It Was Vacationing in Another State

I will never understand the Internet.

I thought I had my old email addresses forwarded to my new email addresses. But today I had to go through about 3700 emails, because the forwards were not working. Guess what? Somebody out there REALLY thinks I need a certain drug with a name that starts with “V.”

I found out I’ve been getting emails from a website called The Daily Caller. Well, my SERVER has been getting them. I haven’t. Ordinarily, when I get unwanted subscriptions with no “unsubscribe” link, I flag the messages as junk and hope the senders end up on blacklists until they learn how to act. But these emails come with the following message at the end:

“Want off this list? Email me — politely, please. 😉 You’re on this list because somebody thought you should be.”

I decided to send a polite email. Now I’m off the list.

I believe this is the site where Jim Treacher works. I’m also getting emails from some guy at IBD. I hope he didn’t send every one individually, because I didn’t receive them and didn’t read them. I am sure they were very nice, however.

One nice thing about bailing out of blog politics and the struggle to be noticed is that I don’t have to keep up with this stuff. I read political material when I feel like it, not when I think I should. When I got 3,000 visits a day, some people actually cared about sending me links, and usually, it was annoying, because I was a content provider, not a blogger who does nothing but link to other people’s stuff. I had more than enough original material. Generally, I didn’t need to be fed by strangers, and I did not read much of the spam, but they still tried. Now, nobody will bother me.

It would be nice to be connected to some big Christian blogs, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t any. Not enough to fool with. There are political bloggers who are Christians, but that’s not the same thing. It’s surprising.

I only read one blog now, other than my own. Moxie quit writing, and some of the content at other blogs I liked was suddenly too racy, and that left me with Knowledge is Power, Drudge, and Day by Day. If anything happens to Sondra, I will consider myself completely disconnected from the blogosphere.

I also found out my site at manlygrub.com was down. I don’t know what the host did, but I couldn’t check email, log into the site, find my Fantastico link, or change my passwords. Who knows how long it had been like this? Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t using it. I’m going to cancel the account. If you used the forum, thanks.

Wonder what else is going on that I don’t know about.

More of All the Good Stuff

Yes, I have too many bananas.

I stuck some banana and plantain trees in the yard. The plantains don’t do all that well, probably because I am too lazy to go buy horse manure. The bananas do well enough to cause me problems. I don’t know what to do with them.

Today I’m baking banana nut bread, to see if I can make it good enough for the Trinity church cafe. I started with the same old stale recipe everyone thinks their grandma invented. I added allspice, and I jacked up the other spices. I also used Mike’s secret ingredient to make the cake moister and tastier. And I substituted brown sugar for white.

I think it should be very good. I’ll know pretty soon. After that, I have to figure out what to put on top of it.

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The banana nut bread is pretty amazing. The added spices woke it up, and Mike’s mystery ingredient improved the texture a great deal. The outer crust is a little chewy now, and the whole thing is moist.

Photos:

This is good enough for church. I can double the salt and maybe make the loaves smaller, so there’s more crust, but other than that, it’s ready.

I’ll have to figure out a topping.

What will I do if people get hooked and the banana trees crap out?

Problem for another day.

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Oh, man. This stuff is too good. I may have to throw it out in self-defense.

Thanks for the recipe, Lord. Now save me from it.

His Price is Far Above Rubies

Went to church tonight to do some work on the kitchen and work security for the Tuesday service. While I was there, THREE women stopped me to tell me how amazing my cheesecake was!

I knew this would happen!

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I got my press ready for 10mm today. Problem: since the gun isn’t here, I can’t check the ammo to see if it chambers and ejects. I made five rounds without powder or primers, and when I get the gun, I’ll see if the external dimensions are okay for the chamber. Once I have it working, I don’t think I’ll need to adjust anything but the seating die.

I have relatively cheap Laser-Cast bullets for practice. I plan to use a recipe that gives about 1060 fps in a 5″ barrel. Internet sources say I’ll only lose about 5% of optimal velocity with a 3″ Glock barrel. When my Speer Gold Dots arrive, I’ll be using a 1250-fps recipe, so I should come in at about 1200.

The modified primer feed on my press is working great. There is nothing like having your own machine shop.

RETRACTION

Lots of stuff to do today.

Tonight, I serve as an armorbearer at church. Before I go, I need to weld the church’s handtruck back together. Now that I’ve seen a few Chinese welds pop, I am a little nervous about trusting welded products.

I also need to make 10mm ammunition before my new pistol arrives. I have the makings, but I need to get the press set up and start cranking the handle. I looked around for 10mm practice ammo, but it’s hard to find here. Some people would recoil in horror at the thought of endangering a Glock warranty with reloads, but I think that’s stupid. For a single repair, which is all you’re likely to need over the life of the gun, the warranty has a maximum value of about $500. In reality, you probably won’t use a Glock warranty, and if you do, it will probably be a repair you could have gotten for $20. You save at least $12 per box with reloads. Over $200 per thousand rounds. Let’s see if we can figure out the right choice! DUH!

Good defensive rounds cost about $45 per box, delivered. I can save something like $30 per box. And I can run them through a Chrony and make sure they’re right.

They wouldn’t even be reloads. I found new Starline brass online. Probably a mistake. I think I should use it to make some defensive rounds and buy once-fired for everything else.

I don’t know why people get so spastic about gun warranties. You have to weigh what you’re getting against what you lose.

I also have to order some pots for the church. I have to take care of Father’s Day. And I should take my angle grinder to church and remove the 24″ piece of 5/16″ angle iron protruding from the kitchen floor. Maybe I should take my rotary hammer and try to remove the stub from the concrete.

It’s too much for my tiny brain to handle.

My cheesecake and brownies are selling really well at church. I’m thinking I should put an oven in a warehouse and see what I can sell to bakeries and restaurants. How hard can it be? I already have an empty warehouse.

Bye.

