Is my honesty with God in question?  Do I meekly seek to conceal or refuse voice to those issues with which I may have conflict or question with Almighty God?  Do I question His Wisdom, His decision or judgment as I see it played out in the lives of those around me?  Do I have the position, the right or the authority to question the Will of God?  Am I dishonest with myself and God when I say that I have completely surrendered to His Will on Earth and in Heaven as I truly grumble in the dark?  Do I think that I know better, and if there is evidence to the same, have I readily approached God in demonstration?

Moses, David, Abraham, Job, Peter and Jonah.  All of these men were totally dedicated to the Lord, certainly to an extent far beyond my poor given surrender.  Yet, each of them at some point contended with God, beseeching Him to stop in judgment or execution of His Will.  Were any of the them right when halting God, interceding or contending with God’s Plan for humanity.  Certainly, each of us will have some confusion regarding God’s thoughts, actions or intentions because His mind is so far above our understanding, but my faith should overwhelm that question.  I may not understand God’s Plan, but I am a slave to righteousness, not a contributor.  God is in charge, He is Sovereign, He is outside of time and understands all the implications of action or inaction.  It may be informative, it may disrupt your self image but He doesn’t need me, He doesn’t need any of us.  It is entirely the opposite, we cannot breathe without His good will.

You may find yourself the first to succeed in questioning God, without regret.  My reading and study of the Bible, I see each time that someone questioned God they ended up hurt, broken, regretful and remorseful in their pride.  He is God, I am not.  Certainly, he is a great Father and going to entertain my questions as a son, but there must be limits to my power perception.  I don’t know better at all.  No man does.  None of us have ever gotten it right, living a righteous life, except for Christ the King.  Certainly there were them who came close, look upon Enoch or Elijah and how were they rewarded for that righteous life, they were yanked out, some would say, “early” to live forever with God.  My job is not to question God, but to trust and obey God in my demonstration of loving Faith.  My advice is that it is okay to disagree with God, but we must remember that we don’t have all the information to take a discordant position in perfect confidence.  Not knowing everything, as does God we must defer to His Sovereignty and understand our position in the chain of command within God’s universe.  He is God.  I am not.   In Jesus Name.

I seek and secure victory thanking Him for providing the win.  I fall, dashed upon the rocks, emptied of all strength and endurance, then remember I lay prostrate under the wings of God.  Reserves hollow I delight in the opportunity to feel the reservoirs filled by energy beyond my reckoning.  Happy, I blink and see His face, remembering from whom I learned its meaning.  I am poor and delight in my riches.  I am a servant and love emulating my Father.  My wickedness has been forgiven and is being extracted bit by nasty bit.  I am to be the purest silver bubbling up through the heat renewed, cleansed.  Weakness excites me, for you shall see His face in my surrendered eyes.  I am nothing of my own, but in Him, in their image I am something about which neither of us has an inkling of understanding.  I forgive and know that He has given me the secret to my edification.  I love, then thank Him for teaching me how.  I am a part of the Body of Christ, set together, pressed tightly, so that we might be one together in His Glory.  He is my cornerstone, my coming King, my Lord, my Good Shepherd about whom it is right to brag.  About me there is no other story worth telling.  In Jesus Name I pray.  Amen.

Impermanence, surrounded by fluidity and change.  What is this life that I should count anything worthy of my dependence or surety?  My flesh is easily breached, scarred, chained and lasts nothing more than one hundred or so years.  My mind perchance may stay cognizant throughout but even that at the center of my self-image is short lived.  What calls me to place so much weight upon something so transient.  Is it necessary to maintain sanity?  Must I imagine myself long-lasting, ignoring the truth of man’s short existence in order to quench my fear of inevitable demise?  Why, yes, of course that is the measure of man’s fear and frankly his immature unwillingness to come to grips with mortality.

But why fear begin mortal if that is what it means to be mortal?  Fearing the truth of my longevity does not transform the truth of its inevitability, neither does it transform me into a being that lives beyond normalcy.  Why then must I avoid the truth of my life, relatively short as it appears?  There are only two possibilities; one, this is it, this short life is all that we are given and therefore prolonging our lives even for a few short years remains our only hope of continuance and two that there is an afterlife that holds an accountability for how we lived during this short time.  For regrets of a life poorly or well lived only matter if there is afterlife during which we reflect upon how we once lived.

