(This post was originally published in April 2017) I’m not a fan of writings that for the most part seem assembled from the quotations of scholars, historians, and theologians, weaving them together like some great tapestry of spiritual enlightenment. To me, such writing seems oddly disconnected from the soul of the author which leaves me cold. I’d so much rather read a personal testimony from the author’s own life experience. What was your condition, how did the Son intervene, how were you healed or blessed, what did you learn? That’s what I want to know, for no derivative or commentary ever touched my heart like the open, honest, and vulnerable testimony of a brother or sister in the Son.

And yet, it was a daily devotional I receive by email that had me on the receiving end of the Lord’s chastisement several times during a health scare. Whoever is in charge of publishing excerpts from an author who died in 1971, had obviously been spying on me and selecting them with intent to hit me squarely between the eyes.

It first happened while lying on a gurney in the emergency room, strapped to an EKG monitor, and with an IV in each arm. I’m sorry, this is emotional. There I spoke frankly to Karen about the possibility of my death. She refused to hear it of course, admonishing me to speak faith but still I wanted her to know that I loved her and she was free to return to her family in Illinois, leaving the care of my elderly father who lived with us, to my siblings. Again, Karen spoke words of encouragement, even while I lamented the garden I’d started in faith but now could not finish because of the heart attack.

With the words of lament scarcely off of my tongue, my cell phone vibrated at 3am alerting me that the latest devotional had arrived in my inbox. That, in itself, is extraordinary, since my phone is set to “do not disturb” until 9am. The word of encouragement read:

I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. (Leviticus 26:4)

I wept. So my garden would thrive; God would see to it that it did. But would I live to see it and take care of it like I hoped? You see, these last 20 years of walking and alternately stumbling with the Spirit, have taught me NOT to read anything into scripture other than what it says. Yes, it will rain, and the fields and trees will produce their crops, but the scripture makes no promise for the farmer who planted and cares for them.

Transferred to a hospital an hour away for an angioplasty to open an artery that was 99% blocked and insert a stent to keep it open, the nurse talked to me while I was being prepped and asked what I loved doing. “Write song parodies”, I said. At that precise moment, Don McLean’s “American Pie” began playing over the PA system in the OR and the nurse asked me “can you parody that?” By the time the chorus came around again, I had come up with some parody lyrics more fitting my situation:

Bye, bye bacon cheeseburger pie
Felt my ticker start to flicker
And thought I would die …

Everyone laughed and when the chorus came around again they sang the lyrics back to me.

Wow. The Father couldn’t have arranged for a better bunch of folks to take care of me or a DJ to spin tunes for my angio-party.

It was in that moment I dared to believe that I might live. Pretty dumb, huh? All the godly encouragement my wife could offer together with God’s timely word in my Inbox, and it’s Don McLean and laughing and singing with the med-techs that renewed my hope. If loving care was the balm I needed, the Father sure immersed me in it while flat on my back in the OR.

On the day I was discharged, again it was a devotional that left me God-smacked.

Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6)

I understood the message to be one of chastisement. For I had been going about the garden project God led me to do in my own strength, determined to complete it on my own, despite a number of setbacks, not the least of which was spring thaw and the frustrating season of mud.

In the weeks following discharge, I did a little non-strenuous work in the garden, such as plant potatoes with a cordless drill and an auger attachment, and a few rows of strawberry plants. Since the garden is downhill from the house and strenuous walking was prohibited, I drove the riding mower down to the garden. It took 3 days, working less than 30 minutes per day to plant the potatoes and strawberries. On the 3rd day, after I’d scratched out the 3rd row in the soft compost for transplanting the strawberry starts, I was sweating buckets so Karen called an end to the day’s work.

Looking down at the garden from the deck, that 3rd row of strawberries was as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Contemplating whether to straighten it, God reminded me that there are few straight lines in creation. Deciding then to “leave it be”, I uttered something that in hindsight, was a prophetic declaration of faith:

This garden, planted in weakness, will be our best ever because God will make it grow!

The single most difficult thing about the aftermath of a heart attack for a man, isn’t the unknown, the medical bills, the new medications, diet and exercise routines. No, it’s the helplessness. The heart within me that physicians once said after I took a stress test was the “heart of a bull”, has nonetheless been injured and will require months to heal. Limitations on activity and medications that cause fatigue and shortness of breath, have left me with dozens of unfinished projects and nowhere to turn for help but the Father. And the strength and unyielding determination in which I’ve always prided myself, have left me deeply humbled, when I struggled to unscrew the lid on a drink bottle that Karen had already broken the seal on and re-tightened.

Helplessness stinks. That helpless is my new normal? That’s discipline. Which brings me to the devotional I received after several weeks of recovery and mounting frustration.

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. (Hebrews 12:7 NIV)

The Lord may get you off activities and shut you up to inactivity, and you go through an awful time and say the Lord has forsaken you, all has gone wrong. What really is it? Why, it is growing pains! …We … learn through suffering. Even the Lord Jesus was made “full grown” in this sense, complete, through suffering. We take the same way unto full growth. It is child training, discipline, learning by way of experience. That is chastening. Making us sons out of children, full grown men out of infants.

The Lord’s hand upon me – His chastisement – helped me with greater understanding for my father who at the time was in steady decline and a teacher friend of Karen’s who in her late 60’s has been dealing with an even more serious heart condition than me.

Affliction changed my prayer life for them by growing the heart of compassion within me. And weakness made me more of a man of prayer than a man of action.

As the Lord said: And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

I don’t remember God saying that the process of giving a man “a new heart” would be easy or painless. But I assure you friends, it’s worth it.