Mouse Poop Rearranged

Went to church today and helped the team REVOLUTIONIZE the kitchen. Stuff was moved. Crap was discarded. We only nearly set the place on fire once.

I have an entire room for pizza production now. Sort of. Part of it is dedicated to storage. But basically, it’s my own pizza empire.

Found out they sold one of my cheesecakes today. Every last slice. They have one left for tomorrow. And now we have a beautiful refrigerated display case for my desserts.

God is great. Food is pretty good. Using big tools to pulverize entropy in a disorganized church kitchen is the bomb.

And they sent a busted handtruck home for me to weld together. I love it.

Cheesecake Assault

I had an incredible weekend.

First, I made three blueberry cheesecakes for church. I stuck two in the walk-in cooler, and we sold the third. People were oohing and ahhing. If I could only get the women to quit dieting…

It’s no wonder they want to diet. They refuse to drink diet soda. Must be an island thing. We don’t even have diet soda in the fountain. I guess all those Pepsis add up, and then you can’t have cheesecake.

Second thing: I got a key to the church kitchen. FINALLY. I was driving the guy who passes out keys crazy. I even went to his Facebook page and posted “Isaiah 22:22!” Now I can get in there and DO things. Today a bunch of us plan to tear through the kitchen and utterly abolish the disorder. I’m going to take some tools so I can hang a clock.

Third thing: I was feeling frustrated and sort of unappreciated because I could not get a key to the kitchen, and it seemed like the Armorbearers were in a rut. I couldn’t help them get them to communicate so we could organize to do things. But I got the key, and then the Armorbearers had a fantastic meeting after church. We managed to get a couple of things worked out. We’re planning to bring a guy in to give us krav maga lessons, and we’re gearing up for paintball. One of the younger guys suggested it. He said it builds unity. I don’t know about that, but it sure builds welts.

I had dinner with some Messianic Jews on Friday. They want to form an AB squad for their synagogue, and they want to go to the range with us and get CCW permits. Hopefully, we can work that out.

I talked with one of my chefs yesterday, and we made some tentative plans about equipment and food. I’m checking stuff out at Instawares. I plan to take some of my beautiful Chinese cookware with me today so people can check it out and see if we should order some, and I think I’m going to donate some of my useless, overpriced Japanese knives. They have gathered dust for three years, at least. I don’t like giving cast-off stuff to the church, but these are too good to throw out, and I refuse to use them here.

Life is sweet, thanks to God.

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This is from a friend named Celeste. Found it on Facebook.

I cry out with my whole heart; hear me, O Lord! Psalm 119:145
Family, PLEASE I am asking for urgent prayers for my brother Jim who is in the hospital. They are running tests and we are praying for a miracle. Thank you. xo

Not by Sight

I should finish writing about my trip to Washington, DC, for the National Day of Prayer. I left you at the National Holocaust Memorial.

After our tour, Mike and I were stuck in the city. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews had a dinner scheduled, and we did not have enough time to go home and shower. We made our way to the Crowne Plaza on K Street and headed downstairs to the banquet room.

They had a table set up, with little gift bags for everyone. I got a package of Dead Sea girly stuff. Mud pack or something. We also received Rabbi Eckstein’s latest CD. He sings.

We met a number of donors and IFCJ staffers. One of the staffers is a food critic. She said she would like to see my cookbook. I didn’t know what to say about that. It’s not the kind of material Christians ordinarily read.

The Rabbi showed up, and each of us got to pose for a photo with him. Very nice guy. Not stand-offish at all. No entourage. No hovering assistants to keep donors away. He even posed with Mike, who, as I have noted before, isn’t even a donor!

We sat at our tables in the banquet room, and food started coming out, and speakers appeared. I was amazed that prayer in the name of Jesus was tolerated.

I shouldn’t even have to point out that almost all of the donors were Christians.

The Rabbi spoke. He said he did not want to talk politics, but he referred, in a general way, to the problems Israel was having with the current U.S. administration. Barack Obama is not a conservative Christian, and he does not have the pro-Israel attitude conservatives expect when they nominate a candidate. He sees Israel and the Jews as spoiled by previous administrations, and he is determined to bring about “even-handedness” in our dealings in the Middle East.

“Even-handedness.” There are about 15 million Jews on earth. They have one tiny country they can flee to when persecuted. They have 1.2 billion Muslim counterparts, many of whom are determined to destroy Israel, and many of whom hope to exterminate the Jewish people. But our President wants “even-handedness.”

I can’t tell you how good it felt, watching an Orthodox rabbi tell us he was frustrated by a liberal administration and pleased to have the support of conservative Christians.

He gave us a song or two, using a beautiful guitar a supporter made. And we heard from some other speakers, and then we had conversation.

My table was wonderful. We started talking about weapons and tools and so on. We had a Pentagon employee (Army, I think) and a retired military guy and his wife, and most of us were on exactly the same frequency. Linda (the IFCJ rep who invited me) told everyone about my cookbook and my guns and tools, and we started exchanging information and opinions.

I think Mike was a little weirded out. We were sitting with total strangers, yet there was an instant rapport. We were talking about prophecy and how America was declining, and one of the guys started quoting Perry Stone, whom I have mentioned to Mike many times. Everyone wanted to know about concealed carry and reloading and so on, and I told them what I knew.

There was one couple–Baptists, probably–who seemed almost taken aback by the passion and conviction we all displayed. But the rest of us were completely caught up, like no other group at the dinner. I told Mike that when you start walking by faith, this kind of thing happens all the time. I said, “It’s going to keep happening for the rest of your life.”

By the end, we were talking like old friends.

The next morning, Mike and I got up and headed for DC again, to hear the Israeli ambassador. His name is Michael Oren, and we were scheduled to hear him at the Ninth Annual Israel Solidarity Event, at the Israeli Embassy!

I spent four months on a kibbutz in 1984, and for a long time, I’ve longed to return to Israel. The embassy is considered part of Israel, so it was a pretty good substitute.

