Work,
Play, Rest and Grow
Sometimes the simplest things in life are
the hardest to grasp. It took me years to learn to ask God to take care of the
small things in my life as well as the big ones. The light came on as I cruised
around an overflowing parking lot. It had been a long hot day and I was very
tired. I told the Lord I really did not want to walk all the ways from the back
of the parking lot. Then the verse in
James 4:2 passed thru my mind. “You have not because you ask not.” So without wavering I asked the Lord to provide
me a space. As I cruised up the aisle I
saw the very first car in the row start backing out. I said, Thank You Lord and pulled into the
parking spot. I sat there a few minutes pondering what had happened. Is it really that simple or was it just a
coincidence. Looking back on the course
of my life it had happened many times. To me Proverbs 4:18 says the more you
trust God the brighter his light gets in your life. From that day forward I
have tried to remember to take everything to the Lord.
When I leave home I ask the Lord to
prepare my path and generally find a front row spot. Often enough that my wife
one day asked me how I always seemed to get a front row spot. I told her I pray
about it and she laughed, I did too, but mine was a laugh of gratitude for the
wisdom I had come to understand and was able to share, which brings me to the
purpose of this post. As my
grand-daughter always says, Sharing is caring and that is why I write.
It is easy to drift away from trusting in
the Lord. When I came to the Lord, or better said, back to the Lord, after a
long period of running away from him. I had nothing. I had lost my business, my
house, my family, and after spending six months one winter living in my van in
Ft. Meyers, FL I returned home only to lose the van also. Finally I turned to
God and told him I had nothing to give or share but my time and that I would tithe
my time in His Word. For the next few
years I spent roughly two and a half hours a day reading the Bible. It was easy when I was unemployed. It became a challenge once I got a job. Having spent months going from door to door
looking for a job and doing yard work or whatever I could find to survive I
knew the job I had was a Blessing from God.
You read enough of my blog stories you will come to see why I say that. Less than three years later I had back
everything I had lost, including my family. Materially all that I had lost was
recovered and actually increased in both quality and quantity.
Thirty-five years later I sit here and as
I look back over the years it is easy to see God’s hand in my life and that he
in fact has guided my path and opened the doors in my life. Just as His Word
says he will do if we seek Him with all our heart and soul. While it was
happening I did not understand much of it. Time has given me the perspective to
see that when I had a massive heart attack and had to quit trucking and sell
half of everything I owned to keep my house, God’s hand was in it. The easiest
way to tell the story is to tell you to read my blog post of June 25, 2006
titled A Tale of Life and Death, My last Post. It tells the story and is fairly
long. Here is the link address http://rictheturtleryan.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-tale-of-life-and-death-my-last-post.html
for anyone who might want to read it.
There is a certain irony for me in sitting
here and writing this today. It is April
Fool’s Day and is a day that has had significance in my life since April 1969,
Here is a link that explains why. http://rictheturtleryan.blogspot.com/2014/04/when-god-says-april-fool.html Sometimes it is easier to share a link
than explain, especially since some people are looking for quick answers. The
only problem with that is you short change yourself of the results of really
searching out an answer.
It took me a long time to really understand
that the following verse applies just as much today as it did when it was
given.
It is II Chronicles 7:14 __ 14If my people,
which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will
forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
In this day and age there are too many
nominal Christians. At times I am one,
it takes true dedication and perseverance to become a real Christian. One that lives the Word of God and not one
that just quotes it and gives lip service, but make no changes to the way they
live. It only matters if you really care where you will spend eternity. Looking
at the World we live in today, especially the country we live in today lip
service has become the standard most live by. How did we get to this point as a
nation? Certainly not by living
according to verse mentioned above.
In Joshua 1:8 God made it pretty clear what
he considered following him.
“8This book of the law shall not depart out
of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest
observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt
make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.” Many people say I don’t have time for all
that. Then they complain because they
walk around broke even though they make decent money, and their lives are in
chaos.
The wisest man who ever lived laid it out very
plainly in First Proverbs,
“To
know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; 3To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity; 4To give subtilty to the simple, to the young
man knowledge and discretion. 5A wise
man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall
attain unto wise counsels: 6To understand a proverb, and the interpretation;
the words of the wise, and their dark sayings. 7The
fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and
instruction. 8My son, hear the
instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: 9For they
shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.
My
goal is not to preach, it is to live according to what I have learned. My
writing has definitely diminished as I have tried to apply it to my life. Hopefully the quality has increased, but
that is determined by you the readers and by how much you share it. I don’t advertise other than sharing on
Facebook and Twitter and as my readership grows it lets me know that what is
being said is being shared and that is how this post grows. It has been read in
over 70 countries now and at times by almost a 1,000 people a month. The more
it grows, the more I feel motivated to share from the experiences in my own
life. What I pray for now is for God to
give me the stamina and energy to do what I feel called to do.
When I started my walk with the Lord I
never had a problem finding those two and a half hours a day. I did it before
breakfast, during meals and before bedtime. Now finding time for even a few
minutes is a challenge. Not because I
have less time, but because my priorities have falling away from my first love.
As it says in the first verse I quoted all we need to do is turn our hearts
back to Him and He will take care of us.
This
year I am sharing the top thirty posts of all the six years I have been
writing. The link in this paragraph links to my best ones from 2015 and before
with links. The list following this paragraph gives some new ones for 2016 and
the dates they were posted. Hope they share in a way that helps people grow in
their understanding and walk with the Lord.
How
Dancing Lessons Could Fix America 110
8/30/16
Comprehensive
Two Part Gun Solution 115
8/516
JESUS
SAID IT NOT ME
118 7/27/16
A
Tale of Life and Death, My Last Post?
219 6/23/16
Coming
Full Circle 255
6/7/15
Turning
a Corner in Time 165
4/10/15
The
Truth Will Set You Free 155
3/27/15
How-to
Recycled and Cheap Starting Pots
126
2/9/15
A
Book Review of “Running From a Crazy Man”
154 1/10/15
A
Little Further Down the Path 122
11/4/14
When
God Says April Fools 139
4/11/14
Putting
Your Hand to the Plow
115
12/15/13
Sign
of Jonah, The Only Sign Given
91
5/27/14
Building
A Hedge of God’s Protection
95
6/22/13
Is
America Dysfunctional/ Or Reprobate?
127
2/22/13
Simple
Shelves and Recycled Storage Units, How-to
258 12/26/12
Deadhead
? Or Not? How to Judge
132
9/14/12
Money,
Victory Over STUFFITIS
246 6/13/12
Trucker
Logic
165 5/28/12
Israel’s
1st Jubilee in 2000 Years Begins 243 5/17/16
Mad
Dogs of Darkness
199 5/9/16
Top
Posts of 2015 224
3/4/16
Are
You Who You Think You Are 129 10/15/15
Armageddon Anyone? 162 10/2/15
Fixing
the Holes in Your Pockets
170 8/28/15
Blessed
to Death 174 8/13/15
Church
of the Eighty Foot Parking Lot
206 7/24/15
Hope
in the Face of Mayhem 150 7/20/15
A
Meal with the Least of These 93 12/25/14
