Hi, all! You know, I must be pretty hard up if I feel I have to reply to my own topic! Seriously though, I didn't want to make the last writing too long (whoops! too late) and I didn't want to move this too far from the subject, so here I am again.

I've been continuing to read through this site, and there are some really good testimonies sprinkled in here. At this point, I'm still not ready to go into some of the sorrows I experienced, most of which were going on simultaneously while I was at Faith Assembly. But I am making reference to them here to say if anyone has been in the pit, I've been there with you. In one of the posts I recently read, Dave Gilmore (message #775) said,

So much pain communicated on the factnet.org site. Bitterness abounds. My wife and I lost a son during our years there [FA], later divorced, and experienced a number of other troubles over the years but I have never blamed someone else for these things. ...Bitter or better . . . you make the choice. God is sovereign and works all things together for our good through His great love for us... .

There's much for me to think about here, brothers and sisters. Enough bad has happened to me that I can choose to give up or I can choose to get healed and see what God can do with the rest of the life He's given me. Now mind you, I am not saying, "I can choose to give up or I can choose to go on." No, I cannot go on without healing. I'd just be trying to cover over the problem, cope, compensate. Nothing else will do for me than healing and restoration (that is cleaning me from the inside out, not putting a veneer on something that needs to be recast/rebuilt). Does that have anything to do with God wanting truth in our inward parts (Ps 51:6)?

I don't know what happened in your lives, brothers and sisters, but the trials showed me where I wasn't with God. In His mercy, because I'm choosing healing and restoration, that process is taking care of some of what I thought I had but really didn't. One more aside, and this is very important in my life--what I lacked was seldom what self-appointed judges (or my own fleshly evaluation) said I lacked; oftentimes the trial was not about what onlookers thought it was about. If I had listened to them without going to God, I would have remained in condemnation which leads to bitterness--and I would have totally missed the point.

I almost got stuck there - several times. But God didn't let me stay there, and I've just now (finally!-healing isn't accomplished in a day--it's a journey by faith with God) gotten healed enough that at the beginning of 2008 God said I was coming to a new level. Does that mean I'm all healed? Hardly. It just means the focus is changing a bit... .

But now I want to share with you some neat stories of tests I've had since 1999. God has still been proving the Word I received, even "out here." I pray they bless and encourage you as to what He can do for you.

Just in the past year (spring 2007) I have seen a job with my brother-in-law end after 6 1/2 years because the owner who was 70 sold the business, and the image the new owners wanted to project was not that of a then-almost-56 year old! Knowing the job was ending, I prayed and trusted God for the timing of that, and while the new owners first said I was going to be out in mid-March, they changed it till mid-April, then July 1st. All this time God was saying only one thing as I asked for His strategy: "Finish well."

That precluded my going out and looking, so I just kept praying, believing for favor, and trusting God. My prayer warriors were getting, "God is going to give you your next job--you don't have to go looking." Since that didn't contradict what I heard, I just held steady. At the beginning of June, I got a call from a family (whom I'd asked to pray for me) that I've been friends with for 14 years--the husband owns a small business, and his administrative assistant of 4 1/2 years gave notice that she was leaving mid-June. The upshot of it was, I left the former job on Friday, June 8 and started the new one on Monday, June 11. God was so good, I didn't lose any pay due to time between jobs. Furthermore, my pay increased and my hours went down, and I only work 4 days a week, which gives me time to work on the other things God wants me to!

Before the job though, I needed a car. (Since I must support myself trusting in God's help, this is no small thing.) At the other job I was able to walk--no more than 15 minutes away. This one, however meant I had to drive 6 miles each way to ride with a friend from church. Work is about 14 miles from home and there are also days she can't drive, and I get to drive her to work. (I of necessity gave up my last car in 2001 when I couldn't afford any more repairs on it.)

I prayed, and the Lord told me I'd know when I could get another car, so I'd been slowly saving and praying. At the beginning of 2007, I had enough to pay cash for a decent used one, but having asked the Lord, "What's the strategy?" He told me, "Wait." About the third week of January 2007, a young couple from church told me they felt God wanted them to give me their used 1994 Honda Accord, but that it needed some repairs, and they didn't want to give it to me without the repairs being made. I told them not to go out and put money they didn't have into repairs--that if the Lord wanted me to have the car, He had a way.

I advised this young couple (who wasn't really familiar with listening to the Lord) to pray, ask the Lord for His strategy and wait. They did, and He told them to see if anybody at church wanted to help with the repairs. They told the pastor who knew my financial situation, how through rocky times the Lord had kept me out of debt, etc. Pastor prayed and was led to suggest this couple email some people in the Body and ask if they wanted to help contribute to repairing my new car...some did want to help anonymously and in the middle of May 2007 God gave me my new car just in time to take my current job in mid-June! (One of my sons has insisted on paying insurance and registration so far as well!)

