This is a defense of Rose Creek Village … sort of.

It’s not about Rose Creek Village. It’s about you.

I’ve heard, recently, several people complain about some friends of mine—leaders at Rose Creek Village—who are intimidating. I agree they’re intimidating; that’s not just the opinion of the complainers. Pushy is probably a fair description, too. The complainers definitely felt pushed around by my friends, and I am certain that at least a few times those feelings were legitimate.

Of course, these are my friends, so it was self-evident to the complainers, while they were complaining, that however my friends treated them, they would have treated me the same way, at least in the early days of our community. So, more than once recently, I was told, "Well, that doesn’t happen to you, of course. You always spoke up." That’s always followed by some statement about how I don’t let myself get pushed around.

Worse, that’s always said as though it’s some sort of excuse for others. They’re not like me. Indeed, they cannot be. Apparently, I must be bold by nature. My personality innately stands up to others and refuses to be intimidated.

Laughable.

There were very few children more timid than me. I was pushed around by everyone. I stood up for next to nothing. I did homework once for a kid in 9th grade, much bigger than me, because he asked me and I was scared of him. Afterward, he taunted me publicly for doing it. I never did anything about it, and until this day I’ve never even told anyone that it happened. (And now I’m writing it on the internet; go figure.) In fact, it didn’t much matter to me that he taunted me in class, since I was neither friend nor acquaintance of most of the kids in the class. All my friends were from the street I lived on, not from the school.

I never went to a school dance, not even Homecoming or the Prom. I was 21 before I was brave enough to ask a girl out on a date, and I never had an official girlfriend until my wife-to-be when I was 25.

It wasn’t until I met her that I first worked up the courage to return a fast food meal that wasn’t made right. Telling a waiter or waitress in a real restaurant that my meal wasn’t right would have to wait till I was in the my 40′s, and I’m pretty certain I’ve only done that once in my life despite the fact that incorrect meals have happened to me a lot more than that. I was in my mid-30′s when I began to work on looking at strangers in the eye if I crossed paths with them in a store.

Yeah, I was painfully shy and embarrassingly timid.

In other words, standing up to other people does not come naturally for me. It is very easy for me to let people intimidate me. I prefer that to confrontation, even if that confrontation is telling a merchant that they got my order wrong. (To this day, that’s still true. I’d rather pay money I don’t owe than have a confrontation about money. You’d love doing business with me.)

But I’m not allowed to live like that in the church!

Since the day I became a Christian I have believed in God. (Some Christians only believe in God in theory, not in practice.) God is greater than dictators, kings, and especially than leaders of Christian churches, whether real ones or self-serving ones.

Early on at Rose Creek Village (actually before it was called Rose Creek Village) I had my first run in with leadership. They wanted me to be baptized, and I didn’t believe I needed to be baptized by this church. I had been baptized before, understanding what it was, and thus I had been baptized both into Christ and into the body of Christ. There was no need for me to be baptized by Rose Creek Village.

The head elder, Noah, overrode the others and said, "Maybe he’s right. Let’s leave this in the hands of God."

(Over the next few months, the leaders won that one. The story is too long to tell here, and I don’t have answers for all the theology, but God convinced me that they were right, and I was baptized.)

A few months later, a couple leading men came up with a whole morass of rules for the house I was living in. I didn’t like it, but I decided not to say anything. I would wait for God to provide some examples of whether these rules were a good or bad idea.

But one of the other men spoke up. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like it, so I felt free to talk. We debated the rules, though I was left as the only spokesman for the anti-rule group. Eventually, a person who’d been around a lot longer than me said that I was taking the gift of God—their rules—and throwing it on the ground. I couldn’t take the conflict, and I just turned and walked out. I went for a drive for an hour or so and just prayed.

When I got back, everyone had decided to put the rules on hold. I think they were concerned that they’d hurt me.

I want to point out here before I tell any more stories, the issue wasn’t just that they felt they’d hurt me. God is in control of my life, and God is in control of the church. God will always show the willing and malleable where to take a stand. If I’m part of the church, then God will ensure that where he makes me stand, he will make the church stand as well. What he’s saying to one, he will say to all.

