Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages
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About this ebook
This book is a view into the spiritual journey of a contemporary man who feels strongly that he has been called by God to full-time voluntary ministry and has given his life completely to that purpose. He was called from a lucrative career as a rising corporate executive making a six-figure salary to working in full-time unpaid ministry. Previously an agnostic at best, he feels he was called by the Lord for a time just such as this. This book is a transparent and intimate look into his journal entries describing his interactions with the God of creation, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Gerald L. Prater
Gerald L. Prater is a retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant. He spent 20 years serving after enlisting at the age of 17 years after graduating high school in Miami, FL. He spent his entire 20 years serving in the Military Intelligence career field as a Spanish Cryptologic Linguist. After basic military training and technical training in Spanish at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA and Goodfellow Air Force Base (AFB) in San Angelo, TX, he served tours of duty at Key West Naval Air Station, FL, Kelly AFB in San Antonio, TX, and Howard AFB in the People’s Republic of Panama. While he was on active duty, he took advantage of military sponsored education benefits to obtain three college degrees: 1) An Associates of Applied Science degree in communications from the Community College of the Air Force 2) A Bachelors of Science degree in Management of Computer Information Systems from Park University in Parkville, Missouri 3) A Masters of Business Administration degree with an Information Systems concentration from the University of Texas at San Antonio in San Antonio, TX After retiring from the Air Force, he started an 11-year career in information systems and corporate auditing. He worked initially for TRW, a defense contractor serving as a staff Software Engineer. Next he worked for the telephone company GTE (which later became Verizon as the result of a merger) as a corporate staff Information Systems Auditor. His corporate auditing career progressed until he was promoted to the position of corporate IT and Network Systems Audit Manager finally working in that role in Austin Texas at Applied Materials, a major nano-manufacturing firm. It was from this position at Applied Materials where God called him into full-time volunteer ministry in November 2009 (see the story written up in the 11/24/17 chapter entry in this book series. Gerald does not align or associate himself with any particular religious group or denomination. He is a non-denominational follower of Jesus Christ, believes in the triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), that Jesus came here and lived a perfect life among us, died for our sins, rose again from the grave three days later to give us new life, and now dwells among and in us through the Holy Spirit. Since November 2009, he has maintained a full-time vocation of ministry as led by the Spirit of the Lord. He has never had any formal seminary training. However, during the years since 2009 he has engaged in detailed personal study of bible and theology. This has included not only in-depth study of the bible by exegesis (line-by-line), but also studying the teachings and university curriculums of several recognized professors of theology and apologetics at the graduate school level. One such professor who has had a significant impact on his studies is Ravi Zacharias and his team at RZIM (Let My People Think). The perimeter around all of these areas of study has always been (since his awakening by the Lord Jesus) with help to discern and understand from the Holy Spirit. All of the areas of spiritual insight, biblical study and commentary in this book are all led by the Holy Spirit. One thing that has made Gerald unique in these studies is his calling by the Lord to pursue these studies and vocation on a full-time basis with equal if not greater vigor than he used before in his prior corporate career. Using this vigor, he has found that studying and understanding the bible is actually quite easy. This is because when studied in earnest, it is easy to understand in total because the overall story is so simple and consistent. This is one of the reasons he finds it so easy to explain many fundamentals of the bible in written and spoken forms. Using his prior experience with governmental and corporate research and analysis together with effective university graduate studies, his studies of theology over the past decade could be considered an equivalent of honorary post-graduate studies in theology. After 10 years of this type of study, he could (only if led by the Lord of course) take actions to pursue an honorary PhD in theology and apologetics.
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Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages - Gerald L. Prater
2017 Journal of Ministry Messages
This Year’s Collection of Words of Life Shared in My Daily Time Alone with God
By Gerald L. Prater
Copyright 2018 Gerald Prater
Smashwords Edition
Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
Foreword
I want to thank and acknowledge an old Air Force colleague of mine, Rodney Irons, who was the catalyst of getting me to refocus on getting these books finalized in October 2018. He contacted me and asked for access to some of my writings and I realized that my work efforts on the book had become stagnant. So I kicked it into high gear, learned a lot about e-books and general publishing details, and developed a draft. Thank you for giving me the incentive Rodney. God bless you brother.
