Q: Can You Say, “Free at Last/(VISA card)Free at Last!”?

“But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow,[a] do not despair, for these things will surely come to pass. Just be patient! They will not be overdue a single day!” Habakkuk 2:3-5 Living Bible

Timeline 

(9/16/19, 4:42 pm) Subject walked into Synovus Westside Centre branch; slapped down $93.58; and paid off finally his lingering VISA debt – which amassed 23% in overcharges over five years!

(4:45 pm) Subject waved aloft his payment receipt like a winning MegaMillion lottery ticket,  “I’m free, I’m free.” Mrs. Leteria Moses-Waters, longtime personal banker/branch manager, swiveled her chair around, with two thumbs-up. “Tim, you did it; you had the faith and persevered against all the odds.” 

(4:46 pm) Subject ran out the front door, uncharacteristically, and the banker probably knew why, . . .

Career vs. Calling?

Michael Novak’s Business As A Calling cites “Callings are not easy to discover. Frequently, many false paths are taken before the satisfying path is at last discovered. Experiments, painful setbacks, false hopes, discernment, prayer, and much patience are often required before the light goes on.” 

Since 1969, I’d been running frantically (and unsuccessfully) from God’s calling for me to minister.

Jonah Complex 2.0

Additionally, Abraham Maslow’s “The Jonah Complex” is “the fear of success which prevents self-actualization, or the realization of one’s potential. It is the fear of one’s own greatness, the evasion of one’s destiny, or the avoidance of exercising one’s talents.”

Summarily for me, God “orchestrated” patiently: 

• 13 firings — 11 Huntsville pink slips!
• Never once any job promotions in 39 employment years; yet
• Numerous industry, company awards to precede most of those firings, to remind me of my potential, but not at that workplace!

“The Sadim Touch”

Still “leaning to my own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5), I chased business partnerships and freelance assignments, only to cause not only me but my partners’ downfall. Finally following successive failures, I told them, “I’m the problem, the Jonah, and the only way that you’ll succeed is to throw me overboard – like Jonah” (Jonah 1:11-13). In the process of chasing these well-intentioned yet under-capitalized business ventures, I amassed credit debt forcing VISA to deactivate my privileges.

God was employing the Sadim (opposite of Midas!) Touch: every income-generating thing I touched tarnished and failed.

Finally, . . .

One January 2018 Friday night while praying, God directed me to a dust-collecting book Dad gave me in 1991, The Divine Art of Preaching, defined as “the divinely-ordained power of personal testimony.” 

I looked at both my rollercoastering and my book, 7 Steps, and declared finally, “Well, I guessed I’m s’posed to preach.” 

Almost immediately, . . .

I began pursuing homiletics coaching and classes. Simultaneously, a slow drip of speaking engagements, freelance writing assignments (such as TVW!), and seminar-workshop facilitations began to emerge, for me to address my unique first-person ministry: ego-holism recovering. 

Weeks ago, a national medical research institute called me to participate in its research study on freshly-minted older Americans! 

Nobody but God.

Now, Do As I Say, NOT As I Did!

Ego-holism recovering step #6 – “The Healing’s In The Revealing” – mandates we share our pains-turned-object-lessons, which is why I ran uncharacteristically out of the bank last Monday –

. . . Didn’t want Leteria, tellers and fellow customers witnessing a 65-year old acquitted credit-card inmate crying. Uncontrollably. And un-apologetically.