How could it be otherwise?

A few months after that, it was Noah who laid a bunch of rules on that very same house. Again, I opted not to say anything and to wait and see what would happen.

My wife, who’s a lot braver than I am, wasn’t so willing to sit back and wait.

No problem. I’m the head of my wife. I told her to just give it time. I specifically told her not to say anything to Noah.

So the next morning I walked onto the porch and my wife was giving Noah a piece of her mind. I was surprised, somewhat upset with her, and somewhat afraid of the situation. I was not prepared for this confrontation.

Noah looked at me. He was clearly angry. He asked, "Do you feel the same way your wife does?"

"Yes," I said.

"Great," he replied. "You make me feel like some kind of cult leader ordering people around. I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!"

I gave some feeble excuse, and he stormed back to his room. (Apparently, God was overriding my husbandly authority. Some day we can do a blog on realms of authority and talk about why I was the one who was out of line.)

There was a gathering that morning (the rough equivalent of a church service), and we had the gathering outside. We sang a couple songs, and then Noah stood up.

He said. "God has shown me that his people are to be free. They are to be ruled by God, and not by rules. I repent for trying to put rules on the people of God."

He then gave public thanks to God, crossed the circle, and kissed both my wife and I on the foreheads.

We’d been part of Rose Creek Village less than a year. We had no position. We were just some of the new people.

I’ll tell you one more story, also from the early days here in Tennessee. All of this would have taken place in 1996 and 1997.

Originally the house I was living in had 7 bedrooms. We had added a couple rooms in the basement, and we had an RV or two outside, so there were five or six families living out of the house. In 1997 (I think), we built an 8-bedroom, 4-and-1/2-bath addition onto the house. It was three stories tall, and the bottom story became a dining hall. Between all those bedrooms, some additional RV’s, and a cabin we built outside, at one point around 100 people were eating in the 900-square-foot room.

The room wasn’t carpeted at that point, and with all those people, many of them children, it could get very loud. Noah and another brother were having trouble handling the noise, and so they were making extreme efforts to get everyone to be less noisy. I’m pretty sure that most people felt like the biggest disturbance of the peace was not the noise but Noah’s and this other brother’s complaints about the noise.

Once again, I took it upon myself to talk to Noah about it. I never wondered why someone less shy hadn’t already gone to him. I knew from the talk around the house that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. The question to me, though, was not whether people were doing what they should be doing. The question to me was whether I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.

So I talked to him, and he got mad. There was nothing to do but have a heated discussion with him.

I hate discussions like that, especially with someone a lot braver than I am, so it was easy for me to keep one ear tuned to God. My prayer to him was pretty simple: "How do I get out of this conflict as fast as possible without having to back down?"

I felt like I wasn’t allowed to back down. It was Noah who had taught us that peace comes from God, not from outward quiet.

But reminding him of that wasn’t helping.

Finally, God dropped something to say into my spirit. I said it, and Noah stopped talking and looked at me. Then he hung his head and said, "You’re trying to help, and I’m talking to you like this."

(In Noah’s defense, due to the subject of this post, I am leaving out all the parts where I was in the wrong. He had to talk to me about skipping gatherings, complaining about church activities, exploding on a brother in a situation where I was completely wrong, and other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten. However, this blog’s about talking when needed, not about my numerous faults.)

How many people would just have judged the rules that were handed down in my first story above? How many people would have let those first rules happen, then let Noah’s rules happen, then let the situation in the dining room remain unchanged, full of pressure and complaints about leadership?

How many would later have walked away from the church saying, "You wouldn’t believe the terrible things that happened! There were all these rules! And then there was complete chaos in the dining room, and the leaders were upset and making it worse. Everyone knew and agreed with me that the chaos was all the leaders’ fault, but do you think they changed?"

The real question, however, does not concern how many but concerns only one.

You.

Would you have just let those things happen? Would you have been wondering about whether those rules were the will of God, and would you have taken it upon yourself to speak up for God if you felt no one else was?

Or would you just walk away later and talk about all those terrible people and the terrible things they did?

There are reasons that you are not allowed to remain a coward, making excuses for not doing the will of God.

