The Winter of My Discontent

Some people think God only speaks in scripture. In fact, if pressed, they may even admit they believe He only speaks in the words of the Authorized Version (King James Version). After all, it is authorized and none of the others are. In case you are confused about that, the King James Version of the Holy Bible was authorized by, you guessed it, King James of England in the wee, morning hours of the 17th century.

Interestingly, the title of this post comes from the same historical period. It is, of course, a take off from the opening line of Shakesphere's Play, "Richard The Third." When the line came up in my spirit the other morning I thought I was going to write about having a bad month starting around Thanksgiving. Judi asked me last night if it were true I had not written a post in a month. It is. I was even surprised it had been quite that long. I thought when Richard spoke this line he was talking about a winter of discontent. Now you know how well Shakesphere and I are aquainted. Of course that is only half the line. The remainder of the line is, "Made glorious summer..."


I did have something of a winter of discontent. Thankfully it only lasted about a month. For those of you who do not know, I am not really a fan of winter. No offense to those of you who are. I simply prefer the sunshine and warm days. I would rather wear shorts and flip flops than parkas and boots. Anyway, I am proclaiming today that my winter of discontent is now past and my glorious summer has begun. What does that mean? Let me try to explain.

Sometime around January 1 of this year, I felt I needed to fulfill another part of my anointing and, "...proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:19 NIV) I am only about two weeks behind on that. Two weeks behind really is not that bad lately. I had a fever about three degrees above normal on New Year's Day. It only lasted about fifteen hours. My last fever was two years ago and lasted over a week. Things have changed. Things have improved. This is the beginning of OUR glorious summer. It is the year of the Lord's favor. As with everything else in the Kingdom of God, we have a part to play in that as surely as someone had to bring Shakesphere's words to life by playing the part of Richard and speaking those lines.


Last Sunday I listened to my pastor give his "State of the Church Address" to the assembled body. One of the things that caught my attention is that he said God wants to do great things in the church. How he said that also struck me. He said God not only wanted to do great things at Church for Life, but also in "the church in Santa Maria." That phrase kind of sounded familiar to me.


Indeed, God does want to do great things in the church in Santa Maria in 2010. It is to be our glorious summer. It will be the year of the Lord's favor on all who believe and work to make it happen. Have we talked about the works of God? I will have to go back and look. I barely remember last December. I have no idea what all this blog contains without looking. Let me at least give you a teaser, "God works". That is from Romans 8:28 in the NIV. But wait, you get more. God works and we work. See Philippians 2:12-13. Oh great, now we have to discuss what salvation really includes. My guys at the mission do this to me too. Just as I am making a cogent point or trying to wrap up a class someone asks a question that requires a more detailed explanation than I have time to give. If we do not get back to that sometime soon, remind me. (Ok, I looked and we did already discuss salvation. Check out the post from 9/6/09. Those last couple sentences were just too good to delete so I am just adding a little to the end here.)