Praying for Healing

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Our good brother Tim in Australia has a life-threatening disease.  I ask everyone who reads here
to pray for his healing, and keep praying for his healing, every day.

Even more, I strongly urge everyone who reads here to read Tim's continuing series "To Live Is
Christ."  His meditations are at "Onesimus Files," the top blog in my recommended-link list, at
the upper right corner of this page.

I especially urge everyone to read his "To Live Is Christ (11). God's Clearly Stated Will." posted on
January 5th (https://onesimusfiles.wordpress.com/2020/01/05/to-live-is-christ-11-testimony-6/),
where he cites the many scriptures which must be our basis for faith that God heals, and that He
desires to heal.

As Tim so rightly sums up the question of healing, it all rests on "God's word and God's will."  That
indeed seems to me exactly how real faith approaches every question and circumstance.

Tim's determination, faced with a life-threatening disease, was to read everything scripture says
about healing...a response to life-circumstances that should be every Christian's immediate response,
but seldom is.  The verse that first struck him was Phillipians 1:21, "For me, to live is Christ..."  Faced
with the immediate and literal life-and-death question of every human's life, Tim began what he calls
"a new faith journey," Tim started, and continues in his excellent series of meditations, with that
scriptural affirmation.

Before anyone who reads here prays for healing...their own or someone else's...I recommend, insist,
they read, and ponder, and re-read, Tim's front-line view of life and death, in scripture and prayer.

AMEN !!

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Righteous Lot

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I'd really never thought of Lot as an exemplar of the faith.  He obviously
had his eye on his own financial advantage when his uncle Abram gave
him the choice of grazing-land (Genesis 13:1-11).  Although Abram was
his elder and his mentor, Lot was quick to grab the best-looking pastures.

It's unimaginable in our time, though not remarkable in the hospitality
ethic of his; but Lot also offered his daughters to the rape-mob demanding
he turn over his angelic visitors to them (Genesis 19:1-11).

And though Lot could truthfully later plead that he was stone-drunk when it
happened . . . we usually don't expect the Bible to hold up an incestuous father
(Genesis 19:30-38) as a role-mode.

But II Peter 2:7 does, calling him "righteous Lot."  That verse came to mind
when my friend Don and I were talking.

That passage even goes on to say Lot was an exemplar for Christians.

" . . . and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the
depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among
them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless
deeds he saw and heard); if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue
the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the
day of judgement."    (II Peter 2:7-9)

Lot's righteousness was that he was "distressed" (the Greek is kataponeo,
"worn down," "exhausted") by the evil deeds of the "lawless" among whom
he lived.  It doesn't seem to have bothered his fellow-citizens all that much.

I doubt that's because every single citizen of Sodom roamed the streets all
night getting drunk and looking for a rape-victim.  Every society needs a core
of responsible fathers and mothers raising their families, working jobs, and
running businesses, to flourish.

Sodom undoubtedly also had civic leaders who shaped public opinion and
guided public policy.  They probably lamented the crime-statistics: but no
doubt they also boasted that Sodom's way of life was justified by the fact
it enjoyed more "freedom" than other cities.

Most people in Sodom probably accepted lawlessness as "just how Sodom
is," and locked their doors.  Like people today, they were willing to "go along
to get along."  Undoubtedly they prided themselves on being "good people,"
and nothing like the street-gangs.   But scripture attests that only Lot was
"tormented" to his soul by the cit's pervasive evil.

Lot's lonely righteousness was that he was deeply grieved by the lawlessnes
of his fellow-citizens...grieved as God Himself was grieved.  This scripture is
God's promise, exemplified in Lot, that He will still "rescue the godly" . . . by
whom He means those few (like Lot) whose souls like His are fiercely outraged
by the evil deeds of the lawless.

God's promise holds good today, for everyone whose heart is like His, and is
His . . . however few they are.

Amen !

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Test Your Spiritual Discernment Here !!

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Reading I John, this series of verses caught my attention:

I John 2:18 says there are already "many anti-Christs" around us.

I John 3:10 says the children of God and the children of the devil "are obvious."

