To all who have made this year as productive as it could be in the Lord, I am so grateful.  Without your help I would not have been capable of spending the minutes I have been graced to use spreading the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ the King.  I am humbled by your assistance, buoyed by your support and my reach has been significantly extended by your prayers and encouragement.  The words are insufficient though they are the only mechanism beside action to demonstrate my love and appreciation for all of you.  I pray that my actions following these words express my love for you in a greater manner than my speech.

Forgive me for my shortcomings.  We both see them as if they are big red buttons on my forehead.  I appreciate you never mentioning them, or seldom mentioning in the case of those who have kept me honest and aware.  These are the things we do for each other and for those things you have done for me I am truly grateful.  Thank you for loving me, overlooking my foibles and treating with a fair hand.  That is the example of unconditional love that the Lord told us to share.  I thank you for being obedient in your loving me, I know it has not always been easy, so I offer my special gratitude.

What is next for this body we’ve become?  What horizons shall we ponder, what valleys will we harvest and which mountains shall we traverse in our conversations with God?  How many souls will come to Christ this coming year because we are firmly set in that sweet spot of God’s incredible Will for our lives?  How great the well of love within our own hearts for surrendering to that call and being provided a store of that overwhelming Spirit?  What shall our year end review look like in three hundred and sixty five more days?  Do we have that many days left?  I don’t know but what I do know is that I will be truly blessed in the greatest possible fashion to spend each and every one with you.  May the Lord richly bless you in Spirit, Love, Provision, Passion and Safety throughout 2019.  With all my love in the Great Name of Jesus I pray.  Happy New Year.

Once a year we reflect and ponder what has gone and what is to come.  What did you gain this year?  What was lost?  How many wounds were suffered and healed?  How many days spent in laughter, prayer, sickness or remembrance?  Who did you meet?  Who did you send off into the Lord’s Will?  How many new friends came calling?  Where did you move or how did you grow in the place God has planted you?  What was turned on and how many things were removed for lack of productive input or outcome?  How was your walk?  How many miles did you travel for Christ?  Do you remember or wish to forget?  It all matters not just the good stuff for life is a buffet not a plate prepared.  Did you get filled or spend time feeling empty?

Are you ready for tomorrow’s delivery?  What were your prayers?  Did you write them down in expectation of answer or deliverance?  How might love change you in the coming days, weeks, months and year?  How healthy is your heart?  Are you in disrepair from yesteryear?  Have you waited upon God and been renewed, refreshed, filled with hope, potency and potential?  Are you celebrating and if so then what?  How many children smile at the mention of your name, the sound of your voice or the sight of your face?  How many days does the Lord have to wait until you get around to the work He has presented you?  Do you have a resolution?  Do you take your vows seriously or do you need to reinvest toward objectives?  Upon which dreams are you wishing?  Have you built a stockpile of contentment?  It this an end or a beginning?

Who is Christ to you?  Do you act like you believe that statement?  Are you found among those ready, operating and doing the work of harvest or will you be found among those in the darkness, weeping and gnashing teeth?  What is your purpose?  Have you asked or hoped he wouldn’t tell you until you finished your current plan?  Where is the Body of Christ in your itinerary, your priorities and your forgiveness roster?  Who gets your attention God, the back yard, your boss, husband/wife or dog?  Is this going to be your best year yet?  Will you live it like it’s your last or as if it could be?  Where is your focus on the world, the funds, the house, the car or skyward waiting for his return?  Has he given you balance or have you asked?  What would you ask Him for if you only had one prayer remaining?

My prayer is for you to hear and obey His direction for your life and that I might be asked to encourage and support you in its achievement.  In Jesus’ Name

Daddy, I see and hear.  Please let me process this that I have been given so that I might act with alacrity and depth.  My quest brings me to the foot of your throne, at which I am ill equipped to see and hear, for I am fearful and small in Your Mighty Presence.  Lord let me never offer excuse but understanding and acceptance without resistance, demand or question, for I trust you completely.  Thankfully your voice is always clear above the prideful chatter of my mind.  Thank you for entrusting me with your Love and Your Word.  I am riven to my core by gravity and honor.

Father, this is not a moment of which I am proud, but it is a moment that I needed, to once again be blessed to be in Your Presence, overwhelmed, stricken, motionless.  May I listen for a while?  I don’t have anything to say but this song from my nucleus.  The fiber of the man I am cries out to you with love, respect and worship.  Each time I remember that being allowed here has nothing to do with me.  I have been imbued with the righteousness of your son in exchange for belief, none of that makes up for my corruption but I accept and glorify your name for cleansing me and calling me, Son.  For now I will remain in awe that I have once again been allowed to approach Your Majesty.

