Season of Sowing in Excellence: 20 Spiritual Meditations from the Seasons of Our Lives Collection

By Reverend Larry L. Camper

Season of Sowing in Excellence takes you on a journey with the author as he navigates his way from living life in a mediocre way to living life to the fullest and in excellence according to God’s Word. See through his poems, meditations, and Story of the Season how God blessed him to understand just how much of a difference he can make using the gifts God has blessed him with. Larry opens up for you how you too have been gifted by God to be a great blessing and to be blessed at the same time. Read his book as he shares with you what God was sharing with him. Each poem and matching meditation also has a short easy-to-remember “Consider This” that summarizes the poem and meditation so that one will be able to easily recall the helpful, encouraging message within. Of course, each of the twenty entries also has an associated scripture from the Word of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973656227

Reverend Larry L. Camper

Larry writes from the heart meditations and poetry that the Lord has given him as he has asked God’s help to make it through various seasons in his life. He loves the Lord and loves his family. He is an ordained minister of the gospel who loves preaching the gospel. He believes that the Lord has plans to use him to be a blessing to many through his writing as well. Because his writing comes from a heart that has experienced much laughter and many tears the reader will find in his writings words that reach their hearts and speak to their lives in such a way that they will find themselves going to those writings often.

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Copyright © 2019 Reverend Larry L. Camper.

Interior & cover Credits: Gary Crumpler

Interior images Credit: Timothy Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5621-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5620-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5622-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902703

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/22/2019

Contents

Biography - Reverend Larry L. Camper

Dedication

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Season of Sowing in Excellence Story

Looking To Learn

Beyond Words or Understanding

Even Greater Blessings

A Great Gift from God

One Door Closer

Good for Any Situation

Take a Moment

While Others Are Being Blessed

Embrace the Challenges

Achieve To the Fullest

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

To Another Level

A Purpose and a Plan

Knowing That He’s Got Your Back

God-Given Passion

No Plans to Quit

Much Better Than Your Present

With God As Your Source

Never Again the Same

His Way

About the Author

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Biography - Reverend Larry L. Camper

Reverend Larry L. Camper was born on June 7, 1957 in the small town of Seaford, Delaware. Being raised in a very rural town, he developed a sincere appreciation of time spent with family and friends. He still places great value on family and friends today. As a child and teen he was a member of Seaford’s East Clarence Street Church of God where his mother, grandparents, and great-grandparents were also members and where his personal relationship with Jesus had its beginning.

He attended Seaford schools until graduating from Seaford Senior High School in 1975. As a senior in high school Reverend Camper was selected to Who’s Who among American High School students and upon graduating traveled to Europe, spending the summer in Sweden as an exchange student. As a rurally raised young man, upon his return to the U. S. he became a college student in Ohio, some six hundred miles from home and nearly forgot the Godly way in which he had been raised. Even though God had His hand on Reverend Camper’s life, for a long time, he wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to do things his way, instead of God’s way.

But God! God has changed that. He has blessed him to surrender his life to Christ. He has blessed Reverend Camper with a wonderful family…a God-fearing, beautiful, and compassionate wife, three terrific children, and two absolutely adorable grandchildren, with a third on the way. Since the publishing of his first two books, "…if You Faint Not and Season of Hope", Reverend Camper has had his oldest daughter, Lauren, become a certified paramedic, his middle child, Deidre, earn her Master’s Degree, his son, Larry Jr., the youngest, begin to use the painting gift God has blessed him with.

Reverend Camper was a member of New Mount Olive Baptist Church from April of 1990 to October of 2011. There he served as a deacon, taught Sunday Adult Bible Institute, and shared in the teaching of Bible Study (called Word Alive).

He is thankful for and loved his church family and is especially grateful to God for the teaching and preaching of his former pastor, Reverend Dr. Luke Mitchell Jr. He was one of the assistants to the pastor and for ten years was usually in the studios of 1340 AM-WYCB Radio on Friday Nights from 7:30 to 8:00 for the New Mount Olive broadcast of Higher Ground. He shared his poetry during the church’s broadcast for thirteen years and has had poetry in several local bookstores.

