You May be Next

If I pray for someone, and that person gets what he needs, it does not mean I’m special or that I have a gift. It just means God did something generous and I was in the supply chain.

That being said, let me refer you back to November 22. I mentioned a prayer request I got from a reader. This lady said her husband was severely alcoholic and had been for several decades. Before I managed to get the request blogged, she sent this:

“Steve,
did you pray for him or something? WHile he was sleeping it off today he saw in him mind’s eye a beer can and “heard” the statement that he was giving his whole life to alchohol. Uh, wowie.
Don’t let up and I won’t either.

He was pretty sober when he woke up and I was friendly and told him that that well, you got a pretty clear message.

Amazed,
_____”

I was shocked.

It gets better. Look what I received today:

I think I should let you know how the miracle is going.

After the day he received the message about his beer he had to try to drink a little one more time. He ended up terribly drunk one more time. He slept for about 36 hours and woke up and told me he couldn’t drink
even one beer. That it just doesn’t work for him. No kidding?

He is doing fine. He was told by doctors that he would become ill if he tried to just quit because of the level of his alcoholism. But he hasn’t become ill at all. He is just fine. Now the scary part is trying to grow a relationship with him again. This is not nothing. Forty years of me taking care of him while he gets drunk whenever he is not at work is hard on the old relationship.

I am excited for the grandchildren who live with us, and his kids, to see him become sober. It will be quite a witness to them. Only God could have stopped him. He always stated that he had no interest in stopping. I sound a little flat I know. But I am a little scared. Trying to have faith and be encouraging to him.

Thank you for prayers, Means more than you will ever know.

I want to point something out. I didn’t get much prayer in before the first miracle, but God performed it anyway. Since then, readers have been praying, and I have kept this man on my daily prayer list. I have put some effort into it, but it hasn’t been the focus of my life. I don’t want anyone to even dream of giving me credit. Even if I had been praying and fasting around the clock, only God could have made this happen.

I hope people who read this will be encouraged. God delivers people from addiction and strong habits that are harmful. This case is a little unusual, but then so was my case. Over the course of a day, I was delivered from gluttony and given increased self-control in other areas. Sometimes God acts very quickly. When he doesn’t, it should not discourage you. Your answer may be coming later.

I just don’t know what to say about this story. If any Christians have advice for these people, I hope they will feel free to leave it in comments. Satan will surely try to reverse this miracle, and they need to be ready.

Man, We’re Old

Someone suggested I fix my dubious Lodge skillet by machining it. I have considered that, but I would have to be able to mount it on my rotary table, and that would be a pretty good trick. The table is not as wide as the skillet, so I’d have to put a plate on it, and the plate’s thickness would have to be extremely uniform. If it weren’t uniform, I’d get a skillet that wasn’t uniform. Which is what I already have.

Not sure what to do about that.

The plate would also have to be perfectly flat and very rigid.

I’m going to try to get a couple of bigger Griswold skillets. Now that my bone-filled head has accepted the time-honored wisdom about cleaning skillets with salt and a spatula, I am not as reluctant to use them as I used to be. I’d go ahead and use the Lodge, but one side gets hotter than the other due to the varying bottom thickness.

Hmm…maybe I should boil a little water in one of my Griswolds and make sure they don’t have this problem. If they heat unevenly, I have less motivation to get more of them.

You can get Griswolds fairly cheap on Ebay, but if you get picky about features, the cost goes up. And the bigger skillets can be extremely expensive unless you get lucky. One thing I can say about them: you only pay once. I’m buying used items that are up to 70 years old and nearly like new.

I want one or two more matching skillets before I give up and go cheap. I think the size 13 jobs (and whatever comes after them) will have to remain an unrealized dream. If I paid over $300 for a skillet, I’d have to have myself institutionalized to find out why. The big ones can cost that much.

I’m really looking forward to church this week. It’s the first week of the month, so we’ll be having Breakthrough Wednesday. This is a fantastic service. It’s not as regimented as the regular services. There are tables up front and in the back for communion, and there are people available to pray for you. The worship is very intense. I love it.

I’m going to be an “armorbearer,” which means I’ll be helping the church out as needed. One of my duties will be to put on a two-way radio and wander around keeping an eye on things. I had to buy my own “surveillance set,” which is what they call the microphone and the earpiece with the squiggly cord that runs up your neck. The church has radios, but the surveillance sets have a way of vanishing. I think people just don’t want to share them, which is understandable. I sure don’t want to. Yech.

God has been so kind to me, helping me to find purpose in life. Works don’t get you into heaven, but they help determine what heaven is like for you, and besides, they allow you to express your love for other people and your gratitude for God. I’m way behind, so any opportunity he gives me is appreciated.

Speaking of God’s kindness, Aaron just had a grandson! Unbelievable! I’ll be praying his mom recovers fast, and that he has a life of blessings and righteousness. Perhaps you will join me.

Another thing you might want to pray about: reader Dave Rodenborn lost his African grey parrot, Splint. The poor little guy wasn’t trimmed correctly, and he managed to fly out Dave’s front door. Dave is in California, so the weather shouldn’t be too hard on Splint. Many greys are recovered; they don’t like to fly far in the first month. I truly hope Dave gets another chance. Nothing is worse than knowing your mistake harmed your pet.

Grace

I am so thankful. Today I made pies, cranberry sauce, and cornbread dressing. I generally pig out on Thanksgiving and the day before, because it’s just too hard to be good. I have to taste the food while I cook it, and it’s very hard to resist eating the extra cornbread, not to mention the bacon I have to fry to get the grease. But today I forgot to eat lunch and had to make myself have home-canned chili at about 6 p.m. While I was eating it, I got a little concerned about my calorie total for the day, and I dumped a third of the chili and part of my Coke.

