Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages
    Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages
    Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages
    Ebook198 pages2 hours

    Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages

    By Gerald L. Prater

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This book is a view into the spiritual journey of a contemporary man who feels strongly that he has been called by God to full-time voluntary ministry and has given his life completely to that purpose. He was called from a lucrative career as a rising corporate executive making a six-figure salary to working in full-time unpaid ministry. Previously an agnostic at best, he feels he was called by the Lord for a time just such as this. This book is a transparent and intimate look into his journal entries describing his interactions with the God of creation, our Lord Jesus Christ.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGerald L. Prater
    Release dateDec 16, 2018
    ISBN9780463605936
    Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages
    Author

    Gerald L. Prater

    Gerald L. Prater is a retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant. He spent 20 years serving after enlisting at the age of 17 years after graduating high school in Miami, FL. He spent his entire 20 years serving in the Military Intelligence career field as a Spanish Cryptologic Linguist. After basic military training and technical training in Spanish at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA and Goodfellow Air Force Base (AFB) in San Angelo, TX, he served tours of duty at Key West Naval Air Station, FL, Kelly AFB in San Antonio, TX, and Howard AFB in the People’s Republic of Panama. While he was on active duty, he took advantage of military sponsored education benefits to obtain three college degrees: 1) An Associates of Applied Science degree in communications from the Community College of the Air Force 2) A Bachelors of Science degree in Management of Computer Information Systems from Park University in Parkville, Missouri 3) A Masters of Business Administration degree with an Information Systems concentration from the University of Texas at San Antonio in San Antonio, TX After retiring from the Air Force, he started an 11-year career in information systems and corporate auditing. He worked initially for TRW, a defense contractor serving as a staff Software Engineer. Next he worked for the telephone company GTE (which later became Verizon as the result of a merger) as a corporate staff Information Systems Auditor. His corporate auditing career progressed until he was promoted to the position of corporate IT and Network Systems Audit Manager finally working in that role in Austin Texas at Applied Materials, a major nano-manufacturing firm. It was from this position at Applied Materials where God called him into full-time volunteer ministry in November 2009 (see the story written up in the 11/24/17 chapter entry in this book series. Gerald does not align or associate himself with any particular religious group or denomination. He is a non-denominational follower of Jesus Christ, believes in the triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), that Jesus came here and lived a perfect life among us, died for our sins, rose again from the grave three days later to give us new life, and now dwells among and in us through the Holy Spirit. Since November 2009, he has maintained a full-time vocation of ministry as led by the Spirit of the Lord. He has never had any formal seminary training. However, during the years since 2009 he has engaged in detailed personal study of bible and theology. This has included not only in-depth study of the bible by exegesis (line-by-line), but also studying the teachings and university curriculums of several recognized professors of theology and apologetics at the graduate school level. One such professor who has had a significant impact on his studies is Ravi Zacharias and his team at RZIM (Let My People Think). The perimeter around all of these areas of study has always been (since his awakening by the Lord Jesus) with help to discern and understand from the Holy Spirit. All of the areas of spiritual insight, biblical study and commentary in this book are all led by the Holy Spirit. One thing that has made Gerald unique in these studies is his calling by the Lord to pursue these studies and vocation on a full-time basis with equal if not greater vigor than he used before in his prior corporate career. Using this vigor, he has found that studying and understanding the bible is actually quite easy. This is because when studied in earnest, it is easy to understand in total because the overall story is so simple and consistent. This is one of the reasons he finds it so easy to explain many fundamentals of the bible in written and spoken forms. Using his prior experience with governmental and corporate research and analysis together with effective university graduate studies, his studies of theology over the past decade could be considered an equivalent of honorary post-graduate studies in theology. After 10 years of this type of study, he could (only if led by the Lord of course) take actions to pursue an honorary PhD in theology and apologetics.