We met some of our new friends outside the security building, and we made our way through the metal detector. It was odd to hear the peculiar, brusque Israeli accent again as the guards and staffers worked to get us checked in.

Before we began, a pianist and singer performed Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel. Funny thing, it’s based on the same folk melody as Smetana’s Die Moldau, which was one of my mother’s favorite pieces of music. When Hatikvah was banned by the British Mandate, some radio stations played Die Moldau in order to get around the prohibition.

The Star-Spangled Banner followed.

Christian speakers including Gary Bauer preceded the ambassador. They talked about the worldwide increase in anti-Semitism and the need to stand by Israel’s side in these strange times. Once again, prayer in the name of Jesus was permitted. Amazing.

I believe the only Israeli speakers were Noam Katz (Minister for Public Diplomacy) and Michael Oren. If memory serves, Mr. Katz openly admitted that American conservative Christians were the best friends Israel had. It may have been Ambassador Oren, but I don’t remember it that way. In any case, it was stirring. What a change in the Jewish perspective.

Ambassador Oren was wonderful. He’s a historian (born in the US and schooled at Princeton and Columbia), and he told about American’s long association with Israel and the Jews. He told us that one of the Founding Fathers proposed putting Moses and the Hebrews on our national seal, as a metaphor for our crossing the Atlantic and leaving the British behind. The British were our Egyptians. Ambassador Oren also pointed out that a surprising number of early Americans were schooled in the Hebrew language, and many believed it to be the language of heaven.

When the Israelis spoke, a serious-looking young man stood to the side of the podium, staring out over the crowd. I took him to be a Mossad bodyguard. An armorbearer! Just like me, except he actually knew what he was doing.

I found myself seated next to a donor I hadn’t met before. We found ourselves talking a great deal. She and her husband had been at the dinner, and a group had prayed for him, and his ear had been healed. She complained that now he could hear her muttering about him!

She asked about my church, and I told her about Trinity, and that we belonged to the Assemblies of God. The woman I was talking to said she thought it was a sign that she should check out a local AG church she had wanted to visit. A lady in front of us turned around and said she was AG, too. I seem to have made a much better impression on people than I had any right to.

I told her what I could about charismatic Christianity. I believe prayer in the Spirit builds us up (as the Bible claims), and that it gives us faith and changes us from within.

Naturally, I also talked to her about food. I took her email address and told her she could have any recipe she wanted. Since then, we have corresponded. Her husband’s ear, which had been screwed up for years, is still fine.

I was glad I had managed to be of some use. When you walk by faith, God chooses the people you meet.

I touched the stones of the courtyard on the way out, saying goodbye to Israel once again.

I can’t tell you everything that happened on Saturday; it’s fairly private. We went to the air and space museum at the Smithsonian. I felt like God was showing me the wonders he had done for this country before it turned away from him. I wondered what was in store, as our rebellion continued.

On Sunday, Mike and I went to church. His wife wanted to take their son fishing, so they didn’t go. But Mike was very gung-ho. I got him to go to Trinity Assembly of God in Lanham, Maryland. I found it on the web a while back, and it looked promising. And how about that name? Same as my church in Miami Gardens.

We got to the church, and I told Mike to pick seats for us. I was confident that God would do something weird with his choice. We ended up near the back on the right.

The music was very good, and I even knew some of the songs. I guess charismatics tend to gravitate toward the same hymns.

Mike has been having some difficulties with his family. I don’t want to say more than that. Guess what day God picked to get us in church together? Mother’s Day. The whole service was about wives and mothers. Very appropriate.

Before things really got going, we heard some testimony from a lady whose prayer for a baby had been answered. When I heard her voice, it was another great surprise. Many of the people in the church were black, but until she spoke, I didn’t know they were island people. Just like Trinity in Miami Gardens! How did that happen? We were in Maryland, not Florida. They had Hispanics, too. The pastor’s name is Tino. The only other Tino I know goes to Trinity.

The pastor had us pray sort of randomly early on. This is not unusual at a charismatic church. Mike and I went at it, and as we did, each of us felt a big hand land on his shoulder. An older man in the row behind us was praying for us, asking God to take us in hand and change us and make us his instruments. It was wonderful. I turned and thanked him.

When the prayer was done, the pastor sent a Mother’s Day bouquet to his own mother, who was attending. The person with the flowers walked right toward us and then past us. To a lady in the row behind us. Standing next to the man who prayed. Evidently, Mike chose seats directly in front of the pastor’s dad.

The pastor’s wife gave the sermon. She talked about great female figures in the Bible. Ruth, Esther, Deborah, and so on. But toward the end, she became agitated and kept saying she felt like she had to talk about restoring marriages and families. She started talking about all the things the church had to offer. Counseling and prayer and so on. And she kept repeating, “You have to do the work. You have to do the work!” This is exactly what I tell Mike all the time. You can’t wait to get your life in order before you turn to God, because he’s the one who fixes your life. You have to make time and go.

She became so agitated, she began speaking in tongues, which Mike found a little alarming. But that’s part of the package.

He has gone back to the church since our visit, and I’m hoping he’ll join. How many “coincidences” do you need to witness before you give up and get on board?

I accidentally left my IFCJ gift bag in Mike’s car. Now he’ll have everything he needs, if he decides to do a Dead Sea mud pack.

There wasn’t much more to the trip than that. We went to Five Guys again, and then I got on a plane.

If you read all three installments of the story, it should be obvious to you that I was guided on this trip, and so were the people around me. This is what my life is like these days. I am not perfect in obedience or faith, but I am on the path, and I am seeing God’s power in my life. The Bible says he lifts us out of the miry clay and sets our feet upon a rock and establishes our goings. It is absolutely true.

I wish I had time to write up all the things I’ve seen. I can understand why the Gospels say the world could not contain enough books to hold the complete story of Jesus’s ministry. I’m a nobody, and I can’t even cover what happens to me.