I could never do things like that in the past.

I have a big bag of size 34 Old Navy cargo shorts I have to get rid of. They’re going to Goodwill, along with my size 36 Levis and size 35 Ralph Lauren shorts. In a month or so, I expect to be getting tired of the size 32s I’m wearing now. They’re really more like 34s, but still, it will be great to downsize out of them.

“Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” Who, more than I, knows this to be true? I love and enjoy life more than ever, yet I am less and less attached to it. I don’t put my hope in it. Is this the way it’s supposed to work–have I been led to the blessings God intends for all of us to have–or am I just deluded?

Holding on to things out of fear is one of the fundamental errors of mankind. It’s bad for artists. It’s bad for investors. It’s bad for people who need to flee countries in turmoil. And it’s what we do when we insist on doing things our own way and trying to achieve happiness by earthly means. Over and over, the Bible tells us the same thing: give up what you treasure, and God will give you something better. Jump, and he will catch you.

Give the priests your first fruits, before you know the rest of the harvest is going to come in. Give them your best ten percent, in hopes that God’s blessing will outweigh the loss. Sacrifice the son through whom God said you would have descendants as numerous as the stars. Give your last handful of meal to a prophet, in the midst of a famine. Die on a cross so you can sit at God’s right hand and save the world. Follow in Jesus’s footsteps and count yourself part of the sacrifice, in order to have a fuller life here and perfect satisfaction in the world to come. Give up your own strength of character, in order to be given God’s. Over and over, we are told to exchange that which we can see and touch for that which we have been promised.

I love this life, but if I prize it too highly, it will be a curse to me. A bowl of pottage for me to eat, when I could have had a glorious birthright.

Luckily for me, it would be hard not to trust God, when things are going this well. I wish everyone had it so easy, and I wonder what it’s like for people who are farther along in faith and obedience and even more blessed. I wonder how they stand it.

A few weeks back, I was having a day when I kept feeling the presence of God very powerfully in my prayers, and it became so intense that at one point, I was a little afraid to continue, because I thought it would be too much. That was stupid of me, but the story says a lot about what is possible.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I hope every one of you will become at least as rich as I am.

Scale is Immaterial

I’ll tell you what. Don’t even try to tell me God doesn’t work little miracles in our lives. I have two pones of mouth-watering cornbread baked, the whole place smells like pumpkin pie, there is country ham in the kitchen, I have ham hocks in the fridge, the just-made cranberry sauce is cooling…and I keep forgetting to eat lunch.

Turkey and Antibiotics

My pastor’s daughter-in-law is in the hospital. She has had a respiratory problem for a while, and it hasn’t cleared up. They hospitalized her because it had become very severe. I just found out.

This is a scary thing. Please do me a favor and offer a prayer. Her name is Dawnchere, and she is also a pastor at my church.

Mr. Turkey Will be Spinning in His Grave

Have you read about the canned pumpkin shortage? My dad saw the story somewhere. I have since obtained two cans of pumpkin, so I’m not worried. Maybe you should run out and shop.

I should have been satisfied with one can, which would be enough for one pie. But I always make two. Even though I’m not a big pumpkin pie fan.

One thing I learned that you might want to try: sushi ginger will really liven up a pie. I ran out of cruddy powdered ginger a few years back, and pickled ginger was all I had, so I used it. It was much better than the canned stuff.

I have to thank Mike for the rotisserie turkey idea. It will free up oven space for dressing and yams, and I think my dad will get a charge out of using his Showtime oven. I never dreamed he’d be cooking the turkey. Another plus: it may enable me to take time out to go to my church’s Thanksgiving service.

I have to get started today. I’ll make a couple of pones of cornbread, I guess. Pies tomorrow. And I can boil the yams and potatoes tomorrow and put them in the fridge.

I don’t think I have a dressing recipe. I meant to write down the proportions of the ingredients last time, but I failed. I guess it doesn’t matter. It always comes out perfect.

I would love to stuff the bird with stuffing laced with my homemade pork sausage. That would be tremendous. But Mike advises against stuffing rotisserie birds.

Reader Ruth says:

I don’t want to be an old granny about this but…
Remember what Jimmah Cartah said about lusting in his heart,
well, I think you are lusting after food in your heart.

She’s kidding, but I’ve found that it’s completely possible to covet food. During fasts, I used to think about the stuff I would eat the following mornings. “Covet” means more than “want.” It means “to set your heart on.” That’s what I did. I set my heart on things like McDonald’s breakfasts. I was determined to have them, come hell or high water.

That’s bad. When you set your heart on things, you don’t allow for change. And sometimes change is the right thing. For example, you might decide to fast for a day, and then toward the end, you might feel led to go on and make it two or three days. But what if you’ve set your heart at having pizza? It will be really hard to give that up. If you can’t alter course, you’ll miss whatever God intended you to get.

I’ve found that it’s possible to covet things I already have. One example is money. Sometimes I feel like I should give an offering, and something inside me wants to hold onto it. And most Christians covet their tithes, which already belong to God, even though they’re in our possession. Robert Morris notes that the Bible doesn’t tell us to “give” God tithes. It says to “bring” them. You can’t give what you don’t own.

I don’t think it’s wrong to see things other people have and feel brief moments of desire. That’s not setting your heart on them, and it would be somewhat abnormal not to want good things. But it’s definitely wrong to obsess on them and think of ways to get them.

Abraham was told that all sorts of wonderful things would happen to his descendants, but he was told to kill Isaac. Maybe his obedience shows that he refused to set his heart on the things he was promised, because his true wealth was his relationship with God. On the other hand, it has been suggested that he simply trusted God to bring Isaac back to life.

