Tag Archives: testimony

Letters

Learning From the Past

I felt like I was being schooled as I drove across town. 

The guy on the podcast was talking about the Jesus Revolution movie and the Jesus People movement in which it's set. He made a dramatic statement that I've heard before, but this time it hit me like a freight train: 

• More than 80% of current pastors came to faith in Jesus during that move of God, even though many of them were not part of the Jesus People movement. 

It hit me strong enough that I tapped Pause on the podcast to think about it. "This shouldn't be a surprise to you, Son; you were there," and he reminded me of some things. 

And as I reflected on those days, Father reminded me of some things I hadn't paid attention to. For example, American culture was a mess. Sex was a dominant topic on people's mind (whether "free love" or advancing homosexuality or the sexes at war in the Women's Liberation movement). Jane Roe's lawsuit against Henry Wade for abortion was making it's way through the courts, destined for the Supreme Court. The political world was characterized by assassinations (two Kennedys & Martin Luther King), and the media had declared that God was dead. Riots filled campuses across the nation, hopelessness was rampant, and rebellion might have been the watchword for a generation.

"Does that sound familiar, Son?" and he reminded  me of some of the headlines I've read recently. 

But God.... It was into that mess that God stepped in. Holy Spirit began answering prayers in ways that church folk never expected and it blew up one tidy little Bible church after another, beginning with Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel, but it went well beyond that. Before long, there were flocks of people getting baptized in oceans and lakes and rivers and apartment swimming pools.

Since there was never an overly-precise definition of what exactly was part of the Jesus People movement and what wasn't, I can get away with saying that I was part of that movement. In point of fact, I was only one of several minor leaders of a tiny little eddy of that movement in a remote corner of the country (a Bible study I was part of exploded from one person to a couple of hundred). 

But I was part of it. And our little sparkle of light was only one of a magnificent firework display that Holy Spirit was setting off in our region. 

There was a Young Life group that was blowing up, some of the earliest Christian musicians kept showing up at the school offering free concerts where stories of Jesus captured students' attention. Several local churches were exploding with hungry newcomers, and many music pastors were hastily learning to play guitar.

As I write this, I'm remembering, and I have the benefit of fifty years of reflection. I remember thinking, "How could God bring so much good into such a nasty, sin-filled culture?" But he did. 

And as I drove across town, reminiscing, Father drew my attention to three facts: 

1) The culture was full of sex and sin and rebellion and anything-but-God. 

2) That was the climate that God chose to step in, and he stepped in first among the youth, among the "unreachable" generations. 

3) His invasion changed the nation, for generations even, though a good deal of what he was doing was not actually visible. In fact, it was decades later that I learned that the entire student leadership of one school had come to faith during those days. They had been serving as missionaries and pastors for many years. Or that one cheerleader with a rebellious streak and a sullied reputation told how she was wrestled to the ground and forced against her will to "pray the prayer," but had been powerfully changed by God and had been walking with him for years. 

I need to clarify: I am not prophesying. I'm observing. 

I'm observing a generation obsessed by sex and rebellion and marked by hopelessness. I see governments stained by corruption, the legal system and the business world weighed down with attempts to make sin acceptable.

And I remember: But God. 

He reminded me: It was into an environment like this that Jesus stepped up as Lord and the world shifted around him. 

Two conflicting things are true: 

 ▪️ If he did it once, he can do it again. In fact, in the Greek roots of the declaration, "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy," is hidden the thought, the prayer, "Do it again, God!" 

And at the same time,  

▪️ I've observed that he seems to favor doing it again in a new way. He also said, "Behold, I do a new thing!" and I've never seen him do the same thing the same way he did it before. 

Which means, I want to position my heart to recognize (and join in) the invasion he's carrying out in this generation, and while I loved the Jesus People movement, I do not expect to see another move quite like that one. I expect to see something new and different.

And I do Not plan to attend the conference and buy the books and watch them burn. Instead, I plan to blow on the embers until they flicker into flame, and then I plan to feed that little flame the best I can.

And then I plan to jump in with both feet.


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Letters

The Miracle Car

May I share a testimony with you?

For years, I’ve had an older Toyota sedan. Recently, through circumstances that aren’t part of this story, the car died, and we replaced it with the same model, but a year or two newer. (What can I say? I like some of the classic Toyotas.) I hadn't had a chance to sell the busted one yet.

Then the newer one died. My daughter was driving her sister home in it, and suddenly it seemed that the engine exploded: steam and smoke and scary noises burst from under the hood; the girls jumped from the car, steered it into a parking lot and called me to come rescue them.
 
I was able to drive it home, but just barely. It was horrible: it chugged and snorted and belched great clouds of white smoke and threatened to die on the half mile trip home. A friend looked at the engine and hung his head: “Cracked head,” he murmured, and shook his head. I was horrified: that wasn’t worth repairing.

Father whispered to me: “You’ve learned to trust me in circumstances where My provision comes before the problem does. Now can you trust me where you see the problem, but you don’t yet see My provision?” Hmm. This might be interesting.

Then we had a brainstorm! We could use the cylinder head from the dead car on the new car! That might work! Let’s look closely, and see if we can figure out how to do that!

