Always Remember God Thought of You First; Do the Same for Him

Michael J. Clark

God thought of you first. He created the world for you first. He made the sun and the moon to shine first. He caused the oceans to rise and fall and the rivers to flow for you first. He caused vegetation to grow and brought man up out of the dust first. He gave man (You) dominion over the land and its animals first. He gave you a free will first and when you didn’t act accordingly, He sent His only Son to teach you first and die for you first.

Now you need to think of Him and His goodness to you first. Give Him your tithe that is due Him first.

He provided you with everything you need. Now He waits for you to accept and love Him just as He first loved you. You couldn’t do what He did, creating the world and forming life, but do what little you can by thanking, honoring, acknowledging and praising Him for what He could and did do for you first. And in return He who created all things, and you, will bless you exceedingly first.

The Guide & the Land

(Sweet Memories)

Michael J. Clark

I have hiked the same hills for fifty-five years now. In days past -- the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s -- I hiked and hunted them alone. My soul companions were the Lord and His wild creatures. Sunshine, rain and snow, I explored the hills and their every hillock and crevice. They were no match for my young legs and inquisitive spirit. I left no coulee or draw unknown to my memory. They became named and numbered with a host of memories -- a thousand hidden places and ten fold that many memories.

I became a young Audubon, stalking and observing each bird and animals’ species with wings and legs therein. It was easy to identify each of them at great distances by their patterns of flight and movements. Nothing escaped my young expectant eyes…my nostrils soaking up the air and my ears in tune to the crickets and their moods.

Now fifty-five years later, after cutting cedar posts, fencing , riding horseback searching for and moving cattle, hunting everything from turkeys to huns, sharp-tail grouse, coyotes, deer, antelope, elk and moss agates, and watching sunrises, sunsets and lightning storms, fighting fires, and enduring blizzards, floods and droughts, I have to smile to myself inside when one of my hunters and I have taken a couple mile stalk for a mule deer, and he says to me, “Do you know where the pickup is, cause I sure don’t,” or ”Are you sure we are on the right ridge,” or “Wouldn’t it be easier to drag this deer over this way?” These are the times when I have to say, “Trust me; trust me!” Or as a last resort, when they have tried my patience with, “Are you sure?” Then I’ll smile and say, “Walk down there and take a look,” or “You can go that way, but I think I’ll go this way.” God love em’ if they only knew the memories these old hills have provided me and the trials we’ve been through together.

God has provided us with the company of the grand, solemn, beautiful hills. They fascinate and grow upon us, and one has a feeling and a love for them which one has for nothing else.

God's Montana: Land of Plenty

By Michael J. Clark

Plenty of country to roam
Plenty of fences to fix
Plenty of coulees and draws to hunt
Plenty of sunshine
Plenty of hills to look for agates
Plenty of solitude
Plenty of time to read God's Word
There's no changing
God's Montana
When she's wet
She's wet
When she's dry
She's dry
Hot when she's hot
And frigid for awhile
When winter stops by
But all in all very
Satisfying

Montana , I love Her
Like I've never
Loved anything else
An abundance of
Wild game, a lack of people,
Much time to reflect
And do some wintertime reading
Four seasons to work and enjoy
Plenty of time to pray
And be thankful
You're living under The Big Sky,
"God's Big Sky"

The Cross

By Michael J. Clark

At speaking I'm fair
Pronunciation not too bad
At grammar I'm poor
Hanging participles
And incomplete sentences
Are my plight

But my heart is strong
When it comes to seeking the Lord

I will build a cross
To honor his
Ultimate sacrifice,
It will be made to last,
Of strong, heavy, sturdy wood
Strategically nailed
And hewn to fit,
Measured to stand tall,
To be seen for miles
Not hidden,
But placed on a hill,
A hill much like Golgotha

The cross's heft
Is immense, but it has
To be shouldered and placed
Eyed to be straight and true
Then tamped and retamped

It will become a perch for Eagles -
Christ's sign of victory
It will be set
To face to the southeast toward Israel,
God's chosen land,
His chosen People!

On a barren hill it will stand
To show the world
There is hope,
Hope in God's greatest gift
To man - his ultimate promise -
"Believe in Me and be blessed
With salvation and eternal life"

The Lord's Ways

By Michael J. Clark

Thank you, Lord, for Your ways
For they are the paths to righteousness
That lead to Your eternal paradise
And when faithful men
Come to fully understand them
They have come full circle into "Your fold"
Where the wise sheep obey their shepherd
And come to good pasture
Where wolves (Satan) are of no concern
Where fresh water (the Word)
And lush vegetation (God's promise)
And contentment abound

God's Reassuring Dream

by Michael J. Clark

Dear Lord,

I thank you for the blessed opportunity to be conceived in your eye and to have lived here on your earth for the time allotted me. Your earth is a beautiful intricate creation and quite simply put, a staging ground for a far greater eternal paradise dwarfing all expectations we have so far known.

In a little while those here today will hear the song "If Heaven" by Andy Griggs, and to those who believe in your Son, Jesus Christ, it's not "if," but "when." Lord, in 1993 when my wife passed away and the children lost their mother, I was in great despair. I asked you for reassurance. I asked you for hope -- a sign. It came in the form of a dream a few weeks later. It was the most wonderful dream I had ever dreamt throughout my life.