When I used to have one or two “fat days” per week, I was jam-packed with covetousness. I had to have those days to keep from going crazy. I don’t do that any more. I don’t even eat breakfast at McDonald’s on a regular basis. That was a cherished Saturday ritual. But breaks and days off are for people who are under a strain. Now that God has removed gluttony from my life and given me strength to behave, I’m not straining to avoid overeating. I make a little effort, but not much.

Recently I realized I was excessively fond of my morning coffee. I looked forward to it even before I went to bed. And most of the reason was the caffeine, which helped me figure out which planet I was on in the dim hours of early morning. This week I decided to give it a rest. I won’t have coffee or any caffeine-heavy beverage until at least Friday. I don’t want anything to have that kind of hold on me.

I enjoy things more, now that I don’t give myself everything I want. I enjoy food and money a great deal more. I don’t have wanton eating sessions, and I think more and pray more before I spend. These things help more than you would imagine. An old Yiddish proverb says, “Di gor rayche zaynen di vos zaynen zat mit dos vos zey hobn,” or, ”The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.” Boy, is that true. If you enjoy what you have, greed won’t be a problem for you.

This afternoon I’m going to the hospital with my sister. We’re going to talk to her radiation oncologist, to get information about prophylactic cranial irradiation. This is the last stage of her cancer treatment. I would appreciate it if people would offer some prayers. It’s a very hard decision to make. They’re telling her she may lose a few IQ points. It has to be hard, risking a thing like that.

Iwon Losing Comedy Demographic

Via Sondra, I saw a crude but extremely funny SNL video this morning. I can give you the basic idea. The Chinese premier or president or whatever is on a stage with Obama, and Obama tries to talk tough and self-righteous about trade issues and human rights, and the Chinese guy responds by utterly trashing Obama’s wasteful and unsuccessful economic programs, and by pointing out that we owe China $800 billion. And even though the sketch appeared on one of liberal NBC’s most liberal shows, the actor playing Obama was not given any clever responses. They made Obama look like a fool. And the New York audience howled!

Everything smart people on the right predicted about Obama is coming true. He is amateurish, embarrassing, and completely inept. He has succeeded in piling up so much debt, our future socialism is virtually assured even if he turns into a Libertarian tomorrow afternoon. His ego has become an offense to a wide segment of the American population. And he is so hostile to Israel, it is hard to conclude that anything other than heartfelt anti-Semitism can be at work.

It wouldn’t be so hard to watch, were he not a tremendous clod. I will never get over the photograph of Obama after the Presidency-debasing “beer summit.” His race-pimp professor buddy slandered a cop, and Obama followed suit, and neither was man enough to apologize. After the awkward beer drinking, the gracious cop helped the professor down the stairs. While Obama skipped toward the cameras like a kid rushing the door at Toys R Us.

I guess the consolation here is that with his popularity dropping, Obama will be skipping toward the cameras less and less. His dealings with the press will be less like full-body massages and more like trips to the principal’s office. Maybe he will be improved by the experience of facing hostile journalists for the first time in his life. I tend to doubt it. Clods have a problem perceiving their own faults, so they do a poor job of correcting themselves. Obama will probably react defensively, releasing his West Wing flying monkeys on the press at large, the way he released them on Fox News. If so, the results will be even more disastrous and humiliating. Obama got his rear end handed to him by a single cable network. If he goes after the MSM, he is going to go home to Illinois in a collection of Zip-Loc bags.

People call him Carter II. I hope that makes Sarah Palin Reagan II. We know all the dirt on her now, including dirt that was completely made up. There isn’t much left to hit her with. When Sarah Palin writes an autograph, the AP assigns a team of reporters to fact-check her signature. Old dirt isn’t as good as fresh dirt. What are they going to sling at her in 2012?

She’s a little weird, but she did a bang-up job in Alaska. Prior to resigning, I mean. And she had no choice about that. The left’s policy of criminalizing conservatism made it financially impossible for her to remain in office.

I’d vote for her in a heartbeat. She prays. She thinks for herself. She’s conservative. She’s a hardcore gun-rights supporter. She hates taxes. She isn’t corrupt. Name one other Republican who fits that description and who has a high enough profile to be elected.

I don’t know what to pray for when it comes to Obama. Do I pray he turns to God and gives up socialism and learns to be sincere, or do I pray he crashes and burns so horribly no one will be able to stomach the Democrats for forty years?

You have to pray for people to improve. That’s what I’ll do. But unless he has a life-changing Damascus Road moment, I would hate to see him in power in 2013.

I guess I can pray that the damage he does will be reversible.

Today is a great day. I have some time, and I have some things I want to do. Motorcycle repair. Machining. Yard stuff. I’m going to choose some things I think I can get done, and I’m going to get on it. The weather is right, and it’s going to be even better later this week. I no longer have the excuse of heat stroke.

Maybe I should start by vacuum-sealing all of my pork sausage.

I am always reluctant to say God told me this or that, but over the last few days I’ve felt great faith that I will be getting out of Miami before long, and that God is going to give me a career other than law. And I’ve felt faith that he’s going to do a few other major things for me. I hope this is all true, and that I will be able to avoid screwing it up.

Miami is a place that attracts cursed people. It is not a happy city. It used to make sense for my family to be here, but I think we’ve done our time. God willing, I will be found worthy of an area where the people are more conservative and more in touch with God. That would sure be nice.

My Gut Says He’s Right

I have been trying to put a respectable effort into Twitter and Facebook. I think I must be a born recluse, because I am incapable of getting excited about these services. And it disturbs me when someone I know “retweets” someone I don’t want to follow.

