This posts is going to be a little different.  I guess with a title like “propheticwordofgod.com” you’d think this site would be filled with nothing but positive affirmations and assurances of good tidings.  Maybe it should be.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that right now I don’t really have any good tidings to give you.

My family is in a very difficult season and we simply don’t know how to go on anymore.  We’re just so very tired.  Calling this a “season” would be a misnomer.  For the entire 6 years of our marriage (and for me, the previous 3 years) we have just always been in this trial.  We, like most, thought that at some point this “season” would end and that better days would be ahead.  We thought that at some point the Lord would come in and deliver us from our trial but that simply hasn’t happened and we are at a loss as to why.

We’ve shared our grief with our brothers and sisters in the faith, we’ve shared it with each other, most importantly we’ve shared it with the Lord.  But this trial has gone on without ceasing and I am starting to lose hope.

I know that Jesus Christ is Lord.  My wife knows this.  With every fiber of my being I know and believe the good news of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for the remission of sin.  I know the Lord loves us.  I know the Lord is with us.  Nevertheless we are so very tired or our trial.

In November of 2009, I was 29 years old, had a good job and a nice truck; generally my life was a good one.  Then one morning as I was driving into work I heard the Lord give me a prayer to pray.  I hear the Lord speak, I have throughout my life, but rarely this loudly and clearly.  As soon as I heard what he wanted me to pray, my inner voice yelled, “NO!!” but before I could do anything about it the words came pouring out of my mouth, “Lord, if it be your will and bring glory to your name, crush me.  My life is yours do with it what you will.”

Two weeks later I lost my job.  Since then, the Lord has simply refused to bless the work of my hands.  There was one year in there were I made just enough money to provide for our family.  The rest of the time though has been a practice in futility.  No matter what I do, how hard I work or how gifted I may be for a particular job or enterprise, all manner of things have worked together in the most comedic ways to ensure that money would not come to my hands by my hands.  It’s uncanny, we’ve never seen anything like it.

I’m heartbroken by my inability to provide for my family.  Some days I feel as though I will literally go insane.  I’m a smart, well educated, man.  None of this makes any sense apart from the providential working of God.

Back in 2011 about 2 years into the 9 years (and counting) trial, I was at a very low point.  Thoughts of suicide were starting to become a regular occurrence.  I felt like the Lord was asking me to spend some time alone with Him and so I decided to head out to the woods of Southeast Texas where my Dad and his friend have had a deer lease for decades.  There’s a very rudimentary camp there.  A little shack, with no running water or electricity.  I felt like it would be a good place to just go away and spend time with the Lord.

Knowing that I’d been dealing with suicidal thoughts my wife (then girlfriend) and parents were afraid of me being alone but they trusted the Lord with me.  Not knowing what our enemy was capable of we agreed that I wouldn’t take any gun with me.  There’s all kinds of critters in those woods though and so I needed something with me for protection and so my Dad made me a staff of sorts out of an old broom stick with a metal point on the bottom end.  The thought was I’d use that to fend off any coyotes or worse that might be inclined to bother me.

This was the summer of 2011, which is to this day the driest year on record (records go back about 100 years) in the state of Texas.  And it was the second hottest on record.  It was dry and hot and the woods I planned to spend some time in were a literal tinderbox.  There had been historic wildfires and people were on edge and praying for rain.

My Dad took me out to the camp and dropped me off with some water and basic supplies and then left.  It was quiet.  It was sunny.  It was hot.  It was one of those kind of days where the heat just hangs over you and presses down on you.  Not exactly comfortable, but it was where I was supposed to be.

I decided I would take my “staff” and go for a quick walk around the familiar lease.  A got about a quarter mile into my walk when something really pretty incredible happened.  Out of nowhere, and I mean nowhere, a dark cloud formed over the area and I thought, “is it going to rain?”  Just then there was a lighting strike so loud over me that it made my ears ring.  It scared me half to death.  I dropped the staff because it had metal on it and I thought it might function as a lighting rod.  This lighting/thunder was this close and this loud.  Then, it began to rain.  And I mean rain.  The rain came down hard and full and did so for about a minute or so and then just stopped and the sun and heat returned.

I’m not sure what that means or if it means anything.  But I’m inclined to believe the Lord was with me during that time in a way that I don’t fully understand.

As I spent day after day in the woods, I would read my Bible, pray and ask the Lord to speak to me.  I would read some more, pray and ask the Lord to speak to me.  It was hot during the day so I would make a trek down to a nearby creek and cool off in the water and then sit by the creek side and read, pray and asked the Lord to speak to me some more.

I read and prayed a great deal during this time and there were two things that I distinctly remember hearing the Lord say to me.  1.  “Wait.”  and  2. “You can trust in my steadfast love.”

For the next seven years I have clinged to these words.  “Wait.”  “You can trust in my steadfast love.”  Setback after setback, loss after loss, I’ve clinged to these words, this promise.  Hoping beyond hope that the breakthrough was right around the corner only time and again to realize there was another mountain to be climbed on the other side. We simply don’t have anything left in our tank to climb another mountain.

I know the Lord loves me, I know he is with me but I am just so very tired.  I can trust in his steadfast love and we are still waiting but we are just so very, very tired and not sure how much longer we can go on like this.

If you feel pressed by the Holy Spirit while reading this would you please for my family as the Spirit leads you to?  If you don’t feel led to pray in a certain way will you please pray and the Lord to remember his servant, to consider his frame, remember his family, his wife and his children and to put a stop to this trial at once.  Lord have mercy on us.