Rulekeepers and Hot Women

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2

The Apostle Paul lived at a time in history when physical prowess was exalted, in soldiery, in the original Olympic games, and in idolatry.  Not that much has truly changed if you ask me.  Historians and early Church fathers allude to the fact that Saul of Tarsus, renamed Apostle Paul, wasn't the most physically gifted man in stature or appearance and yet something about the achievement of the sports arena of his day caught his attention, gained his admiration, and fueled his metaphors and analogies.  He routinely encouraged us to beat our bodies into submission, take our thoughts captive to obedience, run the race with discipline, etc.  1Cor9:24-27 comes to mind.  The author of Hebrews likewise gives us this picture in the first verses of chapter 12, reminding us that we run in the public witness of spectators fans and rivals, as well as experienced witnesses listed throughout chapter 11 who have walked the road before us and are standing all around us with eternal patience to see what we do in our time with what we are given.

I was awoke about 90 minutes before my alarm this morning to talk about passing the baton.  To talk about our receipt of the Abrahamic covenant, specifically the summation of Genesis 12:1-3 in the phrase "blessed to be a blessing."  This covenant, perhaps more importantly than any other, weaves it's way through the whole of Scripture from the first book to the last.  I once set out to catalog all the numerous allusions or rewordings of this principle and stopped shortly thereafter, realizing that even when the words aren't explicitly written, the Holy Spirit bears them out through the story line written for our admonition.  These rewordings and allusions to this covenant make it quite clear: "IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT YOU."  Two of my favorite reiterations of the Abrahamic covenant are these:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2Corinthians1:3-4

For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from some other place, but you and your father's house will perish.  Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
Esther 4:14

The book of Esther mentions only the religious practices of prayer and fasting, not even specifically tying them to Judaism except for Mordecai and his cousin Hadassah, whom we know as Esther, being  noted as Jewish captives carried to Babylon.  The book of Esther was a contentious inclusion in the Canon of Scripture because it completely lacks exposition of even one of the names of God.  And yet, His hand is seen throughout.

Mordecai wouldn't have seen the events of being exiled from Jerusalem and carried away captive as a blessing.  Maybe that happened before his birth and he grew up in Shushan.  Maybe he and his relatives were deported later, after all it didn't just happen in one mass captivity exodus, there were several waves.  Mordecai wouldn't have seen the events that took Haddasah/Esther's parents lives away as a blessing.  Esther's father was Mordecai's uncle, do you think he ever missed his uncle?  His aunt?  Would he have considered their deaths a blessing?  Did them passing leave Esther as his only familial tie in this foreign culture?  These are questions and thoughts and considerations that might lend perspective and depth to the "stories" you read in the pages of Scripture.  The Bible does not stand with the primary purpose of relating history, though it is historically accurate.  The Bible is many things actually, but the thing I want to drive home this morning is this: it's the real story of people just like you and me, faced with extraordinary every day life and working out how best to show God to a watching world - to spectators, fans, rivals, haters, and co-laborers who realize that there is a bigger story of which they are a part.

Mordecai was a cultural rule keeper, and his refusal to bow to a king's official precipitated an edict that nearly killed his whole race.  The back story between Mordecai and Haman goes back centuries.  Mordecai's cousin Esther turns out to be the hottest woman in the kingdom, and she almost missed her destiny caught up in the trappings of what her beauty afforded her.  Kind of like Sarah in Abraham's time.

Both Mordecai and Esther were blessed to be a blessing and ended up passing on the batons of faithfulness that they had been handed.  My wife and I were talking on the way home from a Church business meeting the other night.  We don't do well with passing on the baton in today's Church.  I was talking about this just yesterday with a Church planter whom I am supporting and probably going to go with here in the near future.  And the problem isn't always that we don't do well with passing on the baton, Lord knows many of us are running breathlessly in the exchange zone ready to slap it down into the waiting hand of a co-laborer, BUT THAT CO-LABORER ISN'T READY.  They are stunned from their exchange jog to stand there with their mouth gaping when they realize you've been pushing and training them all along to receive the baton and run their leg.  Or they're still looking around at their activities thinking that's good enough not hearing the charged breathing and rapid foot falls approaching behind them with an arm extended to hand off the charge.

