Wintertime

We got us a snowstorm today and I won’t plow any more snow till tomorrow morning. Wind is blowing fairly hard as I write and the temps are heading south.  Oh well, just one of the perks of living here I guess. There’s plenty of wood close to both outdoor wood boilers so that’s a plus! Plus nobody has to go anywhere tomorrow either and that’s a bigger plus! If the roads are drifted, well, big deal.

Our schedule is booked the next few days and besides the regular farm work there’s something to do three days in a row regarding faith matters. Plus I gotta jot down some stuff tonight for this coming Sunday in church, not a long winded 45 minute or hour thing, just five or ten minutes, which is acually difficult now that I survived, (barely) the long haul in church. But I’m digging out some World Harvest Bible College stuff about the subject I want to talk about and I must admit, its fairly simple. That’s one thing I always liked about that course, it fits right in with country churches!

Tomorrow, weather permiting, in the evening, we’ll be visiting an old time Pentecostal preacher and his wife and I’m all excited about that because believe me, when I listen to him one on one it just amazes me! I want what he got! Those old stories of a lifetime of faith are incredible! He personally knew many of the great preachers of long ago and I’m driven to listen and find out more and more! Amen! Plus he knows many of the bigger named preachers out there today, watching their ministries start and grow. But what I am most interested in is the old stories of faith in the little rural churches!

So I’d better finish up with a couple of things outside this evening and then get some notes together for church on Sunday. As fast as our days book up a feller has to stay days ahead of themselves in order to be prepared!

Gonna Pick Up and Move

Finally getting around to writing on this old blog. Been busy with all sorts of stuff and trying to keep up at Northern farmer. I’ve been chewing on the idea of switching back to blogger because its so much more user friendly and might start soon. Gotta update the links and all on the old Healing Waters blog, do a little housecleaning. I don’t know what it is but I have a hard time on WordPress and blogger is getting so durn easy lately. I hope folks don’t mind having to follow my moves around but that’s what seems to be happening. Never did shake many off by the moves to WordPress so I figure a little inconvenience won’t last too long for folks.

So until I do the official switch in a few days keep on commenting here and I will notify when I move back to the original Healing Waters. Got some housecleaning to do over there, or should I say “barn cleaning”, but I feel really good about this return home!

Waking Up

Glory to God! Life this week has been somewhat different and now its calming down to more the regular stuff. The regional spelling bee is done with and the daughter made it a good ways into it. A prouder parent would be hard to find! Had church services Wednesday evening, spelling bee up in Brainerd yesterday afternoon and then get home and do some chores quick and head to a leadership meeting over at our little rural church at six. And that meeting really has me fired up and looking forward to this coming year.

Now a farmer always looks forward to the coming year, mainly because the year before was rough. Kinda a rule in farming life. But I’m getting the itch, planning where and what to plant in this field and that field. Looking forward to cattle on pastures and cutting the chores down to a minimum. This year we aren’t raising anymore chickens to sell, plus I’m cutting out the egg laying hen flock. Not that we won’t have chickens, but we plan on doing it mainly for ourselves and a few family and friends and that’s about it. Just getting some old fashioned, colorful breed farm chickens and cut the feed expenses down to nil and enjoy those farm fresh eggs and allot less work and hassle too.

Getting back to church stuff, funny how I do sidetrack, I’m looking forward to this year like I’ve never looked forward to a year at church before. Now some call me a hillbilly, jokingly of course, but at church I do have that reputation and it don’t bother me at all. I remember when I started this blog, the reason being I wanted to kick back and relax and just write about this country way of church and faith. Reading books on the old ways of faith in rural America was a passion of mine, and still is. About revival hitting little country churches and folks getting filled with the Holy Ghost and the Power of God sweeping through whole rural communities. Oh I got a hunger for this and it hasn’t let up. Those evening meetings where the Word is being preached and the people are getting saved and lives changed forever!

Last evening we got the plans for the first six months of this year at our little church and I’m so fired up I can barely contain it. As time goes on I’m gonna let folks know what’s happening before it happens this year in case there’s any folks in the region that want to stop by for some old fashioned Holy Ghost meetings in very small town America. I call it an awakening at our little church, and I do believe its happening, with all my heart. Many things have supressed it these last couple of years, but the awakening is happening as I write. The sleeping church is beginning to stir and I truly sense God in all of this.

I hope and pray to chronicle all of this as the year progresses. And I do believe much more will be happening then what is planned. The plans are just an outline, a direction, but we’ll let God take control as He wishes! Prayer, it starts with prayer and that’s what we’ll do. And as a church stirs from its slumber there’ll be allot more folks getting invited to services. Many more than in the past. I know as far as we are concerned, we’ll put every effort possible steering folks over our way!

I’m on fire tonight! On fire for our Lord! The old paths, the only paths, and that old fashioned rural love for a great and awesome God that loved us first! I thank the Lord that He placed us here for a time such as this.

Nothing Can Separate Us From God’s Love

These last few weeks I’ve found it a bit hard to tend both blogs and I do hope I can get things back in order around here. Life is changing so fast in so many different directions that sometimes its hard to get ahold of what’s all happening. But through it all I’m just a farmer that loves God and can’t hardly attempt to describe all the wonderful things He has done for us these last few years. From surviving devistating droughts and all that goes with that, to the day to day stuff that normally would have drove a person half nuts.

This year when reading through the Bible, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m using the New Living Transilation and its opening my eyes like never before. I could truly use this bargain barn Bible for my number one ministry book! I think the cost was $2.50 at the bargain store and its a beautiful leather bound edition and it has so many other things in it including the plan of salvation and hosts of other stuff that I just love paging through it. Its easy to carry but I do need my reading glasses with this Bible! Those letters are pretty tiny to say the least.

I think today I’ve almost fully recovered from post sermon stress syndrome! Anyway that’s what I call it! And a strange thing happens, a person just gets flooded with the love of God!  And also with this comes those soft whispers of the original ministry plans. Now I touched on this over on Northern Farmer tonight. I’m finally getting enough strength and will to blog again after these last few tough days. But a verse kept popping into my head today. They’re from Romans 8.

31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[o neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It’s an awesome thought, nothing can separate us from the love of our God! And God wants us to love all His children as He loves them! Not much could be harder than that on a set in his ways old dirt farmer! When one gets the flood, as I call it, there’s love that just wants to be released in every direction, the love of God flowing through us, His vessels here on earth.

When Jan sent me the book about Robert Sheffey last spring or late winter, I forget exactly when, it started something in me that has never stopped and I pray it never will stop. Sheffey had that love for God that a person has that truly knows that he’s been forgiven of his sins. When a person truly comes to grip with reality, what salvation really means, it can go no other way than to love God with all your heart. And then comes the realization that God loves everyone else just as much, and wishes for no one to perish. After recieving the gift of eternal life, of being forgiven of our sins, of being saved from certain death, how could I ever once again follow the world’s normal ways.

Getting flooded with the realization that God loves you sets many things in motion, mainly wanting to follow Him. No grudgingly, but in joy and wanting to do what He wants us to do. Oh Lord, am I happy tonight!