So four of us gathered around to examine it. Only two of us had experience working on cars: one on a Honda, the other on a Volkswagen; the third guy & I could maybe change the oil, if we were desperate.

We lifted the hood. There was rust spattered all over the engine like blood, and I was sad all over again. “Well, let’s see where it’s cracked.” and we stuck the garden hose to the empty radiator. The idea was to fill the radiator, start the car, and see where the water leaked out: that was where the crack would be.

But before we could start the engine, we found the leak: a long crack on the top of the radiator! That was a much easier repair.

The four of us ran to the old car and checked: yep! Same size radiator. So over the next several hours, we removed both radiators, tested both radiators, and installed the one from the dead car into the living car, and filled it up. We started the engine: the same chugging and snorting and great clouds of smoke belched from the exhaust. How discouraging.

But then one of the guys pointed at the loose wires on the distributor, and asked, “Would that make a difference?” Two of the cylinders weren’t even firing. We re-attached those spark plug wires, and started the car again: it purred like a happy kitten.

I was floored. We’d gone from a completely dead car to a completely happy car in half a day, without spending a single dime. I’ve never seen that happen before!

Then Father reminded me: “Son, I’ve told you that I am your provision. Do you believe me?”

For the record: No, I don’t get every need met that way. The first car was still dead. And no, I don’t get all of my needs met in the way I want them met (like getting my classic car repaired for no cost at all!). But yes, I’m learning.
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Letters

Responding to Testimony

I had been listening to some pretty awesome testimonies of God's goodness recently. One day, I was driving across town, reflecting on the testimonies, admiring how good God really is.

“You know, Son, If you keep welcoming the testimonies, you might be in danger of seeing those things show up in your own life.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

I thought for a while about what he was saying: receiving the testimony empowers the testimony in my own life. Yeah, that's Biblical.

Then the other end of the scale crossed my mind.

“I wonder if that means that if I were to reject the testimony, that I would stop that work of God in my life, I would actually be working against God's move in my life?”

I felt Father sadly nodding agreement. There was a tear.

I pondered some more.

I could hear someone's argument in my mind: “Does that mean that I need to believe every unverifiable, every unbelievable fairy tale that anybody dreams up?”

He was silent.

I thought about that for a while.

After several miles, I realized that this isn't a binary situation. This isn't “Either I fully believe the testimony & receive it, or else I completely and utterly reject it.” There are times, no doubt, for each of those extremes, but there are other options, other choices, where I believe a portion of the testimony and respond to other parts skeptically.

I thought some more.

It came back to my attention that Father has been reminding me of my own testimony recently: how he's taught me how I don't actually need to form an opinion all the time. He reminded me of how much freedom that has brought me in recent years, to occasionally say, “I don’t know.” “I don’t have an opinion on that one.”

And that’s the answer in this situation. Or at least an answer.

If I don't have the faith (or the will) to believe the testimony before us, have another option, other than closing off the grace of God in my life in that area: I’m not actually required to form an opinion, a judgment, of every single thing that we hear.

It's easy enough to let unbelief disguise itself as the wisdom of not forming an opinion, but we’re mature enough to avoid that, aren’t we?

Use discernment. Duh. That’s why he gave us that gift; use the gift, then trust the gift that God has given. Engage your trust, or don’t, as you choose.

But if it's a good testimony, believe it, engage your faith with it, and look for the grace of that testimony to manifest in your life.

But maybe if it isn’t a testimony you find you can engage your faith with, I don’t need to utterly reject and shut down that move of God in my life.

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Letters

Discipleship Before Conversion: A Testimony

Back in the 20th century, I managed a business for a friend. This was my “tentmaking” job while we were planting a church.

Barry was a salesman working for me. He was a great guy, an effective salesman, and he was focused on his #1 goal in life: becoming a millionaire as soon as possible. I loved his honest transparency.

As a part of our job, he and I had a “sales meeting” every week. Those were remarkable meetings.

These meetings generally lasted a couple of hours and we met in the food court of a local shopping mall.

We always started out with reviewing his sales work. He’d give me the signed contracts that he’d earned over the last week. We’d discuss the accounts and then talk about the coming week’s sales strategies. That took at least a quarter of an hour.

Barry’s vehicle of choice for reaching his millionaire goal was a large multi-level marketing group he was excited about, so we discussed how that was going for him. That took maybe a third of an hour.

Then came the good stuff. I pulled out my Bible, and we discussed our experiences and beliefs in things of eternity. Barry wasn’t a believer, but he was an honest thinker. “Because the Bible says so,” wasn’t convincing to him. But, “Well, the Bible says this, and here’s what I’ve experienced there,” meant a lot.

He wasn’t afraid to push back on a subject if he thought I was wrong, and if I was, I had to be real about it, or these brilliant conversations would be gone.

That was back in my stick-in-the-mud evangelical hard-liner days. I was convinced that being rich – and therefore aspiring to be rich – was evil. Barry, the non-believer, reminded me that a lot of the guys in the Bible (Job, Abraham, Joseph of Arimathea) who were wealthy. And he pointed out that aspiring to wealth wasn’t condemned; it was just a path full of dangers and traps (see 1Timothy 6:9), and he fully acknowledged the dangers.

