A new day!

 Praise the LORD!!!

    Good day. I pray that the LORD has blessed you with the power and strength to bring glory to HIS precious and holy name. For too often we have been blessed with another day of life and yet fail to bring glory to HIM that has blessed us with it!

    I'm saying this as the month of July comes to an end and it has been one that I've managed to do little to bring glory to the name of JESUS. This month has been a rough one. I'm working for two different reality companies as a maintenance man. Doing apartment turnovers for both. Almost everyday in this last month Kingsville has had one hundred degree plus heat indexes. For the most part they've been over the '105' mark, which is the point of an 'heat advisory' being issued.

    If you know the way I work, you'd know why this really takes it out of me. With my belief in doing everything as if unto the LORD, besides a tendency to do thing to the best of my ability, I work as if there is no tomorrow. I usually don't take a lunch break and am constantly going at the task at hand! Seldom even stopping to think over progress, just going at it until it is done. With this type of work ethic it is needless to say that I've become a commodity for my employers. No sooner am I finished with one job and I'm hustled off to another one. Many times I'm getting a call from one boss while working at the other one's site, being asked when I'll be able to undertake something for them. Many a night I drag myself in with barely enough strength and ambition to whip up dinner and take a shower nearly just collapsing out of exhaustion.

    My prayers of late have been for the LORD to provide the needed resources so I'll be able to stop working for 'men' and go totally at HIS ministry for me. I'd be putting this exact type of effort into the work, if not even more. Though when working for 'men' my work and attitude reflects my love for the LORD. If blessed to be only doing the works for HIM, the middle men would be cut out and all would be completely to HIS glory. What is holding these works for HIM alone up? But one thing, the support and funding needed to survive . This would be a total of around a thousand dollars per month. This though would be just to maintain everything as it is, not to be posting an increase for the ministry! This doesn't sound like much to most people, for they spend far more than this monthly. I'm single, no family living with me, no transportation(I walk everywhere or am given rides,) and though our computer system is five years old, its working fine for the moment. I've few tools to manage the work that I'm doing, but far from those truly needed to accomplish the work. But the LORD has blessed me with being able to accomplish much, with little. A kind of 'multiplying of the fish and loaves.' Though this is far from that which I'd figured the LORD would have this ministry doing by now, I'm content with it. For I know, though I can't see the reasons behind it, that it is HIS will for me at this time.

    For those of you not familiar with my beliefs, I believe that there is nothing under the sun that isn't happening according to GOD's ultimate plan for mankind. I know this stands against many a person's theology and don't care. It is what the LORD has blessed me to understand of HIS character and I'll make no amends to it. I've heard many state beliefs in contrast to this and won't argue with them over it. My life has been a conglomeration of the works of GOD, a mix of good and bad together and all of them have come, in the end, to bring glory to JESUS' name. I can show you in the Bible hundreds of places where GOD allowed tragic events to happen, only so that in the end, it is to HIS glory and not those of man! Just look at the book of Genesis alone, or maybe Exodus. The point is, GOD's ways are different then our's, far differing and there is no way humanly possible for us to even begin to understand why HE allows things to happen. We need to learn to just accept that which is and always will be the truth; that the GOD WHO created the universe and all that dwells within it can do whatever HE wants. We as merely created beings, are totally in HIS hands and must accept HIS will and way for and within our lives.

     The point of this whole article, is simple. I've been working on VCM for twelve plus years to get it to this point and if it is the LORD's will that I work it, in same manor, for the next twelve plus, "I will do so!!!"  May all be to the glory, honor, praise and worship of the greatest name in all existence, JESUS the CHRIST!!!!!!!

 Good day and GOD bless,

 Rev. Marshall Barth

 Vine of CHRIST Ministries

 Vine Ministerial Network International