Then there's the Church body that doesn't even frame their efforts around building up the priesthood of all believers.  There are some legitimate reasons and concerns intertwined with this one, which I won't delve into here today.  And I won't allow those legitimate concerns to obscure the point I'm making either, that the Church is not the building or the denomination, it is the people who have heard the clarion call of Jesus Christ to repent of their futile broken ways and submit the the loving, gracious, cleansing Spirit of God moving them beyond their brokenness and into the Kingdom which has come among us and is now breaking in and trying to usher in complete newness of life where the enemy of our soul seeks to deal in death and brokenness and defeat.  We must pass the baton.

Our pastor is preaching his way through the Gospel of John to start our year.  Two weeks ago we peeked in on the "Conversation of a Lifetime" between Nicodemus and Jesus in chapter three.  This Sunday we watched the potentially scandalous conversation of Jewish Jesus with a Samaritan woman of checkered past at a well which historically brought them to common ground through Jacob.  The conversation was strange in both chapters.  Jesus was speaking in metaphor more real than the 'reality' that Nicodemus and the woman were living in.  Nicodemus lived in the reality of a knowledge filled religious life not truly centered on the Spiritual aspect of God, while the woman was struggling with making water easier to fetch so she didn't have to suffer the withering heat of the sun or the condemning hostility of other women.  They were both looking for tools to make their day go smoother, while Jesus was offering a cooling breeze to blow through and freshen our stale world and an eternal spring that would well up within them and effortlessly spill out to water a thirsty world struggling to survive.

You have the professional religious leader holding a clandestine night time meeting with the controversial Jesus in chapter 3.  You have the beautiful woman who was always being used and discarded, and had set herself up for failure once again in chapter 4.  You have the clean cut, educated, successful man of respectable stature in Nicodemus; and the racially despised, tawdry woman of bad reputation.  Pastor Steve likened them to a business class traveler who noticed the church bulletin sticking out of your purse on a 4 hour flight and wanted to talk about Jesus, and the inappropriately dressed woman showing too much evidence of all the wrong things plopping down next to you on the public bus and wanting to talk about Jesus because she too noticed the church bulletin sticking out of your purse.  How do you handle those two totally different conversations?  How do you be all things to all people as Paul alluded to in 1Corinthians 9:22?

Both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman gave their hearts to Jesus.  We don't see the immediate evidence with Nicodemus, not really until he shows up to help Joseph of Arimathea with the body of Jesus after the crucifixion.  He spent some serious time counting the cost - can you truly blame him?  We see the rapid evidence of the Samaritan woman's conversion though.  How ironic is that?  Maybe long term Nicodemus planted solid trees that grew into fruition and brought more than the woman's entire village to faith, maybe.

My wife and I reached a conclusion in our conversation about the comparisons that were drawn: "the professionally minded Church would hire Nicodemus in a heartbeat - but never allow the Samaritan to teach Sunday School even after years of showing a changed, faithful life."  We're full up with Samaritans that have no roots refusing to sit under the leadership of a Pharisee who has given his heart to Jesus, and full up with Pharisees who won't ever bring themselves to trust the Holy Spirit to have changed the Samaritan that's been hanging around for years.  Oy vey.

We won't willingly pass that baton.  We demand it be wrested from us.  We fulfill the prophetic nature of the Kingdom being taken hold of by violence in that sense.

Some of us are jogging along with our hand held out behind us awaiting that exchange, only to find that the one who was meant to run a relay has instead turned their leg into an independent marathon.  You ask Paul to tutor you as Timothy and he doesn't have the time for Samaritans. 

Some of us run breathlessly to the exchange point willing to release it, only to find the person we've mentored to be distracted from what they were being prepared for and confused that you really intended to have them run anywhere with anything.  You ask Timothy to take seriously that the time is short and you as Paul will not be with him forever, and he balks under the chafing constraints of Nicodemus.

Nicodemus needed to repent of his religious ways and realize as Paul did, that he came to the Kingdom at such a time as this in order to dig around the budding trees of faith and nurture them with his deep knowledge and religious experience rightly transformed through the knowledge of Christ.  The Samaritan woman needed to reposition herself to have influence with someone other than men, by repentance and a changed life that showed the fullness of what Jesus did for her that day, realizing how much she truly has to learn from that Jew down the road.

What do you need to do?  How have you been blessed to be a blessing?  What horrible circumstances would God redeem in your life if you would stop your private marathon and pass the baton of brokenness into the waiting hand of Jesus?  What amazing opportunities and experiences could you capitalize on investing in others if you realized they weren't given you simply for your trophy shelf and prideful pleasure, but as batons you must pass on?  If God will use Mordecai and Esther's personal tragedies and professional successes to save the Jews, He'll use yours to rescue those who are perishing.

You aren't alone, that's a lie the enemy of your soul would love for you to believe, but the Truth is otherwise.  You stand surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and many of them have experienced a piece of your story in their own life, and your faith in Jesus, your testimony in how He has redeemed (or is in the process of redeeming) that circumstance might be the very thing that causes them to run down to their village and bring everyone else back.  Do you remember what they said after the hottest woman in the village brought them to hear Jesus?

...Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.
John 4:42

The baton shouldn't have to be jerked from our hand, nor should we think there is just one leg in one relay race.

We need to remember with Paul:

...you are not your own...For you were bought at a price...
1Corinthians6:19-20

We are all, each of us individually and all of us corporately, blessed to be a blessing.  And if you want to have God's promises fulfilled in your life, you're going to have to teach others in the family to do the same thing Jesus said of Abraham:

...I have chosen him so that he will command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just.  This is how the LORD will fulfill to Abraham what He has promised him.Genesis 18:19 (HCSB)

He has chosen you.  Will you choose someone to pass that blessing to?

I just passed on to you four and half hours of my life that I will never get back.  Don't let it be in vain.  Jesus hung on the Cross for hours, despising the shame, don't let it be in vain.

In Search of Justice

One of my brothers (in Christ) recently posted on Facebook that he highly recommended reading this book called The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn.  I felt a nudge in my spirit to take him up on his suggestion.  After all, I need another book to read along with about the other ten or so I'm piece mealing my way through (did you hear the sarcasm there?).  Feel free to insert an A.D.D. joke here if it helps you laugh at the stacks of books you'll find littering horizontal surfaces throughout my home near my roosting spots.  I have a desk, because it has a wide and deep horizontal surface which is perfect for said stacks.  I'm told that if the top surface were cleared of stacks I could sit at that desk and read one or two of those books with a note pad or something.  I'm not sure I believe them when they say things like that.

But that Harbinger book has started something I'm going to have to pursue, and publicly as the case may be, because the answer is important.  What is Justice?  The story line hasn't specifically brought up that question in the first nine chapters, but it's drawing a long series of parallels from the Old Testament Prophets that speak directly to that as one of the key failures for which Israel was judged by God. 

I think the answer is directly related to all the political harangues we've been on so bitterly for the last 4-5 years.  The root issues underlying the bitter exchanges are important mind you, but the problem I have is I find no redemption in them, because the conversations are all surface.  I mean we can't get down to the brass tacks of simple root applications, we keep it heated and we keep it emotional and we try to force our well reasoned approach down our opponents throat BECAUSE WE'RE RIGHT BY GOD AND IF YOU DON'T AGREE YOU'RE LIKELY GOING TO HELL FOR BEING A ...  You get where all this stuff has gone.  We can't truly agree or put words to what we think are the solutions.  I recently blogged about a conversation wherein I just told the other person we can't agree on the foundation of the Constitution as a rule of law so there is no conversation to be had, we're talking at and around each other...

