First off, the Daily Grind:
I am feeling MUCH better today! Yeeeehaww!  Yesterday I was a coughing machine, relentless, on-going all day long. Last night I put the humidifier on in my bedroom and after it drained out the entire water reservoir I filled it up again.  This morning?  Hardly coughing at all and starting to  feel better.

Work - is work.  It has it's interesting points, but that because I am not chained down to a desk all day long, I am outside working or in the truck driving.  It kind of reinforces the idea that an inside sales position and I?  Probably not a good mix.  Outside sales would be awesome, but - you have to go through the inside thing first to get that kind of promotion.

Now onto more important matters, namely, the Daniel fast that I am on.  It's been 10 days since I have had any meat and up to this point, it has hardly been a "chore" at all.  I don't dream of hamburgers and steaks all day long, those thoughts don't even occupy my mind at all. I get hungry, I just eat what I am allowed to eat on this fast and that's that.

But the real stuff is in the prayer and the denial of self.  There are other things that I am engaging in for this fast  that are also having a real effect.  I so much feel that I have simply squandered away my days since I got divorced, hiding in my cave, becoming almost hermit-like in recusing myself from ministry and simply leading a life that is not fit for the calling that God has upon my life.  Not that I am anything special, but I know there is so much more that I am supposed to be doing for the Lord.  I have no good excuses, just lame ones.

But even now, I remember a word I got after I got divorced and had this feeling that God wanted nothing to do with me in terms of ministry, a word that has been sitting on a dust-filled shelf in my memory banks that just suddenly came out today:  You are NOT disqualified from ministry!  The word disqualification had been churning over and over in my mind, but I spoke nothing of it to anyone.  A woman of God from an online ministry wrote to me one day on her internet site and proclaimed those and many more words from the Lord that I had been thinking over and over.  The word she gave me was so precise, accurate and directly aimed at what I was then-experiencing, there is no way I could adjudge that as anything else but from the mouth of the Lord Himself.

Yet, I wandered off that path and basically did nothing.  Work, that was it.  I did look for a church a few times and started attending one but ended up leaving and then attending another one - which I also left.  The pastor was a nice man and all, but I couldn't help but think this guy really was well out of his calling.  Only when Caleb came alive in the Lord did I come to grips with reality and come to terms that my life had drifted far away from what I was and am supposed to be doing in and for the Lord.

I couldn't possibly sit here and tell you what, or perhaps more to the point: where I should be at right now in terms of ministry, but I can say that the starting point, at least for me and for now, will be through the church I am going to.  They have been very patient with me as I have worked to deal with the issues that life offers - which usually are not all that pleasant thank you - but I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Ask me about that light last year and I would have told you I still only see darkness, no where near the end.

Okay, backtracking a bit: I did do some things that I have always felt the Lord wants me to do during these years after the divorce.  I have given large quantities of food to hungry families.  I have helped people keep their lights on - easy to do if a person has a M-Power card, you don't give them the money you simply put it on their card.  Jesus simply said to feed the hungry, that's something, at least, that I have kept doing throughout this time.

Well, anyway, this fast is having a serious effect that I did not expect in renewing my desire to get back into some form of ministry - whether in the church or not - and also simply digging into the Word and trying to keep my mind stayed on the Lord all day long. Can't say that is happening 24 hours a day,  but certainly I'm feeling better about myself in this regard.

On a slightly different topic, I won an Ebay auction a few days ago for a Bible that has 4 different versions of the Bible side-by-side.  A great study Bible, you can read the same scripture in 4 different versions and get a much fuller perspective of what is actually being said - and imparted.  I don't actually HAVE the Bible yet, paid for it but don't expect to receive it for another week or so.  I am far more confident using Ebay these days because of their "Buyer Protection" plan.  If you don't receive an item you paid for, you WILL get your money back as long as the auction says that the purchase is covered by that plan.  Or if the item received is not what was listed in the auction (which happened to me last year when I bought a pond filter and it turned out to be something completely different and worth far less in value than what was advertised: I eventually got my money refunded to me). Ebay didn't use to have that protection and it was a gamble every time you bought something.

Well, that's it for now.  It's time to go to bed.  Worked an 11-1/2 hour day today and I am bushed.

G'nite.

ben