I am giving it the old college try, regardless.

Today on Facebook, someone asked if I was sorry to see Oprah’s show go off the air. Something like that. I had to vote “no,” partly because she promotes a professional antichrist by the name of Eckhardt Tolle.

There have been so many antichrists and gurus of real quality, it’s hard to believe people fall for this one. I could understand thinking Krishnamurti had the answer. Or Buddha. But Tolle is to antichrists as The Weekly World News is to Investor’s Business Daily. If the Dalai Lama is Olivier, Eckhardt Tolle is Yogi Bear.

Today I saw a real gem from this guy. Some poor lost soul wanted to know if it was okay to eat meat, and Tolle told her (I’m sure it was a her) to ask her body. It works like this: you think of the food, and you feel one of two things. Your body tries to open up to the food, or it contracts away from it. If your body opens up, it means the food is good for you, because “The body knows more about food than your mind ever will.”

Try this right now. I did. Apparently I should be living on pork sausage, pizza, ice cream, biscuits, country ham, and Tootsie Rolls. That’s just the list so far. If my body is right, medical science has made some terrible mistakes.

My body will open up to all sorts of stuff. Scotch. Cocaine. Ritalin (I loved that stuff). Caffeine. Premarital sex. Opiates. Even fruit-scented shampoo; when I smell it, a part of me wants to drink it. My body is getting all excited, just making this list.

My body is a moron. It probably thinks Eckhardt Tolle is the savior of the world. If my body called the shots, I would be worshiping either Naomi Campbell or Ronald McDonald.

It has to be a bummer to for a guy with Tolle’s pride to be severely outperformed by a third-tier science fiction writer who said our troubles were caused by dead people sent here in DC-8s by an alien named Xenu. And Tolle is also eating the dust of a convicted con man who pretended to read ancient Mormon mysteries off a pile of impossibly heavy gold plates contained in…a hat. And who claimed an Egyptian papyrus depicting mummification techniques was actually the collected works of Abraham.

If you’re going to fall for something, at least fall for something plausible. Don’t worship a toaster or the number 15 or a guy who shares Oprah’s private pantheon with Dr. Phil and a physician who has nearly succeeded in trademarking the word “poop.”

I wish I had some Pop Tarts. My brilliant body is really open to them right now.

Pounds and Pounds of Pleasure

The pork sausage I made is filling my life with joy.

God miraculously delivered me from gluttony. That means these days I just don’t want as much food as I used to, so I eat less. But the custom of having three meals a day is a threat. I’m not all that active, and three real meals–even if small–can be enough to prevent weight loss or cause gain. That means I have to quit eating a lot at at dinner, which is a meal I don’t particularly want to begin with. So I’m shifting the calories to earlier meals.

I’m not hungry in the morning or at night, so I think I’m going to shift the focus of my food day to lunch. That means I need to eat a respectable lunch. This is where pork sausage fits into the picture. I haven’t been able to have a good breakfast for the longest time; it just doesn’t make sense to stuff myself when I’m not hungry. But now I can have breakfast for lunch! I can use my gorgeous antique skillets, which make the best-tasting eggs imaginable! I just had two fried eggs, two sausage patties, and two pieces of toast, and I even let myself have butter!

That sausage is the bomb. It has no gamy smell, the seasoning is perfect, and it seems like the quality lard I used to bulk it up makes it fry up better than store sausage. It’s funny how simple foods can be better than fancy-shmancy dishes served at expensive restaurants. If you can make a really good cheeseburger, you won’t have the slightest interest in mastering complicated cuisine.

Maybe one reason we overeat is that our food is so unsatisfying.

Hmm…I used to overeat when I was eating really good food. Well, it was a fun theory for the ten seconds during which I entertained it.

I can’t wait to make sausage with apple juice in it. I can do that as soon as I eat the…ten and a half pounds of sausage I already have.

Argghh.

Oh…oh…turducken made with pork sausage made with apple juice instead of sugar…oh…

I need to breathe into a bag for a sec.

Let’s Move it Out of the Basement

On Friday and Saturday, I participated in the Men’s Encounter at my church. It sounds like a left-wing touchy-feely fest where men cry and admit they like to do needlepoint, but such was not the case. It was a surprisingly well-structured boot camp for charismatic Christian men who needed to be shown the way into the Holy of Holies. That’s a good way to describe it.

I left for church at about 4 p.m. on Friday, got home late, woke at 6 a.m. yesterday, and got home at 9 p.m. So you could say I had a busy couple of days.

Unfortunately, each of us had to sign a promise in which we said we would not disclose what went on. Were that not the case, I could tell you more about it. But the first rule of Faith Club is: you do not talk about Faith Club.

I guess I can make a few general remarks. We learned about forgiveness, repentance, purity, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, among other things. And the approach the church took made it clear that these things are weapons. The speakers also helped us understand that if a family or a city or a society is to change for the better, men have to lead. That’s a Biblical principle. When women or children are forced to lead–or choose to do so out of rebellion–it means things are going very badly. Men are supposed to rise out of their selfishness and protect and provide. That’s the way the universe was designed.

Some of the testimonies were amazing. I guess I can mention two, since they were revealed later at the regular church service.

One guy showed up because a friend–a talented singer who tears up the stage every weekend–invited him. He didn’t buy into prayer in tongues, but he still took part in the session in which people were baptized with the Spirit. He said that in his heart, he was sort of mocking the pastor, not expecting anything to happen. Then something rose up inside him, and he started speaking. And unlike the vast majority of people who get baptized, he understood what he was saying! Very odd.

