Idolatry 101

4/25/2024

            By nature, humans are geared to worship; it’s in our DNA.  Admit it or not, we all worship something or somebody, which began with ourselves.  This is evident as we gaze into the sweet, little faces of our infants.  They begin life self-centered, and without proper up bringing, they live the rest of their lives the same way.  While psychologists have given us many, lofty-sounding terms in order to compartmentalize our idolatrous tendencies, the easiest way to understand it is to recognize that worship of anything but God is simply old-fashioned Idolatry dressed up in modern clothing.

We Americans have lots of stuff, compared to many other countries, and we tend to worship our stuff, whether it be our money, our cars, our reputations, particularly our looks, and on and on, but generally, we worship anything other than God.  Doubt it?  Look at the people in Walmart, or the sleazy ads on the internet, or the non-existent dress code in your church congregation.  Who needs to pay for porn when it’s everywhere in front of us!  Don’t we just love our bodies?!!  My wife calls the folks who wear yoga pants (we used to call them panty hose),   “Body buddies”, and it’s getting ubiquitous and disgusting.  Please leave something to the imagination!!  And with a nose for business, I’ve always said, “Why give it away when you can sell it?!”  But doesn’t that describe a big chunk of American demographics? 

In our One Year Bible, my wife and I began reading in the book of Judges several days ago.  For those who don’t know, this book recounts a very rough period in the history of Israel, and the writer presents the history as a roller coaster ride, one which we may be seeing right now in the U.S.A. 

The book presents a chronological series of Israel falling into idolatry and abandoning God, followed by various periods of foreign occupation and severe persecution.  Then, in response to their prayers of repentance, God appoints a “judge” to fight for Israel’s return to freedom and self-rule.  However, the return to God and self-rule lasts for generation or so, until the pattern occurs all over again, as Israel once again forgets God and drifts back into idolatry.  It reminds me of a pig falling back into the mud, and now, sadly, it reminds me of America.  It seems our generation isn’t learning the lessons which were so costly for the previous generations.  Re-learning is always more costly.

To our shame, the M.A.G.A. movement has degenerated to the point of putting Donald Trump on a pedestal, and in doing so, they have made the man some kind of super-hero, in fact, an idol.  It doesn’t take much of a prophet to see where this is going.  By idolizing Mr. Trump, the target on his back, and by extension, our own, gets bigger, brighter, and more glaring every day.  Donald Trump is not perfect, and most decidedly, he is not God.  He has glaring character faults which are incredibly obvious if we dare admit it.  He is a man; he is only a fallen human being, just like the rest of us, and we need to see it now, more than ever.

As I write this, I fully realize some would say I do not support Mr. Trump’s candidacy, which is not currently accurate.  They would declare me some kind of enemy of freedom, which I am not, but under no circumstances will I worship Donald Trump, nor will I dance to the cheap music of the M.A.G.A. movement sycophants.  I will not…and neither should you.  It’s simply too dangerous for the country to idolize anyone, and if we truly love this country, we will make a hard-stop before we go any farther. 

While I do believe that Mr. Trump is the most obvious choice for our votes, instead of Biden-Obama, that’s not saying much.  In fact, my cat would make a better leader for this country than Biden-Obama!  And I say ‘most obvious choice’ simply because no better men are on the ticket at this time…but we have them; they do exist.  A good friend of mine recently said, right now it wouldn’t matter; the M.A.G.A. crowd has chosen Trump, and neither hell nor high water will change that at this juncture.

I want to end this writing by saying what I’ve always said – ONLY GOD CAN SAVE THIS COUNTRY.  That fact is immutable, and until we reconcile ourselves to God and His agenda, we will only succeed in taking another odious lap in the mud puddle of history. 

We do not own this country – it was given to us by God alone.  If we want to keep living here, we need to waste no time in returning to Him.

John

A Covenant With God

4/21/2024

Ref:

  1 Corinthians 11:24-30

  [See also: Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; Hebrews 13:20 (NASB95)]

            It is amazing to me that we so seldom receive Bible teaching about COVENANT.  Why is teaching about this critically important topic most often overlooked, and why would I think it’s ‘critical’?

