I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving was perfectly awful. In 7 days, Monday to Sunday, Thanksgiving week I worked 89 hours. Thanksgiving was a 7 hour day, so that was by far the best. The average day was 15 hours, and two days back to back were 16 hours. I feel most fortunate to still be found among the living. I could handle 80 hour weeks when I was 20, but that was 30 years ago! I am incredibly anxious for my life in retail to come to a close. I am burned out beyond even my ability to believe. It is certain that I now have an implacable and deeply ingrained hatred of all things retail. Once I leave retail that door shall be absolutely closed. There will never be a time in my life I will look back on my years of retail torment with any kind of nostalgia or longing. The road ahead of me must be incredibly harsh indeed for God to have placed me in retail. I suppose God needed to put me in a job I would hate worse than whatever he was going to call me to do in ministry.

Actually I rather like the call of God on my life. I could simply never see myself doing what God has called me to do. I've avoided God's call like the plague not because there was anything wrong with the call, but because there was something wrong with calling me to speak to the Church. Who would listen to the likes of me? The unfortunate thing is I've fairly proved that Christians don't listen to anything that comes from me. God's call is awesome, it's God's people who won't or very probably can't hear. Now that sounds a bit disparaging, but hey, I can only talk about what I've seen and experienced.

I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that God's people can't hear. When the Bible talks about believers hardening their hearts I never really understood what that meant. I know now what having a hard heart means. Hardness of heart comes from Christians doing ministry their way rather than seeking hard after God's way of ministering. The way Christians minister to hookers, porn addicts, gay and lesbian people has been to strive for laws like DOMA, picketing, marching against, and politicking. God doesn't stand against sin, God overcomes sin. When Christians act like the world it hardens our hearts against God. Instead of reaching out to prodigal younger brothers and sisters we either accept too much or we condemn and reject. God isn't in either approach, and even though the "merely human" approach is doomed to fail, every time, still Christians think "merely human" ways work. The unfortunate truth is "merely human" ways of doing merely serve to harden the hearts of believers, and God is not served in the least. Those who serve God serve a God who overcomes the world, its "merely human" ways, sins, and brokenness. God doesn't need the ways "mere" humans go about ruining and destroying everything they touch. God's ways are the only ways God honors and blesses.

Do you know when Jesus teaches the parable of the farmer who scatters his seed? In one part of the story Jesus speaks of the ground which is too hard for the seed to sink in. The hard packed ground is the ground which has been used as a path. If a farmer wished to reclaim the hardened ground for planting there was very little which could be done, other than striking the ground to break off the hardened top of the soil. Farmers in the time of Jesus soujourn had to take long and thick poles which they would use to literally pile drive the hard soil to break it up. Once the hard top was finally cracked and broken up, the soil beneath could be plowed up. Pounding on hard hearts will, unfortunately, be the same kind of very difficult, mostly fruitless, work. But hey I've already tried to talk God out of the call, so now I will simply answer and go where he says go. Fruitless? That's his problem, mine is only to obey. I hope my fellow Christians aren't as hard to get through to as I was!!!!!

At the end of  December I will be 50 years old.  Unlike my 40th birthday, I am honestly looking forward to turning 50.  I don't like everything which goes with being older, but I love the growth of my relationship with Christ.   Grace and peace have become more than things I write at the end of emails, comments, and blog posts.   God is showing me the most incredible grace and peace.  I'm a manager with a retail furniture company, and things are going very badly for me.   What do I have to say about this difficult situation?   I say grace and peace, because these are what gets me through the day.  In the flesh I see everything falling apart, I am tired, moody, all too often running into bouts of anger and wrath!   Then God comes with grace and peace, "Peace Lonnie!!   What about grace, Lonnie??!!"   I repent... I mean I repent a LOT!!   But the very next thing is, "God where is your grace for this situation??   God, please show me where your grace is for this overwhelming situation.  God's grace is always there, and the situation comes to an end.  The ends I come to do not always look graceful, and very often I look as  graceful as Charlie Brown trying to kick the football Lucy has pulled away.  I always seem to be looking up at the world from a mangled heap of me!   The best times are the times I'm looking like a laughingstock and a mangled heap, BUT GOD!!!!  I don't care how I look or how graceful the conclusion of overwhelming matters are for me.   I get to see God's  grace working!!

Today came the strongest impression I've received yet, "Very soon it will all be over!  Very soon there will be new work (not retail!!!), and new ministry work (hopefully full time with pay).   I haven't got the foggiest idea what God has next, but I have an overwhelming sense of peace, and that God's grace is going before me.