Jubilee Continues

I keep saying I think this is my “year of God’s favor.” Today I got news that seems to confirm it.

I got sued twice this year over real estate I owned in common with some relatives. We sold land we should have held onto, and we ended up with two frivolous lawsuits because the deals weren’t handled well. A few weeks ago, I found out one of the suits had been dismissed. The court issued an order requiring us to pay a tiny amount to another party. It’s going to cost me about a hundred and thirty bucks. The court didn’t even tell our lawyer. My aunt found out after visiting the courthouse to try to find out what was happening.

The other deal is more interesting. A businessman bought part of a big commercial plot from us, and he tried to get an option on the rest of the property. He failed to pay the entire option fee, so he had nothing when he tried to exercise the option. He had a lawyer send us some BS about suing, and on advice from me and my father, everyone ignored it.

Today we found out he sold part of the land we sold him, and he has been parking cars on our land, next door. I don’t know exactly what he does, but apparently, he has to park a lot of vehicles in order to do business. He sold the land he should be parking stuff on, and he seems to have decided it was okay to park on our land instead. I am assuming the story told to me is correct.

My aunt’s husband taped off the property and notified the sheriff. The businessman’s wife flipped out. I guess this is going to kill their business. Their lawyer now admits they have no option on the rest of the land, so they are completely out of luck. That’s unfortunate for them, but we are under no legal or moral obligation to do anything to help squatters fix a problem they created.

Now, instead of pushing us around with his lawyer, he’s looking at a trespassing suit, and he has no way to do business on the land he bought. We can’t figure out what he was thinking when he sold land that was vital to his business. He may have to quit. If he does, we should be able to buy the land back for less than he paid us.

That’s great for us, because we regret selling the land, and we would like to develop it. We own the parcel next door, and together, they form a large and unique commercial property, in an area where flat land is hard to find.

On top of that, the state condemned another piece of the property a while back, and they have to start moving dirt off of it. We need fill to make our land level; it will increase the value dramatically. It will make the difference between being able to put a convenience store on it and being able to put a Wal-Mart on it. The state’s guy says they’ll be happy to give us 7,000 yards of fill. And when they’re done, the area will get a lot more traffic, and we’ll be at a major intersection, complete with a newly created island of property just perfect for a gas station.

If we can’t get the businessman to sell, we can charge him a lot of money to park his cars until we develop the land.

Crazy. We did our best to screw this up, and God pulled our bacon out of the fire.

My dad asked me if I had any idea what this guy was thinking when he did all these crazy things. I always say that when people do things that are utterly inexplicable, there is probably a supernatural cause. I think God worked it out so the dumb things we did would not harm us as badly as they should have.

Two lawsuits are completely destroyed. We stand a good chance of getting our property back. The state is going to fill our lot. The guy who was trying to turn us into victims is going to have to pay through the nose. That’s how it looks.

Isn’t this the kind of thing that happened to Jacob?

I don’t deserve it, but I’ll take it. This sure beats living under a curse.

Israel’s Enemies Poison Their Own Harvest

Busy day yesterday. Laid out 6 dozen garlic rolls, baked 4 dozen, and had to discard the rest. Made lots of pizza. Put brownies out in clear boxes for the customers to see. Fortunately, I had some help. The 11-year-old son of our church’s head servant leader showed up and worked with me. This kid is going to be a CEO some day. Show him something twice, and the third time, he’ll start without you.

Needs to realize that cleaning up is part of the job, however.

The guy who runs the church’s cafe during the week says the building’s business tenants go nuts over the brownies. The congregation isn’t as crazy about them. I decided to bake tons of brownies and store them in the walk-in cooler, so the weekday team can get them out as needed. Brownies keep for eternity, so I should be able to bake 6 half-sheets a month and cover our needs pretty efficiently.

The Armorbearers ended up talking in the parking lot. Unfortunately, one of the younger guys brought up paintball. So now I may have to participate in that. They say those paintballs sting pretty good. I may have to hide a sheet of MDF in my Depends.

We also talked about the need for martial arts training. I suggested krav maga. One of the top instructors lives in Miami. It would be pretty cool, defending God’s house with a system developed by God’s people, in God’s country. And you don’t have to be in great shape to do it, which is a plus for me. I contacted the instructor, and he’s available.

Speaking of God’s people, Israel is in the news. A “peace flotilla” including one ship full of armed hooligans approached her coast, and the IDF boarded the problem vessel, and Israel’s soldiers were attacked. Naturally, Israel’s enemies are portraying her as the aggressor. Pray that God will humiliate and abase the liars, and that Israel will emerge unscathed.

The Bible uses the terms “flood” and “waters” to describe the waves of slander and lies the enemy uses to afflict God’s people. You can see it over and over in the Psalms. False witness is a great evil, and it brings suffering on those who utter it. The Psalms tell us God protects the righteous from it.

The Old Testament uses the term “leprosy” (“tzara’at”) to describe the curse that comes from slander. It doesn’t mean the disease we think of as leprosy; that illness probably did not exist in the Middle East in the time of Moses. It refers to other disfiguring illnesses, as well as a type of rot that attacks a person’s house. God used to make the walls of the homes of liars rot, in order to publicly expose them as people who lied in private. If you routinely lie about people, and your home is falling apart, and your plans always seem to come to nothing, you might want to ask yourself if you’re causing your own problems.

I know a person who spews a never-ending flow of slander and accusation, and this person is a complete failure and outcast (like a leper) and lives in a home which is literally rotting. I know another who behaves the same way, and that person has a miserable life which has amounted to nothing. I believe tzara’at, in one form or another, is still with us. It reminds me of what Wiccans believe: if you try to curse a righteous person, the curse comes back to you. They’re probably right. Some slanderers have supernatural protection from the enemy, but that protection goes away when the righteous attack it in prayer or the enemy no longer finds the slanderers useful. My guess is that the delayed payback carries interest.