    Related to Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Apr 22, 2022

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Mar 18, 2022

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Mar 10, 2023

      D ear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to k

      8 min read

    • Article

      Francis Chan

      Nov 27, 2021

      Francis Chan
      2 min read

    • Article

      Getting Personal

      Feb 22, 2024

      Getting Personal
      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Apr 14, 2023

      Send your letters to editor@joymag.co.za Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Dec 31, 2021

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      3 min read

    • Article

      Activate Hope

      Jun 9, 2021

      Activate Hope
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Thank-you Project

      Sep 3, 2020

      The Thank-you Project
      9 min read

    • Article

      Jasmine Guillory

      Jun 14, 2021

      Jasmine Guillory
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: 2017

      Dec 1, 2017

      Over the last 13 years, the Year in Reading has collected the book recommendations and musings of some of the most brilliant readers and writers working today.  Looking at the series over time it becomes an instrument of measurement, not only for tra

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Desire Not to Be: The Millions Interviews Garth Greenwell

      Jun 12, 2020

      One of my most central beliefs about literature is that literature is a way of looking. It doesn’t have to do with extraordinary or unusual events. It has to do with a particular attitude taken toward the world. The post The Desire Not to Be: The Mil

      9 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Oct 30, 2020

      It’s such a relief to read a magazine that the whole family can enjoy. May God continue bless you all. Shirley Hoshe What a joy to open the magazine and see all the beautiful organs of the world. Wow! They are true masterpieces. I am sure that each

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Apr 5, 2024

      D ear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to k

      10 min read

    • Article

      Like the First Time

      Aug 15, 2018

      KIRSTEN SUNDBERG LUNSTRUM is the author of three collections of short fiction: This Life She’s Chosen, Swimming With Strangers, and What We Do With the Wreckage. Her stories have been recognized with a PEN/O. Henry Prize and the Flannery O’Connor Awa

      5 min read

    • Article

      Searching For Answers

      Jan 19, 2024

      Searching For Answers
      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      Feb 11, 2022

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      6 min read

    • Article

      Never Enough Time for My Book—Or Yours

      Nov 10, 2021

      Hello and welcome (again) to I Have Notes! It means a lot that you’ve elected to spend a little time with it each week, and I’m so excited to get to talk with you—even though technically, officially, I had planned to be on book leave right now. You w

      8 min read

    • Article

      A Q&A With Megan Phelps-Roper, Author Of ‘Unfollow’

      Oct 10, 2019

      Former Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Phelps-Roper discusses her break with the organization, Twitter, and her new book, “Unfollow.”

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The EDITOR

      May 20, 2022

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to editor@joymag.co.za for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      7 min read

    • Article

      Listening To The Father’s Voice

      Oct 22, 2021

      Have you ever had a thought or a spiritual dream that you just know is the Lord speaking to you? I have experienced this several times over the years. When the Lord wants to get my attention or turn my focus to something specific, a chain of events s

      1 min read

    • Article

      Why We Need Memoirs

      Jul 1, 2019

      They remind us that we are all flawed and complicated, all doing the best we can, none of us free from suffering. The post Why We Need Memoirs appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      You Are enough

      Jun 14, 2023

      You Are enough
      1 min read

    • Article

      Delightful Observation

      May 8, 2019

      While walking along a path in Italy that brought him joy, Ross Gay suddenly thought that it would be a fun intellectual experiment to write a short essay about a pleasant experience every day for one year, beginning with his birthday. By the time he

      5 min read

    • Article

      Change the Words You Use

      Aug 24, 2021

      Change the Words You Use
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Gerald's 2017 Daily Messages - Gerald L. Prater

      2017 Journal of Ministry Messages

      This Year’s Collection of Words of Life Shared in My Daily Time Alone with God

      By Gerald L. Prater

      Copyright 2018 Gerald Prater

      Smashwords Edition

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

      Foreword

      I want to thank and acknowledge an old Air Force colleague of mine, Rodney Irons, who was the catalyst of getting me to refocus on getting these books finalized in October 2018. He contacted me and asked for access to some of my writings and I realized that my work efforts on the book had become stagnant. So I kicked it into high gear, learned a lot about e-books and general publishing details, and developed a draft. Thank you for giving me the incentive Rodney. God bless you brother.

      Thank you to all who have prayed for and encouraged me throughout this journey. There is a special reward waiting for you in heaven.