Let me tell you one more story.

When I was a very new Christian, attending an Assembly of God church down in Florida in 1982, a very excited evangelist came to town. His name was Danny Duvall, and if anyone ever inspired me to a Christian walk that was both practical and zealous, Danny Duvall did.

He didn’t just preach about being zealous for Jesus, he took us out and showed us how to do it. He took us door to door in town passing out flyers for the revival he was preaching. He also took us to the tourist section of town to witness.

I was terrified. Remember, I didn’t talk to strangers. I didn’t even ask girls out on dates until shortly before this time. Stopping people to talk about Jesus when all they wanted was a good time at the bars along the beach … that was not my idea of something pleasant.

Fortunately, I was with a friend that I knew had no problem talking to strangers. Before we were Christians, he had been a real ladies’ man, chatting up any girl he ran across and every bit as comfortable with men as he was with women.

Danny Duvall explained that the technique was simple. He didn’t bother with smooth approaches. He just picked a person, then told them he wanted to talk to them about Jesus.

I was curious to see whether this would prove effective. Danny sent me off with by brave friend and with another young man who’d been in the church much longer than us. If this blunt method of Danny Duvall’s worked when they tried it. After that I would do it, too, even if it terrified me.

As we walked to the tourist section the young man from the church asked, "Who’s going to go first?"

"Not me!" my brave friend said.

I stared at him. What did he mean he wouldn’t do it?

The young man from the church echoed my friend’s sentiment. Then they made it clear that if it boiled down to one of them being the first to dip their toes in the water, then we might as well head back to the car.

I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do but to volunteer. God sent us out there. We weren’t street witnessing because we thought it was fun!

God made sure the experience would set a pattern for the rest of my life.

The first people to come along were two guys who were everything I wasn’t. They were big, their demeanor made it clear they were tough, and they were at home in the party scene.

I stepped in front of them.

"Can I share Jesus with you?"

The bigger of the two made a face that indicated utter disgust. He raised his hands, sidled around me on the sidewalk, then rushed off with his friend laughing.

I promised myself I would never use the word "share" in public again.

I was utterly dejected, but I was going to give it one more shot without using "share."

The next guy was a shorter, slightly chubby and much more cheery looking young man. I worked up a more masculine demeanor, stood up straight, deepened my voice, and said, "Can we talk to you about Jesus?"

"Sure!" the guy said. He seemed thrilled to talk to us.

He didn’t wait for us to begin the conversation. He explained quickly that he was a "disciple" of Richard Bach.

Have you heard of Richard Bach? People who have read a lot and are at least my age are probably aware of the book Jonathon Livingston Seagull. In 29 years of telling this story, which happened in August of 1982, I’ve never met anyone who has read his other book, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.

I had, however.

I had devoured it. I loved Richard Bach.

Illusions had completely reinterpreted Jesus, and Bach made a lot of claims about what the Gospels say that just aren’t true. Because Richard Bach had been central to my own thinking as a teenager, I was aware of both his claims and the verses that contradicted those claims despite having only been a Christian for a month.

We talked with the charming young man on the sidewalk for two hours. We were there so long that the police eventually came by and ran us off.

I knew that God had sent that young man along. I also knew why God hadn’t sent him first. The first two guys, representing everything I had been scared of and intimidated by as a school boy, were sent by God, too. He wanted effort from me.

The other two guys? I don’t know what happened to the young man from the church, but I know my friend fell away.

God’s will is dependent on you.

God’s will, in the long run, is going to happen anyway. You, however, will never see it unless you participate in making it happen. It can go on all around you, so that there’s no direction you can look in which God’s will is not happening, and you will not see it if you’re not participating in it.

God doesn’t give his gifts to the lazy.

Nor to the cowardly.

In my day, I was a full-fledged coward. Cowards, however, are the first people listed among those who will be throw into the lake of fire. They are ahead of the unbelieving and the abominable (Revelation 21:8).

I’m not really interested in having my part in the lake of fire, so turning away from my innate cowardice has been a priority in my life for 30 years.

It needs to be a priority in yours. If you can’t speak up, the problem’s not the nature you were born with.

