We will go through Matthew this week, and I have divided it up in this way:

Monday, January 16: Matthew 1 to 7
Tuesday, January 17: Matthew 8 to 12
Wednesday, January 18: Matthew 13 to 17
Thursday, January 19: Matthew 18 to 23
Friday, January 20: Matthew 24 to 28

Matthew drew a lot more comments from me than Genesis did! So during this week’s writings I began carefully dividing up the sections I’m commenting on. On Wednesday (perhaps I’ll go back and do this for Tuesday’s before you get there, but I can’t promise yet) I added "(Advanced)" to some of the sections so that you could know the sections that are best to skip if you need or want to.

The goal, remember, is to get you reading the Scripture. I want my commentary to make Scripture easy for you to understand, not to replace it!

Prayer Request

Please pray for me this week. I’d really appreciate it. As I write this, I’m done with Wednesday’s commentary. I have just finished large doses of radiation and a final chemotherapy in preparation for a bone marrow transplant on Tuesday (tomorrow) to cure my acute leukemia.

Thanks to so many prayers already, I am doing well and am able to keep writing these Through-the-Bible commentaries. It’s really miraculous. I’m trying to get ahead to cover the times that I may not be able to keep up. Trips to ICU are not uncommon for people going through my treatment, and "neutropenic fevers" are very common. Mouth sores and stomach and intestinal pains that force patients onto morphine or even stronger pain relievers are expected.

"Pain medication will be your friend," I was told.

I don’t want to do that.

If all goes well, the mouth and stomach pain danger should go away in about two weeks, though healing could take much longer, and the danger of the fevers and ICU should go away in about 6 weeks.

Again, people’s prayers have been so effective already that it’s miraculous. I’d like to keep serving you this way, though, and I feel like God led me to do this despite the severe treatment I’m going through. Thank you very much for your labors for me in prayer.

Because of the sorts of things I do online, I end up running across atheist arguments or in debates with atheists, at least occasionally. It can be amazing how confident they are that Christians’ prayers don’t get answered.

I’m so used to answered prayer and to small miracles, that I find it impossible to keep track. My memory is such that recalling such things can be hard, unless it’s really amazing stuff like praying for my nephew’s eyes.

There’s a pretty awesome story that a dear friend and mentor put on his blog.

That was from a previous trip to Africa. On this current trip to Kenya, he had one of those awesome experiences that are not really all that rare. He writes:

As most of you well know, every time I come to Africa there is a great fight for my mind. Discouraging thoughts, oppressive feelings are always there to meet me in abundance. This time before I came I asked God for help that I might overcome these formidable attacks before they got a hold on me.

Those of us who know him know how he can struggle with discouragement.

This time, though …

I went to my computer and found this email from a man I met for 2 minutes in Africa 5 or 6 years ago in India.

That’s from an email. He gives the man’s name later in the email, and it’s an Indian name. I have no idea what the “in Africa” part is there for, as Noah wasn’t in Africa 5 years ago, just India. Also, the man’s email, which Noah forwarded to me, says he met Noah in India. I suspect the “in Africa” is a typo. I haven’t asked Noah because he’s in Africa.

Anyway, Noah explains what this email was like:

As I began reading this letter it was as if this man had been in my head reading my mind. He addressed every discouraging specter in my head. I was ecstatic! I could not believe this was happening. A brother I barely knew in a distant country was awakened by God in the middle of the night to let me know that God saw me and had arisen to come to my aid. I don’t even know if he knew I was in Africa.

The email to Noah is written like this:

I woke up in prayers this morning and when i was praying the lord was dealing with my life,it was deep in the spirit that you cant imargin,i saw the heavens opened and when i bowed down he remindend me you,i saw you in a deep cloud of wondering,you were in africa,i dont know if you are doing anything there!am not going to any church!is like you are in africa now,the lord has sent you there with your wife and your seeying that whet is a head is imposible!remove doughts in you! he is able to acomplish,he is with you in that mission,BE STILL,THE LORD IS WITH YOU!

You can read the whole thing at Noah’s blog. (Just press on past the suitcase story, but also follow his blog! That’s something you won’t regret.)

Having traveled to Africa with Noah two or three times, I recognize how perfect that email was.

