I love you Father.  This is your time.  Friends, the things that are given to you as reminder that this world was never meant to be done alone.  Events, the things meant to present difficulties from which men make history. Days fraught with difficulty, worry and concern closely resembling foretold description.  Breathing in frustration and breathing out courtesy, testimony to changes within machinery.  If patience is going to do it work, then it demands cooperation with this cyclic purification.  Taking in world, giving out spirit, as the flame cleanses. A clean spring, having nothing poisonous at source.

These are the days for men of honor, courage and a clear relationship with You.  Songs whistled together, ticking out in time the faith in the Rock beneath their boots.  Times for either pride and worldly inclusion or quiet separation, tending to flocks and fences.  Excitement seeing these men come forth born in the forge of this moment’s demand. Strength in short supply, arduous work ahead, builds champions.  These are the days when mediocre shall be foreign to sturdy hearts, resistant to bite, burn or darkened days of dreary expectation.  A time when boys will once again turn their hearts back to their Father’s craving to learn the things of manhood absent worldly youth.  Silence, respect the attitude of reason and price paid for gathering grain.  The mooring of sturdy vessels prepared for whatever storm, flame or fire come hither.  Men born for this day, forgetting all others but the sweat, tears, blood and treasure paid to buy time, time of preparation to ensure this victory.  Together they smile and wait.

Make it straight for the crooked arrow flies astray and this skinny path demands accuracy and acuity of mind, heart and hand.  Be alert, for the moments will be twinkling, flinches, whispers of time when reaction must be instantaneous.  Spirit the center of conversation, Mothers leading their sons to grasp the force built in emotion. The strength of reason matched to wisdom, sense and faith, knowing what must be done and never wavering simply marching forward with grand expectation.  Courage built upon the Promises of a Father having never once faltered, never once met with failure, never an inkling of fluctuating prophecy.  A Word Assured in the hearts of the men who have written it upon their hearts, inscribed deeply in the surface of their shields, a Word that does not crumble, shake or shiver in the wicked wind.

These are times for the Faithful to Stand Firm, holding on to God’s Promises, overcoming all with their love, their testimonies and their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ’s certain return.  Oh, these men, I am proud to know them and that they are my kin by adoption into the Kingdom of the Most High forever and ever Amen.

Prayed for you, especially when the wicked drive in your heart forced you to slander her good name, bring suit against a good king and machinate in the dark about how to shed their innocence.  Been kind to you as I wiped the spit from my cheek, thanking you for showing me what it means to love in spite of hate.  Spent time, asking the Lord to step in and break the fallow ground around your heart as you laughed at their dilemma.  Been truly concerned for your apparent journey into hell and the opportunity to help you avoid that eventuality in Christ.

There are many things for which I am ashamed, the greatest of which are the times when I showed you me instead of showing you Him.  See we both live here.  The difficulty is that my flesh has the audacity to step in at all the wrong times and take back control of this life precisely at the times when Christ could demonstrate His love or you and this world.  I continue to be found out for the frail, messed up, insecure, easily angered man from whom I was transformed by God.  Never mind this new creature feels so much better and does the things that the Lord intended, there is a responsibility to comprehend and attend to the direction in my heart.  Lord, my breaths come in wave as I realize how much I need your forgiveness for the man I have not yet become.  Please be with me that I might some day do the things you are praying for me to master.  Thank you for the opportunities that you’ve provided to see the truth of my own behaviors, without that mirror I certainly would be doomed to repeat these issues perpetually.