Thank you to all who have prayed for and encouraged me throughout this journey. There is a special reward waiting for you in heaven.
Most of all, thank You Lord Jesus for all of the ways that You have gone out of Your way to bless me (even through pain) so that I could truly be blessed beyond measure by being able to be a blessing to others. My Lord is the ultimate inspiration and source of this volume and the entire series. That blessing and ultimately You, Lord, are and has always been what sustains me. I humbly surrender at Your feet.
Your servant
Table of Contents
Foreword
Table of Contents
Introduction
January
1/7/17 – A Stubborn and Rebellious People
1/7/17 – Romans 8:28
1/17/17 – Word of God Speak… Through Your Servants
March
3/4/17 – Just Like You
3/18/17 – Even If – My First View
April
4/13/17 – More on Even If
4/16/17 – The Great I Am
4/27/17 – Birthday
4/29/17 – Unlike Any Other Book
May
5/11/17 – The Day the Lord Has Made
5/12/17 – Who Is My Shield?
5/22/17 – Even If – Behind the Story – My Story
5/31/17 – Glory Awaits
June
6/3/17 – What Do We Do When God Says No?
6/5/17 – Your Latter
6/8/17 – Problems Can Be Good
6/12/17 – Worship In Spirit and In Truth
6/12/17 – The Will of the Father
6/13/17 – Praise As a Way of Life
6/15/17 – Undisputable Evidence
July
7/15/17 – Kicking Against the Pricks
7/17/17 – Just Being Held is Very Personal
7/18/17 – My Testimony
7/18/17 – Even So Come Lord Jesus
7/22/17 – Struggles and the Blame Game
7/26/17 – The Power Within Us
7/27/17 – Anger and Emotion
7/28/17 – Power and Control
7/31/17 – The Blessing of Recognizing Your Need
August
8/1/17 – The Elephant in the Room
8/3/17 – Live Like You Mean It!
8/11/17 – Stephen and An Eternal Perspective
8/12/17 – All of Creation Is Screaming I Was Designed!
8/31/17 – Thankful for Problems?
September
9/1/17 – It Is Well…
9/1/17 – Perspective
9/3/17 – Job’s Story
9/3/17 – The Reality of the Enemy
9/4/17 – Give Me Ears to Hear
9/5/17 – 'Enough said...
9/7/17 – God’s Promises – Words to Live By
9/9/17 – Worship Is About Priorities
9/9/17 – More on Worship
9/11/17 – God’s Promises When He Seems Absent
9/13/17 – God’s Presence When He Seems Absent
October
10/2/17 – In The Father’s Hand
10/5/17 – No Going Back
10/11/17 – Surrender
10/14/17 – Cell Phone vs Bible
10/22/17 – A Prayer for Healing, Comfort, and Encouragement
10/23/17 – Come!
10/26/17 – Lord I Need You!
10/27/17 – Even If
10/30/17 – El Amor para la Gente
November
11/1/17 – The Best/Only Healer
11/2/17 – Mighty To Save
11/3/17 – NOTE: A Study of Revelation
11/15/17 – NOTE: The Real Battle
11/16/17 – Life Transformation Intro
11/16/17 – NOTE: Life Transformation
11/20/17 – Praise Report
11/22/17 – Medical Appointment
11/22/17 – NOTE: Overview of the Bible
11/24/17 – Bible Overview Promo and Background
11/24/17 – Looking Back When My Calling Was Confirmed for Me
11/28/17 – NOTE: What is the Mark of the Beast?