I’m not tired, hungry, alone, wounded, broke or ill.  Yet I hunger for your righteousness, I miss you, I am weary of this world, cry from the broken heart of a shepherd and I am sickened by my impoverished thinking.  These are the emotions of a fisherman a farmer for I was never meant for royalty, yet you have labeled me Prince and Priest.  I am not worthy yet honored to be the conduit for Your Revealed Will.

My simple prayer, call them to You so that they might have ears to hear and eyes to see.  Let them know Your Grace and Mercy that they might cry out for salvation.  Let them remember the Absolute Truth of Your Sovereignty that they might renounce their petty fiefdoms and choose to voluntarily serve You our Righteous King.  Let me sing to You now Father of my Love for it the greatest treasure I have, my heart of worship.

Glory to my Rightful King.  The sound of rushing wind and timeless fury expressed in a whisper.  Passion let me be set aflame by reasoned purpose, a duty beyond the lusts of a simple man.  Father know my heart and see it cleansed of poverty, poison and rebellion, for I surrender.  I surrender my King, Everything, for it all belongs to You.  My heart, my life, my hand, my teeth and tongue, may they be used for Your Will Alone.  Let my Ears hear Your Breath of Life and be filled with Joy anew.  In Jesus’ Name.

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Lord shall I weep for thee, maybe for thine, how about mine and what about me.  Always ending up at me as if I am the eventual landing point for all the world’s interactions.  I am not central, I am not peripheral or tertiary, but one of the smallest little dirt filled tributaries on the smallest moon of a orbiting volcanic rock that is barely classified, planet.  Yet my dirt matters to the one whom all things rightly shouldn’t.  It makes no sense, yet it does to me and it makes me yawn, then stretch, then cry, huge crashing drops of saltine splendor on my laptop.  Thankfully, though I review the universe in comparison to my perspective somehow it all matters to me too.

How is that, that in my position of insignificance I should be so moved by the little things a universe away which by all right and justification should have no bearing whatsoever on my emotions, thoughts or processes?  Why does it matter that the universe cries out in agony for the saviour?  I mean I cannot save it.  The closest comprehension I may gather is that it is like watching a forest burn though you yourself made it out of the flames to safety or watching the tsunami demolish the town as you view from higher ground.  There is a feeling of connectivity with those being burned or drowned, to the point it breaks something inside our own healthy structure, some kindred pain for which there is no other explanation then our relationship to God and our similar love for all His Created beings.  You see if God loves them then simply by I love them.  They matter to me because they matter to Him.  If that isn’t proof of my affinity and origin in God I cannot imagine what would suffice.

By all right I should be content in my dirt tributary, why am I not?  What is that “reaching seed” syndrome that causes me ambitious desire to see the world in a better status?  He created it, why can’t I just leave it alone and live with it?  Another proof, you bet you?  He has placed in each one of us the desire either to stir it back to health and order or to help it hasten on its path to destruction.  Why do we want to help or wish to hurt?  Why is there good and evil, why must there be conflict between these counter imposed ideals?  Why can’t they live in harmony, a balance, the yin and yang of eastern mysticism?  Because they are at odds, countering each other until one is in the controlling position.  If it be evil then all things seek to consume the remaining fuel and if it be good then all things seek to grow things in the light to maturity.  They are opposite, never balanced but in constant struggle by nature.  Do not allow the deceiving voice of darkness to convince you otherwise.

Lord thank you for giving me the desire to care for even the insignificant object light years away.  I don’t get it but I know that it makes me like you and that I get.  I will strive to bring the light to darkness and raise things up to their productive peak for your Glory.  For now I just need a good cry because it all is out of order and desperately needs you.  In Jesus’ Name.

This life is the only place I will feel; pain, frustration, anguish, desire, longing, romance, betrayal, indifference and heartbreak.  Do you believe that we will somehow miss this input when we’ve reached the promise land and have been freed from the world’s emotions?  That is an odd question to contemplate, however it does put into perspective the pain we feel now, because it is our only opportunity to grow from its intrinsic motivational qualities.  Should I miss the pain when it’s gone, most certainly not, but I shouldn’t avoid it, fear it or despise it so, after living of life is its own meaning.  So the pain the gain the loss the dross they are all part and parcel of this term of existence.  They are simply; well, Life.

