Mary led group in worship…
♪ In Your presence that’s where I am strong… in Your presence, O Lord, my God… in Your presence, that’s where I belong… seeking Your face, and touching Your grace… in the cleft of the Rock… ♪
Pastor Ray shared…
When Mary first started singing about the presence of God, I was reminded of this prophecy from 1993. It’s in Pastor Lynne’s book, The Master Is Calling. It’s all about the presence of God.
I said you’d be changed in My presence, saith the Lord. If you’ve not experienced change in your life, if your old ways are still prevailing, if your old man is still in evidence, you’ve not spent the time with Me that I desire. It isn’t a matter of self-control or disciplining your flesh with no help from Me, saith God. If you’ll spend time in My presence, you will be changed. Your pattern of life will change. Your old man will begin to pass away. Your new man will begin to rise in the image of My Son. Your life will begin to bear much fruit. The evidence of your walk with Me will change as a result of spending much time in My presence. If you’re having trouble getting rid of an old habit, if you’re having trouble with your marriage, if your family relationships aren’t changing, you’re not spending the time with Me that would enable that change to come to pass. Your desire and the motivation of your heart to walk uprightly before Me is a product of becoming so close to Me that you do not want to bring hurt to Me. In natural relationships, when you love someone, you want to do right things for them. You don’t want to hurt them. Well, as you spend time with Me, saith God, as you spend time in My presence, we will develop a relationship that is closer than any earthly relationship. It will shape the pattern of your living. You’ll want to conform your ways to My Word simply because it’s the desire of your heart. Your life will change. But it will be a product of your spending time with Me.
Mary continued singing In Your Presence, O God…
Pastor Ray continued…
Can we spend more time in the presence of God? That’s the question in my heart. Can we spend different times of the day just lifting Him up, just ministering unto Him? Can we by faith spend time in the presence even when we’re doing other natural things? Just thinking about Him… thinking about what His Word says about us… thinking about His glory and beauty and faithfulness…
I know we can, Lord. It is our desire. We do want and yearn for more of You. We know we cannot do it on our own. It’s not our strength. It’s Your strength in us. So we take that word from 1993 and begin to see that things that You’ve called each one of us in these days to do and say… places to go… connections we’re to make… we take that and recognize it is time in Your presence that makes all the difference in us. It makes a difference in the prayers that we pray. It makes a difference in the words that we say. It makes a difference in recognizing that Jesus is Lord. It makes a difference in the path we walk out. Thank You for Your presence, Lord.
Mary led group in singing…
♪ Holy Spirit, You are welcome here… come flood this place and fill the atmosphere… Your glory is what our hearts long for… to be overcome by Your presence, Lord… ♪
Pastor Ray…
We love Your presence, Lord… to be touched and changed in Your presence… we love it when You come… when we sense You…
Stand up with me. Today is D-Day, 75 year anniversary. I got up early enough to watch it being talked about on TV. When you see those crosses on almost 10,000 graves… I want us to look to the flag and say together the pledge of allegiance. I know this is not a “political” meeting. But it’s a God meeting and we’re one nation under God. Let’s say the pledge.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic for which it stands,
One nation under God, indivisible,
With liberty and justice for all.”
You may be seated. D-Day was 75 years ago. I turned on the TV to see part of President Trump’s speech. The scene was unusual because the men and women that died were bringing honor and thanksgiving to the military people. Behind the President were people that were actually there 75 years ago! A paratrooper now 97 years old jumped out of a plane yesterday. He said he’d be willing to do it again. It was interesting to hear all of that. It’s almost like it’s holy ground. I saw some facts about D-Day that you might not know about.
D-Day Facts…
As early as 1942, the BBC launched a bogus appeal for photographs and postcards from the coast of Europe, from Norway to the Pyrenees. It was a fake request. It was actually a way of gathering intelligence on suitable landing beaches and Normandy was settled on. Millions of photos were sent.
The allies put a lot of effort into trying to convince the Germans the invasion was going to be near Calais, not Normandy. They faked them out. The invented phantom field armies based in Kent as part of their D-Day deception plan, named Operation Fortitude.
The built dummy equipment, including inflatable tanks, parachuted dummies, used double agents and released controlled leaks of misinformation which led the Germans to believe the allies were going to invade via the Pas-de-Calais and Norway. The Germans took the bait so much that even after D-Day they held many of their best troops in the Calais area expecting a second invasion.
By 1944, more than 2 million troops from more than 12 countries were in Britain preparing for the invasion. So on D-Day, allied forces consisted primarily of US, British and Canadian troops but also included Australian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Rhodesian [present-day Zimbabwe] and Polish naval, air and ground support.
They were watching for the right weather conditions. They wanted a full noon with a spring tide so they could land at dawn then the tide was about half way in. But those kind of conditions meant there were only a few days that could work. They chose to invade on June 5, not the 6th. But ended up delaying by 24 hours because of bad weather. It was Group Captain James Martin Staff who made the vital forecast and persuaded General Eisenhower to change the date.
The forecast was so bad that the German commander in Normandy, Erwin Rommel, felt so sure there wouldn’t be an invasion that he went home to give his wife a pair of shoes for her 50th birthday. He was in Germany when the news came of the invasion. He was the commander and he wasn’t even there.
There’s an interesting fact about Hitler. When the D-Day forces landed, Adolf Hitler was asleep. None of his generals dared order reinforcements without his permission and no one dared to wake him. Crucial hours were lost in the battle to hold Normandy. When Hitler did finally wake up, at around 10 a.m., he was excited at news of the invasion. He thought Germany would easily defeat the allies.