      Most of all, thank You Lord Jesus for all of the ways that You have gone out of Your way to bless me (even through pain) so that I could truly be blessed beyond measure by being able to be a blessing to others. My Lord is the ultimate inspiration and source of this volume and the entire series. That blessing and ultimately You, Lord, are and has always been what sustains me. I humbly surrender at Your feet.

      Your servant

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      January

      1/7/17 – A Stubborn and Rebellious People

      1/7/17 – Romans 8:28

      1/17/17 – Word of God Speak… Through Your Servants

      March

      3/4/17 – Just Like You

      3/18/17 – Even If – My First View

      April

      4/13/17 – More on Even If

      4/16/17 – The Great I Am

      4/27/17 – Birthday

      4/29/17 – Unlike Any Other Book

      May

      5/11/17 – The Day the Lord Has Made

      5/12/17 – Who Is My Shield?

      5/22/17 – Even If – Behind the Story – My Story

      5/31/17 – Glory Awaits

      June

      6/3/17 – What Do We Do When God Says No?

      6/5/17 – Your Latter

      6/8/17 – Problems Can Be Good

      6/12/17 – Worship In Spirit and In Truth

      6/12/17 – The Will of the Father

      6/13/17 – Praise As a Way of Life

      6/15/17 – Undisputable Evidence

      July

      7/15/17 – Kicking Against the Pricks

      7/17/17 – Just Being Held is Very Personal

      7/18/17 – My Testimony

      7/18/17 – Even So Come Lord Jesus

      7/22/17 – Struggles and the Blame Game

      7/26/17 – The Power Within Us

      7/27/17 – Anger and Emotion

      7/28/17 – Power and Control

      7/31/17 – The Blessing of Recognizing Your Need

      August

      8/1/17 – The Elephant in the Room

      8/3/17 – Live Like You Mean It!

      8/11/17 – Stephen and An Eternal Perspective

      8/12/17 – All of Creation Is Screaming I Was Designed!

      8/31/17 – Thankful for Problems?

      September

      9/1/17 – It Is Well…

      9/1/17 – Perspective

      9/3/17 – Job’s Story

      9/3/17 – The Reality of the Enemy

      9/4/17 – Give Me Ears to Hear

      9/5/17 – 'Enough said...

      9/7/17 – God’s Promises – Words to Live By

      9/9/17 – Worship Is About Priorities

      9/9/17 – More on Worship

      9/11/17 – God’s Promises When He Seems Absent

      9/13/17 – God’s Presence When He Seems Absent

      October

      10/2/17 – In The Father’s Hand

      10/5/17 – No Going Back

      10/11/17 – Surrender

      10/14/17 – Cell Phone vs Bible

      10/22/17 – A Prayer for Healing, Comfort, and Encouragement

      10/23/17 – Come!

      10/26/17 – Lord I Need You!

      10/27/17 – Even If

      10/30/17 – El Amor para la Gente

      November

      11/1/17 – The Best/Only Healer

      11/2/17 – Mighty To Save

      11/3/17 – NOTE: A Study of Revelation

      11/15/17 – NOTE: The Real Battle

      11/16/17 – Life Transformation Intro

      11/16/17 – NOTE: Life Transformation

      11/20/17 – Praise Report

      11/22/17 – Medical Appointment

      11/22/17 – NOTE: Overview of the Bible

      11/24/17 – Bible Overview Promo and Background

      11/24/17 – Looking Back When My Calling Was Confirmed for Me

      11/28/17 – NOTE: What is the Mark of the Beast?

      11/28/17 – My Struggles

      December

      12/4/17 – The Praise of a Servant

      12/5/17 – Praise from the Valleys

      12/6/17 – We Serve a Jealous God – This is Good for Us

      12/8/17 – Grace and Mercy

      12/8/17 – Struggles and The Motions

      12/11/17 – Darse por Vencido

      12/11/17 – NOTE: Priorities

      12/15/17 – NOTE: A Study of Jeremiah

      12/16/17 – Hopeful Even In Weakness

      12/17/17 – Refreshing Hope

      12/19/17 – Heart conditions and promises

      12/19/17 – Praise for a Good Doctor’s Report

      12/20/17 – Saving Faith – Faith that Listens

      12/26/17 – Hope That Heals

      12/29/17 – This is Amazing Grace

      12/31/17 – My Publication Update and Psalms 19

      References

      Alphabetical List of Hyperlinks

      About the Author

      Introduction

      This volume of my book series contains my journal entries and ministry messages from the year 2017. The year started out with comparatively light message activity because I was spending a lot of time in deep bible study, research and reflection. In particular, I was studying a lot of the Old Testament. Also this year was marked by a lot of struggles for me with my personal health and other life situations. This was the third year since I had started to suffer from occasional seizures and this caused a tremendous amount of emotional stress and pressure on my confidence in several areas. Of these affected areas, one of them included questioning the validity and purpose of my calling into ministry. After I looked back on it after a lot of prayer, the Lord helped me to see and understand the source of it as being spiritual attacks by our enemy in strong attempts to get me to be quiet.

      Although the year’s journal entries and messages started out very sparse, 2017 ended with a flurry of detailed and in-depth messages and notes outlining a lot of what I had been studying and researching earlier in the year (getting a big-picture view of the bible and its message. Don’t miss the entries in the last few months of the year that are labeled NOTE: These contain many of those detailed explorations and discussions of biblical topics and some of the major books.

      When you look through the table of contents, you will see that the book is arranged in chronological order throughout the year. Each daily message is identified by a chapter heading consisting of the date of the message followed by a general title that describes the theme of the message. With that in mind, you can peruse in order by date or search topically through the titles.

      My objective with my books and my journal entries over the years is to give you a view into my spiritual journey and show you what the Holy Spirit is and was saying to me through the scriptures. It is very transparent and presented just as it was given to me in the moments. My ultimate objective is always to get you to have an interest or hunger to go and read the bible passages for yourself and see if it says the same to you (always with the help of prayer and the Holy Spirit). Don’t just take my word (or anyone’s word) for what it says, but read and search for yourselves as well to see if these things are true. Follow the example of the Bereans (Acts chapter 17) when the Apostle Paul taught and preached to them.

      As I stated in the forward of my initial volume, this is not a typical book that you might sit and read end to end. When complete, this collection of books will consolidate and chronicle all of my spiritual writing and posts on Face Book since my spiritual journey started in 2007. In this book you will see journal entries at the end of the year in December when some friends first gave me the idea of going back and consolidating all of these messages into a book. Those entries documented the start of this effort and here, one year later, I am finally publishing the first two volumes of the series.

      If you would like to see a brief introduction to the author, please don’t overlook the Reference section at the end of the book and the About the Author page.

      More Overview of the Book Series

      After beginning this effort to consolidate and edit these writings from the past decade, I determined that it was best to break them up into 1-year books due to the size of the materials. Also, I decided to start with this year (2018) as the first volume and then go backward in the journey with subsequent volumes. My reasoning for this was two-fold:

      1) The materials and messages from this year (2018) were very powerful and had a sense of urgency that the spirit showed me should not be put off and given a lower priority in this publishing effort. If done at the end of the series, these points could be lost in the details or overlooked completely.

      2) As we are doing in my current study of the Old Testament at the Reveal Resource Center (food bank), I think there is great value and insight into going backward into the story and seeing how it developed while already knowing what was coming. When I started this Old Testament study at the food bank, I termed it Backing Into the Old Testament as we began with the last book of Malachi.

      January

      1/7/17 – A Stubborn and Rebellious People

      I was reminded this morning of this note that I posted 7 years ago that is speaking so very clearly to us today as we embark on this new year. It is in our nature to be rebellious and to shake our fists at God. But His grace is more than sufficient for our needs and He loves us in spite of our weaknesses, short comings, and how we respond.

      I am particularly touched again by these words in light of a current small-group bible study we are doing on the book of Revelation and how even when judgment comes in the end times, people will have a tendency to remain self-centered, rebellious, and to shake their fists at God. Thank You for Your love for us (Your bride) in spite of ourselves.

      Be blessed today. LORD, have Your way!!

      GERALD PUBLISHED A NOTE ON MARCH 22, 2010

      Lessons the Book of Numbers

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1