In the Eye of the Storm

Living in New Orleans as I do, hurricane season is never far from my mind. I feel as if I am either preparing to start the six-month-long season or enduring it. The season begins in June and ends in November. For me, Thanksgiving has an added dimension of thankfulness when we make it through a storm season with no big hurricane.

My Mother and I – along with Chloe' – leave town when the big ones come around. We stay at home if the hurricane is only a class 1 storm. I have been through several hurricanes in my life and I want to attempt to describe it for you.

Preparation and prayer are the keys to safely surviving a hurricane. Adrenaline keeps my mind working at top speed: I make a list for all the outside chores and another one for inside work. We move all the potted plants indoors. The furniture on the veranda is moved inside or is turned to face the wind. Our neighbors board up our windows. Everything that is loose is put away so that it does not become a guided missile. Inside, we fill the bathtub with water; we collect bottled drinking water, canned prepared food, medicines, flashlights, and a hand-cranked radio.

We watch the weather channel on TV as long as we can get a signal. The storm seems to creep up the Gulf of Mexico, but one look outside shows us low clouds flying by at a tremendous speed. At ground level, we feel only a light breeze, but where the clouds are, a fierce wind blows. The sky darkens and the first drops of rain touch earth. Coming from the southeast, we see a curtain of rain so dense that we cannot see the house beyond it. The streetlights come on in front of the rain. The sky is very dark and threatening.

Soon, the rainsquall is gone. The sky is a lighter gray; the streetlights go off. This pattern repeats itself several times, each squall lasting longer, with higher winds and darker skies until the streetlights never turn off. The tension increases inside the house, too: the sound of the high winds and the rain pounding down, the sight of the tree limbs breaking off the trees and whipping through the air; water flooding the street, lights flickering off and then on again – or going off completely - ratchet up the stress level.

Suddenly, everything is quiet. The wind stops blowing. Instead of sheets of rain, single drops of water drip from the eaves of the house. A few rays of sunlight peek through a light film of high clouds. A bird or two flutters out of their hiding place. A weight feels as if it has lifted from my chest. My battered nervous system relaxes as we step out on the veranda to see if our neighbors have any damage.

This is the eye of the storm. Every hurricane has one. While violent weather is going on all around it in every direction, the eye is a place of peace and tranquility. The fiercer the storm, the smaller the eye, but the eye lasts as long as the power of the winds. If you were able to travel in the eye of the storm, keeping pace with the storm as it moves, you would never experience the harsh conditions that surround the eye.

I see a wonderful analogy in this. We are in a time of extreme storms in our nation, our culture, our world. Everywhere we turn, we see violence – physical, mental and spiritual. Unlike my experience with hurricanes, we can choose to live either in the fierce winds or in the calm of the storm's eye. In Isaiah 26:3 we read, "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you." In John 14:1 Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me." (NIV) Living those Words, taking them into our hearts and our experience, will keep us in that place of calm and quiet even in the harshest storm.

So many times, the way to find peace is to press into the center of the trial instead of running away. When God covers us with his feathers and we find refuge under His wings, the winds and waves cannot reach us no matter how hard they try. The internal peace and stability we achieve in that place allows us to see the reality of the problems that face us while it gives us the courage to trust God and to fight to stay as close to Him as possible.

The next time a storm comes your way. Be prepared by praying and spending time studying the Bible when no storm is on the horizon. Run to God at the first sign of a small cloud on the horizon; then stay there. From that position, you will be able to stand against your enemies, keeping your peace and sense of well-being, no matter what class hurricane comes your way.

Learning How to Love

Have you ever heard of the term "divine appointment?" No, it is NOT the day God decides if you can go to heaven, but that was a good guess. Usually God connects you with a stranger or puts you in an unusual situation. Without your prior knowledge, He has plans for you to meet that person's needs or to change the situation by your actions. It is a little like having a small part in a movie. Your scene is shot and then you go about your business, making no other contribution to the story line. I wrote about a divine appointment I had with a Muslim taxi driver on the way to an airport in the last post.

