Month: April 2024

This is not the good news I hoped to share with you when I got home. First. the colonoscopy found another cancerous growth on my colon where two were removed two years ago. They are studying the CAT Scan to see if surgery can remove it. I’m praying they go with surgery instead of chemo or radiation.

Then the physical therapist evaluation discovered that in addition to my constricted arthritic knees, my hips are also constricted so ever walking again safely even with my walker is no longer a reasonable goal for me.

I’m disappointed about all of this bad news, but I still  have much for which to be thankful. The other patient in my room is younger than me. His body is still strong and he walks the halls every day  with his wife and  caregiver, but he will never be able to go home again. Dementia has robbed him of his memory and ability to speak. He can hear and obey instructions but cannot make any decisions on his own. Compared to him, I am truly blessed.

Thank you for your continued prayers.

Tomorrow morning, April 17th, I will be checking into the VA hospital for various tests and procedures and two weeks of intense physical therapy. My prayer is that the tests will be good and the therapy will allow me to start using my walker again.

The floor I will be on at the hospital has poor wi-fi but keep me in your prayers and I’m sure God will give me a lot to share with you when I get back home. God willing, this will just be a brief pause in my writing.

I read a story recently about a teenage girl who was going through a rough time and asked her grandmother for advice. It seemed like she was going from one bad situation to another and she was at the end of her rope. Her grandmother said “I want you to pay close attention.” She put three pots of water on the stove and then turned the burners on high. The girl thought to herself, “I should have known that grandma would turn a serious life crisis into a cooking lesson.” But she tried to pay attention. When the water was all at a full boil, she put a potato in one pot, an egg in another pot and a scoop of ground coffee beans in the third. After a while, she dumped the  water into the sink from the first pot and dumped the potato onto a plate. Then she dumped the water out of the second pot into the sink and the egg onto the plate. She then put a filter on top of a carafe and poured the contents of the third pot into the filter, disposed of the filter and grounds, then poured a fresh cup of coffee. She then instructed her granddaughter to carefully slice open the potato and peel the egg shell. She then began her life lesson.

” All three pots represent the same bad situation – boiling hot water. That situation turned the inside of the potato soft; turned the inside of the egg hard; and caused the ground coffee beans to released the essential oils in them to transform the boiling water into a pleasant cup of coffee. The difference between them was not the bad situation, but what each was made of inside. Many people allow a bad situation to turn them soft inside and weaken them. Others allow a bad situation to harden their hearts inside, making them cynical of all situations. Because you and I are Christians, we have within us the essentials to transform the difficult situations – God’s love, mercy, grace and the power of His Holy Spirit which give us the power to change those bad  situations into blessings.”

We can’t control our situations, but we can control our reaction to them.

I’m sure the title of this blog post has raised more than a few eyebrows. The question mark is there for a very good reason. Satan would certainly not intentionally affirm our Christian life or our actions or words in obedience to God’s Holy Spirit within us. However, each time he attacks us, we can be sure our words and actions are having a positive effect that he is trying to stop.

When I started this blog seven years ago, I ran into some minor problems and distractions that I prayerfully overcame. Since it has  begun to reach Christians nationwide and now worldwide, I’ve been attacked again and again by Satan. I’ve been hospitalized three times, had surgery for colon cancer and skin cancer; was treated for three serious viruses; and the nursing home I was sent to after my most recent hospitalization did their best to weaken me and keep me from going home instead of building my strength with physical therapy. It was only God’s answer to all of the prayers that went up to Him on my behalf that I made it home.

My doctor is scheduling  a follow-up test on my colon and would like me to stay two weeks in the VA hospital for other tests and intense physical therapy later this month. I will continue to blog until then and I need your prayers for good test results and a  stronger body when I get back home to resume blogging and my Christian life.

I hope each of you reading this will begin to see Satan’s attacks as proof you are making progress on the path God has laid out for you. Just rely on Him to go through them with you and make sure you are going in the right direction. Satan’s attacks are meant for evil, but God can and will use them for good as he gives us the strength to overcome them.

My dear young pastors, Sam and Taylor, were just blessed with a miracle baby boy. They fostered a newborn baby and eventually were able to adopt him. God has blessed their ministry and the church they founded and now God has blessed them with another son. He was born on the seventh of March and weighed seven pounds seven ounces. It really appears that God has put His signature on that young man’s life. I’m especially happy for them because my wife and I were unable to have children.

This happy news made me take another look at what God’s word says about the process of child birth. Jeremiah wrote that God told him, “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I separated you out as my prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5 NLT) The Psalmist describes God’s handiwork. “You made all of the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous – how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” (Psalms 139:13-16 NLT)

The womb is not always a safe place for God’s miracles to happen anymore. In the U.S. alone, more than seven million abortions have been done since 1973. Did God know them before they were being formed? How many of those 7,000,000  innocent lives were separated out by God for great works before being killed before even taking their first breath? Only God knows those answers, but what I do know and continue to experience myself is when a society devalues human life at the very beginning, they will devalue life nearing the end as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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