            What is a covenant?  A covenant is simply an agreement between two or more parties that have bound themselves by promises to honor the agreement.   Back into farthest antiquity, the most binding covenant was known as the ‘blood covenant’, wherein all parties to the covenant ratified their part of the agreement by shedding, and “swapping” their blood.  This meant that the parties to the agreement were putting up their own blood as collateral, saying in effect, that they would shed their own blood, if it became necessary, in order to honor the covenant.  After the bloodletting, gifts were exchanged by all parties as a token of their promises to honor the covenant. 

            With this in mind, it is important to note that all of God’s conditional promises to His people (His family), are based on His covenant with His people, and to us, through the blood of Jesus Christ, which ratified, and initiated His promise of eternal Salvation, given as His gift to us.  Without having a valid covenant in effect between us and God, only through the blood of Jesus, it makes no difference at all how much we factually know about the Bible, or Jesus Christ.  Knowing about Jesus is no more important than what nonfamily members knew about my dad.  I qualified because I shared his blood, making me family.

            The Bible makes it very plain that all life is “in” the blood.  When we partake of the sacrament of communion in our churches, the token substitution of the very blood of Jesus is the wine, or juice, and we are strongly admonished to only take it into our bodies in a ‘worthy’ manner.   The apostle Paul stressed in his first letter to the Corinthian church, chapter 11, that it had already been a fatal mistake for some in the church to have taken the sacrament in an ‘unworthy’ manner.  My opinion on this is that they must have incurred life-threatening curses by partaking in the sacrament without having a covenant relationship already in place with Jesus Christ. 

I have been in churches that teach we should ‘examine ourselves’, as Paul taught, but only to the extent of making sure we had forgiven everyone we had yet failed to forgive.  While this is good and proper, it does not go far enough, and I do not think it is what Paul primarily had in mind when he told the Corinthians to ‘examine’ themselves.  Rather, I believe he meant that the partakers should first make certain they weren’t trampling upon the blood of Jesus by taking part in the sacrament in ignorance of its significance.  In effect, the blood of Jesus is Life to those who believe, but it can result in death to those who do not. 

Personally, I find it grievous to take communion without even basic instructions on what it means, and how serious the sacrament is, in God’s eyes.  I wonder how many church members are sick because they brought it on themselves by succumbing to peer pressure, when they should have declined to accept the elements until further self-examination? 

Having a good understanding of covenants is vitally important as we approach God for the healing we need in our bodies, and our situations.  Psalm 91 is pivotal, and to me, it is the open door to all of God’s conditional promises in the whole Bible.  I cannot imagine approaching God’s throne without first knowing my legal “standing” with Him is healthy through my blood covenant with Him. 

My household is a covenant household and will remain so until we pass on into eternity.  Our covenant with God, ratified by the blood of Jesus Christ, contains our promise to remain faithful to Him even unto death; His covenant with us, ratified by the same blood, promises to grant us Eternal Life.  This is the most binding covenant, and it is only available to us as we live in our mortality, but the promises of God will live on forever.

John 

“Can you serve Me here”?

4/10/2024

            Several years ago, I was employed at a K-12 private school that was an offshoot of a church.  In a separate part of the school building there was also a very busy pre-school.  My specific job was to provide security for the pre-school teachers from 6:00am – 8:00am, and again from 4:00pm – 6:00pm.  I did not initially mind the hours because I had prayed for a 20-hour work week, which God had graciously provided, but after almost 3 years, I was getting burned out with boredom and drudgery.  Since most of my workdays were mind-bendingly predictable, I had begun to feel that I was not accomplishing much to further God’s Kingdom.

Every weekday for 4 hours in the early mornings and another 4 hours in the late afternoons, I would sit and stare at computer monitors showing the feeds from numerous security cameras.  There was no advantage in wandering around on foot because I could see more from the cameras than I could otherwise, so I felt stuck in a humdrum job.

Since there was a predictable lag time between the first arriving teacher, and the first arriving small child, I got into the early morning habit of walking the darkened gym and praying to God, and this became the best part of my otherwise slow days.  One day, as I was telling God I felt like I was accomplishing nothing of much value to Him, I heard this question pop into my head: “Can you serve Me here?”  And I might note here that only God can hit that hard and not be condemning.  I was immediately humbled, and repented as I received His well-deserved correction.

