Well, It's Been A Long, Strange Trip..But We're Back! All about "The Kingdom Way"

Well, I don't know what your excuse for not blogging much lately is, but here's mine. I wrote a book on  the process of discovering your destiny, cleverly called, The Kingdom Way: Discovering The Path To Your Destiny! Don't believe me? Here's the cover:

Want to know more? Go to Amazon.com to look at and/or purchase it,  for a modest $19.99, which is a heck of a deal for a 398 page book. 

Had to use my pretentious author name, C. Wayne Stewart. That sounds better than Cliff Stewart, right?

The book is a twelve week study of the aspects and steps to discovering your destiny, and takes you from the place of not understanding your own path and worldview to having a focused life and passing on a multi-generational vision and call. Basically, it's a book about everything, as in, life, the universe and everything. 

The Kindle version will be out in a month or so. I'm workin' on it! 

Here is the back cover blurb about the book:

Who am I? 

Why am I here? 

What am I here to do? 

Is there a God? 

If so, does He have a plan for my life?

The Kingdom Way is a book intended to help those on the path of life to begin to answer these important questions for themselves. The book is designed as a twelve week course, equivalent to one season of your life, with five studies per week and questions to answer that develop into a treasure trove of information about your particular life call and path. Join author C. Wayne Stewart as he explores the amazing possibilities available to those willing to take the journey called 

The Kingdom Way.

Along the way, you will discover:

 - The skills and information necessary to honestly seek God

-  How to truly see God through creation and His personal attributes

 - That when you meet God, you are finally able to see yourself

 - That you can hear the voice of God and what that means in your life

 - The incredible power that is released when your will and God’s will are aligned

 - What it means when God has spoken to you for a specific purpose, or call

 - How God’s dream and vision for you unfolds into a compelling life of effective impact 

 - The wonderful gifts, talents and motivations God has given you to accomplish your life purpose

-  The skill and ability to perceive processes, times and seasons

 - An understanding of what it will take to fight for your dream and to persevere until it is done

 - What it might look like to live in the preferable future of a fulfilled dream, call, vision and destiny

 - How to live as a visionary leader

Whether you use it for personal or group study, The Kingdom Way will help you to know what God has uniquely designed you to do, what He is doing in the lives of others and how you can make a profound difference in the world. Take the challenge. Take 

The Kingdom Way. 

“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

To the house of the God of Jacob;

He will teach us His ways,

And we shall walk in His paths.”

 Isaiah 2:3

About the Author

C. Wayne Stewart is founder and president of Restoration Ministries in Centennial, Colorado and also serves on staff of Plumbline Ministries (Kansas City) with Brian Fenimore. He is a jazz fan, a lover of coffee, and an admitted Jesus Freak. His vision is to see people walk out their call and destiny in God to the full.

The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson, and read by Richard Burton

The Hound of Heaven

By Francis Thompson  (1859–1907)

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;    

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;    

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways    

    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears    

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.             5

      Up vistaed hopes I sped;    

      And shot, precipitated,    

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,    

  From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.    

      But with unhurrying chase,            10

      And unperturbèd pace,    

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,    

      They beat—and a Voice beat    

      More instant than the Feet—    

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’            15

          I pleaded, outlaw-wise,    

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,    

  Trellised with intertwining charities;    

(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,    

        Yet was I sore adread            20

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).    

But, if one little casement parted wide,    

  The gust of His approach would clash it to.    

  Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.    

Across the margent of the world I fled,            25

  And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,    

  Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;    

        Fretted to dulcet jars    

And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.    

I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;            30

  With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over    

        From this tremendous Lover—    

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!    

  I tempted all His servitors, but to find    

My own betrayal in their constancy,            35

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,    

  Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.    

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;    

  Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.    