During one part of the Encounter, I heard a real commotion going on not far from me. I won’t describe it, but I think it’s okay to say I witnessed it. In church, we heard a testimony which appeared to explain it.

A 14-year-old boy decided he was an atheist, and he told his parents. He said he would keep going to church in order to make his mother happy, but he didn’t believe any of it. Somehow, his father got him to go to the Encounter. The kid was planning to get high with his friends when it was over.

At one point , he was praying with his head down, and he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, and no one was there. But he saw a shadow on the floor. The shadow of Jesus. As he continued to pray, he saw shadows of evil faces on the floor around him, and they faded out and disappeared. I wish I could tell you what happened after that, but I can’t. To say he was affected emotionally would be putting it lightly.

It’s easy to conclude that Christian testimonies are nonsense, because they take place in churches that are imperfect. Every church has some error and some sin in it. Some churches are just plain silly. But God told us he uses foolish things to confound the wise, and it’s true. And he does astonishing works through people who are not only imperfect, but sometimes, seriously flawed and even embarrassing. It’s a hard thing to get used to. It would be nice if Christians were all super-dignified models of maturity and wisdom. But we are not.

If God can use Nebuchadnezzar, surely he can use you.

Today I turned on the PC and looked at my email, and I found an incredible testimony from a reader who asked for prayer. I didn’t get around to posting her request. I prayed about it, and I planned to blog it when I got the Encounter behind me. But God didn’t wait. He did something I can hardly believe. If she’ll allow it, I’ll blog it.

It’s impressive when I post a prayer request and something good happens, but it’s not a great shock, because so many faith-filled people read this blog. That there would be power in their prayers is not surprising. But it’s startling when the result comes before I can post the request. God still does wonders, every day.

A few weeks back, we had a women’s conference, and they had to use the entire sanctuary. This time, they used curtains to shrink the seating area, and we only had about 250 people. That shows how men are letting God down and exposing society to every possible kind of attack. We are something like forty percent of churchgoers. And we’re the ones God wants to use to reach everyone else! Every week my church is overloaded with women, because the men who should be there can’t be bothered to show up. They’re sleeping it off next to floozies or just doing their own thing. I used to be one of those men.

The Encounter is worth going to, even if you don’t go to this church. It’s open to everyone. I believe they’re having another one in a few months. I hope other churches are doing the same thing. A church without men is weak and headed for trouble. We shouldn’t let our selfishness imperil the women and children around us.

More

I got permission to blog the other testimony. At the end of a November 19 email, a reader wrote this:

“If you think of it, pray for my husband. I married him in 1970. He was 21. He soon started drinking. He has been drinking ever since then and is drunk every day. Very drunk. He is still functioning at work and all like that, but its not much of a life. His name is _____.

I appreciate all your writings and your present course especially. May God continue to bless you and your family. I know he has wonderful things for you.”

I usually put requests like this on the blog, but I was busy with the Men’s Encounter, and I was going to blog this one today. I did pray however. And here’s what she wrote at 1 a.m. on November 21:

“Steve,
did you pray for him or something? WHile he was sleeping it off today he saw in him mind’s eye a beer can and “heard” the statement that he was giving his whole life to alchohol. Uh, wowie.
Don’t let up and I won’t either.

He was pretty sober when he woke up and I was friendly and told him that that well, you got a pretty clear message.

Amazed,
_____”

How about that? God didn’t even wait for you guys to pray. Sometimes his kindness is too much to comprehend.

Tune In

One of the wonderful things about being connected to the Holy Spirit is that he constantly confirms his presence. One way he does this is by revealing the same thing to different believers, independently.

Last night I was watching Perry Stone with Marvin, and he talked about the items found in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. One such item is a huge seven-branched menorah.

A long, long time ago–maybe twenty years–it occurred to me that the menorah represented the post-resurrection baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is available to all believers. In the Bible, olive oil often represents the Holy Spirit. The Bible says there are seven Spirits of God. Light represents illumination, and the Holy Spirit illuminates, explaining things to believers from within them.

Perry Stone confirmed this in the DVD! He said the menorah represented the Holy Spirit, and he mentioned the seven spirits. That was neat. I’ve never heard any other Christian say those things, but God said them to me during the Reagan years.

He added some other interesting information. Jewish accounts tell us that God used to communicate with the Jews in the Holy of Holies, through the menorah and the 12-stoned costume the priests wore. Hebrew letters on the costume would light up, and so on. The Old Testament is full of symbols of things that came to pass in the New Testament. It makes sense to say that the communications the priests received are like the things the Holy Spirit tells Spirit-filled believers by supernatural means.

Yesterday a commenter mentioned the practice of asking the Holy Spirit for guidance. We should do this dozens of times every day. It actually works. For example, some believers think there is a spiritual gift of “discernment” which helps them tell whether a teaching comes from God or elsewhere. I think that’s probably a little off; Robert Morris says there is no gift called “discernment,” but that there is a gift called “discerning of spirits,” which means the ability to detect the presence of spirits with your ordinary senses. I’ve experienced that at least twice, including the time I got a good long look at a spirit on the wall of my house. I think what some people call “discernment” is actually either the word of knowledge or the word of wisdom.

The word of knowledge means God tells you a fact you could not have learned through natural means. Example: Jesus tells the woman at the well she has had five husbands. The word of wisdom means God gives you supernatural understanding, more or less. I think everyone knows what “wisdom” means.

It makes sense that a doctrine denying true discernment of spirits would arise. Ordinarily, evil spirits are invisible. Surely they like it that way. It would be odd if they didn’t fight the notion that they could be exposed. Also, people like to make excuses for God when the things he promises don’t seem to be materializing. If God says we’ll be able to see spirits, and then we don’t see them, it’s human nature to decide he said something else. But I’ve seen them, so it doesn’t trouble me to say this gift exists.