If you pray I'd appreciate your prayers...for the ministry work, and for grace to complete the book.  Thanks!!

AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING!   All of you are on my, "People I'm thankful for" list

Lest I forget...

GRACE AND PEACE TO YOU FROM THE LIVING GOD!!

I found this very interesting article at a website called Gifted For Leadership.   Here is the link for the article :

www.giftedforleadership.com/2013/11/embracing_gay_people_at_church.html

You may have to cut and paste the addy I'm not having great luck with the new keyboard I for use with my iPad.  The typing is a lot better.

This is an excerpt I've copied from the article:

Never was a man more radically changed. From the outset, Norman told Brad that he didn’t know if he could change his orientation, but he knew he could change his behavior. My husband said that was good enough for him. At that moment, Norman became a part of our family. He came to a Bible study in our home each week and sang worship songs with the vigor of a man who knew he would soon be meeting the one he sang about. He soaked in Scripture as if it were his last drink of water before entering a long desert journey. We visited him frequently in his ever-increasing hospital stays.

However, we were surprised to find that not everyone at church responded to Norman as enthusiastically as we did. Older men, particularly, kept their distance—although moms with young children were a close second. Through our experience with Norm, we learned some things that I would like to have put into a sermon for our church.

THIS WAS MY RESPONSE:   (As usual my comment is actually post length...and a very loooong post it is too).

There are not enough words to express my great gratitude for you and your husband.   What you are doing is the work of God.

Not long after salvation I started work at the soup kitchen my church had opened in one the poorest and dangerous parts in my home town.  God had saved me and pulled me out of homosexuality.   But simply saving me didn't fix the brokenness in me.   Saved or not I didn't know how God take out of me all the "abomination" I had chosen to give myself.  You know the "abomination" of which I speak don't you?   Leviticus 18: 22,  

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

 I was filled with fear, hopelessness, bitterness, and the rejection of my fellow Christians.  When I told my first pastor about my past I thought I was telling him about the most amazing freedom God had already worked into my life.  The night Jesus Christ saved me he showed me what he was offering through eternal relationship with him.  I had a little vision of this small silver wrapped box, with a beautiful silver bow holding closed.   So real was this vision that I simply asked, out loud to, an empty room, "What's in the box?"   Immediately words seemed to well out of a place within me.  I didn't sense the thought originated in my mind.   It was a simple thought, but it destroyed my life in homosexuality as sure as nuclear bombs obliterate all life.   The thought said, "This is My gift to you:  Unconditional love, unconditional understanding and unconditional acceptance.   (What Jesus meant by unconditional acceptance didn't mean Jesus affirmed that he created me to be gay.   Jesus accepted just as I was, and he would take the sin out of me.)    BUT HOW?!  How can even God change an abomination into a child of God?!!   

A couple of years later God sent me to work in the soup kitchen my church ran in one of the worst and most dangerous neighborhoods in my home town.   Ministering at that soup kitchen was incredibly difficult to do.  I didn't look down on the patrons of the little soup kitchen because I'd made my life an abomination, so I certainly could condemn anyone else.   There actually was one group of frequent visitors: the hookers.   

The worst hooker was a woman I always call "Lilly".   Lilly had AIDS, but she kept selling sex.  At first I hoped God might have sent me to be in the right place to catch Lilly in the act of selling sex to someone, so I could turn her in and then act as witness against her in a court of law.   Lilly just needed to be thrown in jail to save lives.   

Instead Lilly became the key to unlocking how God can free a man who'd made himself an abomination.   Lilly was the hardest human I'd ever met.  There was nothing of human spark in her.   When she looked at me there was never any recognition in them.   She show me she hated me, and she didn't try to sell me her wares.   There was nothing in the eyes looking at me.  She was seeing through me.   She deserved whatever punish came her way, including Hell.    The evidence of her life condemned her.   Lilly never spoke to me once in the 4.5 years I ministered the gospel at that little soup kitchen.  I did have the chance to hear parts of the stories other hookers talked about among themselves.    Some of those hookers were very bold saying right to you face.  "I do this (prostitution) cause I love sex and I love money."   Funny thing was I'd over hear them talking about how they hated men and that all men are pigs and dogs.   For people who loved money and sex they hated the men who supplied them with both. 

