Ezekiel

God strengthens us.  Ezekiel lived during the time of the Babylonian captivity.  His book starts out with him among the captives on the banks of the river Chebar.  He marks the time with a reference to Jehoiachin who was only king for three months and I guess may have only been a baby or a child.  But it makes me wonder why the reference is there.  Pastor Murray explains what he thinks about it.  Then God tells Ezekiel to cut off all of his hair and his beard and weigh it out in three equal parts.  I think some of it he burns, and some of it he scatters around on the ground.  Ezekiel talks about the coming of Jesus and talks about how even Noah, Job, and Daniel could not save themselves without Jesus.  I think it is Ezekiel who prophesies to the dry bones.  The leg bone's connected to the thigh bone.  The thigh bone's connected to the hip bone.

I'm glad for folks like Dave Ramsey who teach good solid financial advice.  With better financial decisions I could be doing very good by this time.  But I thank God that I am doing as good as I am.  I have to believe that this is where God wants me at this time.  I need to work on my giving.  I think I'll give a little more to Life Tabernacle.  It would be hard to go to church all the time and make my life completely revolve around the church.  But it would probably be a good thing.  I think if freedom was lost in America I would do it but as long as the church is there it seems that we will have freedom in America.

Election is coming up on Tuesday.  We'll see how it goes.

The Lord's Prayer

 Just a few more days until the big election.  I can't see any other result than Trump wins by a landslide.  If the fake news and election riggers declare Biden the winner it will definitely be time to dig deeper into the word.  It's always the time to dig deeper in the world though so there is nothing new under the sun.  Baldwin says if God is not bigger and stronger than Biden and Harris then we're in a heap of hurt.  The good news is that Jesus Christ is bigger than all of them put together.

Jesse Duplantis will be in Colorado Springs this weekend to support Andrew Wommack and the Charis Bible College in Woodland Park.  These preachers got to be seeing what's happening.  The war is on.  I guess the war has always been on but things seem to be heating up here in the good old united States of America.  I thank God for my blessings and worse comes to worse I will pick a church that is making a stand and go get in to that church and make my stand with them.

I think I like Life Tabernacle the best right now.  I like the building and the pews and the preaching.  And I like the geographical location as far as the weather goes, never snows, always warm.  And I like the culture of Louisiana and being down close to New Orleans.  They got their hurricane worries and I guess if one were to wipe everything out then you just do the best you can, keep having church, and rebuild again.  Occupy until He comes.

On the financial front things look good.  I'm working the Dave Ramsey baby step program and find myself solidly on baby step number seven.  The last of them all.  Build wealth and give.  I need to work on my giving.  I'm just now getting my sea legs since the covid bomb dropped and I'm working a good steady savings plan.  I gave a good little bit to Howard-Browne and Jonathan Shuttlesworth during the peak of the terrorism.  But since things seemed to have quieted down a bit, at least in my own mind, not sure how things are going in other people's minds.  Dave Ramsey calls it your head space.  Everybody is in their own head space and you need to keep it calm.  Says he knows people who got actually pretty terrified during the peak of the terrorism and cashed out at the bottom.  Now the market is back up to record levels.

So I guess that would be my daily report from the eastern front.  Steady as she goes.  My greatest blessing is my mental and physical health and ability and faith in God now that has gotten me this great job that many would love to have.  A challenging job that I have put in many hours of study to be able to do and it is fun.  Network Engineering.  A great field.  I used to try to sell down and out guys at the hotel on it but people just don't want to put in the work and some don't have the inclination to do it.  So to each his own.  I like working with other network engineers who have more inclination and ability to do it than I do.  Hang out with people who are above you in your chosen field and work hard to learn from them and impress them with hard work and effort.  This should at least allow me to keep my job.  Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

And if the job goes good and the economy stays good and I keep my job and the paycheck keeps coming in and the banks don't fail and the country doesn't completely collapse and if Trump wins, then I will try to keep building and try to find a church to help and tithe to and sow in to as I study the word.  That is the best plan in the world for me at this  time.  Thank you Lord Jesus for all of my many blessings.  I pray for those who are facing harder challenges than I am.

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:  he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul:  he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:  for thou art with me;  thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:  thou annointest my head with oil;  my cup runneth over.

6 Sureley goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The Preacher Plan

 Day trading is a business but it's too emotional for me.  Some might call it risky.  The guys who do good at it would say it's not risky you just have to have the right mindset for it.  And it's a mindset that is developed with practice.  But I would call it risky.  Because no matter how good you might think you have your mindset developed, there is always the risk that your emotions of fear and greed will get the best of you.  I like the Dave Ramsey approach better.  Rice and beans, beans and rice.  Save like a crazy man. And it is that plan that has stabilized my business thinking and gotten me out of a fine mess that I had gotten myself into.  So thank you Dave, and I plan on sticking with your plan until the end. 

It is nice that I am able to watch Dave on television every day.  Back in the old days as a kid there certainly wasn't any Dave Ramsey channel that I could flip on the TV any time I felt like it.  But there were books.  There was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.  There was Self Help by Smiley even way back in the day long before my time.  And both books are still here.  Can probably get them on Amazon at the click of a mouse.

