Grand Canyon 1990 Easter, the most glorious, and main event, came 33 years after Christmas. It showed up also many years after the flood of Noah, the call of Abraham, and the giving of the Law to Moses. All prior events in the Bible account, and those featured in this short book, however, aim us in the direction of Resurrection Day and the few days preceding. Easter spells it all out for us. Easter answers all questions about healing. It underpins all applications of life principle, supersedes my fallen principle, and elevates me even further above all natural principle, into God’s principle. What is this principle? “Mercy and Truth have met together and Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other,” Psalm 85, prophetically speaks it out. First, if truth founds life as God knows it, the verse teaches then that mercy easily exists right along side. A convergence of…
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“Beverly 79” Part 3 must now follow. We can’t dismiss the need for discipline, focus, enduring in times when things seem to be quite impossible. We will have many moments overwhelmed, many occasions of pain and disgust. We will not be spared the heartache. We will not find easy fixes for these times. I must qualify my convictions—they were built in times of war, in times of battle, in times of defeat, in times of despair. “Disillusionment, O my faithful companion; disheartening, my enduring guide.”. Failure has been a friend, and mine has been tears. I lost my face, I lost my son, I lost my dignity and even my hope. My gain? Christ. O undeservingly yes— but nevertheless Him. An easier message for you I have not in my bag. I weep to think I would trade anything of my trouble; I would not. In helplessness we discover Helps…
Healing is all of this and more. Well, you might say, I was wounded when my husband left me 4 years into the marriage and I have never recovered. I had received Christ as a child and my spouse and I served Him for most of our youth years. I will never be the same. Can I say this in a kind way; this problem, and also the problem of multitudes, is not that you were hurt at age 25. The deeper issue is that all of mankind since Adam are built out of wound-able stock. Even if reunited to the correct power source as a child, and graced with the re-gene of Jane Smith at that time, you still had a critical piercing that found and did damage to a vulnerable area of your soul. I must by honest, and sensitive, but the part of you that was wounded…
God spoke to me this way: “I heal men in the same way I healed the whole human race.” Forces oppose our cure: The first tries to blockade the unfolding truth revelation, including both; God’s true nature and God’s true redemption. Second, targets the human faculty for digesting, understanding and adopting the unfolding disclosure. Third, inhibits focus continuity so the healing can’t continue a constant. God heals mankind this way: one, purchases them out of the slave market of sin and self. Two, He sets their feet on a rock. Three, He establishes their going. All can be viewed from the unfolding revelation of what a man exists as, stays as, and proceeds as. Man is made for stability. Before the fall we see man always in the light of God’s overshadowing countenance. We see relationship, we see fellowship, love. In the departure from these, we see man alone and…
Dedicated runner (me) in Belle Vernon cemetery, late 70’s We practiced examining our conscience before going to confession when fourth and fifth grades came. Basically, assigned a copy of the Ten Commandments, we mulled over them one by one. My hardest of all was: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. I certainly didn’t, but the Catholics listed sub-points under the big point. “Impure thoughts” logically followed as a major sub-heading, and this complicated a lot of things. Outspokenly, a million things could have comprised an “impure thought,” and since self-examination was a subjective exercise, I ended up confessing these 9 or 10 times per, and even more. Somehow, this variety of sin extracted more guilt than other sins. As we moved to 6th and 7th grades, it became impractical to repeatedly confess these kinds of sins; we had reached pure evil now, I guess. Moses delivered, to the children…
Mike, Tammy, Matt, Amy, and Josh I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free, Michelangelo Much has been said about the little boy inside the big man. Little boy emerges when big man is whittled down. Whittling is a fine hobby for some down-home folks. You know, taking a stick and making a point on it or a chunk of wood and carving out a dog or horse or automobile. Some folks get real fine knives, and some get a whittling set for their Birthday. What is the point? God whittles human sticks as a hobby; and I bet He whistles as He whittles. God uses an Exacto knife! He chips away at the big-serious-man-imitating dude; the one desperately trying to appear again alongside the true work of God. The rare-bird-breed shakes the old, leaving it behind forever. This breed also embraces the new,…
Two boys and a cow, Strawberry Arizona 1989 Another example goes this way: some people arrived at church lamenting their lack of fuel meant for their home’s heat. Hearing this, the Pastor offered to buy them a tank of fuel out of his own pocket money. The answer came back, ”I think were OK, it’s not that cold.” Now, these persons desperately need fuel, but they cannot take the personal charity. Why? Repayment-threat pressures them? The idea of repayment could have become the loathsome hang-up, though reimbursement remained unasked for. But, more than mere repayment possibilities, we discern the much-too-personal part of this deal as the real issue. Folks maybe don’t mind so much receiving money from an institution, as it remains impersonal. In contrast, the demonstration of love, caring, and sacrifice from a real person, burdens them too much. What is the point? Well, a will, healed and emancipated,…
When I was starting out in the religious way as a mere sprig, I had a few harrowing moments. New beliefs and practices tutored us (my sister and I). We never doubted their veracity. In the Catholic Church you ‘go’ to confession, every second or third Friday evening. Church was usually empty, with the exception of the few confessors, and dim looking, especially when dark outside. It had the feel of a museum, with echoes resounding at a door closing, or, drop of a missal. (Yes, I meant “missal”; the Catholics called a prayer book a “missal”). So; high cathedral ceilings dropped huge chandeliers from long long cable wires, but tonight only a little light shone on the many pictures in the auditorium-sized building, Michelangelo’s brush-strokes emanating. Life-sized statues of saints and Mary and Jesus with a golden heart were also visible without spot-lights, from secondary illuminations, and the…
Dying defines resurrection for us. Thank God, otherwise we don’t discern it. In what way define it? It removes everything that is not resurrection, leaving only the “big one”—ww-33/resurrection. What things does it remove? First, it destroys anything that places me outside of God’s immediate presence, since resurrection implies being alive unto God, (Romans 6:11). Yah, all the feel-alone and can’t-find-Him stuff, are found prior to my death and resurrection, because, right now, in the big scheme, I am forever in His presence. “Well, I don’t feel Him,” it is said. Old feelings feel only pre-death experiences, is why. We don’t need these aged emotions to be with God. They died. We get new ones that respond to post-cross experiences and happen automatically. Job knew God by the hearing of the ear, and now his eyes see Him. Are you struggling to hear something? Does hearing make…
Jacob and Esau provide an allegorical story, particularly the big blessing steal episode, which touches our lives See, Esau headed up the family birthright command chain, showing his red head a few moments before twin Brother Jacob’s hand appeared on his heal, no contest. Mom however had heard, “the elder shall serve the younger.” She started big-dreams dreaming for Jacob and frankly Esau was daily forsaking his favorite-son opportunity with animalistic displays and crude initiations. As Father Isaac increased in age, his faculties faded including the eyes. Mom discerned the situation—a befitting time for a deceptive maneuver. She must put Jacob up to it, however, and so worked her carefully devised scheme in a systematic fashion. Jacob, (supplanter), had experimented with this kind of cheat already, and had manipulated Esau’s birthright at an earlier low moment in brother’s famed history. His conscience, obviously prior-educated and conditioned with Mom’s deceitful ways,…