We talked in terms of “Crossing the bridge” from living for yourself to living in relationship with Jesus, and we both discussed it as a “when;” we didn’t approach it as an “if.” But we both knew it was going to be a while for him.

That season in my life ended abruptly when I was suddenly fired by the business owner (after acknowledging he was impressed with the work Barry & I had done to make his business remarkably profitable).  

Legally prevented from other work in the country, we packed up and moved back home and, with our tail between our legs, moved in with grandparents to lick our wounds. The economy was tough; it took a year for us to get a job and find a home.

As we were moving boxes into our rental, the phone rang. I didn’t even know it had been hooked up yet.

It was Barry. “I wanted you to know that I crossed the bridge. I knew you’d want to know And I wanted to thank you for your time and friendship.”

Life wasn’t through kicking us around. But that one phone call gave me strength to keep on keeping on for quite a while.

Barry got a running start into the Kingdom. I was not the only man discipling him before he came to faith.

Consider: Jesus did not require a confession of faith before he called his disciples. Why should we?



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Letters

Testimony: Date Nights

Early in our marriage, we realized that marriage is work. If our marriage was going to be as good as we knew it could be, as we hoped it would be, we knew that it would take work. We needed to invest in our marriage: in the relationship.

So very early on, even before we had children, we started the practice of weekly date nights. We set aside one evening a week for a single purpose: strengthening our relationship, investing in our marriage.

We only had a couple of rules.

• Dinner together was a given; all else was negotiable. Sometimes we went and did a thing together, maybe a museum or a garden or a movie or play volleyball. Sometimes we’d buy a big basket at the grocery store, fill it with all sorts of good food, leave it on someone’s doorstep, ring the bell and run like the wind. Whatever we did, we did it together, and we enjoyed being together in it.  

• “Business” conversations were off limits. No making plans, discussing money, solving problems. Dreaming together was good, but not the work of making things happen. This was an investment in our future together, not fixing problems behind us. We had six other days in the week to work on those.

• We did not share our date night with anybody else unless both of us were completely on-board with the idea. Double dates were rare. Less rare was us showing up with a fancy frozen treat from the local dessert shop and knocking on a friend’s door: “We wondered if you could help us? This is too much for just the two of us. Can you help us with it?” Laughter was frequent.

When we started having kids, the subject (and cost) of babysitters came in to play and date nights became even more important. We preferred long-term relationships, so we tried to hire sitters by the quarter. “Yes, we’d like you to babysit our kids every Monday evening for the entire school year, please.” We declined to negotiate the rates down because of the long-term commitment.

Like everyone else, we went through seasons. We’d promised, among other things, “…for richer or poorer…” and we had both of those seasons. So sometimes our dates were at the local hospital cafeteria, or a bagel and a brick of Philadelphia cream cheese at the grocery store, or take a sandwich and go for a walk by the lake, but skipping a date night wasn’t an option.

The hardest year was probably when we were part of a poorly-planned church-planting team in another nation. We were a year into that experiment when I lost my job, so there we were: locked into what we considered an expensive lease on our home, not just unemployed but completely unemployable because of international law, and increasingly depressed at what we saw (what I saw) as failure all around us. We were broke!

We were facing the possibility of having to forego our date nights. Ouch.


In our work with the church, were trying to get a youth group going for the teenagers, and we were talking with the kids about what night of the week to try to do something. Several folks had several ideas, like humans do.

“Not Monday nights!” one of the girls said. “Oh, why not Mondays?” I asked. “Because Mondays is when I’m coming over to your house to babysit so you can have your date night!”

I gasped. I didn’t know that they even knew our situation. We started to argue, when her (single) mom came over and backed her up. “We’ve talked about this, and her mind is set, and I don’t suggest you try to change it. She’s as stubborn as I am.”

She went on to explain that they’d watched our relationship, and even though we’d never talked about it, our young family had been teaching them how to do relationships, just by being us. They wanted to give something back for all that we had (unknowingly) given to them.

So for the next year, this young lady came to our house after school. After dinner, she and the kids would get down to the serious business of playing, while my Lady and I headed out the door for a walk or an ice cream cone or something quiet together.

That was one of the most intense years of our lives (we had kind of a lot going on, doncha know); she may have saved our lives.

But God. God knew. Jesus understood something of what it takes to make a successful marriage with His own bride. Father understood how much work fathering actually is. And I think Holy Spirit just wanted to love on our kids and us.

At the end of that year, very large amounts of raw sewage hit the ventilating device, and we left with our proverbial tail between our legs. That experiment had cost us everything, every dime we had, every relationship but our marriage, and except for this one miracle teenager, it might have taken that too.

A decade or more later, completely out of the blue, back in America again and just beginning to get back on our feet, we answered a soft knock at the front door. Here she was again, now a happily married woman, introducing us to this strong man she had fallen in love with. The look in her eyes when she whispered “my husband” was golden. They had just stopped by to thank us for investing in them all those years ago.

We wept. Maybe it wasn’t all wasted effort after all.

God is SO good. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.




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Letters

Testimony: The Covid “Vaccine”

A Little background:

 
• The Covid 19 virus is a real virus. People are dying from it.

