Immersed…it was a two way baptism.
Epidemic or evidence?
This is probably like dropping a box of bullets on the floor as a topic, but so be it. I will dance and dodge if necessary. According to the scriptures, some things just need to be said.
As I look at our culture from a Christian perspective, I find myself frustrated when I hear things like drugs are an epidemic and the only thing for it is more suboxone, more meetings, more recovery houses. We have definitely seen more use and misuse in more people. I see people every week get dropped off at a bus station while they’re going AWOL from a recovery house. And so we have learned to accept it and help people cope with it. “Live a life in recovery with Jesus’ help.”
Really? Psalm 107:20 says He (God) sent His Word (Jesus) and healed them ( we are “them”) and delivered them from all their destruction.. No one would deny that drug use that causes breakdown of individuals, families, futures and lives is destruction. So, is the increased use an epidemic or evidence that “we the people” of God either don’t believe His Word, don’t trust that He has the power to deliver from drug use, or we just have bought into the scenario that what people are is what they’ll always be. So we, if we love them, have to help them live with this chain around their leg (and heart and family members) for the rest of their lives.
Do we tell people that Jesus saves but they have to live in a sin state the rest of their lives and as long as they work the process they will be okay? Most of us wouldn’t think of saying that, but when it comes to the bondage of addiction, people are told “It’s just what it is. Do this, and Jesus will help you stay clean. Keep coming back” Now governments are paying for people to go get suboxone to help them. They’re likely just changing drugs, but at least suboxone is less deadly. And the profits go higher and the families go deeper into despair.
The price of Jesus’ healing and delivering was shed blood, becoming sin and becoming the curse, destruction, damage and stain that sin brought wth it. Jesus took it all into His body, then took it to the cross, then took all that addiction and other destruction into hell, and three days later walked out free of it, so we can be free of it. He “worked the process” so we don’t have to.
Now our enemy lies and keeps us in fear so we say Jesus is all about recovery. But, the Bible tells us something different. Jesus healed a bowed and bent woman on the Sabbath day. He broke the law. In Luke 13, when Jesus was being yelled at by the religious leaders for healing on the Sabbath (not for healing itself), He called them hypocrites and said they wouldn’t even leave their animals in a ditch on the sabbath and went on to say, “Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
Jesus healed her because He said she’d been bound by the devil and He was bringing deliverance and freedom. She was “a daughter of Abraham” and how much more ought the sons of God, those Jesus bought with His own blood, be set free? How is that possible that we don’t set people free by the Word? People are destroyed because they are not told Jesus is Healer. Jesus is Deliverer. He didn’t go through torment and even into hell, to help people manage their bondage.
So, are we unbelieving believers? Do we think bondage is “above Jesus’ pay grade?” Do we think His Word and His healing passed away and while He sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us, He must have wiped out the power of His Word to heal us?
Why do we tell people less than the truth that God sent His Word to heal and deliver from destruction? Then He said His word will not return to Him empty but will succeed and accomplish what He sent it to do.
It’s a simple reality. Either what He said is true or it’s not. How large do we believe God is? He said it like this, “All things are possible to them who believe” and then He said we believers will do the works that He did. He set people in bondage free. He’s not glorified when we do less.
The Missing Finger
I was talking with a woman yesterday about how predators attack the young, the old, and the maimed. How wild killers separate and run down the one who is alone, because there is strength in numbers. That’s the way the animal kingdom has worked since sin entered the world. It was one of those five minute conversations that had no real significance. I thought.
This morning I woke with thoughts pounding through my head like a herd of zebras being chased by lions, and I had to get to the computer to put this in my prayer journal. That’s where it grew into this, a personal look back at a time in my life when, although I was a Christian, I was the one who was alone, and it was by my own doing.
I had been widowed exactly a year when the offense came. I was part of a congregation and had been for years, loved by some, liked by most, or so I supposed. That Sunday morning someone came up to me and asked my forgiveness for a choice I had made one year prior. Immediately I remembered the times the person asking forgiveness had greeted me with a smile and a hug, telling me they cared about me. And that’s when it started.
The Word says that only by pride contention comes and where envy and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. I took my wounded pride, those thoughts, “How can someone be angry at a decision I made the day my husband was dying? How could they hug me week after week and act like they weren’t angry?, and there’s no way I’m going to go sit with people who act like that and then hear a sermon and feel guilt and want to dump their offense on me” and I went home that day and didn’t go back.