Since learning about tzara’at, I’ve been much more careful about what I say. Israel’s enemies could benefit from the same lesson. God spoke the world into existence, and he spoke the eternal blessing on his people into existence, and he speaks curses into existence, and everything he speaks eventually comes to pass, except for punishments which he decides to withhold. Our words have power, too.

I think that when a believer prays in tongues, he speaks God’s blessings and power into his life and the lives of those around him. That’s like having a fountain that waters your crops and drowns your rats and bugs (like a flood) every day. The words come from the Holy Spirit, which is God, so what you say is God’s word, as much as the Bible. Pouring that “living water” into the world has to be a good thing.

It’s surprising how much power words have, even in the natural sense. Think about it. Our laws are words, so when a criminal is imprisoned or put to death, in actuality, he is jailed or killed by words. When you spend a dollar, you are relying on the words printed on it, which say our government backs it up. The words, not the paper, buy the goods you need. A declaration of war is words. A marriage is made by pronouncing words. All contracts are made of words. When you face foreclosure, words take away your house. The Bible even tells us God dispatches his angels using words, and we know that one angel killed 185,000 Assyrians in one night.

When Edward Bulwer-Lytton said the pen was mightier than the sword, he was not kidding. A hydrogen bomb is useless without someone to write the words allowing its deployment.

Even computers are powered by words. How do you tell a computer what to do? How do you create an application? You use a programming “language.”

Understanding the power of words should help us grasp the importance of prayer. It is literally more powerful than anything you do with your mind or your hands. Everything is established in prayer, or in blessings and curses. The work we do in the natural is just execution.

Israel will never go under. God’s flood is deeper than Satan’s. It’s sad that her soldiers were hurt, but in the end, Israel will be buoyed up like the Ark.

Join In

Evangelist Judah Smith spoke at my church last week. Today he has a prayer request, via Twitter:

Hey everybody could REALLY use your prayers right now for Dad- he has a mtg at Mayo Clinic today @2pm- we need great favor! Thnk u!

Don’t know what’s happening, but people don’t go to the Mayo Clinic over trifles.

I Cannot Have Problems

More interesting stuff is happening.

Last night at church, I worked as an armorbearer. When I do this, I carry a two-way radio with an earpiece and microphone. You know those curly plastic things Secret Service guys wear in movies? That’s what I’m talking about. The correct name for the earpiece rig is “surveillance kit.”

At the end of the service, I tried to pull the earpiece out of my ear, and the tube came loose, leaving the end of the kit deep inside my skull somewhere. Whoopee.

Ran into a friend hosting a prayer group in the back of the church, and I told the group what had happened, and I suggested they pray I manage to get the thing out of my ear. I was laughing, but I was not kidding. You can’t expect anything to go well if you don’t prepare in prayer.

At home, before attacking the earpiece, I prayed about it, and I said I was determined to see this annoying event turn out to be a blessing. I thanked God that it had happened. I always do that when I have a setback. To understand why, read Corrie ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place. Her sister made her thank God for a flea infestation in the concentration camp barracks in which they were incarcerated. Later, it turned out the inmates were able to get away with a lot of things in the barracks, because the fleas kept the guards out.

I found some tweezers with fairly wide tips, and I went to work, accomplishing nothing whatsoever. It’s amazing how hard it is to find something inside your ear with tweezers. It’s not like the location is a mystery. Still, I could not grab the earpiece, and half the time, I missed it completely.

I eventually gave up and went to bed. I figured I’d go to the ER or my doctor in the morning and give everyone a good laugh.

I woke up after 2:00 a.m. The earpiece was starting to cause some pain. I decided to try removing it again, and I preceded the effort with more prayer. I was more determined this time. God has been fantastic about responding to my faith lately, so I was sure I could get the earpiece out, if I didn’t waiver or give up.

I could not find the tweezers, and I was annoyed because I couldn’t find any of my other pairs. I was afraid the wide tips on the first pair were not right for the job. I prayed for help finding them anyway, and I kept exerting my faith. I went to every room where I had taken them earlier in the night, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Finally, I decided to go to the garage and try needlenose pliers. When I went to get them, I found the wide tweezers on my workbench, and resting on the top of an electrical box, a pair of tweezers with narrow tips and serrated tips for better gripping.

I took the narrow tweezers and went to work. Nothing seemed to go right. I missed the earpiece over and over. I kept yanking hairs out of my ear canal. But I stuck with it, praying the whole time. I would put the tweezers in, establish contact, close them, and pull. Finally, on one pull, I felt the earpiece move. That meant it was possible to grab it.

I kept working at it, and in a few minutes, I got a good grip, and the entire earpiece came out. I felt like I had delivered a baby from the side of my head.

I don’t know if you understand how unlikely this seemed at the time, from the natural viewpoint. During most of the process, I didn’t really know how the earpiece was shaped or whether it was possible to grab it. You would have to have an unfamiliar object stuck deep in your ear to understand.

I took a look at the earpiece. It had a narrow hole in the tube side, which had been facing out when it had been in my ear. There was no way the wide tweezers could get in that hole, and it was necessary to get one tweezer tip in the hole to get a grip on the earpiece. If I hadn’t misplaced them and then had to hunt them down in the garage, I would never have found the narrow tweezers, which turned out to be the only tool which could solve my problem.

Classic God move.

I started thanking God, very sincerely. It’s not hard to be sincere at a moment like that. I was extremely grateful for the relief. And I started thanking God for all the other rotten things in my life. Why not? It’s a good thing to do.

I spent a little time in prayer about some stubborn problems. I prayed about some things I needed, and I prayed about my sister’s difficulties. I felt a powerful flow of faith going through me. I could tell problems were being solved. Things were happening.

