I Can See Clearly Now

By W. Lamar Prioleau

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462875078

W. Lamar Prioleau

W. Lamar Prioleau is an ordained minister and elder, having worked in ministries in South Carolina, Hawaii, California and the greater Washington D.C./Maryland/N. Virginia area. He has served in various capacities during his travels over the last 15 years to include singles group director, financial officer, board member, auxiliary director, youth director over the last 15 years. He currently serves as the Auxiliaries in Ministry jurisdictional chairman in Washington D.C. He holds a Master’s of Theology Studies from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary as well as an MBA from Charleston Southern University. This is Rev. Prioleau’s first literary work.

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Copyright © 2011 by W. Lamar Prioleau.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011908165

ISBN:         Hardcover                        978-1-4628-7506-1

                   Softcover                         978-1-4628-7505-4

                   Ebook                              978-1-4628-7507-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Why Is This Happening to Me?

Chapter 2

Seeing Through the Shadows

Chapter 3

Nothing Catches God by Surprise

Chapter 4

Clarity

Chapter 5

Is God Truly Good?

Faith Must Precede Clarity

Chapter 6

The Presumption of Innocence

Chapter 7

Finding Rest in the Fog

Chapter 8

I Will Trust in the Lord

Bibliography

To Portia

This book would have not been possible without your patience,

support, and love. In me, you found a man with a thousand questions

and of clouded vision, and you walked with me as I searched through

the doors of life . . . opening them one by one.

Introduction

What would it take to shake your faith in God?

FEW BELIEVERS ARE willing to thoughtfully entertain such a question, yet it drives to the core of the foundation of the believer’s personal statement of faith. For the Bible-believing Christian, faith is more than a concept or a philosophical perspective. Faith is at its core a function of our walk with Christ, and it is as fundamental to the believer’s religious understanding as is the work of salvation and grace. Faith is something we live in daily, affecting among many things the way we interact with others and their actions, the manner in which we make decisions and also the manner in which we live through the consequences of those decisions. We count on faith to assist us in living above whom and what we are at our base level. As we live a life pleasing to God through faith, God rewards our walk with him through the provisioning of his grace and mercies, sometimes in miraculous or semi-miraculous ways. The old Pentecostal saints used to call this phenomenon making a way out of no way. Just as the Lord counted the faith and faithfulness of the heroes of the Old Testament as righteousness in Hebrews 11, so will he never fail to bless those of his faithful disciples today who commit to honoring God in all their ways. Hebrews 11:6 makes this all very clear.

But does anyone operate in faith anymore? Not many people at all. Our culture is no longer one that encourages self-denial for the greater good as it did once upon a time. And no one is willing to live their lives vulnerable to the whims of a god they barely believe in or know anything about beyond the secular assumptions that pass for religious understanding in this country. Adding to this condition of spiritual depletion is a sense of arrogance that is a product of America’s collective wealth and security. Because Americans enjoy a high per capita living standard, we don’t know the depths of indignity that most of the world’s residents endure every day. What if that all changed for us? A consequence of living is that faith can be severely tested. When that occurs, how will you respond?

The purpose of this book is to help the believer to begin to see through the fog of their turmoil and recognize that God has not forsaken those whom he loves. Romans 8:28 says this:

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.[1]

We tend to view the negative and difficult events of our lives as sinister efforts to impede our progress toward realizing our personal endeavors. But God’s Word in Romans 8 reveals that through the worse events of our lives, God’s plan is always at work. All that occurs in the life of the believer is subject to the will of God for each and every believer. The Lord’s methods are purposeful in that through both the perilous circumstances and the fog of understanding, God’s divine will is being performed in their lives.

Believing in the design that the Lord has upon your life is critical to the believer’s ability to endure trials. But why must we believe? Why can’t God just perform his desire without all the muss and fuss that comes with making our lives vulnerable by walking in faith? Could it be that trusting in God requires demonstrating confidence in God? Indeed, it does. And the product of demonstrating confidence in the plan of God for our lives gives us the ability to focus on the activities and priorities that facilitate the spiritual maturity necessary to ultimately understand his plan for us. This focus also serves to influence our perception of what trials are and the function they serve in our lives. They assist us in developing a worldview that is consistently more in line with what the scripture calls the mind of Christ.[2]

What must never be forgotten is that God has a method for developing the life of the believer. This method is standard in purpose, but unique to each believer in application. For some, past temptations may be used to strengthen spiritual resolve. For another, God may allow deep-seated insecurities to be exploited in order to force the believer into a deeper life of prayer and consecration. Whatever that method may be, it will be a method of which the worst of the believer is burned out for the sake of making room for the will of God in their spirit. It will be a method that sharpens the calling of the believer while also destroying the stumbling blocks. Whatever the method of preparation that the Lord employs, the believer must be willing to trust God’s design and to endure the trial that has been set before them. For most people, this is often easier said than done.

Every believer has at some point encountered someone who has asked the question that all nonbelievers (and most believers) have asked, Why does God allow the unjust to prosper while the just struggle? Even for the believer who refuses to completely abandon their faith in God, this question, or more to the point, the experiences that lead to this question often cloud our understanding of and weaken our resolve to govern our lives according to godly principles. The intent of this book is to explore this issue and to help other believers struggling in their faith to come to understand that God has not forsaken those whom