Preface

The Lord is good, and He is faithful.

It all started from the time I packed away all my Christian books, tapes and CDs and put them in storage because I was angry with God. I thought that I deserved better from One whom I served for a long time, though not always faithfully, I must admit.

I had been a Christian for over twenty years and had for many years played drums in Sunday worship in various evangelical churches, mostly on a regular basis. However, the worship part had stopped making sense for me and I was contemplating resigning my music ministry.

Recently, I have been struggling with profound personal issues and was on the verge of giving up hope when I felt the hand of God intervene in an unexpected way.

One day I stopped at a traffic light and saw a car with a sticker advertising a Christian radio channel that I had not heard of before. I put on the radio to listen to this channel and I heard a preacher talk about Jonah. He said that one of the lessons of the book of Jonah was that if you run away from God, not only will you hurt yourself, but you will hurt others as well.

That was the first time I realized that God had a task for me to do. Not long after that, I attended a revival meeting. That night I went home, laid myself on the floor and said to God, “Lord, I cannot go lower than this. Please look down on your servant and help me to deal with this pain.” Finally, I asked, “Lord, what is it that you want from me?”

Several days later, I was praying when something inside said, “One hundred poems.” It was a faint but compelling voice. It was daunting too, so I quickly dismissed it as my own imagination. I had never written so many poems in my life. I had written about thirty poems in a span of twenty years, so this to me would be a formidable task by any stretch of the imagination.

But the voice was persistent. I said, “Lord, this is impossible. It cannot be done.” Then I found myself writing the first poem, and then the second, all the while I was pouring my heart out to God. I found I was finishing one poem each day, and I was very surprised by the quality of the poems. Two months later I had written fifty poems. I had poured my heart out in these poems and each day there was new inspiration from God. However, I had exhausted all that I needed to say to God and, what is more, found that the last poem drew all the previous ones to a conclusion.

I was stuck. I still had another fifty poems to write and went several days without writing a single word. I had writer’s block. It was very frustrating, especially since the inspiration had previously been coming on a daily basis. I prayed and prayed, but nothing came. Soon after, God told me that I was now ready for my journey. Before I could go on this journey, He had wanted to heal me and equip me with the tools necessary to undertake the next step and to ensure that it was a success. The previous fifty poems had been the easy part. However, they were the biggest part because they were the most important one. God wanted me to take a journey with Him on a mountain, but I felt that now I would have to work much harder than before.

The inspiration resumed on a daily basis, once I realized that this was what God had in store for me. I had never once, while writing any of these poems, planned what I would be writing next. The details of the journey unfolded with each passing day, and each day was as exciting as the one before.

Finally, the daily inspirations led me to new and exciting discoveries about God. I tried to describe these faithfully in my poetry. There were some “Aha!” moments in the book, which for me came as a very pleasant surprise. In one instance, I had an inspiration that I never expected and did not understand its meaning, yet I found myself writing like I knew exactly what it meant. I really had to think hard about this one, but when I did, the answer was so simple and profound that it enabled me to finish the second part of the book and set the direction for the final part.

I invite the reader to share this journey with me and discover some of the qualities of God through the poetry that I was inspired to write. God asks us to do impossible things, and gives us the ability, power and perseverance to carry these tasks out. The whole book took just over four months to write. I attribute this amazing feat to Him alone and not to any wisdom or abilities on my part. In fact, this is how we can be sure that something is from God, in that He asks from us the impossible, and then enables us to do it.

The Lord is wonderful and faithful. And He is good.

Ned Jacob
Scarborough
October 2005