Skipping Calves

In my fifth blog, “A Personal NOW Experience,” I referred to Malachi 4:2, which is the first scripture God gave me when I asked for a word for the healing of my back. It says, “But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.” I remember saying it was a strange scripture to me, but that I loved the idea that eventually, I would be able to “skip about like a calf let out of the stall!”

My dear son-in-law, Bernie, who has certainly known back pain himself, has consistently prayed for my healing. No matter how busy he was, he would always stop and take time to pray for my back. One day he came by my house to see about something. As he left, he stuck his head back through the doorway and told me about an amazing event he had witnessed almost fourteen years ago. The family was at a farm in Wyoming. The people had two cows, which they were milking for their family’s supply. While there was still enough milk left for the calves to nurse, they took the mother cows into their stalls. These were big babies…each weighing hundreds of pounds!

In telling it, I could see that Bernie was re-visiting the next scene in his mind, as he burst out laughing! When the farmer let those huge calves out of the stall, he said they stood there for a moment, and then they took off, kicking, jumping, twirling, and running all over the place! Then my son-in-law looked straight at me and said, “Janny, God is going to heal your back, and you will be jumping, twirling and running just like those calves!”

I stood there, mouth open in amazement! I said, “Did Lisa or anyone tell you about the verse God gave me from Malachi 4:2 about a month ago?” He shook his head—no. So I showed it to him. It was exactly what he had described seeing! Who would have known that connection? Only God!

Isn’t God good? What he showed Bernie many years ago, not only blessed him, but the experience also encouraged me fourteen years later! Although my healing has yet to be totally manifested, I have faith that it will be. And at exactly the right time, this story’s unfolding brought a huge confirmation of the faithfulness and truth of God’s word to my soul!

HAPPY YEAR 2018!

How often have I said, “I am so glad we won’t be bound by time in Heaven!” However, today I find I am thankful that God provided us with times and seasons on earth…days and nights, weeks, months, and years! This is the first day of a brand new year. I have (as Pastor Dawson admonished us on December 31st) spent time reflecting on the things God has done for me (literally, for my soul) in 2017. I have contemplated on what I want to let go of and what I want to grab onto in 2018. Are there still some unanswered prayers? Yes. But God has changed my heart in many ways in this past year! So, today is a new beginning, and I am grateful for it. This writing is the result of that time of being still and listening to the Lord. As you know, if you have read my former blogs, I somehow stopped being able to write in the midst of the back pain I have been dealing with since last August. The pain has not gone away…but neither has GOD! He is and has been, with me. I do not believe He has sent the pain, and I do not see anywhere in scripture where He uses pain or disease to “whip us into shape!” Jesus, the perfect God-Man, took our sins, pains, sorrows, diseases and oppression to the cross for us, and He died there in our behalf, because He was the only perfect Man who could pay the price. And because He had no sin of His own, death could not hold Him, so He rose up from death. Thank God for a living Lord and Savior! There is no punishment for our sins any more. He took the punishment for us! Are there consequences for our sins? Yes, but not punishment. (Romans 8:1)

As I was quiet before the Lord this morning, I realized that there have been some changes in my soul this year. I have learned a measure of endurance (waiting without so much impatience), hope (not in what is seen, but unseen…2 Corinthians 4:17-18), compassion (thinking of how others must feel), grace (not trying to make things happen myself), and humility (“I cannot do it, Lord, but You can and will in Your perfect timing!”)    (Be patient with me when you see me fail in these areas! I have only learned a measure!)

When I look back, I do see how God works all things together for good for His children! (Romans 8:28) And the “good” is being what Romans 8:29 says…He wants us to become conformed to the image of His Son. Well, there will always be much room for growth on that one…especially for me! However, I am grateful for the small changes I have seen in my heart, which I don’t think I would have seen, if God hadn’t shown me in my quiet time with Him this New Year’s Day.

Let’s take time to ask, listen, read His word (which is His will), and to wait on Him, that He may put His love, hope, peace, and direction in our hearts for 2018!                                           “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you…” (James 4:8a)

Asking, Believing, and Receiving

I have not written for over two weeks because I didn’t know what to write! If you read my last blog, you know I was sharing about a NOW experience I was having with back pain. I know the Lord wanted me to share it. I thought that was because the trouble was soon to end victoriously, as I was feeling much better…for a while! On Friday night, I had wonderful, anointed prayer by friends at church, but still there was the pain. And two days later, my sister, a friend, and I were to be at the beach for a week. We had already paid for a lovely oceanside condo, so although I was in severe pain by then, I went. What better way to recuperate than to relax at the beach? NOT! I did all the things I usually do…listened, and read numerous scriptures about healing to build up my faith! I faithfully used an ice pack and then heat, and ALLOWED my sister and friend to wait on me all week! Even though I rarely went out that week, the view was gorgeous from our condo! Here is a sunset view my sister captured from the deck! “Oh Lord, our Lord! How majestic is Your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1)