This, I believe, was the blessing that came from the annoying accident. The ear thing was unimportant, and the inconvenience was minor, but the powerful prayer I experienced later was a very big deal.

I have another praise report. Remember the guy whose car I squashed? At the time, I told him the accident would turn out to be a big blessing for both of us. I asked him if he needed prayer for anything, and he told me he had midterm tests coming up. Some kind of career program he’s involved in. I told him I’d get on it, and I did.

Last night, I saw him. He told me there were five guys in his group, and he was the only one who passed the tests. How about that? Today he’s doing something or other regarding this project, and I am still backing him up in prayer.

Walking by faith will lead you to victory, but it also leads you into battle. Bad things are going to happen. When you choose to serve God, you are very literally entering a battlefield, and you are attracting the attention of a large army of enemies. It’s not imaginary. It’s not insignificant. As soon as you start to pose a threat to the enemy, you will draw fire. That’s just how it is. You can’t expect to be protected from all adversity. Instead, you can expect every adversity to turn out to be a benefit. God will see to it, if you don’t give up on him. Psalm 32 says, “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Either he’s there, or he’s not. If he is, he will return to you eventually and turn your manure into strawberries.

The big difference between believers and nonbelievers is that the misfortunes of nonbelievers are just misfortunes. Sometimes they turn out well, but very often, they do not. If you stick with God, he will always bring you out on top in the end.

I am better off today than I would be, had the earpiece not gotten lodged in my ear.

To some people–myself included–the story will seem silly, but if I had had to get professional help, it would have taken hours and cost a lot of money. I’m very glad it didn’t come to that.

Sorry I don’t have anything more dramatic to report, but I think that, too, is a blessing. And anyway, divine intervention is divine intervention, regardless of the scale.

If You Can’t Breathe, You Can’t do Woodworking

I have to do dust collection. I will never be able to use my woodworking tools without it.

I was waiting for a nice Delta collector to go back on the American Express Rewards shopping list, but the danged thing is still not available. Maybe I should have jumped on it when I had the chance.

I checked out dust collectors on Craigslist yesterday. I can get a giant Dustkop industrial cyclone for a mere $250. Unfortunately, it takes up an area about the size of a kitchen table and has a 3-phase, 3-horsepower motor.

Maybe my failure to acquire the Delta machine is a blessing in disguise. In fact, I’m sure it is, because ALL of my problems are blessings in disguise. Disguises. Whatever.

I’m considering making my own dust collector. Wood Magazine sells plans. For the cost of a small Delta, I can have a cyclone which should satisfy my needs for all eternity. I just have to grit my teeth and build it. One nice thing about it: it would be strong enough to put in a corner, with long hoses or ducts. A smaller machine might have to be rolled from tool to tool, so it would be in the way.

I want to fire up the table saw and make bed covers for my mill, but I am not willing to tolerate a big dust cleanup job. Trying to suck sawdust out of the crevices on two motorcycles gets tiresome.

Today I’m trying to get the garage in order. I need to get the new rotary table and chuck working so I can put them away. When I put a dial indicator on the side of the chuck and turn the table, the radial variation is barely measurable, but when I chuck a cutter in the jaws, I get higher numbers. I was getting something like 0.017″, which horrified me. Then I moved the chuck jaws over one slot and tried again. This time, the total measured variation is about 0.0045″. If I understand runout correctly, the runout is half of that, which is acceptable. But I can’t help wondering what would happen if I took the jaws out and moved them again. And there are twelve possible ways to combine the chuck, adapter plate, and table, so this could turn out to be a long job.

I just learned that you can induce runout by tightening a chuck using only one socket. I refer to the sockets in which the chuck key fits. Can you believe that? I have to go back, tighten the chuck using all three sockets, and start over.

I guess I should look for a 4-jaw chuck. I probably should have gotten one to begin with, but I suppose optimism overwhelmed my common sense. A 4-jaw chuck can be adjusted to overcome runout, although it may have other problems if it’s cheap.

I hate to do this to my male readers, but I just learned about a pretty cool tool. You will want it, I assume. It’s called the Ridgid Jobmax. It’s a battery-powered handle which accepts things like a drill, an impact driver, an oscillating tool, and an autohammer. Popular Mechanics says it outperforms individual tools made by other companies. Get one of these with the impact driver and oscillating tool, and you would be king of the jobsite. If you also had five batteries. That’s the hitch. It would be a neat thing to have around the house, if you had limited space and a limited budget.

Ridgid makes good stuff.

I better get back to the garage and resume rearranging piles.

A Lean Year Can be a Blessing

I had a funny moment this morning.

On Tuesdays, my dad and I have breakfast together at a local restaurant. We have been doing this for years. Today when we walked in and chose a table, a lad–total stranger–stopped me and said she had to tell me something.

This is Miami. You can imagine my thoughts. “Process server.” “Hare Krishna.” “Angry liberal who doesn’t like my NRA T-shirts.”

She said, “You look so HANDSOME since you’ve lost weight!”

I didn’t know what to say! She said she had noticed the change over the last few months. I had no memory of seeing her before today.

I thanked her, and we sat down to eat. My dad was happy about it. Anything good that happens to me reflects on him, as far as he’s concerned.

Why is this a big deal? Because it’s an answer to prayer. I want my father to accept Jesus and be baptized with the Holy Spirit, but he hates Christianity, so I pray for God to show him that I am more blessed than he is, so he’ll want what I have, and so he’ll get it through faith and obedience.

My dad has a real problem with food. When we go to this restaurant, sometimes he moves us from one booth to another because he needs extra room. Since August, he has seen me lose weight without effort, and today, he got a very loud reminder, in a place where he has to face the temptation that causes his problem.

That was pretty cool.

It was one of those things that are so weird, they have to originate in the supernatural.

As for her taste in men and her eyesight, well, we have to make allowances.