One of the greatest things God taught me through hookers is:   Hooker might love sex and money but they hate men using their bodies.   Money changes nothing, no one wants to be made into an object for other people to use, abuse, and throw away.   Actor Charlie Sheen said it the best: "I don't pay prostitutes for sex I pay them to leave."  

as I overheard pieces and parts of the hooker's life stories I was able to piece together their early lives.   The men and women who should have loved and cherished them raped, beat, prostituted them for money or drugs.  To survive these women took control of their own lives and did the only thing they knew how to do.   The most important people in their lives treated them like so much garbage.  For some of these women if they'd stayed where they came from they'd have ended up dead and literally thrown their dead bodies into dumpsters or shallow graves.   I started seeing the hooker's lives in a very different light.   One day when Lilly came in God powered more light on situation.   This thought welled up from inside me,  "I want Lilly to be my daughter.  I never intended men to use, abuse, disease, and then throw her life in a dumpster, like so much trash."    God loved Lilly!  God wanted Lilly to become his beloved child.   The people who should have loved and treasured Lilly treated her body like it was a trash can.   All Lilly did was embrace the message her abusers given her, "You are a trashcan."  Lilly went out and continued the use and abuse of herself living up to the identity her abusers had given her; TRASHCAN.   Not only did Lilly trash herself, but she trashed every man she could get her hands on.   They used Lilly as a trash can, she trashed the men who used her, and the men who used her, likewise, trashed themselves with her.   

Another great lesson God taught me through hookers:  The person who objectifies, uses, and abuses other people makes himself into an object.   It is impossible to make a fellow human being into an object, for lust and use without being made a similar object by lusting and using.   

This understanding was the key to God teaching me about Leviticus 18:22

This thought welled up from inside me,  "Lonnie you are not an abomination.   

"I have saved you and you are no longer a "thing to be used."  I have created in you a new human life.  You are the object of my love and fatherly pride.   You are not a "thing" you are my child in and through Jesus, my Son.   I have taken away all that you were, and that includes the abomination.   I have taken all you are and placed it upon my Son hanging on a cross.   I have taken all the worth, beauty, holiness, righteousness, and perfection of my Son; my very heart and all of my wealth, and placed it on you.   You are no longer a thing for I have made you alive, free, and clean."  

THAT IS LEVITICUS 18:22, not as it was given through Moses, but rather through the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.   I love Leviticus 18:22, for in Christ the law which killed me has become the life giving law of the Spirit of Life.   I'm not a thing to be killed by the law, I am a child of God made brand new so that instead of being an object of destruction I am made new for eternal  life and eternal relationship with God and his other former

 abominations.   "God gives beauty for ashes..."

Keep giving this man God.  Your friend is called to relationship with the beauty of God (grace).   Your friend has lots of ashes, but the beauty of God you give through acceptance, understanding, and God's world overcoming love will utter consume all his ashes.

This is an excerpt from the book I am writing:  EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT GOD'S LOVE HE TAUGHT ME THROUGH HOOKERS

Over 1200 words, but I'm still having trouble with chapter 4.  I don't know what it is, at this point, but it isn't flowing like the other chapters have.   This is becoming a baptism by fire.   It is incredibly difficult for me to think of myself  as a writer, but that is part of what God has planned.  I'm not saying I'll ever be a best selling author.  Author is a means to an end, it's about communication.   I'm at the door which leads to a complete change of life.   I've been holding this  off since I was about 16.   A  34 year era is ending.  I won't be bother with nostalgia, since I don't feel the least bit nostalgic.   I'm not feeling nostalgic about leaving retail.  I have no idea  where God will lead me,  but at this point I'm  so burned out  I'm about  to lose  my mind.    I am ready for retail to go  away.

FROM CHAPTER 5

"This leads to another realization God taught me through hookers:  Whether conservative or liberal, Christians don't want to deal with the brokenness in sexually broken people.  Condemning and merely swallowing sins are different sides of the same coin.  The truth is we don't want to deal with "those" people.

