I am engaged to a Lady who lives 7000 miles away from me. We are planning to be married in May of this year. We have a relationship beyound what my heart could have imagined. It will be 2 years for us this January. We met here in this site.
Here is my path God ordained for me leading up to finding my hearts desire.............
My life was a mess, We had this recliner that was mauve in color the we got as a hand me down from her Grandmom I think.
This chair was the first palce i had my relational moment with God. Kneeling before the chair with my head resting in it. Now thinking about it much like a child would rest their head on a parents lap. That chair absorbed many tears and snot bubbles.
As a child having such a hard heart I can not remember if I ever cried but thanks be it to God my heart is tender today by His work and grace.
But my life was still a mess and would continue to press hard against me. The reality of the empty room where my daughter once played and layed her head to sleep. Where i prayed with her by her bed and read the bible to her while sitting in that easy chair.
You know I used to think it was the love for my wife that God used to change me but now I think it was the love I had for my daughter. She was the only innocent one in all of this. She was the one hurt most by her parents division.
But God...........God will do a work in the future to bring healing to all of this.
My family is now 6 hours away and since my convictions are to not fight in court with my wife I did not. This is according to Gods word
1Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? 2Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
When my wife left me I thought I had things all figured out spiritually speaking. I had been studying the bible now for over 10 years.
What i was confronted with is that God is much greater than I figures Him out to be. His word was more vast than i even imagined.
During this time I packed up my belongings and moved back into the disfunctional home I grew up in.
I took time to visit my daughter in North Carolina.
The best move I made was to seek help with my financial issues. I contacted Larry Brukett ministry and found a financial advisor. This fellow mentored me not in financess to say but to understand what true wealth is.
You see I ws clueless to what was truly valuable. I didnt hardy believe I was valuable. I tried to make my self valuable by making my self what I thought people would value but that was all cosmetic.
This fellow would give me assignments to read in scripture and I would come back with some christianity mombo jombo. He kept asking me if I wanted to go deeper.
I wanted to go deeper and so he persisted and I kept coming back with the same surface answers. Then one day it clicked.
I learned the lesson......What i was missing is that I didnt understand that i wanted to be god. I wanted to controll my life. We say we want Gods will but do we?
I finally realised the depth of the depravity of my own heart. Why you ask would this be wealth?
The wealth is the knowledge of God over my desire to be god. The wealth is the love of God to sacrifice everything even for a individual who would not only reject Him but kick Him off of the throne If I had oppertunity. The wealth is knowing that I wanted to be like God knowing good from evil. But this knowlege causing me the need to hide because this knowledge and responsibility is to great for me to handle.
Their came those words again where are you? Words spoken to our first parents Adam and eve and now spoken to me.....
The christian experience is a walk and we start out in life on this path that we try not to waiver from only to realise Jesus is the path.
The life, death, ressurection of Jesus is everything and we live because of the faith we place in Jesus.
He is the Way, the truth, and the Life. No one comes unto the Father except through Him.
Now life is still difficult and I am living with my parents for a year. Now that I have been away for some time I realise I am becoming more spiritually sensitive. When i sleep at night I am scared.
This home that I was raised as a child and the fear I felt was more than a disfunctional home. I realised that their was a evil spirit dwelling in that place. I had this friend from Unganda who was really into spirit things and i told him about my experience.
He wanted to come with me and pray over the house anointing it with oil. I really didnt believe in such things but I gave it a try figuring I was wrong before and I could be wrong now.
Well we did just that and something happened that i can not explain. It was like the moving of water and a rushing of feeling that came accross me more powerful than I have ever experienced. Tears started to flow and a power and peace flowed up inside me like a fountain. The tears stared to flow..........
The following day my mom began to clean out all this stuff and place it in a pile in the middle of the living room. To latter discard it in the trash. The Spirit moved again in my life in a mighty way.
As I go and share with you these are mile stones along my path leading me to my final destination.....Home in the Kingom of God.
It is my hope that as you are encouraged by my But God mile stones you search God out and discover your own mile stones that are your intimate moments in time with the creator of the universe.....
In life we weather one storm after another. What shelter do we seek to hide under? The wing of the mighty God or elsewhere?