What I learned from that short, intense confrontation with God was this: When God appoints us to a menial job, He expects us to serve Him just as faithfully (and gratefully) as if He called us to do something of earthly, recognized importance.  Remember, He never really “needed” us; He could have taken care of it without us, but instead, He chose to include us in His work. 

As I write this, I’m thinking a small child with a toy carpenter set “helping” his father on a project.  He may not really be able to help much with his toy tool set, but the father is loving the companionship the child is unknowingly providing.  In short, they are doing a job together, and to the child’s father, doing anything with his son makes him happy.

If you are one who feels forgotten in a job that doesn’t seem important, or if you feel that God is somehow disappointed in you because it appears unimportant to Kingdom work in your estimation, you might want to consider looking at your situation from God’s point of view.

Can you serve Him there?

John

On What Do You Stand?

4/5/2024

            Without Jesus Christ, there is no such thing as moral high ground.  Do not waste the short time you’ve been allotted trying to discover this elusive ingredient to a worthwhile life, by searching anywhere else.  It only exists in Christ.

            If you say God exists, yet fail to place Jesus in His proper place, you are building a moral foundation on a lie; we always lie to ourselves first.  Without Jesus Christ, what you believe about God the Father is irrelevant.  Everyone has an opinion, but without Jesus Christ as your Savior, any other beliefs about God will not save you.  In fact, Jesus Christ is the only divinely ordained personification of moral high ground; anything else having a pretense of morality, is only a charade, a safe place of your own imagination, and soon enough, we will all face God and be asked, “What did you do about Jesus when you lived?”  And God only asks rhetorical questions; those are the only kind of questions He can ask.

            When my wife and I moved into our present neighborhood, we joined an online platform called Nextdoor (.com).  It consists of “neighbors” in our locality and our city.  Perhaps you have one like it in your area.  Reading some of the recent posts, it was uplifting to realize there are still people who are able to think logically, and who value truth and morality, but there were also posts, mostly from young folks, that exhibited the almost complete ignorance of anything or anyone farther afield than their own noses.  Consequently, I’m going to state my own opinion: we have, living among us, at least one generation of terrible parents, and they have spawned devil’s children that have no idea what morality is, or where it originates from, and worse, do not want to know.  Their entire world-view ends with themselves…everyone else can go to hell, as far as they’re concerned.

            If I sleep with my neighbor’s wife, and it is consensual, were either of us “wrong”?  If I repudiate God’s clear admonition against homosexuality, or bestiality, and I do not identify the guilt of sin in my actions, am I wrong?  How can I be wrong if I do not feel wrong?  If my sense of morality is subjective to me, and I encounter others that have the same standards, how can we be held guilty?  What about murder?  What if I kill others for money, and interact with others in my line of work…are we to be condemned, and if so, by whom?  If you leave your car in your driveway with the keys in it, and I steal it, why would I be guilty?  You made the mistake; all I did was take what you left out.  How could that be wrong?

            There can be no such word as “wrong” if there is no objective standard of “right”, and the only objective standard in the universe is God, and the only way to Him is through Jesus Christ.  Our entire basic framework of law and justice originated with God, but over the years we’ve mangled and twisted that framework to fit our twisted and demented view of morality.  On open display in America today are numerous “Judges” who should themselves be judged.  And they were “appointed”, or voted in, if you believe it, by folks who richly deserve what they now have.  It’s always fair if it happens to you; it is not fair if it happens to me.

            It saddens me without measure to see and hear so many ignorant and completely self-consumed young folks we have in this country, for whether we like it or not, they are our future.  And as they continue to impact our moral standards in this country by their increasing entry into our society (and they vote!), we will have problems dumped in our laps we cannot escape.  It is already beginning, and like chickens breaking through their shells, they will soon dominate our national culture.  As one true racist accurately prophesied some years ago, “America’s chicken’s have come home to roost.”

