Hi Gino, 

God bless you brother and thank you for your words of encouragement also.  

http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/may2022/gino58-3.htm

This is indeed how the body of Christ should work and I am so grateful to this forum and others like it that makes it possible for us to encourage one another.

The older I get, and the longer I run this race, the closer I get to the goal and it is as if I can see the goal within my sight. And I realize more and more what my purpose is.  Minister to whoever I can, as often as I can. Minister love and grace to family, minister love and grace to co-workers, and the same for total strangers on the street or to extended brothers and sisters around the world on the internet- even if it is only to a handful of people we can all make a difference in our respective circles of influence and I am so glad and encouraged to see that I am able to do that in some small way

I had a bit of a revelation some time ago about how to live my life.

Life is a bit of a “currency exchange”.   If we were to travel abroad from the US to Europe we would exchange our dollars for Euros or if we were to travel to Israel we would trade them in for Shekels - but we are on a journey to heaven where the streets are made of gold so what can we trade in to have currency when we get there?

Time.  

Time is the only currency God has given us on this earth and some of us have a little left and some have a lot left, but as long as we draw breath we all have it and we should use our time to exchange our currency for the coin of the realm of heaven which is the service of Christ motivated by His great love for mankind.  And this is not to say give up on spending time with your family or quit your job so that you can become a missionary - rather it is to say that every moment of our lives, just make the right choices to love and minister.  Like it says in Deuteronomy “You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭11:19‬ 

Our influence is both active and passive, and I think this passage tells us to even use the passive time that we are just sitting around the house to be an influencer for Christ and use more and more of our time to exchange for service of Messiah.

Whenever I interact with family or neighbors, I try to interact as if Christ were living and loving through me, and then in whatever spare time I have, I try to reach out to others to encourage, like the videos I make or the letters we write to 5Doves or other forums, all exchanging our time for a little more service to our Beloved Messiah.  So I try to spend my days maximizing my impact on whoever I can with the love of Christ and serving others and I see that you and many others on this forum also do the same.

Your letters are always interesting and inspire thought.

I especially liked last week "at the same time, 3 different men, related to the same city, but with 2 very different kinds of outcomes"

http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/may2022/gino58-4.htm

That was very well thought out and very true, I have thought the same thing as well about Boaz and can’t say it any better than you did so I will just quote you  - you said:

(Here, Boaz, this man of Bethlehem, at the same time that all the other wickedness was going on, had land and employed reapers.

That was hard labor, and not the highest paying job, yet the reapers answered their boss by saying, "The LORD bless thee".)

(Boaz must have been a godly employer, and good to work for.

So even though that two other men could go out from that same city, to do terrible things, yet at the same time, in that city, there was a place to work, where the peace and blessings of the LORD were. We can, in our days, have the same situation, where although wickedness is all around, we can have the peace and blessings of the LORD, in our days.)

Indeed, when there is wickedness all around us, we can still live in relative peace as long as we continue in service to the Lord, doing our part, no matter how small or large, and he will provide the blessings of peace and provision.

God’s richest blessings on you my brother, keep up the good work with your posts - you have an admirable command of scriptural knowledge and I love that your posts always cite several scriptural references to back up whatever subject you are exploring!

Your brother in Messiah,

Derrick Drew