I John 4:1 says we should "test the spirits to see whether they are from God."

That set of scriptures sounds like a challenge: or rather, when God says it, a command.

Since I John is where God gives His main teaching about anti-Christ, maybe He wants us
to check and see if our spiritual discernment is functioning well enough to spot him.

Jesus told us in John 8:44 what's obvious about "sons of the devil:" like their father, they
love lies, and they love murder (and Jesus says in Matthew 5:21-2 that "murder" is angry
contempt for other people).

There's our spiritual check-list.

Of course, we should first run the test on ourselves:  do we love lies and murder ?  If so,
we have to repent before we presume to run that check on anyone elses' spirit.

O.K., done.

Now...looking around ourselves, testing in today's world to see if our spiritual discernment
is in working order...can we spot any of the "many anti-Christs" out there ?

It shouldn't be hard: as John rightly says, they are obvious.


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Slave Names

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Doing genealogy for black American families always has one huge roadblock.  Before they were
emancipated in 1865, most black people didn't have last-names.  There were a few exceptions,
"free persons of color:" but slaves were only known by their first names.

In censuses, a primary genealogical tool, slaves didn't even have that.  They were enumerated
on "Slave Schedules" only by sex and approximate age, under their owner's name.  They were only
counted at all because of the "three-fifths compromise;"  by which the U.S. Constitution allowed
slave-holding states to count that fraction of their slaves toward the state's population-total, on
which Congressional seats were apportioned.

Even in the documents of those who knew them best, their owners, slaves seldom had more than
a first name, with an occasional descriptor.  A loving mother's will might leave "my house-servant
Suky" to a favorite daughter: a debtor might bemoan in a letter having to sell "Tom, my blacksmith."
But slaves' first identity was always as their owner's property.

One rule of thumb that's often helpful in doing genealogy for black Americans is that when they
were freed, most slaves took the last name of their former owner.  If an ancestral family shows up
on the 1870 census as Mose and Annie "Blankenship," it's a good idea to see if there are any
(relatively-prosperous) white people named "Blankenship" in the same area.

With any luck, the 1860 Census Slave Schedules may show that one of the white Blankenships had
owned a male and a female slave about the ages of Mose and Annie.  Occasionally the pre-war
legal docments or family-papers of the white Blankenships may contain a reference to their slave
Mose, or "servant" Annie.

For slave-owners liked to maintain the fiction that their slaves were "servants."  They also liked to
portray themselves as the paterfamilias of "my people."  Pretense and self-delusion were probably
necessary for them to soften the reality; that although they lived with and provided for a number
of dependents, their relationship to them was mercenary rather than (in most cases) familial.

Undoubtedly some slave-owners were kinder to their "servants" than others.  Probably the circum-
stance of daily living together in a detached "society," comprised almost entirely of the white owners
and their black slaves, made for personal relationships between them of every kind from murderous
hatred to genuine affection.

But the slaves would not have been fooled by the familial rhetoric of their owners.  It's doubtful the
owners were themselves  The idea of racial superiority on which the slave-system existed drew a line
they all knew was uncrossable.

And despite whatever benign posturings their owners made of it, slaves knew the reality of that
system was being forced to do what "master" said to do...even against their own will, choice, and
best interests.  Slaves...masters too...all understood that that their lives and their labor benefitted
him alone.

All alike recognized slavery as a monstrous wrong.  Even the great slave-owner who was perhaps
most instrumental in the founding of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, later wrote of slavery,
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

So it's hard to understand why, when ex-slaves were first free to establish their identity as persons
rather than property, they so often took the name of their former owners.

There even seems to have been a perverse pride among some ex-slaves, that taking the name of
a prominent slave-owner (their own or not) conferred greater dignity on them.  (That seems the
reason more ex-slaves took the last name "Washington" than had ever been owned by the few
whites of that name: and "Washington" is still a common surname in America's black population.)

Something similar has happened in American Christianity, and it's hard to understand why so many
of those set free by Christ take the name of their mercenary former owners: for what else is it when
Christ's freedmen call themselves "conservative Christians" ?  Weren't "conservatives" the predators
who used an evil system to make Christians serve them, to their own benefit alone ?

