God Really Has a Sense of Humor!

You would think it was spring, well actually my office is long over due for an overhaul or a purging would be more like it! In so doing I was going through those little stacks of notes one can tend to pile up and I found another fortune from a fortune cookie.  I can't believe how God has spoken and confirmed things through those silly fortunes!

At the end of June I attended a Writer/Speaker conference in Grand Rapids, MI, Speak Up, put on by Carol Kent. What an amazing time my friend and I had there. I took the writer's track and she the speakers. Wonderful time with talented people and such a great help for me knowing nothing about writing a book.

In the months of preparation before going I asked the Lord to give me an answer. Is my writing something that I should continue with or give up. You see I have been in the process of writing my crazy story for some time, just not knowing what to do with it or where to take it. I also have a desire to write on a couple of my speaking topics and I just really wanted my Father's approval before going any further.

While at the conference there were publishing agents and editors in attendance and I was so blessed to get some very positive feedback from three of the four I had appointments with. So possibly that means I should continue my adventure with writing is what I'm thinking. I'm not saying I have a book deal, but I feel very favorable about the outcome and with all that I learned while there. 

So then a month later I am cleaning my piles at work and find this crazy fortune which tells me that I love words and that some day I am going to write a book! I have to say, if God can speak through a donkey He can sure speak to me once again through a fortune! 

So is it crazy to see God's approval in a fortune? Did I do the right thing by putting out the fleece so to speak and asking Him if I was on the right track (or should I say write track!) I know this, I will continue to write and hopefully someday soon I just might have that book or two to share with you!

Is there a dream somewhere deep inside of you? Don't you dare give up...begin to pray it through and into being!

A Fortune Cookie?

Many years ago while in a spiritual growth spurt I remember being extremely frustrated that in my dreams it seemed as if I wasn’t a christian.  There is probably a doctor of something who has studied this kind of stuff and would be able to tell me why this happens...but that being said, I almost felt like only part of me was saved but not my subconscious.  It really began to bother me in the dreams I remembered.  (I typically don’t remember many of my dreams.)  If I belong to the Lord then I am His conscious and unconscious!  No split personality going on here!  So I began to pray and ask the Lord to please let me know that I am 100% his, through and through without wavering, asleep and awake!

It was but a few weeks from my intense request of the Lord when I had a dream that was incredibly vivid and even in color!  I think most of my dreams are black and white but the few real God-dreams I have had have been in technicolor--vivid and very intense.  I don’t remember who it was that I was with but that we were running and hiding out as if we were being pursued by someone.  I remember scenes of running up and down back outside staircases like on  apartment buildings and then suddenly I was with many others who were being ushered on a train.  I then realized that I had been taken captive.

Suddenly, soldiers were one-by-one taking people like me and executed us with machine guns.  It was soon to be my turn and I remember being grabbed roughly and as the gun was placed to my head and told I was next that I started to sing the chorus to “I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel”.

I am not ashamed of the gospel, the gospel of Jesus christ,

I am not afraid to be counted, but I’m willing to give my life...”

And suddenly I woke up, completely amazed at what had just taken place in my dream.  You might enjoy listening to this powerful song yourself at the end of this post.

So what about the fortune cookie you are thinking?  About two weeks after this vivid dream that I believe was an answer to my request of the Lord, I found a fortune cookie placed on my desk at work.  We had a youth radio station and it was manned by young adults and they were such a blast to work with and have around and I was pretty certain that one of them had put it there.  so I opened it up and read it and was in total amazement as to what it said (I have to print it out because it is too faded to read from the picture above)...

You begin to appreciate how important it is to share your personal beliefs.

Okay, you may say whatever you want but have you ever seen a fortune with a message like that?  Not me!  And that was a confirmation for me that God not only heard my prayer but he answered it in a very dramatic way!  For some reason I needed to experience what He allowed me to live out in my dream and then it was as if He was said to me that I was His through and through!  Whew, the content of my dreams began to change after that and I no longer doubted whose I was!  And that old, yellowed and faded fortune remains taped to my computer screen at work!

Enjoy and older Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir presentation with Damaris Carbough...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECtCB7XqIO0