To be continued…
I drafted a book back in 2021, and it has been shelved there ever since. In 2020, I received a cancer scare that made me realize that if I don't survive my kids’ adulthood. They would never really know what their mom was like growing up through all the years. My kiddos were really young at the time, and they needed to learn how to write well and sight words. Not heavy stuff like how to navigate your first real breakup or moving across the world at 18.
So in this book, I told what I remember at particular points in my life, and have been planning to do follow-up books and make a series. Then life happened, and close to the end of this book journey, it just needed to be printed; and I totally neglected this entire idea and just let it simmer.
When are you going to put out the book? Ain't you writing a book? Or was that just Journaling? Those comments and questions gave me the momentum to at least reread change up stuff and just keep working on it. But the book just still remained unpublished and was not being shared. December 2024 comes, and I get an email from the publishing company. You need to do something with this book, or we will deactivate your account. Excuse you... not happening.
Again, I do everything to get to print, and now every day I am fighting with the publishing company because of the book cover. Of course, if I reach back out to the artist from years ago, I get nothing. And at this point, I am wrestling with the idea of a cover revamp. How did I get here? What do I do? Well, a friend said today, TJ, pray for yourself? Okay....
But she had a point. You know the power of pray and you know that when you pray for others about anything, things change. You speak the words of God in the situation, and God works on your behalf because you know he would. So why don't you do it for yourself?
The student has become the teacher! Her words reminded me of Daniel, yes, the same Daniel who was thrown in the Lion's Den. He just wanted to worship the true and living God and was almost eaten by lions. Story for another time...
Daniel was praying and fasting about something. Have you ever heard about the Daniel Fast? You are just eating vegetables and drinking water. That is the gist of it. So Daniel is praying and fasting for more than two weeks. I believe it was like more than a month. Then, finally, Gabriel, the messenger angel, said God had to send Michael the warrior angel to clear the path for his visitation to Daniel. He is like dude, I've been trying to get here with the answer to your prayer. But a full-scale spiritual battle was fought to get this message to you. It would have been a lot sooner, but whoever or whatever is against you surely did try to stop this message from getting here.
This story always got me because I can't even remember what the message was, and to be honest, that is neither here nor there. It was the fact that an angel of the Most High was sent to intervene on my behalf so I could collect what God wants to do next.
Follow guys, almost there...
When we pray and sometimes fast, the authority that is given to us human beings causes God to send his fighting angels to clear the path for us. To help us achieve more than just a breakthrough, but to change the entire system. My book and all the others to come, when it finally gets out there for the world to read. Will do some amazing work in many lives. It will be my message that could have gotten here sooner, but needed the help of prayers and fasting to not just be out there but to really make a difference.
Remember, as we enter this season of prayer and fast, that Daniel was a captive in a foreign land, but God used him to not only prophecy what is to come but also to witness to the people of that nation, making them wonder, ‘Who God is Daniel really serving?’
Daniel Chapter 10, verses 12-13 NLT; “Then he said,” Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in the heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia.”
And that’s what the bible says, not TJ