Mr. Hate Gets a Miracle

Trying to catch up again.

Things continue to bloom in my life. There is no way I’ll capture it all.

My church is completely nuts. The Holy Spirit interrupts every service. We get prophecy and guidance, and now, even better, miracles.

In 1989, I went to Key Largo. My dad owned part of a condo at Ocean Reef. My friend–I will call him Elmer–came down from Massachusetts, and we spent a few days running around together.

Elmer is gay. In 1989, he was still denying it, but everyone who knew him from college realized it was a done deal. This was not a concern to me. As far as I knew, he was not acting on his urges, and anyway, I was not the strongest Christian around. I was about to fall away for a very long time.

We rented some jet skis. The water was rough. The machines were not maintained well. They were supposed to have rubber padding to help riders stay on their feet, but the padding was gone. As a result, the footing surfaces were slick fiberglass. It was very hard to stand up, so I spent a lot of time on my knees, trying to get up. The bouncing flexed my knees too far, and ever since then, I’ve had a little bit of stiffness that shows up at certain times. It’s a very minor thing, but it has been aggravating, and of course, I pray for God to get rid of it. I have always regretted renting that stupid jet ski.

It’s funny if you think about it. It was a winter day, and the water was not clear. I was bouncing around, on my knees, in rough water where I could not stand. The Bible says dark waters have covered the earth (Genesis 1:2). Waters represent speech. They represent blessings and cursings. Satan has wrapped the earth in a flood of lies, and the gay push is a big part of that.

On Tuesday, right in the middle of the gay marriage kerfuffle, I went to church. People were praying and praising, as usual. We went on for a very long time. The pastor and musical guest managed to do their jobs; God didn’t completely obliterate what they were trying to do.

While the pastor was talking, I felt something going on in my right knee. I felt a pulsing, massaging sensation. I knew it might be God, but I also knew it could be a twitch or some other purely physical thing. I moved my leg. The sensation returned. I moved it again. It returned again. I decided to accept it, and it kept going for maybe ten minutes. I don’t recall, but I was probably thanking and praising God the whole time, because that’s what I do in church.

We have to stand up and sit down a lot in my church. When I stand, my knees tend to get stiff, so I get a little pain when I sit again. We stood up for some reason or other, and when I sat, my left knee felt a little pain, and there was no pain in the right knew.

For the rest of the service, I made a point of standing and sitting over and over, to see what was going on. I would stand for a few minutes and then sit. And I always got the same results.

I got up the next day and got on the exercise bike. I felt a little stiffness in the left knee. The right knee? Nothing.

I can tell the difference when I go up and down stairs. It’s very obvious.

For a long time, I’ve been praying for God to manifest himself more powerfully in our services and our daily lives, and he has been doing it. The peace and prophesy and improved worship have been with us for a while now, but I’ve also been praying for him to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out devils through us.

He has now covered “heal the sick.” He gave me a bona fide miracle. I didn’t think I’d be the one he chose, but I’ll take it!

And the funny thing is that he did it at the time of the gay marriage mess. I’m very outspoken in my opposition to this change in our laws. A total acceptance of sexual perversion will lead to increased persecution of Christians. It already has. It will prevent gays and those who support their bad behavior from getting to know the Holy Spirit. It will keep power out of their lives. It will keep things like healing and peace away from them. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. You can’t demand iniquity AND the Holy Spirit. You have to choose.

People are accusing me of “hate,” which is not only dishonest but idiotic. Some of the most likable people on earth are homosexual. It would not be easy to hate Nathan Lane, for example.

The healing fixed my leg, and it also gave me an opportunity to mention the circumstances. It’s hard for the liars to reconcile my willingness to spend a weekend with a gay man with “hate.”

I still hear from Elmer from time to time. He has no problems with me. Maybe hate doesn’t bother him! I keep praying for him. He is very angry and bitter. He talks about killing his ex-boyfriend. He made tons of money and lost it all, and then he got banned from the industry in which he made it. Life is hard for him. I would like to see God turn that around for him. He’s a hardcore atheist.

It’s funny. I’m standing up for God, over the dark waters. And he fixed one of my legs. What does that mean? Does it mean I’m part of the way to where he wants me to be?

The music goes well. I will probably repeat things I’ve written about earlier. I got a new digital piano. Sam Ash sold me a floor model. I tried to save money. At first I was just composing on it, so I didn’t work the keys much, and I didn’t see any problems. Then I started working on “Bumble Boogie,” which is something I really want to learn. A finger started getting sore. I discovered a chip in one of the keys. Because I was hitting the key a lot, it was hurting my finger.

