Fixing The Holes in Your Pockets

                 Fixing the Holes in Your Pockets

      Have you ever gotten so busy living, you don’t have time for life. It is really easy to do.  This summer has proven that to me.  I love doing my blog, but I also love helping others and traveling.  This summer I have tried to do it all. When you do that something has to get short changed. This summer it has been my blog and my Lord.  You have to make hay while the sun shines, in my case it is get things built, and see what you want to see before the snow flies.

     When I first came back to the Lord after running for years and having lost everything I had, including family, business, home, car and friends.  My life finally turned around. Having nothing but the time of the day, I started tithing it by reading the Bible two and a half hours a day. I did that for several years.  It was not hard when I was unemployed. The Good Lord provided me with a job driving over the road that still afforded me the time to do my reading.  Gradually as I got back on my feet I tended to stop tithing my time and started tithing my income.  Looking back that was a mistake. I should have kept doing both. The Lord provided both and it was my choice that caused me to drift away a bit.

    Years ago listening to Christian Radio out on the road I heard a sermon by J. Vernon McGee and it impressed me deeply.  It went something like this.  A man came to J. Vernon and said he needed J. Vernon to pray for him.  He explained that he had started tithing some time back and had been truly blessed.  He said he had no problem tithing when he started and his income was $10,000. Then his income went to $50,000 and a $100,000. Then his income finally went to over a million dollars a year.  He said he was having a hard time tithing on so much money and would J. Vernon pray with him on the matter.  J. Vernon said sure and started to pray. “Lord this man had no problem tithing before you blessed him so richly, but now he is. Lord I pray you adjust his income to a level he feels comfortable tithing on.” The man thanked J. Vernon for helping him change his perspective.

   Often when people hit hard times they tend to cut back on their tithe, but in reality that is the last place they should cut back.  If you read in the third chapter of Malachi verses 8-12 the Lord explains clearly that when you fail to honor him, he has no obligation to honor you.  He challenges “us” to challenge him and see if he will not open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing we are not able to receive.  The thing to notice is that we have to rise to the challenge, not cut back. We also need to understand that often times the Blessings come in other forms than money.  He opens doors of opportunity and provides for our health and Blessings on our loved ones.

     What I am saying can be proven from the Word of God.  In Haggai 1 verses three to eleven it makes it pretty clear that the problems we have come from how our relationship with God effect’s our Blessings from him.  I am sure many people can relate to verse six.  I know in my own life experiences that when I have come up short, the problem was my attitude and actions.  It was not God’s short comings, but my own

    I have been retired eleven years now and struggled for some time on Social Security income. It was quite a step down from $150,000 a year to barely $14,000. We never missed a payment though. It was tight for awhile, but blessings come when you least expect them.  A couple of years ago my income quadrupled overnight. I started receiving Agent Orange compensation, for something that happened almost fifty years ago.  

      It has been a challenge, but my goal is to return to reading the way I did back when I was down and out and broke.  It was much easier back then, but God did not promise it would be easy.  He just said we had to obey His Word.  If you do, you will be blessed.  It is as simple as that. God said it in His Word, over and over, and He will do it. Period.

Blessed to Death

Have you ever been blessed to death? In January 2004 I had the big one. Fortunately for me they bought me back from that one.  The link takes you to my testimony of why I feel so lucky to be sitting here writing this eleven years later. It leaves out the events leading up to that day.  About ten years before that day I took all my money out of my savings account made a down payment on a truck and started a business with only the money advanced to me for my first load.  Over the next ten years I truly learned what it means to trust God.  He will guide your path if you give all your trust to him to carry you through.  The first seven years had been really hard, but the last three were truly blessed and I had managed to get into a reasonably sound financial position.  The only down side was in July 2003 when my youngest daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

                    
          Glenda loved Sunflowers, her final request was to have her ashes spread in a                                                       field of Sunflowers
                                  27 August 1977 to 11 August 2010 

     They had scheduled her first brain surgery the first week in August 2003, but they postponed it.  That was a blessing in disguise as she was able to baptize her twin sons at Bible camp.  My oldest grandson was also baptized. Being on the road I missed it all, which is not uncommon when you are a trucker.  The shocker for me was when I returned home and happened to look in the front of my Bible given to me for my Baptism.  My three grandsons had been baptized forty two years to the day after I had been baptized.  Little did I know what was to come further down the path.

