In Passionate Pursuit of God's Holy Calling

By Dan Kern

IN PASSIONATE PURSUIT OF GOD'S HOLY CALLING is about the journey of a man who had to overcome a lot of adversity to truly find God's will for his life. Perhaps you have struggled with trying to find God's perfect will for your life. I know firsthand how difficult this process can become and the frustrations associated with finding it.

God has a perfect plan for each of our lives but the question we need to ask our self is this. Are we willing to do whatever it takes to put that plan into action when we find it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453548486

Dan Kern

Dan Kern has faithfully served in the work of the ministry for over thirty years as a Senior Pastor as well as a Children's Pastor. He attends New Hope Church, Seymour, Missouri where he has been active for the past fifteen years. Dan resides in Missouri with his wife, Carol, and their two wonderful children, Joshua, Amanda and her husband Alex, as well as three beautiful grandchildren, Emily, Braiden, and Brennan.

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In Passionate Pursuit of God’s Holy Calling

Dan Kern

Copyright © 2010 by Dan Kern.

Library of Congress Control Number:           2010911266

ISBN:                     Hardcover                        978-1-4535-4847-9

                              Softcover                          978-1-4535-4846-2

                               Ebook                              978-1-4535-4848-6

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Contents

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CONCLUSION

PREFACE

I am going to endeavor to be as transparent as I know how when I share my experiences regarding why I wound up in India at this stage in my life. I have learned over the years that much of life is a complex set of situations and circumstances that move us toward a certain direction. Since being called into the ministry thirty-one years ago, I sensed that I would be a missionary someday on a foreign field, but to be completely honest with you, I never knew when.

Romans 8:28 says, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

I don’t know about you, my friend, but I went through a period of time in my ministry where things didn’t seem to make any sense at all. I was doing ministry, but I just didn’t have the kind of fulfillment in it that I had had before, and it was as though what I was doing just didn’t feel right anymore.

The apostle Paul states for us in Ephesians 5:17, Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.

The one thing that I have learned in the ministry, and it has taken me many years to fully embrace what I am about to say, is this: All of our experiences in life, not just in ministry, are designed to funnel down into God’s perfect plan for our lives.

Yes, all of the pain and suffering that we are called upon by God to endure, all of our fears and failures, all of the frustration and discouragement, all of the negative, adverse situations and circumstances that come at us in rapid fire succession, are all designed by God so that his plans and purposes can be fulfilled in our lives.

Now I can personally attest that this journey is oftentimes not a pleasant one, which I will discuss in more detail in upcoming chapters.

Much of what I have to say is going to rock you to the very core of your being and is designed by the Holy Spirit to challenge every member in the body of Christ to evaluate his or her life and to see if we are, in fact, in the perfect will of God.

One objective that I feel the Holy Spirit has in mind as I write this book is to get all of God’s children to move out of their comfort zone and to allow us to step out truly and fully into the arena of faith; the place where we can begin to trust God to make a way where there seems to be no way. So as we begin this journey, please fasten your seatbelt; the ride gets a little bumpy from time to time.

CHAPTER 1

When Nothing Made Sense

(The journey before the journey)

I grew up in a single-parent home and never had that father role to help shape my life. I know a lot of you can relate to that same thing that I was forced to work through and in no way do I want you to feel sorry for me. I am telling you these things to give you some background information in my life to help you see why I am so passionate about my walk with the Lord.

I remember two things in my childhood growing up that left some scars that I almost never recovered from. The first thing that scarred my life was the fact that my babysitter, an ex-navy man, molested me when I was eight years old and that literally struck fear in me. Fortunately, my older brother got the courage to tell my mother what the man had done to us, and he was arrested and sentenced in court as a child molester.

We had to testify in court about what he had done to us, and I still have the image in my mind of seeing him paraded into the courtroom with handcuffs around his feet. They sentenced him to a correctional facility in the state of Texas, gave him a lifelong ban from the state of Maryland, and made him register as a sex offender.

The second thing that scarred my life was the fact that my father committed suicide on my eighteenth birthday, August 18, 1976. Please allow me to reminisce about a few things prior to his suicide that will help you understand the situation a little better and why it became extremely hard for me to recover from it.

My mother was married twice both times to men who were full-fledged alcoholics. Her first husband was found murdered in the trunk of his car, which was retrieved from the bottom of a river. Her second husband, my father, whom my mother thought was a social drinker, loved to drink socially from early in the morning until late at night.

My father also enjoyed gambling at the horse track, and many times he would gamble away the rent money thinking that he would win it big. We came very close many times to being evicted and thrown out into the street because our rent was late.

My mother had finally had enough and decided that we deserved a better life than our father was willing to give us. So in 1965, when I was seven, my mother gathered our stuff together when Dad wasn’t home; and we left, never to turn back.

It was extremely hard for a single mother having to raise six children by herself, but fortunately, she didn’t have to do it completely by herself; she had the help of her mother and father.

I look back upon those difficult years and have nothing but great admiration for the tenacious spirit that my mother possessed. She loved us with only the kind of love that a mother could give and made many sacrifices to see that we lived in nice communities with good schools.

In the fall of 1975, my mother decided, at age forty, to go back to school and get her GED. She had quit school at age fifteen and got married on her sixteenth birthday. She started attending classes at Prince George’s Community College where she wound up receiving her GED.

I found that to be quite impressive for a mother who was working two jobs, going to school in the evenings, and trying to raise six children without the help of her alcoholic husband who never paid child support even though it was ordered by the courts that he do so.

My mother worked a union job in the daytime during the week and was a professional musician on the weekends. God truly blessed my mother with great musical ability. She not only played the piano beautifully, but she also played an accordion organ called the cordovox.

The cordovox was bigger and heavier than a regular accordion for it had various instruments that could be played with just the push of a button. My mother played with a band called the Johnny D Trio, which played in various nightclubs on the weekends.

My mother received excellent tips wherever she played, and I can honestly say that God blessed her with this musical ability because it not only kept a roof over our heads, but also food on our table, clothes on our backs, and shoes on our feet.

In the fall of 1975, my father was diagnosed with a liver disease and was making attempts to stop drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. My older brother, David, found out that Dad had gotten evicted from his apartment and was sleeping in his taxicab. He asked my mother, in the spring of 1976, if Dad could come and stay with us until he got back on his feet. She agreed to allow him to sleep downstairs in our basement, with one condition: that the moment he started drinking again he would be asked to leave.

To be honest with you, it felt great having a dad around who was actually sober. He was really fun to be with when he wasn’t drinking. We played scrabble together and various card games and just enjoyed his company. He even agreed to go with us to our home church, Trinity Assembly of God Church in Lanham, Maryland.

This was