Robert Morris also says every believer can exercise each of the nine spiritual gifts, and that it’s a mistake to get the idea that you only get a certain number of them. I suppose that’s right. Like he says, you wouldn’t want a situation where a believer needs a certain kind of help and can’t get it because another believer with the needed gift has wandered off somewhere.

Anyway, a Spirit-filled believer can ask for guidance and receive it in a hurry.

God reveals the same things to different believers at different times and in different places, and one good conclusion to take away from that is that you should be humble when the Spirit works through you. If God tells you something, it’s not because you’re wonderful or because he needs your help. It’s because he’s wonderful and you need HIS help. God can reveal his mysteries to a chair or a rock if he feels like it. If he tells you something, you have nothing to be proud of. It’s no reflection on your or your brilliance or your super righteousness.

It’s natural to feel important when God works through you, and it’s natural to admire people through whom God works. But “natural” is bad. We’re not supposed to be natural. Apes are natural. Like Rose Sayer said in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above.”

Pride is a tough thing to fight, because it’s so sneaky. It takes so many shapes, it’s not always easy to spot. I think many of us are going to get humbling lessons at judgment, when we find out how little we earned, after lifetimes of doing impressive things via God’s power. It’s impossible to know who is really making God happy, or whom he will reward. I think many of the people at the top of the list will be nobodies who barely got noticed at their churches. I don’t think the list of notables will be heavy with mega-church pastors and TV preachers.

God told me some stuff. He told other people the same stuff. I didn’t deserve it, and it wasn’t my stuff. It didn’t come from my mind. It was all handouts and alms. I try to remember that I am a welfare case.

Today I was working on my latest psalm, which is number 32. I thought I understood it pretty well when I chose it, but now I see that I was wrong. It’s largely about the necessity of being honest with God. People complain that their prayers aren’t answered, when they’re holding onto worldliness and sin and rationalizing what they do. If you want God to do what you ask, you should confess everything you can think of (in addition to making sure you’re not asking for stupid things like a pony or a closetful of Jimmy Choos). Paul made it clear that holding onto sin and iniquity (the inclination to sin) could result in the destruction of the flesh. You can become very miserable and physically sick from it; this is why communion, with real confession and repentance, are important. It’s why you have to forgive.

The fifteenth psalm says you have to speak the truth in your heart if you want God to give you a victorious life.

This is important to me because I know a couple of people who have terrible problems and who need to forgive and repent, yet who are pretty far from the turning point. I’m trying to be honest with God in my own life, for fear of earthly misery. It happens. It’s not a joke. This stuff is like pus inside a wound that has only healed on the surface. It will break out over and over. You have to debride the wound and get the garbage out.

Now that I think about it, this was the main subject of Perry Stone’s DVD. He was talking about the things Christians do that give Satan legal access to their bodies, minds, and spirits. He’s right. Running around claiming your rights won’t work, if you’re still rebelling. The notion that faith, all by itself, will keep you safe is not correct. If it were, you wouldn’t have much incentive to keep growing and improving.

We’ve promoted a lot of dumb “name it and claim it” ideas that put our desires above Matthew 6.33. Above God’s desires. “Believe for” a Bentley all you want. You only get what God thinks you should have.

Three

I have an email I need to acknowledge.

We got some really good news the other day, and I have still been trying to gather my thoughts to send an email to everyone.
Mom had a colonoscopy on Nov. 3, it went wonderfully-the cancer had not spread to her colon, only one small polyp that the doctor felt sure would be benign when it came back from pathology, and a very mild case of diverticulosis which can be managed with more fiber, and bleeding internal hemorrhoids causing her anemia.
This week on Monday Nov. 9, we went to see her radiation oncologist. She examined mom and said that the cervix was pink, healthy and soft. The tumors were getting very small. We told her that we gave the credit and the Glory to the Lord.
So that’s all we know for now.
Just keep us in your prayers.

That’s from Heather.

Also, reader N5 has mentioned his desire to get help getting off booze. He is interested in finding a church in his area. My pastor has been looking for one to recommend, but he’s so busy he barely has time to breathe right now. Maybe some of you would like to hold N5 up in prayer.

If it were me, I’d spend at least a day in fasting and prayer, and I’d repent of addiction on my own behalf and that of my family. And I’d cast it out. Jesus said fasting and prayer would enable us to cast out demons in his name.

Another reader wants prayer for an employment problem, but he hasn’t given me permission to mention his name or Internet handle yet. I have a feeling God will know who you’re referring to if you pray for him.

No Thanks

I quit reading Larry Huch’s The Torah Blessing. I wanted to give it a chance, but the more I read, the more I felt it was not for me.

These days, charismatics are very interested in Christianity’s debt to Judaism, so we love learning about it from any source that will teach us. We are obsessively supporting Israel, and we worry that the US is going to be punished for the way it has betrayed her. And we want to know where our faith came from.

The danger here is that we will end up Judaizing the church. This is something Paul fought. Certain Jews in the early church tried to force circumcision and other parts of the law on non-Jewish believers, and Paul made it clear that this was wrong. The Mosaic law has never been imposed on Gentiles. To this day, Orthodox Jews think it’s absurd to talk about Gentiles observing halaka. Judaism is not like Islam, which is so intolerant its adherents in the Middle East and other parts of Asia feel entitled to sponsor murder in non-Muslim countries because far-off infidels have disobeyed Mohammed.

