Lessons From Rehab

Having To Put Life Together Again

The Lord sure does have His unique ways of getting His points across. Several weeks ago I fell, tripping over the wire for the doggie run and landed on the concrete on my patio at 11:30 one night while letting my dog out before going to bed.  Oh the pain. Surely I didn’t break my hip…… did I?  The answer came soon enough. 

Somehow I skootched myself back inside to the front door of my apartment and began calling for help. I had been reduced to being a television commercial, hollering, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”  Fortunately, after a while, one of my neighbors heard me and came bearing a cell phone so I called my daughter Ellen first who lives around the corner, then realizing there was nothing she could do, I called 911. And thus my adventure began. 

Weeks before the Lord had been telling me I needed to rest. Not just rest in Him, but rest from all the activities I was involved with. I was admittedly exhausted, but how do you stop? So much to do, so many people to be with. I loved what I was doing, and presumed that I was doing it all for God and it all was His will; evidently such was not the case.  My thought was that what I was doing, despite the fact that I was always pushing past fatigue, was all part of serving Him. I then heard Him clearly say, “If you had something wrong with you, you would rest. So rest so you don’t have to have something wrong with you.”  Oh dear. Well, that got my attention.

I knew it was time to obey. I knew I had to take time off, a sabbatical. I talked it over with my pastor who said that when God asks you to rest like that, He often has something else He wants you to do. I cancelled my classes and Shabbat Service. I finished speaking engagements including in NC and settled into the intended rest. Only I didn’t know how to rest. Phone calls came, emails, lunches, dinners, people who wanted to talk and I wanted to talk with. A possible home fellowship start-up came to an abrupt halt as if God had pulled the plug before it even got started. But most of all, I didn’t know how to turn off my brain. I had been going and doing for so long, I couldn’t seem to turn it off.  

One day I said to the Lord, “I need you to show me what you mean by rest. I don’t seem to know how.  My internal motor is still running. What is Your idea of rest, Lord, and how do I get there?”  That night I fell.  I’m inclined to say the Lord stuck out His foot and tripped me in answer to my prayer that afternoon.  You don’t think God does things like that? Didn’t He discipline Israel when they needed it? Didn’t He impose years of not working the Land while in exile when they didn’t keep the Shabbats for 70 years? This wasn’t quite of that magnitude but I was getting the point.  

I later recalled a conversation I had years ago with a woman named Sandy Dodson (now with the Lord) who ministered in the power of the Holy Spirit in a conference for three entire days. I myself was healed of something that had been with me since my teens. I met her in the ladies room on the last day and said to her,, “ You must be exhausted after putting out all that energy for people.” But her response was this:  “God doesn’t use up His people. If you’re exhausted, then you’re ministering in the flesh and not the Spirit and you better find out where.”  Wish I’d remembered that earlier. 

And so began my saga of hip surgery and then rehab. I never knew this kind of pain and incapacitation. I’ve had to learn to walk all over again. But more importantly, the Lord has been teaching me how to walk with Him as I have not before. A restoration of a broken hip begins with realizing you have no ability whatsoever to move or lift that leg even an inch off the bed. It’s as good a dead, only any attempts at moving it is horribly painful so you know it’s not dead, it’s just incapable of doing anything.  It clearly brought to mind, “Without Me you can do nothing.”  

Oh I could do things with my hands, I could talk, I could do anything but what involved my hip. My understanding of what it is to “walk with God” took on new meaning. It starts with utter dependence upon Him, with nothing of ourselves alone that can facilitate truly walking with God. “Enoch walked with God and He was not for God took him”. What was it about Enoch’s walk with God that God ‘raptured’ him away to be with Him?  Many of us are awaiting such an event as “the rapture.”  Since ‘first mentions’ in the bible set the tone of things to come along those same lines, it would seem that for anyone to be “not for God took him” they would need to “walk with God” in a way that significantly sets them apart from those who do not.  

As I began physical therapy, tiny movements at a time, I had to start with learning how to sit up even a little (try eating lying down or on an incline), or how to move my leg just a little (try getting comfortable when you’ve been in the same position for hours). I could give you a list of what I had to learn to accomplish but my goal is to point out how absolutely dependent I was upon the nurses or the PT people for everything. The nurses, bless them, saw to my needs, and the P.T. folks taught me how to sit, walk, stand and move again. These were people who continually cared for those who could give nothing back to them (see photo at left).  I have become so very grateful for even little kindnesses and appreciative of how little it takes to bless or help someone else who may or may not be in need. 

