ACCOMMODATING THE PAIN!

In 2006 I had surgery on both my hips because of extremely painful arthritis. I had suffered severe pain for several years and the surgical procedure (hip resurfacing) was very successful—and I’ve not had any hip pain since that time!

Not long after the surgery one of Carol’s sisters, Barb Mackery, came to visit us. As she came through the front door I went to greet her. Barb smiled as she saw me walking and said, “David, you are taller!” I had some kind of smart response about having always been six feet three inches tall and the conversation passed on. 

We had a delightful visit with Barb but I was left with a nagging question, “Whatever did she mean when she said I was taller; how could that possibly be?” Over the next couple of days I thought about this and then suddenly the light went on. (Canadians are a little slow this way. Being raised in the north where it’s cold causes the electricity to flow a little slower and therefore the lights go on a little more slowly . . . but they do come on!)

I realized that in order to minimize the pain in my hips and back I had changed my posture. The most comfortable position I could find was being slightly stooped. But with the pain gone, I no longer needed to bend over—and I could stand at full stature.

And then something else hit me full force. Most of the pain we experience in life has little or nothing to do with aches and agony in our body but more to do with those things that hurt our “inner man.” The the pain of a broken relationship; the pain of an unrealized dream; the pain of failure; the pain of the death of a loved one—the list could go on and on. The fact is that we all suffer pain, most of which has no connection to a physical cause.

My arthritis had caused me to try to find a posture that minimized the pain. I didn’t realize I was adopting a modified position, but I was.

Understanding this caused another question to arise. If physical pain caused me to live my life at less than full stature, what does the “pain in the rest of life” do to me? Is it possible that I am living life spiritually at less than full stature because of some of the disappointments and hurts of the past?

It is not God’s desire or design for us to live in an accommodating position. He wants us to be mature and complete. He wants us to be as tall as we are supposed to be!

Some people try to accommodate the pain of life by numbing it out through the use of drugs and/or alcohol. Chemicals sometimes simply mask the pain and may actually cause the user to hurt himself more severely as he acts as though he has no pain, that nothing is hurting. But actually the cause of the pain is still there and the user hurts himself, not realizing what is happening.

So what is the answer to the “pains” of life? I wish I could give you a neat “packaged” answer but I can’t.

I do know a couple of things about pain, about the Word of God, and God’s desire for His people to stand tall in maturity and freedom:

1.      Pain gets our attention and assists us in knowing that a problem exists and that we need help. Pain will either push us away from God or cause us to draw close to Him, but the choice is ours.

“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now Your word do I keep [hearing, receiving, loving, and obeying it]” (Psalm 119:67, Amplified Bible).

2.      Pain is a teacher and to start with, it will teach us patience and obedience, if we will let it.

“Knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance” (Romans 5:3, Amplified).

           

             “He learned obedience through what He suffered"               (Hebrews 5:8). 

3.      The Lord wants you to stand tall and strong in Him. He wants to set you free from anything that is crippling your spirit.

“One Sabbath day as Jesus was teaching in a synagogue,  He saw a woman who had been crippled by an evil spirit. She had been bent double for eighteen years and was unable to stand up straight.  When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said, ‘Dear woman, you are healed of your sickness!’ Then He touched her, and instantly she could stand straight. How she praised God!” (Luke 13:10-13, NLT).

Don’t accommodate the pain. Let the Lord heal you and set you free!

          

HE ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT

It’s not easy to remain calm as we have watched cataclysmic events occurring in our world in the past few weeks.

•       Two major earthquakes in Nepal and numerous smaller      quakes right here in the U.S.
•      Hundreds of immigrants drowned trying to cross the      Mediterranean Sea in an overcrowded small boat.
•      Iran defying the world regarding its nuclear options and essentially thumbing its nose at the United States and the rest of the world.
•     The former head of the CIA pleading guilty to leaking classified documents to his mistress.
•     California in the midst of a terrible drought.
•     Terrorists taking control of large portions of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and other nations in northern Africa.
•     Persecution of Christians taking place all over the world and intensifying.
•     Nine dead in a wild biker gang shootout in Waco, TX.
•     A rising tide of anger at law enforcement in the U.S.

And the list goes on and on and seems to grow daily.