Your dream took me down a street of palisade like dwellings that I could look into over a brick-like curb. They were the most beautifully ornately decorated dwellings I had ever seen. Quite simple in structure, they were beautifully furnished in brass, gold, purple, and ivory. Their richness and hues of color were so far beyond the same colors on this earth that it was almost unfathomable. And the feeling of goodness and wellbeing that I felt was beyond anything I had ever experienced here on Earth. The only way I can describe it is to say that it was a beautiful floating euphoric feeling of total and ultimate goodness. If I could have combined all the good feelings and then taken them times a million ten-thousand's times ten-thousand. It was total euphoric contentment. And when I awoke from your dream, I wanted to go back there into the dream again.

I did not want to be here on Earth, but instead back where I had been - but I couldn't. I was to stay here for awhile to raise my children and tell them and others about this wonderful contentment I had experienced. It was a drop of your love, showing me not to worry; but be patient, live the rest of my life and wait.

Dear folks, the day has come "when" I am living that dream. For as Christ reassured his disciples in John 4: 1-4, "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you for myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know." In His dream, God showed me a glint of heaven and what I believe was a short preview of "a peace which surpasses all understanding."

Dear folks, please hold steadfast to your belief and join me in this most wondrous place. Be patient; lend your ear to the ways of the Lord, for heaven is just over the hill and around the bend.

---

This dream was dreamt in September of 1993 and finally written down in June of 2006. It has been burnt indelibly into my memory. I have relived its clarity and beauty each day since the day it was dreamt. When I asked God for reassurance, I had no idea what kind of a blessing or how much of a blessing He could bestow for eternity on that very word. "To reassure" means assure anew - and He has done that daily in a way of such grand manner that only He could do.

Remember that with God all things are possible. His goodness surrounds you from the wooden pew you are sitting in; to the water you drink to replenish your cells, and to your eye that beholds it. He created it all, for He is the Alpha and the Omega - the beginning and the end.

Life is like a circle. God created me so that He could inspire me with a reassuring dream that in turn would be written down. And that written word would help reassure man kind about God's eternal goodness.

Our Ripening

By Michael J. Clark

This refreshing pre-autumn Sunday morning
As young Magpies cackle out in the yard,
I sit reading Isaiah 58:6-14,
"Blessings of true worship,"
Such bold, beautiful and forthright words

An immeasurable flood of contentment
Falls over me
The year's hay crop is in,
The grain harvest is yet to come
So it is with the Lord's work -
We are all souls
In different stages of "Ripening"

My German Shorthair dog, Fritzie,
Sits looking out the picture window
Pensively waiting for
The freshly frosted fields of autumn,
When Hungarian Partriges
Will flush before her in
Fields of canted golden sunlight

We all wait,
Knowing the "best is yet to come"
When we are ripe enough for harvest
And by God's grace
We are ready to become
Part of "the bread of life"

August 15, 2004

God's Big Way

By Michael J. Clark

God does things in a big way
Look at His universe -
Where does it end?
Can a human being count the stars
That fill His galaxies
Or the raindrops that fall each day on His earth
Or the flowers that grace His earthly hills
Let alone the seeds that grow
All the grasses of His world

We as humans are but a small part
Of His universe
But to Him, one of His most important creations
For He wants us to enjoy
His created world
To work and nourish the Earth's bounty
And reap its rewards -
To thank and praise Him
And to never forget His everlasting promise
That someday we will spend eternity
In His strong loving arms

Where the Mountains Reach up Almost to Heaven

By Michael J. Clark

I live where the mountains
Reach up to almost touch heaven,
Each morning the sun rises from the east
Through those Crazy Mountain peaks
To shed a new day's light
On a rugged cross on a barren hill,
A cross chosen and
Placed there to resemble
The one your Son suffered
And died on for all of us

The sun which warms the wood
In that cross throughout each day
Also warms my heart because
I know you gave your Son to us to
Change and warm the hearts
Of men, which is done
Throughout the world day by day

As the sun sets in the west
At day's end
Those craggy peaks to the east
Take on a majestic rich purple hue
And as the last streaking shrouds of
Light illuminate that rugged cross
We are reminded of your everlasting light
In the heavens which awaits each
Believer when the sun sets
On him and his days
Beneath those "mountains that reach up
To almost touch heaven"

God's Great Love

By Michael J. Clark

If ever love could be perfect it would be fully committed by someone
that was honest, gentle, kind and true,
supplied by one of purest stature and of best intentions, by one that is
ultimately forgiving and understanding.

It would be given by someone that everyone admires and respects,
that has the qualities that cannot be found in normal man,
that someone would have to possess all of the qualities and be willing
to offer this kind of dedicated unrelenting, perfect, forgiving love
forever. How could any person refuse such an offer in a lifetime
perfect love.

God has promised you that great love - not only that, but he also
wants to give it to you eternally in a paradise which is above and
beyond all all of your grandest expectations.

How can anyone in their right mind not be willing to accept a great
love such as this - all he asks is that you believe in his promises and
accept him and his Great Godly Love.

All Things Come from a Seed

By Michael J. Clark

So: When the opportunity arises,
Plant a seed in each person's
Heart that you meet,
Just a small seed,
But a seed that will stay with them

As long as it takes for the soil
In their heart to become fertile
Enough for it to sprout
In the fervent hope that it may bear
Much good fruit and save their soul
And produce more seed
Hopefully a hundred fold
To be spread for the ultimate good
To do likewise for the rest of mankind