In the meantime, between the pain and the fatigue, I was relegated to where I could do very little for myself. It didn’t take me long to say, “OK, Lord, I get it. Walking with You means resting in you because any effort of my own unless and until I am ready for it, is counter-productive, painful and useless.”  If we look at this from a spiritual point of view, how much energy do we expend that does not produce the intended results.

I once did an extensive study of the cause of God’s favor and disfavor. I was trying to figure out how to stay in His good graces.  It distilled down to two words, the difference between dependence and independence.  Every since I have attempted to live in godly dependence upon Him.  

But it is possible to think you are depending upon Him while doing more than He has been asking you to do. That, my friends, was an autobiographical statement. But I do wonder how much the church is doing that is not what He’s been asking us to do.  How many in ministry are burned out but unable to stop. How many meetings have many of us been attending without quality time with Him alone, or for that matter, neglecting other parts of our lives or family because we’re ‘doing the stuff’.  We’re busy people, most of us. Too busy. Slaves to efficiency and technology, driven by a guilt that doesn’t allow us to just say no. Or am I alone here? 

It has taken me several weeks of rethinking how I’ve been living my life, even “in Him”  to see that many of my activities haven’t produced the Kingdom life either in me or those who have been in my classes. Have we together learned a lot of good Biblical information, and has some of it even been transformational?  Yes, I would say so. But are we the Bride without spot or wrinkle that Yeshua is returning for yet?  I would say not. 

Years ago I heard the Lord say, “The Bride I come for will have eyes for no one and nothing other than Me.” He has a right to that kind of complete adoration, wouldn’t you say?  How distracted are we, though?  Even distracted with what we’re supposedly “doing for Him” including at the expense of being with Him.

When I got here in Rehab and saw my state of dependence in the natural, and then realized it mirrored what my dependence in the spiritual should be upon the Lord, I knew I needed a significant boost in my faith.  Since “Faith comes by hearing” I started listening to Scriptures online, specifically the Psalms. The first thing that happened was that I realized my Bible time wasn’t just about the Lord and me, but others were in there too. If I found something meaningful or a revelation popped out to me, I couldn’t wait to go and share it with or teach it to others.  I saw that my relationship with Yeshua was like a marriage that had too many others in the intimate places.  Part of my coming to rest was giving up the ‘striving’ to share what He showed me with others, but to allow that same insight to be just between me and Him, to be about our relationship, to be what he wanted to share of Himself with me – just me.  Not me and everyone else.  My first and primary ‘call’ is not about what I share with others, but as daughter, as lover, as adoring disciple, even to resting my head on His chest at times as John did. That, of course, applies to each and every one of us. 

I’m sure by now you get the picture of what I’m trying to say.  I have heard stories recently of several people who have also been confronted with finding their efforts for the Lord frustrated or ineffective, or they too, as it happened, were to some degree incapacitated in some way causing them to rethink their own walks with the Lord. There seems to be a pattern here.  If it happens to you, I urge you to heed the call! God is likely to want more of you for Himself than He’s had.          

I am now able to walk, s-l-o-w-l-y, though I must use a cane or a four wheeled walker for now. It is a reminder that I am walking with God – in no hurry. I'm finding new ways to put life back together at His pace. For those of us who look forward to being with Him forever, I have this feeling that we are living in a time when Bridal clothes are being given out. We don’t want to be too busy so that we miss hearing His voice calling us to intimate times with Him, and a life that becomes one in which we have eyes for no one else and nothing else but Him.  It’s something He must do, but giving Him our attention should sure move that along, wouldn’t you think?  In other words, right priorities!  To be His bride is to walk with Him, beside Him, and at His pace.  I hope to see you on the journey.

When It Looks Like Satan's In Control.

A River of Baptism

History, as we know, often repeats itself. To not know history, is to be vulnerable to making the same mistakes. According to a note in my NASB Chronological Bible, during the inter-testimental period, much of Israel came to belief that satan had managed to take control of the earth away from God. Today there might be some who would wonder if that's not true in certain places in the earth.  Either way, we can see how being blind to God’s goodness, presence and sovereignty  can become through sin and unbelief. 

Despite the well intentioned actions of a priest known as Judah Macabbee and his five sons to free Israel from Titus and his desecration of the temple and imposition of paganism in the Hanukkah story,  that same family only two generations later became as apostate as Israel had ever known before. They   perpetuated much of the same things Judah and his sons had fought again. 

Israel was divided between those who aligned with ungodliness and those who held to various forms of traditional Hebrew religion. Inner conflicts in the land were so bad that the leaders invited the Roman’s in to arbitrate. They came and never left, having taken over as rulers of the land.  Any Israeli leadership from then on operated under the auspices and permission of Rome.  That Israel would turn to pagan powers rather than to God to solve their problems gives indication of how far they were from Him. 

