(Note from Juliet: Please forgive me, I think I've had these for about a week, but every time I had use of the internet I forgot to post them.
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Greetings and blessings to all of you,
It is now July of 2013. I have been down for a year and a half, and I have three years to go. That means I'm a third of the way through!
In thinking about this, I look back over the time I've spent in jail and prison and evaluate my time spent. Three main activities stand out that I've invested myself in - reading, prayer, and world development.
I love the fact that I have all the time I want to read all I want - that's been one of the great blessings of this time - and I've done what I can to make sure I avail myself of that investment opportunity. I estimate that in this year and a half I've likely read well over 500 books. Not all the best, and I definitely wouldn't recommend them all. But there have been a voluminous number of incredibly good ones which have improved who I am substantially. The books you all have sent in have been among my greatest treasures (along with the pictures and letters).
I have learned a tremendous amount about prayer through the books I've read on the subject since I've been down, but nowhere near the amount I've learned through practical application. Especially leading up to my trial and during the hard times of my early incarceration when I really had nothing else to do with my time but pray, when God was my closest and most intimate friend in the most real way possible, I discovered an intimate and passionate prayer life that I never had before. I know that my spiritual discoveries were not due to any great spiritual power of my own, but due to God's grace and blessing, and the prayers of all of you who have lifted me up and interceded for my walk with God. Those are the prayers which God has answered most abundantly, and the prayers I most covet. Do not think that the race has been won, or that I have reached my goal. I am so far from what I desire from and in God I am most often in despair of ever reaching it. But I have faith and I believe that as He has given me the grace to will, He also will give me the grace to do as well. Do not cease to pray for me - more than anything else I hunger for your passionate intercessory prayers on my behalf.
As for my world development, I am in ecstasies over the progress I have made. Even despite the amount of material I have lost and which I have had to build upon or reconstruct through memory, I have made Ithylak a work of wonder (if I do say so myself), and I am not slowing down by any means. Soon I intend to start writing the stories again, and my plan is to have completed at least one of my novels while in here. That means I'm going to need test-readers and editors galore... any volunteers?
I do not view these years as time wasted or stolen from me. I view them as opportunities to invest in my future. I have many more ideas and plans of what I want to do in these next three years. Continue to pray for my productivity, strength, and diligence to fulfill those plans.
In His name and in His hope and peace,
Jaymes Lauser aka Sir Emeth Mimetes
Greetings and felicitations in Christ,
May God bless you and keep you all in His mercy and grace. May His grace and strength abound in you more and more. May His love abundantly overflow in your lives, and may His light shine ever brighter for His glory and the salvation of those around you. May His glory be revealed to you in ever more intimate nearness and friendship. May your lives be sanctified and purified from all that keeps you from His holy presence. May your prayers find power and effectiveness, may they be imbued with His passion and fervency. May your eyes be enlightened to see as He sees, that the sins in your life and in the world raise bile in your throat, sicken you to your stomach, and revolt you to your core. May it anger you and fire you with indignation and passion for His holiness and lawful judgments. May your bones kindle with the burning drive to work His will in your life and to do only as He is pleased with you. May your soul earnestly hunger and thirst for the beauty of His Word; may your heart yearn for the teaching of His Holy Spirit as you read His Word. May your choices always be for His intimacy instead of for your fleshly lusts; may they always be for His service instead of for your sinful bondage. May each and every one of you catch the vision that He so longs for you to see - that He yearns for you to be as near to Him as any of the great men of God, and the only thing keeping you back is yourself. You are made to be intimate with Yehovah God. You are chosen and called out from the world as His children, destined for one purpose: to be intimate and united with Him. That is His plan, His purpose, His passion. There is nothing He sets as a higher priority than your growth in Him - else why would He willingly humble Himself and lay His glory in the dust and submit His immortality to death for that end? His Holiness is the gift He longs to give you, the goodness He longs to bestow on you, so defiling it would be contrary to His purpose. Therefore we must be sanctified and purified in order to enter into that great and immeasurable Life of intimacy with Him. It then hinges on our choice. Do we desire Him? We may want the end result, but do we want the sacrifice that is necessary to gain that result? Every temptation therefore is an opportunity for us to choose - to choose our Saviour, or to choose our destruction. So let us pray that by His grace we may both will and do of His good pleasure, that His glory may be ignited in us so that the choice is made easy. For we are frail and stupid creatures, prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love. Let us pray together for the liberty and freedom of life in Him. For the true independence and liberty is freedom from sin, freedom from slavery to our flesh, freedom from bondage to the worthless and despicable temporary pleasures of this world. Let us set our eyes on following the perfect law of liberty, that we may be free to do the righteousness which we crave to do, free to walk in newness of life, free to follow in the footsteps of our Saviour.
Happy Independence Day, and may the God of all Comfort make you free indeed!
In fervent love knitting me together with you,
Jaymes Lauser aka Sir Emeth Mimetes
