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.

” 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.

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.

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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Every Easter, my memory takes me back to the summer of 1964. I was a 21 year old Air Force staff sergeant touring the Holy Land. On one of our three evenings in Jerusalem, two buddies and I searched for and found the recently excavated Garden Tomb. It had not yet become a tourist attraction, so we were able to walk right up to it and even into it even though no one was around. As I knelt in prayer at the entrance of that empty tomb, I could hear the angel announce, “He is not here. He has risen as He said”. The realization that Jesus lives covered me like a warm blanket. I have never felt closer to Jesus before or over these past sixty years since then. I am reminded of that event every time I sing these words. “Because He lives I can face tomorrow. Because He lives all fear is gone. Because I know He holds the future and life is worth the living just because He lives.”

I want to leave you with the words of another of my favorite Easter songs describing the depth of despair after Good Friday and the joyful celebration after the Resurrection. “They all walked away. There was nothing to say. They had just lost their dearest friend. All that he said, but now he was dead, so this is the way it all ends. The dreams they had dreamed were not what they seemed now that he was dead and gone. The garden, the jail, the hammer, the nail. How could a night be so long? Then came the morning! Night turned into day.  The stone was rolled away. Hope rose with the dawn. Then came the morning! Shadows vanished before the sun. Death had lost and life had won for morning had come.”

This year I’ve been concentrating on the feelings Jesus experienced leading up to and during his sacrifice on the cross in addition to the obviously severe physical pain involved. Both Christian and non-Christian sources agree that Jesus was stripped naked before being nailed to the cross. Although artists through the centuries have added a loin cross to restore his dignity, Jesus’ first feelings as the cross was raised putting him on display to the gathering crowd which included his mother and dearest friends were total exposure and embarrassment.

Jesus felt compassion while on the cross. He asked his heavenly Father to forgive those crucifying him because they didn’t understand what they were doing. Jesus felt compassion for the two people who loved him most, his mother and John. He asked them to console each other as mother and son during his absence. Then he showed the most compassion to the thief who believed in him. He took him to Paradise.

I can find no report of Jesus ever shouting out because of the physical pain from the torture and even crucifixion he endured, but he did cry out in anguish when he took on the sins of the world, including yours and mine, and his Heavenly Father could no longer even bear to look at him. I have said and written many times that the fire and brimstone of hell are just discomforts compared to the pain of being totally separated from God. Even  brief separation made God’s Son cry out in anguish .

Thank you Jesus for the physical, mental,emotional and spiritual pain you suffered to provide a path to eternal life for me and everyone else who believes in and follows you.

After hurting the Jewish religious leaders’ pocket books, the same ones who attacked him for healing people on the Sabbath, Jesus began to preach and heal people right under their noses in the temple courtyard. Jesus knew that was the last straw that would cause them to plot his death.

Then Jesus’ emotions turned to the love he had for the twelve disciples he had chosen to continue his work on earth. Although he was saddened by Judas’ betrayal,  Jesus lovingly tried to prepare the eleven for what was about to happen to him. He told them his body would be broken like the bread he broke and passed to them and his red blood would flow from his body like the wine he passed to them. Then he told them that as often as they eat bread and drink wine, they should remember his sacrifice for them. After the Passover meal, Jesus showed his love for them by washing their feet like a servant. After that, the eleven followed Jesus  to the Mount of Olives for prayer.

It was there that another, unusual emotion bubbled up in Jesus – fear. The one who slept soundly in the boat in the storm while the disciples feared for their lives was now facing the most painful tortures and death man could devise. As Jesus prayed, his sweat dripped off of him like drops of blood. He prayed what I call the real Lord’s Prayer, “Father, take this cup from me, but never the less your Will be done.” It was then that Judas lead the high priest’s guards to arrest Jesus.

Have you ever wished you could look into the future and see what was coming up in the days ahead? I’m sure Jesus wished he didn’t have that ability as he entered Jerusalem that day. He knew that in less than a week many of those same voices that welcomed him to Jerusalem shouting, “Hosanna!” would be shouting, “Crucify him!” Jesus knew that in just a few days, one of his twelve closest friends would betray him for thirty pieces of silver and do it with a kiss on the cheek. He knew that one of his three dearest disciples was going to deny he even knew Jesus three times, while the rest of them scattered and deserted him. He knew the excruciating sacrifice he was sent to become for you and for me was just a few days away. No, I’m glad I am shielded from the future until my future becomes eternity in God’s presence.

We shudder just thinking about the physical pain Jesus suffered in our place. The beating, the lashes, the nails piercing his hands and feet, not to mention the crown of thorns piercing his head; just the thought of all of it boggles our mind and touches our heart. This year I am concentrating on the mental and emotional pain he experienced as well.

(Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT) “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done so none of us can boast about it.”

It is our faith that releases the power of our prayers. I’m reminded of an old story about a rural community that was suffering greatly because of a long drought. Word went throughout the community that everyone was invited to the town square to pray for rain. After nearly two hours of prayers from all of the pastors in the area, there wasn’t even a small cloud to be seen. As they were getting ready to break up the meeting and go home, a young boy pulled up on his bike. He was wearing water proof boots and carrying an umbrella. He knelt in prayer and when he opened the umbrella it began to rain. He was the only one who wasn’t soaked to their skin. He was the only one who was so certain God would answer prayer that he came prepared to receive it.

When we ask God for something, are we in faith eagerly expecting His answer? If not, He may withhold it until our faith increases our expectation.