Lord they are wicked and I know that means they will be having a date with you, where in fairness of judgment you reward their evil with appropriate punishment.  But that is not my cause, business or concern.  I was sent here to warn them and tell them the good news of Christ that they might turn from their wicked ways and be saved, cleansed and renewed.  How come I always want to do your job and neglect my own?  Father, I see that you love them and continue to call them to answer the call of grace, upon that Truth I will make my stand.  For if you continue to call them to repentance then hope remains that some will accept that offer and step away from the waiting abyss.  Let me continue in the logic and belief of that possibility and though my heart or mind tells me to war with them, castigate them or pronounce them beyond hope that the fact that we are still here directly contradicts those ideas.  Let me be free of regret when I sit on that bench at your side and forget what I should have done, remembering only what was done good and faithfully.  Your Servant.  Praise You.  In Jesus’ Name.

Did they just say it is not good for the Government to be too transparent?  Spoken as a true miscreant, hiding your power moves, political reciprocity and acts you need to conceal because you wrongly convinced yourself that the people either do not need to know or they are too ignorant to comprehend what is being done.  Either way, your duty is to explain it to them so that they do understand what is being done in the name of their government.  Transparency, has a pretty clear definition, I know laborious comedy.  However, it really is a word that cannot be misunderstood, unless of course the objective was never transparency but obfuscation, camouflage or opaque understanding.

Do I speak truth or do I beat around the bush hoping to pull the wool over your eyes that I might appear better, stronger, more original or noble?  Ouch that one hurt.  My own desire to tell partial truths, expand upon the truth through exaggeration or just give the part that is consistent with glorifying myself are frankly SIN.  If I see it any other way then I ought not call out any politician for I am the same cat, operating by the same principles, within the same parameters and tool set.  Again what is involved in being honest except just that?

I am sorry for the things I have embellished, concealed or partially delivered for I have sinned against you and God.  I hope that you will forgive me, but better hold me accountable the next time it happens because that is not the man I want to be.  Take time to be honest with me about my dishonesty or attempts to fudge, knowing this that is the man I wish to be, the fellow that is always reliable to give the truth of course in a gentle fashion.  Lord, keep me honest, let me be content with what I have instead of trying to build myself or portray myself as something that I have never been.  It is a joy to be exactly who I am and not have to be concerned about what I lie I told to who at what time.  Too many balls to keep in the air at once for me, I would rather just tell the truth.

Give us the truth that we might be set free, indeed.  Thank you Jesus.

When its eighty degrees there is more emphasis to get to the point, what then if it were one hundred eighty?  The same decisions, contemplation’s and muses become desperate when the variables change in significant degree.  Determining where I will work and for how much becomes an unlikely deliberation if my family is starving, my wife or child sick or there is little work available.  It is in my nature to relax when the pressure is off, but why?  The voice of reason in my head says the same thing that the ant is saying all year long, better do the work now because at some point the weather will change and there won’t be any food stored away.  What is the origin of complacency?

We all know that tough times come and hopefully they go, though that is not always the case.  Why then, firmly tucked in this solid reality, would any of us sit back when the opportunity provides itself to get ahead a little in order to make it through the tough time that are inevitably around the corner?  It makes little if any sense, yet we all do it.  Why do we wish to relax, what is that desire to be comfortable, restful and frankly lazy?  For those of us who live in climates that change drastically between seasons, it is logical to get done the things that we may not attend to when it gets too cold or too hot.  Yet, we leave them until the last minute.  Why have we left all these problems in America until they are nearly past the breaking point?  Why did we have to be shaken from our slumber, instead of developing a cultural context of preparation and forethought.  If you want to see the largest single thing for which we receive disrespect around the globe it is that we are so blessed and yet take it all for granted, living regrettably paycheck to paycheck.  What causes us to adopt this concept that we can just rush and get it all done.  Rushed work is never as good as work that is carefully tended.

What then of our prayer life, our Bible studies ,our preparations for the Lord?  I know we don’t want to talk about it.  Okay, that is the same excuse or beg off that we used for not cleaning our rooms, doing our homework, straightening the garage, keeping up our checkbooks and taking down the Christmas lights.  When do the excuses end and our egos stop being so frail, tender and sensitive that we can actually take a realistic look at our prayer life?  I am no ones minder, no body’s steward, but my own and all these criticisms fit right here in the review of my own behaviors.  Well, I guess the only real way to be a good leader is to live by example.  Enough said.