      But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,            40

    The long savannahs of the blue;    

        Or whether, Thunder-driven,    

    They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,    

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—    

  Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.            45

      Still with unhurrying chase,    

      And unperturbèd pace,    

    Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,    

      Came on the following Feet,    

      And a Voice above their beat—            50

    ‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’    

I sought no more that after which I strayed    

  In face of man or maid;    

But still within the little children’s eyes    

  Seems something, something that replies,            55

They at least are for me, surely for me!    

I turned me to them very wistfully;    

But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair    

  With dawning answers there,    

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.            60

‘Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share    

With me’ (said I) ‘your delicate fellowship;    

  Let me greet you lip to lip,    

  Let me twine with you caresses,    

    Wantoning            65

  With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,    

    Banqueting    

  With her in her wind-walled palace,    

  Underneath her azured daïs,    

  Quaffing, as your taintless way is,            70

    From a chalice    

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’    

    So it was done:    

I in their delicate fellowship was one—    

Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.            75

  I knew all the swift importings    

  On the wilful face of skies;    

  I knew how the clouds arise    

  Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;    

    All that’s born or dies            80

  Rose and drooped with; made them shapers    

Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;    

  With them joyed and was bereaven.    

  I was heavy with the even,    

  When she lit her glimmering tapers            85

  Round the day’s dead sanctities.    

  I laughed in the morning’s eyes.    

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,    

  Heaven and I wept together,    

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;            90

Against the red throb of its sunset-heart    

    I laid my own to beat,    

    And share commingling heat;    

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.    

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.            95

For ah! we know not what each other says,    

  These things and I; in sound I speak—    

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.    

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;    

  Let her, if she would owe me,           100

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me    

  The breasts o’ her tenderness:    

Never did any milk of hers once bless    

    My thirsting mouth.    

    Nigh and nigh draws the chase,           105

    With unperturbèd pace,    

  Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;    

    And past those noisèd Feet    

    A voice comes yet more fleet—    

  ‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me!’           110

Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!    

My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,    

    And smitten me to my knee;    

  I am defenceless utterly.    

  I slept, methinks, and woke,           115

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.    

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,    

  I shook the pillaring hours    

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,    

I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—           120

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.    

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,    

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.    

  Yea, faileth now even dream    

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;           125

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist    

I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,    

Are yielding; cords of all too weak account    

For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.    

  Ah! is Thy love indeed           130

A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,    

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?    

  Ah! must—    

  Designer infinite!—    

Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?           135

My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;    

And now my heart is as a broken fount,    

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever    

  From the dank thoughts that shiver    

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.           140

  Such is; what is to be?    

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?    

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;    

Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds    

From the hid battlements of Eternity;           145

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then    

Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.    

  But not ere him who summoneth    

  I first have seen, enwound    

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;           150

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.    

Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields    

  Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields    

  Be dunged with rotten death?    

      Now of that long pursuit           155

    Comes on at hand the bruit;    

  That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:    

    ‘And is thy earth so marred,    

    Shattered in shard on shard?    

  Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!           160

  Strange, piteous, futile thing!    

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?    

Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),    

‘And human love needs human meriting:    

  How hast thou merited—           165

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?    

  Alack, thou knowest not    

How little worthy of any love thou art!    

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,    

  Save Me, save only Me?           170

All which I took from thee I did but take,    

  Not for thy harms,    

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.    

  All which thy child’s mistake    

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:           175

  Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’    

  Halts by me that footfall:    

  Is my gloom, after all,    

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?    

  ‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,           180

  I am He Whom thou seekest!    

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

What Really Satisfies Your Soul? A Kingdom Quote From Henry Blackaby

Have you ever heard people say they are experiencing a dry spell in their Christian life? What are they saying? Are they saying that the Lord ran out of water? It should never cross your mind that the fountain of living waters residing within you should ever be reduced to a trickle. You don’t need to run all over the country trying to find sources of spiritual refreshment. Conferences, retreats, and books can all bring encouragement; but if you are a Christian, the source of living water already resides within you. - Henry Blackaby