Why Didn’t I Get Healed? Part 2 (reasons 7-12)

You didn’t believe.  You didn’t have enough faith.  That’s what so many people are told when they go up for healing during a prayer service and nothing happens.  They’re told it was their fault.  Sometimes by a friend or other church member – and sometimes by the minister!  Besides being sad and offensive, it’s a short-sighted answer to something that isn’t quite that simple.

            I thought it might be nice to provide a better answer to those who may have wondered why they or someone they know didn’t receive healing.  So, what follows is a list of twelve possible reasons taken from a book I read a number of years ago.  The author is Francis MacNutt and this is taken verbatim from his book “Healing”. 

            I found this book to be the most balanced teaching on healing that I had encountered.  I should disclaim, however, that this is not an official promotion for this book.  All too often people pay bloggers to write something nice about them or their product.  This is not the case.  I just hope this helps a few people.  While most of this is taken verbatim, any italicized writings are mine.

7) Refusal to see medicine as a way God heals

            As I have made clear elsewhere, I firmly believe that physicians and medicines are the instruments that God ordinarily uses to bring about healing.  This is what most people believe and nothing should have to be said in defense of medicine… However, we still keep hearing about ministers of healing who persist in setting up prayer (the “supernatural”) in opposition to medicine (the “natural”).  In past years we have heard of persons who are reported to have died  of diabetes because parents or ministers encouraged them to stop taking their insulin as a sign of faith.  Then the patients died.  “By their fruits you will know them”: such actions are simply false doctrine unless a given person is genuinely inspired by God to rely solely on prayer and not to see a doctor.  … This false opposition further damages the sick person and sets up a needless controversy with physicians that results in mutual suspicion between religion and science.  I have abridged much of this section for the sake of brevity.

 

8) Not using the natural means of preserving health 

            Although most of us have a high estimation of the medical profession many of us neglect the ordinary means of keeping balance in our lives.  If we neglect these we should not be surprised if we fall sick and prayer does not cure us.  I find in my own life that if I come down with a cold or some other ailment when I am needed to give a conference, prayer always seems to cure the ailment.  But if I have been working too hard and an open time in my schedule is available, the cold usually runs its ordinary course, rather than being immediately cured by prayer.  It’s as if the body needs a rest and God is saying through these circumstances, “Put more balance in your life.  Unless you take ordinary care of yourself do not expect to be cured of your sickness through extraordinary means.  I want you to learn to keep your life in balance.  You are sinning against your own body.” 

            Similarly, in more serious illness, if there is some natural factor underlying the illness that the patient should attend to, he cannot expect prayer to cure him.  He should do something about putting his life in order.  If I have headaches because I worry too much, or if I suffer from hypertension because I work up to my breaking point, I need to change my life before healing will take place.  If you eat junk food, if you smoke, if you don’t exercise, you should not always expect that prayer will compensate for the lack of discipline that has led to your sickness. 

            I think I can personally attest to much of this.

9) “Now is not the time…”

            For whatever reason there often seems to be the right time for a healing to take place.  Christ urges us, like the importunate widow, to continue in prayer if at first nothing happens.  There seem to be four basic tie sequences in praying for healing:

            1)  Some healings are instantaneous.

            2)  In some healings there is a delay.  (I have prayed for a person on Saturday whose

                 healing occurred on the following Monday.)

            3)  Some healings occur in a process, gradually.

            4)  Others do not seem to occur, at least on the physical level, at all.

We need not be disappointed, then, if there appears to be no immediate answer to prayer for healing.  Perhaps now is not the time.

 

10) A different person is to be the instrument of healing 

            Perhaps I am not the one who has the discernment to pray for this particular person.  Maybe I don’t relate humanly to him, maybe I don’t have enough faith; maybe I don’t have a ministry in this particular area of healing: these are some of the reasons why I am not the appropriate minister of healing for everyone who is sick.  At times, I must be ready to let someone else take over and do the praying.

This section also abridged for the sake of brevity. 

11) Demonic interference  

            To the modern mind this may sound strange, but we have found that one reason physical and inner healing are blocked is because of demonic interference, especially if the person had been involved in the occult.  Connected with this are two special blocks to healing: curses and generational bondage.

Curses.  Again, this may sound medieval, but we have found occasionally that people – including good people who may not even be aware of it – have been cursed by witch doctors ad practitioners of voodoo. 

            One of the more remarkable instances of this occurred in England when our team was praying for a minister who had ringing in both ears (tinnitus) and pain in his right ear; we had prayed for about ten minutes, and nothing had changed.  Then, one of the team members, who had the gift of discernment, whispered to me that he was oppressed by a spirit of infirmity.  When we prayed to free him there was an immediate reaction.  It turned out that he and his family had come home from Africa a few years earlier after being struck down with a medically unexplained illness.  What had happened, apparently, was that the local witch doctor had cursed them.  After several hours of ministry to the minister and his entire family, in which several spirits departed, all the ringing in his ears and the pain in his right ear ceased. 