So you pay off all of your bills, you get out of debt, you get your emergency fund built up, you get a decent job, you save 15% every paycheck, you build wealth and give.  Now these preachers I've been listening to have an interesting approach to building wealth.  And it is a fine line for a preacher of the gospel to walk, preaching about prosperity right along with the gospel of Jesu Christ.  I was listening to Albert Strang on the Kenneth Copeland show and he had an interesting story.  He said he was a secular reporter but then he began to struggle with his faith wondering how he could remain a secular reporter and still be on fire for God.  And the answer came to him in the form of Charisma magazine.  Now he has just come out with a book called God, Trump, and the 2020 Election.  Good guy and a living example of how you can combine the two.

https://www.charismamag.com/

3,950 visitors per day according to https://myip.ms/

Well I would say that is a pretty good traffic count.  And it has taken 40 years to get there.  He seems to have done good for himself financially.  And that is exactly what they preach.  Howard-Browne says get to a point where you live on the tithe and sow the other 90%.  That sounds like a good place to be.  I will press my numbers down as tight as I can and see if I might be able to even start tithing 10%.  Seems like a big chunk when you are in the worldly mindset.  Dave Ramsey is also big in to giving.  It seems that it is a skill to be developed and practiced and a skill that will come back to you many times over.

Pastor Murray says you are never wasting your time when you are studying the word.  And I think I agree with him.  You can get so caught up in current events, wondering if you are going to be out on the streets or if freedom and liberty in America are going away.  And Dave says he knows people who sold out their retirements at the bottom from fear of the covid.  I rode it out with Dave basically having exactly those fears in my head but just not knowing anything else to do or how to do it so I just did nothing like Dave would recommend and sure enough here 56 or 57 days later the market is back at all time highs.  I checked my 401k which I had figured to turn in to a 201k but sure enough, there it sits at all time highs.

So the plan of the preachers has you in good shape come hell or high water.  So it is the plan of the preachers that I will follow.  Now I have to go and see if I can get a good 10% tithe going to a church that I choose.  And then you have to get it up to 15% and then 20% and eventually to 90%.  That is the preacher plan.  And it goes hard against the worldly man plan.  I am at a stage where I could do it better than many.  It becomes a matter of what is the lowest income that you could live on and still consider yourself to be comfortable and moving forward in your retirement plans at a sufficient rate.

Basically it becomes how greedy you are in your vision of how your life will play out once you are no longer able to work.  As a writer and a network engineer that is only a matter of being able to sit up and write and think clearly and use my hands and fingers on the keyboard and computer.  And that is the same situation that many find themselves in today.  In this age of the computer and information.  Being a network engineer in this age is not a bad thing at all.  It does take work, and it did take work to get to where I am and now I am enjoying the fruits of my labor by collecting the salary that I apparently have capped out at but no longer spending every spare minute outside of my 40 hours in the memorization of technical manuals and books.

So I have time to put my mind on other things.  And then came covid.  So now as Peggy Hall says we start to get our sea legs back underneath us and look around and see where we are.  Obviously as Stephen Strang and Kenneth Copeland say, it is a very important election and the results will mean a hard swing in one direction or the other.  And that could mean my 401k could disappear again.  That is the world we live in.  So Kenneth Copeland and Stephen Strang have their money somewhere.  If they practice what they preach they are giving away lots of it.  And I think they probably do.  Maybe they have it structured where it is being invested into a business.  All businesses deal with this same concern.  This is nothing new, businessmen thinking about their assets and the economy.  In fact there is not anybody alive who does not spend some time thinking about their financial assets and the economy.  It is because in my lifetime everybody has had plenty of food to eat.  If it ever got so bad as to be having to worry about where the food was coming from then everybody's plans kind of get shifted around.

I was thinking how blessed I am to have what I have.  A beautiful home, a nice car, a good job, good health, and money in the bank.  There has never been a time in history where man was not alive and man is the same today as he was when God made him.  I have to believe that.  And in the preacher plan that is premise number one.  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And just knowing that I have never had to face what the men on the lost Franklin Expedition had to face in 1845 on the Victoria Bay in the northern Canadian Arctic.  The story says that they found bones with saw marks and knife marks indicating that the party had turned to cannibalism somewhere along the way.

Beans and Rice

By cutting off my bluehost.com wordpress blog which costs money and moving back to blogger blogspot blog which costs no money I am thereby saving money.  The Dave Ramsey program is one that I can wrap my mind around.  Save like a crazy man.  Beans and rice.  Rice and beans.  Get a thousand dollars in the bank.  Get out of debt.  Pay off your house.  Invest 15% into your 401k every paycheck.  Invest more, save more, work harder, work longer, beans and rice, rice and beans.  I boil it down to work every waking minute of your life and never spend a penny.  That's the key to success.  And since you will then have so much time on your hands and so much money in the bank, read the good book and think of ways you can give back to the kingdom of God.

 free is my favorite color