The Breath of Life – Finding the Rock to Hold on to in the Groundlessness of Existence - Purity 592

 The Breath of Life – Finding the Rock to Hold on to in the Groundlessness of Existence - Purity 592

Purity 592 12/03/2021  Purity 592 Podcast

Good morning

Today’s photo of the edge of a rock wall and a rainbow in the foreground of the natural wonder that is Victoria Falls from the vantage point of the Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Park in Livingstone, Zambia comes to us today from my photo archives as I captured this view at the end of a vacation mission trip in February of 2016.  

Yeah I am diving into the archives of my photos lately for a few reasons.

I normally share photos that I “borrow” from my FB friends and acquaintances. I do this  because I think the photos my friends share are beautiful, give God glory, and I feel that it is nice to share them with a wider audience. “Others would enjoy these photos! My friend won’t mind if I share their awesome photo!”

I also feel that it connects me to my friends in a small way.  It’s sort of a “Hey, I see you! I think what you are doing is awesome! Thanks for sharing your experience with me!”  

When I share a photo, if I remember where I got it (ha-ha), I share information about the location and some general details of the context in which it was taken but I usually refer to the photographer anonymously as a nameless “friend” to protect their privacy. If the photographer is professional or a group, I give credit where credit is due and mention them by name to possibly market their services or FB group. 

I use the photos I share to tell a story – to maybe share some general details of what a friend is doing or where they have been, to point to the beauty in the world, and to point to the God that provided both the beautiful scene and the friend that captured it.   

I do this to encourage my friends and anyone who sees my blog or listens to my podcast to enjoy their lives by getting out there and seeing the world and to raise the level of their quality of life by coming into relationship with the Lord and by bringing Him along wherever they go, thus walking and talking with God on a continuous basis: which also known as living life in God’s presence or walking in the Spirit. 

I have been sharing my friends and acquaintance’s photos and offering encouragement 6 days a week for over a year, without the express permission from my photo taking friends.  I was following the above guidelines and was operating under the assumption that “the Lord had need of” the use of my friend’s photos as a part of my purpose to encourage people to enjoy their lives and to connect with the Lord.

This week I borrowed a friend’s photo without asking and they commented that I should ask permission to do that. They didn’t ask that I remove it, but I decided to do that anyway and offered an apology.   While they didn’t respond to my apology, I did notice that I was no longer their FB friend.  So my rag tag ways and assuming has cost me another FB friend.  

So right now I am diving into the archives because I am a little gun shy.  My daily posts and podcasts are not intended to offend anyone, and it honestly pained me to receive even the mildest criticism of how I do what I do, and it shook me to think that I could lose friends because of what I do.  

So to all the friends and acquaintances from whom I borrowed photos from in the past, I wish to thank you for your “views”, and I would like to formerly apologize for not getting your express permission to use them. If you would like me to never share your photos again, please contact me via FB messenger and give me a heads up and I will not share your photos in the future.   I would rather lose the permission to share your photos than to lose your friendship.  

However, although I am currently a little gun shy, I fully intend to continue to share my friends’ photos to connect me to them and to encourage people to enjoy their lives and to live in the presence of the Lord.   These posts are a small part of what I believe to be my purpose in life and unless I receive an indication to stop in my spirit from the Lord the messages will continue.  I believe I am answering God’s call on my life and will not stop.   

That’s one reason I have been using my photos over the last couple of days.  

Another reason is that I am on FB less and, quite frankly friends, there hasn’t been a whole lot to “borrow” from my friends lately.  So get out there and show us what you got!  The pickings have been slim lately and I hope that this message encourages my friends to get out in the world and capture some of God’s wonderful creation to share.

I understand that it is now the holiday season and things are constantly in flux.  I am continually amazed at how my individual days can seem to last forever but some how pass with such rapidity that weeks and months seem to pass in the blink of an eye.  

It’s quite the paradox that I am experiencing.  My days are FULL, all caps, but paradoxically they just seem to be slip sliding away as we move ever closer to Christmas and the new year beyond. 

The passage of time and the constant activity and changes in our lives can make us fee that there is nothing we can hold onto.  It can seem that there is no solid ground to stand on as circumstances just cause us to keep moving and we may not even have any certainty of where our lives are going.  

But the good news is that there is something we can stand on in the seemingly groundless state of existence that we live in where things seem to come into being and then are absorbed into eternity as we age and watch our children grow and our older friends, family, and acquaintances shuffle off this mortal coil.   Or more accurately, there is someone we can hold on to: God.  

Genesis tells us that God was “in the beginning” and Revelation tells us that He will call into existence a new heaven and a new earth.  This tells us that God is self-existent, eternal, all powerful, and is well aware of the changes that are happening as He is directing all things for His purposes.  

That is why it is so important to establish a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.  God is the one that we can always count on and the One who we can place our trust in.  We can stand on the Rock, through our faith in Jesus, and not be shaken. 

While these theological and spiritual realities could give our minds a sense of peace if we reflect on them and personalize them by reminding ourselves of who we are in Christ, we may want something more tangible that we can focus on or feel to tell us that God is with us.    

 While I use photos of nature to tell people that God’s creation is a great example of God’s handiwork and presence, I would like to remind all of my friends today that we are also a part of God’s created order and that we have been made in His image and have all been given something in ourselves from God that can ground us in our experience and connect us to the peace that God wants us to have. 

The gift that God gave mankind and that can be used to ground us in peace is our breath.

The word tells us in:

Genesis 2:7 (NKJV)
⁷  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

 

God literally breathed His “breath of life” into the first man and that breath has continued on to all of Adam’s descendants.  

That is why so many practitioners  can find moments of peace and clarity simply by focusing on their breath.  When we focus on our breath we become grounded in our bodies that are made in God’s image and are focusing on God’s first gift to man.  

So if the holiday season has got you stressed, or if some dude borrowed your photo for use in some Christian message to give God glory and it offends you, remember the gift of the breath of life that God has given you, focus on that, and find the peace that God wants you to experience in life. 

Taking a few deep breaths relaxes us. If you ever wondered why that is, now you know. The reason we find peace from focusing on the rhythmic process of inhaling and exhaling is because it is in this process that we are grounding ourselves in the gift God has given us.  

This gift is available to all of mankind because God loves all of us and wants all of us to have peace.  However, the gift of the breath of life only can give us a measure of peace while we are on the earth.    

God also sent the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, to reconcile us to Him and to atone for our transgressions.  So remember to be completely grounded on The Rock who is Jesus Christ and be assured that even if your breath is taken away as you are called into a spiritual state beyond this life, you can know that you will have everlasting life and the peace that comes from becoming a member of God’s royal family and eternal kingdom.   

So breath in and breath out and say I have peace now and I will have peace forever more because I have made Jesus my Savior and Lord!

 

Today’s Bible verse is drawn from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.  

This morning’s meditation verse is:

Malachi 3:6 (NLT2)
⁶  “I am the LORD, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed.

 

Today’s verse reminds us that God is the only One that does not change.  

The late David Bowie sang about all the “CCHHCHAHAHA Changes” that come in life. As I have stated in the past. Our natural and scientific observations of existence would logically lead us into despair because the universe is continuing to expand, and everything is aging and slowly dying or falling apart.  

How can we find peace or meaning in this world that is passing away?  As I stated above, we can focus on our breath but honestly the higher levels of peace and joy that is available to all Christians is to renew our minds with the word of God and to become fully grounded in our identities of who we are in Christ.  

Why? 

Because our identities in Christ, require that we be in relationship with God though our faith in Jesus Christ.  In Christ, we align ourselves with the One who is constant, the One who doesn’t change :God. 

When we receive the Holy Spirit at salvation, we receive everlasting – eternal – life: a life that transcends our mortal bodies, a spiritual life that endures, a life doesn’t change.  The One Constant in our life is the Lord and when we come into relationship with Him the fruit of the Spirit grows and gives us peace.  

The second part of this verse points to the fact that those in relationship “the sons of Jacob” are not to be destroyed.  God used the nation of Israel to carry His Word and through their lineage was used to bring the Messiah to earth. The sons of Jacob were saved by God’s grace and for His purposes and likewise Christians are saved eternally and will be a part of God’s purposes in eternity.  

So rejoice! Through Christ we have eternal life, and we can trust that we will not be destroyed because God is faithful to keep His promises and He never changes.     

 

 

As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. 

 

Today we begin sharing from A.W. Tozer’s Advent Devotional – From Heaven,  starting on Day 7, as I started late and want our sharing to lead us up to Christmas Eve.