… Most traditional cultures are very aware of the power of the curse, and they expect Christians to be able to bring healing by breaking these powers that produce sickness and even death. 

Generational bondage.  Connected with some sicknesses are causes that seem to descend from generation to generation.  Some are purely genetic, carried in the configuration of our DNA.  With such diseases as sickle-cell anemia, we should pray not only for the ailment itself but pray to break the genetic predisposition to that disease in the sick person and also in her children and descendants.  In some addictions, too, such as alcoholism, certain races and families seem to have a hereditary weakness that we should pray to break.  (My Irish ancestry seems to fit into this, and I have prayed to break it in our family.)

            A common example of this need for generational freeing is when someone in the family tree has been actively involved in the occult, such as a witch or warlock.  The bondage seems to continue on, until it is broken and it may influence the health of the current generation. Once in my experience a woman was freed of severe emotional problems when we prayed to free her of the influence of a druidic priest in her family’s ancient past.  In another woman the blockage to the healing of her problems went back to a Black Mass performed by an ancestor in seventeenth-century England. 

            Slightly abridged for the sake of brevity 

12) The social environment prevents healing from taking place

            Since we are meant to live in a community of love, some of the healing we need will not take place until our relationships and our society are healed.  …Hatred and bad relationships cause all kinds of sickness and that sickness usually remains until the root cause is removed.  When a married person suffering from depression or anxiety asks for healing and it is clear that part of the problem is caused by a tense relationship in the home, prayer can only deal with part of the problem; if a disturbed child is brought by its mother for healing, you know that you are only dealing with part of the problem until the entire family is brought into a more harmonious relationship.  Much sickness in our society is caused by wounded relationships and will only be healed when the larger relationships are healed, and until we have Christian churches and communities where people can be loved into wholeness.

            Beyond all this, there is a general weight of evil and sickness in our world that is enormous: the law of entropy, resulting I life eventually winding down in death.  Even Lazarus, raised by Jesus from the dead, eventually died.  During wars we pray for peace, knowing that peace is a Christian goal; yet we know that our lone prayer will probably need millions of other prayers added to it before peace becomes a reality.

            Connected to this entropy, we experience the wearing influence of age and time upon our bodies.  In this life we will not live forever.  And yet, I believe that even here (and I have experienced it) prayer will give us greater health than we might otherwise expect.

            Some diseases and infirmities, too, are more severe and require more prayer and more of a creative miracle:  for instance, if your spine has been severed in a motorcycle accident, or if you have a child with Down’s Syndrome, that kind of healing occurs rarely and takes longer time.  And yet this kind of profound healing can take place.  (I personally know of two Down’s Syndrome children who were healed.)

Why Didn’t I get Healed?

12 Reasons Why Healing Doesn’t Happen  (Part 1: Reasons 1 – 6)

 You didn’t believe.  You didn’t have enough faith.  That’s what so many people are told when they go up for healing during a prayer service and nothing happens.  They’re told it was their fault.  Sometimes by a friend or other church member – and sometimes by the minister!  Besides being sad and offensive, it’s a short-sighted answer to something that isn’t quite that simple.

I thought it might be nice to provide a better answer to those who may have wondered why they or someone they know didn’t receive healing.  So, what follows is a list of twelve possible reasons taken from a book I read a number of years ago.  The author is Francis MacNutt and this is taken verbatim from his book “Healing”. 

I found this book to be the most balanced teaching on healing that I had encountered.  I should disclaim, however, that this is not an official promotion for this book.  All too often people pay bloggers to write something nice about them or their product.  This is not the case.  I just hope this helps a few people.  While most of this is taken verbatim.  Any italicized writings are mine.

1) Lack of faith

When the disciples could not cure the epileptic demoniac, Jesus upbraided them for their lack of faith (Mt 17:14-20).  I believe that this is still the reason we do not have more healings taking place in our churches today; there is a general skepticism about healing as being anything more than a natural psychological process.

But even for those of us who do believe, we need to grow in faith.  I find I have more faith than I did a few years ago.  We need to grow in faith – even those of us who have seen miracles of healing – in order that God may use us still more.

2) Redemptive suffering

Physical healing is not in itself the highest value in the world.  At times God uses sickness for a higher purpose.  There has been a long history of saints whom God has called to suffer redemptively in union with the suffering of Jesus on the cross.  “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church.” ( Col 1:24).  If a person is called to suffer for the sake of the kingdom, or to learn a lesson, or as punishment, or for some other reason, then clearly we should not pray for healing.