The lesson to be learned here is that for Israel to look elsewhere other than to their God 

to resolve any crises is to put themselves under subjection to those to whom they look or defer.  

Case in point:  America has played a significant part in what was originally and ironically called “Peace Accords” to try and resolve the crises between Israel and her unfriendly neighbors. In doing so Israel was put under great pressure by America and other nations who are in alignment with America to refrain from defending themselves, only resulting in making matters worse. Would America refrain from retaliating if our cities were being bombed daily? But there is another point I'm trying to make here. 

With such sin in their hearts and such disregard for God’s word, it is easy to see how a prevailing thought would have emerged that God was no longer sovereign in the world but that satan had won over Him and now had charge of the earth and the affairs of men. Perhaps people think even today that God has been found to be ineffective and weak and of no real influence for good among men. If that is the case in people's minds, then there is nothing to keep them from acting like the devil, even if they don't believe in the devil. Where there is no fear of God in this life or the afterlife to maintain godly order there will be no motivation for righteousness among men.

  

How we see God will influence how we live our lives!  

But there is always a voice of reason, of hope, of truth., There is always the Voice of God for those who will listen and hear.  It is into this that Yohanan ha-mahtbeel, John the immerser (Baptist), arrives, preaching a baptism of repentance for sins. Finally, there was a way back to God!  It is no wonder that so many came out to this strange man with the message of salvation and a word that God was still there for them. Let's face it, everyone knows they sin. Even if they don't believe in God, they know they've lied, lusted, hated, stolen....  They may not label it sin, but we all know we're not without violation somewhere.

God always has a remnant that remains faithful to Him - or at least wants to but isn't aware that it's God they want.  I became an athiest at the age of eleven, yet within me I had a deep quest to know truth. I just hoped I'd recognize it if I ever found it.  To me, beyond all else Yeshua is, He is truth!  It may have been a truth-seeking remnant that came out to Yohanan at the Jordan River.  Mikveh required living water, that is to say moving water for immersion in order to be made clean for God.  The Jordan would have provided that moving water and the people apparently welcomed the chance to find God again, to repent of their sins and to re-align themselves with Him. 

When Yeshua (Jesus) came to Yohanan at the waters of mikveh (baptism) His first recorded words are, “We must fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). What a statement! What man had ever fulfilled all righteousness? Not even David. Not even Samuel whose sons did not follow God as he did. And surely not Shlomo (Solomon).  Yeshua fully intended that He would fulfill all righteousness, not one jot or yod of the word of God left out.  He uses the pronoun “we” in speaking to Yohanan, but that “we” can be extended to all who would follow Him.  To those people who would hear those words of His, what He was saying was that righteousness can still be fulfilled. All is not lost. Satan has not won and righteousness not only can still be attained, here was a Man who would prove to embody all righteousness.  

When voices speak to the contrary, and when circumstances appear as if God has lost control of the world, even your own world, Yeshua was, is and always will be the Voice of God, the Savior of not just the world but every situation we find ourselves in. He will never, no never forsake anyone who looks to Him, who trust Him and who desires to fulfill all righteouness - that is to say, be in right standing with God. He still is the only one to whom we can look for all hope and goodness. 

Once we have been baptized as a new believer to profess your faith in Yeshua, we need not enter the waters of mikveh again to be made clean before God (though if someone feels to do so, say in starting anew with God after a difficult time or time of uncleanness, go right ahead. I've done it.)  Repentance, and turning away from whatever unrighteousness has troubled you, is available just by going to Yeshua and confessing your sin and receiving the forgiveness He offers to us all.  It is that easy. He already did the hard part.You may not need this message today, but I pray God tucks it somewhere in your spirit to bring it back to mind should you ever need to be reminded that He is still the One to fulfill all righteousness on our behalf.

PASSION OR LOVE?

God's love enables us to 'love' others who are not at all like ourselves!

We live in an emotion-hyped culture today. We often define ourselves by our passions. Famous people on TV are asked about and admired for their passions even when their passions have no socially redeeming value whatsoever. I’ve heard people speak of having a passion for everything from concern for world hunger to a passion for things as insignificant as wearing the right make-up, or for red shoes, or working out at the gym, or for Starbucks coffee.