So now a year has passed and my life is moving foward. I had decided it was time to find my place once again. In this year I had worked out visitation rights of my daughter and her mom realised she was going to be responsible for driving her to me every other week. This is a 12 hour drive round trip. Not such a good idea to move so far away now right?
Well they moved back locally and my daughter began to visit me and spend the nights at my parents in a room I prepared for her. But i wanted to provide a safer enviroment for her and my self. So i began to look for apartments.
By this time God had matured me and help me deal with some of the issues of my heart and break through the walls I had built over my childhood.
One of the blessings and assurance God gave to me through heart break was being so far from my daughter. Not being able to be active and involved in her life. Since my parents were uninvolved I didnt want to leave my daughter with that feeling of abandonment like I had.
One day in prayer God spoke to me again through scripture where He says He WILL be a father to the fatherless.
What a comfort and reality in my life. A double blessing. God was fathering me and he will father my daughter if needed. This truth brought a great sense of freedom and security. Those words Aba ( daddy) are for my heavenly daddy. I call my earthly father dad but it could never be with the endearment I feel for my heavenly Daddy.
These things are the intimate moments I have shared with God and He with me. They are part of who I am today thanks to Him.
We desire intimacy but many of us fail to understand or know how to receive and participate in a intimate moment.
Our fears and the guard we palce around our hearts cause us to miss out. As God pealed away my fear and allowed me to become vualnerable I began receiving love.
In relationship when we guard our hearts we loose the capacity to receive the very thing we desire mostly. Intimacy....
Obviously trust is a key component when begining a relationship but in a failed marriage someone has to take the step of courage to receive the reward of intimacy.
Men that is our responsibility. We men have to lead the way in showing our women that we can be vaulnerable and strong at the same time. So often our pride and our fear of being weak causes us to loose the very one we desire to be close to.
This happened to me. Pride comes before a fall and a haughty spirit before destruction.
I guess in part you can say this is a public confession. Gods word tells us if we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
It is with both a changed heart and the confession of our mouths that we find forgiveness through the blood of jesus our lord.
It is my hope as I lead in this others will be inspired to confess as well. Our confession is our testimony of Gods unfailing love toward us and we become the Gospel through it.
One day my ex wife will read this and I want to add I am truly sorry for everything and hope to find forgiveness from you one day.
Too you men and women who are struggling with marriage you can reast assure that God is able to work in your spouses life if you just find the patience to wait.
I known God wanted me to find my own place but the money situation was a issue for me.
So out of obedience and in faith I began to investigate places. I had come across this privatly owned 3 story home built and lived in by its original owners. Old school construction. The husband and wife who resided there and rented apartments out were in their 80's.
After meeting and finding out the gentleman and his wife were believers in Christ and the rent was very affordable I realised this was were God wanted me. The only problem was they required 2 months rent like everyone else. A deposit and first months rent. Slightly under $1000.00......
I had a sense God was going to do something but I didnt know what. But by this time I had began to learn to trust God by faith in some area of my life and this would turn out to be another marker stone of faith for me.
I was talking with my brother who lived in our parents house with me one day. I said to him I dont kow how God is going to do it but I believe He will. I said God would have to have me sell a contract and the customer would have to pay for the project in full.
This is unheard of in the building industry. No customer pays in full for a job up front usually its is in thirds. 1/3 deposit 1/3 mid completion and 1/3 upon completion.
This was the only way I could see it though. That Sunday I went to church and ran across one of the families I had given a bid. He said I havent forgotten about you and was going to be sending a check. This fellow knew nothing of my problems and of the conversation I had with my brother.
Well would you know a couple days latter I got the check and can you guess what???? It was for the full amount of the project.....
Praise God!!!!!
So the first thing I did was worship and praise God. Then I wanted to show it to my brother because God moved and revealed Him self in a tangable way.
God tells us that if we have faith as small as a mustard seed that we can say to that mountain be cast into the sea and it will be so. God is pleased by out trust in Him and this was a turning point on my life to want to trust God more.
You see if it is Gods will and we trust God by faith then their is nothing that can stand in the way of it being accomplished. We can count on it as if it happened already. The key though is getting our own selfish desires out of the way that we can trust God as little children.
You see when God tell us that we come to His Kingdom as little children it is all about trust in our Heavenly Daddy.
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. Mat 18 & 19
14But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
