Theological Musings

t’s been too long since I posted here. And I hate that my post is mostly self-serving. But here goes…

Indieheaven is an organization that aids independent artists (like me) in their careers through networking, resources, etc. And each year, they have what they call “Momentum Awards” — sort of their version of the grammy.

I was nominated this year for an award, and there was an early round of voting. Starting February 1 and running through March 1 is the second round of voting. The top vote-getters from the first round are in the running as finalists.

I was pleased to find out that I am one of four finalists in the “Instrumental Artist of the Year” category!!

So, if you don’t mind, please head over to http://www.indieheaven.com/momentum_awards.php and cast your vote before March 1.

I’m honored to be nominated for this award, and appreciate those of you who are supporting me in this.

or those of you who have been remembering this in prayer, I wanted to let you know that finally, after a six-month process, I have found out that I did not get the position at Barter Theatre in Abingdon, VA that I had hoped for.  So, for the present time, we will be remaining here in Boone.  The news was a bit hard to receive, but at the same time, I’m just very glad to finally know (six months is a long time to be going through a process like this).  Thank you all for your prayers.  And a belated Happy New Year to you all!  More substantive posts will hopefully follow…

n the fascinating discussion regarding healing, Scott asked for some first-hand experiences. I have been reticent to share the following experiences because they are personal. Yet, I think the time is right to include them in the discussion as my own first-hand experiences with both physical healings and provision of God.

Stretching Space - In May, 1995, I was preparing to move from New Jersey to Dallas, Texas to attend Dallas Theological Seminary. My parents offered to help with the moving expenses and to drive the moving truck for me so that I didn’t have to drive it and tow my car. I fully appreciated this offer, and accepted.

Based on the small amount of stuff that I had, I estimated that a 10-ft. U-haul truck would be sufficient, so that is what we rented. As moving day approached, I dragged my foot along the carpet in the living room of my small home to make a mark where the end and sides of the 10-ft. space would be. And I began stacking the boxes in that space.

The closer I got to moving day, the more I realized that my stuff was not going to fit in the space I had carefully measured and marked out in the living room. There was no way.

Driving to work a few days before the move, I was meditating on the passage where Jesus multiplied the bread and the fish to feed 5,000 people. Unaccustomed to asking for “miracles”, I began to talk to God openly.

“Lord, I don’t know how to ask for this, because I don’t even know if it is something I’m supposed to be asking you for. It seems silly. However, the reality is, my belongings will not fit in the 10-ft. truck we have reserved. If you were able to multiply a few loaves and fish enough to feed 5,000 people, I can’t help but believe that you can stretch the 10-ft. of space inside that truck to allow everything to fit.”

With that, I continued stacking boxes right up until moving day, extending past the line on the carpet. And I told absolutely no one about the problem or my prayer for provision.  Instead, I just quietly trusted that all would be well.

Moving day arrived, and my parents went to pick up the truck. As I sat waiting on the front step, they backed the truck up the driveway. I sat there looking at it thinking, “That doesn’t look like the truck in the picture.” My parents got out of the truck, and I said, “Is that a 10-ft. truck?” They said, “Well, actually, when we went to pick up the truck, they were out of 10-ft trucks. Since that’s what we had reserved, the guy at the U-haul place told us that he would just give us a 14-ft truck at the same price.”

When we packed the 14-ft truck, my boxes and belongings came right to the very end of that truck with just enough room to slide the door down and latch it! God “stretched” the 10-ft truck to just the right size to meet my needs!

Throwing Away the Meds - I am normally in very good health. I am very grateful for that. But it didn’t look so good for a while. In May, 2001, I was working at my desk in San Marcos, TX coding away on a software project. All of a sudden, I started feeling dizzy. My hands started to shake, and I began feeling very nauseous. Without warning, I suddenly began vomiting. Everything began to feel very strange and out of sorts to me.

I got control of the vomiting and decided to try to make my way to the bathroom at the other corner of the building. Feeling very weak, I made my way to my feet and started down the hall. Everything was spinning, and I kept falling. I tried to lean against the wall for support, and slowly made my way to the other end and into the bathroom. Once there, I laid on the cool tile for a while trying to get the feelings to subside.

Eventually, I managed to get myself back up and make my way to a co-worker’s office. He took one look at me and said, “Are you ok????” I tried to talk, but couldn’t really get the words out. He left to call 911 and another co-worker tried to help me to a chair. Instead, I began to collapse, and ended up stretched out on the floor.