• But the virus is being blown way the heck out of proportion, and most of the deaths attributed to Covid are actually people who had the virus dying from something else. (CDC has acknowledged it..)

• A fair number of people are scared silly of the virus. (This is not a time for judging.)

• There are a few vaccines for the virus. Except that they’re not vaccines, they’re “experimental therapies.”

• A fair number of people are scared silly of the vaccines/experimental therapies. (This is not a time for judging.)

• The federal government and a good number of state and local governments are working overtime to convince us that we need to get the vaccines/experimental therapies. (Ironically, as I’m writing this, I’m getting text and email notifications working to persuade me to get the treatment.)

• The attempts to manipulate/convince the public are primarily based on either bribes or threats; they are mostly not based on logic, research, or science.

• It’s pretty well documented that the medical community has opportunity to make a lot of money from the government for promoting the Covid “vaccine,” for treating Covid symptoms, for reporting Covid deaths. (NB: It’s my policy to place a lower value on the opinions of people who are being well paid to have and to convince me those opinions.)

• A fair number of people are scared silly of the government’s intentions. (This is not a time for judging.)

• The Bible is pretty clear: we don’t actually have reason to be afraid, and in fact we are commanded to not fear.

• A fair number of people are afraid to trust God when our health, our life or our government is on the line. (This is not a time for judging.)

OK. That’s the background. (Note that I’m not interested in arguing about these points. If you feel that urge to fuss about these, go somewhere else to do it.)

TESTIMONY. This is my own story; fair warning: it might be long and rambling.

I’m a fairly strong, fairly healthy adult male with a solid immune system. I’m not actually afraid of the virus. I’ve walked with Jesus long enough to know that he’s serious about his ability to take care of me, and I know that it’s true that “whether I live or I die, I am the Lord’s.”


I’ve heard first hand reports from medical professionals, from people who have taken the vaccine; I’ve read the manufacturers’ statements about them (and their disclaimers of any liability for their product).


Based on what I’ve read (and I’ve read the original CDC & other reports, not just the news reports about them), I don’t see any reason why I personally need to take the vaccine/experimental therapy that they’re so aggressively promoting. I don’t judge those who take it, but I am comfortable concluding that it’s not for me.

But there are people around me who are scared of the virus, some more than others, of course. Many of these are MY people, people I would die for, people who would die for me: people I love.

These people are scared for me, and they believe they have reason. They consider me higher risk for more than one reason, and the reports agree with them. Some of these people trust the vaccine/experimental therapy, and they want me to “protect myself” and take it. Some of them want me to take it as protection for themselves. (This is not a time for judging.)

So this put me in a tough place. I was confident that I didn’t need the vaccine/experimental therapy, and that in fact, I would be wise to avoid it.

But people who love me were paying a price for my choice. That wasn’t comfortable for me. There were people, people I love and whom I love to be around, that weren’t comfortable being around me. That’s not comfortable for me.

That’s been a hard place. And when I find myself in hard places like that, I try to remember to take these to my Father, so I brought this awkward, confusing, emotionally-charged mess that was in my heart to him. He listened quietly for a while (or at least I assumed he was listening, but he sure was quiet). I poured out my concerns and confusions to him. I wasn’t OK with this divided heart thing going on.

We spent a while here, days, maybe weeks, not minutes or hours. But eventually, his peace did what it does, and it settled my thoughts and emotions and drew my attention back to my Father’s goodness where it belongs.

And in that process, he drew my attention to Mark’s version of the Great Commission, and to one clause in particular: “If they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them.” He wasn’t giving me a direction in the midst of the options, he was just reminding me: “This is the way I am with you, Son.”

As I kept praying (I cannot tell you how many times I’ve stopped listening too early!), I felt his affirmation that I could trust him, I could trust this promise, whichever way I chose to go, but this was my choice to make; he wasn’t going to make my choices for me here.

I still believe that this virus isn’t a threat for me personally, and I still believe that I don’t need the experimental therapy that’s being promoted.

So I signed up to get the experimental therapy, confident that it will by no means hurt me. That was long enough ago that I had to work really hard to get it; it was really awkward, really uncomfortable, really irritating to jump through all the hoops. (The notifications I’m getting now announce that some places have it available for walk-ins.)

After several weeks, I made it to the front of the line and it was my turn. They had me sign a raft of papers (and were really confused when I insisted on reading what I was signing), and the nurse who gave me the injection confessed that he didn’t believe we needed “a ‘vaccine’ that is 95% effective against a disease with a 99+% survival rate.” We laughed about it together.

When it came time for the second injection, people crawled out of the woodwork to tell me their horror stories of how bad the second one was, and how dangerous it was, and how that’s where people got sick from the second one. Thanks folks!

So I reminded myself pretty aggressively of Father’s promise. “If they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them.” My version went this way: “If I am injected with anything deadly, it will by no means hurt me.” It was kind of hard work to agree with him instead of all the fear-driven testimonies.

The next morning, I woke up feeling “off,” and the doubts whispered into my ear: “See! I told you you’d get sick! Now it’s happened to you!”