That's pretty common in political conversations.  So, we've stayed surface, or tried to slap band aids on the issue by pressing the latest cause "put prayer back in schools" or "sign this petition to give all female teachers bra holsters and .22 automatics".  First of all my girls already pray in their public school, because they've been taught at home to talk to God about everything.  Second of all... the caption read "this is a properly dressed teacher" and I'm not sure that anything less than a C or D cup would have concealed the outline of the smallest gun hanging between her cups, not with the tight t-shirt she was wearing, let alone whether she'd ever be able to pull a child in for that impromptu hug that seems to be the signature of a child comfortable with their teacher.  But even if we think both of these things should be done (and I'm not saying they should or should not, not here in this forum) the question remains why?  What have we gained, have we restored a foundation?  Does it raise too many implementation questions?  My point is that until we can get the answer simplified and into a practical application I'm not signing anything.  Because methinks the problem is more basic than those things.  I think it's about something brought up first in the history of Abraham recorded in the Bible.

For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. 
Genesis 18:19 (ESV)

The way of the LORD can be kept by DOING righteousness and justice.  Got it.

Well sort of... on second thought... part of it but not really the other.

If we accept that a good working definition of righteousness is "right relatedness to God and others", you know love your neighbor, do unto others... speak the truth, IN LOVE as we're told in Ephesians 4:15 (rather than WITH A CLUB - as it so often turns out).  I get that part mostly.  I can work it out.

But justice?  doing?  What... I mean how... I don't get it really.  And I hear that prophet guy saying:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8 (ESV)

Do justice?

And I hear time and again these other prophets saying that Israel and other nations are under the wrath of God for failure to be just and righteous and defend the defenseless, and live righteously with one another.  Don't change the rules, don't move the boundary markers, don't have double standards.  Do have love for God and one another.  Do have faith in God to reward your right behavior.

So if Abraham can be chosen to teach his family how to DO justice and righteousness, that must mean it's doable - right?  This isn't a situation of 'with God all things are possible.'  Or 'Is anything to hard for God?'  This is a situation of Abraham knows how to get this done, he's fully capable of doing it.  Therefore we can all DO justice.

How?

Well, I suspect like I heard somewhere a few hundred times or so "let it begin with me" is most definitely where the prescription starts.  But the how is still important, I can work out righteousness - I get it mostly.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Don't make condemning judgments that bludgeon the other person with condemnation and allow no room for redemption.  Instead make right judgments that incorporate understanding where the situation unraveled, what God intended the situation to be, and work with each other to get there by His grace.  Or simply accept the fact the other person doesn't want to get there and you aren't going to take them there kicking and screaming and force them to repent.  You might drag them to the altar and get a confession, but not repentance.  So I can accept my friend as they are, love them where they are, while I pray for them to get more in line with what God reveals to be His best intentions for our best life now and throughout eternity.  I can even wrap my brain around the fact that the best righteousness I can do will still fall short of God's truest glory and that ultimately I have to rely on this $50 theological term 'imputed' righteousness, the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ and 'imputed' to me by faith in Him. 

But how do I work out justice?  I mean are we talking laws, rules at least?  Or is it something else, something more than rules, or less than rules as the case may be? 

Abraham was before the Law, the Ten Commandments and the bazillion others... so it can't be as complicated as we want to make it.  Yet God says we're supposed to DO this justice thing.  What's worse is we've got all these references to Him being mad when this justice thing doesn't get done.  He rolls up nations like we fold up game boards, He smooshes together all the Risk armies into one little geographic territory and starts rolling the dice to conquer the un-Just(ice) opponents that he warned beforehand.  I mean there's these little Roman numerals and horses and cannons all piled up and spilling in like some crazy plastic barbarian horde changing the whole color scheme of the map and collecting cards every round... so I'm guessing He takes it pretty freakin' serious.  I should probably get this one right...

And yet I can't specifically tell you what it would mean to DO justice.  Seriously.  I wish this tired soldier were joking.  I can't specifically tell you.

Can you tell me what it would mean?  Have you ever thought about it?  Do you think we ought to know what gets God so fired up? 

