PHANTOM HARVEST

When the brook dries up and the ravens come no more, it's time to move, time for change.
God had other plans for Elijah, to worry and stew is human and real. Moses worried and stewed about his speech impediment. Jesus on the cross cried out "Father why have you forsaken me!". Peter fervently denied knowing Jesus, I'd say he was more than a bit worried and stewed. Life isn't slanted it's in the eyes one is looking through that discerns the view. "Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes it's food?"
Jesus did not come to sow peace.
Matthew 10:34
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword".
Well written but very misleading.

I think I received a different message from that and one that I needed. For me, it's about appreciating what we have now. If we can't be happy in the now, we can't ever be happy. If we feel we can't be happy until we reach a certain place, then we are just spinning our wheels, because then we'll never be satisfied. I look forward to what I hope to grow in to as a Christian, but I also must appreciate how far I've come.

"I think I received a different message from that and one that I needed. For me, it's about appreciating what we have now. If we can't be happy in the now, we can't ever be happy. If we feel we can't be happy until we reach a certain place, then we are just spinning our wheels, because then we'll never be satisfied. I look forward to what I hope to grow in to as a Christian, but I also must appreciate how far I've come."
We have different filters, you say tomato I say $@%&*#@$ but I can appreciate the sentiment as it was intended.
I've come a long way but I know I still got a looong way to go.
Peace.

This lesson is one that is all too real in my life and comes from a history that you need to understand. As the note at the top reveals, it has to do with my struggle to discern the will of God. Many years ago God granted me 5 years of formal Bible education. I had thought I was going to be wisked out to the mission field and God would knock down all of the obstacles. The unspoken mentality of my college and seminary were that if you had been trained, you should be serving the Lord full time.

When doors were repeatedly closed, I and then we [for I got married during this time] fought through our discouragement and "by faith" tried other doors, windows, and even the drier vents! Sometimes we were allowed to work in local Christian support positions, but always I was plagued with a sense of disatisfactiion, that God had something better for us to be doing. After all, I was a trained and gifted teacher - why would He not want to use me? In all of these ministries something would always happen to pull the rug out from under us and I was forced reluclantly to seek "secular" employment.

The lesson I had to learn was to trust Him and serve Him with contentment no matter what the circumstances, even when I finally got into my dream ministry, only to have it willfully and irrivokably destroyed by a "Christian Leader" before it ever fully got off the ground.

"Why?" I cried out! "Why won't You let me go there and serve You?"

And eventually my heart quieted enough so that I could release my bitterness and hear His reply, "Because I want you to serve Me wherever you are, not promise to serve Me, when you get someplace else. I want you to bloom where I have planted you. Stop searching for some other place and serve me now!"

That is when my writing ministry began and I took the gift of Teaching His Word that He had given me, and used it allegorize the struggle against bitterness that the enemy had used to cature my heart [my "Dragonsback" Fantasy series]. I found contentment in NOT being in fulltime Christian service.

So, oneagleswings, my friend, I was not trying to say at all in this poem that there is never a need to move under God's leading. No, it is more the recognition that our fulltime job as Christians is to take all the manure that the world [and even some Christians] heap upon us, and NOT run seeking someplace safe without tests, but to use the fertilizer to help us grow and BLOOM WHERE WE ARE PLANTED!

Because HE Love me,

Bob

What an awesome testimony. Praise God!

Well, that waaaas some testimony and you are my friend !
That's is/was some journey buuut I kinda' knew the background of ministry was permeating your writing no fair Mr. deep wisdoms. I'll have my eye on you Don't go getting all stratospherically deep on us now...We's lay persons. And I guess I needed to rattle your chain juuust a bit because you are a trained and gifted teacher! You have another ministry here, I'm listening please teach I would be humbled and honored to learn. Everything you post is high quality work.
God Bless.

Aw, shucks! Now you went and made me blush again.
Lesson number one, for THIS teacher:

"Let not a man think too highly of himself"
Or God might just leave him sitting on the shelf;
"Humble youself under God's mighty hand"
We all need to kneel before we can stand!

RDW

Duly noted my friend.
God Bless.