By the time the ambulance arrived, I was not sure whether I was staying conscious or not. I was hyperventilating. My feet and legs felt numb, and I was losing feeling in my fingers. I tried to talk, but was trembling so much that I couldn’t really get anything out. All kinds of thoughts were running through my mind.

I spent several hours in the ER, but they could not find anything wrong. Finally, they discharged me, and since I was too weak to drive, a friend gave me a ride home. I had no strength at all, and my head was hurting very, very badly.

To make a long story short, this began a period of almost two months where I endured a constant migraine headache that debilitated me. My job was kind enough to allow me to telecommute, but every day, I would get up, stumble to my home office, attempt to work, but within 15 minutes, have to lay back down again. The headache would not go away. I had no strength. I couldn’t hardly think straight, and I ended up just taking a huge amount of sick days (my employer allowed us to borrow from future sick days, so I took advantage of that at the time).

Every day was the same — attempt to get up and deal with the pain, endure maybe 15 minutes of being up, and then feeling like I was going to collapse again.

Several times, a friend took me to the doctor. They did blood tests. They did a brain MRI. They could not identify anything that was causing the pain. So they put me on some pain medication to try to make the pain subside some. Even that seemed to have little effect.

For almost two months, I stayed in this condition. It was actually during this time that I began to seek to understand what God’s heart was with regard to healing. I began to spend time reading the accounts of healing in the Bible. I had always been the one to argue, “Well, Jesus didn’t heal everyone when he was here.” Yet, I could not find support for that argument.

What I found, in fact, was the statement in Matthew 8 where it says that they brought the sick to Jesus “and he healed them all.” And then, this was the part that really intrigued me, Matthew ties that into Isaiah 53 and the prophecy regarding Jesus there.

When I read that, I was dumbfounded. Part of the prophecy of Jesus coming included physical healing? And that was right in there with “by his stripes we are healed”? Why had I never seen that before?

So, I said, “Lord, I have been thinking all along that there’s a chance that you don’t want to heal. That you may have brought this into my life for some reason. That I shouldn’t assume that you want to heal me. But your heart, as revealed in Jesus, appears to be quite different. I believe that you do want to heal me, and I want to accept that.”

With that, and I am not exaggerating at all in any of this, I got up, threw the medication in the trash can, walked out the door, got in my car, and went to work. The headache left, the dizzy feeling, the weakness, all began to go away, and I have not looked back since.

After two months of barely being able to walk, I can’t tell you how good it felt to move around and function in life again!!

He’s Not Hurt? - Sometime around November, 2004, a co-worker of mine got a frantic call from his wife. Some men had been working on their roof, and one of them had fallen off the roof. Since my co-worker didn’t have his car with him (his wife had dropped him off earlier that day), he asked me to take him to his house.

When we got there, we saw the situation. One of the workers had, indeed, fallen from a roof that was about eight feet off the ground. He lay on the ground, his head against a wheelbarrow and his body twisted. He was conscious, but complaining about a lot of pain.

The ambulance arrived shortly after we got there, and the EMT began to assess the situation. It did not look very good, and they medical personnel were being extremely cautious. It was hard to tell if anything was broken, but every time they tried to move him, he complained about severe pain.

As he lay there, I watched and prayed. “Lord, I don’t know exactly what I should do here. Do I walk up in front of all these people and lay hands on this gentleman? Will I make a fool of myself?” I didn’t want to, in any way, draw attention to myself. And so I quietly just kept praying. “Lord, you know the extent of injuries here. You know the fall that he has taken, and how hard he hit. You know how to make everything the way it should be, and I ask you to heal this man. Put together any bones that are broken and restore him.”

They finally managed to get him loaded into the ambulance and rushed off to the hospital. We spent a few more minutes with my co-worker’s wife who was quite obviously and understandably shaken by all of this. But finally, we went back to work. I continued to pray and wonder what would happen.

The next day, I asked my co-worker if he had heard anything. He said, “Yeah, actually. Believe it or not, they checked him out at the hospital and found nothing wrong. They released him, and he is fine!”

Now, I don’t take credit for any part of this. I just am testifying to what I saw. A man fell from eight feet, landing on his back (we found out later that he had experienced a seizure that caused him to fall), possibly even hitting his head on the wheelbarrow, complained of severe pain, and several hours later walked out of the hospital completely fine!

Scott, thanks for asking about the personal experiences. I’ve enjoyed revisiting these events in my mind and sharing them.

Until next time,

steve

here have been very interesting discussions taking place both here in the comments on this blog and over at Scott’s in relation to the recent posts Scott and I wrote. I have been away from my computer for most of the afternoon and evening, so I have been unable to engage all of the comments.