 I googled the word passion to see what would come up. Here’s is some of what I found: Any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling such as love or hate; a strong amorous feeling or desire; strong sexual desire such as lust. Passion is an intense and irresistible emotion toward a person or thing; a feeling of unusual excitement, enthusiasm or overpowering emotion. Passion can be used as a motivation for a person, an occupation, a cause, or a hobby.  The passion or emotion to want something strongly beyond what is needed is called lust, such as the fulfillment of sexual desires or even for food.  

And here are a few of the links that came up:  Poems about Passion, Finding Your Passion, Passion Test, Quotes about Passion, Characteristics of Passion, Finding Your Passion in a Quiz, Passion for Success, Passion for Something in Life, Origin of Passion, Famous Passion Quotes….to name a few.  About finding your passion in a quiz, it seems to me that if you didn’t already know, would taking a “passion test” bring you to the realization of what the commitment of your life really is, or should be all about?  Well, one thing is for sure, passion is fueled by feelings and emotions. So could we say that we live in a feeling or emotion driven culture today? I suggest that the “passionate” use of the word “passion” today leans in that direction. 

Curious as to what the bible had to say, I looked up the word in Biblegateway.com, my favorite online Bible go-to help.  The New American Standard Bible lists seven uses of the word as follows:

·  “A tranquil heart is life to the body, but passion is rottenness to the bone” (Proverbs 14:30).

·  “A wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her passion. In the time of her heat who can turn her away?” (Jeremiah 2:24).

 ·  “But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (2 Corinthians 7:9).

 ·  “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry” (Colossians 3:5).

·  “…not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:5).

·       “For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality” (Rev. 14:8; 18:3), used in speaking of Babylon which the bible refers to as “a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit.” You may wish to read the whole of Revelation 18 to see this statement in context.

 Yeshua’s experience on the cross is also referred to as His passion (see Acts 3:1), from the Latin verb pati meaning to suffer. I doubt that suffering is what we’re thinking of when we refer to our passion.  

As you can see, that’s a whole different perspective on passion than God’s idea of love. Biblically speaking, passion is something to be overcome, to repent of and to flee from, not to boast in nor seek in order to define or wrap your life around. Rather, passion is that which the ungodly partake of. It is listed as an idolatry, and we know how God regards that!

Is this just a matter of semantics, of redefining a word, or is there something else going on here? As I said in the beginning, we are a passion-hyped culture today. But if those are the true definitions of passion, do they not apply to our society today where it is equally sin driven?  Have we as Christians picked up the lingo of the world and applied it to how we feel about Yeshua?  Well, I would like to rescue here those believers who think there is something wrong with them because they don’t “feel” the passion others seem to.

There are some of us whose “lover” is broken. By that I mean they have been hurt, damaged, abandoned, abused…..  and more, and those  folks are often less likely to feel what others who have lived well loved lives feel, even about or from God. They love God and are entirely surrendered to Him, but when it comes to emotions, for those who have not known what it is to experience a secure and adoring love, they may not know how to receive it from God. But that does not mean that they don’t know that God loves them, or that they don’t love God. What they may not feel is the “passion” that others seem to experience, say, during worship.

 If that’s you, and you are afraid you don’t love the Lord as you are expected to because your lover doesn’t work as it should, take heart. This will release you from your malaise.  Let’s look at a very familiar passage of Scripture, 1 Corinthians 13.  But as you read it, I would like you to be looking for where your feelings are to be employed and where it speaks about “feeling” love toward others.  

“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thing. Love never fails” (:4-8a). 

Is patience a feeling or a choice to wait? How about kindness – do we chose to be kind or does it just rush over us as a feeling we can’t control? You get the point, I’m sure.  

Love, from a Hebrew or Scriptural perspective, is not a feeling but an attitude and a commitment. It’s not something that comes over you that you can’t control, like “falling in love” or for that matter, falling out of love.  Love is what you do for the benefit and betterment of the other person or persons. Love doesn’t brag because there’s nothing really about love in bragging; it’s all about you and calling attention to yourself. Love doesn’t keep mental lists of wrongs done to them, or remember the wrongs of the past, even if the past is still fresh. Forgive and let it go and it’ll dwindle, and if it doesn’t, keep forgiving till it does. 70x7, remember! Love rejoices with the one who rejoices. They’re just there with you and for you. Passions usually have to do with things or people that you personally relate to, that are you're kind of thing, but love, real love, loves those who are aren't the least like you (see photo above) but you know that God loves them so you can love them with God's kind of love. 

The best Person who will be with you when you’re loving like this is God Himself. When we love the way He loves, all kinds of possibilities and joys come to our lives.  Unlike passion that may or may not have anything to do with warming the heart of someone else, focus on living a life of God’s kind of love. Be an example to others of His love and you’ll find you’re loved in return.