            Never in American history has it been more critical for us to re-locate and re-adopt the true standards of morality that once upon a time facilitated the birth of this country.  And if we don’t, may I say this:

            I’m old; I have a lot to look forward to sooner than later…but I pity my grandkids.

John

The Witness

4/2/2024

Contrast:

[Acts 22:20 NASB95] ‘And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him.’

[Acts 22:20 NKJV] ‘And when the blood of Your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by consenting to his death, and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’

            Never before in the relatively brief history of the United States of America have we needed witnesses to the credibility of the lordship of Jesus Christ more than we do right now.  This, I believe, is uncontestable.  Throughout all of human history, and in every generation, God has always appointed witnesses to Himself; He will never be without a witness.  While it is possible to show our witness for Christ through holy conduct and imparted righteousness, I am writing about those who proclaim the Lordship of God the Father and Jesus Christ, through their words, for it is by proclamation that our witness is cast.  It is, in effect, our vote with regard to eternity.

            In the Bible book of Acts, the Greek word for ‘witness’ and ‘martyr’ is the same (Strong’s G-3144).  In America, we are now in a time when to be a witness to the Lordship of Christ may bring about persecution, and in fact, the more effective our witness, the more likely that outcome.  Are we able and willing to wear that mantle?  Are we willing to lose friends, family, and perhaps jobs and income, as we faithfully testify to the Lordship of Christ?  Do we dare tell God in prayer that we are willing to be witnesses for Him in this godless generation, while still ignorant of the actual costs we may have to pay? 

            As long as we can read or hear stories about other heroes of the Faith, for instance the ones in Hebrews, chapter 11, we can still honor their memory while standing at a safe distance from their earthly rewards, but I’ve always caught my breath at the guy who was sawn in half for his testimony.  I’m not sure I’m up for that in my life, but I’m almost getting to the point where I want to be as committed as he was, no matter the cost.  And I’m old enough now to see the end of my life more clearly than the beginning, and any day now, eternity can easily be my next stop on this journey…and yours too, if you’re honest with yourself. 

            One of the enigmatic things about our earthly lives is how diligently we worry and work to prepare for our earthly futures, while being almost blasé about eternity.  We have no idea whether we will have serious health issues or costly accidents in our individual lives, but we all keep the insurance industry well-oiled.  While we might be able to afford a degree of “contractual” safety involving things that haven’t yet happened, or may never happen, we tend to put off or ignore preparing for what certainly will happen. 

Given enough time, we all die, and the eternity we failed to prepare for will yawn open before us.  All our earthly concerns and earthly preparations will not matter at all.  In a movie I recently watched, a Christian woman who had been unsuccessfully witnessing to her friend about her need for Jesus, went into her friend’s room and found her dead.  As she looked down upon her body, she said, “I bet you believe in God now!” 

            As witnesses, we are responsible for one thing and one thing only: that we faithfully witness.  We cannot bear the burden of others as they reject our witness, nor can we worry about achieving “success”; we are only responsible to be faithful to God, for everyone needs to be afforded the chance to receive or reject the Lord.  I do not agree with beating someone over the head with our Bibles, but it is our duty to be witnesses with faithful endurance; it is their decision to accept the witness or reject it. 

            Like the woman’s dead friend, we will all eventually believe in God.

John  

For The Hope That Is In You

3/29/2024

Reference:

‘but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always [being] ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you’                      [1 Peter 3:15 NASB95]

            After reading my bible, a portion of scripture I had not been reading jumped into my thoughts.  I clearly heard in my head: “for the hope that is in you”.  It was not my thought, and all I knew was that it was somewhere in the Bible, so I opened the concordance of my bible and looked up the word, “hope”.  The very last entry read, ‘for the hope that is in you’!  Wow, what are the odds?!  I then read several chapters bracketing 1 Peter 3, and knew I had to write something…

            Most Americans are by now, acutely aware that our country is somewhere between “in a lot of trouble” and “finished”, depending on the news provider (AKA: propaganda) we tune in to.  It seems that every news source has an underlying agenda to proclaim. Most of them aren’t very open about it, but the agenda is always there, just out of sight, very much like the matador’s sword, hidden under his cape from the unsuspecting bull.  That bull would be us.