Condemnation and acceptance are the way we get past, around, or avoid people Jesus came to serve and save.  The Religious Right removes Jesus Christ from his cross so the sinner may be crucified in his place.  The Religious Left removes Jesus from the cross, because where there is no sin there is no need of a suffering savior.  Jesus says in Matthew 23:13, "You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.  You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to."  And again in Matthew 23:24 , Jesus says, "For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."  Sexually broken people deserve the opportunity and invitation to know, "...Jesus and him crucified."  Condemnation and acceptance add up to the same thing:  People  are refused Christ.  When we deflect broken people through condemnation or acceptance of sin then we, without thinking, have shut the door of heaven in the faces.  We are tying up heavy burdens for these people because we demand they free themselves, or by demanding that they merely accept their sin because of the specious argument that "nature" made them that way.  Their sin is to heavy for the to carry, but Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  We can't say to the hooker "Lilly", or the LGBT person at work or school, "You made the choice, so make a different choice,"  and we also can't simply say, "Well God just made you this way, so you need to just accept that."   Jesus says the opposite of what Both the Religious Right and Religious Left say.   Jesus came to open the gates of the kingdom of heaven and to take away the heavy burden. "

Can you help a brother out?   Does it make sense?   Are you getting the gist of what's written here?    Do you agree or disagree, and why do you agree or disagree?    Do you think  the verses from Matthew 23 fit the context or can rightly be fitted to the context of the excerpt?

I'd honestly appreciate your input!!

Forgive the formatting error, I don't know how I did it and I don't know how to fix it.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

What does it take to get you?  How does God get you where he wants you?   He sent me back to South Carolina, and back into retail furniture.   It's been Hell, almost from day one.  The thing about God is he's a true dad.   He pushes you where he wants you to go.  Okay, maybe God only  pushes me where he wants me to go.

God has to push, because  I won't move.  That is one of the things that saves me.  I honestly do trust God to tell me where to go, well, not if it's ministry.  My saving malfunction is also the thing that gives me trouble.  God may want to move me to do many things, and I'll go, but there are some things I deflect, and avoid, like writing.   Just once I'd like God to give me a task I have some ability in, and I guess that is one of the problems I have with God.  Why not work from the strengths I've been given?   Actually, I'm not sure I have any strengths.  I've always known God was even in control of that.  God has let me get away with holding off the call to be a pastor, for almost 25 years.  For 15 years I've held off writing the book he told me to write.  But I'm between a rock and a hard place.  God is breaking me down.  No more letting me get away.   South Carolina and retail management suck.  I never could understand why God sent me into retail management.   I hate it, and that is one of the main reasons God put me into it.   The only escape from the Hell of retail management is for God to move me, believe me once you're in retail management you're truly stuck.  No one will hire you, because retail is looked down upon by every other industry.   I hate it, and God knows that.   I don't care about it.   There is no keeping my interest with something I hate, and God knows that.   I  haven't really been avoiding God's call.  God has been preparing me for what he's called me to do, and I'm in the last set up.    It's funny and painful, but it beats getting my own way.

It's death.   God calls all of us .   With God death is followed by resurrection.  Get me in the grave quick cause life is sucking!!

If you're going to get set up, no one does it better than God.

Several Xangans have complained about how newer comments were posted top to bottom instead of how we alway had it with Xanga...older comments first, followed down the line. Well if you haven't figured it out yet...

First find the list down the left side of your dashboard. Click on "advanced". New menu options will drop down. Click on "discussion settings". You'll go to a new page. Under the heading, "other comment settings", you'll find, "comments should be displayed with newer comments at the top." Click the little arrow next to newer, and change the setting to 'older' and enjoy the little slice of Xanga classic!

I'm not thrilled with this new Xangaverse. But I'm still enjoying my fellow Xangans, and that's the point. I'm willing to endure Xanga yuck, because the Xangans are worth this new errr, experience. I can stick this out, because you're Xangans!

So just stick it out! Don't make me stalk you... Who knew a person could be such a gifted stalker? I'm so gifted no one has even come close to finding all the bodies. None of you have anything to worry about. I'm very fond of you all, and if you keep me fond, you'll never learn how incredibly gifted a stalker I truly am!

:-€

I'd always thought it would be great to write a book. Many of us flirt with the idea of having an affair with a blank page. An idea begins, like the diaphanous silvery column of smoke rolling up from a lit cigarette. The idea begins to take shape and it is a comely shape! Before our eyes the thin smokey thought becomes sharply focused. the smoke has form and content, and she's an incredible femme fatale. If you prefer your smokey idea take a more masculine form; a dark, brooding, muscled, secretly sensitive, but lost hero needing the nurturing salvation of the only woman created for the task.

Fortunately, most of us only ever flirt a bit. Thinking about writing and writing are so vastly different. I was content not being a writer. I could be just as content today not being a writer.