Without afterlife conscience matters not.  For my prescience contributes little to a history of man content to chase the same spoils of fleshly impermanence.  It is our indomitable spirit that craves things less fragile than humanity.  Evolution would not make the dominant species so easily broken, so readily dispatched into silence.  We were designed for a short term purpose that requires our fragility lending toward tempo-rarity. Again we were made to die early and remain relatively vulnerable.  It is permanence we seek, we don’t like sickness, death, fragility, scarcity of time or weakness.  This distaste leads us directly to the humility at God’s feet.  For we lack that which we most desire the time and opportunity to do it right.  We are either men dependent upon the rules, graces and intercessory action of God to reach something akin to eternity or we believe that somehow we will find some personal route to the everlasting.  I cannot even understand my wife never-mind find myself clever enough to create a window to continued existence past mortality.

What God says is rational, real and dependable.  We may either believe upon His graces and be saved to spend eternity free from the fragility of this world or we may seek separation from Him, in which case we are subjected to the rules and consequences He has deemed for said departed.  Either way our lives are temporary so we ought make the best of them.  The best I can do is tell you how to escape the temporary harshness, loss and limitations of an unimpressive mortal life by believing that this is just the training ground for what lay beyond the veil or mortality.  We shall be with Him in eternity, timeless, united, permanent.  That is okay with me.  In Jesus name.

Love in an egregious sense, overwhelming, inspiring, frightening in its purity and conscience.  Something beyond my senses yet understandable, enviable, multiplicative through source and spirit.  We traveled unnoticed, or so we thought, all the while not only perceived as an insect in periphery, but substantially, completely, totally identified, created, purposed and loved.  How marred my comprehension once enlightenment revealed my relationship to God.  No longer simple, ignored, forgotten or moribund, now a thing reviewed and cared for by the Creator of all waves, light, pulses and plasma.  In His recognition of my kinship I am now defined.

What then does that definition portend?  With which responsibilities does it weight my character, my loyalty, faith and performance?  How may I act as this new creature, gone the suppositions of prior existence?  Does this unquenchable, immeasurable love grant me freedom to act out of whim or craving?  Or is this love a cage threatening my own sovereignty establishing itself above metaphysical laws and passion?  Would I be forced to come to reckoning and forgo my own wisdom, self, taste bud and reactionary provocations?  Is this a Man’s god or must I become God’s man?

Seeing as I didn’t know before I knew, then it was not a thing self generated, whether by conscience, clever-thinking, self magic or wizardry.  What I have been given is given by one who loved me enough to raze shadow and offer cleansing light.  How then may I own and thus control that which I have only been given through act of care and kindness?  We relish this line of inquiry for it leads to one inevitable, stark, astonishing place, surrender.

Worse than this is the truth that without what I have been given I was helplessly, hopelessly left compromised, owned, shackled by dark things of wanton wisdom.  Deceived, destined, declined entry to things eternal, left, a wet hat, or stray cat in the cold, dark forest of self-sustainability, leading to eventual decomposition.  What praise then shall I offer the one who saw through this abomination?  What song shall I trumpet at the joyous knowledge of my having been set free?  What reason or excuse will suffice why I do not declare my  gifting as opening sonnet or closing prayer to each discussion?

To them who avoid or try to explain away God for fear of judgment, this is not some hopeless Russian play leaving us weeping in the inevitable, inescapable thrust of overwhelming oppression and loss.  This is a love story that drove angels to their knees in wonderment as God put off His glory to come and save the children He loved so dearly.   They saw God become man to right a wrong for which He had no culpability, to drink the rotten filthy poison of man’s wickedness to overcome its slavery of mankind.  This is that greatest story, one in which we all are participants, choosing our roles and relationships, through acts of will or surrender.

There are only two parts, one sides with light the other with darkness, but there is a hitch, the darkness has the power to deceive and disguise itself as light for them who are not familiar.  But for the price of belief each and all of us might be set forever and completely free from the power of deception and disguise.  Logic, systems, cellular complexity and even the inexpiable faith that lives within each heart declares the Glory and Majesty of Almighty God. But it was His love that won my heart, a power over which neither death nor my own foolish thinking could contend.  Death was mastered, I surrendered, both sworn allegiance to the righteous and true Lord of Lords, King Jesus.  All will come.  I pray that you enter Heaven by faith, surrender and salvation, because He loves you so much.  In Jesus name.

Does my interpretation or willingness to debate, argue or rehash God’s Word matter a smidgen?  What if I were the smartest man in the room, would it further God’s Will one centimeter if I were to provide the most convincing argument?  Yes, I am supposed to study to show myself approved, but that is in order to properly dispense or relate God’s Word, not boast about my eloquence.  Yes, I must be ready to give an account of my faith, but again that relates entirely to pointing others to Christ or familiarizing them with the process and benefits of salvation.  My eloquence is often an obstacle or potential enemy to my growth for none will be saved by me, through me or for me, but through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God by belief in the Gospel of Good News of Christ.  I am a messenger and let us remember that Angel means messenger.  We must not forget that the most blessed Angel fell through a quest to see his own elevation to importance.