There are Messianics all over the US, and like the Orthodox, they don’t believe in Judaizing the rest of us. It makes no sense to take laws that God clearly intended to set Jews apart, and apply them to people who are not Jews.

I had a funny experience a couple of weeks back. The word “tikkun” kept rolling around in my head, and I could not remember what it meant. I Googled it, and I came across a Messianic website which belongs to Tikkun Ministries. The rabbi who runs it is named Dan Juster. I didn’t look closely at the site. I just wanted to find out what “tikkun” meant, and once I had accomplished that, I moved on.

I have a new friend; she works for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. She sometimes sends me interesting links about Israel and Christianity. A few days after my Googling experience, she emailed me an article written by Dan Juster! Very odd. Here is an excerpt:

First I want to firmly counter a false theology that has grown up, mostly among Gentile Yeshua believers who believe that the recovery of Jewish roots requires that they embrace the Jewish dimensions of calling rooted in the Torah and reject Christian tradition. They attack the Church because they worship on Sunday and celebrate the resurrection on the “wrong” day of the year. As I argued in a past article (see, Calendar Confusion, March 2009), finding the exact right day for celebration was much harder than most suspected, even within ancient Judaism. The point here is that while God has ordained specific days of rest and celebration for the Jewish people, He has not required any specific days of rest for the nations: neither the seventh day Sabbath nor the Feast days.

You can find the rest here. What he says makes perfect sense to me.

Larry Huch recommends that Gentiles pray wearing Jewish shawls. He says we are to observe the Jewish (Saturday) Sabbath, including a traditional Sabbath dinner. We’re supposed to light candles and put an alms box on the table and do a lot of other things Jews do on Friday night. I don’t know what else he recommends; when I got to the stuff about the Sabbath, I felt I was not going to benefit from reading further, so I stopped. I think he’s wrong, and I think his interpretation of “supporting” scriptures is erroneous.

What he’s asking is way too much. Judaism and its practices and observances are eternal, and every Christian should learn about these things, but I’m not about to buy tefillen, give up pork, invest in an eruv, stop wearing shorts in public, wear a yarmulke, grow sidecurls, observe a yeast-free Passover week, build a booth on Succoth, or learn and observe the 613 commandments. I am not a Jew. Being a Jew is a lot of work; I have enough on my plate. Pork included.

What Huch teaches seems like legalism to me. He gets around this by saying we’re not “required” to do all these things, but that they please God and provide “points of contact” and such so our faith can be turned into results. I don’t buy that. The difference between saying something is mandatory and saying it’s something God likes us to do is nearly meaningless to a Christian. We don’t live under the law; many things we do for God could be described as discretionary, but we do them as though they were commanded. When you tell a Christian God likes it when he does something, it’s nearly the same thing as making it a commandment.

Here are the things that seem important to me: get salvation, get baptized in the Spirit, pray in tongues long and often, study the Bible, give offerings and alms, repent every chance you get, fast, take authority over evil spirits in order to overcome your chronic sins, do good things for others, pray with your understanding (including simple conversation with God), and support your church. That’s most of it. Don’t worry about finding a red heifer or avoiding shrimp. I can’t speak for Messianic Jews, but if you’re a Gentile, God could not care less about those things. Why keep sending checks to the bank when someone else has paid off your mortgage?

I’m afraid Judaizers will fall into disfavor, as they should, and that the fallout will splatter on non-Judaizers who provide beneficial teachings about the Old Testament and Judaism. Perry Stone is such a teacher.

People are not all that bright; that’s a fact of life. Most human beings will have a hard time seeing the distinction.

Last night I watched a wonderful Perry Stone video about depriving Satan of the authority to enter your “temple,” or your body, mind, and spirit. He presented it at a conference in Dalton, Georgia a few years ago. He had large models of items from Solomon’s Temple on the stage, and he explained the symbolic significance of each. I loved it. I would recommend it to anyone. He didn’t say we had to sacrifice bulls or burn incense or bake shewbread, however. He wasn’t wearing a prayer shawl or a yarmulke, and he didn’t dip hyssop in a bowl of blood. I am one hundred percent behind this kind of teaching. The Judaizing stuff…not so much.

Mr. Kalashnikov’s Latest Must-Have

Last night I finally got to work on my Saiga 12 conversion.

For those of you who are behind the Bible-and-gun-clinging curve, the Saiga 12 is an AK-47 12-gauge shotgun. It’s magical. Low recoil, a clip instead of a tubular magazine [someone tell me the right name for “clip” and I’ll put it in, but “magazine” obviously doesn’t work], and AK reliability and simplicity, plus you can get one for 500 bucks. Hmm…way over a thousand for a Gucci semiauto that holds fewer rounds and has a lame tubular magazine, or $500 for an AK that shoots buckshot? Real hard choice there.

For reasons too boring to go into, the government makes the Russians put a bunch of pansy parts on the Saiga, in order to make it resemble a sporting gun. Picture yourself hunting ducks with this thing. Insane. As soon as you buy one, you’re supposed to buy other parts to make it work properly. You move the trigger forward, add a pistol grip, and get rid of the silly Elmer-Fudd-style buttstock. You can also get magazines holding up to 12 rounds, but for some reason, the 8-round jobs are favored.

You have to drill out rivets and mill off unneeded tabs and so on. I got my parts a long time ago, but I didn’t have machine tools, so I put off doing the conversion. Last night I decided to attack.

The milling machine made the work a lot less nerve-wracking. I got the rivets out without damaging the gun. Putting the new fire control group (“trigger and stuff”) in the gun was a horror. The Tapco parts I ordered did not come with instructions, so there was a lot of painful trial and error. My fingers are sore today, but I got the parts in there. I still have to add everything up and make sure the result is legal.

