Enrolled in God's School of Ministry

By Lee Yates

When God calls you into His school, He is actually placing you in isolation. God removes you from your workplace, He removes your relationships (family, friends), and He takes away your finances. After removing these, you are completely without. Everything and everyone you used to depend on is gone. You feel like you are all alone in this world. You have times when you want to share your thoughts with someone, but people just don't understand where you are coming from. You feel like the whole world is against you. You are on the outside looking in...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Yates
• Release date: Jan 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466123380

Lee Yates

Lee lives in sunny southwest Florida with his wife and Persian cat. He enjoys traveling, playing drums, and spending time at the beach.

Book preview

ENROLLED IN GOD’S

SCHOOL OF MINISTRY

Lee Yates

Copyright 2012

by Lee Yates

Smashwords Edition

PREFACE

I would like to take this time to explain exactly what it is to be enrolled in God’s School of Ministry. You would think of it as being all fun and exciting. It’s true, there are times of fun and there are also times of excitement, but I would like to talk about the other side.

When God calls you into his school, He is actually placing you in isolation. God removes you from your workplace, He removes your relationships (family, friends), and He takes away your finances. After removing these, you are completely without. Everything and everyone you used to depend on is gone. You feel like you are all alone in this world. You have times when you want to share your thoughts with someone, but people just don’t understand where you are coming from. You feel like the whole world is against you. You are on the outside looking in. I’ve tried talking with other pastors, but they have walked away from me. I thought for certain a pastor would understand.

Reading this, you would get the impression that God did not love me, but you could not be more wrong. God separated me so He could have me all to Himself. He has removed all outside influences. God wants me to learn from Him and no other sources. The reason God has taken away my income is so I would have to rely on Him and only Him.

God says I am to suffer for a little while and He wants to prove to me His word is good and true and He will provide all my needs.

After spending a few months in God’s School, you start to fight with your flesh. My flesh is telling me to get a job and help support my wife, while at the same time my spirit is telling me to stand still. This becomes a constant struggle. All the suffering and struggling and pain I am enduring are found in the Bible. I know God will give me the strength and courage to get through. I am so blessed to have a wife who understands me. She, too, is going through the same suffering.

I felt I could not go on another day. I was even to the point of asking God to take me home. I hope this shows the kind of pain I was experiencing during this time. I thought by writing these words it would help me to feel better. It has lifted up my spirit to the Heavens! I am also hoping by writing this it will reach someone who might be going through a similar kind of pain, and encourage them to continue reading and studying the Bible. Meanwhile, I continue to be still and patiently wait for God to bring our miracle breakthrough.

As I write this book, I have information and personal experiences that I would like to share with you. These experiences are all true and have not been exaggerated.

Before I continue, I would like to thank my wife, Gayle, for staying close to me during this journey and for trying to understand what was taking place in my life. This book could not have been written if it were not for her sharing these amazing events with me. I want to express that God is the author of this book, and that I am just the writer. Give glory to God!

CHAPTER ONE

In the Beginning…

I was born and raised in the Washington, DC area in a neighborhood that could be compared to Leave It to Beaver. As I was growing up, I realized that I had a speech impairment. I stuttered quite a bit. This is something that I have battled most of my life.

My mother was stricken with cancer and died when I was fifteen years old. This age in a boy’s life is difficult as it is, but having your mother die almost proved to be too much. I have an older sister who was married and had children, so this left just my father and me at home together. My father was raised the old fashioned way – go to work, provide food, shelter and clothing for his family. When it came to raising the children, this was left up to my mother. To me, my mother was everything rolled up in one. She was not only my mother; she was also my best friend. Due to this loss, my stuttering became even worse. I do not blame my father for raising my sister and me this way, because he was doing the very the best he knew how. He showed his love by providing for his family. During the first year without my mother, my father was left with all the cooking and housework. I was so sick of eating hot dogs, baked beans and applesauce! In less than a year, my father had remarried. I believe there was never any love involved on either side. She was looking for someone to help take care of her financially and to provide for her four kids. My father was searching for someone to keep him company and to do the cooking. I believe that my father was feeling insecure and totally lost.

My personality had begun to change. I literally placed myself in a shell, and secluded myself in my room away from friends and everyday life. I slowly began to sink into depression.

My father owned a printing company that had been in the family for three generations and I was waiting to be the fourth. I worked at the printing company part-time until I graduated from high school, then full time until I was thirty-one years old. To make a very long story short, my father’s new wife soon had him in the palm of her hand and worked to turn him against me. I guess you could say he was brainwashed. My father was strong in so many ways, but was so weak when it came to her. My father’s need for companionship far outweighed his interest in raising his son. My father’s new wife was able to convince him that I was not worthy of taking over the business and that I was only interested in his money.

When I was 19 years old, I moved out on my own and was introduced to my future wife, Gayle, at about the same time. A year and a half later, we were married. It seemed like life was really looking up. But after just a few years, I was without the family business. My father’s wife had taken it all – a small fortune.

Due to the stress I was under, I landed in the hospital in traction with a herniated disc. To make matters even worse, Gayle’s mother was suffering with cancer at the same time. Gayle and her mother were extremely close. Gayle’s father had died when she was just a baby and she had no brothers or sisters. It was always just Gayle & her mom until I came along and they welcomed me into their little family. I was treated more like a son than a son-in-law. After she had been sick for over a year, Gayle’s mother came to live with us. Going through this illness with her brought back memories of my own mother’s fight with cancer.

It was while my mother-in-law was in the hospital that I had my first real encounter with God (although I didn’t recognize it at the time). I felt a sudden urge to go to the church where we were married and ask the minister to visit my mother-in-law in the hospital. This was so unlike me because I only attended church once in a while – usually Christmas and Easter. I was not what you would call a Christian. I had been baptized by water when I was 13, but I never really understood what this meant. I had not accepted Jesus into my life. I had always thought that if someone went to church once in a while, it would satisfy God. I believe that when Gayle’s mother was visited in the hospital, this is when she experienced God and handed herself over to the Lord. She passed away not long after this. I felt like I had lost my second mother.

Gayle and I decided this would be a good time to move from the area where we had spent 30 years. I no longer worked for the family printing company and Gayle’s mother had passed away. I was not on the best of terms with my father. There was nothing to keep us there. Ever since our honeymoon in Florida, Gayle had wanted to live there. We put our house on the market and it sold only two weeks later. We took this as a sign of it being the right thing to do. What we did not realize was that we were both trying to run away from ourselves. We had decided on Orlando, Florida. After we arrived there, we decided we should take a couple of weeks to relax since we had recently gone through so much stress in our lives.

After two weeks, it was time to face reality. Gayle was able to find work very quickly. I had