I prefer to listen to the conservative news sources available on the Internet, simply because most of the time, their agenda-driven material is more openly supported by provable facts.  Over the last few years, I’ve learned how easy it is to recognize folks who still get their “news” from mainstream television sources, because they are usually fearful and ignorant of what is actually happening in our country.  In fact, their ignorance borders on sheer, willful stupidity much of the time, and to exclude professing Christians by that statement would not be true.  One big problem, again like the matador’s sword, is the hopelessness/hope tension, promulgated by both mainstream and conservative news outlets. 

The mainstream sources would make us fearful and hopeless unless we trust our government to know better about what will make us better, than we do, while the conservative sources would make us fearful and hopeless unless Donald Trump is re-elected in November.  I say this is a losing battle no matter which source we listen to because both will only put us at odds with each other – something that has recently become a cancer in this nation.  We are anything but The United States at this time, instead we are more distinctly divided now than we ever have been since our first civil war (1861- 1865).  This a road that leads only to destruction. 

Jesus Christ said, and later Abraham Lincoln quoted, that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”  Now, more than ever before in our history, including our Civil War, we need to anchor ourselves to one hope, and I believe that alone, will begin to re-unify and heal this America.  Failing that, we will butt heads with each other until the soon-coming day when our new owners will take us over, but by that time we may merely be a smoking ruin of a once great country.

I have felt very strongly for some years that only Jesus Christ can save America if He only will.  The Globalist puppets of both political parties in our nation, would lead us into global servitude.  That is their goal, and they seem to be winning as I write this.  The few true, “America first” politicians are only experts at spinning their wheels in mud they cannot get unstuck from, while the demographic in our country is changing dramatically every day, compliments Barack Obama and his finger-puppet, Joe Biden.  Have we ever needed Jesus Christ more than we do right now?  That answer should be slam-dunk obvious, but it remains elusive in the background as long as both fighters in our political ring fasten their hopes on MEN.

I will go on record to say this:  Only Jesus Christ can save this country, and only Jesus Christ can give this nation the New Birth it now must have.  Jesus heals and resurrects; and nobody else has a corner on that market.  All ownership on this earth is temporary.  Nations rise and fall, and always will.  We have absolutely no guarantee this land will continue to be our land into perpetuity.  None. 

Only Jesus Christ is eternal, and only He is the way into perpetuity for this sick and afflicted country.  Believe it, and fasten your ONLY hope on Him.

John

The Lowly Pine Beetle

3/27/2024

            In the Spring of 2004, after longing to live in the mountains of Colorado for at least fifty years, I finally moved from Kansas to Northern Colorado.  Having spent all of my life in the Midwest states of Missouri and Kansas, it was quite an adventure!  For me, the drive west from Kansas City into Northern Colorado was like living in a dream, and putting Kansas in my rear-view mirror was exhilarating, because every mile farther west felt like we were escaping New York.

            In my opinion, Colorado is the most diverse and interesting state in America, and there is still almost a frontier aura to the land, even though the first 100 miles west from the Kansas line on Highway I-70 is just like Kansas.  The first view of any mountains occurs from Limon, Colorado, and then they almost appear imaginary on the western horizon; they look like clouds, but they don’t move.  From the truck stop on Limon’s one hill, the sense of adventure is steadily pervasive, and it is easy to imagine the trip in a covered wagon in the 1800’s. 

            After spending a week in a Loveland trailer park, we made the decision to relocate in the Estes Park area, about thirty-five miles due west of Loveland on Highway 34.  Winding up through the Big Thompson Canyon, knowing we were finally going to be home in the mountains, a dream both my wife and I had harbored for decades, was absolutely incredible, but the experience went off the charts when we rounded the last turn into Estes Park, through what I call the Gateway Rocks.  Immediately upon completion of the right-hand turn, the mountains literally exploded in our faces, and were so incredibly beautiful it took our breaths away!  The town lay in front of us at the bottom of a gentle sloping road and appeared like a small jewel in the lap of luxury.  We knew we were home!  You probably guessed my heart is still there, and always will be.