Just a reminder that we are not alone. There’s good reasons for believing in God, and living the Christian life is a not a fantasy. It’s a powerful life. It doesn’t matter whether we can explain it if we can walk in it.

For the kingdom of God does not consist of words, but of power. (1 Cor. 4:20)

Have you ever had someone tell you that Jesus never claimed to be God or the Son of God?

I was a part of the fledgling New Age Movement as a teenager and young adult in the 70′s and early 80′s. The New Age Movement loves to claim Jesus as its own, but it can’t have Jesus teaching the things he teaches. The New Age is all about feeling good and living for yourself. Staying married, denying yourself, or changing in any way so that you might benefit others is an abridgment on New Age freedom and enlightenment.

The New Age is sort of like the far left in politics. Its adherents simply invent their own reality and live in a dream world all the time. That way, they feel really good about themselves and even believe they’ve transformed the world, while never having actually met or touched the people they talk about helping.

Actually, I guess they’re also like many (most?) Christians, who say glowing, worshipful things about the Bible, but who don’t actually read it, do what it says, or even believe the things it teaches.

Okay, I’m off track. (And to think I did so well being brief in my last post.)

The Outrageous Claims of Jesus

Despite what I was told in the New Age Movement, Jesus most certainly did claim to be the Son of God (Matt. 26:63-64; Luk. 22:70; Jn. 3:18; 5:25; 9:35; 10:36; etc.). Yes, the apostles taught that we could all be sons of God, but it was Jesus alone who could say, "Before Abraham was, I am" (Jn. 8:58).

It’s not the words, "I am the Son of God," that make Jesus’ claims stand out. It’s everything else!

It’s not the rest of us who can say, "I saw satan falling from heaven like lightning" (Luke 10:18). We hear about it from Jesus, who has existed since before the beginning.

He’s the one for whose coming we wait, and he’s the one who will sit down on his glorious throne and judge the nations (Luke 17:24-25; Matt. 25:31-46). He’s also the one who will call the dead out of the graves (Jn. 5:25-29). Now that’s an audacious claim!

But today I want to talk about the simply implied claim I was reading about in Matthew 10.

Matthew 10 and the Implied Claim of Jesus

Picture this scenario. You’re a Jew; you are listening to a man expound the Law of Moses, the greatest of the prophets, and towards the end of his exposition, he says the following:

The HCSB capitalizes "Me" in this passage, but those who were listening to him, even though they were apostles, did not yet know that pronouns referring to him ought to be capitalized. (Actually, I don’t even agree with that; let’s honor him with our obedience, not by adjusting our grammar.) Statements like these had to take the apostles’ collective breath away!

The crowds had wondered who he was just because there was so much authority in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 7:28-29). This passage from Matthew 10 is only directed at his disciples, but what a statement!

I’m more important than your parents, and if you love them more than me, then you’re not worthy of me?

What???

Jesus had better be more than just one of many sons of God if he’s going to be making statements like these!

The Foolishness of Preaching Christ

Let’s forget about New Agers. We’ve addressed some Scriptures to answer them with. People who live in a fantasy world are always easy to answer.

But what about us?

Do we know what religion we’ve joined and what religious leader we’ve chosen to follow?

We’re making some outrageous claims. Jesus rose from the dead? He created the universe? Somewhere around an octillion stars (a number so big that WordPress’ spellchecker doesn’t recognize it!) spread across 14 billion light years of space? 14 billion light years is 5.88 trillion miles … times 14 billion, or 82 sextillion miles.

Jesus, if we believe what we teach, lived a highly supernatural life, and he sent his apostles to live a highly supernatural life. In Matthew 10, he sent his disciples to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons.

Have you ever thought about those people knocking at Jesus’ door on the last day, asking to be let into the kingdom? Jesus said many would tell him that they prophesied, cast out demons, and did miracles in his name.

He’s not going to let them in because it’s not faith that matters on the last day, but what your faith accomplished: good works. So they are kept out because they didn’t obey the Father but were lawless instead (Matt. 7:21-23).

But despite the fact that they were locked out of the kingdom, the King—Jesus—doesn’t deny that they performed these supernatural feats. If we’re going to be Bible believers, then we have to acknowledge that miracles are a somewhat normal part of the Bible’s picture of the Christian life.

We’re making outrageous claims. We had better have outrageous power.