Allow me to interrupt for a second.  This is one that I take issue with.  I’m not 100% in agreement with the idea of God SENDING someone an illness or tragedy.  The author makes a good case, I will admit.  But particularly the idea of a PUNISHING God is contrary to my thinking.  I do believe that if we are disobedient we have effectively told God that we choose our own way and we’ll be fine on our own thank you very much.  So God steps back.  When he does we lose a little of His protection and some things get past our shield of faith.  One of those things might be sickness.  While I’m not sure God sends it exactly, I do believe God can use it in a redemptive way.  Let us continue:

I remember in 1969 when Agnes Sanford was visiting the Trappist Monastery in Dubuque, Iowa, to give some lectures on healing to the Trappist Monks. It was just then that an epidemic of Hong Kong flu struck the monks down.  On the second day of the seminar Agnes herself, the renowned expert on healing, came down with flu and had to be taken to the Franciscan Sisters hospital.  But a higher purpose seemed to be served by this as it gave Agnes a chance to talk to many sisters and nurses and, as a result, she was asked to give a workshop to the Franciscan Sisters and in this way, influence an entire community prominent in nursing.  Paul recognizes the higher purpose that sickness sometimes serves when he says, “…even at the beginning, when that illness gave me the opportunity to preach the Good News to you, you never showed the least sign of being revolted or disgusted by my disease that was such a trial to you” (Gal 4:13-14).

3) A false value attached to suffering

Having said that some suffering is redemptive and is for a higher purpose, we must balance that statement by saying that most sickness does not appear to be redemptive.  I have been asked to pray for persons who didn’t really want to be free of their suffering; it seemed to me that their sickness was destructive and was not a blessing sent by God, but they had been so conditioned by their training that they felt guilty about asking God to take away their suffering.  When you see a person depressed and unhappy under the weight of disease you can be fairly sure that he is not being blessed by God.  But if he believes that God has sent the sickness, he often feels guilty about asking for healing.  Nor should we pray for a person contrary to his wishes.  Even if someone talks him into praying, there will be a strong subconscious resistance that may block the healing.

4) Sin

If there is sin connected with the physical ailment (especially resentment), no healing is likely to take place unless the sin is dealt with first.  At one conference we were praying for a woman with a truly destructive illness, but nothing was happening.  The whole group remained in prayer filled with an expectancy that something should happen.  Then someone sensed that the disease was hooked up with a deep resentment of authority and a number of angry relationships.  When this was brought up, she agreed that this was very true, and so she asked forgiveness for her bitterness.  Immediately the healing began to take effect.

5) Not praying specifically

Especially in praying for inner healing, it seems important to get to the root cause of emotional suffering, the initial harmful memory.  Several times I have prayed for inner healing.  And I thought we were praying about the right problem but nothing happened.  It was only when we went back and found the root incident, which had been forgotten, and prayed for Jesus to enter into that moment and heal it, that the healing finally took place.  Why can’t God answer our general prayer and heal the person without our having to discover all these specific roots?  I know He can and that He does.  But experience also indicates (this is not only my experience but that of others who pray extensively for inner healing) that there a few people who do not seemed to be healed until you touch specifically on the root incident that initiated the problem. 

The author then goes on to give an illustration by way of a lengthy story, too long to include here.  This blog post is long enough.  However, I will say the truth of the above statement is made clear to me when I reflect on those I have seen overcome addictive lifestyles only when the recovery process went past the behaviors themselves, and addressed the painful things from long ago that led to those choices in the first place.

Not getting to the specific root cause of sickness is also one of the reasons people do not “keep their healing”.  Some evangelists teach that the reason why people who have been healed and later regress is that they lack the faith to hold on to their healing.  True, that is one possible reason.  But another reason for the failure is not in the sick person, but in the minister of healing who has only prayed for the healing of symptoms.  These symptoms improved as a result of prayer, but because the underlying cause remained, the symptoms later reasserted themselves.  Let us not be too hasty in accusing people of lacking faith

I must admit I have found this one to be true.  When Someone approaches me for healing I try to get as many of the specifics as I can.  For example if somebody has back or neck pain I usually ask if they’ve had it looked at, do they know what is causing it etc.  If they answer, for example that the chiropractor told them they have a disk out of alignment, then rather than pray for the abatement of pain,  I will pray for the realignment of the disk.  To take it even further, I will try to visualize the process in detail.  Much the way an athlete will use visualization techniques.  If it’s cancer and they’re in treatment I might visualize the drug reaching the cancerous cells, attaching to them, killing them, the tumor dying off and shrinking, etc., etc.  Not being a medical professional there is only so much I can grasp, but every detail helps.  Most importantly, as I visualize, I am speaking out in prayer what I am visualizing.

