This episode is excerpted from the first short inspirational article I wrote, about the fall of 1999. I had forgotten about it until recently when the Father thought I needed encouragement and reminded me about it. The message is simply for the family of God in Christ who are down and discouraged by the evil goings on in the world today: WE WIN! I hope this blesses and encourages you as it has me.

When I was 14, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Not long after, some of my new Christian friends introduced me to various beliefs about the Rapture of the Saints. That was the 1970’s, and Hal Lindsey’s book “The Late Great Planet Earth” was causing quite a stir, and prompted many rapture debates. I can remember one friend who asked me: “are you pre-, mid-, or post-trib, pre-, post-, or a-millennial”? Biblical scholar that I was then – after all I knew John 3:16 inside and out – I gave her my most profound answer: “Both!” and then I changed the subject. She was one of those Bible Baptist kids and us Presbyterians knew better than to engage one of them in a debate. Eventually, I adopted as my own the popular beliefs at the time. Certainly that was easier than searching for the answers myself.

When we moved to the Olympic Peninsula, we hoped to meet a few brothers and sisters in the Lord and decided to visit a small independent country church. Before going, we talked about our intents and purposes and resolved to keep mum about our history, gifts and callings. The very first service we attended, the new pastor was introduced and within 5 minutes of hearing him boast, I said to Karen “he will destroy the sweet fellowship here”. When the service was over, I chided him about a gross contradiction between his message and the men’s program he promoted. He threw his head back and laughed, dismissing what I said by the Spirit of Truth. In hindsight, that should have been our first and last visit, but we decided to check out the Bible study prayer group meeting the following Wednesday.

The leader was spirit filled and conducted the Bible study with learnedness and sensitivity for every person’s participation. Her devotion and preparedness was obvious and we regarded her a genuine sister. Midway, the study broke for refreshments, where my dear wife boasted to the woman who asked about us “my husband is a songwriter and worship leader”. “Ooooh!” said the woman as she rubbed her hands together “we’ll have to put him to work right away”. So much for keeping mum and avoiding church work.

(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.

Talking with a friend about New Year’s resolutions, he reminded me that I’m already a new creation and asked “so what’s to resolve”? I thanked him for that amazing insight and resolved then and there not to make any resolutions! So much for diet, weight loss and exercise regimens this year!

Seriously, I was thinking about a resolution for the new year to focus more on Jesus and less on the religious system I left behind. About that, I had been considering Lot’s wife, who couldn’t keep her eyes on where she was going, but instead looked back and paid with her life. Though there is no mention in scripture why Lot’s wife looked back, the Hebrew word for “looked” (H5027*) means to “regard with pleasure, favor or care.” The simplest explanation is not only did she disobey God’s command not to look back, she looked favorably upon what God called an abomination (Genesis 18:20) and that put her in opposition to God. For that, she was turned into a pillar of salt.

There is no pleasure in looking back at the religious system I left behind. And while the teachings there provide an abundance of blog-fodder, is it productive to expose and correct their every error?

There’s this vague recollection I have of a comedy skit where Adam is in the garden with God and names the animals. The Adam character is a trifle lazy and, as memory serves, hillbilly-ish. In between laughs from the audience, Adam makes quick work of naming the animals; for example, all birds are “flappers”, fish are “swimmers”, waterfowl are “paddlers”, and so on. I half expected God to point out that waterfowl are both paddlers and flappers, but He must have figured hillbilly Adam couldn’t handle such profound revelation. I thought maybe it was a scene from the musical comedy “Cotton Patch Gospel” but Adam wasn’t a character in that one that I recall. Anyhow, the way my mind works, I can’t help but remember that skit and chuckle to myself whenever I read the account of creation in Genesis.

My wife and I met in our early 40’s and married after a year-long, Seattle to Chicago courtship. Typical of Christian weddings, our minister’s homily spoke of the 3-stranded cord, unity, cleaving, and becoming one flesh. To conclude the marriage ceremony, he cited the command of Jesus “what God has joined together, let man not separate” (Mark 10:9).

Twenty-five years since we lit our “unity” candle, it’s clear our guests didn’t listen to the minister’s homily nor take to heart Jesus charge not to separate us. Were it the only time any of them heard the message of marital oneness, I might understand their ignorance. But the fact is, the unity message is proclaimed at nearly every Christian wedding. Thus it begs the question how people can be so heedless as to begin competing for influence over a newly wed couple the moment they say “I do” with intent to conform them to their own selfish expectations.

Before retiring at the end of 1998, at the ripe old age of 42, I was an auditor and analyst in the aerospace industry. A successful auditor requires a well developed nose for error. Admittedly, we’re a suspicious lot, but hopefully not to the point of paranoia. A good analyst is all about the facts and data. So I suppose it was only natural that my suspicions together with my need for fact-based truth, would compel me to sit down with a large stack of church bulletins spanning several years of worship services, to inventory and analyze the many scriptures that were read before the sermon. My “gut” strongly suspected us pew-warmers weren’t getting the whole story and so I set out to confirm my suspicions.

It was quickly obvious that the same scriptures were read year after year in the weeks preceding Passover, Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, while entire books and chapters of scripture were never read at all. The first time I attempted such an investigation back in the early 1980’s, I discovered that the pastor read just 10 verses of scripture on average, before giving his sermon. A few minutes of number crunching demonstrated it would take almost 60 years to preach through the Bible at that rate, assuming no scriptures were ever repeated. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking; “how anal” and I don’t deny that. It’s just one of those things us analyst and auditor types do for fun when we’re not digging through the freezer to sort TV dinners in order of the “best used by” date. Suffice it to say, the exercise showed me IF I wanted to know what was in the Bible, I would have to read it myself.

In completing the full armor of God, Paul writes “pray in the spirit (pneuma) at all times” (Ephesians 6:18). Elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 14:14, Paul equates praying in tongues (glossa – a spiritual gift aka pneumatikos) with praying in the spirit (pneuma).

To pray in the spirit (pneuma) is to pray with the breath (pneuma) of God. Where in 1 Corinthians 14:14 Paul says his mind is not fruitful (does not comprehend) when he prays in the spirit (pneuma), is confirmation of 1 Corinthians 2:14 where Paul writes natural (carnal) man can not receive (understand) the things of the spirit (pneuma) nor understand the mind (nous) of God. Thus Paul remedies the disparity between the spirit and his mind by praying in the spirit (pneuma) and also with his own natural mind (nous).