We're okay but the car is wrecked.

Nancy and left for church last night around 4:30.  We never made it there.  A woman turned left in front of us on John Deere Road and totaled (I suspect) our vehicle.  We are thankful to God that we, and the lady who pulled in front of us, were able to walk away from the accident.  The Toyota Yaris did what is was supposed to do.  The integrity of the passenger's cabin was okay.  We were wearing our seat belts and both of our air bags deployed.

We are both a little sore and we may check in with the doctor tomorrow.  In any case both of us work with LPN's who can listen to our hearts and sort of check us over.

Life is very fragile.  Nancy and I both could have been badly hurt yesterday.  I have a brother and sister-in-law who live in the Tokyo area.  Both are fine for now.  And on Thursday night our Pastor's daughter in California fell.  That's all it was.  A simple fall.  But she lost the baby she was carrying that was due to be born in two weeks and she is fighting for her life right now.  Both her kidney's have shut down.

How wonderful it is to have Someone you can walk through life with hand in hand who will watch over you every moment of every day; give you strength when something bad happens; and welcome you home to heaven when something really bad finally happens that will turn out to be something really, really good. 

2 Corinthians 5.18-6:2

All of the great and wondrous blessings that are part of this salvation come as gifts from God.  Through the work of Christ God brought to an end the state of war that had existed between us and Him and He made us His dear friends.  Then He entrusted is this message that brings peace with God.

Every man who insists on being the king of his own life is in a state of war with God, whether he knows it or not.  Because Christ bore our sins God no longer has to punish us for the things we have done – as long as we accept this message that brings our personal war with God to an end and makes us His dear friends.

In our ministry we act much like ambassadors from God’s kingdom with a message for each and every little kingdom of “self” that is in a state of rebellion against God.  When we speak we speak His very words; we communicate His own personal peace proposal to everyone we meet, literally begging them to accept God’s peace proposal through Christ.

God took Christ, who was totally free from the taint of sin and completely pure in thought, word, and deed, and He literally poured our sins out on Him.  Christ took every last particle of our taint and our guilt and in its place He gave us His own purity and righteousness to have as our very own.  In the sight of God, if you are in Christ, you are just as pure and holy as God Himself is!

And in our partnership with God in this ministry we plead with you to ignore the false teachers in Corinth right now who are trying to get you to believe in a different gospel.  You have received the grace of God through faith but that faith will only save you if you continue in it.[1]

Through the prophet Isaiah God said that “at the appointed time I will respond to your need and save you.”  What we are saying is this.  This is that appointed time.  This is the “day of salvation.”  This is your only hope.  If you turn away from it there will be no salvation for you and you will be destroyed.

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[1] “By which also you are saved if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.”  I Corinthians 15:2

I Sort of "Saw" Mom After She Died

(from an email to my brother Wayne)  I sort of "saw" mom after she died.  I didn't see anything with my physical eyes.  The truth of the matter is that I think the Holy Spirit sort of communicated to me the essence of the way mom is now, more than He let me see her. 

Mom and I started out, like all mom's do with their kids, with me knowing nothing and mom, seemingly knowing everything.  I was a newborn.  I wasn't even a skull full of mush.  I was a skull virtually empty of content.  Then I caught up to her in the knowledge department and then I think, in all honesty, I slipped ahead of her and became more "grown up" than she was ever able to be (thought not without enormous flaws which are the fate of all of Adam and Eve's kids in this life).

Mom is now way ahead of me once again.  The sense that I got was of a Lois who is very, very wise.  Her serenity, should she be embodied and come back to visit us for a month or so, would be legendary.  All of the scars are healed.  All of the inner conflicts, hungers, doubts and fears are completely resolved.  She may actually be as far ahead of me now (if not farther) than she was ahead of me the day I was separated from her body for the first time.

So did mom fail?  Of course she did.  In Adam we all failed.  But in Christ we all succeed with a success that is so comprehensive that we are unable to fully grasp, while in this life, how radically awesome we are going to turn out to be in the end.  As Paul says, we are His workmanship.  We are His project and when He is done making us we shall be a stately as a mountain, as beautiful as a sunset, and as tranquil as a brook bubbling through a mature redwood forest.  We shall be as beautiful and as wise and as peaceful as He can make us.

An Earthquake in Tokyo

Earthquake emails from my brother in Tokyo.  Times are Central Standard Time.

11:59 PM:  We just had the strongest earthquake I've ever felt.  I figured it

might be the end.

The Lazy-Boy was rocking in the living room like it was a rodeo.

Dressers, desks, pretty much cleared -- although somehow electronics

and my desktop are intact.  Duration: at least one full minute.

