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  1. Stephen, I’m so glad you miss your grandpa. So, so glad. And I love your writing style! I’m glad Jeff shared it with the staff – I’ll drop in again. Thanks, my friend. Miss you!!!

  2. This is so good Stephen. Memories like this have to be explored and you are doing a fantastic job of that. I love your writing. I haven’t read any of your stuff before this. You are really good. Keep feeding that gift and it will continue to grow.

  3. Stephen’s vision of the natural world is stunning in its detail and focus — truly drawing you into each image and leaving you in awe of the talent behind them. Love this book!

  4. Just going by what I read on your blog here, but you think it’s possible you have the gift of insight. I mean a real, God given fruit of the spirit like Prophesy? Which is powerful and a very much needed gift in this world. It appears as though you also have a heavy helping of Wisdom which often finds fellowship with Prophesy. Your writing and the talent you display for art both more than suggest these gifts to be a part of you [at least in my vibe opinion of you. But I myself do have the gift of discernment if you believe in such things].
    But, again, maybe you also have the devil gift of self pity and entitlement that always seems to accompany and follow gifts like Prophesy and Wisdom. And I hope you won’t be too offended if I offer the possibility that for many people that can be crippling. You see the wrong in things. You see the wrong in the world. You see the evil happening in more places than most can imagine. With the bad and dark you also see the right choices that should be made by a lot of people who don’t see what most of the time is unmissable to you. By instinct you know the words that the Lord wants to be spoken into a circumstance when no one else knows anything to do but cry and complain about they’re side of things. I think very much that you are the one who always sees more. That is the gift part of you.
    But the curse comes from your hurt. The hurt comes from your past. Your past seems filled with so many moments that seem to left you angry but convinced you can hide your anger behind what many people close to you think is an average amount of bitterness and frustration about painful things in life that any wise and spiritually deep person like yourself would find hard to swallow. But those things in life that are hard for everyone isn’t what makes you so mad I don’t think. Here’s what I feel you need to hear and bring to God if you still have enough fear of Him to be this naked in His presence.
    God gave you the gifts to clearly see so many things and the wisdom to know what choices to make so much of the time that it has to be a terrible temptation to use that power to navigate through some dark corners and justify some less than selfish choices that deep down you know are aimed at producing the results you want and maybe even think you deserve.
    Your gifts allow you the luxury to appear and sound insightful and to demonstrate keen understanding of people who can easily become mesmerized by someone like you. And maybe the image you easily generate isn’t as selfless or as glorifying to God as you allow others to believe.
    It can become a slippery slop because you have the power to lift up and encourage so many people. I bet you can even explain why people are hurting better than they can understand their own hurt a lot of the time.
    I bet that leaves you feeling tired of so many people not being able to do the same for you as much as it leaves you feeling resentment you know you have to hide towards the God that blesses so many other people who don’t have the weight of your gifts or the pure heart they would need to chase after gifts that benefit others more than themselves.
    But you have the terrible misfortune of being your own ultimate judge of your strongest motivations, personal dreams, and self determining goals or plans that by all rights are almost a birthright to anyone with your awareness.
    And I think you know how easily you can justify and manipulate things in many areas in life so that you have a good chance of getting what you want by using your wisdom to satisfy selfishness and get what you feel you deserve and use your discernment of people to get away with it and still appear innocent.
    This isn’t a cheap spiritual parlor trick to say this. You’re talents and the insight you would have to possess to create the work you have on display here prove themselves. You’re tendency to express self loathing to the world on a level I don’t think you see clearly proves a lot of the rest.
    You chose to write the words loser, and what the hell is wrong with you. For some reason you tapped the keys to spell failure referring to yourself. And you did after telling about a message you wrote that was more brutal than other messages and then forgiving yourself for it.
    You condemn yourself and I think that is the best part of all of this. You seem to be uncomfortable with your own self pity. Do you despise yourself for not being able to stop wanting things in this life you see others with? I think you do. And I think you should stop finding reassurance in your ability to look like the humble believer to help make up for being the less than devoted follower of God you wish you were. Everyone struggles to yearn for the right things. You are no different. You are only more at war with your own unconfessed manipulations of your image because you have a far greater skill to hide what others can’t.
    No one knows how great the temptation is to hide shameful days they lived more than the person blessed with an uncanny ability to hide the worst of themselves. But part of hiding those parts of you is saying the Godly words and using the very gifts that will make you see and loathe the same parts of your soul you keep hidden.
    Maybe stop the cycle and admit to God you feel entitled and bitter about the respect you are convinced you earned and remember if you belong to God you haven’t earned a damn thing other than the privilege of suffering when He allows it for reasons you may never accept or see for yourself. Maybe come to the point that you not only know the right thing to say is “my God is good” and I will praise him in my deepest heart as much as I praise him with easily admired words that are barely more than second nature to you.
    Young man [i imagine you to be young] for all your gifts and I think even because of all of them you will always be an easy target for the first lie the serpent ever told in the garden when he asked Eve ‘is it true that God said…’. He was really asking Eve if she could trust that what God told her to do in her life was really in her best interest or if it was causing her to miss out on what she maybe felt like she deserved.
    You tell interesting stories but all of us have to stop and let got break us in very painful ways so we remember he’s the only point to our story so if looking like a loser or looking like a failure is the part He ends up giving us than praise God he made a role just for you that I think will matter more in Heaven than what ever thing you admit to being teased by in this life.
    It will be first impulse to react to this out of all the things I think you have saying angry things in your ear. A lot of fear will swell up in you to protect or hide what you think people would dislike in you if they knew all the things you’ve been smart enough to disguise. Keep hiding those same things and keep on feeling that compulsion you always feel to use the Gifts of God when you know they need to be used and you will only hate yourself more or become blind to the flaws you will get tired of causing you shame. That day you will sincerely become bitter and really know resentment for your God because on that day you finally be blind.
    Or don’t do that and maybe for the first time imagine that running straight into the truth about who you are and asking God for healing and transforming power would be the thing that activates the purpose you seem to be hurting to find. Have you even thought that confession and naked vulnerability to your church and circle is the last missing but very important ingredient to add the real power of the Holy Ghost to your fruits of His spirit? Your power with God ordained brokeness humility is a very beautiful thing to witness if you stop throwing words at the God to excuse yourself cause He isn’t doing the things with your life you dreamed He should be.
    Last thought I feel I to leave to you is from the mouth of God to Job when he asks him “Do you condemn God to justify yourself?”
    If you as a man have been treated unfairly by God then you are a just man and He is an unjust God. If you don’t believe that is true…and maybe you think it is true and you’re mad you have to hide it…than you can’t feel shorted by God and admit you are the one being unjust to God and humbly giving to Him what he has earned.
    Maybe don’t worry about the brutal email you sent compared to everything else. Maybe they didn’t even read past the first sentence anyway. Don’t write back or feel a need to agree with anything I just write things to some people some times and most times I don’t give an email. I post under a fake name on You tube and then delete anything I get back which I admit is unfair but not really since winning a talk with someone isn;t what I care about anyway. GNight storyteller.