Benefits (Benefit #2)

Here's that list of benefits from Psalm 103 again:

1. forgiveness for iniquity
2. healing for diseases
3. redemption from "the pit"
4. being crowned with "steadfast love and mercy"
5. being satisfied with "good" - specifically good health

God heals all your diseases

Benefit #2 is "who heals all your diseases". I grew up in churches that believe that God can supernaturally heal someone by laying on of hands, prayer, maybe anointing with oil - there are a number of Scriptural mechanisms by which humans express their faith that God will heal someone. But I know that there are a lot of churches that believe instead that God does NOT supernaturally heal people anymore. Those things the Apostles did in the Bible? Those things, members of these church bodies might say, left the world when those Apostles died. I am not here to criticize those people; I'm just acknowledging that the things I was taught in church are not the same things everyone is taught.

But the benefit laid out here is pretty straightforward. I looked up the Hebrew words, and there's not really any ambiguity. "heals" means healing - sometimes it is even translated as "physician". This "diseases" is not common in the Old Testament, but every time it occurs it's talking about a disease in someone's body, usually one that kills them (don't look it up if you are squeamish!) And how about that word in the middle: "all". So God is the physician, you have some kind of illness or illnesses in your body, maybe even terminal ones, and the benefit is that the physician God will heal ALL of your sicknesses!

So here's the big question: Michael, as you were growing up in your church and people were laying hands and praying and anointing with oil people with sicknesses, are ALL of them healed? And my answer has to be: some of them walked away from the prayer time and didn't seem changed at all. Others walked away super excited because they could tell that they were healed! I don't actually know why that is - I have some theories and ideas, and I've heard preachers talk about it. But the benefit is that God heals ALL of your diseases. That's what the Bible says, so I have to believe that it is available!

There is a warning in verse 2 of this chapter: "forget not all his benefits". In my previous blog entry I described how at the end of the year in a lot of businesses, you sign up for benefits. The ones you are offered and refuse, you can't turn around three months later and access - if you didn't sign up at the right time, you don't get them. Also, if you forget you have a benefit - say, you go to the pharmacy but don't give them your insurance card - the benefit does not work for you. You get to pay the price for forgetting that benefit. I suspect this is something like that. You have to know that healing is available and trust God to supply it. I'm by no means an expert on this, and there are instances when things happen and you wonder why someone stayed sick when to all appearances they were believing God for His healing. All I do know is that the benefit is there, and if I get sick, I want to do everything I can to access it!

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On to Benefit #3, or start from the beginning!

Benefits (Benefit #1)

I've got a printed out copy of Psalm 103 that I recently posted on the white board next to where I work. The reason is because it talks about "benefits". A month or two ago, if you work for a company like I work for, you probably got to hear the "benefits" talk. This is the talk about how to sign up for insurance, 401(k), whatever stuff your employer makes available to you. In order to take advantage of that stuff, typically you have to take steps to sign up. Psalm 103:2 says "..forget not all his [God's!] benefits." I was like, wait, God has benefits? This I need to look at! Seems like I might want to sign up!

Here's God's list of benefits from that chapter (no 401(k) plan here, sorry!)

1. forgiveness for iniquity
2. healing for diseases
3. redemption from "the pit"
4. being crowned with "steadfast love and mercy"
5. being satisfied with "good" - specifically good health

God forgives all your iniquity

So, "forgiveness" seems pretty self-explanatory (we'll get back to it in a minute), but I'm not sure everyone knows what "iniquity" is. You may think, as I did and I'm sure most people do, that "iniquity" is just a longer word that means "sin", but it's not, not exactly. "Sin" is when you mess up and do something wrong -  you were presented with a situation and you made the wrong choice. "Iniquity", however, is the thing inside of you that caused you to make that choice. The Bible talks about the "flesh" meaning that before we gave our hearts to Jesus, we were messed up and couldn't get to God, and sometimes we still act like that. Think of the sin as the action itself, and the iniquity is the thing that clicked inside and caused the action to be taken. Notice it doesn't say "iniquities" like there are multiple things–it's one "iniquity" that causes the whole problem.

Let's go back to "forgiveness" now. Let's say my wife didn't know it was my special cookie sitting on the counter, and she wanted a cookie so in all innocence she ate it. I found out and got mad, but then I realized it was a mistake and I said, "I forgive you."