Shaking: like I've never felt.

This was as serious an earthquake as you can get without being

absolutely disastrous.

Still shaking, and not mildly …

12:08 AM: 

Obviously I don't feel like I'm in immanent danger, or I probably

would not be writing this.  But we are still shaking perceptibly --

*very* perceptibly, and it's been 18 minutes since the shaking

started.

This is scary stuff -- there are still some strong shakes.  By

strong, I mean the kind that would have scared me a few years ago,

but were nothing compared to what we just experienced.

Glad I got my power walk in already today.  ^^_^^

Telephones appear to be out now, as shaking *still* continues as I

write.

Holy *shit* this is strong.

From my brother Wayne who is still up and living in Naperville, IL: 

10 ft sunami warning for the NE coast.  Could be 20 ft they say.  How high are you?

I see a huge pillar of smoke rising from Tokyo

From Lance in Tokyo, 12:17 AM: 

How strong was it?

Well, when I leave my desk, that's strong.  When I go to the area of

our house where I believe the support beams are strongest, that is

the beginning of scary.

Hell, this sucker doesn't stop!!!

When I get down on my knees, that's when it really gets spooky.  I've

never gotten down on my knees before.  I did this time, and I said,

"Please stop now!"

It didn't.

Aftershocks are rumbling through here like crazy, the one above quite

strong.  But I think the worst is finished -- at least for today.

Shaking again ...  strongly ...

The earth is like Jello.

Obviously, we missed the BIG ONE, for now anyway.  Also obviously, I

don't even appreciate the BIG ONE yet, because this one rocked my

world.

You can get updates at:

(We just had a HUGE aftershock, maybe as big as the first one)

Wayne responds: 

I just watched a live feed on fox news with waves coming ashore (I think) with dozens of cars being swept away in the wave.  They are saying a small 3 ft wave came ashore shortly after the quake hit, but the big wave is still to come.

Lance continues:  It's been 5 minutes at least, enough to call Yuki (his wife) -- she's okay,

although the *IDIOTS* she works with want to evacuate the building.

I told her to let them go -- she is safe where she is, and who knows

what lurks outside.

My triple-monitor display continues to rock.  Telephone wires look

like jump-rope invitations.

Amazingly, it seems no broken windows.  But the floor in my office is

a mess.  The ground is *still* moving, and moving sharply.

From Lance:  Now 2 hours and about 25 minutes later, and we are still getting

rattled by aftershocks that I would have previously called

"earthquakes".

But as I say, we dodged a bullet.  Had this been a bit closer, your

emails would be going unanswered, probably.

My response to my brother the next morning:  I hope this email finds you and Yuki safe and well.

Of all the natural events I have been involved in, earth quakes are the most disconcerting.  The air is supposed to move.  The wind is supposed to blow.  So sometimes it blows too hard and you get a tornado.  But the earth is NOT supposed to move!  It's supposed to be right under you.  When you go up for a rebound it's supposed to be right where you left it when you come back down.  (Actually, I don't go up for rebounds too often any more, but I certainly used to.)

I have been riding a motor scooter for several years now.  I got involved with the scooter when the price of gas last jumped to $4.00 a gallon.  I get 60 mpg on the bike.  So no matter what happens to the price of gas I am in pretty good shape for about eight months out of the year.  But riding the bike has brought me to a new place spiritually when it comes to praying about common, ordinary events.

I noticed I am much more likely to pray for a safe ride to work when I ride the scooter than I am when I drive a car.  And yet driving the car is one of the riskiest things we do.  It's safer than being on the scooter, but it's still a risky thing.  So the bike is dangerous and so is the car, but why did I find myself more likely to pray before I got on the bike?  It was because I was used to the car.  Everyone rides in cars.  Everyone accepts that risk.  And when we accept a risk we stop thinking about it.  And then we stop praying about it.  Which is presumptuous I think.

Several years ago, before I ever bought the scooter, I was driving down to Macomb to pick up Joy and bring her home from college.  It was snowing.  All of a sudden I lost control over my vehicle.  It was spinning like a top and I ended up going off the road backwards.  A split second after I went off the road a semi when right through the space where my van had been spinning at 55 mph.  With that snow on the road there is simply no way he could have stopped in time.  A split second sooner and I could have been broadsided by that truck.

I can't tell you how many times I had driven by people in the ditch during a winter storm and thought to myself, "Well, you just have to know how to drive in bad weather.  Some people just aren't careful enough."  Mr. Smug, who now found himself in a snow bank on the side of the road watching as a semi roared by.