One Final Caveat and One Final Plea

Matthew 13:58 says that Jesus couldn’t do many miracles in his own country because of their unbelief.

In the history of the world, there has never been a more unbelieving culture than modern western society, primarily the US, Canada, and western Europe. Miracles are limited here.

I’ve spent a relatively significant amount of time in 3rd world countries, and I’ve had good friends raised in countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Surinam, India, and Togo. Miracles are not so uncommon there. I know atheists would believe they’re just confused or inventing the stories, but I’ve been too close to too many absolutely stunning events to disbelieve so easily. While I’ve personally witnessed only a few of those events, I’ve spoken firsthand with literally dozens of people who have recounted amazing miraculous occurrences.

In fact, one of South Africa’s national rugby players was healed of a knee injury by a faith healer from Nigeria. That was a public event, and there are videos of it on the internet.

I’m not giving a plug for the prophet who healed him. Obviously, if we believe in Jesus, some miracle workers are lawless; Jesus said so in Matt. 7:21-23. I don’t know anything about T.B. Joshua.

But we’re not in Nigeria. We’re in America, a breeding nest for venomous unbelief.

But just because America’s full of unbelief doesn’t mean we who are Jesus followers should be. Let’s give some actual thought to whom (Whom) exactly we’re following.

This series started by looking at Paul’s boldness and his avoidance of flattering speech.

All of these attributes come from 1 Thessalonians 2, and they are all the result of one thing: Paul’s focus on and commitment to the Gospel of Christ.

Paul never lost sight of the goal: preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the salvation and transformation of all who believe.

Today’s topics come from 1 Thess. 2:5-6, where Paul says, " … nor with a pretext for greed … nor did we seek glory from men" (NASB).

Knowing Ourselves

Both these things …

• Greed
• Glory from men

… have to with personal gain.

We are all prone not only to being influenced by greed and glory-seeking, but also to being deceived by them.

Exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Heb. 3:13)

I have never heard of a deceived person who knew they were deceived.

By definition, a deceived person thinks they’re right. A person deceived by sin thinks he’s not sinning.

A person deceived by greed and glory believes they are not self-seeking. They believe they care about God and about the ministry of the Word of God.

Our protection from these things—according to the writer of Hebrews—is being exhorted/encouraged (parakaleo can mean either) on a daily basis.

Don’t judge yourself in such matters. Let God judge you, and ask your brothers and sisters in Christ to judge you as well … not in condemnation, but in exhortation and, thus, love.

Glory from Men

If there’s anything that has a stronger draw on the hearts of men than money (and women), then it’s glory. We love to be glorified. We love to be held in honor. We love to lead. We love to be respected.

This is such a strong influence on us that God has provided many ways for us to battle the temptation and deception of glory.

Deliverance from Glory-Seeking

1. Humiliation

First, you can count on God to humiliate you. You can count on God—if you’re really his and not marked for perdition because of your self-will—to ensure that you have plenty of opportunity to be humbled.

Humbled, though is a nice word. Humiliated, however, is not so nice. Do not fret when God humiliates you. It hurts badly, but it is important for your own salvation.

2. Weakness of the Flesh

Many Christians are deceived into thinking that God is concerned about correcting all their faults.

He’s not.

He’s concerned about making you useful, and perfect people aren’t all that useful. They’re impossible to follow.

It’s important that a minister of the Gospel have weaknesses and struggles. It’s important that people know they have them.

Paul had a "messenger of satan" that perplexed him. He cried out to God for deliverance, but God told him that God’s strength would only be made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard had weaknesses and temptations … sexual ones. I assure you that they are not the only preachers of the Gospel with such struggles.

Their temptations and subsequent sin were exposed publicly.

God will not deliver you from weaknesses and temptations. He will only deliver you from sin.

Nor does God intend to deliver you by public exposure. He wants you to privately expose yourself.

Confess your faults one to another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. (Jam. 5:14)

We don’t make provision for weaknesses in leaders today. Leaders are separated from the people. The church is not a family. It’s more like a manager (the pastor), some players (active members of the church), and a crowd of fans—some for the team and some against it.

Thus, church leaders are forced to perform. No provision is made for the fact that God sends messengers of satan to them, working on them, wearing them down, making them needy, causing them to struggle … so that the power and the excellency would always be his and never theirs.