            There are many folks who live in Colorado who can sit on their land and look over at the mountains, but take it from me, living in the mountains is quite different.  The mountain air is light and clean, compared to anywhere in the Midwest, and every day is a separate adventure with numerous and distinctive weather systems, animals and terrain.  Every corner on every road opens upon a potentially life-changing experience, but I fear I’m trying in vain to describe the indescribable. 

            Up close, the mountains are like a very beautiful woman; they are clothed in God’s beautiful creativity, but they can also be very dangerous.  On foot, the mountain trails seem benign and innocent, but they kill unwary folks every year, because their harsh hardness can destroy just as quickly as it can enthrall.  A great many plains-dwelling tourists go for family-friendly hikes with their kids off-leash, so to speak, and some find out their flip-flops and tee shirts can, without warning, be hyperthermic for them.  And a few of them have their very last view of their child as he bounds out of sight ahead of them on the trail, a trail that unbeknownst to them is within the territory of a mountain lion, struggling to feed his family fresh meat.  Being stupid in the mountains can be terminal, but thankfully not that often. 

            All of the foliage where we lived was dominated by big Ponderosa pine trees, some of which were over 500 years old, and the mountains were covered with Ponderosa pines and Aspen trees filling in the old burn areas.  The wind blowing through the trees is usually constant, and the leaves of the aspens, golden yellow in the short Fall season, are constantly in motion.  Being among the aspens in the Fall is like bathing in a gold cascade.  I still cannot accurately describe the experience!  We took scores of professional-quality photos with ease, as they framed themselves in every direction, but little did we know then that God privileged us to see Colorado in its glory, right before it all changed…enter the lowly pine beetle.

            Several years after our arrival, an invasion of pine beetles also arrived.  They are very tiny, insignificant black beetles that bore into the trunks of Ponderosa pines, leaving small, neat holes to announce their presence.  Within only several hours of boring into the tree, the tree is irretrievably dead, although it may not know it for months.  However, several months later the stately giant is brown and brittle.  Due to the infestation, our mountains turned from green and clean to brown and dead.  It was, and probably still is, devastating.  Our only good news was that we had hundreds of pre-beetle photos to testify to the original glory of the mountains, something today’s tourists may never see in their lifetimes. 

            As I reflected this morning on the pine beetle invasion, I was struck with how similar our Christian experiences can be, and the Old Testament nation of Israel, called out by God, was also similar.  At first, the exhilaration of being loved by God, and knowing it, is very exciting, but very shortly after the honeymoon fades, life has a way of boring into our trunks, and sapping the new life away…and we seldom realize it’s happening.  We don’t run away from our first Love; we drift.  And as we drift, we compromise, and as we compromise, we fall. 

Entire lives can easily be spent in our club-card churches, but while we are told weekly that we are all right, many might secretly wonder if they aren’t actually starving.  The thrust of Jesus’ teachings was not to sit in our churches and hear sermons about how we should love ourselves; His teachings were a radical departure from that view, and His subsequent death and resurrection paved the way for the invasion of His Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit was specifically sent to empower and enable Christ’s followers to live drift-free Christian lives on earth via the baptism in Him, which is on view throughout the Book of Acts.  The experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is still available to those that want it, but many have been turned away by religious doctrines designed to enforce lifeless, religious lives. 

The only sure way to keep religious pine beetles from boring into us and killing us, and the only antidote, is the Holy Spirit.  Without Him, we are ripe for death.  Jesus said as much in Matthew 24:28, “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” 

Vultures only feed on the dead.

John

Healing Responsibility

2/28/2024

            As a watercolor painter would “wash” the paper with a background color, I need to wash this piece by laying the foundation that God is Sovereign.  He does what He wants to do, when He wants to do it, and how He wants to do it, and He does not require any human approval for any of it.  Biblically, He often has chosen to work with and through human “partners” in what He does.  Having said that, let’s look at the subject of divine, physical healing.

            It needs to be said that there is absolutely no cogent foundation to believe the Bible teaches that divine, physical healing ended with the death of the last apostle in the first century AD.  However, for some idiotic and doctrinal reason, there have always been preachers who will teach against the workings of the Holy Spirit since the Bible was canonized; they are called Cessasionists, and today, whole denominations are full of them, and they specialize in turning out unbelieving believers by the droves.

