Do Not Be Afraid

 

 

Week of February 24

 

Several years ago I was going through a tough time and feeling a great deal of anxiety. Something happened that has been a source of comfort and courage ever since.

 

I need to say, right up front, that I have never practiced, nor do I agree with, what has sometimes been called “Bible roulette.” This is the technique of seeking guidance from God by letting the Bible fall open at random, putting your finger on the page, and trying to interpret as a directive from

God the verse thus identified. On the other hand, in my personal devotions I will often select a passage to read as I feel led, or because I feel a need.

 

I must also say that the Bible I usually use for my devotional reading was, at the time I am referring to, still fairly new. It was not dog-eared from use, nor did it naturally fall open to any particular passages.

 The event is recorded in my journal. But it need not be, for it stands out in my mind with crystal clarity.

 

I was alone and feeling agitated. There seemed no end to my anxiety. I cried out, “O God, I am so tired of being afraid!” It wasn’t a formal prayer. It was a cry from the heart.

 

At that moment I felt an urge, an invitation, a desire to turn to Scripture. As I reached for my Bible, I felt a definite inclination to turn to the Old Testament. But nothing more specific had yet come to mind. I opened the Bible somewhere around the middle. The very first words my eyes fell upon were these: “...do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God...”

 

I was awestruck. I tried to reproduce the event, but it was soon obvious that my Bible was not automatically opening to Isaiah 41:10.

 

The skeptic may call it coincidence. But I am convinced that God was in that event, speaking precisely to my anguish through those words of Scripture. Thanks be to God.

 

Persh Parker

Billings, Montana

John's Miracle Recovery

 Week of February 17

In mid July 2009 on the island of Kauai, Hawaii I became very sick. I had been healthy all my 63 years and this was a new experience for me. After a week of high fever, aches and waking up with the sweats I called my doctor friend in Montana. After hearing my symptoms Dan said I needed to see a local doctor.

I did and he thought it was a sinus infection. After a few days I started getting vertigo, and seeing double.  I decided if I didn’t feel better in the morning I would go to the emergency room.

In the morning, still feeling lousy, I took a cab from where I lived outside of Koloa to the hospital on Kauai where I was admitted with what was originally thought to be double pneumonia. It was not.

While my lungs sounded clear x-rays revealed two white clouds. I was transferred by air taxi to the Staub Medical Center in Honolulu. Here I tested positive for Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the organs of the body. I my case it was the lungs.

I do not remember of lot of the initial weeks in intensive care as I was drugged and in an induced coma. I was not expected to live very long and my wife and three daughters were called. They came from Montana to visit me for the last time. I did not know they were even there.

My body weight went from 167 to 132. Massive doses of steroids were given me as part of my treatment. When I awoke from the coma I was on a ventilator and had all sorts of tubes in my body.

I was literally a rag doll and could only move the muscles in my neck. An emergency button to call for help was draped over my shoulder so I could press it with my neck.

I remember thinking. How am I going to possibly come back from this. I believed I couldn’t and became totally depressed.

The bed I was in was a special physical therapy bed which could be set to do a wave like motion under the body. It wasn’t suppose to be on for me but it was. The motion caused me to move sideways and my body became lodged between the mattress and the sideboard. I was being squeezed with my arms dangling helplessly over the side of the bed. I could not move my head to press the call button. I was crying out “nurse help…nurse help!”

Then a strange thing happened. It was  as if my spirit had left my body. I was sitting on the edge of a small stream with tall wet grass along the banks. A mist was rising from the water. I knew if I just lay down in the wet grass it would be over. No more struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to totally give up.

Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I “sprung back.”

A voice said, “Can I help you?”

After getting me help I found out that the man who touched my shoulder was the pastor at the hospital. He told me that he received a call 30 minutes earlier from my friend Jim in White Fish, Montana who asked that the Chaplain  look me up.

From that moment on I never had depression again. In fact, during the rest of my hospital stay I was even joyful. My spirit was strong and I made dramatice progress physically. Within two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen.

I still could not move a muscle but my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He began by massaging my muscles and moving my limbs.

I was moved from Intensive Care to the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are close to being released. I worked hard and talked and joked with almost every aide and nurse on that floor.

One day the doctors looked at me and my progress and said “John you are a living miracle.” They suggested I be transferred to a nursing home in Montana where I would be near friends and my support system.

The Flying Nurses International flew with me from Honolulu to Salt Lake City and onto Glacier International Airport in Kalispell, Mt.

It wasn’t until I was back in Montana that I learned that my doctor friend Dan and Jim, who I knew from my appraisal business, had been meeting  and praying for me daily throughout my ordeal.

