GIving

by

When prayers for healing seem to fail, part 1

The year 2025 was difficult for my wife Karen who suffers from a variety of spinal health issues. For perspective, she’s lost 4 inches in height since graduating from high school. Now a septuagenarian the concern for her is spinal collapse and spending the rest of her life in a wheel chair. Throughout her painful trial, we’ve persisted with God in prayer with fasting where together we have done our best to keep the faith. It’s taught us great admiration for Job, who resisted the suggestion to “curse God and die” and replied “even though He slays me, yet will I praise Him”. Countless times I’ve told her how grateful I am for her unwavering trust in God to heal her infirmity and remain with me in this life despite her physical discomfort. Some would have given up but not my Karen. She is the wife of noble character.

Both of us were born Presbyterians who in adulthood, experienced Pentecost (Acts 2:4), what is commonly called the second blessing. Since that time, we’ve encountered a variety of beliefs about divine healing the most personally frustrating for us holds that the scripture “by my stripes you have been healed” means every infirmity, whether spiritual or physical, has already been healed by Jesus. Thus when healing does not manifest following prayer, the fault must lie with the person who needs healing. Often the reason cited for failure to heal is lack of faith, un-confessed sin, disobedience, etc. It’s a cruel belief that can leave a person in worse shape than before. Illnesses are painful enough… but illness compounded by guilt and self blame? Downright crippling. Such also paints the picture of a less than loving and merciful God; a stern and indifferent parent who simply watches while His children chase healing like a carrot on a stick.

Continue reading →
by

Fixin’ to get plowed

Read this AM:

Now hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob And rulers of the house of Israel, Who despise justice and twist everything that is straight,  who build Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with malice.  Her leaders pronounce judgment for a bribe, her priests teach for pay, and her prophets divine for money. Yet they lean on the LORD, saying, “Is the LORD not in our midst? Catastrophe will not come upon us.”  Therefore on account of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the temple will become high places of a forest. (Micah 3:9-12)

Question:

If twisting truth and taking pay for God’s word and ministry is a sin for Jacob (Israel), is it not also a sin for Christianity?

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with skin diseases, drive out demons. You have received free of charge; give free of charge. (Mat 10:8 HCSB)

by

School of the Holy Spirit

I’ve attended more than a dozen churches in my lifetime. Some of the ministers I met encouraged me to seek God for myself and obey Him without hesitation. Such were the men who led me to Jesus and who married me and my wife. Both remained genuine and loving brothers in Christ who would never come between me and the Lord, except perhaps to stop me from doing something that would harm my relationship with Him. The former was like a 2nd father to me during my teen years, the latter a sweet friend and counselor, who could always be found on Saturday evening standing in the pulpit delivering his Sunday sermon before God and an empty sanctuary. Sadly, some others questioned whether I could really hear God’s voice for myself and insisted I obey them instead. Through them God taught me to stand up for my freedom and to respond like Peter who said: “judge for yourself whether it is right to obey you, or God”.

Examining what it means to be a Free Son takes several forms: identifying ways in which we’re free, and the things that hold us back. Often that means coming to terms with falsehoods we’ve embraced and the people who taught and reinforced them. No one ever said rising from the dead was going to be easy (Luke 9:60, Ephesians 5:14). Imagine Lazarus, passing peacefully in his sleep, only to awaken days later on a cold slab in a dark tomb, tightly bound in linen cloth with 75 pounds of burial spices wrapped up with him (John 19:39-40). However did Lazarus manage to get to his feet and stagger out of the tomb? Likewise, when we awaken from our slumber, how do we come out from under the heavy burdens placed on our shoulders by false teachers and teachings (Matthew 23:4)?

Continue reading →
by

Exposing the Tithe Lie

The TITHE AUDIO SERIES tab at the top of the page is the most recent and complete treatment of the TITHE subject. Divided into 12 parts, it is intended for individual and group study. Included is the script in PDF format and a reading in MP3 format. – Jack

There are 7 articles in the original “Tithe” series, written between 2000-2002 and posted to my former web site Lord, You Are (dot) com, now defunct. This article consolidates the  7 articles in the order they were published. Exposing the falsehood of the modern tithe doctrine was one of the instruments God used to set me free from man’s dead Laodicean church system. As always, I pray the Lord will use them to set you free from false teaching and guilt-based giving.

To Tithe or not to Tithe: the $earch for Truth

Though I’ve always struggled with the tithe, I still shook my head in disgust when I heard about the preacher who’s congregation quietly left the church during the prayer following a long sermon on tithing. He said “Amen”, looked up and cried out “half my church is gone!” I laughed saying “they must have fled the conviction of the Holy Spirit”.

donottithe8What the Lord said took me completely by surprise: “They fled from error and guilt-based giving”. “What?!?” I’ve heard more sermons on the tithe than on any other topic except perhaps our need of Jesus for eternal life! After I picked up my jaw from the floor, the Lord prompted me to study tithing and giving.

Throughout the Bible study I prayed for His guidance and in the end I reached the inescapable conclusion that the “tithe” is to the modern church what the issue of “circumcision” was to the church in Paul’s time.

NOTE: Nothing in this article is intended as an excuse to stop giving as the Lord leads you to give.

The verse most often cited in support of the tithe is from the Old Testament, found in Malachi 3:8-10: Continue reading →