11/28/17 – My Struggles
December
12/4/17 – The Praise of a Servant
12/5/17 – Praise from the Valleys
12/6/17 – We Serve a Jealous God – This is Good for Us
12/8/17 – Grace and Mercy
12/8/17 – Struggles and The Motions
12/11/17 – Darse por Vencido
12/11/17 – NOTE: Priorities
12/15/17 – NOTE: A Study of Jeremiah
12/16/17 – Hopeful Even In Weakness
12/17/17 – Refreshing Hope
12/19/17 – Heart conditions and promises
12/19/17 – Praise for a Good Doctor’s Report
12/20/17 – Saving Faith – Faith that Listens
12/26/17 – Hope That Heals
12/29/17 – This is Amazing Grace
12/31/17 – My Publication Update and Psalms 19
References
Alphabetical List of Hyperlinks
About the Author
Introduction
This volume of my book series contains my journal entries and ministry messages from the year 2017. The year started out with comparatively light message activity because I was spending a lot of time in deep bible study, research and reflection. In particular, I was studying a lot of the Old Testament. Also this year was marked by a lot of struggles for me with my personal health and other life situations. This was the third year since I had started to suffer from occasional seizures and this caused a tremendous amount of emotional stress and pressure on my confidence in several areas. Of these affected areas, one of them included questioning the validity and purpose of my calling into ministry. After I looked back on it after a lot of prayer, the Lord helped me to see and understand the source of it as being spiritual attacks by our enemy in strong attempts to get me to be quiet.
Although the year’s journal entries and messages started out very sparse, 2017 ended with a flurry of detailed and in-depth messages and notes outlining a lot of what I had been studying and researching earlier in the year (getting a big-picture view
of the bible and its message. Don’t miss the entries in the last few months of the year that are labeled NOTE:
These contain many of those detailed explorations and discussions of biblical topics and some of the major books.
When you look through the table of contents, you will see that the book is arranged in chronological order throughout the year. Each daily message is identified by a chapter heading consisting of the date of the message followed by a general title that describes the theme of the message. With that in mind, you can peruse in order by date or search topically through the titles.
My objective with my books and my journal entries over the years is to give you a view into my spiritual journey and show you what the Holy Spirit is and was saying to me through the scriptures. It is very transparent and presented just as it was given to me in the moments. My ultimate objective is always to get you to have an interest or hunger to go and read the bible passages for yourself and see if it says the same to you (always with the help of prayer and the Holy Spirit). Don’t just take my word (or anyone’s word) for what it says, but read and search for yourselves as well to see if these things are true. Follow the example of the Bereans (Acts chapter 17) when the Apostle Paul taught and preached to them.
As I stated in the forward of my initial volume, this is not a typical book that you might sit and read end to end. When complete, this collection of books will consolidate and chronicle all of my spiritual writing and posts on Face Book since my spiritual journey started in 2007. In this book you will see journal entries at the end of the year in December when some friends first gave me the idea of going back and consolidating all of these messages into a book. Those entries documented the start of this effort and here, one year later, I am finally publishing the first two volumes of the series.
If you would like to see a brief introduction to the author, please don’t overlook the Reference section at the end of the book and the About the Author
page.
More Overview of the Book Series
After beginning this effort to consolidate and edit these writings from the past decade, I determined that it was best to break them up into 1-year books due to the size of the materials. Also, I decided to start with this year (2018) as the first volume and then go backward in the journey with subsequent volumes. My reasoning for this was two-fold:
1) The materials and messages from this year (2018) were very powerful and had a sense of urgency that the spirit showed me should not be put off and given a lower priority in this publishing effort. If done at the end of the series, these points could be lost in the details or overlooked completely.
2) As we are doing in my current study of the Old Testament at the Reveal Resource Center (food bank), I think there is great value and insight into going backward into the story and seeing how it developed while already knowing what was coming. When I started this Old Testament study at the food bank, I termed it Backing Into the Old Testament
as we began with the last book of Malachi.
January
1/7/17 – A Stubborn and Rebellious People
I was reminded this morning of this note that I posted 7 years ago that is speaking so very clearly to us today as we embark on this new year. It is in our nature to be rebellious and to shake our fists at God. But His grace is more than sufficient for our needs and He loves us in spite of our weaknesses, short comings, and how we respond.
I am particularly touched again by these words in light of a current small-group bible study we are doing on the book of Revelation and how even when judgment comes in the end times, people will have a tendency to remain self-centered, rebellious, and to shake their fists at God. Thank You for Your love for us (Your bride) in spite of ourselves.
Be blessed today. LORD, have Your way!!
GERALD PUBLISHED A NOTE ON MARCH 22, 2010
Lessons the Book of Numbers