I was within the return period. I figured the Sam Ash people would give me the runaround, but I prayed before taking it back, and they were incredible. They gave me a new piano for the same price. Now I use it all the time.

I’m playing again. I can play “Linus and Lucy.” I can play “Walking Bass Blues.” I am getting a few other pieces back. I found sheet music for “Roll ’em Pete,” which amazed me. I’ve always wanted to play this piece, but I thought no one had transcribed it.

My interval training has solidified to the point where it’s just maintenance. I can identify any interval within an octave by hearing it once, ascending or descending. I dug out some sight-reading software (notes without rhythm), and I’m doing really well. I’m doing rhythm training with two different programs, and it’s paying off.

In the past, I could not get all of my teaching software to work. It had MIDI bugs. When I dusted it off and got it going again, I found that there were updates that fixed the problems. Now it runs as it should.

I learned to play Clair de Lune a long time ago. I could not count out the notes. Not well, anyway. It’s 9/8 time. I just tried to play it the way it sounded on CDs. I sat down with it the other day, and now I have no problem counting them out. When I learned it the first time, I had to guess. My teacher was a great guy, but he really led me in circles. He didn’t know any better. Now things are working. The other day, my pastor prophesied that we would now be able to plant seeds, and they would grow. It’s not like the old days, when everything I did withered. I’m living in Joshua, not Deuteronomy.

If you want to learn an instrument, learn to sight-read. Learn to read rhythms, especially. Rhythm is much more important than pitch. Get it into your heart so you feel and hear it when you read. Otherwise, you’ll have to work by monkey-see-monkey-do memorization all your life, and when you forget things, you’re toast. The fundamentals matter. A drummer who can read rhythm patterns is a better musician than a pianist who memorizes.

Prayer in tongues continues to pay off. The message of tongues is confirmed over and over again by my experience. The growth never stops. It brings supernatural faith, revelation, correction, and miracles. Without it, you will be weak when the rains come. Right now, Satan is raining lies all over us, trying to promote gay marriage. Weak Christians who lack the Spirit are washing away, like houses built on sand. They will believe anything people tell them. They are herd creatures who can hear peer pressure but not the voice of God. They haven’t seen God work in their lives, so they feel he is far away and aloof, and that it’s okay to go along to get along. They don’t think he’ll show up to defend them or to punish those who go against him.

I can stand because God helps me through the Holy Spirit. He has shown me that by fighting habitual anger, I lose fear and anxiety. They are a package. You can’t have one without the other. When you’re angry or worried, you’re weak. Worry and fear counteract faith, which is the thing that gets prayers answered. I’m not as afraid as I used to be. People are small before God, and Satan is not a roaring lion. He appears AS a roaring lion, but he’s really a barking Chihuahua in a lion suit, holding a megaphone. He’s the weak one. He is a mere angel. He is nothing before the one who created him, or before those who are close to God.

We tend to think of the world as a place ruled by two great powers: God and Satan. That’s completely wrong. There is only one great power. Satan is puffed up with BS. He’s like Liberace. Take off the jewels, the toupee, the sequined suit, the cape, and the wire harness that allows him to fly, and what do you have? An old mortal man. A second-tier pianist.

When the time comes, God will send one angel to take him by the neck and dump him in the Lake of Fire. He could not do that to a God. Right now, Satan serves a purpose, so he is permitted to survive, but when his day comes, he will look as small as he really is, and people will say, “‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, Who shook kingdoms? (Isaiah 14:16).”

Eventually, the world will say that, but if you are strong in the Spirit, you can say it NOW. Satan will still be a problem, but he will be a problem of a much smaller scale. Jesus was not afraid of him in the least, and we are not supposed to fear him, either.

I hope people will pray that God will soften the hearts of homosexuals so they can be reached, and that he will help us to repent and pray so he can give us the supernatural tools we need to get people delivered from sinful compulsions. If we can give gays a real way out, many of them will take it, gladly. We have failed them by turning down supernatural power, whining about our unworthiness and how much we deserve to be weak. What we deserve is irrelevant. We are heirs, not wage earners, and if we turn down our inheritance, we displease the testator. Groveling and accepting crumbs is not the way to make him happy. You have to learn to accept what you did not earn.