Your Attention Please

I have a few miracles to announce, I'll keep it short since I don't want to go on and on and bore you with such elementary things.

We've had our second healing of exczema. The first was a severe case on large areas of the body as well as the face and lips. After healing prayer it skeddadled leaving no scars behind. The second was, according to the doctors, a natural extension of allergies and only to be expected except that the only thing we expected was it would be healed and healed it was after prayer and some rather energetic manifestations in a person who seldom has them (arm waving, bending over and unable to straighten, etc). I think we're on an exczema roll, it's amazing how one's faith for healing leaps when you see it happen.

We've also had a healing of hips which have been painful for the person's lifetime and now do not flare up in pain at all. I also had a healing which I forgot about until I was thinking of these. After the healing room my shoulder hurt like crazy and shooting pain kept running through it the next day, about 3 minutes between the shots. I prayed a bunch and nothing happened so I got stern and determined and told it to leave. It never bothered me after that.

My final miracle is that 6 months ago we shared our miracle requests with each other and the Lord in our kinship group. Then we believed they would happen. I asked for the miracle of a new bike and someone in the group prophesied that it would be red. This Friday I bought a new bike and it was red.

Go ahead and ask, He's waiting....

Pa

Mathematics

It's been 28 years since I graduated from University yet I still have a recurring dream about missing all my Mathematics lectures, knowing there's a final test looming and knowing I'm not going to get my degree because math is going to take me down. 28 years of that.

I am not strong in math and I think anyone who can prove the existence of stars and black holes simply by the use of numbers and formulae is astonishing. I also admire carpenters who know how to use a tape measure and people who can do math in their head on the spot. I still don't know how to do a 15% tip on a meal bill. I flunked math in high school and had to take it again and then avoided it in University. I did take a statistics course and passed it with flying colors, but only because it was applied and meant something.

Since I didn't take math at University and have my degree and have 28 years of space between that event and now, why do I still have this dream? My theory is that there is still some part of me that is insecure or scared or fearful or something like that and this dream signifies it. It feels like insecurity, like I've blown it all because I was too lazy/slothful/stupid to go to math lectures. It feels like I've been totally foolish, like I've failed. What are you telling me Lord?

I think I am a candidate for Sozo/Theophositic ministry. My guess is that I still feel like a failure in some part of me and that I also feel inadequate. I don't really feel like that on the outside but I'm guessing there's still some tape on the inside that's still playing that message over and over again. For 28 years to be exact.

Pa

Catholic Mass

The funeral for Remi was today and during the Catholic service Mass was held. I was blessed to hear the priest declare over the bread that it was for healing. I believe he ended his liturgy over the bread with something like 'Lord, if you are willing, heal me'.

I remembered that the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches still hold firmly to the fact that healing is in the atonement (body and blood) and it's only the Protestant church that has tossed out the idea. In fact we have tossed it out so far we think it's heresy.

I've decided that I am going study 'this is my body' more carefully.

Ma and I got the laminate down. She had to whip me pretty hard but I hung in there with her. It wasn't a real easy job since it was narrow laminate of three different lengths and you had to think fairly hard to get it down properly. Thank goodness she was there laying out the pattern or I'd still be on the first row.

We got 'er done.

Pa

No luggage

I forgot to tell a story about my recent trip to Calgary. I get to the airport and suddenly realize I had left my luggage at home. That's a hoot, I'm usually totally prepared a day ahead of time for all my trips and have never left my luggage behind.

My solution was to wash all my stuff in the shower using shampoo, hang it for the night then iron it in the morning. Problem was it was still wet. So I just wore the hotel robe to my meetings.

Naw, that's a lie. My solution was to go to a clothing store and buy a new set of clothes to wear. I submit this as an idea for any of you ladies wanting new clothes. Next time you travel, just forget all your luggage at home.

Pa

I repeat.....

I wrote possibly the best blog ever and it was so hot that the blog machine took a notion to tautologize it, meaning it kept circling round and round endlessly within the blog maker machine and not posting. If I hadn't stopped the spin cycle it might well have wrecked the whole machine and then where would we be? I can't afford to pay for a new blog maker.

So let me repeat but only in summary fashion since a hot blog is only fun to write once, not twice.

I said Ma and I were going to roll up our sleeves and lay some laminate flooring this weekend, starting tonight. I also said we were going to 'get 'er' done because I wanted to use that phrase which is finding currency among rednecks and the unwashed, a constituency I consider myself part of.