The Lord could do everything He wants to do through me by using an empowered squirrel.  It is a blessing that He has freed me from my prison and an even greater blessing that He allows me to carry His Word of Salvation to the World.  I don’t deserve this work nor can I sit on my comfortable stool in church and neglect its blessing.  I am a creature of purpose, meant for no other reason than to point men toward the love of God through Christ.  I challenge to show me any rival purpose for my life.  Look if I were to succeed at every plan I ever concocted, reaching the pinnacle of worldly success I would still remain below the level achievable by clumsily attempting God’s purpose for my life.  Because God empowers me to achieve His successes where my own are done as labors of my own skill, work or worse yet chance.

I want God’s Blessings upon my life and yours.  I want the power of the Spirit to gift me to do things that are beyond my capacity, authority or gifting.  I want His fulfillment to be seen in my service toward something that may or may not benefit me in this life.  I just want to be with Him and know that I have believed, lived and walked a life of faith that pleases God.  I would not shirk or dispose of wealth but choose to see it as access toward greater successes for the Lord’s Kingdom.  I would not ignore talent that could waken hearts and minds but use it wisely and at precise timing to bring others to Christ consciousness.  I would not forget great relationship brought on by the opportunities presented me by my station but use them to further His agenda and bring others into an eternal relationship with Almighty God.  We have a righteous Father, I can only serve Him honestly if I too attempt to live righteously, knowing this impossible without His indwelling.  My efforts matter little except as confirmation that I believe, trust and Love God.  For my efforts are the dutiful works of a beloved child attempting to please His Father.

We love you Lord, Bless Your Holy Name Lord, King Jesus.

We were made for God’s Glory.  Is it being revealed through your walk with Christ?  What has been sacrificed on the altar of your willingness to suffer with the Lord?  Have you given all, some or none?  I do not like being the sharpening stone, but it seems we are content to languish in our own piety of inaction.

The power of Christians is prayer.  Dedication to standing alone with God, listening, absorbing, surrendering to His Word for each of us.  Each of us has purpose.  Have you investigated your own or left it in secrecy hoping that God will never call you count for non participation?  We all know that time is short.  Christ died almost two thousand years ago and was resurrected in preparation for His return.  Just a reminder that was circa 33A.D.  How long will it be before He returns to rule and reign for one thousand years before the white throne of judgment?  Have you taken to heart what His imminent return means to everything you have currently chosen to serve to ignore His call?

The day is short, night is coming.  The battle rages against an enemy who is executing a fourth quarter playbook, while we sit upon the bench, hoping that the coach doesn’t put us in the game.  Get in prayer, join with other Christians in support of God.  Even if you don’t get off the coach sit there in silent allegiance to Christ and the church.  Make a difference, tell the truth, serve God and quit serving everything else that fancies your attention.  Tell the lost about salvation.  That is each of our job yet few still do it.  In Jesus name i pray for today.

Is He answering your prayers?  Do you think He has heard them?  If He isn’t answering and He has heard them, what may be delaying His response?  Is it timing?  Are we simply asking for the right things at the wrong time or is there perhaps a deeper, more elusive understanding?  If what I have asked for is consistent with His Will what possible rational would delay His execution?  Is He training me in patience to understand that He alone determines when I receive a blessing?  Is He temporarily denying my petition so that I build faith muscles in continued request through prayerful fellowship?  Or has He determined that whatever thorn or poverty I am experiencing is actually His intention for my betterment to the enrichment of His perfect Will?

Does the enemy still have the wherewithal to delay God’s answered prayers?  What is the extent of a raging battle in the heavenly realms?  Does the enemy still maintain plausible resistance having lost the potency of sin and death?  What differs in our prayer lives now that we have Grace, now that we have the Spirit of God living within our fiber, now that we are made of Holy mettle?  Do we remain helpless against the enemy, knowing that somehow he and his fallen may battle to delay or forestall our blessings given in answered prayer by Almighty God?  Are we still to expect that each of our prayers rises to God’s review and that He alone determines what shall be given through Grace and Divine Provision?  What do you believe, for as you believe you will live.

Am I still asking for things born of my own self-interest?  Why of course I am for I remain trapped in this fleshly dominion.  Can I differentiate through Divine Discernment those prayers which are consistent with His Will and those that are of my own volition or desirous enrichment?  Must I continue to waste the precious moments I have alone with God, before His throne, asking for riches, glory, healing or relief when I go into the process with the knowledge my requests are inconsistent with His Word and His Will?  Come on at some point I must grow up in my faith and understanding.  I know what God wants for me and I know those things that are born of desirous craving, covetousness or self idolatry.  Must I then hold my breath, beckoning God’s angels to fight their way through enemy lines to deliver these selfish wants?