As soon as I got home, I went to an Orthopedic Urgent Care (since I was still out of network with my physician.) Then, armed with meds, advice, and exercises, etc., I went to work on the issue, still crying out to God. That was over a week ago. I am still crying out to God, asking Him to teach me from this. I am hungry to learn! There are some wonderful things which I am beginning to see; in the midst of it, I cannot waver on the fact that Jesus took this for me! This truth is so deeply ingrained in my soul by now,  I cannot deny  that “By His scourging we are healed.” (Isa. 53:5) Another good thing is that I totally understand why people give up after a long fight! It wears you down. Every little routine becomes a struggle. This has made me more empathetic about the serious pain some people have. In John 10:10, Jesus said, “…I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Believe me, this is not the abundant life! In the first part of that verse, Jesus tells us what the thief (devil) comes to do…”only to kill and steal and destroy.” We have all experienced the results of his efforts to attack us many times!

Last week, feeling very discouraged myself, I wrote a compassionate message to some friends who have had one trial after another. It was compassionate because I care deeply for these wonderful folks, and I was furious at the devil! Here is what it said: “We are in a war with the enemy, who is trying to wear us down! But our Captain, our Master, our GOD says that we are MORE than conquerors through Him who loved us! (Romans 8:37) I think we are all learning about standing, and having done all, to keep standing! (Ephesians 6:13-14) I know for sure, I am!…”  When I finished typing, I heard in my heart a very loving but clear word; “Why don’t you preach that to yourself?” I broke out into laughter!  BUSTED!!!

 

A Personal NOW Experience!

Today, I think God wants me to share about an experience I have been having with asking, seeing what scripture says, and listening for the Lord to direct my path. Several weeks ago, I started having symptoms of pain in my hip and back. It was worse when I went to my exercise class (which is a Senior class designed not to hurt old people!) I asked my doctor about it, and she suggested I do stretching exercises and sent me for a back x-ray, which showed some probable degenerative problems. In the middle of all this, my insurance informed me that my doctor (for probably 15 plus years) was no longer in network with them! So I decided to stretch and exercise with gusto! (As you can tell, I am very un-medical!) That very day, I was in such pain I couldn’t even walk my dog. Eventually, I had to take ibuphrophen to be able to go anywhere or do anything away from home. (I am a very un-medicine person as well!) Upon advice I used an ice pack and heat which made it feel better. Of course, I was reading healing scriptures which I have for years compiled in lists. These scriptures renew my faith in what God is saying about His will for our healing…sort of like re-charging a battery. So I am asking God if I should go to a Physical Therapist, an Orthopedist, or a Chiropractor? No answer. Around  September 9, I realized I was getting stressed out about it, which always makes everything worse! I needed to hear from God for me! That’s when I felt to give up, get quiet, and wait on the Lord and listen for His direction. After three days of this (for about 1/2 hour or so each day) I heard a scripture in my heart that was unusual to me! It was Malachi 4:2…”But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.” In the King James Bible, it capitalizes “Sun,” and says “His” instead of “its.” But that is the only version I looked at which calls “Sun” the Lord. I studied that verse all that morning, with many interesting interpretations, but I didn’t truly understand it. I just knew I wanted to be able to “skip about like calves from the stall!” And it was saying “Healing” to me! Two days later, as I continued to wait, I heard Romans 4:17(b)…”Even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.” I saw that as an act of God, to regenerate the degeneration in my back! That is what I need. I am praying both those scriptures back to the Lord, and standing on them in faith because He said them to me. Today marks two days since I heard the Romans scripture in my heart. I have had no pain meds for these two days. I walked my dog almost a mile after church this morning. When almost home, I had one twinge of pain for one moment, and I rebuked it because I know God has answered my prayer. I also know that the enemy will try to fake symptoms and make me take it back! Just please remember this; God will work with meds or in spite of meds! He is the greater One! Just wait on Him and ask Him for a specific word for you! Then you walk in obedience to the word He gave to you!

Just to tell you, I was nervous about sharing this right now! Because I know I am still somewhat in the middle of this trial. But if anybody is wrong about this healing, it will be me and not God! His promises are true and faithful!