            My first experience with the reality of divine healing was when I was healed.  In early 1971 had been medically diagnosed with a condition known as hypoglycemia.  My healing occurred in early 1972 during a church conference held in Webster Groves Presbyterian Church, in St. Louis County, Missouri.  And prior to it happening, I was curious, but skeptical to any of it.  Dr. Derek Prince was the speaker, and during his message I had already been stunned to hear God speak to me about the truth of Derek’s message.  Towards the end of his teaching he asked for anyone with a blood-related condition who wanted to be healed, to stand. 

            Even though I was still stunned to have just heard from God about the truth of Dr. Prince’s message, I was still a bit skeptical as I, and about 30 others in the congregation stood to their feet.  Derek prayed a very short, verbally unimpressive prayer, and we all sat down.  I wish I could say I felt something dynamic during his prayer, but I felt nothing.  It was only after I went home and tested my “healing” that I found zero side effects to consuming any kind of food or drink that was not on my approved list of “safe” foods.  I had been healed, and remain so today.  One of the key points in that testimony is that I made the effort to stand for healing, and by doing so, I came to Christ. 

            In the Gospel books of the Bible, we find that Christ healed many people.  In fact, as far as it is recorded in the Scriptures, He healed ALL who came to Him.  We also find some, who could not come to Him because of their disability, get healed when He came to them.  He is, as I first stated, sovereign.  It is also Biblically true that He did not heal those who chose not to come to Him.  Just a guess, but I conjecture that although He walked through Israel for almost 3 years, Jesus probably healed much less than half who needed it….but they did not come to Him.

            There is a two-sided responsibility involved in being divinely healed today, as there has always been.  First, Jesus Christ, through His Holy Spirit, is responsible for the work, but just as important, we who want Him to heal us, must assume the responsibility of coming to Him for it, and then receiving it in faith.  Everything we receive from God will to some degree, depend upon our faith.  While we don’t necessarily have to have a lot of it, thank goodness, faith is always required of us.  Just like we have to exercise faith to believe we will be given eternal salvation, it is the same with healing.  The “I’ll believe it only when I see it” crowd is not an example of that faith. 

In my previous testimony, I had already realized the truth that Jesus was able and willing to heal me when I stood up, and although I felt undeserving and skeptical I would be one of the “lucky” ones who would be healed, I did stand up with some small degree of faith – and Jesus met me more than halfway.  He’s very good at that.  Jesus Christ loves to give gifts to us if we would just let Him, AND if we would meet the conditions for receiving. 

If you or a loved one has prayed for healing, but did not receive it, please do not despair.  Jesus Christ does not change His mind – He is always willing and able.  99.999% of the time when healing does not occur, we have not met the conditions.  We have to exercise our faith, and sometimes we have to determine with flinty resolve to hang onto our faith, until the gift is received. 

Technically, the healing I received in 1972 would be classified as a “miracle of healing”, in that it was immediate; many healings today are not necessarily immediate, but we are promised in Mark 16:18 that if we meet the conditions, we ‘will recover’.  I know this to be true, because since 1972 I’ve been healed many times, and most of those times I “recovered”, and I knew I had when it happened!  I have many testimonies I won’t go into now, but believe me, Jesus is true to His divine nature and His divine Word.  Meet the conditions and you will recover.

John

Why Is Waiting So Difficult?

2/27/2024

            Is there anything we do as humans that does not involve waiting?  I doubt it.  From slow drivers we can’t get around to almost anything else, waiting unfortunately seems to plague us.  And in the Western world at least, we hate waiting.  If you have ever been on time for a medical appointment, you know about waiting.  How about the typical vehicle registration experience, or the line, no matter how short, at the post office?  But have you ever wondered why?

            The Bible indicates that even God waits, as indicated in Genesis 15:16.  God’s timing is always perfect but built into it is His foreknowledge on how long He needs to wait…on us.  I thought it ironic this last Sunday morning as we sang, “We wait for You God..”, because He’s never late, but we usually are. 

