"Writer’s Block"
When I was called to serve the Lord, He also gave me this assignment: "Read the Bible, and write what comes to you."
Though the statement was clear enough, I was a bit confused; so I responded, "What?"
With a noticeable tone of agitation He had never used with me, before or since, He reiterated, "Read the Bible, and write what comes to you!"
So, I set my whole being to the task, and began knocking on neighbors’ doors to borrow a Bible, since I did not have one. When I finally had one in hand, I read some Scriptures, wrote what came to me, and went and presented it before Him. He accepted it with little comment, and we went on to other items. That was the first rudimentary effort at my daily assignment as the writer before the Lord.
I read the Bible like a man on fire, many times through, different versions, and every Bible study I could find. And then every day I would rise early to write; I was completely consumed to do the commands He had given to me. That is the raw power of God’s commands when they are truly filled with the Holy Spirit: I could not stop doing those commands; I had to read, and then write what came to me.
Needless to say, I had no idea what the Lord had in mind for all this, and most all those things I did at first ended up where they eventually belonged: in the trash. Exactly like children working up through ever higher levels of studies in school, those assignments are not generally designed to be retained; they are almost entirely for the development of the skills of the students, until they graduate. So it was for me, though I did not understand this. I always wrote with all my heart, doing my best to present work before the Lord good enough that He could then use to bear fruit for His kingdom on earth. But, year after year I would never see any fruit come from my labors; not one person that I know of ever came to the Lord through any of my work.
This was beginning to take a mental and emotional toll on me; yet I was still compelled to read the Bible, and to write. I always figured that one day the Lord would take this work He had required of my hand, and bless it mightily with much fruit; it actually promises that in Scriptures, being to His great glory and honor [John 15:8]. But year after year no fruit came, which not only frustrated me, but also all those around me, who saw all this work I was doing, and wondered when anything would ever come from it. I even recently had someone challenge me, as to how many people I had actually baptized into the Lord, as an indicator that I am truly His servant. Shamefully I had to confess not one. Yet I also knew with absolute clarity that I had to do as commanded, lest I frustrate my Lord once again; I dare not stop writing, unless He commanded me to.
Once the Lord began breaking the seals on Scriptures, my writing took on a whole new life, needless to say. I began to see more method to the madness. Though I needed all those foundational practices, they were never intended to be an end to themselves. Most all those earlier works did not even ring true to the fullest extent, in view of the light that the Lord was now dawning upon Scriptures. Yet all that former work was still extremely important for the proper development of this servant of the Lord, His called writer.
Even with this understanding, this burden is still not an easy one to bear; twenty-five years of hard labor, and not one piece of fruit to show for it. It can become hard for a servant to go on; doubts can set in that this is even the will of God at all. I am not talking about adding one more year of patiently tilling a fruitless tree, to the three years already labored [Luke 13:6-9]; I am talking about many times that number, over and over.
Fortunately for me, the Lord had also been developing our relationship during that same time period, so that we are by now extremely conversant: most of the time I can clearly hear the voice of the Lord, having been fully trained in the finely perfected art of hearing His still small voice, as prophesied by Elijah for this day [1 Kings 19:12]. I surely would not have been able to endure this distance, crossing such an expanse of pure desert wasteland, without His steady love and encouragement. Twenty five years of big zeros is a very long time, day in and day out; twenty-four/seven my mind was set to this task, because the work is not shallow thinking, but requires all I have. And it further wears me out, with plenty of people also trying to challenge the effort. But now I am seeing how it had to be this way, and why I had to endure all this time. At any point if I had turned away from His command to me, this end would not have come. And this end is the one we will all need, to be acceptable in our day of presentation before the Lord [Is 61:2].
This area of giving up on the Lord [Ex 32:1] is one of the most serious failings of the people of God, and a mandatory understanding for those who are considering serving the Lord: we must be willing to wait upon the Lord. And we never do know how long that wait will be, nor what all is involved in that wait. Hebrews 11 records how difficult it must have been for our forefathers, who went to their graves without ever seeing this day, which we are going to have the wonder and joy to finally see. But, we too most likely will face severe challenges to our faith, and we must be prepared to face those challenges, even to expect them: because without faith it is impossible to please God [Heb 11:6].
I now understand that this work had to go this route, and that it will bear tremendous fruit; not for my glory, but solely for His. I look forward to the time when my reproach is finally taken away [Is 54:1; Josh 5:9], and the true family of God begins coming out to this great day. Precisely when that will come to pass I cannot say. And even if it never were to come to pass in my lifetime, then I would simply be like all our forefathers before me: waiting upon the Lord as commanded.
The way the Lord phrased it was like this:
Matt 24:13
13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved. NKJV™
But elsewhere this is what Scripture reveals as our current reality:
Isa 53:6
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. NKJV™
So, now we can see from Scriptures that we did not endure to the end, as recommended by Jesus [a bit complicated for discussion here, but throughly covered in the study series (see also Ezek 16:44-52)]. Yet in this new vow we still must come back to the statement He prophetically made for us, so long ago: we must endure to the end. This time, though, He makes no other promises beyond what is stated in the Vow Study. I strongly believe in resting all our hope in God’s fullness unto us; but this mind set is to be different: this time our focus needs to be on His commands for each of us, and to endure in those commands until the end.
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