 

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Tozer’s books for your own private study and to support his work.

DAY 7

TAKING UP HUMANITY

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity …

HEBREWS 2:14

John Wesley pointed out that it is a dark mystery how God could swoop down and become man and bridge the yawning gulf and join Himself to flesh and limit the limitless. Wesley also said that we should distinguish the act from the method by which the act was performed, and not reject a fact because we do not know how it was done.

I think that is very wise, and it would be very becoming to us if we should enter the presence of God, reverently bowing our heads, and singing carols and saying, “That it is so God, but we don’t know how. We will not reject the fact because we do not know the operation by which it was brought to pass.”

Now, this much we can know: the incarnation required no compromise of Deity. The gods of the Roman pantheon, the gods of Greece, and the gods of the Scandinavian regions were gods that would compromise themselves. The old Valhalla was full of gods that were compromisers, and the Elysian Fields and the Pantheon and all that—wherever the gods were, they always were gods who had to compromise themselves one way or another.

But the holy God—who is God, and all else not God—that God, our Father who art in heaven, could never compromise Himself. So that the incarnation—this deep, dark, yawning mystery—was wrought and accomplished without any compromise of the Deity. God did not degrade Himself by this condescension. He did not in any sense make Himself to be less than God. He remained God, and everything else remained not God. The gulf still existed even after Jesus Christ had become man and had dwelt among us. So that instead of God degrading Himself when He became man, He by the act of incarnation elevated mankind to Himself. He did not degrade Himself to mankind. That’s pointed out very carefully in one of the old creeds, the Athanasian Creed. The old church fathers were very cautious here, and they would not allow us to believe that God, when He became flesh, became flesh by a coming down of the Deity into flesh, but by a taking up of mankind unto God. And thus we do not degrade God, but we elevate man, and that is the wonder of redemption.

Now we can know this again: that this unison or union with man and God is effected under perpetuity. God can never back out of His bargain. God can never cease to be, in that sense, man. The second Person of the Trinity can never un-incarnate or de-incarnate Himself. He became incarnated forever. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

 

Tozer, A. W. (2016). From heaven: a 28-day advent devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.

---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------

 

Join our “Victory over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” series of Discipleship Classes via the mt4christ247 podcast!

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Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

Purity 404: Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship

Purity 404  04/28/2021  Purity 404 Podcast

Good morning.

Today’s video of these man made “waterfalls” was captured by yours truly at the entrance of the Hyatt Regency Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio Texas on Sunday as I left the Alamo and ventured across the street to explore Riverwalk.  

San Antonio’s Riverwalk is a bustling tourist attraction that features all kinds of museums, shops, restaurants, taverns, and other activities that make it “the number one attraction in Texas”.  I didn’t know anything about Riverwalk when I went there but I decided to check it out for a while since I was in town.  After a short walk along its shores I decided that it was a little too touristy for me.

I’m not into shopping in general and that especially for applies to souvenirs.  I don’t think that cheap, or not so cheap, trinkets are the best way to remember the places we visit.  

I also don’t drink alcohol and lately have been trying to be more moderate in the things I eat. Riverwalk’s festive atmosphere that beckons you to eat, drink, and be merry was actually a turn off for me.  So after about a half hour of exploration, I decided to leave the Riverwalk behind. It’s a good thing I decided to leave when I did and not just press on because apparently it would take 5 to 6 hours to walk the full length of Riverwalk!    

Today’s video and my short experience at Riverwalk reminds me of the 1994 TLC song “waterfalls” whose chorus reminds us to:

“Don't go chasing waterfalls” and to “stick to the rivers and the lakes that” we're used to. It warns us about having things our own way and that we might be “moving too fast”.

For a pop song it gives good advice. It warns of the dangers of chasing intangible dreams with no thought of the consequences, specifically the dangers of getting easy money with drug dealing and the dangers of easy love, warning of HIV.  

Riverwalk could be a good time, but I would caution my friends to consider the consequences to their wallet, their bodies, and their souls.   Man loves to manufacture “fun” for a cost but sometimes that “fun” turns into slavery and costs a lot more than the price of admission.  

Going on a walk with God on the other hand tends to lead to peace and joy that goes beyond all understanding. It leads to a new life that is defined by freedom and is free from guilt and shame.      