Asking and Believing

“All things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” Jesus said this in Matthew 21:22. I wrote about asking previously. So far, I have found sixty-seven exhortations in an on-going study on “ask” in scripture.  So I don’t usually hesitate to ask, but I often fail in the department of believing and receiving. Why would we hesitate to believe what God says? He is the Truth impersonated! (John 14:6) The source of a word spoken to  us matters greatly! When I was in Chapel Hill Elementary School, my home was right around the corner from the Psi Chi Fraternity House. My friends and I were fascinated by a big, green parrot which stayed in a large cage outside on nice days. He certainly could

 

talk! Over the years, the fraternity boys had taught him all kinds of nasty words and phrases. My parents loved all my friends, but they would not allow me to socialize with that bird! Now, if a parrot called me stupid, I would probably laugh. But if a friend, teacher, or any human being called me that, I would be hurt and angry. Why? The source of that word coming toward me would make the difference! Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, that He should lie…” He gives us His written word to communicate His will to us. We use our words to communicate with Him. John 1:14 calls Jesus Christ the Word—the Word of God made flesh. Words are very important. And it matters whether a promise given to us is from a trusted friend or a habitual liar, does it not? God’s word we can believe! As most of us know, there are two Greek words translated “word” in English. Logos means the general word of God (from Genesis to Revelation.) Rhema is a specific word…a certain word to you in a certain time. Romans 10:17 uses “rhema,”when it says, “So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word (rhema) of Christ.” Dr. H.A. Ironside calls the logos the said word of God (the Bible.) He calls the rhema the saying word of God—the living, active word of God. So when we ask God for something we often must wait for the Holy Spirit to bring us a word (rhema) which will produce a faith (belief) we can stand on with confidence! And that word must always line up with the written word of God.This is where many of us give up and throw in the towel. We want everything instantly! The word of God admonishes us to “be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:12) This subject brings us to the fact that our words are very powerful! After all, we are created in the image of God! (Genesis 1:27)  Later, I will share my family’s experiences when we decided we would not speak words of unbelief, sickness, failure, or negativity about ourselves or others.  And we each agreed we would not be upset when someone corrected us. Oh my…battles ensued!

 

 

 

Asking

When I first began researching, studying, and sharing about healing, my entire emphasis was on the physical. The more I learned about physical healing, the more I realized it involves the whole person. The Bible is our manual for learning to live life well.

Today I am sharing a story about asking…for a house, not healing! But whatever you need or want, go to your heavenly Father! He loves us to go to Him for our needs and our heart’s desires! A caring earthly father loves to give good gifts to his children…and have you noticed? Little children do not mind asking a loving dad for what they want, whether it is good for them or not! If we are purposely walking with God and desiring to please Him, even though we make mistakes, often the deep desires of our hearts were put there by Him. Do not mind asking!

My husband and I planned to move back home after his retirement. But we often wished it could be sooner so that our children could grow up being around their grandparents. We did not know this was God’s idea! He had to grow us in confidence and courage to ask Him because it didn’t seem possible with Roy’s job. We loved South Carolina as well, and had many friends there we would be sad to leave.

One night I had a vivid dream. I saw a white, two-story house with dark green shutters on a wooded lot. It looked like my childhood friend’s home in Chapel Hill. The strange thing was, I dreamed the same thing three different nights! Some time after that, I was reading my Bible, and a scripture “jumped off the page!” I felt God was saying we were moving back home! My husband, who was with Duke Power Company his whole career, said, “There is no Duke Power office in Chapel Hill, because the University owns their system. There is nothing for me there.”

Six months later, the company changed his career totally, and sent him to the Triangle area! The white house I had dreamed about was not for sale…neither could we afford to live in this town after selling our beautiful home in little Fountain Inn, S.C.! We found a great home for our family in Durham, where we lived about nine years. Yet we were not far from our families in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. One day, it was announced that the company had bought Chapel Hill’s system! They were building an office here and the architect gave Roy two weeks to decide if he wanted his office here instead of Durham. We had tried to sell our Durham home for almost four years with no success. But we felt God was giving us the go-ahead, so he said, “Yes.” I wish I could share all the tests, trials, and teachings in this whole experience, but it will have to be enough to say we learned much about God’s provision, faithfulness, love, and timing during this juncture, which changed our lives!

One part I must share however. We found a beautiful home in Chapel Hill, but it needed a lot of work done on it (which meant we could afford it once we sold our Durham house.) One day as I was going out, I heard Roy say to a relative on the phone, “Well, the house we found would remind you of the house where Janelle spent so much of her time when she was growing up.”

I got into the car, started off, and slammed on the brakes! Running into the house, I yelled, “Roy! That was the house in the three dreams I had in Fountain Inn—only I saw it from the side, not the front!” Standing there with the house information in his hand, with wide-open eyes, he said, “You dreamed that fourteen years ago. This house was being built fourteen years ago!” We both got weak in the knees! In a few months our home in Durham sold. We had no worries that we would lose the Chapel Hill dwelling while we waited because we knew God had built that home for us! Believe me, we had grumbled much during our four-year wait to sell our house, but God had His best for us, and His timing had to be exact…and it was!

