Matt: 13:3 Part 7, The Gift of Faith!

[saint701]

Hello Christianity Oasis, All...

Blessings!

Fast forward a few years...I invested a bundle in a restaurant venture, just your typical downtown eatery serving mainly the lunch crowd in the community's thriving business district. I bought the business from a Christian man who had a son suffering from cancer. He wanted to move to Arkansas so he could be close at hand where his son was to receive treatment. I prospered in the business for a while...8 months...then the landlord walked in one day and said he really didn't want a restaurant in this particular building of his. I was devastated!!! And as such reacted emotionally.

I didn't pray or think things through. Had I done either one of those or both I might have found another space for the restaurant. Instead, I sold off all of my holdings; tables, chairs, miscellaneous equipment, utensils, etc..and returned to graduate school for the fall semester. I excelled in that endeavor, but come the next semester, confronted with selecting a topic for my thesis, I chose a biblically related theme. That aggravated the Dean of Education and he embarrassed me to no end in front of the rest of the class.

Well, wonderful...no end to the shame for me it seemed! Let me back up a little and relate the story of why I entered the restaurant business, the why I left teaching in the first place. It was the middle of winter. I knew I had the best group of students I might ever have in my teaching lifetime. That was good, of course...what should have been the sign of a valuable community resource...oh no!!! Why??

I was teaching in my home town, the town I grew up in...loved it...wanted to do my best to give back some of the good instruction I had received there growing up. But...my mother was a retired teacher from that same community and as such was still on the school's medical insurance plan. Well...the school superintendent and an unscrupulous board member hatched an evil plan to kick all retired teachers off of it! And..., I was in the way. I might raise a stink! What an awful thing to do to the elderly!! I managed to get my mother on a private plan but thankfully the Lord kept her healthy. Others in the state were not as fortunate and there were horror stories of devastating illnesses that ruined the lives of many retired teachers. But finally, praise the Lord, after a few short years, the state legislature passed a law mandating all school systems in the state provide health insurance for their retired teachers.

However, while all of that was going on I became depressed. Yes, I had a wonderful group of students, and despite my mother's predicament, I still had my job, albeit with the threat of the ax cutting me off from it. You see, the superintendent and his unscrupulous school board member came up with a 3rd-year evaluation plan meant just for me...or so I thought. The purpose of the evaluation at the end of one's 3rd year of teaching was designed to screen out any teacher deemed unfit for tenure which would be awarded after one's 5th year of teaching in any school district of the state. I reasoned within myself that considering my mother's situation I would be found unfit to continue in the district despite my excellent work to that point...that depressed me. Somehow...well...probably because I was too sick to see it, I failed to conclude that all of my misfortunes after my wonderful baptism in the Holy Spirit were a consequence of Satan's attacks. Had I been healthy I would have persevered as I did while in the military, but I wasn't healthy, I was deeply depressed, and I resigned short of humiliation.

Now fast forward a few months. I became the happy owner of a restaurant business, failing that I returned to graduate school, failing that I had quite enough of afflictions...I went to war with the devil!!!

The End, The Gift of Faith Part One


Blessings!
Love, In Christ Jesus, Saint701.