I enjoy my divine appointments. Being able to bless someone else gives me a high that no alcohol or drug could match. I show up, get to be the hero, and just know they wonder if I am an angel as I leave. Promise not to tell anyone, but taking part in a divine appointment always leaves me feeling a little giddy. God has usually prepared me in advance – without me knowing it, of course, so most divine appointments are fun.

God has another way for me to make a difference in someone else's life that is much more difficult and demanding: loving a person the way Jesus loves me. Just to make this clear, the person God wants me to love is not especially lovable and has been in my life for some time. This person can be rude or tactless, push my buttons, or take advantage of me. When I talk to them, my frustration level often gets very high because the things I say or do offends them. Sometimes their image of me bewilders me. Am I as horrible as they describe? How can I love them when the ways they act cause me such pain?

Mary DeMuth wrote a novel, A Slow Burn, which tells the story of a woman - a mother - whose life was so broken that she sliced to ribbons everyone who loved her with her razor-sharp self-hatred. This is one of those books where the story is fiction, but it carries the truth. The plot has a divine appointment or two, but God reaches out to her, most often, through people who continue to love her even if it costs them everything.

Just like Hixon in Mary DeMuth's novel, loving someone with the same love that put Jesus on the cross can be very costly to us. We have a choice; we can love them in spite of our pain or we can bring relief to ourselves and leave them unloved.

As for the unlovable person God put in my life, I have more than a small part in that person's story; we are in this for the long haul. God is using this person to teach me how to love someone the same way He loves me. He lets me see how He feels when I act unloving toward Him. The process is painful, but I am stubborn. I guess I AM getting a little more like my Heavenly Father. After all, He refuses to give up on me, too!

A Seemingly Impossible Task

Have you ever wondered why some Muslims react violently when rumors are circulated that the Qur'an has been desecrated? The riots in Pakistan, reported last month in Charisma NEWS Online, caused me to ask that question. (Muslim Pakistanis attacked Christian Pakistanis, killing at least seven people and burning many homes. See the article: http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/news/22823-christians-burned-to-death-in-islamist-attacks-in-pakistan.) As God often does with me, He set up the question a short time before He provided the answer.

Last Sunday, we began a series by John Piper called "Why We Believe the Bible." In the introduction, he compared what Christians teach about the Bible with what Muslims teach about the Qur'an. Mr. Piper made the statement that "It would be truer to say that the Qur'an is for Muslims what Christ is for Christians." (The implication being that most people would compare the Bible to the Qur'an, not compare Christ to the Qur'an.)

After a couple of hours of online research, I discovered that Mr. Piper's statement is valid. I found the following information in Wikipedia (as cited from the Encyclopaedia of Islam Online): "The word Qur'an means "recitation". When Muslims speak in the abstract about "the Qur'an", they usually mean the scripture as recited in Arabic rather than the printed work or any translation of it. To Muslims, the Qur'an is perfect only as revealed in the original Arabic; translations are necessarily deficient because of language differences, the fallibility of translators, and the impossibility of preserving the original's inspired style. Translations are therefore regarded only as commentaries on the Qur'an, or "interpretations of its meaning", not as the Qur'an itself."

In my research, I also found that some Muslims teach that the Qur'an is uncreated; God come to earth in spoken Arabic words, although controversy about this belief does exist in the Muslim world. When Muslims riot, destroy, burn and kill they are expressing their pious respect for the Qur'an.

In light of all of this, as Christians called to share the truth of Jesus' death and resurrection to people who hold these beliefs about the Qur'an, we face a seemingly impossible task. We are asking Muslims to lay down the beliefs that define them. In their eyes, the Christian life is a blasphemy against their god. The biblical description of heaven does not fit what they are taught about paradise. When they hear us talk about the gospel, it is an offense to their whole way of living. Christ's gospel calls them to reject the religion they love, to repent of rejecting God who died for them on the cross. It asks them to accept something foreign to them: that their own personal goodness cannot earn them eternal life. If they live in a predominately-Muslim world, accepting Christ's sacrifice in their place means dying to any involvement in the community and could easily lead to physical death.