My prayer life is not my own.  I am instructed, guided and led even in prayer by the Holy Spirit’s masterful teaching hand.  Even now I find myself changing my tone, my delivery, limiting my words and listening intently for God to speak, where I used to whimper, beg, wander and utter voluminous petition before a Mighty God.  God knows what I need and what is good for me and He will get me to where He needs me to be at the precise time He needs me there for His good purposes.  Certainly there are things that I want for myself, but I must not insist as a wanton child that an all knowing God deliver according to my precise request or demanding ploy the wants of my villainous heart.  Perhaps the very thing I want is the obstacle set before me blinding me to the true and glorious intended blessings of God.  Maybe He is waiting for me to surrender that want in order to open the door to a broader horizon.  Should it trouble me that I may be my own greatest obstacle to unrealized blessing?  Isn’t this the most rational explanation for unanswered prayer?  Must I want what I want when I want it even when doing so prohibits me from receiving what God wants for me?

It is time for us to wake up as a body.  The work is out there.  God commands he doesn’t simply ask politely, though He does allow us the stupidity of exercised free-will, disobedience before He resorts to discipline.  This is the time, we are the people.  The work is out there.  What am I doing today to spread the Gospel, to lead people to a cross where they will be saved from sin and death by a Righteous Saviour for Eternity?  Am I praying that someone else catches fire when I am utterly unwilling to accept the zealous flames within my own heart?  The work is out there.  Am I looking toward the daydream of revival when there are no seeds of rebirth within my own spirit?  Am I a changed man become a man of change.  Am I bringing the world into the church or am I bringing the church into the world?  Am I so eager to extend my own petitions to God that I refuse to listen to His commands upon my life?

What am I?  A man making His own history or a man revealing the mystery of Christ to a dying world that so desperately needs my loyalty to ambassadorship.  He is the great “I am” and if I reflect Him in any small measure than what “am I”?

I wept for you.  Not because some ill issue had fallen upon you, but because you were forced to withstand my criticism, my scholastic review in all its gilded glitter and sanctimonious acidity.  My words are of little affect whether meant in constructive pride or tempered with positive intention.  I am and never will be your teacher, guide, principle, confidante or uncle.  It has been so easy in my ill equipped state of self dependence to believe myself adequate to the task of showing you the light of God.  I am not a failure for at this task I lacked requisite authority by which to succeed.  My fool’s errand.  I only hope that you remember my love for Him, His Words I took the time to repeat and His sermons preached from my country lips.

Father, I know that you will forgive, but I thank you for bearing with me and patiently awaiting my awareness of a lesson I resisted so confidently.  I do so love you.  Let that simple truth be the ember to flame all future ministry.  I hear them, but I listen only long enough to say something brilliant enough to sustain my own wick.  Must I remain this wretched, this hopelessly unencumbered by true Christian wisdom?  I sit at the bottom of a narrow well of my own construction making hand puppets at the sky, hoping to be clever enough to show someone the way to Jesus, as I languish in the chains of my own self-righteousness.  It is great wonder how I managed to assist in even a small proportion.

Does intention matter, does heart, do dreams and kindness or prayer?  Then I shall stay in prayer, silent of my own festering, leaving the waters untainted by my spots or coloring.  If I may say anything let me say Christ, Him voluntarily sacrificed as culmination of a divine plan, so astounding that it amazes every angelic conversation.  I would speak of a church standing, preparing, being knit together and spliced into the natural olive tree with its predecessor the Jewish nation, bound together as one body in Christ, with Christ, through the Love, power and authority of Christ Jesus the King.  Born for one purpose to glorify God.  Would these words matter.  yes, but only in their inspiration, their leading away from attention upon my inadequacy, but used as breadcrumbs leading to the skinny path toward eternity.