            My wife and I seem to be cursed with a consistent ability to be on time in a world that is not.  If we arrange to be someplace, we are usually among the very first to arrive.  We joke about it of course, but it happens all the time.  It’s not difficult to be on time; one simply has to project about how long it would take to make the drive and begin it that many minutes ahead of time.  No big math issue, but there must be a lot of folks who begin their drive at the arrival time. 

When we lived in a small Colorado town, we noticed one couple who would arrive at church almost exactly 15 minutes late for the morning church service, and they did it that way every week, almost to the minute!  I always wondered why, if they could be exactly 15 minutes late, why couldn’t they start exactly 15 minutes early?  And I would bet all of us know people just like that.  They probably figured that if they arrived late, they wouldn’t have to wait for the service to begin.

Today I started thinking about just why, if this world has so much waiting built into it, did God arrange it that way?  And if so, which seems likely, what lessons are we missing by trying so hard to dodge it?  Several weeks ago I was waiting (after being right on time) for an eye appointment, and I had a lot of time to watch people, as they waited.  Every one, and I refer to adults, escaped into their cell phones as soon as their backsides hit their chairs!  Every one!  What amazing consistency!  I was looking at a whole waiting room full of people with their heads bowed into their phones.  A naked man could have walked through the room, and I would have been the only person to know about it.  We hate waiting!

Patience is a biblical virtue, and I didn’t come naturally equipped with an overabundance of it, so every now and then I pray for more.  Warning: this is a prayer that God always answers!

And every time I pray for patience, every slow driver in town lines up in front of me, and they clog both lanes!  Funny somehow, that you have to practice patience to get more of it, and it is aggravating because we hate waiting for it.

            God has created this world to move at His pace, not ours.  We can complain to high heaven, and we usually do, but it doesn’t really speed up any faster than He allows.  There is a perfect time for everything; every word we speak, every decision we make, every person that we come into contact with, and every event.  It is Satan’s job to throw monkey wrenches into that perfect timing, and the only way to avoid being derailed by it is to trust God in faith.  Have faith that He is never surprised because He can’t be, and His perfect time is still on track. 

            We end up again at FAITH, and that is always God’s perfect ending!

John 

Stop The World

2/24/2024

            I’m fairly certain we all know professing Christians who espouse the old 60’s saying, “Just stop the world and let me get off.”  I really do understand, and I feel empathetic, but I also know the temptation to feel that way, and especially to voice it, is not from God.

            The more enlightened I get about what this world system is really about, the less I like it, and the thought of being extracted from it appeals more to me every day.  I am not as naïve as I once was, and my altruistic world view of America, no longer strikes me as honest or aboveboard.  However, opting out of engagement with the evil loosed on this world, is not a rational Christian (Biblical) response.

            To assume that we are alive at just this time and place is just the way the cards fell, flies in the face of the Creator God we say we believe in.  Perhaps we should be asking God why and for what specific purpose He determined to place us, as chosen members of His eternal family, on earth at this exact time.  God has a certain purpose for everything He does, and everyone He calls because He Himself, is the ultimate purpose for everything in the universe.

            In most of our wars, R&R is used to re-balance and re-charge the troops that have been subjected to constant combat.  Without taking a breather from the strain of combat, front line troops decline in their ability to fight and survive.  God put us smack dab in the middle of a centuries long war, and while He will provide His version of R&R for us, He does not expect us to duck the fight.  He is, after all, a God of war.  That’s why He’s the Commander of the Host.  ‘Host’ means army, and like it or not, to be a member of His family mandates that in some way, we are part of His army.  God has His army in heaven and His army on earth, but both parts are part of His one army. 

            The evil force we see loosed on the whole world at this time is composed of evil spiritual forces combined with evil humans, and I believe this army of evil is what the book of Daniel labels the ‘feet of iron and clay’.  The defeat of this army (‘empire’ in Daniel) is attributed to a rock that smashes it into pieces, and that rock is Jesus Christ.  To be part of His host is a high honor, but to be honest, some days it feels like a dubious honor. 

But I have this to say:  some days you fight in the front lines and some days you perform kitchen duty, but the only dishonor is to opt out altogether – there is no place for that in His army.

John