Church leaders must come from among us.

Obtaining church leaders from seminaries is a practice far more foolish and dangerous than we realize. Beyond the fact that it’s unbiblical, against the tradition of the apostles, and we don’t care … beyond all that, it’s horribly dangerous.

It produces Jimmy Swaggarts and Ted Haggards.

A church leader should be confessing his weaknesses, obtaining prayer, and being healed … humbled all the time, considering himself, lest he also be tempted.

The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase, but by established character. (Tertullian, Apology 39, c. A.D. 200)

We observe to come from divine authority, that the elder should be chosen in the presence of the people under the eyes of all, and should be approved worthy and suitable by public judgment and testimony. (Cyprian, "To the Clergy and People of Spain"; c. A.D. 250)

Conclusion

Let me just drop this here. I’m sure there’s more to say, but that’s a lot to chew on if you read all this.

I mentioned at the start that Paul was able to say those things in 1 Thess. 2 because he was focused on the Gospel and its transforming power. He was never moved from his goal. He was always steady and straight ahead.

The things above are true for disciples. They are true for those that want to be transformed by God.

Others may find that God doesn’t get in their way. He doesn’t humble them. Their goal is to honor themselves, not to honor God, and so God doesn’t deal with them at all.

Instead, they hear the worst thing that anyone can hear from God, which is "your will be done."

So if you have been called by God as a worker in his body or as a preacher of the Gospel, don’t fret your weaknesses … confess them. Ask for prayer. Be transformed and healed by the prayers of your brothers and sisters, and thus live in humility, apart from the glory of men, a true servant of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Last-Minute Hotel Deals at Expedia.com

This morning my warehouse manager, Dean, came in to tell me that his mom had just called from Sacramento shouting, "I’m healed, I’m healed."

A few weeks ago, a set of shelves (installed by her and her husband) fell off her bathroom wall onto her. As she lay on the floor, seconds later, her sister called from Florida, not a very common occurrence. She took the call, slurring her words, barely conscious, and her sister yelled at her over the phone, trying to keep her awake.

The sister instructed Dean’s mom to call the next-door neighbor and that she’d call back in 2 minutes. The next door neighbor, fortunately enough, was up and dressed, which was unusual for her at 8 a.m. (I guess she’s an artist or something, Dean said.)

The neighbor called 911, and the EMT team showed up in 2 minutes. They found her unconscious, and they had to hit her with a defibrillator 3 times to get her heart going.

They got it going, but Dean’s mom was left with numerous stroke symptoms: weakness on one side, slurred, slow speech, and she had difficulty reading and writing. She also couldn’t handle light, needing sunglasses outside. She was weak and tired.

Recovery has been very slow for weeks, and two weeks ago I let Dean off for a few days to go visit her.

Apparently, his mom decided yesterday that she needed more prayer, and she went to see a friend at a charismatic, non-denominational church she attends. Her friend prayed for her yesterday, and today she woke up symptomless. No pain, no slurred speech, no weakness, and her reading and writing ability is back to normal.

Does This Happen All the Time?

No. A lot of people don’t get healed. I have another friend who works for me whose mom did have a stroke, and though she’s almost completely well, she had no miraculous healing, and she still has some effects of it.

Dramatic stories like this happen rarely, at least in my experience.

I’ve seen only a couple such things. Friends in foreign countries–friends I know are honest–have told me many more. There’s a lot of unbelief in the US, and we’re already inundated with the message of Christ. Where the message is new and the unbelief is less, God seems more prone to displaying miraculous power (Matt. 13:58).

However, I could tell a hundred less dramatic stories, and I’ve forgotten many times that. I remember, for example, getting up one morning during a drought here convinced God wanted us to pray for an end to the drought. At our gathering that morning, I asked everyone to pray, and one of the ladies said, "Can we pray the rain starts Tuesday? We’re taking my students to the zoo on Tuesday."

The rain began as they were in the parking lot leaving the zoo. That was in the late Spring of 2007 or 2008, I don’t remember which.

One of the things that builds my faith the most is how often I know, before I ever pray, whether there’s power in our prayers. It’s not that we simply prayed for a drought to end. I’m sure we did before that Sunday, and it didn’t happen. But when we were led to pray, and we prayed, it happened.