That's NOT what this forgiveness is.

This "forgiveness" is more along the lines of pardon for a crime. In fact, in a lot of verses the same word is translated into some variation of the word "pardon". So let's put that together. God doesn't just say "I forgive you" when we sin. God's first benefit is that He has granted us a full pardon for the actual sinful nature which we were born with and to which we sometimes still succumb. He has pardoned all of it! Keep the dental plan, I'll take that benefit, please!

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On to Benefit #2!

Spiritual Worship

Stepping back a bit from my previous post about Romans 12, I think it's interesting to get some context from the whole chapter.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1–2 (ESV)

What I see here is that Paul is going to give us some instructions on how to live a life fully committed to God, not only in spiritual things but also in the physical realm (so, not just thinking nice thoughts, but actually taking action). He prepares us for a mental paradigm shift, then he goes on in the next few verses to explain that in the body of Christ (meaning, all who has put our faith in Him, not the head and torso and arms and legs and hands and feet he had when he walked on the Earth) has lots of members with different functions to perform, different jobs to hold, and all of them are important.

Then we get to that passage I mentioned last time starting in verse 9. There are 13 verses from there to the end of the chapter, and I noticed something interesting. Out of the 13 verses, I only see two verses that are about doing something solitary. "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord." (verse 11) "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." (verse 12). The rest of the verses are all about how we treat other people! We love them (9-10), we take care of their needs (13), we bless them, even the mean ones (14), we empathize with them (15), we are friendly even to the ones that are different from us personally (16, 18), and we choose to treat them well even if they treat us badly (17, 19-21). All that stuff in verses 6-8 - prophecy, teaching, exhorting (persuading people), giving lots of money, leadership, all of the things we tend to think are cool important things that we want to do - all of that stuff winds up being secondary to just being able to treat people like Christ treated them.

To come back full circle - this chapter started off telling us how to worship God with our whole selves, even our bodies. We each have gifts and callings, but in the end, it is doing physical acts of service for others that somehow turns around and becomes a spiritual act of worship to God!

How to Be a Christian

I've been thinking lately about Romans 12:9-21. I actually took a picture with my phone of the passage, and I keep looking at it and thinking about it. Basically, it's a description of how to really live out your faith as a Christian. Every day I take a look at it and take stock of how I'm doing, sort of like a checklist before launching a rocket ship. Here are things I've been thinking about in some of the verses:

Verse 9 "Let love be genuine." If you know about Greek words for "love" - this word is "agape" which means the kind of love that comes directly from God. It doesn't say that we should force ourselves to love - it says we should let the genuine love flow from God through us. I think in the Christian life sometimes we think we have to make something happen, when in reality if we sort of let go of the reins, God will make it happen (see 1 Thessalonians 3:12). Let God's love happen in you!

Verse 10 "Love one another with brotherly affection." This is not "agape" love. This is human affection. Basically this verse is talking about loving other believers in Jesus like family, like brothers and sisters. People don't always get along with their brothers and sisters very well, but in a loving family, they'll stand up for each other when the chips are down. I'm so glad I go to a church where people do care about each other! At your church, when the service is over, do people immediately leave and go to lunch? Not at my church. At my church, people are still there chatting and enjoying each other's company well after the service is concluded. Some of my favorite people are there - I want to talk to all of them! No church is perfect, but I think that's what this Scripture is saying.

Verse 11 "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord" We have a vibrant volunteer culture at our church. I'm not sure how visible it is to members who aren't involved, but I'm on two different teams - worship arts and children's ministry - and in both of those contexts people are fired up about what we're doing for the Lord. I don't hear people talking like they are doing it because they feel obligated or because they want to be special (and that can be a real problem on worship teams!) - people genuinely see that God is doing something and we just want to be part of it.

Verse 15 "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." This past year my wife went through a serious health problem (maybe I'll talk about it in a future post), and it was really hard, but as soon as our brothers and sisters in Christ found out about it, they went out of their way to help us out. They prayed for us, brought us food when we were going through a rough patch, and when my wife wasn't able to come to church with me because of her treatments, everyone asked how she was doing. Do you know what effect it had on me? It made me want to be that person for someone else one day. I guess that's that whole "iron sharpens iron" thing, huh?