The weight loss itself was supernatural. God did it all. I am really sick of people trying to tell me I did it. It actually makes me angry sometimes. Sometimes people have an offensive insistence on “debunking” miracles. If God works miracles for people they know, it poses a threat, because it means God is real, and they need to change their lives and draw closer to him. It’s easier to put the credit where it does not belong. “An earthquake parted the Red Sea.” “Evolution proves God exists.” You know the mindset.

When you try to give me the credit for this, you are encouraging me to steal from God. That is not helpful to me, no matter how grateful you think I should be for the praise. I could not have done this, and I do not want to fall into the trap of thinking I blessed myself. I know you mean well, but so did Peter, when he objected to the crucifixion. And you know what Jesus said in reply.

Speaking of the supernatural, I saw something interesting on Sid Roth’s show yesterday. The show is called It’s Supernatural, and it always features Christians who have experienced supernatural manifestations. Sometimes I’m very suspicious of these people, but I liked the folks he interviewed yesterday. Their names are Ken and Jeanne Harrington.

They talked about the supernatural things God had done in their lives, and if I understood them correctly, they tied all of it to obeying certain Biblical principles, such as humility and honesty.

They made a good impression on me, and I can tell you why. They’re not sharp, oily, polished people. They seem very nice, but they are extremely ordinary. They’re not highly educated. They don’t have a bunch of cribbed preacher jokes to sling at the camera. They dress normally. No chin beards or hair gel or funny suits in colors heterosexual Caucasian men ordinarily shun. And they don’t push an overpriced seminar or a set of pricey tapes, as far as I know. They host “workshops,” and they have a book called Shift!, and I think that’s about it.

I enjoyed listening to them, because they reminded me that while transformation through the Holy Spirit is the most powerful thing in a Christian’s life, the earthly approach matters, too. You can’t just sit around praying in tongues all day. You have to read the Bible, and you have to try to change. The Holy Spirit guides you and gives you the power to succeed at this, but you have to act. Sometimes I underemphasize the importance of earthly tools.

They talked about the importance of avoiding attempts to justify yourself, even when you’re wronged. When you have a conflict, you are very likely to be wrong to some extent, even if the other person is almost completely at fault. Instead of insisting that person take all the blame, you should take responsibility for your part in the mess and apologize.

That makes sense, because Christianity is about growth. If you insist you’re right, and you believe it, you will not try to improve yourself. You will cut off the flow of growth. You can’t grow without admitting the need to grow. This is a lesson I am trying to implement in my own life, and I am not doing a great job.

So much of evil has to do with holding onto unprofitable things. Covetousness is an example. To covet is to set your heart on something. When you set your heart on something, you exalt yourself. You’re saying you know what the future should hold. You can’t walk by faith, if that’s your attitude. If you read the Bible, you’ll see story after story of people receiving the unexpected from God. They hoped for certain things, and God gave them different things, and it turned out God was right. This is the essence of Christian living. You can’t live this way if you covet. When you covet, Satan tells your flesh you need a certain thing, and your flesh tells your mind, and in the end, Satan rules your mind through the flesh. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. God is supposed to rule your mind, and your mind is supposed to rule your flesh.

When you covet, you refuse to grow. You’re like a kid who never learns to eat solid food, because he insists on continuing to breast-feed.

I think addiction is the most powerful expression of this principle. An addict refuses to move forward. He is so in love with the pleasures of the past, he will not try to free himself from them in order to make room for the greater pleasures God has planned for the future. If you know an addict, you know what I mean. They’re obsessed with the past. Blame. Offenses. Other people’s sins. Anything that excuses the refusal to grow. We’re supposed to move forward constantly, without letting anything get a grip on us and hold us back. Addicts never grow past the ages at which their addictions start. They remain immature, like teenagers, all of their lives.

We are told not to love this life. The reason is that the next life is better, and we have to let go of this one to get it. By worrying too much about success and pleasure in this life, we treat it the way an addict treats drugs. We become addicted to it. We covet it.

I might buy that book. I suspect that some of Sid Roth’s guests are con artists, but I don’t see how the Harringtons can do me any harm.

They mentioned something interesting. We have had many revivals which have failed. We have seen miraculous manifestations of God’s power in revivals that failed. God will let us perform miracles sometimes, even when we are not walking in his will. They said the emphasis on character was missing.

As Paul taught, the spiritual gifts, without the fruit (righteousness derived supernaturally from the Holy Spirit) can actually be liabilities. It’s a good thing to keep in mind, especially if God has started allowing you to use his power. The charismatic churches have had a lot of problems caused by allowing the flesh to use the spiritual gifts. I don’t have to name famous pentecostal preachers who have disgraced their offices; we all know who they are.

Wonder What it Will be Like When I Turn 99

I am wiped out. Again.

On Saturdays, my church has a thing called Rhythms Lounge. The kids take over the cafe. They recite their own poetry, sing, and play music. Some of them are very talented. “ALL of them,” my pastor would probably say, if he were reading this.

I help out with food. I was not expecting to cook yesterday, but Christian rapper Dre Marshall showed up in Miami and decided to grace us with an appearance, so I got a frantic call at 10 a.m.

By three, I was at church, and by 7:00, we had twenty pounds of baked ziti, six dozen garlic rolls, and 72 brownies. I could not attend the 6:00 service because the cooking and shopping took so long. I’m getting very efficient. I started cooking at four, and putting all that junk together in three hours–alone–is not easy.

At 8:30 today, I was at the volunteer prayer meeting in the cafe, putting my surveillance kit in my ear and making sure my Glock was concealed correctly. I worked as an armorbearer for two services, and then I attended the third. When you work, it’s not considered attendance.

They had me roaming around, which is a good assignment. You get lots of exercise, it’s not boring, and if you sneak into the cafe for a snack, no one knows.

The Assemblies of God had some kind of big function today at 6 p.m., and our pastor suggested we show up in support, but my dad invited me to lunch, and by the time I got back and took a few minutes to rest, it was about 5:50.