If I understand biblical prophecy at all, these are the beginning of sorrows or “birth pains” (see Matthew 24:8 and Mark 13:8) that Jesus said would come. And we have not seen the most intense and painful sorrows, yet!

Does it seem to you that the tempo of disastrous events and change in the world is picking up?

As I reflected on the stressful times and was praying about the circumstances we are facing, the Lord led me to a wonderful promise. This is a word from the Lord that is as emphatic in its declaration of God’s care for us as the times we live in are difficult. It is a powerful promise to wrap your arms around and hold tightly.

Hebrews 13:5-6 (ESV):

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,

“The Lord is my helper;

 I will not fear;

 What can man do to me?”

The meaning here is clear and we understand that we are not to be driven by a desire to get things, to clutch and grasp at material possessions, for we have been promised something far greater.

This is an emphatic promise! In the original language, it would read something like this, “For He Himself has said, ‘I will not, I will not cease to sustain and uphold you; I will not abandon you or leave you helpless in dangerous or hostile circumstances.’”

How many times in Scripture do we see the Father get this strong and direct with us? For Him to repeat three times, “I will not!” means He doesn’t want us to miss the message.

I am not a perfect dad, not by any stretch of the imagination or use of flowery language. There were times when I raised my voice to my children. (I tried that once with Carol and after I did, I didn’t see her for a week. On the eighth day, I was able to get my left eye open just a little.) I tried not to raise my voice with my daughters when I was upset about something, but only when I wanted them to understand how strongly I felt about the subject under discussion—not in anger, but only in intensity.

I believe the use of repetition in this verse is God raising His voice and showing His intensity because He wants us to get the message. He is not raising His voice in anger but just like a loving father, He is reassuring His children who are being buffeted on all sides and wondering what is next. Wondering if, in this developing chaos, we are going to suddenly be abandoned, lied to and let down by Him, too.

Sometimes the only way to quiet a tumultuous situation is to speak loudly and sharply enough to cut through the commotion and confusion. God raises His voice to cut through the chaos so that He can get our attention, so we will be reminded that He rules the raging of the sea (see Psalm 89:8-9)

When confusion, anxiety and fear are all around, then God speaks directly to us and says, “I will not, I WILL NOT, I WILL NOT abandon you, leave you helpless and without defense. I WILL NOT!”

A BIG WORD WITH ONLY TWO LETTERS

The word “if” has only two letters but it’s a big, big word. The word establishes the condition by which God says He will send revival. If there is no humility; if there is no prayer; if there is no seeking the face of God; if there is no repentance and turning from sin—then there will be no awakening (see 2 Chronicles 7:14).

America is in great need of a revival but there is no national revival or awakening taking place! The hard fact is that most of the pastors and churches in America give lip service to the need for a national spiritual awakening. It is my personal opinion that the majority of contemporary evangelical churches embody the spirit of the church at Laodicea that Jesus described in Revelation 3:17: “I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing.” The feelings of self-sufficiency and arrogance are, to me, dumbfounding. Our nation is on the edge of collapse and our world is reeling under the threats of terrorism, war and economic disaster, yet the church is blithely ignoring the reality of it all.

Here’s a powerful story of what happened in the little town of Manchester, Kentucky, when the pastors and churches had had enough and desperation set in.

In July 1989, USA Today reported that more than 40 percent of Clay County’s [Kentucky] population was growing marijuana and the nearby Daniel Boone National Forest had been effectively transformed into a pot field. By the year 2000 the area had moved on to a new drug. In January 2003 The Lexington Herald-Leader dubbed Manchester, Kentucky, "The Painkiller Capital of America," as Oxycontin was being sold on nearly every street corner. After that, "cooks" rose up to manufacture methamphetamine, a highly addictive crystalline drug that can be snorted, smoked or injected.

Political officials and police were being paid to look the other way. The drug lords bought the elections every four years. More than 90 percent of the county's high school students were using drugs. Overdoses became a common occurrence in the area, with memorial crosses strewn along the city streets like a picket fence. Meanwhile, the pastors were polarized based on doctrinal differences and felt hopeless to help members whose families were drug-addicted and dying.