Verse 21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Do you notice what that does not say? It doesn't say "Be careful because evil can totally beat you up, so try to run away if you can!" It completely puts you and me in the driver's seat. If evil happens to us, it's because we let it overcome us. Instead we need to overcome it! It wants to beat us, but it can't unless we let it! That doesn't mean that evil won't come - ref: my wife's health problems last year. But when evil comes and tries to overcome you, the correct response is to apply good to the situation and overcome it instead!

How's THAT for a lot to chew on?

Getting Going

Blogging is hard. Writing is hard. It's not hard to do once, but it's hard to do often, consistently, and meaningfully. It's not hard to have a thought, and it's not even hard to have a thought that might interest someone, but it's hard to find time to sit down and write a blog post. And that's just by default.

Add to that the fact that over the past couple of years, it's also become a little more difficult to find the courage to blog. Especially about something that can be divisive, like thoughts about what the Bible says about God. Political extremists have co-opted the word "hate" to mean "when someone's opinions differ from mine," and it can be awfully tough to not say anything that someone disagrees with. Even when a guy isn't trying to be political, he can wind up on someone's "you hate me" list. I don't want to be on that list in anybody's book!

But you know what? I think from time to time God might be speaking to me about things that could be useful to others. Worst case, I read my Bible and do a little research and come up with something that is interesting, at least to me. So over the past couple of years the blog posts have been pretty light, but it's time to get back on the horse and start blogging again. There's a time when the going gets tough, and when that happens, you know what has to happen. Time to get tough! Time to get going!

Keep your eyes peeled this year. I have a lot of cool stuff to talk about!

Epiphany 2024, part 2

Most years I start with my youngest and work my way up through her big brother and finally to my wife. This year I decided to reverse that and start with my wife and work my way backward. Her gift and word were a little heavy, and I didn't want to end on that note!

This year I also get some help from a friend and got some cards printed up. Each card has as a background an image I found of The Magi, then printed over that, their name, their "word", and a related Scripture. I'm no graphic designer, but I'm really happy with how they came out! I think I'm going to keep doing it in future years!

This year my wife has been in a battle with breast cancer. At the stage we caught it, it is a winnable fight, and we're in a good place now, but the treatments are no fun. They are time-consuming, and uncomfortable to the point of sometimes being painful. She had a surgery which left her flat on her back on the couch for several weeks, doctor's orders not to move unless she absolutely had to. Her word was "Second Chance". I reminded her that if we hadn't gotten treatment from some amazing doctors and medical technicians using tools that didn't even exist 5, 10, 15 years ago, she would be dead right now. I told her to consider this her reset button. This is the "turn it off and back on again" reboot. This is her video game "extra life". Now is her chance to do things she never did before, because "before" is over with and "second chance" is now. The gift I gave her was a beautiful pewter "ticket" like you see in the picture (it's actually a photo of two of them so you can see the front and the back) by an Etsy artist named Cynthia Webb. I left a message with my order telling her that this was for a gift and I was hoping the USPS would be quick about it, and in the package she included a sweet reply telling me she hoped it made it on time! (It did!) Click on the picture and take a look at her work! It's pretty fantastic stuff!

The Scripture I included for my wife is from Psalm 40:1-3 (I had to leave out part of it to fit it on the card, but the missing part applies too): “I waited patiently for the LORD to help me, and he turned to me and heard my cry... He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the LORD.”

By the way... my daughter protested " 'Second Chance' is two words!" Of course it is, but a "word" can also mean more than one word. "I will take care of this problem, you have my word" - "I'm angry with that guy, I'm going to have a word with him!" ...or how about this one: we call the Bible the "Word of God". The sense I'm using it in, though, is in the "word of prophecy" sense. I do not have the ministry of a prophet of God, but I believe that as the father I have a similar ministry to my own family. So that's why I use the word "word" even when it's multiple words.