So enjoy your freedom to go where you please in this world but be aware of the consequences of whose wisdom you follow.  God as the author of all creation and all truth knows how things work and I recommend you seek His guidance in the way you should go.  

(An Audio version of this message is available at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, you can also find it on Apple podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154) and Google podcasts (https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL210NGNocmlzdDI0Ny9mZWVkLnhtbA%3D%3D).) There is more content at the restricted blog. Follow me on Twitter or MeWe for easy access.  Blog M T 4 Christ dot org – This is where the Facebook post ends.)

#christianfaith #christianblog #christianencouragement #freedominchrist #christiancounseling #dailydevotional #jesuschrist #mt4christ #discipleship #victoryoverthedarkness

This morning’s meditation verses are:

Psalm 121:5 (NKJV)
⁵ The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is your shade at your right hand.

Psalm 119:165 (NKJV)
¹⁶⁵ Great peace have those who love Your law, And nothing causes them to stumble.

Today’s verses come to us from the devotional “Daily Strength for Daily Needs” by Mary Wilder Tileston.  Ms. Tileston apparently wrote her devotional in 1884 and kept things simple. She shared these two verses and the following poem from Charles Wesley:

 

I rest beneath the Almighty's shade,

My griefs expire, my troubles cease;

Thou, Lord, on whom my soul is stayed,

Wilt keep me still in perfect peace.

So the daily strength we are to draw from these verses and Wesley’s poem is based on the fact that we have peace with God.  The verses assure us that the Lord is our keeper, provides us with rest and protection in His shade, and that when we love his law, or his instruction, as the Hebrew word “tora” is also defined, we will never stumble.

Wesley’s poems agrees that when we are under “the Almighty’s shade”, under His protection, in His presence, or in relationship with the Lord, our troubles cease and when we focus on God we find perfect peace.  

So no matter where the day takes you today and no matter what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, remember that your relationship with God though your faith in Jesus Christ means that you are covered in the Lord’s shade. That means you are protected and loved.  Being in His shade also means that we are continually in His presence.  

So keep walking and talking with God. If you grow weary, remember to take a break and to rest in His shade where all your griefs will expire and your troubles will cease, because when we walk with God, we walk in peace.      

I invite all to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk. 

 

Today we continue to share from Dr. H. Norman Wright’s “Experiencing Grief

As always, I share this information for educational purposes and encourage all to purchase Dr. Wright’s books for your own private study and to support his work. If you need this title you can find it online at several sites for less than $5.00:

Chapter 19.
Capturing the Memories

Many who grieve are upset even more when they discover some of the memories of their loved one begin to fade. The greater the distance in time from being with a person, the more this will occur. One man who lost his wife after thirty-five years made a decision not to let this occur, which many others are now doing for their loss. He decided to write down every thought or memory that came to his mind about his wife until he had accumulated a thousand of them. He called this his collection of a thousand one-liners, which would give him a complete picture. Perhaps something like this would aid you in your quest to remember.

You have stories about your loved one. So do others. Telling all these stories is a wonderful way to celebrate a life and give as complete a picture as possible of who this person was. Some have found it helpful in processing their grief to ask friends and relatives to share one of their favorite stories about the loved one.

One of the new roles you take on after the loss of your loved one is becoming their historian. You may be the main person to convey to others who your loved one really was. Newspapers carry obituaries, but you probably want others to know more than those basic facts. You are the one to decide what you want the world to know about your loved one. You're creating a biography. And it's not just facts. It's who they were as a person. It's an exploration of a life lived 66 rather than a history. It's capturing the important elements of one's life, commemorating who they were, and giving a testimonial about them.

What you say and how you say it conveys what this person meant to others. At a time when you're ready, consider this possibility. If you do, write about their life-celebrate their life. Give voice to your precious memories. It's what you saw and knew about this person. And remember, others may have a different perspective since we are all important, hopefully growing throughout our life and gradually being conformed to the image of Christ. You may want to create small vignettes and later weave them together into a more complete story. And most important, even though this is for others, it's for you most of all. It gives expression to what you are attempting to hold on to, clarity to the jumbled mixture of memories, and it preserves what will gradually fade in time.

Experiencing Grief.

----------------------------more tomorrow-------------------------

 

God bless you all!