Reverend Camper and his wife, Debra, were the coordinators of the Marriage Enrichment Ministry at New Mount Olive. He and Debra along with all three of their children are now members at Kettering Baptist Church where he serves as the Minister of Visitation and Debra has been a part of the dance ministry and works with the website team. Reverend Camper sits under the teaching, preaching, and leadership of a truly anointed pastor, Bucas Sterling III. He has completed his studies at Lancaster Bible College in Greenbelt, Maryland, and received his Bachelor’s in Biblical Studies in December of 2014.

Reverend Camper has been very active in his community and over the years especially enjoyed helping out at his children’s schools. He loves his quiet morning devotions and was licensed and preached his initial sermon on June 4, 2004 and was ordained on June 2, 2007. Reverend Camper loves writing and God blessed him to start In Due Season Ministries…a writing ministry featuring first and foremost sermons, which he preaches as well as poetry and meditations some of which are included in the books he’s been blessed to have published. He has written for LifeWay Christian Resources and hopes to continue to write curriculum for Christian Publishers. Currently his emphasis is on books and greeting cards, but the ministry also has poetry in other formats including but not limited to laminated, framed, personalized, poems as well as poetry on CD’s.

Reverend Camper is looking forward to continued growth in ministry both preaching and writing. He loves his writing ministry, but thanks God that he is a preacher first and blessed to be a writer in addition to the privilege of preaching the gospel. He is grateful for every preaching and writing opportunity he receives.

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Dedication

I thank and praise God for all that He has blessed me with. One of those things is a wonderful family. I, too, thank Him for giving me the opportunity as well as the assignment to write the Seasons of Our Lives Collection. I dedicated the first book, "…if You Faint Not", to Debra who is my wife and the love of my life. The second book in the collection, Season of Hope, I dedicated to Lauren, Deidre, and Larry Jr., the three terrific children God blessed Debra and me with.

This book, I dedicate to Debra and the three of them. I dedicate this book to my family.

There are a number of areas in my life in which a look back could give me cause to wish I had done things differently.

There are areas in which I would be happy to have a chance to revisit the opportunities I missed out on by not being more involved or engaged…by not being a very active participant.

However, I truly thank and praise God that I do not have to look at my family life to this point with any regrets…regrets which might come with not having spent much time with Debra and the children. On the contrary, I have been blessed by God to show them consistently and frequently just how much I love them, how much I have been proud of them, and as important as anything, how very much I have enjoyed being a part of the life of each one of them.

Even as I write this, I get teary-eyed because I know how blessed I have been since two life-changing events (both of which started something great) – one about 30 years ago when Debra said, I do at the altar and another about 2 years after that when (our first baby) Lauren’s delivery doctor said, Congratulations, it’s a girl.

Regarding that lovely young lady, Debra, with whom God has blessed me to become one, my precious mother-in-law used to call Debra and me, two peas in a pod because she saw us together so much. Mom, as she allowed and perhaps may have enjoyed me calling her has gone home to be with the Lord now. She showed me a depth of love which much more resembled a mother’s love than a mother-in-law’s. Debra and I still live what mom proudly spoke into our lives…we still spend as much time as possible together…some 25 years later we are still mom’s two peas in a pod. I told my son recently, when he was eating dinner with his mother and me, that when he marries, he needs to make sure he can enjoy as much as, he himself knows and acknowledges, I enjoy being in the company of his mother.

Debra and I have been very involved with our children’s activities and we have been blessed to be their parents. We have experienced and enjoyed everything from the wedding of our oldest, a union which blessed us with the births of our first two grandchildren, to being captain and co-captain of Larry Jr.’s, Destination Imagination, (formerly, Odyssey of the Mind) team, to cub scouts, t-ball, baseball, football, track, dance, drama, PTA, pumpkin patches, house parties, all their company, Barney, Big Bird, Power Rangers, promotions, and graduations…and yes, even teaching them to drive.

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