Such a gospel is a threat to everything Muslims value in this life and the next. When we speak to Muslims about accepting Jesus as their Savior and Lord, prepare to be ridiculed or despised. If the Holy Spirit has not gone before us and done His work inside the person to whom we are witnessing, the words will probably be futile.

Twice in my life, I have witnessed to Muslims. The first time I talked about Jesus to a Muslim was in college. This Muslim classmate was busy trying to convert me to Islam at the same time, so I think my words had little, if any, affect on him. Only God knows the result of that experience. The second time I witnessed was to a cab driver on the way to an airport. He had seen the Passion of the Christ and had a hunger to know more. God brought him into His kingdom before I left the cab. We both left that experience rejoicing.

I learned something new about Muslim beliefs, today. It helps to understand where people outside of God find their values in life before we share the love of God with them. Whether we are witnessing to Muslims or to any other people lost in sin and unrepentant before God, we should stay alert for the leading of the Holy Spirit; He will give us an opportunity to share our faith. With Him going before us, that seemingly impossible task transforms into God's power at work advancing His kingdom. There is nothing impossible about that.

Another Awesome Miracle

In order for you to understand the significance of the latest miracle that God has performed on my behalf, I need to tell you some personal history. Sit back and relax, some of this is (almost) ancient history…

In 1952, the summer I was five years old, a polio epidemic swept the United States. Almost every family had someone who contracted the disease. In my family, I was the only one who caught it.

Polio affects both the nerves and the muscles. Some cases are mild and a person never recognizes that they are a polio survivor. Not everyone was – a survivor, I mean. Some people died from the onset of polio and others died from complications after the acute phase was over. Those who survived were left with varying degrees of nerve damage and muscle atrophy.

My case was a serious one; I was completely paralyzed from the neck down. I could move my head from side to side, move my tongue, and swallow. Fortunately, my diaphragm still moved air in and out of my lungs. (Patients whose diaphragm was paralyzed lived in an iron lung, which acted as a mechanical diaphragm.)

During the acute phase of the disease, the doctors told my parents to be prepared for my death. My parents are people of great faith with large Christian families on both sides who know how to pray in faith and who believed that God could heal me. So, despite the doctors' fears, I survived that phase of the disease. That was my first polio miracle.

My second miracle came with hard work on my part and dedication on the parts of my physical therapist and my Mother. The doctors, pessimists that they can be, told my parents that it was highly likely that I would never be able to leave my bed. Their caution was well founded. The acute phase of polio left me with less than half the muscles to do the work of all the ones that had died. Nevertheless, after almost a year of therapy, I walked into the doctor's office without the benefit of braces or cane.

The third miracle took place after I was an adult and without me being aware of it until it was over. My parents had kept a secret from me for almost 15 years. It was the doctors, again. Before I was released from the hospital, they told my parents that I had lost too many muscles in my pelvic area to be able to carry a baby full term. I would never be able to have children. My Mother told me about this the morning after I delivered my first daughter.

About ten years later, I learned of post-polio syndrome for the first time. Before I heard about it, God's healing touch had affected me during a time of prayer on the 700 Club. I knew He had healed me with respect to the impact that polio had on me, but I didn't know why. Shortly after that, my sister told me about a report she had heard concerning post-polio syndrome. The Holy Spirit confirmed to me that I had been healed of that.

Post-polio syndrome, as well as the doctors can determine, occurs when the regenerated nerves and the over-used muscles reach a point where they can no longer function as well as previously. The onset of post-polio syndrome is so gradual that it takes the polio survivor by surprise. Usually, it starts twenty years or more after polio leaves.