6) Faulty diagnosis

Just as physicians sometimes fail to correctly diagnose diseases and consequently fail to prescribe the right medicine and treatment, so the minister of healing, if he lacks discernment, is bound to fail from time to time.  To be specific, the most common failures I have found are:

            Praying for physical healing when inner healing is the basic need;

            Praying for deliverance from evil spirits when inner healing is the real need;

            Praying for inner healing when deliverance is the real need;

For example, our team prayed for a young woman in Peru for inner healing for depression.  She never knew her father and was sexually abused in her childhood, so it seemed clear that inner healing was needed.  But after prayer she remained as depressed as ever.  Upon further inquiry we discovered that her mother had called in a witch doctor to cure her of an abdominal infection.  This doctor had prayed over her and given her a potion; immediately afterwards she fell to the floor in a trance and woke up cured.  We suspected then that deliverance was needed, and that we had missed it.  When our team prayed for her deliverance, then she was freed.  The inner healing was free to take place and her depression lifted.

            I have left out the author’s second example for the sake of brevity.

Getting to kNOw Fear (part 2)

The Risk of Hanging On

Large companies have people whose sole job is to analyze risk.  Before the company sets on out a new venture these folks determine what might have to be given up in exchange for what might be gained.  Experiencing God works differently.  We can’t analyze what the gains are because there’s really no way to know.  All we can see are the risks.  As our relationship with God grows more intimate we can begin to see that He knows BOTH.  God can see the gains in the risks we take for Him.  What follows is trust; and as trust grows, fear subsides. 

Ultimately, what we are risking is our own interest.  Moses is a perfect example.  He fled Egypt to escape punishment for killing a man.  He found a new home, a new family, and was living a peaceful life as a shepherd.  Until he noticed a bush that was on fire;  And noticed that the bush wasn’t being consumed by that fire;  And until went in for a closer look and started hearing a voice coming from the bush.  When we read this passage we hear that voice telling him to go be a prophet and a hero to an oppressed people.  But all Moses is hearing is that he has to leave behind the security of a roof over his head and food on the table, go back to Egypt, risk death, live a public life in which his every move is scrutinized, miss his kids growing up, miss more than one date night with his wife, etc, etc.  Moses could see none of the gains. 

Letting Go

Letting go is a process.  We usually let go a little at a time.  But sometimes God asks us to make a move that requires a chunk of letting go right from the start.  The first thing we need to do is identify just what our fears are.  If we can’t put our finger on we have simply to pray and ask God to point them out.  Trust me, He will.  Once we’ve done that we simply need to pray for strength and peace, and surrender those fears to God and let Him handle them.  It’s this moment that fear and faith will be coexisting in our heart, each fighting for supremacy.  At some point in this process we must step out in faith, or fear will paralyze us and will win out.

My wife and I are trying to teach our daughter to swim.  The problem is she doesn’t want to let go – of the side of the pool.  Once we get her convinced to do that, she clings to me and won’t let go of me.  No matter how hard I try, and how lovingly I reassure her, she hasn’t come to that place of trusting that she can let go of me, but I will not let go of her.  That I am her father and would not let anything happen to her.  That she is safe with me.  We are often the same way with God. 

 

Our Name is Not at Stake

When struggling with fear and trying to reconcile the risks God is asking us to take, with having faith in Him to carry us to faiths reward, we would do well to remember His words to us in Isaiah 41:10:  “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.  Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”  (NLT; emphasis mine). 

God has, in this verse, made a promise to us.  He has given us his solemn word, and He is not a man that he should lie.  His very name and reputation are on the line should he not do for us what He has promised.  The more we put aside our fears and trust in God, the more we’ll find that we enjoy our new lives, lives dedicated to His will, than we could ever have enjoyed our old ones.  God dwells in that unknown place that he is asking us to walk into and He will not let us fall into some endless chasm when we step off of, and away from, the security of our spiritual front porch. 

www.tveministries.com

Getting to kNOw Fear (Part 1)

What is fear?  There are essentially two types of fear:  Fear of God, and all other fear (which we’ll term natural fear).  Proverbs 1:7 says that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  Sounds a little strange, really, that being afraid is the beginning of wisdom.  But the word translated ‘fear’ in this verse is taken from the Hebrew yir-aw’ which can translate two ways.  When used to talk about fear of the Lord it’s speaking of reverence – specifically moral reverence.  This is not the kind of fear we’re talking about today.  We’re going to address natural fear.

What do we fear?  We fear all sorts of things and the list is a little different for everybody.  We fear emotional vulnerability, long-term commitment, change, seeking a new job, relocating to a new city, making a new start, spiders.  (That last one might be mine).  Each of these, and most others you can think of, ultimately come from a fear of the unknown.  What will happen if I open up emotionally to my spouse?  Will she see it as weakness?  What if that new job doesn’t work out?  What if the schools in that city end up not being up to par?  What if I leave this good job to go into ministry and I can’t pay my bills?

