Brothers and Sisters,

I stumbled on to Ed's teachings over four years ago through a link someone left to one of his books in the Christian Mysticism subreddit. Ed's ministry just tied together so many seemingly unconnected things through my formal education and, more importantly, subsequent independent studies, that I immediately recognized the hand of Providence behind it and the incredible anointing he has.

Of course, I learned many new things through Ed, and I cannot thank him enough and often fight the urge not to get too upset about the fact that he, in my opinion, does not seem to have the kind of position or reach that I strongly believe he deserves because his perspective is so desperately needed, and increasing so, as the wicked tighten the corporate noose around our necks.

Through the years, Ed has been an accessible and wise counselor to me personally, but I put off coming out to this community because I was laser focused on completing my life's work which ended up taking over 16 years. Some of you may have read the book on substack because Ed was kind enough to recommend it on his page before he, and subsequently I, left that platform.

The story itself was completed at that time, but I had not been able to finish the Epilogue until a recent, unexpected development tied it all together and gave me the ending I could not, until that point, write to my satisfaction.

If you would like to read the story, it can be found here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/fools-costume-of-95816960

If any of you are so moved, I would welcome any feedback, questions, or corrections you might have or find. I do not know what to do with this thing now, but I am just so happy to be done with it and very satisfied with how it turned out even though I am a perfectionist who is rarely satisfied with anything I do.

I am reluctant to say much more about myself so as not to ruin the story for anyone that wants to read it. I will say that I am 47, married with one child, and live in central Minnesota.

If anyone would like to pray for me, please aske the Lord to give guidance on what to do with my story and what the next step for us is. I also just learned that I have a hernia that will probably make me lose my job just when my insurance kicked in. Not sure how to proceed with that, if I should try to keep working through incredible pain or just resign myself to the Lord's good and perfect Providence and trust that he will provide, which he always does, but it is sometimes not clear what to do.

Thanks for reading this and for your prayers. Blessings on you all!

You know that, since last winter, I have felt a strong sense of preparing for things to go crazy. Not a total apocalypse as most people see things, but a very potent shift in the moral realm that will echo in human affairs. It's been weighing on me to do some human preparation in order to suffer less from those echoes. Thus, the effort to get everything in order for carrying on the ministry during any human chaos -- the bicycle, the computers, a better car, etc.

That last item turned into a bit of trouble yesterday. It's a hybrid with lots of electronics, but that's what God has provided. We were headed to the store, and it started making alarms and stopped driving. We pulled off the street and it slammed itself into park even before we stopped. We let it cool down while struggling to get it to go. It kept shifting itself automatically back in park. Eventually, it relented and let us drive far enough to get it to a shop nearby. This morning, we learned the diagnosis, and it's affordable, nothing major -- a module in the shift control is failing.

In my heart I'm convinced it represents yet another item that needed preparation, indicating that God is protecting us.

Please keep my mom in prayer. Just found out they will be shocking her heart on July 31 and I will be out of town. And sometime in Aug the will be doing a stress test.

Again, Paul is preparing Timothy to carry on without him. This is more of a pep-talk than actual instruction in something Timothy might not understand clearly. There's a lot of work to do to make Ephesus ready to absorb the exodus of believers from Jerusalem. As if things were not already challenging enough, the worst was yet to come.

If there is a doctrine for shepherding the body of Christ through tribulation, this is it. Grace is the foundation because divine election has a grand purpose. Hang onto the gospel message and share it, knowing that God will call up from your audience men who will join the mission of spreading that message. Be ready to teach and train them. That's how Paul handled it.

He refers to soldiers. Roman troops were recruited by their own commanders; there was a strong personal bond. They took up the uniform knowing it was a radical departure from civilian life. We are no longer involved in the affairs of this world. We cannot afford to disappoint Christ by getting sidetracked. It was rather like athletic competition with its strict rules and hard training regimen.

The mention of farmers being first to eat their own crops is an old saw to remind government officials (tax consumers) to be patient, be slow to assert privileges over taxpayers. The farmer shouldn't groan with dread at the sight of you. They'll work harder if you don't plunder them. It's all part of the image of serving with honor and bearing with some deprivation. It's a mark of divine favor when God asks you to carry the heaviest load; it means He trusts you. Don't put Him in a position where He needs to hit you over the head with it.

What kind of burden must Jesus have borne, even though He was the heir of King David? Paul bore his own cross at that very moment. But no prison could hold the gospel. It's the message that matters, not our comfort or our lives. Paul suffered gladly for the sake of the Elect, seeking to ensure they found the full inheritance of God. He quotes a bit of doctrinal poetry: Dying with Him is eternal life; enduring hardship for Him is reigning training. If we turn away from the calling, He will turn away from protecting us in this life. Even if we fail, He will not -- that's His nature.

One of Timothy's biggest burdens would be believers who get hung up on the words of such teaching and miss the whole point. This is otherworldly truth and a spiritual commitment, not something requiring precise legal grammar. Paul referred to "cutting a straight path". The famous Roman roads would never have gone anywhere if the workers hadn't followed a carefully surveyed and well-engineered path. Just so, the gospel message had a long-term goal and it was necessary to keep an eye on the far destination. Picking over words was a very short-sighted distraction.