Healing is God’s Perfect Will

Healing is God’s Perfect Will There are three places where we see God’s perfect will carried out: (1) Heaven (2) The Garden of Eden before the fall and (3) Jesus. Do we see any sickness in these three places? We, of course, live in a broken world. In fact, there is so much pain and sickness that we tend to think of it as the norm, but it is not! However, living above the norm in this world system requires swimming upstream, so to speak, or we will drift back down into defeat. I was convinced that I could ask God to heal me and others because it is His will to do so. (I certainly could not ask Him to do something that I know opposes His will.) However, in my pride and self-effort, I had a way of getting involved in too many things. As a result, I would often wear myself out and end up sick in bed. This seemed to happen at least once a year. At one point I remember saying, “Well, it must be time for my yearly flu again!” Although it was not fun to feel bad, friends brought food, transported my children, and did many favors for our family. After recovering, I would resume my hard-pressed schedule with new vigor. On one particular freezing, rainy week when I had many obligations on my plate, it struck me again. I gave in to it and went to bed. I had a high fever and flu-like symptoms. This time, I could not watch TV, read, eat, or sleep. On the fifth morning of misery, I took my temperature. It was 102 degrees. This was very upsetting, as my fever usually went up one or two degrees at night. I was so discouraged. As I began to pray the Lord reminded me of the many verses in the Bible where He says that I am a healed woman. Isaiah 53:5, fulfilled by Jesus in Matthew 8:14-17; Proverbs 4:20-22, Psalm 103:2, and Psalm 107:20, are a few. I decided to act healed by faith, based on what the word says, and what I felt God was speaking to me. So I got up, weak and wobbly as I was, and made up my mind to act “normal” in some way. I grabbed a nearby broom and began sweeping the floor. Now, this is the absolute truth…as I swept, I felt better and better and stronger and stronger. Within ten minutes I was totally well and totally amazed! I took a shower, shampooed my hair, cleaned the house, and cooked a good dinner. When my husband and three children came home that evening they could not believe it. I want to be very clear about one thing, however. This has not always happened the same way. One thing I have learned is that God will not be put “in a box.” He will not be a “formula,” and He will not be predictable! In reading all the stories about healing in the New Testament, we see that Jesus never healed people in exactly the same way. He is God. He will not let us call the shots. (I do not even want to tell how many years it took me to learn this!) The Bible speaks of “gifts of healings.” We are complex beings. There are many different types of healings as well as many different ways of approaching peoples’ needs. God requires us to get our direction from Him, the one who knows!

The Big Test

The fact that God wants His children well changed my entire opinion of Him. I knew I wanted my children to be well. Did that make me more compassionate than God? That could not be true. As a young Christian, my mentors shared with me about God’s healing. I was captivated by the subject because it showed me the goodness of God. I plowed through the Bible for months, searching for hidden treasures concerning God’s will on healing.

The big test came when my family took a weekend trip to the beach. I purposely left behind my usual tote bag bulging with “just-in-case-remedies.” In the middle of the first night, Lisa, who was six, began throwing up and experiencing severe diarrhea. What was I to do? I had no medicine, no doctor, and no access to a phone. All five of us were stuffed into one small room.

Trying not to wake up our two young sons or my husband (who at the time thought all this was crazy) I knelt by her cot and prayed for her healing. Whoops! She ran into the bathroom to throw up. Again I prayed and again she vomited. The saga continued as it had begun. Finally, in desperation, I whispered to her that I was going back to my bed to talk to God about this. As soon as I got still, a thought came to me…”You didn’t read the word to her.” Of course! In my quest about healing I had seen a direct connection of healing and God’s word. So, taking my Bible to her bedside, in a loud whisper I began reading every scripture I could find which had to do with any kind of healing. The Lord had been teaching me so the verses were not too difficult to find. Again she was sick. I wanted to give up but I kept reading to her, to God, to myself, to my still-sleeping family, and to the devil! Finally, it ended and we both slept, exhausted.

The next morning, she felt great. After eating a good breakfast, she played on the beach and jumped waves all day long. I was wary when she ordered fried fish and french fries for dinner, but if God had healed her, I wasn’t going to treat her as if she were still sick! She was well. We all had a wonderful, healthy weekend.

In subsequent experiences I have often noticed that God will allow us to choose between two things; that He healed or that nature only took its course as we became well. It was suggested to me that perhaps Lisa merely got rid of the germ as she kept throwing up and having diarrhea. I suppose that could be valid, as the body always wants to heal itself. (A broken arm will eventually heal itself, but it will probably heal itself crooked.) However, in our previous experience with stomach viruses, we were always left weak, lethargic, and unable to eat much for the next day or two. She was well.

This initial experience fanned the flame for my desire to learn more about healing from the hand of God.