But here’s the thing:  God dwells in the unknown.  (More on that later).

What does fear do?  1) Fear opposes faith.  I heard it said once that fear is the absence of faith.  I think this is more accurate.  Faith and fear can be active in the same heart at the same time, but not peacefully.  They do battle – and one will win out.  We get to decide the winner.

2) Fear divides our hearts.  We need to have a heart for God but fear wants us to have a heart for ourselves.  It wants us to give into our concerns and not follow God into that new realm.

3) Fear keeps the joy of living for God hidden from view.  The story of the faithless Israelite spies sums up all three of these things.  When the spies came back they brought with them some of the fruit of the land.  This fruit proved that what God had told them about the land was true.  In essence it proved that his promises were true and that they could take Him at his word.  They also brought back a faithless report full of fear and doubt concerning whether they could actually take the land.  Faith and fear were active in the same place, each trying to win the same hearts.  Fear won, and the Israelites took a detour.  The joys of the Promised Land remained hidden from the view of God’s people for another 40 years.

Fear itself does not negate our faith  Fear may oppose faith, but it is not the absence of it.  We may have questions, concerns, trepidations, even a little skepticism; but that doesn’t mean we are not operating in faith.  We fail to operate in faith when we chose to give in to those fears.  When we choose to stand on fear rather than to stand on faith.  Abraham and Sarah had a lot of skepticism and doubt about having a child in their old age, but they chose to stand on faith.  As a result they saw the joy of following after God in the face of their baby boy, Isaac.  Jesus agonized in the garden over his call to the cross.  But faith won out, and a world was redeemed. 

Scripture should relieve our fears  We often wait around for a clear sign from God that our leadings are correct.  We want God to show us the end of the thing before we agree to start.  We want to know the unknown.  But God wants us to know Him.  Those last to words are significant.   We all know someone that we wouldn’t lend so much as a pencil to.  We know them better than to trust them.  We also know that person who we’d trust with our car, our house, our children.  Someone we’d follow into any situation just because they asked us to, without requiring an explanation.  All because we know them well enough from past experiences to know we can trust them.  God asks us to trust Him so that we can get to know Him; so that we can get to know His character.  Why?  So we trust Him more the next time, and are quicker to follow him.

We usually hesitate because what He’s asking seems outlandish or illogical.    Yet, consider these things:  a 90 year old woman gets pregnant, a burning bush that speaks, huge rivers that part, trumpets causing walls to crumble, a girl told she’ll conceive while still a virgin.  Is God asking of us anything more outlandish than these things?  Scripture is full of stories of people who followed God into the unknown.  Those stories don’t seem so outlandish to us as readers because we know what’s on the other side of those rivers and walls.  We get to dwell in their unknown with God.  The challenge, then, is will we turn around and face our own unknowns with faith?  Will we take that first step into a raging river trusting God to divide the rushing waters around us?  In part two of this blog we’ll take about letting our fears give way to our faith.

www.tveministries.com

You Big Baby!

“Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of God.” – Matt 18:3.  This is the often quoted verse when we talk about child-like faith.  But this verse really isn’t about faith.  Taken in context it’s actually about humility.  It’s Jesus’s answer to the disciple’s question of who is the greatest.  There are similar references in Mark 9:36 and Luke 9:47, both of which are also in the context of humility.  Two other references, in Mark 10:15 and Luke 18:17 allow for the inference of faith as the object lesson.  But let’s pull this idea of being child-like out of the text and zoom in on what child-like Christianity might entail in its fullness.

 Zeal:  I’ve had three kids and I am always amazed at their determination.  As soon as an infant learns that they can interact with their environment they are absolutely bound and determined to do so.  I remember my middle son getting frustrated because he couldn’t crawl.  He could get himself up on all fours but couldn’t quite get his legs and arms to move the way they needed to.  His little face would get red and he’d fuss and fuss.  Before long he could crawl fine, and then stand and then walk and run.  My first child was even better.  She could make her legs work right, but not her arms.  So for awhile she would push herself across the floor on her face!  Both of them saw something they wanted and were determined to do what they had to do, to learn what they had to learn to get where they wanted to go. Christ says we should approach God with this same zeal.  Spend the time learning the Scriptures, in prayer, working with zeal to learn more about Him and grow closer to Him.

Perseverance: This is really an extension of zeal.  But when a child is learning to walk or even ride a bike they fall down.  A lot.  But they stand back up, they get back on the bike, and try again.  We don’t do this as much when we’re adults.  When things get too hard we eventually give up.  We’re not cut out for that, is what we think.  Our faith life is like that, too.  We walk in faith and we believe in God and then something goes wrong and we get discouraged.  That’s understandable.  But Christ tells us to pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, and get back on the bike.