For three years, I didn’t go back. Looking back today, in honesty I can only say that I grew in those three years. I grew in pride. I grew in a critical spirit. I grew in conviction that I was fine and didn’t need a group around me to worship God. I stayed home on Sundays, worshiped via You Tube, continued in the Word every day via Internet, and held classes at my home. I was alone. And I can’t even say I was aware that there was a problem with that. Pride’s blinders are subtle.
Oh sure, there was that scripture “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together”, but I was still meeting with and teaching about God, so I wasn’t really forsaking…
This morning, I realized…if we are the body of Christ (and we are), suppose I am an index finger. Handy, available, pointing the way when asked, but normally just there to work with the rest of the fingers. If I looked at my life as that, when I let pride at offense become a disconnect from the body, that congregation was then missing an index finger. Can a hand function without an index finger? Truly, it can. Can it function in the fullness of what it was intended? With adaptation, the hand will be useful without the index finger, but the function of the index finger will have to be done by another finger. So in my rebellion, leaving the “hand”, the congregation of which I was at that time a part, did not impede the functioning of the congregation.
What did happen, then? What did it matter if I stayed home on Sunday mornings, like so many of us choose to do, especially in summer or family events, or outside activities? It mattered because each member of the body draws its life from the other members. If the human index finger is removed, the hand can still function with adaptation, but the finger begins to die without the blood flow from the other parts of the body. Without the warmth of the other members, the missing “finger” loses life, turns cold, and will eventually rot from the inside out.
In our spiritual walk with God, Jesus said “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I, in the midst.” Jesus also said “I will never leave you nor forsake you” but I can tell you that we have commands to love others as He has loved us and that’s impossible in rebellion and offense while walking alone, even if we have other “also alone” people in our lives.
When offense comes, it is our enemy goading us to walk away. It is our soul telling us we “don’t have to put up with that”. It is a wile of the devil to separate us from the midst of the presence of God that is promised when we gather with people of like precious faith. Only our pride and preferring our own way can get us to that point. If we do not think “more highly of ourselves than we ought”, the enemy has no weapon.
I will never know if my being out there on my own opened the door for the enemy to bring two strokes into my life. What I do know is that when my miracle healing came, there was a limited number of people to rejoice with. And that was kind of sad.
I am now in my right mind, serving God, loving people more than what they think of me, free from caring what that is. Every week,at least once a week, I gather with people of faith, if for no other reason than to be with Jesus “in the midst.” The more I know His love for me, the more I can love.
There are those who will say my stance on “You need to be in corporate worship with people of like faith on Sundays, even when the sun is shining on the lake” is legalism. I tell you it’s not. The One who died for you adores you, whether you ever adore him enough to meet with Him at all. Jesus’ sacrifice was His choice and He gives you the right to make yours.
Gathering with our other body parts is relationship, companionship and support. It is much harder for crazy doctrine to take hold and rest in your head when you’re gathered with people who hold the same truths in their heart you do. We are not safe when we walk alone spiritually. We were never intended to. We might wind up as a disconnected body part.
“That” Mary’s boy
If people haven’t changed much over the centuries and generations, and as Solomon said, “There’s nothing new under the sun”, I’ve been thinking lately about Jesus’ possible childhood challenges.
Did Jesus ever hear “Your mom was pregnant before she got married”? Was He taunted by neighborhood children who were spouting the gossip of their mothers? Was Jesus ever excluded from others because their moms didn’t think He was good enough to be around their precious ones?
Did Jesus have to see His mother excluded and whispered about behind a hand as they walked through the village? Did the upstanding citizens think Mary took advantage of Joseph as they repeated the story, “She was gone for a couple months and came back with a swollen belly”?
In a culture where Mary’s situation was not only scandalous but a stoning offense, was it likely Jesus grew as a child wondering about the story of His birth? He was a human, a child growing up in a world where people had problems believing the supernatural Word of God. He walked the earth and heard the voices. God was in the little boy’s body, but at that time, He was a little boy, subject to the hurts of stubbed toes and mean words.
How many people did Joseph and Mary tell that God had conceived the child in her? We don’t know. We know they went to Egypt for a while. We know they went back to their home town. We know gossips tongues didn’t originate in the 20th century.