So I had a conversation with my soul. “If I am injected with anything deadly, it will by no means hurt me.” I kind of had a shouting match inside my soul for a while, but eventually my soul gave in, the symptoms vanished, and I had a great day. That was a month or two ago, and I haven’t been sick for a day since.

I still shake my head (sometimes when my soul gets out of line) at how much this changes the hearts and the choices of some of the people I love, but then I remember, “I did this for you, because I love you.” I can’t generally tell them that, of course, because they think I was convinced of their opinions when I saw the error of my ways because of their insightful presentation of the media’s hysteria.

And I feel my Father’s comfortable pleasure with my choices here. It was my choice, your choice might be completely different. But this is how I dealt with it.

I hope my story is helpful to you.
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Letters

The Chef’s Knee

I was raised in the church, but I was raised by a couple of left-brain, logical thinkers: by a school teacher and an engineer. They taught me math and science and the occasional Bible story, but we knew nothing of the power of God. We prayed for every meal, but it was a routine; we did it because that’s what good Christians did.

The church we were part of explained why nothing supernatural ever happened and why the miracles that the Bible talked about weren’t really what they seemed to be, and how science explained them.

Many years later, after I came to a real and personal faith and began to pursue Jesus for myself, I discovered that the gifts of the Spirit were real and that there was actual power present in them. I’ve spent the last half century pursuing knowing my loving King and learning all I can about the tools that he’s given us to run this race well.

The son of a schoolteacher doesn’t have any trouble studying the Book, and the son of the engineer has got some natural advantages applying the wisdom of that Book to his life. But power? But the supernatural? Now wait just a doggone minute here. It’s harder to overcome the natural and logical mindset that I was raised with.

Fast forward a few decades. I’ve taught hundreds, maybe thousands of people about the love of God, the gifts of the Spirit, and even about how to heal the sick. I didn’t have much personal experience actually healing the sick, and the voices from my childhood kept explaining away any healings and miracles that I did see.

So one Friday night, I’m with a team of friends hosting a large meeting, when all of a sudden, one of the group gets up and announces to the auditorium that God wants to heal everyone tonight, “If you need healing, come forward.”

I was confronted with my unbelief. So I kicked into administration mode and connected people who needed prayer with people to pray for them (“Just like we’ve talked about,” I reminded a few of them), but there were so many of them!

Among the last to arrive was the chef in charge of the kitchen at that facility, and he was bearing down on me, and he was limping. We had talked a few times; maybe I wasn’t a complete stranger. I looked around for someone with a healing gift. Not a one!

So here I was, acknowledging that God heals, but full of unbelief, and I was expected needing to heal this guy’s torn ligaments. I was doomed.


So we found a place out on the edge of the crowd where he could sit down and where I could get my hands on his knee. He explained how he needs to be on his feet all day, every day, and the stress weakened his knee, and then he stepped wrong or fell or something (I wasn’t paying as much attention to his situation as I should have been, being much more attentive to my immanent unmasking as a healing fraud).

 I laid hands on the knee, and quietly complained to Father that this wasn’t fair! He wasn’t impressed with my panic.

Eventually, my adrenaline levels dropped enough that I remembered to ask Father how to pray, and I had an impression, so I prayed in that direction. I prayed hard in that direction. I prayed every little detail I could think of in that direction, and in the direction next to it just to be safe.

Eventually I had to come up for air. “How does your knee feel? Stand up and test it.” I tried to sound confident.

He tested it, and sat back down with kind of a scowl on his face. “It feels warm inside, but I’m not sure it’s any better.”

My heart didn’t really have any further to fall, but I figured “warm” was a good sign. “OK, let’s pray some more.” It was clear he wasn’t in a hurry.

Over the course of the next hour or two, I threw every prayer I knew and six or ten that I didn’t know at his knee. I wasn’t going to fail because I’d given up: I was going to go down fighting. Every ten minutes or so, we’d check it again, and every time it was a little better. “Not a lot better, but yeah, it’s a little bit better.”

It must have been the nine thousand and twelfth time we stopped to check his progress that he bent and stretched and matter-of-factly announced, “Yeah, I think that did it!” I picked my jaw up off the floor and thanked him for his patience. We were nearly the last ones out of the room.

I had reason to return to that conference facility several times, for several different kinds of events, often including meals, and every time he saw me (he never once missed me!), he’d come out of the kitchen, wrap me in a bear hug, squat down and bounce back up and announce, “Yep! It’s still healed!” (You should have seen the looks on the faces of some of my business associates at the tech events there! I remember that feeling, when I first heard that healing really was for today.)

Healing is still not one of the primary tools that I use in the ministry Father has me involved in. And every time that I slap hands on someone for healing, hell rubs my nose in that fact. “You don’t have that gift!”

“No, but I know a Guy!” and I remind him of the chef’s knee. Shuts ‘em up every time.

It’s still a challenge, still a battle every time I go after healing, and I mean that literally: when we heal the sick, we’re conquering the works of hell (both in the natural and in the minds of those we’re healing): hell is fighting (unsuccessfully) for survival; of course there’s a battle.

And no, not everybody I pray for is healed, not by a mile or six. But I have a testimony to keep me going.