This is a response I just sent to someone. There’s nothing personal in it, so I wanted to post this here. I hope there’s something helpful in it:

The thing that helped me most with baptism was comparing it to the sinner’s prayer, something I believe Peter does in 1 Peter 3:21. Peter says baptism now saves us, and then he explains how it saves us. It saves us by being the appeal to God for (or from) a good conscience.

The KJV and other versions have answer or pledge in the place of appeal, but after reading through several lexicons, I would argue that the NASB’s “appeal” is the only reasonable translation there.

So, baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience.

That fits very well with the verses on baptism in the NT. In Acts 2:38, Jews ask Peter what they should do since they are convicted about crucifying Christ. He tells them repent and be baptized for (eis – into) the remission of sins, and they’ll receive the Holy Spirit. See how that fits with 1 Pet. 3:21? They wanted a clean conscience. He told them to be baptized, and their sins would be forgiven, and they’d receive the Holy Spirit.

Baptism was the way they carried out their faith. It was their “sinner’s prayer.”

Of course, you know there’s no sinner’s prayer in the NT. Read through Acts, and you’ll see that everyone was baptized immediately, the same day. Baptism was the apostles’ sinner’s prayer. The Philippian jailer was baptized in the middle of the night!!! (Acts 16)

When Paul had been convicted by Christ on the road to Damascus, Christ sent him to wait there. Ananias came and told him, “What are you waiting for? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord!” (Acts 22:16).

So Paul, too, washed his sins away in baptism, despite having seen the Lord 3 days earlier. Baptism was his sinner’s prayer.

The early church believed the same way. All Christians believed in baptismal regeneration, including the Reformers, all the way into the 17th century. A symbolic baptism has to be the worst-attested doctrine believed by any large group of Christians ever. It’s new, it obviously violates many Scriptures on baptism.

Baptists and others like them deal with this by using verses on faith to teach about and argue for their version of baptism. They have to. Pretty much all the verses on baptism clearly disagree with them. Church history disagrees with them–100%, across the board–all the way until a century AFTER the Reformation.

So here’s how what I teach differs from the Roman Catholics. One, the Catholics baptize babies. That’s an indication that they think baptism does something spiritual even apart from faith. I don’t believe that.

I believe baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscience. Babies can’t do that. We believe, and then we join ourselves to Christ in baptism. In the beginning, it was really that simple. It wasn’t that baptism was a magic rite. It was the baptism was the proper response of a believer to hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believing.

Okay, so here’s the real difficult issue:

What about those that don’t know?

What about me personally? I was witnessed to by pentecostal believers. They believed, like the Baptists, that baptism is symbolic. So rather than have me respond to God with baptism, as the Bible teaches, they had me pray a prayer. Of course, even the prayer was ineffectual, because like Cornelius in Acts 10, I had received the Holy Spirit as soon as I heard the Gospel and said I believe it. The power of the Spirit fell on me, gave me a good conscience, and changed my whole world as soon as I said, “Yes, I believe.”

I was baptized a month later, wondering what good such an act was, because doing the “public testimony” seemed so meaningless as to be ridiculous. What sort of public testimony is baptism nowadays? Lots of people have been baptized. Many of them repeatedly. Most of them live lives that are a testimony AGAINST Christ.

So baptism is a lousy public testimony. Live a holy life! That’s a great public testimony.

And, Scripturally, how does one explain Paul baptizing the Philippian jailer in the middle of the night? What sort of public testimony was that? How about Cornelius with Peter? It seems clear Cornelius was baptized in his house, on the spot. What sort of public testimony was that?

I believe God makes exceptions. I believe he made an exception for the thief on the cross. I believe he made an exception for Cornelius, pouring out the Spirit on him before baptism.

I believe he makes exceptions for us ignorant 21st century Christians who think baptism is symbolic and can be waited on. He forgives our sins and fills us with the Spirit because we ask him to by a sinner’s prayer or a prayer to be filled with the Spirit. Being merciful, loving, and kind, he answers that prayer.

Scripturally, though, the example set for us–and the command of Christ–is that baptism be the appeal to God for a good conscience, not something else, not even an actual verbal prayer.