Post-polio syndrome complicates the normal ageing process. Everyone's muscles weaken as they get older. Polio survivors can experience this in complicated ways. Less than ten years after God healed me of post-polio syndrome, I began to notice deterioration in some of my motor skills. This time, I knew what I was facing. Yet again, God healed me.

Fast forward to 2005, thirty years after the last time God had healed me. Post-polio syndrome hit me with a vengeance. For the first time in my life, I discovered that my diaphragm had been damaged by polio. I would quit breathing when in the deepest part of the sleep cycle. This time, God did not heal me. Instead, His miracle was one of technology, a VPAP breathing machine to assist my breathing at night and a power wheelchair to take the place of my legs.

All this brings me up Sunday, September 7, 2009. For several months, I had been getting less and less oxygen at night. Both my physical strength and my mental acuity were affected. Many of my family and friends were praying for me. Last Sunday morning, our church had a special prayer service before our regular worship time. My pastor prayed for me; my God healed me. Before the prayer was completed, I could breathe normally, filling my lungs completely with air. Also, over the period of about an hour, God washed out all the poisons that had accumulated in my brain from lack of oxygen.

No, all effects of post-polio syndrome are not gone. I still use all the mechanical aids to get through my days. But God has again extended my life for His purpose – that I might be able to fulfill the plan He has for me and bring glory to His Name.

All praise to our sovereign God!

Journey’s End

If you follow the news from around the nation, you may have read two news items that captured my attention. The first item was the story about a homeless millionaire. (Go here to learn about Richard Leroy Walters: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111091624.) The other story was about a man who kidnapped an eleven year old girl. (Go here to learn about Phillip Garrido: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112301498.)

At first glance, they do not seem to have much in common. But from my perspective, they are exactly alike; they were both hypocrites. According to the reports, Mr. Walters was a stand-offish man who slept outside, ate in a hospital, and used a library as his office. Mr. Garrido was a family man who was taking care of his elderly mother and willingly helped his neighbors when they needed it. Neither of these men showed who they really were to the people in their communities. Mr. Walters was making trades on the stock exchange and amassed $4,000,000. Mr. Garrido kept Jaycee Dugard hostage for 18 years and fathered her two children.

The examples of these two men are shocking in the extremes of their hypocrisy, but they are not alone. We have to look no further than our own reflection in the mirror to find the nearest hypocrite. The Bible says that none of us are without sin. That sin disconnects our inward selves and our outward lives. Unlike Mr. Walters though, most of us want our neighbors to have a higher opinion of us than we deserve.

Since Mr. Walters is dead – which is relevant to my blog, I would like to pretend that Mr. Walters was on the grand Queen Elizabeth on our trip from New York to London. Even though he had enough money to purchase a first-class ticket, he chose to make the trip in third-class. He depended on the kindness of the crew and the staff for company, since he made the trip alone. He had no invitation to dine with the captain; Mr. Walters was one of the passengers who believed that neither the Owner nor the Captain existed.

Finally, the journey ended, as all journeys do. When the Queen Elizabeth docked at port, all the passengers - first-class, second-class or third - were directed to one of two lines. Those with British passports were directed to the line on the right; non-citizens all went to the line on the left. The citizens were quickly processed through and allowed to return home. The non-citizens were processed more slowly. Those passengers with the proper papers were allowed into the country; the rest were refused entry and held.

If Mr. Walters had made the trip on the Queen Elizabeth, he most probably would have been allowed entry into England. After all, he would have appeared to be one of the harmless masses of third-class passengers. His hypocrisy would have made no difference to the authorities. Unfortunately, his own land-fall into eternity was not like that at all.

Using the analogy of the passenger ship, Mr. Walters disembarked at the terminal. All the passengers were in the same line, here. As Mr. Walters neared the front of the line he saw an official take the person's passport and he heard this question: "Did you accept the Captain's invitation?" Those who answered "Yes!" had their passports stamped "FORGIVEN" and they were allowed to proceed.