Don't Christians identifying themselves with their "conservative" masters show a perverse pride in
doing so ?  It's hard to miss that those who call themselves "conservative Christians" imply by that
slave-name that they are the "real Christians."

Is a slave made more-truly, and more-proudly, free by taking the name of the one who enslaved him ?
Is Christ's freedom enhanced when it is linked into the world's evil system ?

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Defining

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

The great teacher Derek Prince once did a series of sermons he called "Agreeing With God."
It's stayed with me over 40 years.

His point was, as scripture says, that none of us can walk with God, except we agree with God
(Amos 3:3).

Agree, first of all, in His Authority to choose the path.  Which is where we all first stumble, and
in different ways and forms, keep stumbling.

His sermons talked about how to get past that: and they all came down to thinking as God thinks.

One sermon I remember was about thinking in God's categories.  But the one that most shaped
my thinking to this day was about thinking in God's definitions: latching on to the certainty (as I
always put it) that "what God says anything is, it absolutely is."

We've all had the frustration of talking with someone at seeming cross-purposes, to eventually
discover what they meant by (for example) "mercy" was entirely different than what we meant
by that word.

If we don't want to talk at cross-purposes with God, we have to adapt His...not our own, not our
nation's, not our faction's...meanings.  Disciplining our thinking in that way is why we read the
Bible: that's where God tells us His definitions.

Some are straight equivalencies.  Because God made truth a central part of my thinking, I have
worked to train my mind in Jesus' affirmation that "...I AM...the truth" (John 14:6).  There couldn't
be a more absolute statement of what...of Who...truth is.  It's seldom I hear the word "truth," in
any context, without reflexively thinking "Jesus."

I John 3:4 is just as clear in defining sin: "...sin is lawlessness."  That's one I'm still working to
make my automatic and immediate definition.  And that process, I should say, convinces me that
knowing God's definitions doesn't end our thinking about a matter so much as it focuses and
greatly deepens our understanding of what God's saying.

But not all the Bible's definitions are presented in straight equivalences.  Reading with a desire
to know His definitions, God shows them to us in various ways.

One I'd call inferential.  It takes a little meditation, for example, to understand that Isaiah 53:6a
is a definition of sin: "All we like sheep have gone astray, Each of us turned to his own way..."
But if we consider that "gone astray" is a common Biblical trope for sin, we can readily see that
God says sin is "turning to our own way."

The bonus-points for working through this verse to God's definition is that it underlies His prophecy
of Christ, His remedy for sin.  And Isaiah broadens and deepens our understanding of how"lawless-
ness" operates in our own lives, by our choice to "turn to our own way."

I recently came across another of God's definitions: one I've read hundreds of times, and didn't "see"
as a definition.

"Wisdom" is another of those key concepts God's impressed on my mind over the years.  I can still
remember the Sunday afternoon I was laying on my bed, reading James 1, when the reality of verse 5
smacked me HARD: "...if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and
without reproach, and it will be given to him."

I remember the excitement of knowing that verse applied to ME...and that God guaranteed He'd
give me wisdom...and all I had to do was ask.  So I did.

The years since, I've had to come to a working definition of "wisdom"...how else would I recognize
it to thank God for it ?  With apologies to Spike Lee, I settled on "wisdom is knowing how to do
the right thing."

Close.  But scripture's definition is better, once I saw it in Ephesians 5:15-17:

" Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time,
because the days are evil.  So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is."

Wise men show wisdom by making the most of their time.  The most we can ever do is please God:
and we please Him when we do righteousness ("the right thing").  We are foolish, and our lives are 
futile, if we do not"understand what the will of the Lord is."  Wisdom is understanding God's will.

I'm sure God has more to say about what wisdom is.  If I pay attention, I can look forward to learning
more of His counsel.  Meanwhile He's working this portion of His meaning into my operative under-
standing, so I can better, more deliberately and with less stumbling, walk with Him.

I agree with God that that's what we both want.  Amen !