God Says: Deliver an Egg

I determined to listen to God for guidance in all matters, and I promised Him I would obey whatever He told me. There were so many things which needed solutions. One was a feeling of friction between my colleague and myself. She had ten children and often was not well, and could not carry out her work program regularly. I felt very critical of her for trying to hold onto her job.

One morning early I asked God for guidance: what could I do to dissolve the critical feeling I had in my heart for her? “Take her a fresh egg,” came a thought. Well! That wasn’t my idea, and who would say that was guidance! A dozen fresh eggs might be reasonable – but one! That might insult my colleague. So, I wrote it off and gave up for that morning.

To Forgive is Divine

The concept of “forgiveness” is not a concept I have always fully understood. I could say the words, “I forgive you”, but I have to admit that I didn’t give much thought to what those words meant. I used to use the phrase “I forgive you” interchangeably with the phrase, “It’s alright”, or “It’s ok.” Perhaps the bare fact of this interchangeability between these phrases gives some indication of how I viewed forgiveness: to forgive was to be “ok” with the offense.

I see a rather significant flaw in this understanding now. Quite simply, when I am offended or wounded by another person, it is most certainly not “ok”; nor will it ever be “ok”. An offense is an offense; it is a wrong that was done, and a wrong can never be “alright”.

Forgiveness, then, came to mean something quantitative for me. If I had enough “it’s ok” in me to match the offense, I could forgive. But what about those times when the offense was so heavy, the wound so deep, that I couldn’t bring myself to think of it as being “alright”? It would take time to “get over” those wounds; the wounds needed to heal before I could say “I forgive”.

Praying with Expectation

It was late at night, and we were on our way back from a prayer service that focused on praying for healing. I know I was feeling energized, both by what I had heard and what I seen in that past hour. The presentation on praying for healing was nothing new to me, but still I had “forgotten” most of it; forgotten it in my heart, I mean, if not in my head.

These were reminders I needed to hear. Jesus said that those who believe would lay hands on the sick, and He said the sick will recover. He gave believers – and yes, I find it difficult sometimes to personalize that and say “that includes ME” – authority over every kind of disease (Matt. 10:1).

Lament for the Waiting

I’m going to step out on a limb here and assume that I’m not the only one who finds myself waiting on God. I want to invite you to join me in this waiting room, and sing with me a song of lament. Waiting for God to fulfill a promise is not fun. If that waiting goes on for a long period of time, it can be exhausting, it can be infuriating, it can be discouraging, and it can even be heart-breaking. Scripture itself says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Pr. 13:12)

I find it almost impossibly difficult to strike the balance between trusting God and sharing with Him my honest feelings of heartache. Maybe you do too. And if you do, then maybe praying this lament with me will help you find your own voice.

Chasing the Glory

I’ll keep this short and to the point, because I feel like there’s enough to ponder in the subject itself, without me adding extra words. I wanted to share something I heard in listening prayer that was, I guess, something I already knew, but also something I don’t usually give enough attention.

Do you want to see God start moving? Do you want to see big things happen? Do you want to see miracles? I do. But why? I guess, for me, that question has several answers, but the “right” answer was buried in the pile somewhere. But that answer strikes me as the key: be oriented to the glory of God, and He cannot refuse the request. It’s just that simple.

The Sacrament of the Sick

St. James wrote in his epistle:

Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (Jas. 5:14-15)

This passage has been used throughout the history of the Church to establish the ancient pedigree of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction (or the Anointing of the Sick).

John Calvin wrote that “The Papists boast mightily of this passage” of the epistle, and goes on to say that this Scripture is “wickedly and ignorantly perverted” when used to defend the sacrament of the sick. What strikes me as most interesting are Calvin’s reasons for disconnecting this passage from healing and from the sacrament of healing; rather than engage in an argument from the text, he argues from his present-day experience.

Write it on the Tablet of My Heart

Here are just a few things I’m trying to keep in my mind, so that they eventually become my “default” way of thinking. I want these to be my first thoughts in any given situation, not the things I eventually arrive at after running out of other options. Until then, “repetition is the mother of all learning.” So, repeat after me …

Goodbye, Allergies

I have lived for a long time with a misunderstanding about allergies. I would not have thought, in the past, to classify allergies as part of the “disease” category – which is to say, I didn’t think of allergies as something from which a person could be healed. I guess I just thought allergies were a part of life. I didn’t enjoy my allergies, but what could I do?

And then it was suggested to me that allergies have a spiritual root, and that root is a spirit of fear. The body, I believe, eventually will agree with and align with the spirit. Fear and anxiety can keep a person “on edge”; expecting the worst, planning for disaster, frequently worrying, not at ease (or at dis-ease). It’s as if the spirit has become hypersensitive to events in life, or to emotions, or to thoughts of the future. And I believe the body eventually will come to reflect this hypersensitive spirit.

How Did Jesus Do It?

Well, of course Jesus healed the sick instantly, He was God!

It might seem like a trivial point that is best left for theologians to bat around, but then again, maybe not. It gets down into the murky waters of Christology, and understanding (as if we ever could) the mystery of how Jesus could be fully God and fully Man at the same time. Can anyone plumb those depths and not get a cramp in the brain?

And yet, I see an important point at issue there, a point that even seems critical to me if I’m going to get any further down the path of understanding the power of God in healing today. What is that critical point?

It’s a Sign of the Kingdom

When the prophet Isaiah wrote of the coming age of the Messiah, he characterized it in this way:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy. (Is. 35:5-6)

A few chapters later, this same prophet spoke in detail of the work that this coming Messiah would accomplish: