(04-01-2019, 04:48 AM)Ed Hurst Wrote: I know the sense of frustration, too. Nobody around here where I live will open up to faith right now. My ideal times of mission activity have all been in the military, and the last episode was early 1993. I've been hankering for something similar ever since. I've come pretty close to giving up on life quite a few times since then. Perhaps not in the sense of suicide, but something just as stupid. The only thing that keeps me going right now is this group in one hand, and the overwhelming prophetic sense of mission in the other. I keep begging God for one more mission adventure, and I've come down to leaving that door wide open, no strings attached. "Anything at all, Lord!" I know it's coming, so I keep hanging on, but it sure has gotten boring waiting for it.
Yessir, 26 years a long time but, hey! you didn't count ME! It may have been a passing fancy had you not answered my inquiries. The Lord sent me to you, at just the right moment. Now my belief is God orders events in our lifes for His reasons to which we are not privy. Personally, I believe free will to be limited, on the other hand there are points where we can make choices that relieve us from being useful and God has someone else do it. The result always leads to unpleasantness for us, yeeech, I still have Brit understatement leftovers.
I get it though, the longing is for direct human interaction.
What grates me is knowing that I could pack my gear and throw my leg over my bike with a couple of hundred bucks and disappear and thrive. In 1983 when I made the decision to return to the US my intention was to do what I said in the previous sentence. I did some in 85 and 87 but, that was it. I failed due to alcoholism and other drug use, as it became the focus of my life. I place my adult life as beginning the morning after St Patrick's Day 2000, when I woke that morning, I knew the boozy part of my life was over. That means I'm 19, whoa lifes just beginning, what am I worried about? Uh...does sway back mule mean anything to you, Mr Iain? Yeah, well there is that. It'll be maze walking time soon. Exercise that'll do it.