My heart aches for old friends, lost family, missed divine or squandered worldly opportunity, regret of things said harshly or innocence lost, but I somehow in odd fashion cherish and welcome the experience of that pain.  I have grown from its catalyst in ways that were unavailable through providence and provision.  The harder road possesses greater and more deeply held lessons than the comfort of a well worn, safe path.  Not that I invite pain but I welcome it and in retrospect appreciate it now that I am not in the middle of its clutching impact.  It is a strange quality of the value of this one way ticket in life, that it all somehow matters more.

Lord, I do not presume to understand what you’ve intended, but I welcome it.  That is again an oddity, to not know and still want, content in the knowledge that whatever comes will be for the good of all things.  How then am I embrace this opportunity to feel loss, for it has arrived?  Thank you for the lesson.  I greet this pain with a new awareness of its intended and eventual affect.  Thank you for the the opportunity to feel, because this is my only opportunity to do so.  I look forward to a life without this pain but for now it is just right.  I love and appreciate you Father, in Jesus’ Name I pray.

Father, quench my anger, righteous or not that I might see through your loving eyes.  Thank you that I am no longer a man with penchant to fury.  Gone are the days of flame, set ablaze by the simplest inconsistency or slight.  But Lord even these times where it is right to be angered still somehow violates the construct of the man you’ve had me become.

Father they are doing evil and I despise their wicked, self or satan serving focus, especially where it quickly lends to seek out, wound, maim or devour the innocent.  I know that I must stand against them Lord and speak your Word, but must I also be ignited by passion in facing them?  I don’t like feeling this emotion.  It sends up my hackles, limits my thinking, diminishes my capacity for love which I so enjoy holding close to my breast.  What then of those moments that linger as I desperately wish to see a wrong righted, an evil undone or a criminal punished.  I see that Your Word says to give way, give room for Your Judgment.  Father show me that room, that space, that step back from the current episode that I might “give room” to Your intervention as needed.

Lord, I don’t hate, but I do dislike.  I don’t wish evil, but I do entertain the idea of sitting someone on their butt with a good, holy right cross.  Is there such a thing, Lord?  Or each time I there venture am I returning to the fleshly man?  If that is the case, for it feels and looks like a duck, then can you show me a way to deal with these characters in holiness that I might not become personally embroiled, incensed or poisoned by their evil, but instead simply become the pylon of Your Spirit I was meant?  What then of the man I do not confront, but instead turn over through prayer?  Isn’t he dealt with equally, giving Him unto the hand of Your judgment?

That is the place I will bid him sent.  That is the parking place for their evil vehicle, in front of You, where Your eye, heart and hand may have their way.  How am I to determine their deserved forgiving?  That is not a thing of my heart, discerning their worthiness for my consideration.  They are evil and the end result of that choice is that they must stand before You for judgment.  Whether that interview occur now or in the hereafter, it is still a meeting between You and they, with my simply playing role of introduction.  Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to see my way to the correct prayers this morning.  I so much wish to be free of these vestiges of mortality, they remain cumbersome, clumsy and unwanted by this transformed creature.  In Your precious name I pray.  Come please Lord the harvest appears to be nearing its end, but if the time is not yet, I will sit in contentment working with my Brothers and Sisters until all the crops are brought in to the store house.  I love you Jesus, My King, my High Priest, my Lord, my Saviour.

You know the moment, the proper time, whether under moonlight in the early Spring or perhaps late Summer, in a library.  Huh, in a library, how the mcmuffins are you going to plant any seeds in a library?  Are you doing some kind of illegal hydroponic germination project?  Shouldn’t planting best be done with a shovel, a hoe or a rake out in the middle of the garden?

That depends on the type of fish you’re conducting?  What, we were just talking farming and you jumped right in to fishing.  What the magillicutty’s is wrong with you Ebenezer?  Sorry to confuse, actually this is same exact discipline.  Farming, fishing are both activities that provide a crop, a catch a harvest, get the picture?  They are productive measures that after some patience, and I might add sometimes considerable skill, produce a result that feeds you and your family for the time being.

Why did the Lord use these two disciplines as basis for his argument for discipleship?  Absolutely, because they were two of the most prevalent jobs or skills of the day.  The majority of the people in that day were either farmers or fishermen, so it made a lot of sense to use those two examples for they would have been readily understand by the bulk of the listening public.  But isn’t that unique that they are just as easily understood today as in that day.  The seed is the beginning of all things in creation, whether plant or animal.  The seed, provided by the male in most specie, is taken by the female an after some unique miracle infused process offspring are produced.  It makes sense, for it matches the same process of fishing or farming.  You plant, you invest, you work and eventually you see the product of that labor brought about by God. That’s right, by God.  Where did you think the fish came from?  It came from the same place that the potato did, from God, from the lake, ocean or dirt he created.