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Letters

Maintaining the Garden


I had an interesting train of thought this morning in the … er… Library.

I have some plants and some starts that will go into the garden when the weather stabilizes (around here, that’s traditionally Mother’s Day). I had already brought many of those out of the greenhouse into what may actually be sunshine at some point in the day; it’s a good idea (in my view) to get plants ready for their new environment before I plant them there permanently.

I’m really looking forward to the growing season. I’ve got a fair number of plants ready to go, the garden beds are ready to go. The soil has been turned and amended with fresh compost. The weeds are gone (except for one: I want to know what it will turn into), and I know where each plant will be going. I have a few seeds in the ground (mostly salad things), and I know where more will be going.

And Father ambushed me on that topic. “You keep your garden up-to-date, don’t you?” and he reminded me how I try to keep it weed free all year, how I add plants and fertilize plants and how I water it regularly.

“Yeah, I do. It is a better garden if I take care of it.” I’ve had gardens in the past that I haven’t taken care of very well. They had been overtaken by weeds and grass and their produce was small and scarce.

Then he shifted gears on me; he reminded me of the investment I make in my marriage. “A good marriage takes the same kind of work that a good garden does, doesn’t it?” He reminded me that a marriage needs fertilizer and needs weeds removed just as much as a garden does.

I am (we are) pretty intentional about keeping the relationship healthy. We talk things out, we regularly express our love with words and touches and time together and such. We have maintained a delightful discipline of taking date nights, just for our relationship, every week (or more often) for more than 30 years.  

I reflected on the different joys that my marriage and my garden bring me.

“A relationship with me takes similar investment, you know. And it will bring you similar joy.”

He’s right, you know. (I say that kind of a lot. I’m not going to change that. He is. :) ) A relationship with another person – a marriage relationship, a friendship, a family relationship, a relationship with my creator – takes maintenance. Since we’d started with the metaphor of the garden, I’ll stick with it: it takes adding things (seeds, young plants, fertilizer, water) and taking things away (weeds, birds who want to dig up the seeds and eat the young fruits, cats who are thankful for a clean sandbox) to make the relationship thrive.

I think I’ll be meditating on this for a bit. How can I best invest into my relations with God and with the people around me? 

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Letters

Transformed Thinking about Scripture

It's hard, isn't it, to let the Scriptures stand on their own, particularly when they're passages that are a little uncomfortable for us, a little unfamiliar to us, passages that don't entirely support our current beliefs.

It's hard to just listen to what the Book is saying, without filtering it through our theology and fitting it into a tidy little theological box. When a verse or story doesn't support my view, and sounds almost like it could be used to support the other view, that makes me nervous, and I feel the need to quote verses that support my view to make me feel better.

So instead of that, I'm working on learning to not filter uncomfortable, unfamiliar passages through either my theology or yours. Sorry. Nothing personal. If it's true that "All scripture is God-breathed and profitable...," (and it is) then the passages that argue against my theological boxes are God-breathed and profitable as well. I want to profit from them, too!

I suspect that this is at least part of what he means when he tells us to renew our minds [Romans 12:3, Ephesians 4:23]

To my great surprise, that state of NOT having answers is becoming more comfortable, more comforting to me. It's in THAT place where Father can whisper to me, not so much his interpretation, but his heart on the matter.

I love it when he does that. I value hearing his whisper, his breath, as far more important to me than having perfect little theological boxes.

So if you find me posting about, or musing about uncomfortable things here, you may want to skip over them, and keep your theological boxes in tidy order. Or you may want to jump in and look for what God's breathing on there.

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Letters

Opinions About Pornography


OK. Let’s go step onto the scary trail. Let’s talk about pornography, and about porn addictions.

I’m going to speak about things that I have no training in. I have opinions, based on experience. I’ve not put this into words for a long time, so this may get overly-detailed (that’s how my process works).

Comment: I’ll be speaking as a guy (I generally do, but this time it may make a difference).

Another Comment: I’m not going to talk about how icky porn is. You already know that.

Warning: This isn't complete. Not sure it's actually possible to be complete on this topic. This is more of an outline, notes, rough thoughts.

Personal opinion: neither accountability nor inner healing will solve porn addictions. They may address some symptoms, but not solve the problem.

Personal opinion: solving symptoms is never a substitute for solving the core issue. If one symptom is solved, but the core issue is not, then the core issue will build pressure, and pop out in another place, or (more likely?) blow the scab off the same symptom.

Personal observation: when “church folk” respond to any addiction, their response is generally in the realm of “self control.” This does help a small number of people. 

Personal opinion: a porn addiction is not primarily about sex or about discipline. These are merely symptoms.

Personal opinion: the core issue is identity, specifically intimacy in relationship. Intimacy, in this context, is NOT a euphemism for sex: it’s about being known and accepted fully, and about knowing and accepting fully. And the first place for this intimacy is with God:

Personal opinion: if a man does not have an intimate relationship with God, if a man does not have confidence that he is fully known and fully accepted by God, then he will try to meet that very legitimate need by illegitimate means. Pornography is one of those illegitimate means.

Personal opinion: that business of being known fully and being accepted fully by one’s wife (or wife-to-be) is supplemental and very helpful, but does not replace the need for this relationship with God. Neither does sex replace real relationship with God. [That’s covered in the DUH-101 course.]

Personal opinion: This inherently creates a problem: the only solution is to know and receive the actions/choices of someone else. Fundamentally, no man can solve this problem on their own, by their own strength. There’s room for a sermon there, but this is not the time for that sermon.

Personal Opinion: the only thing that a man can do to facilitate others’ meeting of these needs is to initiate that sort of relationship. With God, that’s only about making one’s self as open as possible before God, and that is a scary process. With a bride that’s a terrifying thing, because it’s the same kind of vulnerability, but vulnerability before a fallible human being who has her own needs. Scary. But that’s all he can do to help her offer that to him: offer it to her, both for her well-being, and by way of being an example.

Personal opinion: the only things I’ve ever seen work appear to be two sides of the same coin: It can be described as “Develop this kind of relationship with God” or it can be described as “Know – really know, not just study – who you are in Christ,” but these are (IMHO) really the same thing.

Personal opinion: there is a bit of good news in an addiction to pornography: you were made for intimate relationship with God, and this addiction demonstrates that you have a real hunger, and a real readiness for that intimacy. You’re ready to develop a close relationship with your Maker. And God is ready to develop that close relationship with you.

I say again: a porn addiction is rock-solid proof that you are now ready and able to have the kind of intimate relationship with God that you’ve always wanted.

Is it scary? Hell yes!

Are we guaranteed a life of ease and no problems? You’re kidding, right?

But is it possible? abso-freakin-lutely.

And yeah, it really is the better deal! Oh my goodness, yes!

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Letters

The Deception of the Finished Lesson

There’s a deception that I’ve come to … well, I don’t know that I actually “hate” it, but I sure don’t love it.

It’s a deception, an illusion, and it’s perpetrated, many times, in God’s name, and often with the best of intentions.

It’s the deception of the finished lesson.

I became aware of it while I was studying something-or-other for teaching. I felt like I was wrestling a greased pig. I cut my way through bunny trails and wild goose chases and fought off premature and inaccurate conclusions.

It was a long and arduous process.

And when I was done, I presented my results to the folks I was teaching, all tidy, all logical, all wrapped up with a nice little bow on it.

It was good teaching. And my conclusions were both accurate and relevant.

But I was uncomfortable with how tidy it was. This was not a tidy topic, and I felt that I’d done folks a disservice by hiding the blood, sweat, toil and tears that went into the process.

In actual fact, the blood, sweat, toil and tears are a legitimate part of the topic, of the conversation. Let’s be honest: outside of TV shows, there aren’t a lot of thorny questions that tidily wrap themselves up in 30 minutes, are there?

Image result for damaged packageIt seems to me that the need to make things tidy and clean and neat is not actually a benefit to American culture.

Let’s be specific. If we think that the abortion issue has a clean and simple answer, we’re not paying attention. If we think that the topic of social justice can be solved easily, we’re smoking something interesting. If we think the fear of God, or the grace of God, or the rapture, or the solution to immigration, or balancing a household budget have tidy answers, we’re not seeing the whole of the subject.

Christian platitudes are an abysmal failure. But Christian blogs and Christian books (and not-so-Christian books) that have clear-cut answers are equally deceptive.

We’ll see how I respond to this, how I deal with this in the future. As much as anyone else, I like having clear answers readily available, and I like not looking like a dork as I stumble for an answer that actually means something on a complex topic.

But we might find that not every post has a confident conclusion. I don’t know. We’ll see how this turns out.
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Letters

The Deception of the Finished Lesson

There’s a deception that I’ve come to … well, I don’t know that I actually “hate” it, but I sure don’t love it.

It’s a deception, an illusion, and it’s perpetrated, many times, in God’s name, and often with the best of intentions.

It’s the deception of the finished lesson.

I became aware of it while I was studying something-or-other for teaching. I felt like I was wrestling a greased pig. I cut my way through bunny trails and wild goose chases and fought off premature and inaccurate conclusions.

It was a long and arduous process.

And when I was done, I presented my results to the folks I was teaching, all tidy, all logical, all wrapped up with a nice little bow on it.

It was good teaching. And my conclusions were both accurate and relevant.

But I was uncomfortable with how tidy it was. This was not a tidy topic, and I felt that I’d done folks a disservice by hiding the blood, sweat, toil and tears that went into the process.

In actual fact, the blood, sweat, toil and tears are a legitimate part of the topic, of the conversation. Let’s be honest: outside of TV shows, there aren’t a lot of thorny questions that tidily wrap themselves up in 30 minutes, are there?

Image result for damaged packageIt seems to me that the need to make things tidy and clean and neat is not actually a benefit to American culture.

Let’s be specific. If we think that the abortion issue has a clean and simple answer, we’re not paying attention. If we think that the topic of social justice can be solved easily, we’re smoking something interesting. If we think the fear of God, or the grace of God, or the rapture, or the solution to immigration, or balancing a household budget have tidy answers, we’re not seeing the whole of the subject.

Christian platitudes are an abysmal failure. But Christian blogs and Christian books (and not-so-Christian books) that have clear-cut answers are equally deceptive.