So between that near accident and the scooter I find myself much more conscious of common, ordinary dangers and more likely to pray over such things.  I ask God to protect my family from everything from microbes to meteors.  Once a week I try and pray for everything I might have to worry about.  I ask God to protect us, our property, and our vehicles from disease, accidents, lightning, wind storms, fire, flood, backed up sewers, earthquakes, settleing foundations, meteors, infestations of pests (we have termites in the neighborhood), terrorism, crime, and anything else I haven't thought of.

Basically, on my "everything" prayer day I try to cover everything I might conceivably worry about.  And then I ask God for the gift of His peace.

There are two other steps to this process.  Step two is to turn every worry you have during the week into prayer.  Right now I'm concerned about the country, the debt, and what's going on in the Arab world.  But I'm even more concerned about listening to news without turning that into an occasion for prayer.  I have come to the conclusion that if I listen to too much news and do too little praying that I am just harming my soul.

Step three is to meet each problem as it occurs with prayer and a sense of God's presence and God's provision.  I expect my prayers to work!  I expect that when I get to heaven I will find out that there is a certain amount of grief that I did not experience because I prayed!  But we live in a fallen world and, as a more Christian and classier version of the bumper sticker should say, "The excrement of solid bodily waste is a constant and ongoing part of the process of life."  So when "excrement occurs," how do I respond?  Do I panic or do I respond like someone who believes that God is watching over me and that if something bad happens, then God is right there to help me through it?

I suppose the ideal would probably be something like this.  The house is shaking.  I somehow manage to struggle into my adult undergarment to avoid annoying and embarrassing wet spots on my trousers.  Or if the earthquake is really bad, even more embarrassing brown spots!  Always remember, "the excrement of solid bodily waste is a constant and ongoing part of the process of life."  Then I get under a door frame.  But while I am struggling with the undergarment and getting to the door frame I am praying. 

"Lord, please protect my family and bring us safely through this crises.  Protect our lives and our property.  If we must suffer loss or injury, give us the grace to to respond like sheep who are confident because they know that their Shepherd never leaves them or forsakes them.  And Lord, if this is my time to depart be in your presence in heaven, I welcome that with all my heart."

That, I think, would be the ideal.  Now if you will excuse me, I have to go to the store.  While we literally have cases of them in the garage at work, I just realized  that I have no depends in my home emergency preparedness kit.

The Fear of God

The fear of God is what you experience when you have traveled as far as your brain can possibly take you in knowing a truth about God and then the Holy Spirit takes you one step beyond the farthest point that your brain can reach.

In order to understand this we need to spend a few moments thinking about an attribute of God, so let's think about God's omnipotence.  God is a being of infinite power.  The sun is approximately one million times as big as the earth.  The surface of the sun is approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  If you want to know how many starts there are (again approximately) write the number 10 and then put 24 zeroes after it.  Many of these stars are bigger and hotter than our sun.  All of the power to fuel these stars came from a person.  It came from God.  And when God got done forming all these stars and lighting the nuclear fires within them, He still had just as much energy inside of Himself as He had before He began to create anything.  That's what we mean when we say that God has infinite power.  His power is limitless.

The paragraph you just read represents just about everything you can know about the omnipotence of God.  There are others who could say it so much better than I can but at the end of the day the information in that paragraph pretty well sums up everything the human mind can grasp about the infinite power of God.  This is true because our brains are not wired to really be able to grasp the concept of infinity.  We can reach a certain point and once we get to that point, no matter how much you strain or try, your brain can't grasp anything beyond that point.

Fortunately for us our hearts are much bigger than our brains.  With the Holy Spirit's guidance and enabling our hearts can take that one step beyond what our brains can know.  The Holy Spirit can communicate immediately and directly to your heart a sense of the omnipotence of God that is beyond what your brain can know.

Is it Biblical to expect such revelations?

"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him."  (John 14:21)

"He (the Holy Spirit) will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you."  (John 16:14)

So yes, it is Biblical to expect such revelations.  But what is this business about the heart being greater than the brain?  Is this just a loose, mystical use of language, or is it Scriptural?

"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know ... what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe."  (Ephesians 1:18, 19)  Now lets take a moment to analyze that passage. 

When this happens to you your emotions are not going to sit on the sidelines with their hands in their pockets.  You are going to experience a range of emotion that can be characterized by words like awe, wonder, and fear.  The intensity of the reaction will vary from person to person and from experience to experience.

The emotional response might be so strong that it would literally cause on to tremble.  To tremble is to shake involuntarily with quick, short movements as from fear or excitement.  With that as a background, let's look at some uses of the word tremble in the Psalms.