It’s the belief, work, and effort you’ve lived without.

I thought y’all would like to hear this story …

I met a guy here named Todd. When I met him, he was wearing shorts and was missing a very noticeable chunk out his calf. I asked him about it, and here’s his story. I’ll keep it short.

He was on a motorcycle, riding passenger behind a friend, when they were broadsided by a truck. I forgot to ask whether that was a pickup or semi!

Anyway, he was launched down the road about 60 feet and broke ribs, his leg in several places, punctured his lung, and some other things I don’t remember.

The story here is about his leg, which was twisted sideways, torn open, and not healing, even in the hospital. The doctors were telling Todd that his leg was gangrenous and that they would almost certainly have to amputate to save his life. They told him he’d never walk on it again whether they amputated or not.

Then a pastor, John Cowan, whom I know and I mentioned in a blog as the nicest man I have ever met, came in and prayed for him. John said that he was thinking about James 5, where James says that the elders of the church should anoint a sick man with oil and pray for him. John simply wanted to obey that, so he brought olive oil with him, anointed Todd and prayed for him.

Todd said he doesn’t remember the time frame, but over the next hour to several hours, his leg slowly straightened and the pain dissipated.

A few hours later, the doctor came in to check on his leg and make sure they didn’t have to do an emergency amputation. He looked at the leg and asked what happened.

Then he called in several other doctors, and they were all stunned.

The end of that story is that Todd walks just fine, though all his other injuries just healed over time, and he has back problems to this day.

Arguments with Atheists

I used to write on an evolution versus creation message forum a few years ago. I got in a lot of discussions with Christians about evolution and with atheists about the historicity of Christ and miracles.

Atheists, especially ones that study science, love to ask for verifiable scientific studies, especially "double-blind" studies. Otherwise, they say, they don’t believe these miracles ever happened.

They also add that these miracles always seem to happen to a friend of a friend or some distant relative that the person giving the testimony has never met.

Hmm. Not my experience. I’ve met dozens of people with stories like Todd’s … not friends of friends, but people I’ve met with the most incredible stories of God healing them.

No, these will never be subject to double-blind studies. What are you going to do? Break a few people’s legs, twist them around, and then send John Cowan in to anoint them with oil?

After a while, it becomes not scientific but stupid to ignore such stories.

And it certainly becomes stupid to say miracles "cannot" happen, as though you’d conducted your own double-blind studies to prove they’re impossible. Funny how you only need those double-blind studies to prove God works. They don’t seem to need double-blind studies to pronounce them impossible.

Anyway, grace and peace to y’all!

Oops!

Brilliant, huh?

Breaking the RV: The Earthly Stuff

It has been raining here in Auburn, but we needed to take the RV to the RV park and empty the holding tanks. I should have learned my lesson when we were leaving.

I tried to back out of the yard we’ve been staying in, but I couldn’t make the turn around their garage (which is in the picture) and out the gate. I ended up having to turn the RV around in their yard, which is a hill. We’ve been parked on just about the only flat spot in the whole yard.

Turning it around was some serious mental work, but we did it. Then driving out was not difficult at all.

When we came back, I decided to back in so that I could retrace the same route I took out. But as we made the small turn around the garage, the back wheels kept slipping.

Apparently, I’ve got some sort of brain deficiency, and I still thought I could make it. My son and I decided we would try backing just a little further, and if we slipped anymore, we’d give up and park out front.

We slid too much.

There was nowhere to go, and when I tried something, the side of a small ditch caved in and we tilted right onto the corner of the garage.

The garage was never really in danger. It’s an old oak thing, almost like a barn.

The RV, however …

We were very fortunate. The corner of the garage came into the RV about a foot, and it chose a large sliding window to do so rather than a wall. If the window had been open, the only damage we’d have had would have been the screen on the window.

It was closed, however, and the window just exploded.

Okay, Now the Spiritual Stuff

I have a pretty bad temper. Rose Creek Village has really changed my life in that respect, as I’ve had a lot of input and help controlling it. I’m almost like a nice person now.