Now the trigger spring needs to be bent. Kalashnikovs come with strange springs made of twisted wires, and they’re sloppily made. The one I have isn’t bent correctly. It didn’t matter with the old parts, but the new parts don’t like it. Only one arm of the spring is doing anything, so there isn’t much pressure on the trigger, which means it can release the hammer with very little provocation. As a result, when you cock the gun, it doesn’t stay cocked. The hammer falls when the bolt goes forward. I would guess that if I tried to shoot it, the result would be rapid fire, followed by hilarity with the range officers and the power-mad goons fine public servants at the BATF.

I wanted to ship the gun to a smith who does conversions, but thanks to Obama, they are backed up until the year 3000.

The finish on this gun is horrible. It’s a crinkly black coating which flakes off when you look at it hard. And the area that used to be covered by the old trigger guard is bare. I’m going to have to put something on it. I’ll take a look and see if the professionals are still backed up. If not, I’ll send it off. If I can’t do that, I’ll have to use one of the coatings they sell for home use. That will require blasting the parts. What a pain. On the up side, the sight of me doing this in the front yard will have a positive effect on the attitudes of my neighbors.

In the meantime, I guess I can cover the bare areas with Super Blue.

I still have to mill some stuff off. It makes me nervous, putting the gun in my machining vise. I put wooden shims beside it and paper towels under it. Seems to work.

It looks like the Jacobs chuck I got on Ebay, trying to save money, is a piece of junk. With a small drill bit, the runout nearly exceeds the bit’s diameter. With a large bit, the chuck keeps falling off the arbor. I don’t think the arbor is the problem. I can indicate it and see. My used Albrecht chuck is perfect; I just assumed a Jacobs chuck that looked good in photos would be okay. Wrong.

My father is all interested in Martin County, which is up the coast a ways. He wants a waterfront place. I would much prefer inland. I want land around me when cling to my reactionary paraphernalia and grow food and can beans. A waterfront house on half an acre costs more than a mansion–that term is no exaggeration–on five or ten acres farther inland.

The older I get, the less boating does for me. It’s a lot of work. The boat always has mechanical problems which I have to fix (or fail to fix after hours in the sweaty, greasy bilge). I invariably get sunburned. I can’t get my friends to learn to do things for themselves, like tying knots and rigging baits, and they often show up hung over. Also, Miami boaters are even ruder than Miami landlubbers, which is saying a great deal. They make fishing unpleasant. My dad enjoys it tremendously, though, so that makes it worthwhile for me. It appears that it will negatively affect our choice of properties, however.

Given the giant differential between waterfront and inland real estate prices, coupled with the collapse of the Florida real estate market, I suppose there is no reason why I couldn’t get some land of my own, not too far from our compound. That would mean paying for additional razor wire and land mines. And of course, a second pair of Rottweilers trained to eat Jehovah’s Witnesses, Omaha Steaks representatives, and mimes. And burglars and murderers, I guess, although they don’t disturb me nearly as much.

Have you seen the Omaha Steaks people? Them and the other food truck guys? It’s very sad. The companies that sell this dubious food convince them to blow their savings on refrigerated pickups full of things no one wants, and here is their sales secret: knock on the door, start backing up toward your truck, and say you want to show the mark something. If you want to freak one out, don’t budge. The natural human instinct is to follow someone who says he wants to show you something. If you don’t move, it ruins the pitch.

You never see those guys twice. I guess they all go out of business. It’s awful to con someone into investing in a business you know is almost certain to fail. Especially when it involves sales, which is full of psychic trauma to begin with.

If I were going north by myself, I’d be looking at northern Georgia and southern Tennessee. I love Eastern Kentucky, but it’s a depressing place. People just don’t do well there; it’s as if the land rejects them. And the corruption, racism, and unnecessary ignorance wear me down. It’s bad enough that I have to hear the word “nigger” in rap music pouring out of car windows. I don’t need to hear it from people I know, in my own living room. One of the great things about charismatic churches in the South is that they’re destroying racism. It would be nice to live in an area where charismatics are big.

Some areas of Appalachia are more blessed than others; that’s the simple truth. Maybe I could find one. I keep thinking about the area around Chattanooga. Check this property out: CLICK. How about that? Room for a garden! It also has a basement for MACHINE TOOLS. The price is $265,000, so call it 250. Down here, that gets you a 2-bedroom shed in Little Havana with a Cuban-style paved yard. And this house is in an area full of holy rollers, so I’ll fit right in. “The Lord told me I needed a surface grinder and a Barrett .50-caliber rifle.” “You TOO?” “I got a couple I’m trying to sell.” “My mom is believing for a new AR-15.”

Somebody I believe to be honest and in touch with God claims the US is headed for a famine. He says this has been revealed to him. I wonder if it’s true. So many Christians are bugging out.

I can’t relate to the desire to be in a big flashy town. I have always been disgusted and bored by social climbing, and I cook so well, I have little enthusiasm for restaurants. Cultural offerings tend to be pretty sordid these days. I don’t go to movies or concerts. I have never had any inclination to support a sports team associated with a city; I find the concept perverse and tiresome. There is a kind of shallowness associated with a desire to be in big, well-known cities. I would rather live among nice people, with a little ground around me. Hopefully God will see fit to find the right place for me.

First Hurdle Cleared

I’m sorry to keep everyone waiting. The oncologist was not able to find any cancer on my sister’s scan. This is the best result she could have hoped for. Thanks for praying. Only God could have done this.

He sat her down and told her the statistics, and he gave her his advice on cranial irradiation. This took the shine off the good news, so she’s not feeling great. But she got an A+ today; no two ways about it.