“Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praises her.” Proverbs 31:28
Her previous church had burned her and she’d been unable to find
another one that felt right so she had given up. Then out of the blue her
daughter called and asked her to join her at this new church that had started.
That’s when we first met Beverly Kirk 20 years ago. The whole clan came, her,
her family, her brother and his family—I called them the choir section because
they all sat together, off to the side, near the back of Masonic Lodge that we
transformed each week to hold our services. We didn’t have much, but they
didn’t either. But something clicked; I’m not sure what it was. The preaching
was marginal, the music pitiful, and the place…well you can only do so much
with a 50 year-old Masonic Lodge in the middle of a cornfield. I think it was
just the purity of loving Jesus with all our hearts and wanting to live to
honor Him that captured her heart.
Bev and her husband Bob became part of our Ministry Team
Leaders. We were a ragtag bunch of nobodies that had a vision to be a church
that taught the Word of Faith, lived with a Spirit of Faith, and loved God and
loved each other. We sweated through 4
summers of church without air conditioning, but we finally bought our first
building and it had 6 of them. Although our summers Sundays were much cooler
our faith in God stayed hot. We had our issues; there were kids to be born, friends
who died, the joy of marriages and pain of divorces, even some challenging
family issues. But through it all Bev stayed strong in her faith, and she
prayed. Not many days went by where she wasn’t praying for Bob, her kids, and
her church. She and Bob loved our trips to Tulsa for our week of meetings at
Rhema where we had attended Bible School. Her faith grew and her love for God
and her family grew with it.
But it wasn’t until she faced some major health challenges that
we saw just how strong her faith in Jesus her Healer had become. We lovingly
called her a cat, because she seemed to have nine lives. More than once Bev, lying
in a hospital room, stood on the Word as she fought through a serious health
issue that would have taken out most of us. She was a woman of great faith, and
it was that faith that extended her life many years.
In the world’s eyes Bev never had much. She lived in a
modest home, drove a modest car, never wore fancy designer clothes, nor ate in
the finest restaurants. She didn’t travel much, but she was very rich. She was extremely
rich in the wealth of knowledge she possessed in the love that God had for her.
She was rich in the love she received from her devoted husband, from her family
and her friends. She was rich in an unwavering faith of a Jesus who loved her,
and despite her flaws went to the cross for all of her sins and all of her
diseases.
The last few years Bev, now in a wheelchair and on oxygen, she
and Bob attended and graduated from our Epic School of Ministry. She was a
woman of faith to the end and when the end was near she spoke of being
satisfied and ready from meet Jesus face to face. She went out of this world
the way a champion, a hero of faith should. She had said her goodbyes to her
family, sang songs of worship and praise to the One who saved her, and then waited
for us to come to her side to pray. You see we had gone out of town for a
couple of days and so we called her Sunday afternoon, and asked her to stick
around until Tuesday so that we could come to pray and say our goodbyes. We got
to her side around 9:00am Tuesday morning and encouraged her to go in peace and
be with Jesus. We prayed, thanked her for her walk of faith and the example she
had been to her family and then we released her to heaven. Then in just a few
hours later, with her family at her side, she departed peacefully to be with
Him, forever.
Thank you Bev Kirk, for being faithful charter member of
Valley Family Church for 20 years. Thank you for giving us time to learn how to
be pastors. Thank you giving us some room to make mistakes and to learn from
them. Thank you for not being critical when others were. Thank you for always
having our backs and for always believing in us. Thanks for allowing us to be
your pastors, and for the example of faith you have been to so many. We’re
going to miss you. And don’t forget to tell Jesus what we told you, “Send
help!”