This little incident enraged me, though. There was no one to be mad at except myself, so I said some pretty awful things about my intelligence to myself and anyone else I could get to listen—which was just my family. Fortunately, my wonderful wife was offended at the statements. It would have been disappointing if she’d shrugged and said, "Yeah, that’s what I think, too."

I was excited, though, about the fact that I treated everyone else reasonably well.

I was also somewhat panicked. How in the world would we get this RV off of the garage? The garage isn’t even mine! I’m at someone else’s house!

Amazingly, I quickly got my mind set on God, and I sat in a chair, letting all the horrible, painful emotions that had flooded my body and mind fade away. I immediately started wondering what I should learn from this.

Oddly, the first thought that went through my mind was, "There’s nothing to learn. This was just a chance incident; things happen; and there’s not any purpose to things like this."

That only lasted a moment. I’ve lived for 49 years thinking there’s a purpose to everything and that God doesn’t let anything happen to us by accident. We can be stupid and insensitive and learn nothing, or we can pay attention, learn quickly, and not have to go through the same problems over and over and over.

That’s worked really well for me. Though there’s plenty I don’t understand, I’ve never experienced or heard anything that’s made me feel like I need to give up looking at life that way.

Lessons

So here’s what I think.

1. I think the devil doesn’t want us to have it easy out here. I was really encouraged by the thought that he actually sees us as a threat.

2. I have a lot less problems than most people in the world, and it’s really important that I don’t get sucked into the American “Disneyland” mentality that says our purpose in life is to live in comfort.

3. If I will keep my mind on what is my purpose, following our Father and doing whatever he’s doing, this might not have happened. Before I ever drove to the dump station to dump the tanks, I had thought briefly about how easy it would be to just park out by the road. I didn’t pay enough attention to that thought to hold it before God to see if that’s what he wanted.

Life’s simple. You walk in the Spirit all the time, and you do what he leads you to do.

That’s an oversimplification, but it is, nonetheless, exactly what being a Christian is all about. We get to be spiritual people, walking with and knowing God. It’s foolish to get distracted with the things of this world just because we’re Americans with a lot of money, excellent shelter, constant climate control, and more food than necessary.

The End of the Story

Oh, after I let all the emotions run out, I called a tow company and asked them to send me a genius out to help.

Really, I asked for a genius.

The lady laughed, and she said she would send their “guy” within about 45 minutes.

He showed up, and he looked like Jason Fitzpatrick, that missionary to Mexico that I’m so impressed with.

Turns out he was a genius. He simply used a tree to winch the rear end of the RV around until we were pointed at the gate. That probably didn’t require genius, and any tow truck guy could have done it. The genius was the way he handled me.

I asked him, “Is there hope that this will work?”

He said, “Hope? I’m not hoping. I know this is going to work.”

He was careful, slow, and utterly confident, even though he was pretty young in my eyes. He was totally in charge and very friendly. He never once told me I was an idiot. In fact, he never made me feel like one. He acted like this could have happened to anyone.

It could have … to anyone who is overconfident in his ability to drive in mud and trying something he shouldn’t be trying.

Anyway, I got out of it for a very reasonable tow bill and a broken window. Incredible.

One Final Comment

My wife just got done with whatever she was doing on her computer. She got up and said, “All in all, a really good day.”

I have great people around me.

We’re in California trying to help Christians make a choice to live in such a way that everyone can have what I have and what the Gospel is supposed to promise: great people around all of us because we’re together and including everyone who embraces the Gospel.

I just finished a post on the same subject I’m about to address.

In that post, I wondered whether these kind of stories really happen daily. I got to thinking about that, and I don’t have a story like those from today.

But I do have one from yesterday.

I went to a men’s breakfast in the Memphis area yesterday morning. I’d been warned that there’s a guy who comes to that breakfast who likes to teach and spouts a bunch of Scriptures that are often not practical or applicable. I was warned it might be very difficult to listen to him, and it was suggested to me that it might be good to pray he wouldn’t make it that weak.

I think there was some worry about my getting in a debate with him, but I don’t debate people who aren’t interested in learning. I discuss with people who want to learn together with me; I don’t debate people unless it’s necessary for the sake of bystanders.