Faith:  Even though faith is not the specific context of our chosen verse, it is still a part of child-like Christianity.  I remember two instances when I really saw what child-like faith was.  My daughter had prayed to God for it to snow over night.  When she woke up she immediately ran to the window to see the snow.  Not to see ‘IF’ it snowed, but to see the snow she took for granted would be there.  Another time her mother was making her a superhero costume with a cape.  She climbed on a chair to try it on and jumped of the chair.  She started to cry because she couldn’t understand why she was still on the ground.  You see, she thought that if she had a cape she could fly.  It never even crossed her mind that, if she raised her arms to the sky and jumped, it might not really work.  It was actually kind of touching.

                These are just a few examples of what it really means to live a child-like Christian life.  Can you share some others from your own observations?

www.tveministries.com

NFL Players Want Their Donation Back???

More and more these days we see pro athletes becoming role models for how NOT to act.  Today it seems that egotism cannot be held in check even by a modest sense of shame.  The latest story is that MN Vikings players (who are also brothers) E.J. and Erin Henderson decided to donate 20K to their old high school to help renovate their football field.  In return they requested their family name be put on the new scoreboard.  The Board of education said no.  Apparently they have a policy about that, and they stuck to it.  I say: good for them.  It is a decision that models character to all the young men and women in their charge.

            The blogger who wrote the article (click the image to read) seems to think the school board is in the wrong and takes the side of the players.  I think this is a disgusting perversion of how true charity is suppose to work.  The players say they were looking to give back and saw this opportunity.  Opportunity for what, exactly?  To help out, or to satisfy their vanity?  It should be noted that the school board also rejected the idea of naming the field after former team captain Marine Lance CPL Patrick Ryan Adle who was killed in Iraq.  But I guess these grown men who get paid to play a game feel they are better than a fallen soldier since they’re famous and they have more money.  After all, apparently the only thing Lance CPL Adle was able to give was his blood.

            Jesus said that when we give we shouldn’t let one hand know what the other is doing.  I guess if we read that literally it says nothing about putting your name on a scoreboard.  A couple of disclaimers:  I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with certain things:  taking tax deductions on your charitable giving is fine.  If you happen to receive recognition for something you did, that’s fine too.  It’s also ok to appreciate that recognition.  But that should not be our motivating factor.  What these guys should have done was accept the school board’s decision and just follow through with their commitment if they truly wanted to just give back.  But the fact that they are trying to get their donation back; the fact that they are calling this a “slap in the face”, shows they weren’t trying to give back, but just get more. My advice: quit your cry babyin’, grow up, and act like men of character.

www.tveministries.com

The Secret Things

Tragedy is one of the hardest things Christians deal with in terms of theology.  How do we reconcile a loving, and all-powerful God, with the terrible sadness we see all around us.  The problem gets worse the more personal the suffering is.  Whole books have been devoted to explaining suffering in this world.  Whole books have been devoted to tearing down those theories in those other books.  I’ve read plenty of them, myself, trying to find the answers someone would eventually ask me for.  More often than not I am left disappointed in what I read.  One writer will give one answer that is what they see as the one reason for all the evil and suffering in the world.  But upon reflection, it fails to explain more than a few scenarios.  Another writer will work hard to point out all the flaws in several theories and conclude that God is not all-good, or not all-powerful, or that God is not the God we thought He was.  But He is, so that doesn’t work for me.  At the end of the day all I really have to hang onto is a loving, all-good and all-powerful God.

            I read once, in a book written by a pastor of some 25 years or so, that as a minister walking into a tragic situation you had better have answers.  “I don’t know” cannot be an option.  I think that’s a lot of bunk.  I think people are looking for ministers who are real, who have faults, who don’t pretend to be know-it-alls, and aren’t afraid to not know, and to simply cry with them.  I remember when my uncle died in a car accident and my aunt put her arms around me asked “why”, over and over.  I said nothing.  Nothing at all.  Not because I didn’t have the answer (I didn’t), but because that was what I felt the Spirit directed me to do.  Just be silent.  So, sorry folks, but I don’t know.

            The problem of suffering is complex.  On the one hand suffering is suffering and pain is pain.  On the other hand there are many things that cause suffering and so there are many types of suffering.  Or at least many reasons for it.  It truly is a case -by-case kind of thing.  It could be a matter of consequences.  It could be a matter of free will.  But so many times it seems that there cannot possibly be a reason.  That’s when it seems the most unfair.  We ask why God would do such a thing.  I don’t believe that God does these things. But then the question changes to why He allowed it.  Even if He didn’t send it, then He must have allowed it.  Sometimes there’s an easy answer.  If you chain-smoked three packs a day for 30 years and got lung cancer that’s probably not God’s fault.  But so many times, it’s so much harder than that.