We’ll see how I respond to this, how I deal with this in the future. As much as anyone else, I like having clear answers readily available, and I like not looking like a dork as I stumble for an answer that actually means something on a complex topic.

But we might find that not every post has a confident conclusion. I don’t know. We’ll see how this turns out.
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Letters

Reflections on Some Influencers

I was reflecting on some of the guys who have influenced my life in God over the years. None of these guys had a position of “leader,” but all three of them were competent leaders.

I knew a man who studied God, and God’s ways, for decades. He could put all kinds of letters after his name, including DMin, and PhD. He understood the Bible better than anybody else I knew at the time.

When I listened to him, I thought, “What a learned man. What a great foundation! I need a foundation like that.”

I knew another man who didn’t have a degree, but had spent a couple of under-funded decades among a people who didn’t even know who God was: teaching some, discipling a few, and desperately depending on God every day, for his meals, for his ministry, for his family’s lives.

When I listened to him, my heart melted. I prayed earnestly, “Father, I want to know you like this man knows you!”

I knew another man who came from the streets, and even that was just recently. He had not the slightest shred of education, and it showed. But he spent hours, many hours, just sitting in God’s presence, listening to his heartbeat, talking with him about what was on his heart.

When I listened to him, I realized that he had some ideas that were pretty messed up, and the first guy could help him with that. And I saw that he had some serious insecurity issues, identity issues, and the second guy could really help him with that.

But when he talked, he blew my mind. He healed the sick regularly, got words of knowledge effortlessly, and unbelievers listened carefully when he talked about his Jesus.

When I listened to him, I thought, “Father, is this really possible? Can your children walk in this kind of revelation, this kind of power, in this day and age?”

I learned some things in this reflection.

• I really do love meditating on the things God has done in my world, in my life. The angel in Revelation 19 was right: the testimony of Jesus, who he is, what he's done, really is the spirit of prophecy. Mmm mmm. So good.

• Different people have imparted different strengths into my life. If I only listened to people like me, I would certainly not be who I am today. Since both my wife and I like who I am today, this would be a bad thing.

• Even people that make me uncomfortable can have a great impact on my life, provided I’m willing to learn. It's that "willing" part that I wrestle with sometimes.

• It’s not enough to know ABOUT God. I must know God. And there’s more to know than I have any idea, even now. What a big heart!

• It’s not enough to know God. I must also know ABOUT God if I aspire to trust him, to be like him. And again, there’s more to know about him than I even believe is possible.

• When God invests himself into a person, he doesn’t necessarily make that person tidy, neat, clean, respectable. My ideas for what a “Good Christian” is were woefully inadequate, which means they are probably still woefully inadequate today. (Yet again I am reminded: He is NOT a tame lion.)


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Letters

Reflections on Some Influencers

I was reflecting on some of the guys who have influenced my life in God over the years. None of these guys had a position of “leader,” but all three of them were competent leaders.

I knew a man who studied God, and God’s ways, for decades. He could put all kinds of letters after his name, including DMin, and PhD. He understood the Bible better than anybody else I knew at the time.

When I listened to him, I thought, “What a learned man. What a great foundation! I need a foundation like that.”

I knew another man who didn’t have a degree, but had spent a couple of under-funded decades among a people who didn’t even know who God was: teaching some, discipling a few, and desperately depending on God every day, for his meals, for his ministry, for his family’s lives.

When I listened to him, my heart melted. I prayed earnestly, “Father, I want to know you like this man knows you!”

I knew another man who came from the streets, and even that was just recently. He had not the slightest shred of education, and it showed. But he spent hours, many hours, just sitting in God’s presence, listening to his heartbeat, talking with him about what was on his heart.

When I listened to him, I realized that he had some ideas that were pretty messed up, and the first guy could help him with that. And I saw that he had some serious insecurity issues, identity issues, and the second guy could really help him with that.

But when he talked, he blew my mind. He healed the sick regularly, got words of knowledge effortlessly, and unbelievers listened carefully when he talked about his Jesus.

When I listened to him, I thought, “Father, is this really possible? Can your children walk in this kind of revelation, this kind of power, in this day and age?”

I learned some things in this reflection.

• I really do love meditating on the things God has done in my world, in my life. The angel in Revelation 19 was right: the testimony of Jesus, who he is, what he's done, really is the spirit of prophecy. Mmm mmm. So good.

• Different people have imparted different strengths into my life. If I only listened to people like me, I would certainly not be who I am today. Since both my wife and I like who I am today, this would be a bad thing.

• Even people that make me uncomfortable can have a great impact on my life, provided I’m willing to learn. It's that "willing" part that I wrestle with sometimes.

• It’s not enough to know ABOUT God. I must know God. And there’s more to know than I have any idea, even now. What a big heart!

• It’s not enough to know God. I must also know ABOUT God if I aspire to trust him, to be like him. And again, there’s more to know about him than I even believe is possible.

• When God invests himself into a person, he doesn’t necessarily make that person tidy, neat, clean, respectable. My ideas for what a “Good Christian” is were woefully inadequate, which means they are probably still woefully inadequate today. (Yet again I am reminded: He is NOT a tame lion.)


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