18 years with Leah. The face of this little one so lights up with the very mention of Jesus Christ. His name is the one element that constantly brings forth a forgetfulness of the earthly circumstances. Just the mention of Jesus, in word or song, manifested an utter willingness to praise Him, no matter what location or what pain she might have been enduring. Her behavioral instincts instantly focused on Him and her heart cried forth with love for our glorious Lord and Savior. Oh to be so attuned in our hearts in the midst of every trial and situation.
	Her excitement for worship, not just in terms of being all unto the Lord, but in gathering together with the Beloved Ones of God is a constant testimony and encouragement of what should be in my heart for each one of you, but most especially in terms of my heart after the Lord. So often we gather together to see each other, but the fact is that we are to be more focused on how to fellowship in union, to be of pleasure to the Lord. That is the heart that Leah has perfected in her love of God. She loves all, and that love is the Love of God, for His sake. There have been numerous times when we have come to church, when our songs of worship in driving to church, to get Leah through that pain-filled journey, have spilled over with her calling forth the name of Jesus as we entered into worship with the fellowship. She called out His name and responded very vocally whenever His name was sung or mentioned with every fiber of her being entering into fellowship with the body of Christ.
	She loves the Lord with all her heart and soul and being. That is a great lesson that we have learned in the time that we have had with Leah. She is the purest witness of Christ’s love in our hearts and in our souls. We are so thankful to the Lord for the great Love that He has given us, in Christ, in Leah. He has proven Himself over and over again in so many wonderful ways. 
	In II Cor. 8:1-12, Paul gives us an encouragement which has become very real to Laura and me through the love of the fellowship for these many years. The Love of God has been poured mightily into our hearts through the love that has constrained you to keep us in your hearts in prayer and in action. There have been so many examples of the love of God expressed at the hospital, by her bedside, in food offerings, in staying with Leah at our home, in encouragement, in love gifts, in friendship. In every aspect of your willingness to be of service to us. in your love of God, the words of verse 7 have been poured out upon us, Therefore as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also. The members of this fellowship, for years, have been laying down your lives for the sake of so many others beside our family and Leah. I think of the inmates, the ill, the poor, the widowed, the dying, the young people, the brokenhearted, and the hosts of other needs that the Lord has lain upon us. The great lesson is that the love of God covers all the lives of those who seek after Him and will willingly lay aside our wants and our desires and our problems for the sake of His glory reaching out to others.
We have been blessed, as you have been a blessing; you have been blessed in your selfless love; and above all, God: Our Heavenly Father, Our Risen Lord, and Our Holy Comforter has been blessed.
Philemon 3-6 Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers, Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints; That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.
He is Exalted, the King is Exalted on High