Anyway, I prayed God’s will would be done at the breakfast.

It turned out the fellow they warned me about had to leave early. Before he left he piped up and gave a little speech that helped me understand what people had warned me about. He slipped into a preacher voice, used "praise God" a lot, and said a couple controversial things that he had no intention of discussing or being educated about—and he wasn’t educated on those things.

However, he also spoke long enough for me to see something I liked in him.

One, he made an effort to relate part of what he said to something another guy had said. He did it positively, and it gave honor to the previous speaker.

He didn’t have to do that; he just did it.

Two, his point included a story about a brother that admonished him. He listened to that brother even though there was financial loss involved in doing so.

In other words, this fellow stayed short enough not to disrupt and take over the breakfast—which I’ve heard has been a problem—but long enough for me to get a glimpse of something good in him.

There are younger brothers interacting with this man who are not sure they should be as tolerant with him as they are. As a result of that short time, I was able to encourage them that I’d probably be tolerant, too.

Part Two

I left the breakfast intending to drive to Jackson, Tn to find a spot there to do some writing and research.

I was going to go the fastest way, jumping onto the freeway, which would take me all the way to Jackson. Somehow, though, I just couldn’t get myself to do so. I felt compelled—an easy thing to happen to me, as I like country drives—to take an old highway to Jackson.

On the way, one of those young brothers from Memphis called me to ask me about my statement that there was something sweet about this man in the story above.

I explained to him what I meant, and it encouraged him. Then he asked me some questions about how to get through to another brother that’s having trouble following some advice he desperately needs.

I was driving on an empty highway, hardly ever seeing a car. The drive was leisurely, and the conversation was pleasant to have. Generally, I hate talking on the phone, and dodging all those trucks between Memphis and Jackson would not have helped.

Now atheists hate it when I tell stories like that. I’ve been called stupid and naive, and stories like this have been called asenine and pointless.

Whatever.

I think God led me to drive on a country highway rather than the freeway because he wanted me to talk to that young brother freely.

Apparently, those things don’t happen on a daily basis. I don’t have one from today. However, if I remember these (this post and my previous one) from the last two weeks, it’s because there’s been three times as many events just like those.

The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Tim. 2:2)

I’ve been saying for years now that I believe in God because of the small, daily interaction with him, not because of the larger miracles I’ve experienced.

I’ve never kept good track of those things, though, and like most of the meals I’ve eaten the last few years, I can’t remember them well enough to say what they are.

So I thought I’d start keeping track. I’m going to try doing it right here on this blog. I’ll still intermix teachings with these stories some days, but I want to tell these kind of stories regularly.

This week has been a good week for seeing God interact with me, but let’s begin nine days ago, on a Friday.

That night I was supposed to teach about 20 men, faithful men to whom we are trying to commit basic and necessary teachings so that they’ll be able to teach others also.

That Friday, I was trying to decide between teaching on contentment—accepting the things God sends into your life, growing from them, and seeing his hand in them—and teaching on the Word of God. I have a not very good version of that teaching on my Christian history site (though, hopefully I’ll have it updated by the time you click on that link).

Anyway, the decision was very difficult for me. I wavered back and forth all the way into the afternoon.

The problem was, I really felt like God was leading me to do the teaching on the Word of God, but I’ve taught that before; two or three times, in fact, and here at RCV each time. On Fridays, we get together what are pretty much the most teachable men we have, so it seemed likely they would already know the teaching.

I worry about boring people (sometimes so much so that it’s sin and disobedience to my calling, which is to teach; some teaching is boring even when it is useful).

Anyway, I finally gave in and realized that if I was going to be faithful to God, I was going to do the teaching on the Word of God.

When I taught that night, it was the clearest I’ve taught on the subject because it was well outlined and I had a slide show so everyone could follow it.

But here’s the point of this story …

Since we’re trying to teach faithful men to teach others also, I asked the brothers if one of them would volunteer to teach on the subject to the whole village the following Wednesday. One did, and he went off to prepare.

I provided him with my notes, my outline, and my PowerPoint, but I also told him that he needed to ingest the teaching, make it his, and then teach it from him, not parrot what I said.