So we are to take the seed of God’s Word, the ideas presented in the Gospel and plant them into the soil of each person we meet and that soil will produce based upon the factors surrounding its direct relationship to God?  Absolutely.  It is the same way when considering being a fisher of men.  You dangle the well prepared bait of God’s Word and dependent upon their direct relationship to God they will swallow the bait and continue to produce for the Lord for a duration.  That’s not that complicated.  Why do you think seed corn often is the best bait?

Lord, thank you for making things simple so that it is easy to understand.  We get it and will continue to plant seeds and throw bait out there until you come.  In Jesus’ Name.

Life preservers are extremely useful sometimes. However most of their lives are spent resting casually against the hull of a ship or beside the pool, bleached by the sun, corroded by too much salt, suffering under inflation or foam deterioration.  Just as in defibrillators they are kept around in the event they are needed, for important purpose of course, but then quietly tucked away in the hall drawer or hung on a plastic cradle. They don’t take it personally when people use them and then forget they are there because that is their purpose to be called on in emergency as needed.

What a joy to save lives.  What an extreme blessing to intervene for the sick and dying.  What a grand investment in mankind to love them, sit with them and nurse them to health.  Experiencing the excitement at watching someone walk again, learn again, live again is something only those caregivers know intimately.  What then when they go back to that position on the wall, in the drawer or tucked neatly on a shelf until called?

I saw their burden today.  The shadow pain of having cared for someone so long and then having them die and the unnoticed, unanticipated weight or absence of the requirements, establishing a void of volunteered love and kindness.  The tears were real, the problem invisible, the answer given in deliberate prayer and much needed silence.  How is this possible that purpose can be a burden or boomerang to sadness, having accomplished such honorable intention?  Isn’t there only joy in fulfillment of one’s gifted tasking?

Some things are natural but still hurt.  People die, it is natural but it still hurts.  Nurses and doctors prolong life but when people die, even as the result of expected and natural occurrences it still hurts?  Why?  And the doctor is soon forgotten to go back to the drawing board, another patient, likely with the same outcome as death faces each of us.  What then of the life preserver?  Should it be carried or put to other use so that it does not diminish in its ineffectual time?  I mean it certainly makes a decent seat cushion of perhaps could be hung from the ceiling in the garage to indicate proper parking position?  What of the down time.  Are we to forget the tools which save our lives, nurse us back to health from injury and sickness or just simply encourage us back to feeling better when we’ve been emotionally wounded or blue?

There will be associative costs within your divine gifts.  One of which is the, “they only need you when they need you” clause.  When you are a healer they will remember you and desperately need you when they require healing, but then they will naturally lose the need for you and put you back on the shelf with the other emergency only objects.  Is that acceptable?  Are you okay with that?  If you can’t stand being viewed as an on/off switch it is best to stay out of the healing arena.

The joy is that it quickly establishes those around you who truly are authentically yours.  For they will remain well after the healing occurs, to pester, to bother, to befriend, counsel and love the real you.  They will see your gifts and talents and take advantage of them as needed but will see much more in you then just a caregiver.  They will see you and for whatever reason determine that they see value in a long term relationship with a life preserver.  Isn’t God wonderful.  Isn’t serving Him glorious.  All the benefits of this job are greater than the pay.  In Jesus’ Name.

Isn’t being on time about being at the right place on or before a certain time, especially if there is crucial event associated with that moment in time?  How does the concept of Divine Opportunity work?  Are we to be in tune, in step, aligned with the Lord’s calling in a such fashion that we are at the right place at the appropriate time?  Or is it that the Lord brings the opportunity to you when your heart is open and you are engaged with His plan for your life?  That is one I will have to ask the Father.  However it fascinates me how meetings are orchestrated, to the second sometimes, such that we have been placed in the right place for a specific conversation or opportunity to provide assistance to someone in need.  It is the miracle we have all been waiting to see.

God worked this out before the beginning of time.  He made sure that I misplaced my keys, changed my shirt due to a coffee spill and circled the block three times before pulling up right in front of the man who needed prayer.  The woman who needed some money and a ride, left and then forgot her cell phone which I was holding as she walked back in checking the booth where I was sitting.  The old man prayed for help at his home just before I got a flat tire at the bottom of his driveway.  Lord, this is the greatest blessing of this brief life, please don’t ever stop.  Let me be in the right place with the exact assets and attitude necessary to glorify your name.