When Mr. Walters was standing before the official, he answered, "I never received an invitation from the captain." The official looked at Mr. Walters, "Would you have accepted it if you had?" At this place, no one is a hypocrite. Mr. Walters looked into his own heart. He saw that no matter how many invitations he might have received, he would have refused. "No." The official stamped his passport: "REJECTED."

Even though the scene itself is not real, it contains truth. When we stand before God at the end of our journey the only deciding factor for our eternal destination will be whether we are FORGIVEN or REJECTED.

God said in the Bible that He loved the world enough to give His Son to die for everyone's sins. He knew that only some people would accept Jesus' death in place of their own well-deserved punishment. The ones who accepted would be forgiven. Jesus died for all of us, however - even those whose hearts are unreachable for one reason or another. Some people reject Jesus when given an invitation. Some reject Him without an invitation. Our Sovereign God, who searches our hearts, knows the answer to that most important question.

Have you accepted His invitation? If not and if you want to know more, go here: http://www.allaboutgod.com/plan-of-salvation.htm.

Cruise to Eternity, Part Three

"I will not become a Christian because God might make me become a foreign missionary."

You may have never heard those words – or said them, but do you fear what God might ask you to do? Many people do. Some folks are afraid that God will ask them to give up everything and do something unpleasant. This fear is one of the devil's most powerful tools. Why? Because, as in almost every lie he uses, this one has a grain of truth. God may require you to give up a comfortable life. He may even require you to die for Him. God is the One who controls everything; that is part of what sovereignty means, after all.

So how does this fit in with our cruise to eternity? We examined the passengers on the ship; they are diverse in their spiritual condition as well as in every other way. We looked at the owner and the captain; God as creator owns the universe and Jesus Christ is His appointed King of all creation.

However, the owner and the captain were not the only ones dedicated to getting the Queen Elizabeth from New York to London. The journey required both a crew and a staff. The crew operated and maintained the equipment that moved the ship across the ocean. The staff served both the passengers and the crew in everything from food preparation, education, cleaning service, entertainment, medical services, and more. They took the same trip as everyone else, but the crew and the staff had those additional responsibilities.

From where did the crew and staff come? The captain (or his representative) chose them. The company would have advertised a position for a person with a particular set of skills and abilities. A person would have responded, an interview would have been held, and a contract signed between the company and the successful candidate. This process would have been repeated until every position was filled. Two things were required in this process, the company had to find the candidate acceptable for the position and the candidate had to be willing to commit to fulfilling the duties required. How well those two requirements were met had a large part in determining how smoothly the trip went. If the crew and staff did their jobs well, guess who got the credit for it. The captain!

As you can probably already see, the spiritual reality is close to this analogy. Jesus chooses us to accept His sacrifice for forgiveness from our sins, just like a captain chooses those who will dine with him. Those people are chosen, but in our analogy, they remain passengers on the ship; they do not become crew or staff.

You have probably heard the saying "Bloom where you are planted." Those words are not found in the Bible, but the principle is appropriate for those who find themselves "passengers" on this trip. No extra choosing by God is needed for God to require us to love Him, to love each other and to obey His commands in the Bible. However, God does choose some people to serve Him in special ways. The Bible says that He gives gifts to the church of apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, and teachers. In my analogy, these people would be the crew. They operate the church "machinery" to the benefit of all of us. He also chooses staff – in the church, deacons, business mangers and accountants; outside the church, operators of soup kitchens, managers of great wealth, organizers of orphanages, and founders and employees of Christian organizations like Youth with a Mission, or Focus on the Family. These people serve everyone according to the skills and abilities that God has provided. Who gets the credit if they do a good job? Jesus!

Those jobs would not be too uncomfortable for some of us. We might be willing to do some of those things. But what if God asked us to die for Him? Yes, for some people that is a reality, not a possibility. In the Bible, Stephen and Paul were both killed because of their service to God. For more recent examples, read Safely Home, a novel about the persecuted church in China by Randy Alcorn or watch End of the Spear, a movie about five missionaries who died in Ecuador. Those of whom this has been required have been prepared by God to face it.

Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (NIV) Those of us who have accepted Christ as our Savior have good works to do now that God prepared in advance. He also gives us the skills, abilities and training to do the work AND puts the desire to do it in our hearts. So, just as with our freedom from sin, God does everything except commit to doing the work. After we commit, we must put all that we are into performing it. A productive, satisfying Christian life lived in obedience to God also takes all of Him and all of us.

God is in complete control all the time and we can trust Him.

Cruise to Eternity, Part Two

Did Warren Wiersbe's comment from The Bible Exposition Commentary in my last post make you feel a little uncomfortable? He said, "So wise and powerful is our God that He can permit men and women to make personal choices and still accomplish His purposes in this world. When He isn't permitted to rule, He will overrule, but His will shall ultimately be done and His name glorified." If you are a control freak, as I was for most of my life, I know it made you uncomfortable. When we are uncomfortable, it usually helps to know what to expect.

Well, then, what can we expect from God? If we read Ephesians 1:3-6 again it says that we can expect Him to bless us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus and to adopt us as His sons through Christ Jesus, because He chose us and predestined us. (The New International Version says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.")

The point is that He chose us first; we did not choose Him, which is a very good thing since we had no desire to come to Him until He put the desire in our hearts. OK, so who is the "us" that gets chosen?

That is a very good question. To get a better grasp of the "how and who" of being chosen by God works with our freedom to choose, think about our cruise on the grand Queen Elizabeth. The ship has a diverse load of passengers who are all traveling to the same destination regardless of their interest in doing so. The owner decided the location of the destination, the time to leave, and the route of the ship.

Fortunately for the passengers, the owner did even more. The owner hired the most trustworthy and the most professional captain to guide the ship to its destination. The captain is always responsible to the owner, but once the ship leaves the port, the captain has absolute authority and responsibility for everyone on the ship. He can perform weddings, throw someone in the brig, or interrupt a meal for an "abandon ship" drill. As long as the ship is at sea, all persons aboard must remain under the command and authority of the captain.

A custom on many ships was that a few passengers were invited to dine with the captain each evening. Notice that they were invited to dine with the captain. Most people considered this an honor, but I am sure that someone may have declined for one reason or another. In all likelihood, the reason given most often for declining the invitation was illness, even if that were not the true reason the guest chose not to attend. Perhaps the passenger did not have the proper clothes or was afraid of the captain or was too busy drinking in the bar or was too proud. The passenger was free to accept or decline the invitation.

The captain of our ship is Jesus. God has given Him absolute authority over everything He created. We may ignore Jesus' presence on the ship, or even deny that He is controlling it, but our opinion changes nothing. If He invites you to come to Him – and not everyone gets an invitation – you must still choose to accept the invitation. God puts in your heart the desire to abandon your rebellion and join Him. When Jesus died on the cross, He broke down the barriers between God's love and our rebellion by accepting the punishment we deserve. God does absolutely everything to call you to Himself except force you to accept.

My pastor has a saying I really like; he says, "Salvation is all of God and all of me." It is "all of God" because none of us can do one thing to save ourselves. God must do all the work so that salvation is possible and then invite us to participate, change our hearts to desire Him, and open our minds to understand His way. It is "all of me" because the one thing He will not do is take over my soul so that I must say "yes." I must surrender my will, my rebellion, and my insistence on having my own way; that part is totally up to me.

If you have received an invitation and answered "Yes," then you are adopted through Christ and have every spiritual blessing in Him.

If you received an invitation and responded with "No," then reconsider your answer. The invitation is still open.

If you have been "playing" church, but insist on having your own way, then do a reality check. Being a member of a church is not enough.

If you have never received an invitation, RUN - do not walk - to God and ask Him to open your blind eyes and to show you the way to salvation. In an unexplainable way, your desire to go to God is the invitation from God.

Here is one last question for today: How is your cruise going?