When God gives you an amazing gift, it’s often easy to grab the gift with excitement and start running to share it. And what is even more of a blessing is to watch others also receive your gift with joy.  Soon, if you are like me, you create a pattern of giving. You know it came from God and it has the power to bring comfort, counsel, and God’s love to another.  So, you continue in the pattern of distribution without any end date in sight.

However, over time, the excitement turns to obligation–the need to faithfully meet the pattern of giving. And what was a gift begins to lose its joy.

Believe it or not, I started Monday Manna in January 2017.   It was a God-idea, a God-prompt.   Then one year ago, on October 10, I started posting Love Letters from Elohim every Wednesday.  This was another nudge–or at least I thought it was.

2019 started gloriously.  Several times Holy Spirit made it clear that Yeshua must be our focus this year or we would be overrun with all the politics, media, tragedy and circumstances before us.  Thus, again I picked up my trusty pen and started praying, researching and writing “Focus” pieces each week since and published them on Fridays

We moved back to Missouri in June 2018. While we’ve attended church all of our lives since we married 55+ years ago, we’ve never lived close enough to the church we were attending to participate fully in the week’s activities.  Sunday and Wednesday were givens but anything else was extra.  Since March of this year, we’ve had the joy of being part of a church that is six miles away.  For the first time, we have the choice and the means to participate as much as we want.   I was loving every minute of it until my calendar started filling with Bible studies and extra good works I freely volunteered to do.   I’ve been like a kid in a candy store, wanting to taste it all.

However, when I am going to church three or four days out of the week for several hours at a time, my time to pray, study, dig through my journals and do Bible research has suffered.  I’ve found myself less and less with my family or out enjoying other activities.  More and more I’ve wrestled with writing, where it had been a joy.  The gift was becoming a burden.

Scriptures like James 2:17-18 haunted me:  Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. ¹⁸ But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

Or how about John 9:4? — the words of Jesus:   I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.

Holy Spirit has been up close and personal through it all. And these past few weeks He’s been bombarding me with scripture, sermons, emails, blogs, FB posts, and outright prophetic ministry telling me clearly, “Lay down your blog and spend time with Me.”  He’s even put me in front of the TV at just the right time to hear mind-blowing testimony of a man who received the same kind of message.

Angus Buchan (he is the main character in the “Faith Like Potatoes” movie) was in the middle of great successful preaching ministry.  After the movie came out, calls from all over the world came for him to speak.  He was sitting in his office one day praying about the speaking engagements he had lined up for months. God spoke to him and told him to cancel all the speaking engagements and spend time with Him.  He’d learned the value of obeying and trusting God, so he canceled all the assignments.

He began spending more and more time with the Lord, praying and listening.  The Lord told him to open his farm for a prayer meeting. For that first meeting, he sent out a simple invitation for men to come and pray.   240 showed up.  God prompted him to keep having prayer gatherings and the numbers grew.  Numbers increased from 240 that first meeting to an attendance of over 2 million in a meeting held South Africa last year.  The prayers offered mainly by men were answered and tremendous life-giving changes were made in South Africa’s government and circumstances.  Angus says, “There is power in prayer. When men work, they work. but when men pray, God works.”

Angus also says, “A good idea is not always a God idea.  Sometimes the work of the Lord gets in the way of the Lord of the work.” 

Angus thought his preaching all over the world was what God meant for him to do.  He didn’t have another thought about it.  But God’s plans were bigger and had Angus not obeyed and canceled his preaching assignments, he would never have gone on to experience the joy of seeing millions pray, receive healing, be delivered, and experience first hand the power of a God who answers prayer.

With that, I am writing to tell you that for now, I will not be posting more blogs.  I don’t know how long this will last or if I will begin again.  As I told you a few weeks ago, Holy Spirit is my editor and chief.  It’s His call and it’s His work.  I am going to pull away to pray and listen, to rest and do whatever He says to do.

There are 454 blogs on this site and I doubt any of you have read them all.  I’ve written from my journals, conversations, and experiences with Abba.  If you need something other than the Bible to lift your spirit–Come and eat.  It’s free and it will be here waiting 24/7.  I must be about my Abba’s work and right now He is calling me to rest.  I also found out last week that I will be having hip-replacement surgery sometime in the next month.  I didn’t know that when He started speaking to me about resting. 🙂

God bless each of you in your pursuit of Him.  There is no god like our God.  If He tells me to write again, you’ll be hearing from me.  I think there may be another book or two in the making, but I could be wrong.  Putting this recovering workaholic Christian down for a nap is a real challenge.   Love you all.

Shalom ♥