Though like most villagers, he’s spoken publicly to the whole village a number of times—our gatherings are usually open mike—this was the first time he’d been called on to teach the whole village, at least 50 or 60 adults make it on Wednesday night. He was nervous.

He asked me questions every day from Friday till Tuesday. He was clearly unsure what he was supposed to be doing.

Then on Wednesday morning, he sent me the following by email:

I was wrestling with this last night, trying to prepare everything, and feeling pretty dry. Told my wife that I was going to bail out. But then I took a good look at why I was getting all wadded up, and the reasons all had to do with me.

It helped to take a look at the subject matter—the word of God—and this morning I asked him to let me rest and to give me the word he wants to speak, I’m not going to worry about the "me" parts of it. All of a sudden it’s he’s giving me stuff in a rush … pretty exciting.

That thrilled me. How do you teach a young man how not to simply repeat a teaching but to make it his own? How do you teach him to teach out of revelation from God and not just from the letter?

The answer is you can’t. You have to leave those things to God.

And God did it.

Take another look at that email. He said, "It helped to take a look at the subject matter …"

Remember my struggle with the subject matter? I vacillated between the Word of God and Contentment as the subject that Friday night, and felt that it was God letting me know that I should teach on the Word of God.

Would the same thing have happened had the subject matter not been the Word of God?

I don’t think so.

That’s the kind of little thing that happens to me almost daily. Day by day, trusting God proves to be a good and wise thing to do.

Every day? Really?

Actually, I’m not sure it’s every day, but it’s pretty often.

It’s within the last couple weeks that my 7-year-old daughter had a deep spiritual experience.

She was at a nursing home, singing with other children for the residents there, when one of the songs suddenly meant something to her and convicted her. She burst into tears, and her grandmother (my mother) talked to her and helped her go apologize and do something nice for the person she’d wronged.

When my wife and I were talking about it, I told her, "You know, I just remembered that right about that time I set aside time to especially pray for our children. Maybe that had something to do with it."

She looked at me with wide eyes, and she said, "I did, too! I guess it was God!"

Once that sort of thing happens several hundred times, it does something for your faith.

I have a story from yesterday, too … I’m going to put another post to tell you about it. That’ll keep this one a bit shorter.

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.

I heard a song on the radio announce that Jesus had conquered the grave.

Did he really? That’s an extraordinary claim, don’t you think? Do we really believe that a man got up out of the grave and never entered it again?

If that happened, it would sure be a good argument that he was the Son of God, the eternal Word of the Father.

Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel have both written books with excellent historical arguments for the resurrection of Jesus.

I love history, so you know I like those arguments. Some of them helped lead to my conversion. Factual things matter to me.

However, they will never result in the conversion of anyone. Or, if they do, the conversion will be useless and temporary.

The fact is, there is . . .

Much Better Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

I once heard a Southern Gospel song that I believe was called “Please Don’t Tell My Daddy.”

In the song a young boy overheard two men saying that Jesus wasn’t real. He went up to the two men and said, “Please don’t tell my daddy Jesus isn’t real. Since he met Jesus, he doesn’t drink, and he doesn’t beat up mommy anymore.”

Who’s seen Jesus alive since the supposed resurrection?

I’d argue that little boy has seen Jesus, alive, a couple thousand years after the resurrection.

As a new Christian I watched a young lady from the streets come into a Bible study with a hardened, twisted face. Later that night, she encountered the risen Lord Jesus.

I saw her Sunday morning, and she was beautiful, though you’d never have known that on Friday. Her face was completely transformed, and it shone.

What was more amazing was her comment about the shining eyes she could see in others. She didn’t know any of the people in the Sunday school class, but she had no problem accurately picking out the real Christians from the nominal ones with a glance.

(Sorry if that’s offensive. I’m just telling you a true story.)

That girl’s name was Linda White. She met Jesus. Alive. Two thousand years after he died.

Those Who’ve Seen Jesus

Who’s seen Jesus?

Did you realize the apostle Paul never saw Jesus resurrected “in the flesh” the way that Peter, the other apostles, and Mary Magdalene did?

Yet who doubts Paul saw Jesus?