Paul mentions a couple of guys who were notorious for this kind of thing. At one point, they had insisted that some peculiar wording could be read to mean that the Resurrection had already come, and everyone missed it. What a nasty uproar that caused! Well, the answer is that the Lord knows His Elect (quoting Numbers 16:5), and the whole purpose of claiming His name is getting out of moral darkness, not groveling in legalism.

The talk about vessels is that human valuations of other people don't matter; God is the one who decides how He will use His servants. We can't afford to act like irresponsible juveniles but must endeavor to show ourselves mature and reliable. Juveniles are notorious for nitpicking and playing word games, looking for attention. This stuff is a major distraction, sidetracking the Body with senseless quarrels. Adults don't do that; they step in when that kind of arguing erupts so that people can hear God.

Literalism is the Devil's espionage, a snare to trap believers into serving his purpose.

Hard to believe this was two years ago. I've hardly hiked or ridden these last couple years. This was the first year I didn't do spring hikes to observe the spring flowers progress. I have managed to get a     few bike rides in this spring/summer. maybe I'll grab my camera and bring it along.

It was a freak storm that exploded from a small cell far up in the northern edge of the state. The first pass was a ton of rain behind winds up to 80 MPH. The second pass was more rain and lightning.

In the OKC Metro there is a lot of storm damage you might see from hurricanes along the coast. We are used to tornadoes, but that kind of straight-line wind is quite rare. Our internet has been out all morning; I’m using my cell-enabled iPad. At least the cell network is up.

Neither our residence nor car suffered any damage. My son out in Choctaw came through okay, as well.

A car dealer near here had poles down on some of their new cars. They’ll be advertising a storm damage sale; that’s a thing here. For the most part, the big issue is power outages, since way too much of our grid is up on poles that get old and snap off in high winds. Roads are blocked all over the central part of the state. Ours never even flickered, so it’s all underground.

We are thankful to the Lord for His protection.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

In downtown Pittsburgh, on Forbes Avenue. There's a a bunch of these on the sidewalks here and there.

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Reminder: This is probably the last of Paul's writings chronologically. Again, Timothy is in Ephesus as the resident Apostle. Any day now a large number of folks from Jerusalem will come streaming into the area, fleeing a Jewish rebellion in Jerusalem against Rome. But Paul is back in Roman custody, and this time it's a far less privileged situation. Instead of house arrest, Paul is actually in prison. And this time it wasn't an imperial courtesy to the Sanhedrin, but a rising intolerance of Rome itself for Christian religion. If anything, Paul's first passage through the imperial courts marked him as the leading representative of Christian leadership; they didn't forget.

At first glance, it would not appear that the first chapter offers any doctrinal statement. However, Paul reaffirms divine election in a way that most people don't catch. Aside from the formulaic greeting in the first few verses, Paul appeals to his successor Timothy to remain faithful despite the dire news of Paul's situation.

Some ambitious souls in the Christian community there in Ephesus used news of Paul's second arrest as an excuse to discredit him and reassert their own agendas. We could guess that there was still a lot of pressure from Judaizers on one side, and pagans on the other, not to mention the nascent Gnostics. At any rate, there's no doubt the heat is on Timothy, so Paul encourages him to stand strong.

Then, in verse 9 Paul rests his appeal on the sheer trustworthiness of divine election. If God has called us, He will ensure we do not fail His mission. Most western minds approach the whole question of election from the wrong direction. They look for a discussion of individual salvation as the whole matter. While that concept is included, Paul is clearly influenced by the broader Hebrew concept of election, which emphasizes the whole question of human existence.

Paul repeatedly wrote about the Mystery of the Gospel. It's a complex teaching that assumes we exist to prove God is just in His discipline of Satan and various powers in the Spirit Realm. Humanity is not at all the center of Creation; we are at best accessories after the fact. The whole point of divine election is not us, but His reputation among a host of beings far above our level, and not just angels.

This is good news. He needs us to make His case, so He's determined not to let us fail. All we really need to do is hang on for the ride and we'll experience joy unspeakable in this life. His glory is always in our best interest. For Timothy, all it requires is the resolve to cling to what Paul has taught him and see the hand of God smash those who, knowingly or not, serve His enemy's purposes.

Of course, it also means eternal glory with Him, but there's an awful lot of glory going on in the here and now. On the one hand, Paul mentions two fellows embarrassing the Lord, but then praises Onesiphorus, who crawled through the Roman prison system to find Paul and do what he could for him. Should we imagine that Onesiphorus found it drudgery? No, this man was full of joy unspeakable, too.

Election is our confidence to fight and not surrender to the enemies of God.

Here are some more of my little ones that come to visit....

Here's Mom, distracted, while her little fawns stood off to the side:          

These are the first ones I've seen this year                                  

Does who are a year old will only have a single fawn; older ladies will have twins most likely, though triplets are not unheard of.

When I change out my hummingbird feeders, I let the ones I remove and rinse out to dry on my deck railing.
This little fellow made himself a home inside.  I felt bad when I had to encourage him to move out....             

This little one (of dozens who live in my yard and woods) LOVES to lay out on my deck as you can see.         

Last month, a goldfinch pair came to dine at one of my feeders.  Once the male regains his summer colors, he is stunning!