Not "Truth, Justice, and The American way."  I mean surely you understand we here in the United States of America have mostly forsaken Truth and exchanged The American Way for something our founders routinely warned against.  Justice surely didn't survive loosing the book ends of that patriotic phrase.  Truth in this country fell by the wayside at the last just before the turn of the 20th century with the systematic change of American and world history to reflect the motivational pattern of "follow the money."  We redefined what motivated people.  Once we were successful in stripping our motivation for historical actions from Moral law that conformed to, or diverged from,  the revealed nature of God - we were able to slowly and systematically begin redefining everything to suit our needs and whims.  And then shortly thereafter we abdicated our personal moral and financial responsibilities to this nebulous entity "The Federal Reserve" - an entity neither Federal nor having actual gold and precious metals in Reserve.  And though no one reading this today was alive in 1913 and actually made that choice personally, we have inherited the futile thinking of our forefathers who revealed by their actions that the true God we worship is money, or success defined in dollar signs...  history records that several protests were lodged and yet they had that 'injustice' foisted upon them, and we inherited it, and the consequences.  Which brings up a converse approach to finding 'justice.' 

We can probably rattle off several examples of what 'injustice' looks like, so can we work backwards and put our finger on 'justice'?  Or do we have to start from a known point and move forward?

Do you think it's important?  I do.  And I'll tell you why.  It's captured in the last phrase of the verse from Genesis 18:19:

...This is how the LORD will fulfill to Abraham what He promised him. (HCSB)

If doing what is right and just is the litmus test for whether I'm the new creation Scripture claims I'm supposed to be in Christ, and whether or not I'm truly a child of Abraham by faith, then I need to know how to DO JUSTICE.  I'm not talking works salvation here.  I'm not talking legalism or a return to Judaism.  Abraham as I pointed out was before The Law.  And justice was still doable.  So we're going to find a different marker post here.  Or at least I'm going to tell you what I find Scripture to reveal, whether you agree or not will be your choice.

See you next time, with something more than questions.

Gravity Is Not Suspended

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." 

Proverbs 22:6

This is true whether you come from a good background with a Christian family or a bad background with a pagan family.  Give some grace and learn someone's story before you write them off.  Christianity isn't a behavior modification program wherein we all the sudden just unlearn decades of abusive, pagan behavior immediately after saying a "sinner's prayer."  Scripture shows that we experience the inherent consequences of sin whether we're saved or not.  Repentance and Salvation spare us the eternal condemnation we justly deserve, but the temporal effects must often be endured for some period commensurate with their details.  Read the story of King David, the 'man after God's own heart', who fell to the temptation of lust, committed adultery, murdered her husband, married her publicly because she was pregnant with his child, and basically lost the moral foundation under everything he had spent decades building.  My pastor once preached a sermon entitled "The Look That Took." and listed at least ten specific things that indulging his lust took from David after an exemplary life up to that point.

Here's that link if you're interested:  http://sermons.faclex.com/2012/05/06/the-look-that-took/

My point today is less about sin after an otherwise good example, and more about new believers who stumble because they don't know how to walk in the newness of life they've entered into.

What I'm reacting to is the tendency we have to question someone's conversion or commitment to Christ because they get caught in stupid stuff after they get saved.  We expect them to act just slightly less spiritually mature and serious than the pastor who is tenth generation Christian from a solid background of patron saints who were all seminary trained theologians who yearly made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  Hogwash and fudderbuddle!  Entirely unrealistic.  That thug you're running down and casting dispersions on was forged in an oven of culture and sin that you may barely be able to understand.  That thug was once a child trained to walk in the futile and dark ways of his fathers.  Walking in newness of life will not come automatically nor easily.  Many of them may actually end up dying like the repentant thief on the cross next to Jesus, without ever getting the chance to show any actions that would resemble fruit. 