I hope that answers your question. Justification does come upon faith, but faith always acts. So responding to the Gospel by an act of faith, such as baptism or the sinner’s prayer (one being biblical and one being the tradition of Charles Finney and D.L. Moody) does not contradict justification by faith. Instead, it shows us what justification by faith looks like.

Remember, Peter didn’t say in Acts 2:38, “You don’t have to do anything. You have already believed, so you’re justified.” No, he said, “Repent and be baptized.”

Clearly, those Jews believed . How could the be cut to the heart, as the Scripture says, unless they had believed what Peter taught? Yet, Peter still told them to repent and be baptized.

One needs to perform an initial act of faith.

I’d love to say more about Peter’s initial act of faith, but this email is long enough. The first time Peter received a command of the Lord, it was to throw his nets on the other side of the boat (Luke 5). When he did so, the effect was incredible. He acknowledged he was a sinner, and then, when the boat got to land, he forsook everything and followed Christ.

Amazing, isn’t it? Jesus didn’t tell him to be baptized, to read the Scriptures, or any such thing. Instead, he told him only to throw his nets on the other side of the boat. Peter said, “At your word, I will do it.”

He did it. The response to the Word, by obeying it, was like eating it. The Word was implanted in his heart like a seed and he was born again (Jam. 1:21 w 1:18). At that point, because he responded/obeyed, he didn’t need to be told he was a sinner. He didn’t need to be told to follow Christ. The Word of God was now in him, and so he knew what he was supposed to do!

Of course, I know there’s issues with me saying he was born again there and not later, after he repented for denying Christ. But Jesus said that Zaccheus was saved (Luk 19) right there on the spot. There, once again, the Word of God (Jesus) told Zaccheus something simple. He told him to hurry, to come down, and that Jesus would eat with him. Zaccheus complied, and the Word of God was planted in his soul. Jesus didn’t have to teach him to repay those he’d cheated. He knew already because the Word was in him.

Then, as I said, Jesus said that salvation had come to him that very day. It had! And it was because of his positive response to the Word of God.

Baptism is our positive response to the Word of God. It’s like eating it. When we respond, the Word of God will go down in us like a seed, saving our souls.

Well, I guess I did say all of that about Peter. Sorry for the long email. I hope it’s a blessing to you.

This is not meant to be a blog about my personal life, but …

Yesterday my wife had back surgery for a bulging disk. It was huge; 18 mm, for those that have an idea of what that is. The nerve that exits between her bottom vertebrae and tailbone was completely crushed–flattened out–against the bone at the back of the tunnel.

People with bulging or herinated disks have problems if the disk even touches the nerve. This nerve was completely flattened by the bulge. The surgeon commented, both when looking at the MRI and after surgery, “That was a huge disk.”

My wife’s been struggling with sciatica for almost two years. We’ve tried numerous therapies, two of which worked very well for some time. A chiropractor got her relief for six months, and the muscle release techniques found at Julie Donnelly’s web site got her relief for a month. Decompression therapy helped also, even at the end, but only for the day it was done and sometimes the next day.

In the end, none of it worked because the disk was compressing the nerve.

Help from God

One of the things that drove me to belief in God during the short time I was an atheist was a movie called In the Presence of Mine Enemies, a story about a man who was a POW in Vietnam for seven years.

I remember at the end of the movie, all the POW’s were released at the same time. They gathered in the yard and sang “God Bless America,” and then they all got on their knees and gave thanks to God.

As an atheist, that completely threw me. Why were they giving thanks to God? Howard Rutledge, the subject of the story, had been tortured and mistreated for seven years! Why give thanks to God for that?

If God could have saved him, why didn’t he save him at the start, before all the torture?

As I lay in bed that night, I knew there was only one reason that every one of the prisoners would give thanks to God. There was only one reason that none of those prisoners were atheists.

God had helped them during their imprisonment. They were not simply tortured and mistreated. They were also comforted by God.

Nothing else made sense to me.

This surgery for my wife was a similar experience (though, of course, not near so drastic in suffering). By the night before surgery, my wife was able to say, “God’s been so in control of all of this that even if something awful happens and I end up in a wheel chair, I’ll know it is the will of God.”

We’ve prayed and cried out to God, and he’s answered in so many little ways that there’s no describing it. I walked around the surgery center to pray while she was in surgery, and I knew everything would be okay. I didn’t pray; I gave thanks to God.