Then I moved on to say that I had an opportunity to preach again and was considering talking about what the body mean in the Lord's supper. Any of you know? I got the blood figured out, but the body? If we eat his body then...........................happens. I think the Romans had a point, how could any credible religion claim to drink the blood and eat the body of its God. A rather wierd concept and obviously a barrier to entry for those shying away from cannibalism.

Even in Paul's day it had been watered down to mean not much at all, to which he responded by pointing out that people got sick and even died when they 'esteemed not' the true meaning of the body in communion.

Current themes are that it symbolizes that we are all of one body, the little pieces of the loaf all going into our tummies and making us one. Nice concept but I think even the Corinthians could have managed that one and avoided dying. Or that the bread is a symbol. Of? Or that the bread is the actual body of Christ. And?

Here's what I think. I think that if you eat the bread there is healing in it. Actual healing power. I reference King Hezekiah who had the people eat the passover lamb and noticed that all were healed when they did so. I also reference the passover event for the same outcome (not readily apparent but concluded by way of other texts).

My new cry is, "There's power in the body!" Think that will sell when I preach or should I just stick to the one loaf-one body theory and keep everybody happy?

Disclaimer: if my first blog appears somewhere near this one I am not responsible. It's the blog making machine finally spitting the original out.

Pa

It's my turn

Hey, that's the title of an old Bruce Cockburn song, something about how everything changes when you know it's your turn, meaning, of course, that when you know God is actually for you and wants you to accomplish the impossible you get this sudden glimpse of destiny and how things could really be and start living in the light.

Which leads me to a radical verse in Proverbs, "The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day". Say Amen, it's the Lord speaking. That's the path I'm on: strength to strength, glory to glory. Say Amen, that's good preaching.

None of this has anything to do with what I want to say, which is that it's my turn for new laminate flooring. The destruction starts tonight! Ma and I are rolling up our sleeves (old term based on days when people needed to do that) and getting down to business (old term based on getting something accomplished) and we're going to get 'er done (current term among cowboys and rednecks that mean we're going to finish what we start).

Another opportunity to preach has come my way, shall I take it or not? I'm thinking of some sort of totally esoteric theological musings that mean nothing but do make you think. Maybe something along the lines of pointing out that when Paul said many had taken sick and some had died because they didn't esteem the Lord's body rightly in the Lord's supper that what he was saying is that some didn't know that in the eating of the Lamb there is healing of the body, they just thought it was a hunk of bread or a mere symbol or a nice way to remember Jesus.

Just ask yourself what you think when you eat the bread. The blood is easy, we got that one down and there are a million songs to confirm the blood thing. But the body? What's with that? No wonder the Romans said the Christians were cannibals, they (the Christians) claiming to eat the body of their Lord.

"Take, eat, this is my body broken for you". So if I eat the body, what happens Lord? Answer me that if you will. I'm laying flooring and have lots of time to listen.

Pa

It is appointed......

It seems like the Book of Life has a beginning and an end to each of our lives. It is appointed when we should die, although many of us go before that time for various reasons and the Bible contains at least one story of a King who went later than God said he would.

Our neighbour's son, who was a good friend of our sons, died in a car accident two days ago. His Mom saw him out the door of the house just before it happened and said she knew it was the last time she would see him. She even had a dream of an accident and wanted to phone her son. Less than an hour later the police were at the door with the very worst news a Mother could ever hear.

How did she know it was the appointed time? The pagan world sacrificed to Fate, or the Fates, but we think it is a personal God who has written a personal book of life for each of us. Could she have altered the appointed time? Such questions surround death.

Ma, being the sensitive intercessor and burden bearer she is, feels the loss on a deep level. "Mourn with those who mourn" isn't something she has to try to do. Mothers understand mothers.

I was riding with a group the other day and one, who is a Doctor in ICU, said he's seen more people die than he can count or remember and he never ever heard one say he wished he'd worked more. He said it's always about family or God or smelling the roses. Or riding bikes, which is why he's committed to it. The bike-to-work ratio has to balance before the appointed time.
Pa

Just wondering

I am wondering about two things:

1. If the wages of sin are death and disease is incipient death and Jesus has paid for all sin then why should I ever be sick? Another like it, but more problematic: If the wages of sin are death and Jesus paid for all sin then why do I have to die? Should I not be free of death if I am free of sin?

2. Is it correct to say that Jesus' death on the cross has purchased my salvation? If Jesus died on the cross and they took him down and that was it, would I be saved? I don't think so but I think a whole lot of the Body of Christ thinks so.

Pa

Someone else's blues

When I woke up this morning I had someone else's blues.