Want to hear a "Storm Story?"--Okay, you caught me...I am a "recovering Weather Channel addict!" In 2002, I went to St. Louis...while a tornado was heading here. I had just been led to pray three weeks before, asking God if He wanted me to get renter's insurance, because I could afford it by then. (I didn't want to assume anything.) I heard not a word, so I told God, "I take that as a 'no,' that You want me to continue trusting You alone." I got a call that Friday night in St Louis from my eldest son, who said, "Mom, I hate to bother you tonight, but I don't know what time you leave your hotel in the morning, and I don't want you to come back and be shocked. We will meet you at the mall, because things are pretty bad in your area. Your apartment complex was hit head on by a tornado. We don't know about your apartment because they wouldn't let us in to look." That gave me a whole night to wrestle with God; at that point, I had almost no money saved, having just had my new job for a year and a quarter, and had no idea what would happen. But I was so glad I didn't know what had happened so that I could "stake my faith on God" first.

When I got home, the authorities allowed me in. The front apartments had the roof and back wall ripped off. My apartment was in back, and the tornado skipped over it to the house and school just north and west. Not one of my windows was broken, while all of my neighboring apartments even in the same building upstairs and to the left and right of me had cracked or broken windows.

I had to find places to stay with friends for three weeks, have help packing and finding another place within my price range (I was across the street from work--after I relocated, I was a 15 minute walk). Even then, because of lots of help from the Body, I didn't even lose one day of work; I didn't have to pay for the truck to move; they took up a collection without the pastor's knowledge (!) and the amount of money they gave me was enough so that I didn't have to spend a penny on relocating!

I could tell you of the hurricane God protected me in (and maybe will sometime unless you-all stop me from replying to my own posts). Or how about the auto accident (this one was after FA) where I was riding with friends to church when someone crashed into us. God greatly protected my friends and me, and from the insurance settlement God said I could either buy a car or a computer, but that if I bought a computer it was an instrument of ministry, and He would tell me when I could get a car... . Or maybe about the Christian inner city homeless shelter for women and children the Lord told me to go to and offer to work in exchange for room and board for a short season in late 1999 and winter/spring 2000. I could also tell you of the Bible study He had me lead at the shelter and what neat God-things happened there--or about the people from abused homes the Lord has brought to me to seek Him with and on behalf of, or the seemingly conventional church that the Lord led me into in fall of 2001 and the things that are now happening here--the Lord has sovereignly led the pastor into the message I've waited to hear about dying to self and living to God--and I am seeing people begin to catch it and lay down their yuppie middle class priorities... .

I want to encourage you, brothers and sisters, that God is at work. He has not left you; you are not alone. I believe some of you know that already, while others of you are hoping that is so, and you haven't totally given up or you wouldn't be looking here. When I finally told someone what happened to me while I was at Faith Assembly, his response was something like, "If God could heal you, He can heal anyone hurt at or by Faith Assembly." That's true!! - If you're not walking in all you long to, consider what I just shared as the downpayment on the life He offers you if you choose to get healed.

The Lord has been showing me for years the "carnage on the battlefield"--bruised and bleeding broken warriors, totally unhealed and fragmented. This is not His will, and I look to see true healing and His restoration. He by His Holy Spirit will blow and is already blowing through those who are His (no matter what they look like regarding their spiritual state in the natural). He is speaking a creative Word to revive, restore, and if need be resurrect those likened to Ezekiel's dry bones.

Brothers and sisters, one time while I was at Faith Assembly going through an agonizing trial of long duration,the Lord asked me a question. Now I am led to ask you this question. He said, "What kind of a God am I if I can make plans but have no power to bring them to fruition?" Then He said, "If Job had given up when he thought the trial should have been over, he never would have been restored." Selah.

[Updated on: Wed, 30 April 2008 01:47]

[Updated on: Wed, 30 April 2008 12:37]

Hombre said: actually, I find more irony in life than humor and that is what I would like to subdue in favor of humor, but alas it is not meant to be....

Now Hombre said God says:

' ..Wherefore is there a price in the hand of a fool to get wisdom, seeing he hath no heart to it? '
~ Prov. 17:16

...and so day by day,

' I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.'
~ Ecc. 10:7

.....hence, sorrowfully, I conclude with Solomon:

...sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.
~ Ecc. 7:3-5

This is true, but Solomon also wrote other things in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes

Prov 15:13,15 A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance,
But by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.

and

15 All the days of the afflicted are evil,
But he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.

Hence, joyfully I conclude with Solomon (grin!!)

Prov 17:22 2 A merry heart does good, like medicine,
But a broken spirit dries the bones.

and (dare I even mention this one???) maybe I better not make any comments here--let's just let Scripture speak for itself:

Eccl 9:7 Go, eat your bread with joy,
And drink your wine with a merry heart;
For God has already accepted your works.
NKJV

...Have a blessed evening, folks! (I had such fun reading these exchanges, and of course contributing much food (and wine?) for thought!!)

[Updated on: Thu, 01 May 2008 23:35]

James, you said: When I see or hear Indiana, after FA or Bro. Freeman, I think of Larry Bird or Peyton Manning

Well this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but one of my son's one claim to fame (seriously) is that when he was delivering dry cleaning one day, Peyton Manning's dog bit him (not badly)...

[Updated on: Fri, 02 May 2008 16:22]