While America formed the biggest national contingent, the combined force of Commonwealth service personnel – mostly British and Canadian – was greater. Of the 156,000 men who landed in France on 6 June, 73,000 were American, and 83,000 British or Canadian. The Commonwealth naval contingent was twice that of the Americans.
There were five beaches that were chosen for the operation, code named, from east to west, Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah. Casualties varied widely – on “Bloody Omaha,” where around 4,000 men were killed or wounded, one US unit landing in the first wave lost 90% of its men. On Gold Beach, by contrast, casualty rates were around 80% lower.
They were protective of the date and place of attack. Having been given his top-secret mission to attack the Merville battery on D-Day, Terence Otway had to be certain his men wouldn’t spill the beans ahead of 6 June 1944. He sent 30 of the prettiest members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, dressed in civilian clothes, into village pubs near where his soldiers were training. They were asked to do all they could to discover the men’s mission. None of the men gave anything away.
Pastor Ray continued…
It’s so interesting to me that they had 7,000 ships involved with 10,000 vehicles; 4,400 from the combined allied forced died just on that day. Four thousand to nine thousand German casualties. Then something I hadn’t really thought about, almost 20 thousand people that lived in the area were killed because of all the bombing. Over 150 thousand had to leave their homes.
Did you want to share about your day being there?
Robert shared…
I was always impressed by the fact that my father enlisted to serve in WWII because of Pearl Harbor. When I was young, he would talk about the brutality of the D-Day invasion. I thought he was exaggerating. The reason I thought that was because there were movies made about D-Day. They showed soldiers shooting rifles and go “Ohh” and fall over. But my father described something far more violent. Guys parachuted down. My dad came in a landing barge. They’re these rectangle shaped boats with a flat front end. When they got up to the beach, the front end drops and the soldiers came running out. They said as they were approaching the beach, you could hear the bullets pinging off the front of the boat. The guys at the front knew that as soon as that front end dropped, they were all going to get hit. So as the boats would come to the beach, the front would drop and this whole wall of American soldiers would just drop from bullet wounds. As you ran out of the boat, you were running over dead bodies before you could get out of the boat. Some of the captains of the boats were panicking. They wanted to get the boat out of there so they started dropping the front of the boats too soon in too deep of water. Dad said that not only were the front line of the men dropping dead on the platform of the boat, but then as the remaining soldiers were running into water that was 8 to 12 feet deep, falling to the bottom. They were loaded up with guns and backpacks. They were sinking below and other soldiers fell on top of them. So we lost a lot of soldiers to drowning. He talked about the amount of explosives. You’d be hunkered down to the guy right next to you and there would be this explosion. He said you would see their legs fly through the air. He said there would be the upper torso of these teens. These were 18 and 19 year old kids. He said the upper torso would fly through the air, twirling and shooting out blood everywhere. My dad was shot through the left shoulder on the second day. He stayed at war and continued his tour. But I never saw anything on any movie that was as violent as what he described. Until a movie came out called “Saving Private Ryan.” And if you ever want to see what all of our soldiers endured… The people that produced the movie obviously had men who were there and fought in the battle helping them recreate it and get it right. So just a huge salute to all the soldiers who fought that day. We don’t even know the extent to how our lives have been impacted by their sacrifices. One other thing I wanted to mention was we always pictured my dad fighting WWII as dad. Then we found pictures of him. It was hard to imagine. There he was, 18 or 19 years old. He was a kid! It’s amazing. I just want to honor my father for doing what he did. It really was the toughest generation. My father got out of the war. He went to college and came out a dentist. He’s gone home to heaven now.
Pastor Ray …
I thought it was interesting how they said overnight volunteers, like I said there’s almost 10,000 graves there at Normandy. They put American flags and French flags on every grave overnight. Then a report I read talked about how they say the French people don’t like Americans. But Sandy and I have never experienced that. We’ve maybe been there 20 times in different cities. We’ve never experienced that. They said people experienced that in the larger cities like Paris. But when you’re in the country in the villages, they said it’s three hours from Paris to Normandy, all of the villages on the road there, they had French flags and American flags hanging out their windows for this event. So not everything is the way people say it is. So I loved to see our President honoring these men and women that lost their lives. But I also loved to see the connection between those that survived who stood right behind him. Then the connection between our President and the president of France. I know they had a lunch meeting today. I wanted to go back over our declaration or confession for America. And just lift up America. What do we mean when we say that? Well, we see America built up, we see America encouraged. We see our nation lifted up, rising up.
Prayed…
Father, in the name of Jesus and according to Your Word, we pray for those in authority in our nation… we plead the blood of Jesus over this country… from shore to shore, top to bottom, side to side… we plead the blood of Jesus around our borders… we declare that we are protected by the blood… You are Lord over America. Jesus is Lord over the US… we pray for the President and his family… we pray wisdom and understanding over those in positions of authority… we declare they are anointed to do what You’ve called them to do… the President will walk out Your purpose and plan for this country… we declare a strengthening over them today… be strong in the Lord… every lie will be exposed… all the wickedness and deception of the enemy will be uncovered and stopped… that the President would be led by Your Spirit… show him the path to turn every evil thing around… like a sudden turnaround… like a paradigm shift… we come against those that declare the wrong things to be right and the right things to be wrong… we stand against those words in Jesus’ name… we declare the right things are right and wrong things are wrong… we break the hold of the enemy… Father, we thank You for so many godly men and women that would surround our President and impart into him words of life and direction…
