Before I retired in 2020 I had a small but active ministry at my job involving customers and employees. It was risky business in the work environment because sometimes non-believers are easily offended by anything related to Christianity, which is another topic for another day. I felt like I had a purpose. Mentoring young employees, praying with them, and having thought provoking conversations with customers and suppliers. I was in a proactive place in my walk of Faith.

After the SARS-CoV-2 virus hit our company in the Spring of that year, I was directed by our parent company in Europe to terminate one third of our employees. They called it a “preemptive strike”. I was never told how they calculated we needed to terminate so many people. I had to let a lot of good people too. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my life. We literally did not have enough people left to run the business and they put a no overtime policy in place, in addition to a hiring freeze. Orders weren’t shipping, customers were complaining, and of course as a regional vice president, this all became my fault. For the first time in my 40 years with this company I felt like I needed to get away from it all and I did. I quit/retired in August of 2020 at age 60.

I had no plan in place to use my free time. I wanted to take up golf again but right after leaving my job I was unable to sleep and I got involved with a woman I met on a dating sight I had no business being involved with as a Believer. The insomnia got worse. It affected my church life. It was horrible and I felt exhausted around the clock. It affected my ability to function on a lot of levels and the sleep medications prescribed by my doctor were giving me bad hangovers. In January of 2021 I started having bad nausea around the clock. It lasted for thirteen months and I had two upper endoscopies done. Both doctors told me I needed to drastically change my lifestyle, which I made an attempt to do through physical fitness. Unfortunately in April of 2022 I sustained a severe neck injury by overextending with an abdominal roller and pushing the top of my spine into the base of my skull. The pain was intolerable. During the physical therapy I developed a dependency to pain medication. I stopped working out and my Mom passed away a few months later. I’ve been trying to help my sister manage my Mom’s estate in Georgia, making frequent trips there to help clean out her house.

During this three year period I never gave up on my Faith, although at times I felt like there was a total disconnect between me and God and His Son. My prayers became quick, repetitive, and without meaning. I began to question my own salvation. I went to a Christian counselor because I was convinced the instantaneous transformation I went through on the night of December 7, 2013 was somehow not real, even though I experienced it and it changed everything from my appearance to my voice. I was also convinced my Baptism in front of three thousand people had somehow been nullified. I still have my struggles, but I have finally come to a place where I’m praying for God to open doors for me so I can talk to people about The Word.

The problem I face right now is I have too much free time on my hands with no coherent plan in place to use it. I’ve considered going back to work which is a viable reality as of this writing. I’ve considered trying to start a new class at my church for young adult men but I have to make sure I’m not doing it out of pride. I need to be around people for sure. I have a Spirit driven need to spread God’s Word, but I never feel like I’m doing enough and I’m just waiting for God. It’s so difficult to have that fruit of patience, especially since I’m not getting any younger.

A few weeks ago I really started ramping up my prayers in regards to how I could reach more people and plant seeds of sharing in their minds and hearts. I’ve never been on social media before and I don’t have any interest in it. I keep a case of Bibles in my vehicle to give out to random people when I’m out and about, but for me to reach more people I needed an outlet. I had forgotten about the blog option but remembered it doing some clean up work in my browser bookmarks.

I had not intended for this post to turn into an “About Me” page but I’ve obviously gone down that path. As I was gathering my thoughts before writing this I had intended to give examples from Scripture to support the idea of being patient while waiting for God, but I realized all of God’s Word is a call to spiritual action. Complacency and procrastinating must be absent from our hearts while we are waiting for God to align the interwoven cosmic complexities of our lives. I think the lesson I’ve learned from this post is God is probably waiting on us more than we are waiting on Him.

In the days before the internet and social media, you would rarely ever pick up a newspaper and read an article from a pastor publicly outing and judging another pastor for all the world to see. You most certainly would not see anything on television or hear radio news where a pastor is openly criticizing someone at another church for spending over the budget approved by the church leaders and members.

I had a disturbing video show up in my YouTube feed last night from a popular pastor on the web with nearly five hundred thousand subscribers. The pastor in question apparently overspent on the approved travel budget and a few other things. The pastor who posted the video online actually went so far as to resort to name calling by referring to him as “spending like a drunken sailor”. The more disturbing part of this is the video had over 400 comments from his supporters cheering him on for his actions and “exposing” the guy he was verbally attacking. Initially I was dumbfounded, then angry. Then I wrote a retaliatory post and sat there for a minute before I posted it. At the last moment I decided to pray for the guy instead of posting my scathing rebuttal which included references to Scripture about how he should handle these kinds of situations. The attacking pastor even admitted he knew the man, which makes it even more disturbing. This is a man with a masters degree in theology and a large public following.

I want to give all of you some words from the mouth of our most precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as He is discussing the signs of the end times in last of the five Olivet Discourses. Keep in mind this is some of the most important prophetic material in all of Scripture. Matthew 24:10 – “At that time many will turn away from The Faith and will betray and hate each other”. This is literally what we are beginning see among the global church of Believers. Instead of making every effort to preserve the unity of the church we are going behind the backs of each other and attacking like wolves. Understand this: Every Believer on this planet is a flawed human being. They are flawed in their actions, words, teachings, writings, and every other phase of their life. When we accepted the free gift of pardon for our sins past, present, and future, and were baptized into The Holy Spirit, we did not get sprinkled with magic Christian dust and become perfect. Absolutely not. We are all still messed up and we have a daily obligation to pray and repent. Of course being saved does not give us a license to sin. We could do an entire class on that topic alone.

One of the fifty plus commands of Jesus is Matthew 18:15 – “Go to Christians who offend you”. I am not judging this gentleman who failed miserably at following the commands of Jesus, I am only discerning his fruit, of which there was none in his video. If he actually knows the guy like he claims don’t you think his first inclination would have been to speak with him privately as he is commanded? Apparently not. he chose to record a ten plus minute video outright attacking him and calling him a “drunken sailor”, with his followers piling on and saying “get him boy” essentially. I am sure every last one of these people who were involved in this call themselves followers of Jesus Christ. Do you see where this is headed?

Indeed maybe the end times are upon us. I try not be lose focus of evangelizing by channeling my energy into prophecy date setting. There is enough of that going out there already, but Jesus literally predicted this would start happening. I think this is a great time for us to conduct a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves and see if we currently measure up to The Will of God and His Son. We have an eternal obligation to keep each other built up and refreshed. If another Believer is getting off track, firstly we need to be praying for him, and secondly we need to be making some kind of heartfelt effort to get the person reconciled. Can you imagine if a church membership started posting derogatory attacks about each other on Facebook and Twitter, or is that already happening too?

My prayer for everyone is let’s all be careful of having a prideful and selfish admiration for earthly distractions. With all the crazy stuff happening in the world today and communication traveling the entire globe at light speed, it’s way too easy for us to get off track. I do it. We all do it. We can’t go ten minutes without keeping up with latest worldly whatever. Challenge another Believer in your life to replace cell phone, television, and internet time with Bible study time and also challenge yourself. And above everything else, follow the commands of Jesus Christ and live out His Word.

Blessings everyone, you are all super special in God’s eyes..