Megashifting

When I told my son about the seriously ill child of a friend, he responded innocently, “So why doesn’t his dad just do a miracle and heal him?” The question tugged at my heart and caught at my throat. Somehow, it evoked other words from long ago:

In the face of a crowd’s hunger: “You give them something to eat.”

In the face of a child suffering from a demon: “I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”

In the face of the storm: “You of little faith.” I’ve always interpreted that remark as meaning, “You couldn’t let me sleep five minutes longer and deal with a bit of weather yourselves??”

Perhaps my son is more aware of miracles because we’re just past Holy Week, fresh from viewings of our church’s Easter productions, The Thorn and The Crown, complete with miracles. Or perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading my family little stories from Megashift . . . .

“A leper is healed in the marketplace. A paralyzed man leaps from his bed. A small bit of food feeds a large group. Storm clouds turn on a dime. The Gospel is preached in one language, but heard in another. A desperate woman with a flow of blood is healed. A demonized man chained up for years is delivered and set free. The sound of a mighty, rushing wind is heard during a meeting of believers . . . yet there is no wind. Withered limbs are restored. The deaf hear; the blind see. A girl is raised from the dead. And Jesus appears in a vision to one of His chief persecutors. Great historic events by any measure. And all have happened in the last twelve years.”

So begins

Megashift: Igniting Spiritual Power

by James Rutz.

The footnotes for the first chapter alone run more than ten pages, mostly to document Rutz’s sources for the miracles he describes. More than ten thousand people healed of AIDS – those who want to give testimony must present medical certificates to document before and after. Resurrections from the dead reported in more than 52 countries. One ministry in Mexico stopped keeping track some time ago once they got past 300. A lowest-caste Indian street sweeper who has personally been involved with 16 resurrections. Author Jim Rutz said he would be happy to give you her e-mail so you can check this out for yourself, but she has no e-mail. She can’t read. Many of the miracles became a prologue to salvation for entire families or villages. Some of my favorites are stories of transformed persecutors. One militant Hindu tore up a tract offered by a Christian on the street, but that night knocked on the Christian’s door asking to be saved. God had rebuked him loudly in the night “I sent you my truth but you tore it up!” and then gave him directions to the Christian’s home.

No matter what you think of the rest of Jim’s book, every Christian should read at least the first chapter.

As my son said, “It’s good to know stuff like this still happens today and not just long ago.”

Independence Day

In Jesus’ inaugural address (his first public appearance where someone took notes), he chose to introduce himself like this:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim
that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors,
and that the time of the Lord's favor has come.”
Luke 4:18-19 NLT

Jesus consistently set people free:

“Wasn't it necessary for me, even on the Sabbath day, to free this dear woman from the bondage in which Satan has held her for eighteen years?” Luke 13:16 NLT

And no doubt you know that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Then Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the Devil, for God was with him. Acts 10:38 NLT

Freedom is one of God’s core values. Bringing release from any kind of oppression. This is why our myths, legends and stories abound with tales of breaking dark power so liberty can flow once again. It’s who we are. It’s who He is.

Often it’s the frail and nondescript who do the breaking. A middle-aged hobbit with no history of adventure, sent with three bumbling companions against an evil more powerful than comprehension. They’ve got a snowflake’s chance in Mordor. Four children sent to melt an ice age of cruelty, and sent again to overthrow a despot. How laughable. As Trumpkin put it, “I suppose I’d better go back to King Caspian and tell him no help has come.”

Real-life stories also have unlikely heroes. A stuttering octogenarian, reluctantly dragged from the back side of nowhere to herd people instead of sheep. A little brother comes to bring lunch, then stays to bring down the enemy’s ace. Corrie ten Boom, a 60-something tea-drinking spinster, fond of embroidery and playing cards, finds herself in a more dangerous game of underground resistance, hiding Jews from Nazis.

They’re not who we would have chosen. Or how we would have chosen. But liberation happened in spite of our wildest disbelief.

Ultimately, a covert operation. An invasion of one. A baby, born into a kingdom oppressed by an empire’s taxing grip. Thirty-three years later, the coup de grace: one man’s death, unimaginably brutal.

And, we would have thought, unimaginably futile.

This is your idea of setting at liberty those who are oppressed? I’m supposed to find healing from cancer, in 2006, somehow related to the fact that in AD33 or thereabouts, your back was ripped to bloody dangling shreds of flesh?? You have got to be kidding.

Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

But this is how the stories go. Those who believe the unbelievable, see unbelievable results.

To me, that is the value of our core legends. It’s easier for me to believe in the myths of Aragorn, of Matthias the Warrior Mouse who saves Redwall Abbey, than to believe in what could happen in my own story.

I need to remember whose idea liberty is, and believe He wants me free, too.