The Word tells us that Jesus grew in wisdom (and height) with God, and with people. We know that once Jesus learned to read, He became aware of the truth of who He is. But when he was small, when the taunts of the children could wound and leave memories that break a child’s heart, did Jesus have to have faith in the Truth of what He heard in the middle of so many other noises? Did Jesus experience “less than” and shame and wishing He had a different beginning? Was Jesus’ heart ever broken?
Did Jesus as a man escape the memories of hearing His identity questioned? Even the devil used it. Remember the temptation? “IF you are the Son of God…”
Jesus was “tempted in all points” just like us. Not only did He not sin, but He did not remain oppressed by the hurts of others. Jesus Himself proclaimed that He is here to heal the broken hearted. He went back to the Father and sent the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who is still here, to take the broken hearts of women and men who were hurt as children, whether by abuse or bullies, whether for a short time or something endured for years.
Jesus is Healer. If the body is sick, maybe it’s because the heart is broken. If your physical heart is healthy, maybe your soul is shattered. Either way, Jesus is Healer. Compassionate. Understanding. Gentle toward us, powerful against our enemy.
Open the closed places in your soul where the wound is hiding, festering, a tool of the enemy to keep you oppressed. Jesus the Healer, that “Mary’s boy” who is God…heals. Forever and completely. Heals the broken heart.
Be healed.
What did He say about it?
What would happen if we dared to believe God’s word? What would happen if the thing we long for has already been promised to us, if we can see it written in the Bible? What if…we have looked at a Scripture and ran out index finger over it and exhaled, sighing, and said, “You said this, God” and dared to ask Him for it to be present in our lives?
According to 1 John 5:14, He hears us when we ask from His Word, which is His will, which are His promises. And the next verse says, “If He hears us, we know we have what we ask of Him.”
There’s a song that says, “Love like you’ve never been hurt.” I challenge you to ask like you’ve never been disappointed. I dare you to run your finger across that scripture one more time and say, “You said this, God. I’m asking.”
Restored childhood? Maybe not, but a blessed womanhood. Jesus did that.
More than six decades have passed since my birth. More than five decades since the ongoing actions that were, at one time, considered unmentionable, those sexual acts of an adult with a young child, an abomination in the eyes of most, for those are experiences that are as far-reaching as the ships that bring beautiful fabrics from the far east, yet as destructive to the heart of a child as a sword drawn in anger and used in rage. We knew something was very wrong with what we were experiencing, but when the adult is someone who tells us they love us, who sometimes beat us for no reason, and then touched us so intimately at other times, it made no sense, these “knowings” that we were being misused, painfully so, but not understanding why.
If we were to go back, those of us who were drawn into the unnatural lusts of adults when we were mere children, to the time of the first invasion (for it truly was that), I wonder how many of us would say “Why?”, because even now, decades later and fully healed by the grace of my Lord Jesus, I do not understand how it is possible that even the most evil influence on the earth could convince a rational human being to violate the purity of a child and derive pleasure from it. But the “why” is only the beginning, really.
When innocence is not lost, but stolen before the value of innocence is understood, there is never a value placed on what was taken. So when the next predator came, the conquest was made easier by the experience had before. Looking back through time, with clarity and often regret, my life up to a point was a series of bad relationships, bad decisions, and an ongoing myriad of giving everything and expecting nothing, from myself or others. Men did not value me, and I did not disagree with them. I married, had children, divorced, married. Did I truly live four decades in a numbed state of the knowledge that I was valuable based on what happened to me by my father before I was old enough to even know those things should have never happened? Yes, yes I did. Would it surprise you to think that there are so many others like me who sit in our walled worship houses every week, looking like every other woman, and inside, numbness and a shame that is not ours shrouds our joy? And therapy didn’t help. Looking back as an adult merely added shame and resentment, and even fear. A smidgen of hatred and lack of trust for all those in authority, color those relationships we pretend are okay.
And then one day, forty years after being abused and more than twenty years after accepting Christ, I was listening to talk radio and heard a man talk about those dark places in our hearts and I said, “Lord, take me to those dark places in my heart. I want to be free.” Immediately, I wanted to take that statement back. I was flush with the overwhelming fear at the mere thought of mentally living in that experience again. I walked to my place of prayer with feet that had suddenly become concrete blocks. I fell across the bed and said, “Father I am so afraid. Help me.” I was 49 years old.
