My wife and I are taking a trip to Colorado for the rest of the week. I am going to show her some of the places I have hiked and would love to go to hike. We will also rest and recreate. I should be back online early next week.
Be blessed in the Lord my brethren.
by Mike Ratliff
30 Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:30-32 (NASB)
I do all of my blogging on WordPress.com. I have been on WordPress since 2006. Over the last few months I have been getting hints that they were changing things. The first was when they changed the default editor to a “Block Editor” which I absolutely hate and refuse to use. I found a way to get the old editor to work and that is what I am typing on right now. However, today WordPress changed the entire background admin interface. I can no longer “work” with my posts the way I have done for the past 14-15 years. I found myself becoming very frustrated and angry. I put together tonight’s post in pieces and got it out there then edited it several times as I became more and more familiar with “where things are” in the “NEW” system.
In any case, I hope it is readable and as I compared my attitude and how I reacted to all this with my last several posts I did some praying and repenting. As I did this I asked myself where that “geek” was that can solve just about any computer issue (just kidding). I then put on that “hat” I use at work to solve problems and found that about 80-90% of what I had got used to in the old system was still available. It was just in different areas, etc. I just had to change how I did some things to get things done. God is good. I rejoiced as I went through this and now I pray that I can use this new interface to continue to write for God’s glory alone and to provide His message to the suffering Church.
Soli Deo Gloria!
After I wrote my first book, Walking the Walk by Faith, back in 2004-2005, I started a web site to help promote it. Then I started a blog on Blogger. It was as I began posting things on Blogger that I came into contact with Ingrid at the old Slice of Laodicia blog. One of her admins was a man named Jim Bublitz. He seemed to take an interest in helping me. He encouraged me to start commenting more on Slice and I did. Ken Silva was part of that as well, but Jim seemed to be the one who was always ready to “counsel” me and discourage me from “getting into it” with certain other people on Slice. It was also his advice which I took to move over to WordPress. He didn’t know it, but I had been working on a second book and I already had a title for it, Possessing the Treasure. When I got my new blog online in 2006 I named it after that book. It is no longer in print. However, if you are interested in it you can read it here. Both Jim and Ken have preceded us to Heaven. Ingrid is out of the discernment work business, but we are still friends on Facebook.
In 2005 I self-published a book titled “Walking the Walk by Faith” This was two years before I became involved with discernment blogging. It was a full year before Ken Silva and I became friends. In those two years I matured a great deal. After I joined the Christian Research Network team “reality” set in. I looked back on what I put in that book and realized that it did contain the truth, but it had not really prepared me for the brutality of discernment ministry. However, as things have settled down a bit I and that book has been “out of print” for over ten years I have been asked if I can provide access to it again. I have gone through the manuscript and cleaned it up some. I shudder at how naive I was about some things when I wrote it, but I have left some things in like interviews I did and referenced people who are no longer with us. My understanding of how to be in the fire as a soldier of our Lord Jesus Christ has certainly matured a great deal since I wrote that book, but there is still a great deal of truth in there. Here is a link to the e-book. To God be the Glory.
I will be traveling over the next two weeks. I am taking this week off for Thanksgiving and will travel to Washington, DC to visit my son. When I get back I will be traveling to Denver for meetings at our company’s home office. Be blessed in the Lord.
I am taking a few days off to spend some time in the wilderness, hiking, climbing tall mountains, and, hopefully, taking some good photos with a good friend. I should be back blogging early next week.
I will be taking the next two weeks off to visit family and relax.
I will be taking a short vacation and will return Monday May 8th. I have set my blog to repost my series on the T.U.L.I.P. that I posted back in 2014 beginning this evening finishing on Sunday the 7th. Enjoy! Where I will be does not support internet access very well so I may or may not be able to respond to comments until I return so I am disabling comments for all posts until then.
In 2007 Ken Silva invited me to part of the team at CRN (Christian Research Network). It was hard work for awhile. Several of us had to grow up fast because that was right in the middle of the Purpose Driven and Emergent Church takeover of Evangelicalism. There were untold casualties during that time, but God is good and He preserved us. However, Ken went home to be with the Lord a few years ago and a few of us have simply kept posting at CRN as our ministries have continued.
I got an email today from Marsha West the new owner of CRN. She has already been functioning as the managing editor for us for quite some time and I really appreciate her. Here is a link to our new “About page.“
Due to the Christmas and New Years holidays and me being on vacation, I will be taking a two week sabbatical from writing and blogging. See you after the first of the year.
My wife and I are traveling to Washington D.C. in the morning to visit our son. We will be back on Monday. I will try to post again either then or on Tuesday.
When I first began this ministry I started with a website (www.mikeratliff.com) then after a several months I got my own domain name for that site. After several more months I added a blog at Blogger.com. I kept both of those sites running for a couple of years then just before I came onboard the CRN team in 2007 I moved everything to this site https://mikeratliff.wordpress.com. Right from the getgo I realized how hard it was to maintain all three sites so I phased out my support of my blogger.com site, but still kept some things over at my original website. I always had a dream of moving my domain name that I owned over to this WordPress blog however. Last night I did just that. I have emptied out all content from both the blogger.com site and my old website and now if you put “www.mikeratliff.com” in your browser, you will be redirected here to https://mikeratliff.wordpress.com. For most of you this probably means little to nothing, but for me I can now tell people at church how to find my site much easier than before. 🙂 To God be glory!
It is with a heavy heart that I must share news with all of you that I received earlier this evening. I received an email from one of our leaders at Christian Research Network to call a phone number. The message simply stated that it was about Ken. I called the number and was told that our leader, Ken Silva had died, probably yesterday evening. He was found this morning. I am devastated and am grieving. Ken and Jim Bublitz were instrumental in getting me started in this ministry now they are both with the Lord. He will be missed. I have no details about a funeral or anything like that. Please be in prayer for his family and for CRN and the CRN family. – Mike Ratliff
My brethren, my dear friend Jon Cardwell is launching a pretty big free promotion for Christ and Him Crucified at the end of this month, September 30th through October 1st. If you don’t already have a copy, You can check the book out by CLICKING HERE.
If you know anyone who would be interested in getting a free copy of the book when it is made available during its two free days, please let them know. A note from Jon, “If you already have a copy of the book, I sure would appreciate an honest review on Amazon.com. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. A couple of sentences will do. I welcome any constructive criticism of my writing as sales of my books help to supplement my income so I may continue to serve in the ministry. (You’ve probably noticed that the cover art has been changed– please let me know what you think of the new cover). Thank you so much.” OTHER ITEMS OF INTEREST
May the Lord continue to bless and keep you. |
Possessing the Treasure 