The breeze and the 2x4

This is all about how God has and does speak to me. There are times that he speaks as a soft breeze blowing here and there as John 3:8 says "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." There are also times where God uses the preverbal 2x4 to smack us up side the head. The story of Jonah is and example of this, God using the storm and the fish to get Jonah to listen. I have come to the realization that we need to listen for the breeze but be aware of the 2x4.

We are not to be so focused on finding that breeze, that as we search and seek God in the little things we miss the big picture. Looking back at my life I can see where I have missed breezes and ignored 2x4 all leading me to where I am today. Writing to who ever want to know my struggles and how God still uses me after all my failure.

Where I come from and my story so far.

Growing up in a Christian family I remember hearing and learning about God, Jesus, and this thing they called the "Holy Ghost". I remember just going to Sunday school and trying to be a good kid (the best I could be) and wearing the name Christian, because my parents were and I went to church so sure I was too. By my freshman year of high school I knew in my head that I needed to have "Accept Jesus into my heart" because I didn't want to go to Hell. Not knowing at that time that the camps and conferences I was going to, really to have fun, were times where God was speaking to me in the breezes of life. Over my high school career I flitted about not having many friends and going to youth groups. God had gotten me to listen enough over those four years that out of high school I spent a year at Boise Bible Collage. These whispers and breezes were working to a point. Because of bad habits and poor study regiments, I was put on academic probation and chose to get married instead of returning to school.

Being young thinking that marriage would be easy I found myself being mentally and physically abused by a woman (well a girl) who claimed to love me. After less then a year I found myself divorced in debt and looking to drugs, alcohol, and smoking for answers to why I was where I was. After getting into the bar scene I got into a physical relationship with a woman and after a time of being together, I felt guilty for what I was doing and married her. During the nearly seven-year marriage God continued to try to speak to me through the breezes and I ignored most of it. Thinking the way the world does, and not knowing that I was listening to God a little, I went back to school going to a large university and working through most of my general education courses trying to get a degree in computers or accounting. I found myself hitting dead ends and things I didn't want to do.

About the same time I was starting to question "What am I going to school for?" my then wife left me saying "I don't love you any more." Luckily during those seven years God had gotten me off the smoking and drugs and I rarely drink any more. Right out of that relationship I bounced from relationship to relationship trying to find what was missing from my life. As I started to develop a relationship with Christ I found that being a Christian is not about who your family is and where you come from, or going to church (because over all those years I still went to church). I was that Sunday morning Christian that went to Church on Sunday and lived like Hell the rest of the week. As I started my true relationship with God, I was able to look back and see all these trials that I went through were God's 2x4's trying to get me back on path. God has a greater plan for me then I could ever have for myself.

The next 2x4 hit me and I realized that I need to finish what I started nearly 13 years earlier and I started to look for a Bible college where I could finish what I was called to. Not knowing where it would take me or how I would fit it into my life. I listened and found Multnomah University, formally Multnomah School of the Bible. As I moved though the application process and prepared for my first class I was still relationship hopping. Just as I came up to my first class one relationship closed and another opened. After chatting online for a time our first date was the Saturday before my first class at Multnomah. We continued to chat and see each other as I started school. Through my first couple classes and throughout those first few weeks of school we discovered that I have a call on my life that she does too, we both have a heart to serve around the world. After a couple months together and listening to God I felt that I was to marry this woman. being she had never been married before and me having two failed ones under my belt, her family was a little hesitant. After more then a year long engagement we married.

Before getting married we had been discussing my debt and how that would affect us. Being my ex-wife took the house and car and a few others things during the divorce but leaving my name on them, I thought the only way to take care of it would be to use a lawyer and claim bankruptcy. We saved up a little money setting it aside for the lawyer. A few days after meeting with a lawyer we went to a prayer service where we were prayed over as a couple. During these prayers God told these people who never met me and didn't know what was going on in our relationship, they told me that this money I had was not going to what I thought it was going to, they told me about me going and serving and many other things I don't remember any more. After our prayers we sat back down, I was searching my heart and my thought and crying out to God for a direction. I was told that I was to go on the Mexico Mission trip our church was doing. God told me this with a huge 2x4 being I had never experienced prophetic prayer before. The money that we had put away was just the right amount to cover my way on the trip and my wages when I was gone so that I didn't use up my vacation. This all happened maybe six weeks before we were to leave to build a home and change a family's life.

God again is using prophetic people around me to hit me with 2x4's to keep me on track. I still have times where I let the world get ahold on me and drag me down or I get lazy thinking that because I'm in a good place now that I can relax. I need to remember that just as in Jeremiah 12:5 "If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?" we are to train for the battle and trials that we are not yet in because if we are failing now how can we do what God has in store for us. These prophetic women in my life are reminding me that I need to spend time in God's word marinating in it and drinking in every word from the Lord. God is preparing me for a battle that only a year or two ago would have destroyed me.

As I prepare to go to Mexico again there are new ways that God is stretching me and whispering to me in breezes. I pray that you listen to the breeze but be aware of the 2X4.