I’ve never shared what happened next that opened my heart to freedom and a cleansing joy, except in one place. For reasons I haven’t tried to understand, when I sat down to write an inspirational fiction romance, my protagonist had the same experiences and the same testimony. A novel funny in some places, a mystery in others, a love story riddled with secrets and an eventual happy ending after encountering a stalker and a hero, the protagonist got to tell her best friend how the grace of God brought healing and the freedom to be who God made her to be. I self-published that novel and I don’t regret that sales are extremely low, because one of my first readers, without having met me previously, said “No one could have that personal knowledge of grace in that situation if they hadn’t experienced it themselves.” and she was aware of the power in the testimony.
Would I like to see the book become a best seller? Who wouldn’t like to have their first novel go to a million copies? but my prayer is that the testimony of grace and healing from childhood molestation does not go untold. My testimony of Jesus’ reaction to hurting children and women can be found in “Seeds of Strength-Great Grace”, a free 270 page read on Kindle Unlimited.
If Kindle is not your forte, contact me on Facebook or via email. I’ll be honored to tell you what Jesus thinks of you and what you went through. You were never alone, and you did not weep alone. Let’s talk. Be healed. Be truly a woman blessed and free.
Santa…Again?
Today is the celebration of my Lord’s birthday and once again, as I have for more than 20 years now, I struggled today with the whole Santa obsession. Santa getting the attention in the homes of children, Santa getting the credit for this day being joyful, Santa getting the kudos for the gifts that God provides.
I talked to the Lord today and I said, “How am I supposed to feel about this? Help me.” and He gave me a new perspective. What if Santa was jolly because of something he knows that I don’t know he knows? What if Santa has a glowing face because he knows The Light? The original Santa, anyway. Maybe even some of the Santa-for-profits, too. I started writing.
Here it is, a link to a short story that I wish was a book. I’d love to put it in the hands of parents, a sort of Santa supplement, to offset the one-sided story the world sees in the person of Santa, when Jesus was the gift. Wouldn’t this be a beautiful picture book?
The power of Jesus’ “Nevertheless”
We read how the night before His crucifixion, Jesus went to the garden. As a Man of flesh, filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus was sinless, and full of knowledge about what the next few days would bring to Him. Do you suppose He thought, “Why should I have to do this? I’ve lived pure.”
We don’t know, but we have to acknowledge that He was tempted in all points, in all areas of life, just like we are. Yet. There was no sin. But there was the understanding in Jesus’ mind that came from the prophecies. He was going to be beaten so badly that He wouldn’t look human when they were finished tearing His flesh from bone. He knew that the execution by crucifixion would bring pain beyond anything He could bear as He fought for breath. He knew, He KNEW. That men would sit and gamble for His clothes while blood ran down His face from the thorns they would put in His head. Jesus knew that He would be humiliated and spit on. And for what? For walking out of that garden into the troops that would come after Him to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the very ones who would ask that Barabbas be spared instead.
So, “as He was accustomed”, Jesus went to the Father. John 10::15 tells us that Jesus knew the Father as the Father knew Him. Intimately, in a familial way. And Jesus prayed. He prayed again. “If there’s any way, let this cup pass from me….” the humanity of Jesus was demonstrated, and His reaction to it? Surrender. With the full knowledge that only the Father could help Him through it. “Nevertheless, not what I want, but what You will, Father” And with that one word, Jesus accepted the will of the Father, the torment to Himself.
Jesus knew what was coming. The vilest of sin, the most heinous disease the enemy could muster for all mankind, past and future, was going to be poured into the body of our sinless Lord and the wrath of God emptied into that same Body, for the purpose of bringing unholy men into right standing with Holy God by one sacrifice for all men, for all time.
As He woke the sleeping disciples who were still ignorant of the extent of the future events, Jesus spoke with them, talked with them, and surrounded Himself with the friends He had made and the ones He would die for. As they left the garden, we see one thing that stays with me.
The “nevertheless” surrender empowered Jesus to move forward toward it all. How do we know? Because afterward He said “I AM”, and the power of God in Jesus caused men to fall to the ground. He replaced a severed ear with His hand. Even on His way to die, Jesus was still healing sinful people. Grace is not new. Jesus was not weakened by His willingness to let God do whatever God wanted with Him. The power of God was present at the unconditional surrender of Jesus.