That’s worth shooting off fireworks about.

Le Coeur A Ses Raisons

On the day I met Mitch, I saw his Dad in street clothes, only once.

Already losing his battle with prostate cancer, Bill left the next morning for Lake Casitas, enjoying one last precious fishing trip with his sons. After that, as Mitch and I began to date, our times together included time with his Dad, huddled miserably in pajamas on his La-Z-Boy, and eventually on the hospice-provided bed which centerpieced the living room.

Bill liked me immediately, and I am certain he knew I would marry Mitch in time. He privately told Mitch’s Mom they didn’t need to worry about their youngest son any more.

I wish I could have known him better, but soon the pain grew too great for him to speak. And one day, encircled by his family and hearing words of reassurance and release, Bill slipped home.

In those six months while we watched his father die, Mitch began to teach me about our healing covenant in Christ.

My rock-solid, Scripture-loving background had taught me that God wills some sick and some well. His to choose, ours not to question why. He gives and takes away. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. A little sunshine, a little rain. Kind of like yin and yang: we need some bad things just to keep balance in the universe and teach us important lessons.

When Mitch told me that Jesus’ death on the cross purchased unconditional healing for our sicknesses as well as undeserved forgiveness for our sins, I felt concerned. Could my good-looking boyfriend be mixed up with some kind of cult?

Of all the gifts my parents gave me, the greatest is an unquestioned allegiance to the infallible supremacy of the Word of God. If the Bible says the sky is blue, but mine is green, I get my eyes examined, then call the EPA to start a clean-up operation. Like the old office joke about the boss. Rule Number One: The Bible is always right. Rule Number Two: If the Bible appears to be wrong, see Rule Number One. That’s how I was raised.

So Mitch never argued with me. He just took me to the Word.

When I read, for the first time, Isaiah 53:4, with the correctly-translated Hebrew words – and its interpretive New Testament passage, Matthew 8:17, it blew me away:

Surely our sicknesses he hath borne, and our pains -- he hath carried them, And we -- we have esteemed him plagued, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Young’s Literal)

He fulfilled Isaiah's well-known sermon:
He took our illnesses,
He carried our diseases. (The Message)

But what does that mean when your Dad is coughing blood into a pan? Who do we believe when the promises of Heaven face off against the ravages of hell’s visitation?

To Mitch, it didn’t seem to matter that his father’s suffering provided evidence to contradict God’s plan for healing. Every person who takes God at His Word experiences two realities: what we hear God say, and what we see happening in the world around us. Whichever reality we focus on becomes our filter to explain the other. As one preacher put it, "Even if no one ever got saved, the Gospel is still true."

We’re told the early disciples preached the Word with signs following. If you preach only what you see, you’ll get more of the same. And there He can do no mighty work, but only heal a few sick people.

To Bill, family is everything. He knew his most important job was complete, that of raising his kids. Knowing his family would be OK settled the greatest concern of his life. Once each person around the circle said aloud, "Dad, we release you. We’ll take care of Mom," Bill chose to leave his body within one minute after the last one spoke.

They say the heart has reasons that reason cannot comprehend. The closer we grow to the heart of God, the more we’ll catch His vision, and the more easily we’ll understand the reasons why things happen. Isaiah's question, "Is there anyone around who knows God's Spirit, anyone who knows what He is doing?" has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ's Spirit.

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

--Blaise Pascal

Take A Little Prayer With Your Vitamin I

Pastor Kurt from Harvest Downtown sharpened our iron with grace this morning. He pointed us to the four-fold logo
and exhorted us to Preach the Pitcher. This is code for “why doesn’t anyone preach on healing anymore since it is, in fact, one of the four symbols of the Alliance?”

Pastor Kurt is always anything but condemning, and quickly pointed out his own tendency to grab for Vitamin I (ibuprofen) when he feels something coming on – and his own frustrations when that doesn’t cut it.

He compared our tendency to reach for medicine, doctors – then finally God (sometimes when no medical hope is left), to a story told of another culture where a missionary, visiting a home, noticed an impressive line-up of gods on a shelf. His host explained, "If this one doesn’t answer my prayer I pray to this one, if that god doesn’t answer I pray to the next one, then if none of them answer I pray to this one (pointing to a little status of Jesus) and he ALWAYS answers!"

Most of us respond, "So why not get smart and pray to Jesus first?" and Kurt countered with “Why not pray for healing FIRST while you’re grabbing that ibuprofen?”

A great reminder.

In our home, we’ve taught our children to pray over every bump and scratch, just to get us all in the habit. We even pray over the animals! But lately we’ve slackened off - due in part to exactly the frustration Kurt described.

I needed to be told this today. Thanks, Kurt, and keep bringing in the Harvest!