You see, the doctors were right, I am a living miracle. And I was right, I could not come back on my own. I have no doubt that God through His grace spared my life and used my friends and that Chaplain to help me back.

John Woods

Kauai, Hawaii

God's guest list...are you on it?

 Week of February 10

 

 

“Return home and show the great things God has done for you..” So he went his way and told throughout the whole city the great things Jesus had done for him.”Luke 8:39

 Before setting out on my travels, I pray that God will allow at least one believer to cross my path. He has never disappointed me—the unexpected believing strangers are always there.

 A few years ago I wrote about some of my serendipitous “kisses”—and the saga

continues. Since then, I have met believers in the middle of a desert in Idaho, on a tiny island called Salt Cay, in a sports shop in Vermont and at a coffee shop in San Francisco, to name a few. I have recently bought a small, purse-size blank book so I can have my “kisses” sign it, and I can look them up in the Book of Life when I get to heaven. I call it “God’s Guest List.”

 The latest “kisses” occurred during a recent trip to Phoenix. As I stood on the sidewalk of the Phoenix airport waiting for a cab, I met an attractive African-American woman. She was on her way to a car rental place, and I asked her if she wanted to share a cab. “It’s not really on the way to your hotel,” she told me. “That’s OK,” I replied. “I don’t mind going out of my way.” The cab attendant started yelling at me when I joined this woman, since another cab had just pulled up. “I’m going with this woman, and you’re not going to tell me what to do,” I answered authoritatively.

  During the ride, my new acquaintance confided she had no friends in Phoenix and that she was leaving her Congregational church friends and community in Chappaqua, New York. I remarked to her that God would bring her friends and suggested to pray for them—and find a church. We talked like old friends, and when she departed, I wouldn’t let her pay her fare, which intrigued our Somalian cab driver, considering I had just met her. I know he listened to our conversation and I hope that he saw Jesus Christ uniting us together. As I rode alone to my hotel, I knew then that my tenacity with the cab attendant was God-given. This woman needed encouragement!

 Two days later, I sought relief for my muscles at the hotel spa. Many spas tend to embody the New Age philosophy, and this spa was no different.

“Lord,” I prayed, “protect me from this atmosphere.” I was ushered into a

room and was assigned a masseuse, an older German woman with a face that looked like she had gone through many trials. She inquired why I was at the hotel.

 “To learn about Jesus Christ and how to follow Him in our everyday walk,” I responded.

 “I love Jesus, too,” she replied. I then learned she had recently moved to Phoenix after having been in a cult in Germany that pretended to be a Christian commune, but which had deceived her and taken all her money.She asked me to write down the titles of Christian books that would help her, and I gladly gave her a long list—along with the verses of Philippians 3:12-13, which would encourage her to forget what was in the past and press on toward the goal of knowing Christ. She hugged and kissed me, and her weary face now blossomed with a smile. I left the spa feeling rejuvenated by the Holy Spirit.

 Shopping, too, was invigorating. I went to a boutique to buy my aunt a birthday present, and within a few minutes, I found myself on the sidewalk talking with the owner and his wife. We discussed how the Lord was working in the country; the National Prayer Breakfast; their minister son; believers in Phoenix—and who knows

what else. They were mature believers, and we had a wonderful time just enjoying each other.

 

But the trip was ending, and off to the airport I went with my family. As I walked past a sleeping shoeshine man, I noticed he had a Bible opened to John 11, so I woke him up. “Fred, would you give me a shoe shine, please?”

 “Hop up,” he said. “So, how long have you been a believer?” I questioned. “’Bout forty years,” he replied. “Forty years? That’s a long time.” 

“Forty years? Naw, that’s nothin’! Think of Moses in the wilderness. Why, it’s not even a twinkle in eternity.”

 The way he said that brought laughter to my soul. My laughter made him laugh, and we had a grand time. After kidding me about my small feet, he promised to pray for me at his prayer meeting that night. I promised to do the same for him, wherever I happened to be.

  I later looked up John 11 and read in verses 25 and 26: “I am the resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe in Me?” Did Fred just happen to be reading John 11, or was he ready with words of life for any patron who would listen?

  I find it amusing, thinking about the scurrying “travel agents” of God, arranging not only my itinerary, but the itinerary of other believers. Why would God do such a thing? To bless only me? He does that anyway, even when I’m home. Rather, the answer to “Why?” is so He can bless others.

  I’m “paying it forward” to the readers of this article so that you, too, will be blessed and encouraged to look for lovers of Jesus wherever and whenever you travel. “Kisses” are waiting for your collection, and God’s guests are waiting for your acquaintance.

 

Sandra Ulbrich

Durham, Connecticut