That's an old blues song but it was also a fact for me this morning. The more spiritual among us call it intercession or burden bearing but, fact is, what I was feeling this morning belonged to someone else.

Just like the old blues song I really feel pretty good. Got God, got joy, got peace, got money...got a lot of things that have nothing to do with the blues. In fact, on waking I felt joyful and started thinking joyful thoughts but suddenly noticed this other feeling of depression and heaviness. It actually wanted me to say Yes to it, "Yes, that's how I am feeling". It wanted agreement. Instead I just sang a verse of the old song,

"Got more food than I can eat,
Got more money than I can use,
But when I woke up this morning,
I had someone else's blues."

Now tell me how it is that someone else's blues get to find me and see if I'll agree with what they have to say? I'm not interested thank you. How did they get past my God filter? Through the hedge of protection?

Anyway, I did what the other person should have done, I told them to bugger off. Then I laid claim to all the positive aspects of my awesome life, listing them one buy one. Thought the blues might be interested.

Which took me to another line in the song where the guy is listing all the great things about his life, "Pull my hand out of my pocket too fast and I might lose a couple of 50 dollar bills". Yeah, that's life in Christ.

Pa

Miracles on the way

In our leaders meeting last night it seemed apparent that the Lord was going to begin to release miracles in our Body. I've felt this coming for a long time and especially since opening the healing room have I known that we're incomplete without miracles.

1Cor12 is the chapter to find the mention of miraculous powers and the working of miracles and it seems evident they are to be a part of the normal function of the Body. I was wondering what comes first, those who work miracles or the miracles. Are those with miraculous powers in our midst now, only latent, or does the Lord send a miracle and someone suddenly become a miracle worker? And if it's a gift why isn't it as apparent as other gifts we easily identify?

I don't really need to know these things but I will confess that I want to be a worker of miracles and I want the gifts of healings. I eagerly desire them and thus I think about how it happens.

One thing I more and more reject is the soverignty (sp?) of God theory that attributes healings and miracles to God's soverign nature, meaning He heals when he wants and does miracles when he wants and nobody can break the code of when he will and when he won't. He's God and it just happens as he sees fit. I don't buy it since it doesn't fit with the picture of Christ redeeming man to do his works on the earth. Somehow we are involved with this whole thing, right up to our ears.

Pa

I need a bike ride

I've been at work 4 days in 2006 and am already looking forward to vacation time. It promises to be an interesting year. I looked at my daytimer and it said "bike ride at 3pm" so that's where I'm headed later on. It's wierd to be able to ride my bike outside in January.

I don't fully understand what's going on with TW, can somebody give me the details? I feel love in the air but is there more than that??

Got a book I ordered from Amazon about the life of Alexander the Great. Tough to read with all those Greek names but very interesting. Certainly interesting to see how Greek thought and ideas have stretched across the centuries to our own time. Also interesting to see what kind of world Paul (much later) walked into. To say it would be totally bereft of Christian thought would be accurate and to say that Christian thought was the opposite to Greek ideas would also be accurate. Homosexuality, for example, was commonplace and accepted, as was murder, theft and the total subjection of people.

Anyway, no more time to type, back to work.

Pa

What I liked best about the Christmas holidays

1. Thinking about how the whole deal is about the Christ and how I get to live in a time when not only the Christ is present but the Holy Spirit has been poured out on all flesh too. Like anybody with a sense of Kingdom theology I sense the end is at hand.

2. Spending time with Ma; just being with her and doing stuff together. You won't know what I'm talking about until you've been married 30 + years too.

3. Having Andy here.

4. Listening to some of Bryan's songs he laid down when he went to Ohio. I got a whole new revelation about that young feller.

5. Having missionaries we know stay at our place a whole day so we could talk and pray with them.

6. Being surprised by how much I don't like the organizational church.

7. Being surprised as I walked down the hall of a low income apartment building delivering a Christmas hamper and hearing, "This is real church, don't ever get it mixed up with the event on Sunday".

8. Ice fishing in my new tent, the "ice cube".

9. Skating around the whole perimeter of Lac la Nonne. 18km, 1.5 hours. The skate adds to the bike around I did last year, just before it snowed. Next up is to ski it.

10. Listening to a stressed out, over-worked, exhausted Bobbie laugh one night after supper. It was pure joy.

The Lord gave me a number of words over Christmas and today I'm mulling over this one: "Godliness with contentment is great gain". I think it's sort of a backwards New Years resolution, finding contentment rather than making all sorts of resolutions.

Here's to being content, no matter what, and finding God in it.

Pa