Lord give us the courage to look at ourselves in truth and mindful reflection that we take accountability for our own walk in preparation to being found ready at your return.  We love you and ask forgiveness for those times we took things for granted, especially your loving kindness in forgiving our sins as an excuse to keep doing the same one time and again.  In Jesus’ Name.

Something consequential to heart, something to keep the soul and the spirit far apart.  What could be written in these simple words that would provoke the world to action?  I don’t have that kind of authority or wordsmithability to evoke something so precious, appealing and entirely encouraging as to capture the attention of all who’ve heard it.  How then do we marshal testimony, provoke action, edify courage and tenacity to stand in winds our senior?

Can it be done by word, well the rappers are reaching millions of our children for their endeavors, perhaps I should learn that sort of word twist?  Or maybe I could spout hate and violence which draws millions to the theaters in a quest for manhood in the spectacle of lost life dominance?  Perhaps I should write fantasy fiction of gods and evil empires, elves, dwarves and hybrid humans, for that seems to attract millions of eager viewers.  Or better yet I should talk of aliens, cannibalistic risen dead or some alternate universe where we can all have our needs provided for by electric flowers and water that fills all your calories requirements without fat?

What is it with me that I am concentrating on the reality of the issues we face when I could easily use some platform far more effective at reaching a much broader spectrum of people?  Am I that daft, that I would rather sing into the farm yard with few friends and chickens pecking then be a spectacle for those to view as something comedic, salacious or chaos provocative?  Adjust for the audience they say, adjust for the audience.

If I become the center of attention and I have to utilize, sex, popularity, fantasm, wizardy or violence to deliver the message I have been given to speak, what then does it say in my resolve, my determination and surety that this message is the righteous truth that should reach all with ears to hear its call?  I am just repeating a wonderful message written by the Creator of the Universe, given me to speak because that is who he chose to say it, in this body, this set of talents or lack there of, this set of circumstances with this limited capacity at delivery.  Do I doubt Him so that I believe His choices ill suited for merchandising this message?

No, this is what I’ve got and if perchance He wants me to have greater breadth, depth or audience, then He will make it happen.  I am content in the Word I’ve been given to read from.  I am overwhelmed at the majesty and kindness of its purpose and content of its story line.  This is the message meant for all, regardless of place, people’s purposes or passion.  This is the Word Smythed before the beginnings of time for each of us to hear, ingest and take that glorious action availed to all to make a choice of whom we serve.  So listen to me, I hope that you do.  Adjust the message looking for a larger crowd, I cannot. For even if He gives me one heart to whom I ought speak, I would give the same message to a million.  God save you all through Jesus Christ the King.

Focus on the changes that are being made in each of us. The law has been an awesome mirror to show me my sin and how far away from the Lord’s holiness I reside.  But I no longer receive condemnation because the Lord paid for these sins, and although I am trying my very best to avoid each and every one before they occur, when I do slip up the Lord is faithful and true to forgive me and forget them.  However, over the years I do see the evidence, the fruit, the benchmarks, so to say of sanctification by the Lord’s hand.  Each year he takes away from me those old habits, verbal patterns and reactionary devices replacing them with noticeably improved methods of dealing with catalyst with wisdom, understanding and grace.  It is good to see those changes though I still weep at how easy it is for me to mess up.  Did you mess up this week?  I hope that I extended to you the same grace, encouragement and understanding that the Lord continues to give me.