At the risk of confusing people, I want to respond here with what would have been a very lengthy comment. There are some things that I really feel the need to clarify, and some things that I would like to continue to plead with my readers to consider.

I have not at all been trying to argue that any of this has to do with forcing or making God do something. Once again, the original point that I made that started all this was in response to those who are teaching that healings, etc. are not at all for this time and that their sole purpose in NT times was for authentication of the message. (By extension, this also includes the concept that the “completion of the canon” took the place of these authenticating events.)

This is, I think, an important distinction, because it significantly narrows the scope of what I’m arguing for, and what I’m arguing against. I am not a fan of theology that says if we act a certain way that God has to act a certain way in response.

However, having said that, I think it is important to consider what patterns we do have revealed. More on that in a bit.

Let me also make crystal clear that in none of this am I trying to explain or seek a “formula” for guaranteed miracles. All I have tried to do is point out patterns in scripture. I’m trying to work with what scripture says first and foremost before drifting off into “I don’t think…” or “Well, I know it says that, but…”

In light of that, there are some passages that are not entirely clear. Several have mentioned Paul’s infamous “thorn in the flesh”. The reality is, we do not know what that thorn was. It is described as a “messenger of Satan”. This is a phrase that is never used elsewhere in scripture to describe a physical ailment. If, indeed, it was a demon, or a person who was irritating Paul, God does, as he told Paul, give us the grace to deal with those things and not to be hindered or irritated by them.

And this is even more important: This passage does not say that God told Paul “no” to a healing request. In fact, God doesn’t actually say “no” to Paul at all in that passage.

Which brings me to my next point. I see absolutely no record anywhere in scripture where someone asked Jesus to heal them and he said, “No, I think I want to let you stay this way for some purpose.”

I think it is important that we deal with the clear passages of scripture and not brush them aside by focusing on something that is ambiguous.

Someone else mentioned Job’s comment “Though he slay me, yet will I praise him.” I’ve hesitated to respond to this, but I think I’m going to stick my neck out there and give my response to this. Personally, I do not think that Job’s comment represents an accurate portrayal of God’s character. This is in the same line of thinking as Job’s incredibly “popular” statement, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”

We are told by Jesus himself that he came to reveal the Father to us. “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” Jesus said. So what we see in the character of Jesus is a revelation of the heart of the Father.

Now, let me ask you this: From what we see of Jesus and what he taught and revealed, is it God’s desire or will to slay us?? No, no, no, a thousand times no! Jesus died so that we can live!!

Along the same lines, is it God’s desire or will to give us something and take it away from us frivolously, as Job claimed? No. Jesus drew an analogy with human fathers wanting to give their children good gifts and asked, in essence, “If sinful human fathers act this way, how much more do you think your heavenly Father will act toward you?”

Job was accusing God of taking things from him, tearing him down, etc., and demanding an audience with God to make God answer for it all. How can we base our theology and understanding of God on such a misunderstanding to the point of discounting what God himself revealed through Jesus??

Some have hinted that I’m looking at this from the angle of man somehow getting credit for healing. Let me hasten to clarify that, as well. Is it all in God’s power and to his glory? YES!! I absolutely believe that!! Let there be no mistake about that. But God has revealed through Jesus that there is a kingdom available to us that is not of this world, and when he revealed that kingdom, he included things that we either pay lip service to, or outright deny.

I am simply asking the question of whether that is wise or not. When I asked whether we should be teaching this stuff, what I basically mean is whether or not we should tell people that God wants to heal them. The prevailing trend in our western culture is to actually tell people that God may not desire to heal them. Yet I am not seeing any solid scriptural basis for this.

Again, let me ask where someone ever came to Jesus or the disciples for healing and they told them “no”. This is not an argument from silence here. This is arguing on the basis of a plethora of accounts in multiple books of the Bible.

Finally, let me say that in no way am I suggesting that we are to go around judging other people’s faith. Some comments have hinted that talking about the element of faith in a healing necessarily leads to this kind of judgment.

What I am saying, however, is that we should examine our own belief. If we believe that God doesn’t want to heal us, then we can’t expect to be healed. If we believe that God only chose to say “yes” to healings through Jesus and that he doesn’t choose to do that today, there is no reason that we should ever see healing take place. We may, but we have no reason to think that we will.

So, some questions for some possible groups of readers here:

1. Those of you who believe that God is not always willing to heal, can you explain to me the basis for that belief?
2. Those of you who believe that faith is not an important part of receiving a healing, can you explain to me how you answer the numerous times (and they are quite plentiful — just read through the first four books of the New Testament) that Jesus mentions faith with regard to the healing?
3. Those of you who believe that the completion of the canon supplanted the healings and miraculous events of the first century, can you explain the basis for that belief, please?

When Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, did he go around actually placing illnesses on some people, refusing to heal others who asked for it, killing some people, striking others blind, and then telling them to just deal with it, that it was all part of the way things are for now? No, he did none of that.

Why would we proclaim a message that is in any way different than the one that he proclaimed?

Until next time,

steve

n response to my “You Might Be Misrepresenting God” post, Scott Roche and I have been engaged in what is turning out to be the continuation (no pun intended, Scott!) of an unfinished conversation from earlier in the fall.

Scott’s a good online friend, and I appreciate the engagement with him anytime it presents itself. We differ on some interpretations of scripture (who doesn’t?!), but I never feel like Scott is questioning our fellowship as brothers. For that, I am very appreciative. (And Scott, we need to hit up Starbucks in Winston together sometime soon, bro. I’d love to chat about stuff in person with you.)

So anyway, Scott responded on his blog about miracles. You can read the post, simply called “Miracles”, here.

I started to respond on Scott’s blog, but as often happens with me, my comment became quite lengthy, and I decided to put it here as a post instead of taking up Scott’s bandwidth with it.

Scott mentioned a great statement of Jesus as part of the discussion, and then offered his commentary:

Christ said “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.” Does that mean that next week I can raise someone from the dead? No, I don’t think so. What I think it means is that this week I can talk to people about my faith. It means that I can love the people in my community sacrificially. What does he mean by “greater works”? Frankly, I don’t know. I think that greater might mean greater in scope. We have the opportunity to take the message of God’s love into places unheard of in Jesus’ time. I’m more than willing to admit that I could be wrong though. If you are hardcore one way or the other I’d be curious as to know why.

In response to some of the things that were said in the post, I’d like to address the “greater things” part first. I don’t necessarily consider myself “hard core one way or the other” on what the “greater things” are, but I’ll try to give my thoughts.

While I have no trouble saying that the “greater things” are not explicitly stated (and therefore subject to some interpretation at least), we still need to wrestle with the fact that Jesus didn’t just say we would do “greater things”. He first said that we would do the same things he was doing. Regardless of what the “greater things” might be, are we doing the same things that Jesus did?

Take a look at the examples in the book of Acts. The disciples, in fact, did do the same things Jesus was doing. They healed the sick, raised the dead, etc. Furthermore, when Paul talks about spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians, he includes healing and miracles as two gifts that the Spirit gives to the body.

I’m not as troubled by the argument from silence on the cessationist side as I am the inability to adequately explain away the stuff that’s not silent. And “troubled” is not actually a good word. It just doesn’t make sense to me, I guess.

How did Jesus heal people? And how did his disciples heal people?

1. The people receiving the miracle believed it was possible, and
2. The person facilitating the miracle (or at times, someone on their behalf) believed it was possible. That seems to be an incredibly common factor throughout. Enough of a factor that I don’t think we can dismiss it too easily.

Scott also said:

I don’t think that we’re seeing fewer miracles today because of the state of faith in our world. Miracles are by definition rare things.

If scripture draws a strong parallel between the state of faith (either in individuals or in a region) and miracles (and I believe it does), should that not be taken into consideration? On what basis, then, do you think that doesn’t apply? Furthermore, when the kingdom was proclaimed by Jesus, were they really “rare” things? Does scripture itself define miracles as “rare”?

So to have this thing occupy a major portion of your theology and to go around in circles looking for support one way or another is indeed wasting cycles, if that’s all you’re doing.

I hope you can understand at this point that it’s not occupying “a major portion” of my theology, but rather I’m trying to assess what place it should. So I don’t see it as wasting cycles at all.

My point and repeated question basically come down to this: We see Jesus doing miracles as part of his gospel proclamation. Jesus tells us that those who believe in him will do the same things he did, and even greater things. The disciples go on to do the same things Jesus did, and even greater things (in terms of scope, for certain). So, if we are not to expect to do the same things, on what basis do we draw that conclusion?

Here’s a poor analogy: There is a light switch that I always use to turn on our dining room light. If I flip the switch one day and the light doesn’t come on, I can either conclude that the switch no longer is intended to operate that light, or I can conclude that something is not working properly and needs to be corrected for the switch to operate the light again. In a very basic way, the cessationist position seems to be saying that the switch is no longer intended to operate the light, whereas the continualist position is saying that the intent is still there, but something is not working properly.

Thoughts from Scott or anyone else?

Until next time,

steve