In fact, one of the last “little things” to happen was that two days before surgery I picked up Watchman Nee’s A Living Sacrifice. I flipped it open at random, wanting to have a little “devotion” time, and I read the chapter on prayer.

Nee said that one should pray until faith comes. Once faith comes, there is no more need for prayer. You have your answer. Any further prayer will only dissipate faith. Once faith comes, praise is in order, not prayer.

That is so true, and I was reminded of that as I circled the surgery center during the operation. Faith had come, and we had peace.

The surgery was a complete success, by the way.

I already wrote a blog this morning. I’m going to write another, anyway.

I got a newsletter from Gospel for Asia, and I loved reading their first story. They trained a man named Joseph Rao in India for three years, and then he followed a leading on his heart to an unreached area of Maharashtra state in India.

It took two years before Joseph obtained his first convert, but now there’s 25 churches, 28 mission stations (whatever those are), and the seven of those churches that he pastors have over 100 believers.

Now I could tell you that I believe that it’s bizarre to suggest he pastors seven churches and that the work he’s doing is really apostolic and that he needs to be raising up elders to take his place at those churches because it’s elders who really pastor churches; however, it’s hard to imagine the benefit of raising an issue of that.

Instead, here’s the issue I want to raise:

God Hasn’t Changed Since the Book of Acts

America’s boring. We’re full of unbelief, and so we fill our lives with TV, movies, and video games.

In Africa and India and parts of South America where those “ignorant” and “superstitious” people live, they still believe. So they see things that you wouldn’t believe no matter who told you about it.

The article about Joseph Rao says:

Joseph prayed for any who had needs. The Lord was faithful to confirm His Word and healed many from their illnesses, including one woman who had been crippled.

I wonder how many Americans believe that.

I’m Not Charismatic

I’m not charismatic. I left the charismatic movement on purpose over 25 years ago because it was a joke and people pretended to be healed all the time. Lying was a lot more prevalent than healing. A lot more.

However, healing wasn’t non-existent.

And overseas, healing is a lot more prevalent than it is in the US.

That shouldn’t surprise us. The Scriptures say that even Jesus himself could not do many miracles in his home town due to unbelief.

When I was in Germany, I met some Africans who told me stories about things they’d seen in their native Africa. I heard LOTS of  stories. Some were so far out that I assumed they’d just had tricks pulled on them.

Then I met a young man from Surinam. He was a godly, sensible young man who was in college preparing to be a pastor. He spoke four languages. He and I hit it off from the moment we met each other.

When he started telling me the same stories, both about witch doctors and churches, that I had heard from the Africans, I paid more attention.

“How could that be?” I thought.

It was then that I remembered Jesus’ difficulties in his hometowns. God works so much more freely where people believe.

Why?

Why? Why would it matter how much we believe? Can’t God do anything? Didn’t he create the world?

I don’t know the answer to any of  those questions. I just know what I’ve seen.

I was in India when we visited a church along with Pastor Daniel of Voice of Gospel Ministries. As he entered a man came running up with a little girl in his arms. He was very excited, and he stopped us, though it was clear Pastor Daniel didn’t recognize him.

He then told us that he had asked Pastor Daniel to pray for his little girl, whose stomach was swollen with cancer, a month earlier. Pastor Daniel had quickly laid hands on her and prayed. He was in a hurry, so it was a short, one-sentence prayer.

When they took her back to the doctor, the cancer was gone.

That’s one of many stories I could tell you. In some I was there to see the prayer or hear the testimony. Others were repeated by people I trust.

God Is Still Real

I don’t tell you these things to get you seeking miracles. I’ve been in situations where I’ve needed miracles. I’ve prayed for a nephew who had gone blind in one eye and seen his vision restored. However, it’s not miracles I’m after.

Charismatic churches pursue miracles. That’s wrong. God is not a miracle dispenser, though prayer for help in time of need is something he prescribes.

God rewards those who diligently seek him, so I want to encourage you to seek God. I want to encourage you to believe. I want to encourage you to know God.

I want you to fellowship with God and think the way God thinks. Miracles happened around Jesus all the time. They didn’t happen because Jesus was seeking miracles. He rebuked people for seeking miracles. They happened because Jesus loved people, and he wanted to help them.