Where to next?  Well that is the joy of our walk with the Lord, we just don’t know but unraveled in the revealed mystery are the contents of the things beyond our own performance.  For in his power, authority and abundance there are treasures, discoveries and works beyond my current imagination.  I don’t want to continue on the same track, being handed the same lesson time and again because each time I fail to get it the Lord returns me to that same starting gate.  That is not acceptable to me, my own limitations will not be the obstacle that keeps me from reaching the pinnacle of God’s plan for my life.  Oh, you thought I would say that it is someone externally that is causing me to falter, well that just isn’t true.  I am the obstacle to my own understanding, my sin the barrier to my holiness, my rebellion and lack of obedient love the prohibition of my righteousness.  The enemy just knows my frailties and offers me the same lust that tripped me up the last 47 times.  If it worked those times it will continue to work, until the Lord takes that away from me, removing that desire for some more grand.

This life is nice, sure it has some great joy and abundance, but there is also significant heartache, separation, agony, grueling tribulation and yes my great reservoir of sin.  Those are things that I will not have to deal with beyond this life, so yes I am getting ready for the next round, my new life, in the country in which I have been a citizen since accepting Christ.  Do I crave it, no I do yearn for Him though.  I am content with being content in the knowledge that I am here because He has not yet seen that I am ready to move on from this crucible.  So, I ask Lord that I at least get the lesson you have been hoping that I would have gotten today, so that tomorrow I might graduate to a new set of trials and learning experiences on my journey through preparation to be in the presence of a Holy and Righteous God.  After all that is the objective isn’t it?  In Jesus’ Name.

This dance your own, combined steps and the rhythm in your head producing a set of footprints in the sand to remember.  Can they know your dreams without you demonstrating their creation?  Captured and controlled by your own aspirations of fear, doubt and courage.  Will you let the world see the inside of your philosophy, so modern, precise, egalitarian and economic or reason with yourself the causes meant for darkness?  The exacting question one of light or dark, which only each man may answer.

Lead on into the nightmare, fantasy or daydream of romance, money, power, heroism and glory.  These are the inner workings of your creation, to find that personal answer to question only you have been given.  Plod on diverting your attention with the things of other people’s pleasure, searching, seeking, counting, treasuring or measuring the content of wisdom, power and purposelessness.  Whilst internally the machinery groans, the components agonized, twisted, made for other work mis-employed for dally’s justice.  Arguing with conscience the only battle that may never be won by two, for it is singular this quandary.  What will the reckoning be in this diminished ambition?  What if you should be king, will that be easily weighed, balanced and forgotten?

There is no time limit but life, no practice field but the same, where achievement is what it becomes.  Why is life only left to the living?  Are those the rules or may a man imagine his afterlife effective course for correcting the errs and mis-steers of manhood? What you say it must be played, paid or constructed here, to stay here, recorded here for only those left behind to hear in it’s retelling?  What if I imagine a new world, where my own reason, my own imagination controls sound, ground and air?  Shall I dare become that kind of empire to my own existence, wishing the world into something more or less than it is, into what I believe it should become?  The machine is the machine and shant be manipulated by man only escorted, expected, massaged and twirled to the tune of your own volition, for it is the dance that makes a man.  The dance in which each of us wins at being well, you.

In Jesus’ Name.

Biblical understanding demands that I acknowledge our current state of affairs on Earth.  Not wanting to accept that satan currently, rightfully holds the title deed to Earth is insufficient option when considering the methods by which we may be extracted from the chaos surrounding us. The enemy knows that we want to escape oppression.  The enemy also has the authority, the power, the cleverness and the control of all those who have not yet accepted Jesus.  That requires that we accept the fact that he is going to use all of those hearts and minds susceptible to powers and principalities of the heavenly realm to keep us under his thumb.  Now the tough part, based upon that understanding we must NEVER consider any other option, President, Pope, Q or King as the effective resolution to our circumstance.  They cannot save us from the fallen who rules and reigns, the only power that overwhelms and trumps that current understanding is the rightful heir and King of All the Earth and Creation, the Lord Jesus Christ the King.  He alone has defeated the powers and principalities of satan and his minions.  Therefore, unless Jesus intervenes we would never prevail.  However, the Bible does say that we win and that the victory was secured on the Cross some two thousand years ago.  So, what then am I getting at.  Come on Eddy, out with it!