    At first I was really confused and troubled at losing my ability to drive, but over time I found God was doing much bigger and better things through it all.  It is only through hindsight that I can see that losing my ability to drive a commercial vehicle would open the door to being there for my daughter and having the opportunity to grow and bond with her during her seven year battle with her brain tumor.  Living through all that gave me the ability to see that God has purpose in all he does. Even if we do not or can’t see it, he is working in our best interests.

    So what does all that have to do with what I am writing now?  Well I am feeling extremely blessed again in my life. Some time back I asked God to guide me into opening the door to help some of my loved ones I care about that had very little chance of making it on their own without his guidance.  Over the last couple years he has been opening those doors and paving those paths to the point I am feeling nervous about being so blessed in my life.

     The Bible verse that states,  ”You have not, because you ask not.” has meant an awful lot to me all my Christian life.  The reason that is so is summed up in a Bible study I did.  It does not say anything new, but it does share and show that God is true to His Word and that he is in fact “the same yesterday, today and forever” Certain events and time frames happen several times in the Old Testament and may even be happening in the time we live in now.

    My understanding in this matter came from simply asking a question of God that truly troubled my heart and made me wonder if I even really wanted to be a Christian. The question was, “If you are a kind, caring and loving God, how could you allow what happened to the Jewish people in World War II to happen as they are your chosen people.” 

    Sometime later I was reading in the book of Jeremiah when God answered my question.  In the 16^th chapter God is talking about bringing Israel back into the Promised Land. It was in the 18^th verse that he said, he would punish them double for their iniquity. Suddenly a light went on.  He punished them when he bought them out of the Promised Land and he punished them before he took them back. Double, just like His Word said.  That made me start looking at the Bible from a whole new perspective. Suddenly I had peace in the matter.

      There was a quote in Exodus 12:40-41 that had weighted very heavy on my mind for years. The part that bothered me was where it said “the self-same day it came to pass.” Why was it so specific, did it mean something?  Then I came across a verse in Micah 7:15 that says the time of the coming out will speak to the end time. Over the years I learned from study that there were at least three 430 year periods in the Old Testament each was followed by a seventy year period. 

     In the Bible Study it became clear to me that God spoke of giving the nations that surrounded Israel a forth chance in the book of Amos. So it made me wonder if God wouldn’t give Israel a forth chance also.  While helping my daughter with a school paper on Martin Luther, I realized that from the time he nailed his treatise on the door of the church in 1517 till Israel became a nation again was 430 years just like in the old testament. At first I thought Israel became a nation in 1948 and physically that is true, but it was brought before and voted on in the United Nations in November 1947.  That is within a few days of being to the day, but it takes time to write a bill to be proposed and it could very well have been begun at 430 years “to the day”, but I have not been able to prove that.

    One fact that makes me think I may be on to something is that the Dead Sea Scrolls which validated God’s Word over a period of two millennium was discovered between the end of World War II and Israel becoming a nation.

   Why is that so significant?  Is it significant because God gave His Word to the people when they came out of Egypt through Moses.  He also gave His Word to His People when they came out of the Babylonian captivity.  Then finally he gave His Word through Christ before the fall of Israel.  Each time he gave His Word to His People.  It was given again in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

    So are we living in the last seventy year period?  Jesus said clearly we would not know the day nor the hour, but we would be able to discern the time we lived in. Was, or is, there a fourth 430 year period leading up to the founding of Israel? All I can say on the matter is that Israel is back in the Promised Land.  God said it would happen two thousand years ago and now it is a done deal.  So I would say you can take His Word as literal and true and as the old saying says, “You can take it to the bank.”

    A smart person would be looking up for the parting of the eastern sky.  His Word says it will happen and His Word has a pretty good track record. Many people I talk to agree and think the time till the coming of the Lord is short.  I am one of them. My view is based on a vision/dream I had in January of 1967 that made me volunteer for Vietnam. That vision of the end time made me feel that I would be here when the Lord returns in power and glory.  While I may die before I get out of this chair, I have faith I will see the eastern sky part. So let me say with my health issues and having had one experience. I am more worried for others than for myself. Search your heart and share it with those you truly care about. I don't mind the thought of dying, I do hate the thought of leaving and not having shared with those I care about. We can share, but He has to open and prepare their hearts to receive it.  The best thing we can do is surrender the matter to Him.