As has often been the case, the Blue Book has not failed to amaze me in its timing. The theme for this week is Trust. The events of the previous week are helpful in processing the idea of trust. Here is a question the Lord perpetually has before our hearts; “In Whom (or in what) do you trust?” The following is a letter to my dearest friends and family regarding my week. Hopefully they will still claim me after I share my heart.
 
Dear Friends and Family,
 
I was scheduled yesterday for a two-level fusion at 4/5 and 5/6 in my cervical spine. Just before I went in for this procedure I got the word that our TPA had denied coverage because I had not taken enough conservative measures. Some of you who have been praying for me may be thanking God because this affords another opportunity for divine intervention. That would be awesome! 
 
Please, after reading this, be wise to who, how and why you might repeat my words to others. If it is simply to tell another about the inadequacy of my faith or the error in my heart please be patient with me. I may not be on the same road or as far along in my faith journey as you. I am doing the best I can to process the information and ideas that many of you have so thoughtfully offered to me. I have read most of the books that you have recommended. I have listened to most of the CD’s. 
 
As I have considered these materials, I have been reminded what sticky issues health and healing are. God’s Bride seems very divided on this issue. Because I endeavor to maintain a dialogue with so many people I am sometime overwhelmed at the myriad options in play regarding health as it pertains to Christians. I have learned that these are VERY important components to the belief systems of many. After surveying the options recently offered to me, this is the array from which I could choose. I could…..
 
1) Put my trust in deliverance; assuming that my spine has been decaying prematurely over many years in response to a spirit (or spirits of) infirmity. 
 
2) Put my trust in repentance; assuming that specific sins in my life are connected to the specific pathology of my spine.
 
3) Put my trust in confession; assuming that if I confess the right scriptures my body will conform to patterns of divine health.
 
4) Put my trust in prayer; assuming that if I (or others) pray the right prayer my spine will conform to the original divine alignment and spacing.
 
5) Put my trust in communion; assuming that if I take communion correctly that I will walk in a body that is immune to decay.
 
6) Put my trust in visualization; assuming that if I can just see myself whole, I will become what I envision.
 
7) Put my trust in Jesus’s name; assuming that if the kyphosis (reverse curvature) and osteoarthritis (bony growths) are cursed using Jesus’s name, then by this authority the spine will respond and assume the original divine shape and condition.
 
8) Put my trust in breaking ancestral curses; assuming that darkness has flooded in through doors open by my ancestor’s sins or that curses persist due to demonic assignment.
 
9) Put my trust in faith itself; assuming that if I exercise it I can have what I ask for.
 
10) Put my trust in praying for the peace of Jerusalem; assuming that obedience and attention to Israel as the object of God’s affection will produce the blessing of healing
 
11) Put my trust in diet: assuming that I am what I eat.
 
12) Put my trust in emotional health: assuming that my inner life is directly effecting my outer life
 
13) Put my trust in a Calvinistic-shaped God; assuming that my physical trial is a test that when and if passed will build my character, causing me to be a bit more like Christ. 
 
14) Put my trust in some combination of the above.
 
15) Put my trust in science and medicine; assuming that there is no supernatural remedy available.
 
16) Put my faith in my Father in heaven who knows my needs better than I do, who has heard my cries for help, knowing that I do not have the capacity to confidently choose from the above options; knowing that over the previous 27 years, I have trusted in most of these options at one time or another, coming away with a sense that I was often trying to leverage a technique or a method to get what I want from God. 
 
I am painfully aware what a disappointment my faith is to many people whom I love and care for. Because of your faith orientation, it is impossible for you to see me as one persevering in my faith when I have treated the right or the opportunity for divine health so lightly. 
 
I know many of you whom I deeply care about will not agree with what I am about to say, but I need to say it anyway. When I stand before the Lord which, in the eternal time line, will be here momentarily, there is something even more than divine health that I do not want to have taken lightly; that is simply who God is. I tremble at the idea of standing before Him, having given my energies to various techniques to get things from Him however biblical I may perceive them to be. I also tremble at the idea that I might spend my energies treating Him as one who dispenses blessings on a quid pro quo basis; (ie; when I do this, He does that). I simply do not have faith that God is waiting to be good to me dependent on how well I execute on options 1-14. 
 
I googled one of the authors of the books given to me. He was promoting one of the optional pathways to divine health. In the video I watched, this superstar was speaking to an arena of 30 to 40,000 electrified people. Before they passed the plate, he taught them about their right to divine health. Given the numbers in this auditorium, I would not at all be surprised if that offering exceeded well over $1,000,000!  
 
I wondered how the offering would have gone if this pastor had shared this story instead……(Reader’s Digest version)
 
Near a Christian village in Syria, Al Qaeda forces were gathering nearby. These forces hate Christians. They were becoming increasingly aggressive and antagonistic toward the villagers. Knowing what was about to come, a father gathered his small children to himself and said, “Listen very closely, someday soon men are going to force their way into our home. They will have weapons. They will tell your mommy and daddy to lie down on the floor and then we will be in heaven.” 
Where was this father’s faith? In what was he trusting?
 
What are our rights as Christians? If this superstar American pastor’s campaign had been in that Syrian neighborhood, what would he have had to say about rights? What would he have to say about trust?
I hear Jesus asking a couple of important questions to us; “What is that you really want from Me? And, “In whom (or in what) do you trust?
When I stand before HIm, I want life’s circumstances to have forged a heart in me that says, “Lord, You alone are all I have ever wanted and in You alone I have I trusted. You have become my all in all.”
Father of Life, fashion us into vessels of honor. Fill us with simple passion for you alone.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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