Sin has inherent consequences not only in the eternal spiritual realm, but also in the temporal - the here and now of every day life.  If you sin without repentance and salvation by faith in the only begotten son of God, Jesus Christ, you will be eternally separated from the presence of God in conscious torment with the devil and his angels cast into the lake of fire - ugly but there it is plainly written for all to read as Scripture records it.  If you sin, acknowledge that you understand what you've done and repent by faith in Jesus, you have changed your eternal destiny to be with Him in paradise for eternity.  That being said, what happens here in everyday life?  Well the simple answer is:  Gravity is not suspended because you get saved.  If you robbed a bank yesterday, got saved today, and show fruits of your repentance tomorrow by taking your cut of the money back to the authorities you will still most likely serve jail time.  Worse, if you confess the identity of your partners and they get jailed with you, you could end up dead in some prison because they shanked you in retaliation.  Inherent consequences brought about by your sin.  Jesus absorbed the cost of your consequences in the spiritual realm and by His blood you will be cleansed from all unrighteousness to stand in the presence of God - but that doesn't mean there isn't hell to pay in the here and now.  God often reduces those blows, unravels the damages and brings others to redemption through the pain that you caused in your relationships with them - but you still have to face up to what has been done, and walk through it until God removes it from you in the here and now of everyday life.  You are no longer your own, you were bought with a price, your new Master guides that process as He sees fit and as you submit.

In sharing my personal testimony over the years I have often likened this process to the analogy of spending X number of years walking down the road to hell.  Just because I got saved I didn't turn around and find myself standing right at the gates of Heaven ready to walk through as a model citizen possessed of all Spiritual knowledge and righteous behavior.  Now Christ's imputed righteousness does just that in the spiritual realm, but we're talking about what happens here in the temporal realm.  I have to walk back through all the same devastation I wreaked by my sinful walk on the way down the road, I may have entered the narrow gate and be walking that path, but it's cluttered and surrounded by my own sinful wreckage.  If others wreaked devastation in your life outside your control, that walk back can be even more convoluted and may take longer than the walk in.  It's different for everyone.  God uses it to prune you into the fruitful vine He alone can see you being.  Our impatience with others is what causes the lack of disciples we are supposed to be making, we want them fixed now with no personal investment or cost to ourselves.  Whatever.  Loving grace isn't cheap, it cost Jesus His life, and if we're going to be authentic it will cost us something as well.

The Apostle Paul is more along the lines of what I'm thinking today.  Paul is an example not everyone truly understands.  They remember the dramatic story of his conversion on the Damascus Road, most remember he was formally named Saul and ruthlessly persecuted the young Church of Christ, some realize that this is the same man who held the robes of those who stoned the first Christian martyr to death.  But many never realize that after his conversion he basically withdrew for almost 3 years to get his head screwed on straight.  Acts 9:26 says the disciples were afraid of him, after hearing his testimony accepted him, but then sent him on his way when he was threatened by a plot to kill him.  Then, in what is surely one of the greatest chuckles recorded in the Bible, Acts 9:31 says after they sent him away "then the churches...had peace..."  Kind of like when your rambunctious child goes to bed after being a terror all day... mom and dad get to enjoy some peace.  Saul, renamed Paul, had to take some time to walk back through what he had formerly done - where his blind, sinful, misconceptions had come from - and what actions his blindness led him to commit - and what deep grace had been given to him to be considered righteous before God.  Paul had to sort back through his extremely blessed studies under the most revered Rabbi of his day, Gamaliel, to put those teachings into proper perspective realizing Jesus was the promised Messiah most of the spiritual celebrities of his day had not recognized.  Paul's salvation and his subsequent 3 years getting his head screwed on straight didn't bring Stephen back to life; or free the prisoners Saul had imprisoned; or keep people from fearing him at first meeting.though.  These were inherent consequences, gravity if you will.  And it was this same Paul who later wrote that the unrighteous would not inherit the Kingdom of God and concluded that list of unrighteous behaviors with:

"And such were some of you.  But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the fruit of the Spirit of God."  1Cor6:11

So the next time you are tempted to discount the story of some thug who claims to be a sinner now saved by Grace - remind yourself "...such was I..." or "...there but for the Grace of God go I."

Churches are not clubs for the perfect. They are clinics for the sick, the wounded and the maimed, where those a bit stronger help those who are still weak. The forgiven forgive. The healed heal. The comforted comfort others. Our role is not to kick people when they are down. They are the devil’s victims and, rather than scorn we should pour on them the oil of understanding and bring recovery and joy.    

