ANOTHER VISIT TO MY PRAYER JOURNAL

I was meditating today on what I should blog about and I was led by the Holy Spirit to revisit my second prayer journal. It covered the period of the fall of 1994 when me and my family moved to Danville Virginia from Beckley West Virginia after I was called to be the pastor of the New Mine Creek Church.

On November 22, 1994  I wrote in my journal a thanksgiving to Holy Spirit who had revealed to me that the enemy was setting a trap for me by bringing a lot of activities into my life that would cause me to put on the back burner the time that I daily spent with God in prayer. I made a covenant with God not to fall into the trap of busyness but rather to continue to seek Him every morning as I had been doing for more than a year.

I asked the Holy Spirit to continue to give me alerts when the enemy was trying to steal this most precious time from me and thus render me ineffective in the ministry that God had called me to.

I also prayed concerning my dream of becoming a published author. I had not yet buried that dream. I asked God to get the glory from my writing and that He send me another agent to secure a publishing contract for my first novel.

As I read the words in my prayer journal it struck me that I was able to perceive the devil's scheme to fill my time with activities that would steal my time with God but I couldn't see how he was stealing something else from me, my dream to become a published author. I caught the devil coming in the front door but didn't see him coming through the window.

I didn't realize how my enemy eventually caused me to give up dreaming until I read these words seventeen years later while I'm writing this blog. But what was a victory for him became a knockout when my first novel was released in December 2009. What he stole God restored and is continuing to restore as I write my second novel.

I wondered why did the Holy Spirit warn me about his scheme of making me walk away from pursuing God in daily prayer but not warn me about the dream that he was stealing concerning my writing and just as quickly the answer came from the Holy Spirit. The devil could steal my desire to write because I didn't value it enough. In the pastorate I had become satisfied and comfortable being a pastor of a congregation and I told myself that pastoring was all I needed to do. I'd talked myself out of my dreams and made it susceptible to the devil to come right in and steal.

It would take almost a decade for God to resurrect the vision that had died and show me that He had given me many gifts and I would never be fruitful until I used all of them.

 My prayer for you is that you recognize what the enemy is trying to steal from you so that you will guard the precious thing that God has given to you. And if the enemy has stolen your dreams I believe with you that God restore it sevenfold