"Our kids started dying. Out of desperation, we started praying in the fall of 2003. We started crying out to the Lord. A Southern Baptist preacher named Ken Bolin had a dream," says Doug Abner, who was pastoring a church in Manchester at the time. "Ken wanted to have a march against drugs and corruption on May 2, 2004. We received threats on our lives, our homes and our churches, but we knew it was God."

The morning of May 2, in the pouring rain, 4,000 people turned out for the march. That's especially significant considering Manchester is home to only 2,000 people. The rally ended at a park. There the pastors and church leaders repented for being more concerned about their own denominations, their own congregations, and their own programs than the lost souls in Clay County. When they asked the people to forgive them and vowed to work together, Abner says the manifest presence of the Lord fell in the park to the degree that people could hardly breathe.

"The fear of the Lord gripped the community. Drug dealers and corrupt politicians began to tell on each other," Abner says. "A few months later, the FBI came to town and started arresting people. Eventually, they arrested the mayor and the assistant police chief, the fire chief, the 911 director, several local judges and city council members, a circuit judge, school board members and the superintendent and lots of others. They also arrested the drug dealers, who were selling drugs to the nation from Manchester."

Today, Manchester is known as the City of Hope. God even healed the land. For years, the water tasted foul without the use of a water filter. But in 2008, Clay County's water won first place in Kentucky's municipal water system for its taste. Churches and local businesses banded together with the court system to develop second-chance employment programs for Clay County's population of recovering drug addicts. As the economy improved, new businesses started opening to provide those jobs.

Doug Abner says, “I asked the Lord, 'Why Manchester?' And He said, 'Because I want the world to see what can happen when people get desperate and begin to come together,'" Abner continues. "As bad as the darkness was, our biggest problem was not the darkness. Our biggest problem was the lack of light—the church not being what it is supposed to be. When we came together in desperation, He healed the land. He changed the fabric of our society."

(This article is adapted from a story in the July 2015 issue of Charisma magazine.)

The pastors and churches of Manchester, Kentucky reached a point of desperation and when they did and in desperation reached out to God, in desperation they repented of their sin then the promise of God was released and by His Spirit God began to work in that city.

THE WINGS OF THE EAGLE

When I was in high school (yes, I can actually remember that far back, although my memories of that time are all in black and white), there were several teachers that some of us loved to torment. One of our “harassment tactics” was to wait until the teacher was writing on the blackboard and then launch a paper airplane in his direction. The plan was to see how close to the teacher we could come without actually hitting him. When the irate teacher spun around to find out who had joined the ranks of the terrorists, all he saw were thirty cherubic students dutifully writing in their notebooks.

A paper airplane can easily be made using a standard 8½” x 11” piece of paper. A few quick folds and the terror tool is ready to launch. About the only thing you have to be sure to do is make the folds sharp and remember that the wings must be equal and bent approximately at the same angle. If one wing is missing, the plane will not fly—it will spiral to the ground like a broken helicopter. If one wing is elevated above the other, the plane will fly in circles, although flying in circles is fine if you don’t have a destination in mind. So we are forced by necessity to make sure the wings of the plane are good or we really don’t have an airplane, we have a crash landing just waiting to happen.

Last week the blog I wrote was entitled, “You Were Born to Fly.” The process that an eaglet goes through to learn to fly holds many insights for us on how God teaches us to break loose and walk in faith. It’s vital that baby eagles learn to fly! They are not born with this innate ability . . . they must be taught and they must build strength in their wings. Eagles that never learn to fly are nothing more than turkeys pecking for seeds on the ground.

An eagle with one wing will never fly. It may take the leap out of the nest but unless both wings are in place and strong enough, it will not fly. At best, the eagle will helicopter to the ground.

The beautiful Old Testament imagery of an eagle soaring high above the countryside is one of my favorite pictures of the successful Christian life. On its powerful wings an eagle is lifted above the stresses, battles and mundanity of life as it learns to soar and follow the winds of the Spirit. Powerful imagery, powerful word picture.

Using the imagery of the eagle as a type/example of the New Testament believer, we must then ask, “What, exactly, are the wings?” What makes up these magnificent wings that help empower the believer, and need to be in harmony so that the believer’s life is one of purposeful movement?

 So what are the wings? 

“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works” (James 2:17-22, ESV).

One wing is faith and the other is action!