And what should we do with this knowledge? Surrender. If it’s scary. If we know it may well get ugly. Why? “…because as He is, so are we in this world.” (1 John 4:17) The Father hasn’t changed. Jesus is alive and His glory is restored. We can trust Him.
Fascinated
To think that God, Who has always existed, was never created, Who is second to none in rank, authority, power and intellect, has chosen to live in humans, to live in me, fascinates me.
fascinating:ˈfasəˌnādiNG/adjective extremely interesting. synonyms:interesting, captivating, engrossing, absorbing, enchanting, enthralling, spellbinding, riveting, engaging, compelling, compulsive, gripping, thrilling;
I find it enthralling (I like that synonym) that He who sacrificed His son so that I could be made acceptable to Holy God finds me worthy of that price.
I find it fascinating that God, Who could do anything He wanted, to whomever He wanted, in any way He wanted, chose to love me and you and place value on us. What we see in ourselves may well be a lie if we see ourselves less valuable than God Himself sees us. If the value of something (in this case, us) is determined by what Someone is willing to pay, what is the value of the 33 years Jesus spent in preparation to become the sacrifice, the bearer of all sin and disease?
When we find in the Word of God, (a topic in itself fascinating, because Jesus is called the Word, the Word was His weapon of battle and should be ours, and the Word has been written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved through generations at great price by the persistence of men and the power of God) that Jesus endured every temptation we will ever experience yet lived without sin, I’m fascinated that the God Man chose to say “Nevertheless” by His free will in the garden instead of “No”.
What love He had for the Father, that He would sacrifice Himself to bring us into relationship again with Him. There’s nothing that is more evidence than that…the Father wants to have relationship with us so much that He sent Jesus, who came and lived as a Man, who lay down His glory and picked up humanity to set us free from the oppression of satan’s bondage.
I’m thrilled by this one thing: God wants to be known as He is.
Jesus, while on the earth in the body of a human, said that He knew God as God knew Him. That’s intimacy, and possible for us, because we are joint heirs with Jesus. Because of what Jesus did, to as many as believe on Him, to us He gave the power to become the sons of God.
That is eternal life. To know God. Jesus said that as He prayed for us. Find it in John 17. Eternal life is to know God, and Jesus, Whom God sent.
To. know. God. The very concept of that is….fascinating. I must know Him more. You too? Let’s do this!
A novel written, a perspective untold. Let’s talk about that.
What would it be like?
In my semi-novel, “Seeds of Strength-Great Grace”, I tell Bianca’s story. I call it a “semi-novel” because some of the most intimate parts are autobiographical.
Bianca Wilson is a widow in her 30’s who was suddenly separated from her husband by his death in a fire that broke out in a mill where he worked. Tim had been a man of integrity and died a hero.
Five years later when Bianca receives a box from his desk at the mill, the search begins for truth because the box contents left Bianca in confusion, wondering if she had really known Tim.
As a child, Bianca was molested by her father and abandoned by her mother, but in His faithfulness God put her with her aunt and uncle who loved and supported her.
She is blessed with a tough best friend and a lawyer who is way too appealing for her own good, but as David searches for Bianca’s truth, he encounters secrets of his own. A couple heroes and a stalker turned arsonist later, an unexpected windfall and the truth about Tim revealed, will Bianca and David find a fresh beginning in their faith? (You can read it free on Amazon with Kindle Unlimited.)
As I thought about Bianca this morning, I realized a couple things. Bianca is very open about what life was like experiencing incest as a child, but when it came to discussing her relationship with her mother, Bianca said very little. Tim had hired an investigator and later Bianca got a letter from her mother, but Bianca’s personal struggle with her mother’s abandonment remains untold. I’m not sure why.
As Christians, we have either heard or experienced the struggles to find God as a loving Father when our earthly fathers were not loving at all, or failed to be what we needed them to be, whatever the cause.
But what about motherhood? When women reach adulthood without being led by a woman who knows her own worth and can teach us values, what struggles accompany those situations for us? Do you know someone who has experienced growing up without the love and support of a mother? Perhaps your sharing will be “semi-novel” as well. Share with us. The level of personal honesty you want to share is up to you. We’ve all at one time or another said “I know a woman…” when we are that woman.
What victories can a relationship with the Lord bring to women who were on their own or learned from women not our mothers? Bring a testimony. Let’s talk about that.
For His Glory 