Reinhard Bonnke

Healing Still Happens

"...and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them." Luke 4:40

I want to share something with you all today that I wrote and shared as a Facebook post somewhere near the beginning of December 2011.  It's a real moment I experienced while going about my ordinary every day life, and all the sudden God broke in.  In the fullness of that moment He was Immanuel - God with us; He was Jehovah-Rapha - The Lord Our Healer; He was a friend and healer in this moment.  And I share it openly with you because He wants to be those things for you as well, even today, right here in the middle of your ordinary everyday life.  I don't know what those healing moments need to look like for you, probably different than mine, but He does - and as we walk with Him daily, trusting Him to be exactly who He reveals Himself in the Bible to be, He will lay His hands on you and heal you.  Your story could be every bit as dramatic as the beggar healed by the Beautiful Gate of the Temple in Acts 3 where Peter and John told the man "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk."  Or as subtle and private as the woman who had simply determined to touch the hem of Jesus' robe as he was passing by as recorded in Mark 5:25-34.  I'm not saying that every ailment you ever experience will be dramatically removed, I'm simply sharing the experience that many have had in their real, normal, mundane, every day life.  Healing still happens and miracles surround you every day, if you only open your eyes to see...  that's the Jesus I know, walking with me in the everyday ordinary and in the fullness of time bringing out the extraordinary joy filled moments that glorify Him and heal our wounded hearts - and beloved friends we all have wounds that need the Balm of Gilead available from the Great Physician.

I want to share a joyful moment I just experienced with my little family. It's really a moment of healing by the loving hand of Jesus in our life, and I hope it will encourage you as it has me. Before I married Shonda and we were blessed with Ashley and Kira, God promised me that the deepest emotional and spiritual healings in my life would come through my family - which of course takes longer than my original five year plan.

I worked late tonight resolving a service call that started much earlier in the day. My 10yo daughter was still up with mom chattering away on the phone with Grandma when I got home, well after her normal bed time. In the short time it took me to get changed and relax a few minutes before going upstairs mom tucked in Ashley and I figured we'd get a few bedside minutes to talk about her day. I went up to kiss her goodnight and thought she was playing 'possum so I jiggled her loft bed as I clumped up the ladder and didn't get a single giggle out of the child. Not to be thwarted so easily, I grabbed the side rail and rattled it harder - not even a twitchy smile to give away the game - she was truly asleep, with her 'love tank' full as her mommy pointed out when I shared the import of this moment with her. I stood there looking at her and realized how different her life is from mine. She's grown up loved and secure and can sleep peacefully even with daddy jiggling her whole loft bed. Kira too. On my late nights I still faithfully climb up their ladders and kiss them, place my hand on their head or back, pray over them briefly, sometimes not so briefly - but never do they do more than stir a little. Not so with me, even after almost 22 years of living a healthy, Holy Spirit filled life, I still sleep in a state of awareness, not true rest. Full wakefulness for me is rarely further than an out of place noise or a neighbor off their routine. When the girls were newborn I didn't really sleep at even my normal level for 3-6 months (though they both slept through the night around 6-8 weeks) until I became fully immersed in their noises and tendencies. People who know these things call it hyper-vigilance, and mine was learned in an insecure dangerous childhood. I was moved to something approaching awe tonight as I stood there looking at my daughter peacefully sleeping, and heard something like the whisper of God saying "you've done well with this child, and the other as well, they have no need to fear sleeping in your watchful care." What a difference Jesus makes in a parent's life, that He can redeem you and work through you to be more than you ever would be otherwise - and while you think you spend all your time investing in your kids and their needs and wants - they move you to tears just by sleeping peacefully and you feel the healing hand of Jesus touch you yet one more time.

I told you all that to tell you this: since that night I wrote about, my sleep for the first time in decades has become more peaceful, less vigilant.  Something I never thought possible has come to pass.  I shared the word, the testimony of this moment, and He blessed me with healing from the night I made that post.  The centurion in Matthew 8:8 was unwilling to bother Jesus to come beneath his Gentile roof, and he spoke with great faith that Jesus need only speak the word and his servant would be healed.  What words of faith, of healing, do you need to speak today?  Could it be that sharing it would unwrap the gift of healing in your own life?

Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you."  And his servant was healed that same hour.
Matthew 8:13