My son spent the last part of this year working at a pretty great job he got in order to pay off some school bills and get back on track for college. The word I had for him was "Focus". I wanted him to remember that even though he had a pretty decent job that he's working at right now, his college is to prep him for something even more amazing to come later! I actually gave him two Scriptures, Proverbs 16:9 and Hebrews 12:1-2: “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.” and “Let us strip off every weight that slows us down... and let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.” I gave him the cool nautical-style telescope at left (it's mostly for show and not as much to use, although it does actually work). The inscription on the telescope says “Go Confidently in the Direction of Your Dreams/Live the Life You Have Imagined.” I told him not to ignore the people God puts right next to him in this season, but also do not lose sight on the longer-term vision for his future.

Things were a little different for my daughter. For my wife and my son, the "word" almost felt obvious. For my daughter, it took a little more prayer this year. As a dad it would be easy enough to just make up something, but I deeply feel that it is important that whatever I give and say to them for Epiphany every year is inspired by God for that year. Finally something dropped into my heart for her: "Friends". Honestly, I don't even know exactly what that means to her, but I told her that what I felt in my heart was that she seems to have an easy time at making friends - people at school seem to know who she is and think favorably about her. Maybe there are kids who don't like her, but so far I haven't met anyone who seems to be uncomfortable talking to me, like a teenager is when they have to talk to the dad of someone they don't care for. I told her that I think she needs to not be apprehensive about making friends with people. Open up and be a friend when someone needs a friend. I gave her John 15:12-13: “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I don't think, though, that the application of that Scripture ends with literally giving up your life for someone, as in getting hit by a train while you're pushing someone else off the tracks. I think that "laying down your life for your friends" might mean just laying down your cell phone when someone needs to talk, or laying down a book you're enjoying to enjoy the human being right next to you. When she was opening up the twin necklaces you see above, I made sure she understood that I wasn't trying to call her names - I just knew that she would think it was hilarious (she did). I told her she was welcome to keep both necklaces if she wanted to, but I was hoping she would actually give one of them to a friend!

I hope reading this has inspired you to do something like this for your own family. You don't have to be the dad... you can be the mom, or a grandparent, or you can even be a brother or sister and seek the Lord for a word for someone. You might just be a friend, and the Holy Spirit might inspire you to share with someone. A small gift, a physical object, can hold meaning in the way that just words might not... it's why prophets in the Old Testament (and even the New Testament) used physical objects to communicate a message. It's also why we send greeting cards at Christmas and birthdays, and why we give flowers and candy on Valentine's Day. I always try to link to the things I pick out in case you want to share them as well, but please, her from the Lord on your own! The word He gives you is the Word that is needed by exactly that person at exactly that moment!

Epiphany 2024, part 1

Something felt special about our Epiphany celebration this year. I felt like God was giving me something extra special to share with my family, and I was actually pretty excited about it!

I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but typically I'll briefly share something with them from the Word that has to do with the Christmas season. This year I had been thinking about sheep. It turns out there are a lot of stories about the Christmas sheep - that the shepherds were special sacrificial sheep shepherds, that they actually would swaddle the baby sheep and put them in mangers to keep them spotless at birth, that the place where Mary and Joseph and Jesus were was the place where the sacrificial sheep were born, that sort of stuff. It's pretty fascinating, and it turns out that most of it is fictional with no credible evidence, Biblical or historical, to back it up. There is nothing significant that we know about the shepherds other than that they were shepherds - guys with jobs, maybe families, just regular Joes.

There is also little or no evidence for another thing I've heard - that shepherds were some kind of reviled lower class. King David was a shepherd, which would likely have elevated the profession already, and Jesus had no problem calling Himself a "good shepherd" - which, if there were negative connotations to the profession, would have changed the whole spin of that declaration.

But isn't it interesting that Jesus saw the people, who were being led poorly by the religious establishment, as "sheep without a shepherd", and extending the metaphor of the people as sheep and the leaders as shepherds, He called Himself "the good shepherd". Which sounds pretty pastoral to us, but keep in mind that for the very best of the actual sheep in that culture, being the best was essentially a death sentence! The spotless and perfect of sheep were to be sacrificed.

The crazy amazing thing is that the "good shepherd" in this case loved the sheep, but He did not halt the sacrifices. Instead, he became a sheep, and allowed Himself to be sacrificed instead! The "Lamb of God" was given up for us, took away our sins, and freed us from the sentence of death. What a plot twist!

Well, I was going to tell you all about the gifts I gave the family this year, but this post is already long enough. Stay tuned for part 2!