The Return of the King and any movies made about that subject are either made to foster our understanding of that awesome foretold event or to indoctrinate us to an idea that will be submitted, swapped or offered in the place of this truth.  Let us never idolize a king or agent of God as God himself.  Our current circumstances may only be dealt with by Jesus.  For example; the enemy killed Lincoln, Kennedy, and some others and tried to kill Reagan.  What happened to our demeanor and resolve when those assassinations took place?  The same thing that happened throughout history when satan’s human assassins killed any inspirational leader, the people fell into depression and lost their resolve.  Why is that?  Because they had placed the hope, faith and trust in something that was insufficient solution to the current predicament.  Our problem is not the deep state, the pope, the empire, criminals or otherwise our problem is that Jesus has not yet come again to take back rulership, remake all of this, place the enemies in chains and do away with this evil plaguing humanity.

Any, I repeat Any attempts to raise up a human leader in the place of the position reserved for Christ alone.  ANY attempts to place our faith in human means to save us from the mess in which we find ourselves.  ANY attempt to predict that America will be returned to its former glory and remain free of the hand of tyrants, is false as it is inconsistent with Biblical understanding.  The only way back to an America that lives free, is worship of the King who blessed us through answered prayer with a Nation that represented the idea of His Love For Us.  If we are hanging all our faith on our current leaders, President or otherwise to deliver us from this circumstance, I must ask; what makes us believe that Satan who rules here now is ever going to allow that to happen?  Do you think you can stop him?  Pride continues to be foolish no matter the century or the individual preaching it.  Jesus, the Way the truth and the Life and NO ONE comes to the Father but through HIM.

Falling into line like the fresh picked olives from the crooked vine.  Still don’t know if these are yours or mine.  Into the morning of apprehension I stick my weary head too encumbered by last night’s concerns to turn my thoughts to ward any other way. Pristine water mirrored in the gray windswept formations overhead. The tear in my eye yearning to be one with the water, misty mud laden gladness of the dew.  Am I to make sense, unraveling this mysterious conglomeration of worldly events or leave them be, buzzing, chiming, spinning, turning, wiggling like the worm on the warmer side of morn. They can’t help but catch my eye, Red and white, then augury blue, testing something deep inside, remembering for what we stood, Still.  Four-thirty and dawn happened. Standing as older men, pressing forward, a little closer than I’d care to be, smelling of too little attention and three day old shirt.  Soured to the things of pleasantry grumbling, stumbling, lacking the balance of a baby boy, fumbling for completed sentences we stare in patient expectation.  He don’t know Jesus, only the accumulation of things, the years washed away. people gone, memories too, nothing to hold on to but the thoughts of a tomorrow that may never come.  I want to say I love you, knowing that will be dismissed by the wave of a spotted, left hand intent on forgetting something he cannot remember.  Decay, rapid decay of thought, wishes and good manners, nothing left but pain but yet the pain helps it drives, it clears thought, it gives at least, well something to hold onto. Pestering aside I’d truly wish some reason, some reason to try to break through the decades of defenses built to keep out people who would have you feel something about something, don’t they know that I just want to forget it all and move on.  But there is something left worth saying.  Ed, do you know where you’re going when you leave this painful life.  Is Ethel there or is even that enough to get you talking, listening, accepting of prayers, smiles and kin? I ask about the war, no answer, about children, still the same.  Then I stop to ponder what he always discussed at the quiet suppers where nothing much was said or remembered.  For him it always was the lake, the Lake He said, “It’s wider than the river and deeper by a mile”. “On this side you can barely see Montana, and over there a sterling rainbow Christened the birth of our new yearling”, so I leaned a little closer and whispered of the winter touching its windy tongue on the dock of Farther’s Crossing. One stern fueled eye turned to me, reviewing me curiously as a giant views a talking fly.  The tight sewn corners of that beaded old mouth curled in what could pass in most parts as the beginnings of a smile.  He held it a while and then his eyes looked up to the light passing through the window and he pointed as if we would see what he had recalled. And on that winter’s lake was the moment I met Jesus, He was there and I think he shared my thoughts.  For in the boat that day we both saw him resting on a pillow in the bow, settled against the misty, icy breeze.  Then with a tear in the side of his eye, He turned his head right to me and said to me, “Sweet Jesus Bring Me Home”.             ,  

