Brad,

You are still our loving bababababling Brad. lol.

I agree with what you said.

You and your wife sound like Vernon and I. lol. He often squeezes things
out of me that way also. lol.

We have our share of arguements, but we love each other dearly, and God is
always teaching us lessons.

Lovings!
Pat Ferguson with the studering dec access 32
At 01:42 PM 6/19/04, you wrote:
>Kathy,
>
>See that is the problem. As fickle as we humans are, we tend to rely on
>emotional satisfaction. This shown true to an extreme by entire doctrines
>birthed out of that selfish desire. I think our desire to want to do more
>can be of two motivations. One being a pride... "See God! Look what I'm
>doing for you!" or the Humble... "God, I love you so much, I want to do
>more for you, use me, fill me, lead me, and guide me". I think we'd all be
>much more at ease with a holy knock on the noggin and a voice saying...
>"Greg and Kathy? I want you to return home to Michigan and lead my flock
>there". Or perhaps "Greg and Kathy, I've called you to Maine and that is
>your life's assignment for me". Sometimes we really do not want the truth,
>we want what we want. Our pastor mentioned a statement in the wake of a
>tragedy. We always want to know why. Why Lord did this happen? The truth is
>we do not really want to know why because if we knew why, we'd still be
>unhappy and troubled. What we want is it fixed. And fixed according to our
>desire, our satisfaction. Jonah, being called of God to go to Nineveh heard
>from god and took off the other direction. I mean that was premeditated
>"Toss that idea God, I'm outa here!" Then once he was forced, he went and
>still sulked about it after the impact on that city. He was not satisfied.
>I mean wouldn't you or I be elated to have heard from God in the first
>place. Would we  have the guts then to argue and disobey God and then have
>our shipmates toss us over cause we were in disobedience, write our self
>off as being history, swallowed by a fish, come to our grateful senses, get
>spit out on land, go to a city, preach and the entire place comes to god,
>and then in the end be mad at god for saving them? Can we then blame god
>for making us the humans we are? No cause we're back to the clay telling
>the potter what to do. Human nature is one of not being satisfied and we
>struggle with that, both in our BC days, before Christ, and after. Before
>we weren't satisfied because we wanted more money, more good times, more
>this and more that, and after Christ we want to serve him more, more
>impact, more effectiveness for Christ. It is a good motivator, but it needs
>be tempered with patience and listening. Elisha found that out on the
>mount. He was too busy yapping and watching the wind and all that and
>missed the whisper of God. As Ned mentioned, I can't imagine Noah being
>just a little bit in wonder, if he was doing the right thing. A hundred and
>twenty years to build a boat? Come on man! I mean that takes some patience
>to endure that stretch of time for a set of instructions to build it, and
>then put up with the ridicule that he received. He must have been thought
>of as a madman. The problem is with us is we are so use to microwave
>theology. We read in seconds or minutes a couple verses of someone used
>greatly by God and want same,  when in fact it didn't happen in a nanu
>second. We look to our Biblical Super Heroes for examples of how we ought
>serve God, and that is good, but the romantic human view of it all as we
>picture how it might have occurred in our minds is nothing like it probably
>was. As well when we look back at times of our hearing God, it is much the
>clearer after we took action on it, and the events proved it to be an
>accurate hearing of god, but was it all that positive, was it all that
>clear,  in the midst of our listening originally? Did we have a conviction
>immediately that we were hearing from God? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. My
>wife... I keep saying she's incredible. I will start to say something like
>out of the blue I'll say... "Hey would you..." and she'll finish the
>flaming sentence for me. How in the world did she know what I was going to
>say? How did she know what I was thinking?  I mean most times it has
>nothing  to do with what we were even talking about. In reverse the other
>day, we were talking and she said... "Do you think... well know forget it."
>I said what. She said never mind. I said "Well you might as well tell me
>because I'll know what it is anyway cause it has something to do with
>camping." And it was exactly that. She wanted to know if she ought buy a
>Smokey Joe grill but then thought to surprise me with it and I squeezed it
>out of her lol. How in the world do we know what we are thinking or about
>to say before it is even said many times? Because we spend so much time
>together and we are one. We become so engrained as one that  sometimes it
>is quite eerie... mostly her knowing what I'm about to say. However, we
>also go through times of when we just do not get along too well. No matter
>what we say seems to be taken the wrong way. I watched a Little House on
>the Prairie as we have them on DVD, I love watching them because of the
>lesson within them. Anyway Mr. Garvey lost his crop and couldn't find work.
>He was bent on seeing himself as a poor provider and not worthy of marriage
>any longer. So he filed for divorce. He and his wife both loved each other
>very  much but he was bent on his pride. The argument that motivated the
>divorce was his wife was going to take a job at the post office. He didn't
>want her to as  quote, "No wife of mine is going to work and that's final".
>She wanted to take the job to help out with finances. He took it that she
>was saying he was a poor provider. She was saying we need money, things
>happened of no fault to Mr. Garvey but they needed money. He could only see
>it as her saying he was a poor provider and no good. We tend to live life
>through what we wish to see and until we open up our eyes and see past our
>little world, perhaps then we can be more at ease.  I've noted the pattern
>between my wife and I when we get in these modes of misunderstanding, it is
>when we do not spend time together. We tend to get off in our own little
>worlds thinking our own little thoughts, get accustomed to flying on our
>own, and we become selfish. We then see other things as a threat to our
>selfishness and then trouble begins. It is when we finally have had our
>little tantrums, and we feel that we've punished both each other and
>ourselves long enough, that we stop, look at each other and say... "Hey,
>what are we doing?". Many times we don't' even feel like getting to that
>point because we enjoy pushing the envelope a little harder. Sort of like a
>sore tooth... sorry Phil... But a sore tooth, if you push on it, it almost
>feels better for a while, at least while the pushing is occurring, but ease
>up and it begins to hurt again. And just like Phil's tooth, if you let that
>tooth go, if you let that relationship go, it will begin to be distorted
>and inflated and begins to be the only thing one can think of. However if
>we get past the immediate and look past it, we can find our selves in much
>a different position. Return to our intimate relationship and once again
>begin to know the voice of our spouse, and our God, without a word being
>said many times.
>
>Brad
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Kathy Du Bois wrote:
>
>Hey Brad,
>I know that  you mean well, but I know that, while your answer is
>theologicly correct, it is often unsatisfactory to the person who is
>asking the question.  We wish that God would come down and say, "You are
>a hammer,"  or "You are a drinking glass.  This is how you fit into my
>puzzle.  This is your function and job while you are on this earth."
>
>
>
>
>
>Everything that you said is true, and, probably most of us know all this
>in the back of our mind, but figuring out how to apply this knowledge is
>difficult and then, you can have doubt about whether you're  doing it
>right or wrong or really discerning God's voice because the fruit can
>either be so hidden or take so long to develop.  I'm constantly asking
>this question myself.  I want my role in life more clearly defined so
>that I know that  I'm doing what I'm supposed to do.  Too often, I feel
>like I'm lost in the woods without a map.
>Kathy
>
>________________________________________________________________
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>Brad
>
>    Never give the devil a ride, he will always want to drive