Like the wings of an eagle, faith and works cooperate with each other. There is a practical harmony between the vertical faith in God and the horizontal works—reaching out to a needy world. When the wings are out of synch, that is, when they are not working together, the eagle’s flight is hampered, if not completely ruined. When the wings are in harmony, the result is a thing of beauty. If faith without works is dead, then faith with works brings life!

When James said “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” he could just as easily have said, “If an eagle does not have two wings, it cannot fly.” Faith and its companion, action, do not breed death; quite the opposite, they speak of and invoke life.

YOU WERE BORN TO FLY

In last week’s blog we looked briefly at the statement in Proverbs 30, “The way of an eagle.” What wonderful attributes God has given to the eagle and what a powerful thing He has done in using the eagle as a type of the New Testament believer. It has always been God’s plan for believers to learn to fly in faith and soar in the Spirit. But in order for an eagle to fly, it must learn to do so— and so it is with every believer. No one is born again with the fully developed attributes of maturity and in order to fly in faith, a believer must learn how.

An eaglet will not learn to fly unless it gets out of the nest. As long as mom and dad are hovering and bringing it all the food it needs, why fly? Why not just stay in the nest, let somebody else do the work, and enjoy the good life?

 Could there possibly be a lesson here for us? I think so!

In the majestic poetry of Deuteronomy 32:11-12, Moses pictures God with the imagery of an eagle caring for its young.

“As an eagle stirs up its nest,
      Hovers over its young,
      Spreading out its wings, taking them up,
      Carrying them on its wings,
  So the LORD alone led him,
      And there was no foreign god with him.”

(The “him” referred to here is the nation of Israel and also it refers to us.)

So, what do you think? If the parent is referred to as an eagle and the child is, too, what does that mean? Yes, that’s right! We were born to fly, to soar like the eagle!

Eagles build their nests far above the earth, usually at the top of a tall tree high up on the side of a cliff or mountain. In a few minutes you will understand why.

Mom and dad eagle build the nest from sticks and then they pad the interior with feathers, down, grass and leaves. They don’t want their babies to have sticks poking them all day long so they make sure the nest is comfortable and softly lined.

An eaglet has a pretty good life. A great view, a soft bed, and room service throughout the day as its mom and dad bring in the latest menu items of roadkill.

Baby is growing and enjoying this good life. How easy it would be to spend the rest of one’s life living in this kind of laid-back comfort.

One day mother eagle seems to lose her mind. Instead of bringing the hungry eaglets food, she hovers over the nest and with the downdraft of her powerful wings she blows all the comfortable padding out of the nest. The luxury flies away and what’s left are the eaglets and a less-than-comfortable bed of sticks. But, hey, this is still a pretty good life, with the room service and a great view remaining.

With the stirring of the nest, however, everything begins to change. Instead of bringing the food into the nest, mom and dad start having the children come to them. First, the children have to climb up and get their food at the edge of the nest. Well, that’s new and a little inconvenient, but the kids handle it. Then one day no more service into the nest at all. Instead, the parents hover with the food just outside the nest and each baby is forced to climb to the edge and stretch out and take the food. A few days later, the parents have moved back a little further and as the hungry baby tries to reach for the food, it slips and begins to fall.

Baby cannot fly because it has no strength in its unused wings, so down it tumbles and “it ain’t flying but it’s sure trying.” Mother is ready for this and she swoops down and under the falling child, catches it and carries it back to the nest. Baby is unharmed and safe because mother is there.

The next day it’s the same thing. Down goes the child with wings flapping and flapping but it has not learned to fly—yet. Over and over the lesson is repeated and slowly strength comes into the baby’s wings. One day as baby falls and instinctively begins to flap its wings, suddenly everything begins to work and it begins to fly for the first time. Baby is not a baby anymore; now it’s an eagle because eagles know how to fly.

Mother had not lost her mind when she stirred the nest and blew the comfort out of the eaglet’s life. Mother knew that for an eagle to be an eagle, it had to learn to fly.

God will stir our nest and at times He will remove the comfort from our life. He knows that left to our own ways, we will choose comfort over faith, and so the training begins.

God knows that we have to learn to walk by faith, because without faith we cannot do His work and we cannot please Him.

He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will never be inattentive to your cry—but He will stir your nest and teach you to fly because, “They shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31).

You were born to fly!