            A friend of ours recently gave birth to a little boy.  He was extremely premature and weighed less than a pound.  It was a difficult pregnancy and the doctors were worried about a several things before he was born.  I prayed, my wife prayed, our church prayed.  But the little boy died when he was 14 days old.  So I got to asking “why”.  What happened to “ask and ye shall receive?  Where was all this “hedge of protection” stuff all the motivational preachers are writing books about?  Why would God allow this family, this baby, to go through this?  I found myself feeling angry with God.  But then I thought:  perhaps instead of looking for God in this little boy’s death, I should be looking for God in this little boy’s life.

            I spoke about God being all-good, all-loving and all-powerful.  But I had forgotten all-knowing.  Perhaps God wasn’t in the death, but in the pre-mature birth.  Perhaps God knew the alternative outcome and wanted to give this family as much time as was medically possible.  It sounds like cold reasoning and maybe it is, but it’s all I’ve got.  And isn’t ALL life precious?  Infinitely precious?  Aren’t even two weeks of life more precious than not existing at all? But it certainly doesn’t answer all the questions. It doesn’t answer the question of why He allowed the conception, then.  Infact, it doesn’t answer a lot of questions.  But how far back could we go with that?  Probably all the way back to creation.  The first word in the Bible, in Hebrew, is B’reishit. The first letter of that word (and therefore the Bible) is a Hebrew character that looks something like a backwards “C”.  And, since Hebrew is read right to left, the “C”’s open end faces the rest of the sentence, with the closed end facing the margin.  The sages taught that from this we are to learn that what came before creation is closed to us.  That we are to focus on what is ahead of us.  These are the only things we can change anyways.  So I think at some point we need realize that we can only go so far with our questions.  That at some point we have to accept the “I don’t know”.  And in accepting it, maybe we can begin to look for God in the miracles and not so much in the tragedies.  Maybe.  I don’t know. 

www.tveministries.com

Patches? We Don’t Need No Stinking Patches!

The tenth anniversary 9/11 has come and gone (I meant to write this about a month ago), and with it has come and gone another important day in the lives of every American: opening Sunday of the NFL regular season.  And we almost had a good scandal to make the day a true American holiday.  It seems that several of the players were planning on violating the NFL’s strict uniform code.  Chicago Bears linebacker Lane Briggs had specially made gloves, shoes and other gear to wear in commemoration of 9/11 and was expecting a fine in the neighborhood of 15K.  The NFL believed that it’s official pre-game ceremonies, the commemorative ball-caps for the coaches and the little sleeve patches for the players were enough.  (The NFL eventually gave-in and allowed the players to wear their custom gear).

            It kind of reminded me of the way a lot of us wear our faith, and how we compartmentalize it.  For many Christians our faith is something between us and God.  Don’t mention it outside of church on Sunday.  Outside of that you should look like everybody else. But if you want to wear a small cross around your neck, we will authorize that.  I used to be that way.  The problem is that the enemy has worked through the media to create a public image of a Christian that looks a lot like Ned Flanders from “The Simpsons”.  That irritatingly chipper, Kumbaya singing, holy rolling Jesus freak.  And of course we’ve all met a few real life Ned’s to reinforce the image.  We hide the lamps of our faith under a bowl because we don’t want to be that person that everybody is avoiding and laughing at.  But it really doesn’t have to be like that.  I have found that I can weave my faith into the fabric of my everyday life in a way that isn’t pestering, or showy and self-righteous, or a media caricature.  It can be real, be pleasant to be around, and I can look like a perfectly normal person.  Once I figured out how to do that, and did it, I found something amazing:  I had been surrounded by people who NEEDED that.  There were people all around me who needed someone who could provide a different perspective on their problems.  Who needed to see that it was possible to stay calm in the midst of a storm and know almost without asking what the persons anchor was.  They needed someone they knew they could go to who would counsel them when they needed it without judging them or looking down on them or preaching at them.  There were even church-going people who had questions about spiritual things that they had never learned in church before.  I wasn’t a laughingstock.  I was a light.

            Putting on your faith like this is like looking into one of those abstract pictures that has an image hidden inside of it.  You know – the kind that you have to really look at for a while, look past the surface and into the depths of it?  And suddenly the image jumps out at you.  And once you’ve seen you always see it.  The first time I tried to see one of those pictures it took me forever; after the first couple I saw, I could start to see the images in other ones almost right away, without even working at it.  When you put on your faith, God will reveal to you those shadows that he needs you to bring your light too.