Jesus has a lot more faith and you and I have, but our faith is supposed to be growing. We’re supposed to be trusting God in the middle of the storm, unafraid to pray for the things he leads us to pray for.

So above all, more than believing in answers to prayer, you need to believe that you can know God. You need to believe that you can know what you ought to pray for so  that you’re not praying against his will. You need to know what you ought to pray for so that you don’t waste your breath crying out for something that will never happen.

The Book of Acts hasn’t stopped, except in America where we no longer believe. Let scientists study unbelief and figure out how to ignore one-of-a-kind miracles. Christians shouldn’t be so. We should be overcoming unbelief by the belief we have.

Actually, this is an answer to a prayer that wasn’t even prayed. Sometimes he answers before we even call on him.

One of the school projects for our Jr. High boys was to build a windmill and learn about power generation and green power in the process. We purchased instructions for building an inexpensive windmill, we got some men with experience in eletrical power to teach them, and they set to work following the building instructions.

When it came time to measure and cut the blades for the windmill, the boys hit a standstill. Justin, the most experienced craftsman of the students, wasn’t sure how to cut it exactly.

As they debated the best process, one of our construction guys drove up. They nabbed him, got his advice, and got the blades cut.

It’s not like our construction guys drive up, during the day, to a school class on a regular basis. This was completely out of the blue and an answer to prayer, even if that prayer was unvocalized.

As my wife sought to struggle through the rest of the project, the next blessing from God was that same construction worker, Ray, volunteering to take over the project.

No, that sort of answer to prayer will never convince an atheist that God is real.

When you live your life like this on an ongoing basis, however, it begins to become obvious that our God, who has always been a God who hides himself, is happy to reveal himself to those whose hearts are his.

The comments are turned back on. I found a much better spam filter that I was able to add as a plugin. They had great instructions, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out how to do it.

I have a couple recent prayer stories I could add to my prayer answers series, but I want to tell you a story instead. Hopefully, it will encourage you. Hopefully, you’ll be able to relate!

Unfortunately, this story is around 26 years old. Wow! It still stands in my memory, though.

It was 1982 or 1983, and I was in Florida in the military. I was on midnight shift, and one night there was no work at all for me to do. We weren’t allowed to sleep, so I got a book out to read. It was The Release of the Spirit by Watchman Nee, and I read the whole thing in about two or three hours. I was a relatively new Christian at the time, but I could totally relate to everything he said. It was not just like I could understand it, but I could feel the whole thing.

The gist of the book is that God works on our soul from the inside and the outside. He uses circumstances, trials, and other things to crack us from the outside, while the life of God in our spirit presses on us from the inside. He compared it to a seed that is planted in the ground. Pressure, heat, and moisture work on the hard outer shell of the seed, and the life inside the seeds presses its way out as the shell breaks.

Watchman Nee is awesome at helping us understand that God wants people to be able to see Christ in us. Even our best points are not what God wants others to see. He wants them to see Christ. Therefore, our greatest strengths can often be our greatest weaknesses because those are places where we trust ourselves. It may look good and righteous to us, but it’s still part of the hard outer shell of our soul. God wants to break those things and let Christ be released from our spirits.

That book completely filled me with God. I was overwhelmed, and after the first three hours or so of reading I spent the rest of the night outside under the stars praying and crying out to God. The presence of God was so strong that I felt like I’d been transported to heaven.

In the morning, as the sun came up, I sat in our dispatch office waiting for my relief to come in. Apparently, I was not the only one who could feel God’s presence. Five different people walked up to me as I sat there and talked to me about God in some way. My boss showed up and basically apologized for not following God, and he promised me that he was thinking about it. I hadn’t said anything to him. Another co-worker I barely knew came up to me, told me she went to church, and invited me out to visit her church. Another co-worker asked me a couple questions about God, then told me he’d try to be less crude around me. Again, I hadn’t said a word to him about being crude, neither that day nor previously. All this came out of the blue, and I realized the great power of the presence of God.

I was thinking about that today, and I’m reminded once more that it’s not our strength that will reach the world. It is the power of God. May our focus not be on the work of God but on the face of God, for only there will we find the power that will make the work of God something good, spiritual, and divine. It is not our righteousness but his that will transform the world.