 

Join our Victory over the Darkness Discipleship Class via the mt4christ247 podcast!

at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154) and Google podcasts (https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL210NGNocmlzdDI0Ny9mZWVkLnhtbA%3D%3D

Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be encouraged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Purity 250

Purity 250 

 

Good morning,

Today’s photo comes from a friend’s recent hike at Letchworth State Park in Castile NY “way out west in Upstate NY”.

I share this photo of Letchworth State Park’s middle falls because it displays another example of God’s creative beauty and it represents a middle point for our week as we hopefully make the plunge into the second part of the last week of October.

I am close to completion of my thesis and am overjoyed at the prospect of the joy of accomplishment and freedom that awaits.

You know, a victorious life in Christ is defined by keep Him continually in our presence while we stretch ourselves to be more like Him and to discover the unbelievable possibilities He has for our lives.

So if you’re in a rut, it’s time to look at what you’re doing and change it with a spirit of adventure and exploration. Go out there and enjoy your life. Expand your mind by learning something new. If you are distant, draw closer to God.

I’m here to tell you that a victorious life is found in the context of our relationship with God, enjoying Him and challenging ourselves to grow.

The TV and the couch have taught you all they have to offer.

Look up the Wonderful Counselor and follow where He leads you: to life and life more abundantly.

I mean, check out these falls! Who even knew they were out there? There are places to see and things to do with this life and they are so much better when you bring God along for the ride!

God bless you all!

AFRICA and BACK HOME

Bloggers blog right? or write? RIGHT!  

I have been gone too long. I need to share to tell you, and to remind myself, of all the wonderful things the Lord has done for me.

Well I made it back alive from my mission trip to Africa.  My life was never really threatened but we are never promised tomorrow and I suppose there were plenty of moments in my trip where my life could have ended:

 plane crashes (6 flights in total),

disease (Ebola screenings!),

street violence (I’m assuming Soldiers/police in downtown Harare and in the Shop Rite in Livingstone carry AK-47s for show),

falling to my death from a fool hardy trip halfway down a 500 foot gorge (I was wise enough to turn back when I realized that Crocs didn’t offer the best footing and that it wasn’t  worth it.  An exhausted companion who did the entire trek later confirmed “It was stupid!” Apparently the river below didn’t offer much more than the view from above, except swarms of mosquitoes and flies. )

However, the Lord watched over me and I am safely back home.

It was an incredible experience that I will never forget. The fact is dedicating two weeks of my life solely for the Lord’s purposes was one of the greatest things I have ever done.   I felt like I was my ideal self:  all my time could be categorized as working for the Lord or proclaiming the gospel and my personal testimony.   All throughout the trip I felt I was being led by the Holy Spirit. Every devotional or gospel message seemed to lead to the next in a purposeful unfolding that made everything I encounter seem truly momentous: AS IF IT WERE MEANT TO BE!!! 

The mission  team from my church were united in spirit and purpose with no division or conflicts which isn’t always the case with large groups of diverse people (16).  I found a new level of respect for Pastor Jaron Halsted and Pastor Mike Lambert as they ably lead and ministered to the group with great skill. 

The team spent a week in Harare Zimbabwe where we did concrete and tile work that would help support an orphanage that was funded by Pastor Ephiel Mukamuri of Logos Rhema Ministries. Pastor Ephiel welcomed the team into his home and was a most gracious host providing for all the teams needs during our visit.  While in Zimbabwe, I spoke at Pastor Ephiel’s church and two schools that he supports sharing my personal testimony and the Gospel.   We ended our time in Zimbabwe with a picnic with the orphans, dancing, and praising the name of Jesus in song.   

The team then went to Livingstone Zambia where we did brick and mortar work for a school that the Temple of Power church is building.  Pastor Nelly Chibwela opened up her home and heart to the team richly providing for our needs during our visit.   While in Zambia I preached at Temple of Power Church and at Pastor Buster Tembo’s House of Testimony Church.  Near the end of our trip the team crossed the border into Botswana for a day long Safari, where we took a river Safari and then hopped into trucks going into the bush!  The African landscape was graced by spectacular blue skies and sunshine as the team spied, herds of elephants, lions, wart hogs, baboons, crocodiles, hippos, impalas, lynx, and cheetahs.  Our final day in Zambia we went to the awesome splendor that is Victoria Falls. 

