Final Journey in the Holy Spirit: A prodigal Son Returned

Watchman’s Adventure: One night journey from Lamentations to Revelation!

Reblogged from AAA Jack's blog (A Watchman on your walls):

After midnight, while in a hotel room, the watchman could not sleep so he got up and read the Bible. He was led to read the following passages. It was like he was led through the whole salvation plan. He started from Lamentations wherein the poet prophet mourned the sad state of his nation and cried to God for help as he still had hope in the Lord’s mercy and grace (undeserved favor). Then he was led to read Mark on the full passage towards the end of Jesus’ ministry on earth: the humiliation He went …

The watchman never realized that this blog would come to the forefront of his memory and would be just the right message today. During the past few days he went from one chamber of his life into another chamber. A brother passed on to be with the Lord. After an absence of over fifty years, the brother came back and now he left for eternity after just fifteen months of reunion. During the short and last phase of his life he reconciled with the Father in heaven, his own siblings and their children. He even gained a big family of brethren in a farm home living his last journey on earth before the Lord, reading and meditating the word of God day and night, learning to worship the Lord in Spirit and in Truth. Miraculously, his gift in cooking (which had previously been totally robbed and destroyed by the devil through alcohol intoxication) was restored to him. He became a well respected and honored elderly in the home of old and young, men and women. Even more stunning to all who knew him before, from a man who could hardly read a few words, he had learned to read and write well by reading the Bible (completing the whole New Testament and some parts of Old Testament) and copying notes. He even memorized Key Verses. The blood of the Lamb of God (Jesus) had washed away his sins, and the word of God had cleansed and transformed him in and out. In addition to ridding off all his addictive habits, his common burst of anger was healed. A big group of brethren in Christ led the wake service for him and many shed tears for him (and for themselves when they recalled the journey they all went through). One message is clear: the Father in heaven does not give up on His sons.
On the last day of his life on earth he led worship and Bible reading. He passed away peacefully while resting after the daily morning worship service on 3rd March 2012. He was 59 years and ten months old. He did not suffer any major illness in the home. He just had his medical check up a month ago and was given clean bill of health. He was completely divinely healed and well. Three days previously he re-dedicated his life to the Lord for His use, kneeling down and the pastor of the home blessed him. He finished the race on earth well after a life of being a prodigal son. The Father in heaven accepted him into His bosom.
During the worship he picked his favorite eight worship songs. According to his brethren in the home all were positive Kingdom of God songs, praising God and focusing on God’s greatness and glory. The watchman believed that he had joined the heavenly choir and happily singing and worshiping the Almighty God day and night now…
A favorite verse and song of the late brother of the watchman is from Job:

Job 42:5 (NKJV)

⁵ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
But now my eye sees You. “
(In a recent prayer with his class, the watchman suddenly prayed they would be like Enoch, walking with the Lord, and one day the Lord would decide to take them to His home, as they were nearer to His home than to their own homes on earth! )
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Verse of the Day

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” 

Watchman laments, yet "Lord, Great is Thy Faithfulness!"

Lamentations 3

New King James Version (NKJV)

The Prophet’s Anguish and Hope

3 I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
² He has led me and made me walk
In darkness and not in light.
³ Surely He has turned His hand against me
Time and time again throughout the day.

⁴ He has aged my flesh and my skin,
And broken my bones.
⁵ He has besieged me
And surrounded me with bitterness and woe.
⁶ He has set me in dark places
Like the dead of long ago.

⁷ He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out;
He has made my chain heavy.
⁸ Even when I cry and shout,
He shuts out my prayer.
⁹ He has blocked my ways with hewn stone;
He has made my paths crooked.

¹⁰ He has been to me a bear lying in wait,
Like a lion in ambush.
¹¹ He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces;
He has made me desolate.
¹² He has bent His bow
And set me up as a target for the arrow.

¹³ He has caused the arrows of His quiver
To pierce my loins.^[a]
14 I have become the ridicule of all my people—
Their taunting song all the day.
¹⁵ He has filled me with bitterness,
He has made me drink wormwood.

¹⁶ He has also broken my teeth with gravel,
And covered me with ashes.
¹⁷ You have moved my soul far from peace;
I have forgotten prosperity.
¹⁸ And I said, “My strength and my hope
Have perished from the Lord.”

¹⁹ Remember my affliction and roaming,
The wormwood and the gall.
²⁰ My soul still remembers
And sinks within me.
²¹ This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.

²² Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
²³ They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

²⁵ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
²⁶ It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.
²⁷ It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.

²⁸ Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
³⁰ Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
And be full of reproach.

³¹ For the Lord will not cast off forever.
³² Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
³³ For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.

³⁴ To crush under one’s feet
All the prisoners of the earth,
³⁵ To turn aside the justice due a man
Before the face of the Most High,
³⁶ Or subvert a man in his cause—
The Lord does not approve.

³⁷ Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass,
When the Lord has not commanded it?
³⁸ Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That woe and well-being proceed?
³⁹ Why should a living man complain,
A man for the punishment of his sins?

⁴⁰ Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the Lord;
⁴¹ Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven.
⁴² We have transgressed and rebelled;
You have not pardoned.

⁴³ You have covered Yourself with anger
And pursued us;
You have slain and not pitied.
⁴⁴ You have covered Yourself with a cloud,
That prayer should not pass through.
⁴⁵ You have made us an offscouring and refuse
In the midst of the peoples.

⁴⁶ All our enemies
Have opened their mouths against us.
⁴⁷ Fear and a snare have come upon us,
Desolation and destruction.
⁴⁸ My eyes overflow with rivers of water
For the destruction of the daughter of my people.

⁴⁹ My eyes flow and do not cease,
Without interruption,
⁵⁰ Till the Lord from heaven
Looks down and sees.
⁵¹ My eyes bring suffering to my soul
Because of all the daughters of my city.

⁵² My enemies without cause
Hunted me down like a bird.
⁵³ They silenced^[b] my life in the pit
And threw stones at me.
⁵⁴ The waters flowed over my head;
I said, “I am cut off!”

⁵⁵ I called on Your name, O Lord,
From the lowest pit.
⁵⁶ You have heard my voice:
“Do not hide Your ear
From my sighing, from my cry for help.”
⁵⁷ You drew near on the day I called on You,
And said, “Do not fear!”

⁵⁸ O Lord, You have pleaded the case for my soul;
You have redeemed my life.
⁵⁹ O Lord, You have seen how I am wronged;
Judge my case.
⁶⁰ You have seen all their vengeance,
All their schemes against me.

⁶¹ You have heard their reproach, O Lord,
All their schemes against me,
⁶² The lips of my enemies
And their whispering against me all the day.
⁶³ Look at their sitting down and their rising up;
I am their taunting song.

⁶⁴ Repay them, O Lord,
According to the work of their hands.
⁶⁵ Give them a veiled^[c] heart;
Your curse be upon them!
⁶⁶ In Your anger,
Pursue and destroy them
From under the heavens of the Lord.

Footnotes:

1. Lamentations 3:13 Literally kidneys
2. Lamentations 3:53 Septuagint reads put to death.
3. Lamentations 3:65 A Jewish tradition reads sorrow of.

3-3-2012