Begin Again

When you look at the journey you are on in life, there are so many twists and turns and very few people actually follow the path they map out for themselves in those teenage planning or “dreaming” years.  God's ultimate plan for us is to spend eternity with Him in Heaven.  What happens in the middle is what we call life.  Regardless of our best laid plans, thankfully because of His endless forgiveness, we can always start over. 

I can’t even remember all of the dreams I have dreamed.  That’s why I know that God doesn’t just place one dream in my heart.  I believe he wants me to be happy, content, and realize that I am to store my treasures in Heaven and not in the corner office, my garage, or the local bank.  Tonight as I was writing in my prayer journal I had been reading in Psalms for inspiration.  David says that a man who has nothing more than his breath when weighed with a man who has many riches, the two combined equal nothing but breath.  In the grand scheme of things the material things or anything we place abundant value on in this world doesn’t amount to anything compared to the relationship we have with God and what awaits us in eternity.

This summer has been one of the hardest seasons in all my life.  As I look back on times when I lost jobs, battled life threatening illnesses, and buried loved ones, nothing seems to compare to the battle within Rob as I know him this summer.  I launched one of the most successful speaking tours I have ever been able to do.  I am so very proud of my Faith Is A Factor platform, but, the devil was very disappointed in it and did everything he could to destroy my love for God.  He has done everything possible to hang as a dark cloud over the glory and honor I wanted to give to the Lord for showing me a better way to deal with depression.

I made terrible decisions throughout parts of this year.  Those decisions cost me on so many levels, because I found myself in a constant struggle of impulse vs. rationality.  Fortunately, victory has prevailed and as God’s Word clearly explains, we will prosper and He will answer the pleas of the righteous.

In my younger days everything I did was about pride.  It was all about outperforming someone else.  Just because I grew up in a trailer park to cotton mill workers, didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be the most successful person to emerge from Cochran’s hollow.  I wasted too many years storing up treasures on earth…in the corner office, on the business card, in the local bank.  Fortunately I have always served the Lord, but I never truly grasped the clarity of a man’s relationship with his Savior until the last couple of years, magnified even more this year.

Already on a downward spiral, I wrote the sermon, “Faith Is A Factor,” and delivered it with good reviews.  I was able to tour multiple states and reach new brothers and sisters and patients who suffer the same illness as I.  Unfortunately, and not to paint myself as the victim, because I am not, my brother was brutally and in my mind unfairly killed in a car crash at the end of June.  I still can’t understand how a man who never had an enemy, never had a sickness, and was so full of joy had to go before his younger weaker, sicker, sad and depressed brother.  I allowed this grief to overcome me and dominate my life for the last fifteen weeks. 

Realizing that I was in a state of chaos and on a collision course with disaster, I decided to practice what I was so effortlessly preaching….

Completely turning your life over to God is humbling.  When you really make that connection where you understand that He is in total control and you remove the negatives, regardless of how much it hurts or what the consequences might be, peace really begins to pass understanding.  You see I will never understand my brother’s death.  I am not meant to understand it, not in this life anyway.  Regardless of the nights I wake screaming his name or how much I wish I had changed the pattern of that last day, it is done and out of my control.

Through all of the panic attacks and the struggles to survive other snowballing disasters, God emerges with a plan.  He uses the original talents He gave me.  He uses His people, such as Courtney, Sherry, Gina, Kim, Estee, Wayne, LuAnne, Becky, Jean, Nell, Paul, Angie, Tracy, Tonya, Cindy, Suzanne, Michele, Laura, Len  and so many others to encourage and guide me toward making the right decisions to overcome circumstances that had me on the path to destruction.

Finally, I am not a man who cares what others think as much I care what others KNOW and believe in their hearts about God, not about me.  I can be victorious and overcome for Him.  I can use the talents He gave me, to begin again, so humbly and so willingly to take each day one step at a time.  Joel Osteen recently put out a devotional that God doesn’t want His children to suffer in the bad economy the way others do, and this is so true, even in dark times, as the scriptures tell us, our God is a God of abundance in everything, including happiness.

As I read back over my prayer journal entries just in the last few weeks, I can see how God aligned everything for me.  How in my desperation, He worked more quickly, He knew I needed fast results.  Now with His new blessings for me and the new “old” journey I am about to embark on, is a full circle example of embracing the simplicity of using our talents and perhaps this second time around I will learn to glorify Him even more.

God is a giver of many chances.  His forgiveness is endless.  His love is without condition or limits.  So then should be our service in His name.  By the grace and mercy of God I begin again and that is His plan, and today that is all I need to understand.

My love to all….