My time in Africa was well spent and I don’t regret it but in life sometimes things aren’t always so wonderful. 

The truth is my wife, who doesn’t share my zeal for missions or evangelism, was not happy with my decision to go to Africa.  I had made a determined decision to go regardless of her feelings and she barley communicated with me while I was away. What made matters even worse was that Michele suffers from recurring kidney stones and infections. She was hospitalized just before my trip but she was out when I left, granted with a subsequent appointment to remove a stint while I was to be away.  Things took a turn for the worse and she had to be hospitalized while I was away, another stint had to be put in.  She was extremely angry for what she sees as me abandoning her.  Upon my return , she was cold telling me she had contacted a lawyer in regards to getting a divorce.  She was also very ill. She refused to go to the Hospital that day but after a night of vomiting and not being able to keep anything down we were headed back to Albany Medical Center.    

While I was in Africa, I had left under the strain of a spouse who didn’t fully support me and I could understand why some people leave their families, or some people go into the mission field for good.  The problems of my life back home were gone, geographically distant and removed.   I really felt the urge to leave, find a nice Christian woman, and spend our lives being missionaries.  However, the Holy Spirit was leading me while in Africa. The messages I heard were about forgiveness, hope, and love.  I strained and prayed mightily for guidance but as much as I was taken with the life of a missionary and preacher that I had come to experience everything I heard told me to go back home and minister to my wife, to show her the love of Christ that has changed my life so much.  I sulkily agreed that this was what the Holy Spirit was telling me to do, so I reluctantly agreed to go home, apologize to Michele, and to begin to honor, love and obey her as our wedding vows commanded.  

So I apologized and started to do things to be there for my wife, reluctantly agreeing to stop going to Bible college to be there for her.   I took her to her doctor appointments and started doing things around the house to get things in order.  I still had fantasies about running off with some Christian woman and being a missionary but I decided to serve my wife regardless of my irrational feelings.  Understand me when I say I was really grieved about this conflict between my desires and what God was telling me to do but I also felt good about being there for Michele and getting the house in order (AS IF IT WERE MEANT TO BE).   

I’m happy to report that after days of speaking words of encouragement and serving my wife I had a revelation about my irrational thoughts.  I discovered that all my thoughts of running out of my marriage were just insane flights of fantasy that I had given power to by dwelling on.  I realized that in my mind leaving my wife and finding love elsewhere was built as an option to consider so I had opened a door to sin.  It’s the tenth commandment : You shall not covet (Exodus 20:17).  I was wanting things that weren’t mine and it was wrong.  As a married man, I was supposed to love my wife like Christ loved the Church (Ephesians 5:25). I haven’t been faithful to my wife like I should have been.   God was calling me to repent.

I am happy to say that Michele has fully recovered from her infection and that she has forgiven me.  I have made it plain to her that I am going to love honor and obey her to the best of my abilities and things are going well. 

I was chasing after God relentlessly to the exclusion of my wife.  I felt the call to the mission field and went in faith.  My visions of a revival sparked by my visit to Africa weren’t realized but the Holy Spirit spoke to me. Apparently, God wanted to get me alone for a while to show me what was important. Galatians  5:22-23 says” But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” I have spent two and a half years learning about God and faith but hadn’t put the lessons I had learned into practice in my marriage.  God sent me to Africa to show me that He is awesome and ever present and to tell me to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in my life and marriage.  .

I know I will be challenged and I might fail sometimes. I know that I may never get my wife on board with the Spirit-filled Christian life that I want to live. She may tire of me and leave me but I am going to try to do God’s will for my marriage.

Pastor Mike’s wife, Sue Lambert, had to endure 8 years of marriage to him before he gave himself to the Lord. Now he is a Pastor!

In the Bible, Joseph was in prison for years before he was raised to prominence and saved his family and the entire nation of Egypt.   Moses spent 40 years in the desert serving the Lord and never set foot in the Promised Land.  Paul was rendered blind when Christ was revealed to him with no knowledge that his sight would be restored and he would go on to give his life spreading the gospel. 

The point is serving God isn’t without hardship and it is not about receiving a reward here on earth (Matthew 5:12 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.). 

I am going to try to do what God would have me do in my life and marriage without the expectation of reward.  I am going to serve, honor and love my wife as an expression of my faith in Jesus Christ.  .