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to them that love him.  Wow, nonanonacontanonactapentalia, a word which has simplistic meaning yet in immediate review appears odd, lengthy, verbose and foreign.  Consistently we hear the opposite reaction when considering the word of God.  You might hear it is so complicated, so complex, hard to read or difficult to interpret, when in review the Word is rather straight forward and clear.  What then confounds?  What then stands in the hallways of knowledge delaying, obscuring, convoluting each passage?  Let’s take a moment and look at the simplicity of the previous  passage.

If you withstand temptation for the duration or a long time you will find personal increase in a Godly fashion: as when a man has passed through the crucible, he will receive a physical crown of life for having made it successfully through the test, and this is guaranteed and based on a promise from God to those who love him and endured that test.  Pretty simple, straight forward, no complexity, clouds, mysteries in Greek or otherwise.  Why then should I feel the desire to remain separated from such easy deciphered wisdom?  I don’t know why do you think you don’t want to spend time in the word?  Do you find yourself using the same excuses or is your most effective Time or the lack thereof.

Making time, marking time, maximizing time, managing time, some of the time, none of the time or only half of the time I ought to be watching the time.  Time itself is part of that test referred to in this passage of scripture, for endurance dictates that time is the measure of that effective completion.  Just as with money. time is a variable in the equation of life, you cannot escape it, buy it, reduce it, exchange it, justify it or ignore it.  Money is the same way.  Can you explain away the fact that you have no money yet you wish to purchase a home with nothing?  Try that one and you will find out what laughter and disdain look like.

Money is a necessary function of life again, part of the equation, yet these two factors are used more frequently to explain away lack of commitment to ministry than any two other concepts.  Why? Because we have to deal with them, no I believe it is much more simple.  These are the measures of a man’s life, the time and the  money you spent, because where your time and your money reside there your attention lay.  So, if you spend all your time and your money on things other than God, guess what the above passage will naturally indicate with regard to your endurance or temptation avoidance?

Great man you have hit me in my wallet and my watch, but what does this have to do with temptation?  Fair analysis, you’re right, but let us remember you were the one that said the above passage was too difficult to understand until we reviewed it together, right?  So, please don’t blame me for thinking I need to break things down to their basic components.  What are temptations?  I mean to you.  Do they involve drugs, sex, gluttony, entertainment, magic, theft, adultery or maybe following false gods?  Whichever one, tell me which one you could do with no money in your pocket or no time off work in order to do them?  Oh, you see, factors of the equation.  Where you spend your time and your money will indicate your resistance to temptation.  If you spend all your time in the Word and all your money is saved or put to issues as a good shepherd or steward of your household, then the temptations you face will the type that you may more readily resist.  Equations.  It is mathematics this Christianity, because I am willing to bet that the time you spend in the Word and the Money You Give to God are indirectly proportionate to the temptations you face and directly proportionate to the outcomes achieved for God.

So if you wish to have the crown of life “at time of judgment” for enduring temptation because or if you love God then concentrate on the factors of the equation and put your money and your time far away from the sirens of this world.  Act with your wallet and your watch, two tangible controls of the temptations you face.  But remember we can do none of this without God, this is not a doctrine of works trying to be good enough to get to heaven, because heaven may only be achieved through belief, belief in the gift of salvation and sanctification through Christ’s payment of our sin debt on the Cross.  Why endure, because he did for you.  In Jesus’ Name.