It wasn’t “better” to see him “in the flesh.” The apostles, and even dear Mary Magdalene, had trouble recognizing him after he rose from the dead. They had to recognize him every bit as spiritually as you and I do.

The Real Historical Testimony

The fact is that millions of people have seen Jesus over the 2,000 years since he died–temporarily.

In the worst of circumstances and in the best of circumstances; in situations where faith in Christ was popular and in situations where it was not; people have met Jesus, and Jesus has utterly transformed their lives in the most remarkable manner.

The recent movie “Fireproof” has one of the characters say about a Christian in the movie, “He’s the real deal.”

There is no better testimony than “the real deal.“

Yes, Lee Strobel was moved by historical evidence. Now he passes on that historical evidence to others. Thank God for him.

But you know the real reason Lee Strobel is a Christian? Because his wife is the real deal.

“Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar because he doesn’t believe the testimony that God has given concerning his Son.

“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life . . . He that has the Son has the Life.”

~1 John 5:10-12

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 quotes used below are from the Jan. 15 posting at a blog at http://www.beautyfromtheheart.org/index.html. Great blog, and I’ll add it to my blogroll as soon as I get a chance.

Back in 1982, at the tender age of 21, I had become an atheist. I wasn’t an atheist very long, just over a couple months, but it wasn’t an accident. It was a conscious choice that I put a lot of thought into. It was at that point, however, that God really began to go after me in a personal way.

One of the ways was a movie called In the Presence of Mine Enemies. It made a huge impact on me. It’s about a guy who was in a Vietnam POW camp for seven years. It showed some of the torture he went through and a lot of the horrid conditions he lived in all those years. What affected me was what happened when he was released.

He was released when the whole POW camp was delivered by the Americans. All the prisoners were released at once, and they all made their way into a clearing, blinking in the bright sunlight. Immediately, they did two things. They sang “God Bless America,” and they all knelt and gave thanks to God.

I was incensed. I was in the military myself at the time, and I was alone in the barracks rec room watching the movie on TV. I stood up and started yelling at the TV. “Why are you giving thanks to God? If he really exists and can deliver you from the POW camp, then why didn’t he do it seven years ago? You should be cursing him for letting you go through all that torture!” I stormed out of the rec room, stewing and brewing in my own anger.

That night I laid awake in bed wondering how that could have happened. Why would all those POW’s give thanks to God? Why all of them, or almost all of them? Why didn’t most of them agree with me and curse God?

The only answer I could come up with is that God was with them, comforting and helping them during their imprisonment. Somehow, they did not feel abandoned by God despite the torture and despite the ongoing suffering. It shook my atheism, and it was the start of God showing me his Son and causing me to bend my knee to him.

Today, I was reading the story of another prisoner of war, this one at the horrible Nazi labor camp at Dachau. This prisoner of war, Alexandria Goode, was thirteen at the time. Listen to these portions of her story:

Countless prisoners from Alexandria’s own barracks were found dead after committing suicide in their bunks. Utterly alone and parentless, Alexandria credits God with saving her from that same fate. “Oddly enough,” she says, “that’s where I found Jesus.”

Not so odd to me. I became convinced 26 years ago, as an atheist, that God doesn’t abandon the imprisoned. Alexandria, who has much more right to speak about such things than me or you, agrees. She was the subject of Nazi “science” experiments. She had her tonsils removed by them without anesthesia. They injected her with various substances, resulting in boils all over her body (remember Job?). This is what happened to her:

Lying awake in the darkness atop her straw-strewn bunk, she begged God for the strength to survive. It was her bargain. Either should we commit suicide, or God would give her help, somehow.

Following her plea, a peace Alexandria still cannot fully describe overcame her agony: “I was filled, literally filled with the joy…I went to assure the girls who were with me that we were going to be okay, and they really thought I had lost my mind. But I was so sure! I was just filled with an assurance. It was unquestionable.”

Alexandria is living in America today. You can see her picture at the blog I linked above. She’s in her 70′s and serving God wholeheartedly and with great energy.

We serve an awesome God. Thank you, Alexandria Goode, for your incredible testimony and example.