            My faith is not a piece of jewelry to hang around my neck, or an abbreviation to hang on my wrist, or a little patch for my sleeve.  It is a coat of many colors that covers me entirely.  It should be pants, shirt, jacket AND tie.  And maybe a great pair of shoes.

www.tveministries.com

This Baby Will Not Stop Crying

My wife and I recently had our third child and sometimes it seems like he will not stop crying.  In theory this is a simple matter, right?  A baby cries so you either change it, feed it or hold it.  But sometimes I do all those things and he still won’t stop crying.  I know what many of you reading this are thinking: “Yeah, David, that’s what babies do.  You should have been prepared for that.  Just have to patient while he grows out of it.”  And you’d be right.

The apostle Paul tells us that new believers are like infants; and sometimes it seems like they, too, never stop crying.  They come to us with bad attitudes, disrespectful language, wrong thinking, spotty attendance, misconceptions about the church and about God, and (shocked
gasp) skepticism.  Do we show them patience while they grow?

We enthusiastically welcome someone who decides to give their life to Christ.  But then, when they don’t think, talk, act or show up like we think they should, we get judgmental.  Sometimes my wife and I like to go eat at one of those nice restaurants where people don’t usually bring their kids.  A place where grown-ups can go and there are only other grown-ups so that they can sit and talk without kids fussing and crying and spilling things.   The kind of place where the host or hostess just wouldn’t know what to do if a child was brought in.  The body of Christ has many
churches that fit that description.

We can have a hard time understanding why someone doesn’t just “act like a Christian” after they’ve gotten saved.  Or why we can give them advice and they don’t take it.  How it is that you can explain something and then a week later it’s like they never heard a word you said.  Why we can help them see the mess that they’re in, how they got there, how to get out, and how to avoid getting back into it; and then two weeks later they’ve made the same dumb decision, or never left the mess in the first place.

I changed my son’s diaper once, and a few hours later – I had to change it again!  After I changed him I fed him a bottle.  Three hours later he’s screaming for more food.  I picked him up and held him until he fell asleep but a little while later he’s crying to be picked up again.  And – might I add (with a huff) – that I never once got an ounce of appreciation from him. Each time these things happen, I change him again.  I feed him again.  I hold him in my arms and comfort him again.  Because that is the kind of care a baby requires.

As he grows there will come a time when he will have to learn how to avoid a mess by using the toilet.  He’ll need to learn how to feed himself.
And he won’t need me to hold him as much (although, hopefully, still sometimes). The end result of all this is that he will someday have the patience, the maturity and a great enough capacity to love that he will be able to provide a baby with all that it needs to grow.  If we took Paul’s analogy to heart, and cared for our “baby” Christians the same way we care for our flesh and blood babies – imagine what kind of church we could have.

visit us at www.tveministries.com

I Got Stung In the Face By a Bee

Well, a hornet, really.  I was doing some work on our soffits and gutters one Saturday.  In one particular spot where I had to do a lot of work, they had made a large nest just inside the rafter.  So while I worked I had tools in one hand and a fly swatter in the other, repairing my home and doing battle.  I only got a couple; my hand-eye coordination was no match for their dogfighting skills.

When I climbed down the ladder to go work down at the other end of the house I thought I was safe.  After all, most creatures return to their business after the threat has left.  Humans are the only animals that understand the concept of vengeance.  Or so I thought.

Fifteen minutes later I climbed down the ladder on the end I had moved to and took a couple of steps toward my back door.  All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, an orangish blur swoops down from the skies and smacks me just below my right eye. It wasn’t until I felt the first sting that I realized that I had not just been hit, but that it had actually latched on to my face.  It seemed like my arms would not coordinate properly as I flailed wildly, trying to smack it off of my face.  (It’s not so easy to convince your body to hit itself in the face).  By the time it was all over he’d gotten me about four or five times.  All in the same spot since he never left my face .  I’m still not sure if I managed to knock him off, or if he figured he’d owned me enough and nonchalantly flew off and returned home, no doubt to the enchanted buzzing of his infatuated female admirers.

Reeling in pain I staggered into the house and sent my wife to the store for some wasp spray, while I dabbed my cheek (about 1 ½ below my eye) with Hydrogen Peroxide.  As I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, reflecting on how my day was turning into a scene from a Chevy Chase movie, I realized I couldn’t be mad at the wasp.  He was only protecting himself and his family.  If I could recall all the times in my life that I stung someone I’m sure I’d find I was protecting myself.  Protecting my pride.  Protecting myself from getting too close to emotional attachment. Protecting my opinion or what I presumed to be my rights.  The list could go on and on.

And as I sprayed down the wasp nest, obliterating it and anything close to it that moved, I reflected on what I had heard said once before:  that people who hurt, are hurting people.  Was I hurting whenever I stung someone?  I think it’s safe to say I was.  And if that is true for me then I
have to allow that it might be true of others who have stung me.  And so I need to show grace.  Even when – especially when – I am in the
greatest amount of pain.