I will certainly fail as this is my destiny, but in my absolute, assured failure, He will find success for the Kingdom, reborn from my poor intent, covetous heart or self-guided intention, remade into miracle and greatness.  We serve El Shaddai, Jehovah Rafah, the Master Potter of Creation who will prove that my purpose was perfectly unmistaken.  He will have His success in my greatest moment of helplessness and utter loss for that is the mystery of my making.  Born to serve a King I don’t deserve with limited skills and child like understanding.  May His Will be served even in my destruction.  Jesus be praised Amen.

voluntary leprosy, death of the natural nervous system response to pain through any route of escapism.  This life hurts and it was designed to be so.  The pain causes discomfort, movement, growth and an internal desire to cry out to God for relief, shelter, succor and assistance.  Desiring detachment from the hurt associated with pain is the quickest route to a meeting with the enemy, promising, deceptively momentary relief from what God has intended for our growth.  Do we as Americans have a monopoly on pain, do we suffer more than those in other countries?  Of course not, yet we have cornered the market on the accommodation of depression and its subsequent medication.  The enemy has won a major victory in our nation through convincing that treatment of symptoms is adequate replacement for cure.  If pain causes me to seek cure, especially if the illness is terminal, as with my captivity by sin then that pain is justified, heaven sent and good and any efforts to avoid its provocative aspects is a sin more grievous than the original.

I cannot ignore my own illness, hoping to somehow find accommodation or escape from the pain of facing my own inevitable truth.  Facing my own reality may be the single greatest impetus for my salvation.  Therefore, beyond the disastrous contagion of pride, prohibiting or forgoing that cataclysmic moment of my collision with that absolute truth of my need for salvation is the greatest single successful enemy effort against humanity.

Can I expect to enter battle with courage and continuity expecting to escape any wound?  This world drove me to an inevitable meeting with God and I am therefore grateful for those wounds.  It was not my health that brought me to God but my illness, my desire for answer, my sin.  For that is how God uses even evil for His Good purpose, as a catalyst for a reunification with His Holiness in that moment we seek salvation and receive His forgiveness and peace.  Again my pain is not sent from heaven but produces the exact effect God desires for my eternal existence.  Used for Good, as all things it serves God.  And who among us can deny God’s Word, promising chastisement for those whom God loves?  My pain signifies God’s love for me as He continues to prompt me toward righteousness and an eternal relationship with Him.

I do not understand your pain, for it is uniquely yours.  I merely understand that it within that pain is a blessing if you are conscious enough, mature enough, hopeful enough to seek its intention.  Do you trust God?  Do you?  Well here is the opportunity to transform that mustard seed of faith in a bushel.  Let go of trying to escape the pain and embrace it.  Not masochistically admonishing yourself for failure or inadequacy but knowingly realizing that the pain’s intention of driving you closer to a Holy God who loves you.  He is there waiting for that precious moment where you trust Him with your pain and its eradication or nullification.  Perhaps you will be blessed as greatly as Paul and even have God tell you that your pain is the thorn in your side toward realization of His plan for your life.  I do not like pain, but I love what it produces in each of us when placed in subjection to a Sovereign and Loving God.  Trust Him, and forgo any attempts to dull the precious catalysts He is using to get your attention.  Look to Him for relief and you will find peace.  In Jesus Holy Name I pray for you this day.  Amen

Revealed in my joy, understood in my pain, your love for me evades my time of luke warmth.  My quickening, this blessing, my soul siphoned through a fine mesh.  Dross no longer able to make the horrible man I have always been.  All that is good, you did in me, none of my efforts account for substantiation.  Why then should I fear this crucible, a removal of imperfection?  I dread being this man forever, thankful beyond reason for the opportunity to be cleansed, purified, remade into something I could never alone become.  Please don’t leave me in this present state or I am certainly doomed to loose every relation worth treasured enumeration.

What then is this joy in the middle of excoriation, stretched beyond elastic limit, fearing collapse, snap, brokenness and finding after a time, only repair, rework and that blessed peace given by You, to those in You?  Pitied, harangued, forgotten, misshapen and misused, my eyes are led back to the Glory this journey shall produce.  I must not be such the waste of time I appear, if the Lord of Glory would even consider tolerating my foible.  What then Lord is the purpose for this exclusion, this loss, this stripping, this humiliation?  What will it produce that may be of value to Your Good and Honest Will for my life and that of others.  I am tired of being someone other than what you created me to be.  I face the weariness of being someone different to humor their own wickedness, a pawn in someone’s prison, joining them in captivity instead of leading them to freedom.

Father I have failed and yet I remember success upon success, doing the work for which I have been fashioned.  I am thankful that man is only mist, a vapor, for I doubt that I could withstand a greater term of quickening.  It is difficult to see what you see in me and even more rigorous to imagine that in my short remaining time you will somehow find the way to prepare me for eternity.  You simply are amazing.  This pain is amazing in awakening my obedience, my passion, my loyal love and understanding.  I miss them Lord.  My only hope is that what is given will be far greater than that I have lost in the learning.  I trust in You.  I will follow, serve, believe and find joy even if my path leads to tragedy.  I am truly sorry for being such a difficult task.  You are loved greatly, my King by one who has nothing but his love to give.  In Jesus Name I pray.