I drove to Hallandale on Saturday morning for my usual 8:00 a.m. prayer group meeting. There were some screwups, so only two of us made it. Anyway, I have been on the go since about 7:20 a.m. yesterday. I am ready to become one with the mattress.

Today Pastor Rich talked about Pentecost. This is what Christians call Shavuot, which actually started last Tuesday. “Pentecost” comes from the Greek language, and it means “fiftieth.” Shavuot commemorates the day on which God gave the law to Moses. Pentecost is the day on which God wrote the law on the hearts of Christians by allowing the Holy Spirit to fall on them in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.

Shavuot is also the festival of the first fruits; Jews used to bring the first fruits of their labor to the Temple. Sheep and wheat and so on. When I was living on a kibbutz, they brought out fruit and young livestock.

Pastor Rich discussed Pentecost as a day of restoration. He talked of five blessings we should expect in return for our faith, obedience, and offerings. First, we should expect to be relieved of debt. Second, we should expect God to restore and save our families. Third, God will reveal himself to us in a new way. Fourth, there will be a redistribution of wealth (but not the kind Obama wants). Fifth, we will have power over weakness.

I don’t know exactly where this doctrine comes from. We were given scriptural support for it, but I’ve never seen it taught before. Maybe it’s an Assemblies of God thing.

I was fascinated by the sermon, because “fifty” has been very important in my life lately. I wrote about it a while back.

I “happened” to go to a Messianic synagogue on the first day of my fiftieth year, and they were singing about the Jubilee. That word describes the Biblical fiftieth year, or the “year of God’s favor,” as described in the Isaiah passage Jesus read to announce the beginning of his ministry. The Messianics sang about it, and the rabbi taught about it, and in an offhand remark he referred to Yeshua (Jesus) as “our jubilee,” and he even mentioned the Isaiah passage, in a seemingly unrelated part of the service. Now my pastor is singing the same tune, more or less.

I think this is the year of my restoration. God keeps hammering this theme. I don’t know why it should be true, but he won’t let it drop, so there must be something to it.

God seems to be promoting me in the background. Other people are getting attention and honor, but weird things keep happening to me, and I keep getting revelation. None of it gets much notice from the people around me. I don’t know where I’m going to end up, but I think God is going to move me into an important position of service, while sidestepping the man-ordered paths promotion usually takes.

I can’t figure it out, but I know God likes to remind us that man is not the one who bestows favor. When he wanted to change the world, he didn’t work through the High Priest, and he hasn’t worked wonders or explained his mysteries through Popes. He picks people from the periphery of the faithful, probably for the same reason he made Abraham refuse gifts: when he raises people up, he doesn’t want others to say man did it. Maybe the point is to avoid rewarding human pride.

If we could use our little minds to choose the prophets and the savior and so on, it would be a lot like the building of the Tower of Babel, which was supposed to allow man to control his own destiny. We were never intended to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. We are intended to walk by faith, and as long as you think you don’t need God to help you achieve your goals, you will do what you want instead of what he wants. Humility is essential to walking by faith, and if we achieve too much using our base tools, humility will elude us.

Today at lunch, I got an opportunity to explain the Pentecost/Shavuot/Babel parallels to my dad. How about that? These metaphorical similarities are among the strongest evidence that Jesus is who he said he was, and that the baptism of the Holy Spirit (including the gifts of tongues) is real; these seeming coincidences could not have been planned or faked. This is the kind of stuff that makes an impact on intelligent people who resist the faith. I’m so grateful that God gave me the chance to present it.

Father’s Day “happens” to be coming up right away. Wouldn’t it be funny if it gave my dad an excuse to visit the church?

According to Jesus, in Sheol, Abraham told a rich man that if his brothers didn’t believe Moses and the prophets, they would not listen to a man raised from the dead, and that is absolutely true. Like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we can explain anything away, if we don’t want to believe it. People who should know better make up shallow, specious arguments “debunking” Christianity. But there are a lot of people who haven’t heard about Moses and the prophets or the endless list of Old Testament evidence which proves Jesus is the Messiah. Today I got a chance to present some of this material to someone who needed to hear it.

Ultimately, the Holy Spirit, and not evidence, convinces people to believe. If evidence would do the trick, every person who has heard the evidence would be a Christian. Supernatural blindness and human stubbornness outweigh mere evidence. But for those who are susceptible to the call, evidence is a great help.

To get back to the notion of “fiftieth,” I think Shavuot is very much like the Jubilee. Jesus was crucified, and fifty days passed, and suddenly, the Spirit fell on 120 believers. They became the first fruits of his harvest. They became the beginning of creation’s restoration; its jubilee. Sometimes the Bible uses years and days almost interchangably, as when God sentenced the Hebrews to wander in the desert one year for every day during which the spies investigated the land of Canaan. Maybe Pentecost and the Jubilee are reflections of each other; the same idea, expressed in different ways.

In the year of Jubilee, slaves were given their freedom, and people who had sold their birthrights got them back. After Jesus came, people who were slaves to Satan were freed, and they received the birthright Adam and Eve sold for a piece of fruit: eternal life. These things are not coincidence. On Pentecost, the believers in the Upper Room received the power that would eventually grow to liberate the world. Eternal life is wonderful, but the Holy Spirit gives us power to use here and now, to rip this world back out of Satan’s hands. That’s a completely different blessing. For two thousand years, it has been hindered, but it seems to have resumed growing into its fullness. The war is heating up, and God is arming us with Holy Spirit power.

I see this year as my Shavuot. I hope it’s not just my imagination. So far, things are looking good. If “first fruit” status has spread to me, it will spread to others, and eventually, we will be a huge and powerful force before which Satan will find himself utterly inadequate.

Get Good Medical Care While it Still Exists

My friend Linda, who works for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, is going in for surgery to correct a narrowing in her spine. It causes problems with her legs. Please pray for healing and safety.