"Tremble, and do not sin; Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still."  (Psalm 4:4) 

"Worship the LORD in holy attire; tremble before Him, all the earth."  (Psalm 96:9) 

"The LORD reigns, let the peoples tremble; He is enthroned above the cherubim, let the earth shake!"  (Psalm 99:1)

"My flesh trembles for fear of You, and I am afraid of Your judgments."  (Psalm 119:120)

We might consider trembling to be a mild response to the glory of God compared to what John experience when he had a vision of Christ on Patmos.  "When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man."  (Revelation 1:17)  A number of Old Testament prophets had similar experiences.

Some lessons to be learned about the fear of God.

We should spend our whole lives praying for deeper revelations of God to our inner man.

We are simply kidding ourselves if we embrace a teaching that would limit the fear of the Lord to a deep sense of respect or even reverence.  A direct revelation of God may be accompanied by powerful emotions.  At times it is possible that we will be temporarily overwhelmed.

As always the ultimate test of any experience is the impact it has on our lives.  Any experience, no matter how deep or powerful the emotions involved, that does not change our lives for the better is suspect.  On the other hand an work of the Holy Spirit, even one that is accompanied by very little emotional response on our part, is to be cherished if it results in a closer walk with God.

One final word of exhortation.  We are never to seek an emotional experience for it's own sake.  We must always be seeking to know more and more of Christ.  But as we come to know Him better and better, we should no be shocked if we have the occasional experience of His presence that packs a powerful emotional punch.

2 Corinthians 5:16-17

We’ve come to the point where we no longer evaluate anyone based on the standards and values of this world (which are for the most part based on outward appearances).  We met Christ during His earthly ministry, but we don’t put too much emphasis on that.  A lot of the people who saw Him do His work, and this includes His even the twelve disciples, didn’t really understand a lot of what they were seeing or know what He was really trying to do.  Our relationship with Christ is actually deeper and more personal now that He is ascended into heaven and the Holy Spirit has descended to help us to really understand Him and know Him on a heart to heart basis.

The gospel should change the way you know Christ, the way you think about others, and even the way you understand yourself.  When you are spiritually reborn, from the first moment when that direct link opened between your inner man and the living, breathing Spirit of Christ, you became a brand new person.  All of the things that were true about your old life are in the rearview mirror now.  You’ve become fresh and new, like a brand new creation of God.  What you have to do now is learn a new way of thinking, new motivations, and a whole new way of living out this new life within you.

2 Corinthians 5:11-15

The thought of this coming “exit interview” with the resurrected Christ is, frankly, almost overwhelming.  We will see Him face to face.  We will be in the presence of infinite power, majestic authority, and the perfect beauty of holiness.  We are gripped with awe as we look forward to this momentous event.  God has given us a commission to preach this gospel.  It is our deep desire to obey this awesome God that compels us out into the world to persuade everyone to accept this message.  We know that God understands what is really motivating us and we hope that it is clear to you as well.

We’re walking a fine line here in what we are trying to communicate to you.  We aren’t trying to brag, and we trust that you understand that.  What we are trying to do is to give you a defense to use against the many slanders that are being brought against us.  An understanding of what we are trying to do and why we are trying to do it will keep your hearts and minds clear of the lies and slanders that could poison our relationship.  It will also give you information you can use to respond to the windbags who are only interested in outward appearances without really have a heart understanding of any of the issues they are blabbering about.

Our critics think that we are just like they are and they try and interpret every single thing we do in terms of self interest.  So they misunderstand everything.  Our whole outlook is God centered and others centered.  Self interest comes in at a distant third place.  So if we sometimes seem consumed by enthusiasm for our task, well, that’s because we are totally focused on the will of God.  And when we try and translate the glorious realities that God has made so real to our hearts into clear, plain, easily understood language, we are doing that for your sake.

God’s love will rewire your brain and captivate your heart.  That same person we are going to meet in judgment, that being of infinite power and majestic authority became a man and died to save us.  He not only died to save us, but He incorporated us into His very being so that we participate in His experience of death and resurrection.  God has never explained to us exactly how it happened, but by some mysterious, supernatural process God can take a man living in the here and now and release inside of him a manifestation of the power of something that happened in the past:  Christ’s death and resurrection.

The power of the death applies to our relationship to sin enabling us to die to that old self centered, “it’s all about me” manner of living.  And that resurrection power is the new God centered—others serving manifestation of the very life of Christ within us.  So here’s your bottom line.  He lived and died for us.  As the reality of that rewires your mind and captivates your heart you will find yourself willing and eager to live and die for Him.