For me writing isn't about succubus ideas coalescing from smoke, dragging me unwitting to the mysterious intercourse between the blank sheets; author and demon muse finding that potent magical chemistry leaving every hack writer drunk with the delusion he's knocked up with a best selling literary spawn. For me writing is an answer to prayer. It wasn't a prayer born from conscious thought. I was sitting on my bed with my prayer journal open in my lap. My prayer time always ends with supplication; prayer usually, though not always, aimed at meeting one's own needs. Suddenly, a thought hit me, and I started writing in my journal. I didn't know the content of the prayer request until I'd written it out. It was a bit like automatic writing or maybe even like momentary possession. The thought did not originate in my consciousness. It wasn't the pizza from dinner talking, and it certainly wasn't merely a brain fart. It was something supernatural. I'm not saying the prayer didn't originate in me, it could well have been something coming up from the new spirit God had implanted in me. Even if it was something which originated in me, God had to place his finger on it to get the process started. And so I prayed to write.

I'm not opposed to creative or artistic work. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theater Arts. I can carry a tune, but no one would pay to hear me sing. I can be somewhat witty at times, especially when I put on a foreign accent. I'm also not horrible at improvisation.

There are three artistic endeavors I appreciate enormously, but could never imagine, undertaking the tasks myself. 1) Dance, I have a little more grace than a garden slug, but just a bit. As I age I fear I'm losing ground on this one. 2) Drawing, painting, sculpting, and etc.; my hands are clumsy things, it's a monumental miracle that I type. 3) Writing. At times I am a voracious reader. Since I got my first Kindle reader I have read even more. I have the Kindle app on my phone and iPad. Everywhere I go I read. Electronic books are the best invention since the light bulb. Don't give me any of that stodgy nonsense about the smell and feel of real books. Books are heavy, attract mold and silverfish, and take up tons of space.

I love the literary arts almost as much as the art of theater/cinema. Putting words together is a terribly awkward thing for me. I don't have any delusions about being a good writer. I don't understand how writing works. My grammar is atrocious, sentence structure is crap, and they run on forever! But none of that is really important. A good editor is the cure for most of my real or imagined problems. I'd be an editor's nightmare, but hey, that's what they get paid for, isn't it? The book I'm working on will be self-published online. Anyone can download it for free. I still hope to find an editor, even a free book should be readable. I simply think the subject matter deserves a good writer.

Chapter 4 is giving me fits! I fairly flew through chapters 1-3, but I keep getting chapter 4 WRONG! The current working title for the chapter is TWICE THE SONS OF HELL and then the second title line is, "The Prodigal Conflagration".

The second title line, or what I call the kicker line is actually the concept I'm talking about in the chapter. You might be able to tell from "The Prodigal Conflagration" that the chapter is focused, mostly on Jesus' parable, "The Prodigal Sons." What I'm having trouble with is getting Luke 15:1-2, 11-32, Romans, chapters 1&2 to mesh the way I need them to work. Jesus gives us the story of two wayward sons, and Paul expounds upon the type of sinner each brother is. Romans 1:18-32 lays out what underlies the rebellion of younger brother types, while the entirety of Romans chapter two tells about the older brother type. What is most tricky is how to arrive at the final conclusion: A world full of both younger brother types, and older brother types inevitably leads to the third type: Lukewarmness and outright apostasy. (See 2 Timothy 3:1-9 and Revelation 3:14-22). Nature abhors a vacuum; even the spiritual realm abhors a vacuum. The battle between religious left wing nut and religious right wing nut has brought no useful answers which lead people to the world overcoming, omnipotent, resurrection power of the living God.

More and more Christians are left hurting, confused, and running from churches in droves. What about gay people? What about abortion? What about the terrible decline in successful marriages, and the harm done children when the family falls apart in the divorce? And perhaps, most important of all: What happens if my pastor shows up as a regular on the Oxegyn Channel's "Preachers of L.A.!?" (I mean if my pastor's bling isn't as big as all the other Preacher's bling, I'll be so ashamed! And my pastor's Bentley is 2 years old, what if his 'ride' is too old???)???

The point here is centered around God's warning,

"6 my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
“Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also reject you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God,
I also will ignore your children.

I've started Chapter 4 five or six times...I guess "third time" is not the charm... If I have to start the chapter a few more times I'm not going to be the least bit charming. Some writers view whatever they write as though it is their children. I don't have that big an attachment to the verbal hash I sling. But dumping 600 to 3000 words five or six times makes me want to put the "Writing 'Puter" on a greased cookie sheet, dumping a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips on it, setting the oven to 500 degrees, and seeing if I get some "ooey gooey chocolate chip puter cookies!!!