Besides, Father, I really love these people.  They have all kinds of difficulties in this world and really need help, but why am I telling you that, it is why you sent me anyway.  Let me remember to tell them how much you love them, because that is the greatest gift of all.  Thank you for allowing me to be even a small part of your plan for humanity.  If I can do anything at all please send me.  Signed Knucklehead 42, the guy with the keyboard a bunch of random words and a great big heart because you loved him so much.  All my heart, mind, soul and strength, Father, in Jesus’ Name.

Children starving, old people hungry because they only had the money for meds, wives beaten, drugs ruining young adults and orphans enslaved for sexual gratification or worse.  Men and women struggling in marriages where both of them must work while their children are indoctrinated by those owing allegiance to the ideals of social justice.  Fathers, powerless to discipline their children for fear of losing them to the same government who requires him be accountable to their behavior.  Grandfathers wishing they had chosen otherwise as they watch young people ill equipped to protect the America they bought with their sweat and blood.

And you would blame God for this chaos, when He provided Eden and a sinless world?

This is madness.  These are the earmarks of a leader numb to the cries of his people.  These are not the outcomes attributed to God but to the enemy who rules in his stead for the time being.  The Lord rebuke him if he chooses.  And I would pray that God sends him to the Lake of Fire early if He so chooses but I know this is not God’s Will as the Bible says so. Every thing has its time.  Every season must come and go and this one we are in is awful.  We must be moved by something, for most of us just looking at the state of our world does the trick.  The tears roll, but what comes next infinitely matters.

Do you go to God in prayer for the innocent and dying?  Do you stand in the gap for those who are being abused by tyrannical relationships?  Do you ask God to provide you the strength to help the elderly, the orphaned and the widowed?  Are you fighting the enemy with prayer, fasting and the Word or is he unrestrained in your households and those of your family?  We are told by God to resist him and he will flee.  How are you resisting this travesty?  Or have you lain down your weaponry, given up hope and determined to get what you can from this marginal existence?

Father, I am helpless, powerless, broke, tired and ineffectual.  Please help me to look past these obvious excuses to my status as a joint inheritor or everything.  These two states of being are mutually exclusive.  How can I be powerless if my Father has all power and authority?  How can I be broke if my Father owns everything, all the Gold, Cattle and Countryside?  How can I be tired and ineffective if the Lord’s Joy sustains me indefinitely and His power allows me to do the impossible?  There is something awry.  That something is my choice, my will, my desire to drop the excuses and become the man for which provided me salvation.  What, you think he saved me just so I could sit around and be happy with a get out of hell free card?  Really?

We all know that is not the case.  We were all taught statements like, nothing comes for free and if it sounds to good to be true it probably is.  Is salvation free?  First of all it cost the life of the only perfect man ever.  Second it required God to humble Himself and come into the world as a man, be spit on, beaten, whipped, punished and abused, then hung on a cross to die, forsaken by His Father for our crimes.  Third it took the lives of countless innocents in the enemy’s quest to hurt our Lord by killing us.  And finally here is the greatest testimony of God’s greatness, our Salvation is a Free Gift.  Yes, there I said it, salvation is free to all who will accept it through repentance, belief and faith.  Oh, so you say it’s not free because you have to turn from your sin, believe in Jesus and the Work that He did on the Cross and accept the Holy Spirit by faith.  You think those things are worth keeping?  You think that you are getting the short side of that trade?  Really?

So you are moved to tears by the chaos in the world but you refuse to give up this world to change it?  Okay, sounds like you want this world and the pain within it so that you can get your groove on?  Oh, I get it too bad that there has to be orphans, sick people, drug addicts and sex slaves.  You’ll cry about it but you won’t do the one thing in your power to change any of it.  The pain must not be close enough to home.  Meaning your little sister didn’t get used as a sex slave and your Mother is in an old folks home so you are okay because it isn’t touching you personally.  I get it, you’ll shed the tear but that is all you will give to set them free.  Again with the Free.  Do you think it is a strange coincidence or just irony that Freedom starts with Free, especially when it cost everything to buy our freedom?

What moves you?  Does it move you far enough to get you off the couch and out of the house doing something about it or to the floor on your knees and face crying out to the Lord for intervention?  Please Lord Let me be Moved to Action especially when that action is Prayer.  In Jesus’ Name.