CHOOSE THIS DAY LIFE OR DEATH

By James Wilson

            I will never forget the inner healing session I conducted with the distraught widow of a member of my congregation in Virginia a quarter of a century ago.  Her husband had hanged himself in the entryway of their home and she found his body when she returned from grocery shopping; their six-year-old found it with her.  During the inner healing session she had a vision in which The Father allowed to see her dead husband – alive with Him.  When He asked her if she had a message for her husband she replied, “I want to beat the stuffing out of him.”  The Father answered, “Well, he owes you at least that,” and she proceeded – in the vision – to punch him until she was out of breath.  She opened her eyes and said to me, “Now I can forgive him.”

            That may not seem like a very Christian way to forgiveness – it doesn’t to me at least – but reality is the husband brutally injured the wife and young son.  He left himself in the front hallway deliberately and with calculation.  We do not belong solely to ourselves; we belong as well to the God Who created us and the loved ones we invite into covenant with us.  G. K. Chesterton calls suicide an ultimate expression of a will to destroy.  That young widow was entitled to express her own rage.  When it was done – in the vision and not to the husband’s physical self – she was truly able to forgive and begin to heal and move on.

            Equally burned into my memory was the time I had to forcibly restrain my own mother from swallowing a whole bottle of pills in our front hallway.  I literally held her by the throat until she spit them onto the carpet.  Another time I restrained her as she screamed she would drive her car off a cliff; I had my brother disable the car.

            Please don’t misunderstand me.  The despair that can drive a person to want to end his own life is real and compelling.  It runs in my family and I neither question it nor mock its gravity.   On top of this, there are mind altering drugs that can produce suicidal thoughts and motivations; some of these may have played a role in the death of Robin Williams.  But if we learn anything from the Word of God and our own pre-disposition to admire sacrifice and sacrificial heroism it is that only a life lived for others has meaning.  Our original fall from grace was all about human beings deciding to live for their individual selves instead of for God and each other.  Jesus Christ came into the world to restore the natural created economy of sacrifice with His own sacrificial death and resurrection.

            Suicide is an ultimate choice to seek one’s own good at the expense of others.  The greatest irony is that it turns out to be the enemy of all life doing a number on one more victim every time.  Attempted suicides for whom intervention was successful are virtually without exception the first to admit how grateful they are.  It may sound like old fashioned guilt-tripping but it is appropriate to point out that every person has forged interdependent and covenantal relationships that carry mutual obligation.  The so-called right to die is a non sequitur; rights are for the living.

            When my mother entered the last stage of her battle with an atypical form of tuberculosis she asked me to do something that was unthinkable for me as a Christian.  She wanted me to connect her with a Dr. Kevorkian type who would usher her out of this life.  I told her I would gladly prevent doctors from taking heroic measures to extend her life, but under no circumstances would I play God by facilitating the termination of her life.  Once she knew I was serious – over the next few days – she became interested in asking Jesus Christ into her life for the first time in her life.  When she actually popped the question she said it was because she had never known the peace she saw in me even when the world was crashing down around me.  We prayed and that peace entered her even as the Spirit of God entered.  Four days later she lapsed into a coma and went home.

            Had I cooperated with her expressed desire for suicide assistance she would not have gone anywhere.  Our choices are seldom easy, but they really are that simple.  Jesus says, “I came that they might have life, and that abundantly.”  This is true, and it is good.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

A CAPITOL PRAYER BRIDGE

By James Wilson

(Part 3 of 3)

Miracles are nothing more – and nothing less – than incidents of God’s intervention in our lives.  The reality that our hearts continue to beat is no less miraculous than a limb growing out or a cancer being cancelled – unless we really believe a heartbeat is an involuntary muscular activity.  Somebody volunteers.

The message of Romans 8:28 that God works all things together for good in those who love Him and are called according to His purposes is simply His declaration that He is a chronic interventionist.  The miracles in this narrative of the capitol prayer bridge journey are not primarily for my benefit, although I praise Him for taking care of me in the way that He has.  Has He repaired a heart in which the bypasses were detaching sans medical care through my prayers?  Did He restore the ligaments in a knee in one person and realign a spinal column in another as I worshipped with others?  Did a woman discover her ancient sins really are forgiven as I laid hands on and blessed her?  God does not love me any more passionately than He loves every human being He has created and to whom He is calling in this season of His special favor.  These stories are told and these incidents are occurring to waken everyone reading them to the authority God placed in us through baptism and commitment to the Lordship of Jesus.  We are the people who love God and are called according to His purposes.  He doesn’t care whether we are charismatic, evangelical, or mainline; He cares passionately that we confess with our lips, believe in our hearts, and struggle to match behavior to belief.

And to any reader who has not yet made such a commitment, what are you waiting           for?  To any who has talked the talk but is not walking the walk in its fullness…rise, take up your pallet and walk.  The time of paralysis is past.

Washington was the last state I visited.  There I had the opportunity to teach in some depth on the theme, “For Such a Time as This.”  I shared the reality of the Wild Horse Nebula, a cluster of stars and dark matter thirty million light years from earth.  This nebula is so distant it was undiscovered until the Hubble Telescope was placed in orbit.  In the heart of this celestial body is a black hole several million miles across. That hole is shaped like a cross – the Cross – and we become aware of it only in this century.  Does not the Scripture (Psalms 19:1) say, “The heavens declare the glory of God.”

Laminim is a protein molecule so tiny it can only be seen beneath an electron microscope – an invention of the past half century.  It is what is known as an adhesion protein; its function is literally to hold the human body together, joining bone to muscle, skin to flesh, enzymes to organs.  It too is shaped like a cross – the Cross – and we discover it only now.  Does not the Scripture (Col. 1:17) say, “In Him all things hold together.”

Had the Hubble been invented a few thousand years earlier we would not know of the Wild Horse – the universe would not have expanded enough to provide sufficient contrast between light and dark materials for viewing.  A few millennia later and the nebula would be too distant even for the Hubble to pick it out of the cosmos.  Reality is we were born for such a time as this – a time of unprecedented opportunity and equally unprecedented challenge.

The last half century has featured more documented miracles and decisions to live for Jesus Christ than all previous seasons combined – including the explosion of faith we call the First Century; the Lord has put it on steroids in the last half decade.  We live in a time of darkness not seen since the world began, a time of wars and rumors of war; men calling evil good and good evil; a time of Christians being hated for the name of Christ we bear.  And we are nowhere – in scripture or the template of history – promised anything but a shortening of the suffering that accompanies the birth pangs of the Kingdom.  Yet when we undertake a journey in obedience – as I did – even a lost cell phone charger is replaced by way of gift (Wyoming) and the tires my mechanic said would need rotating and replacement when I left were found to be without defect when I returned – fifty-two hundred miles later.  He really does work it all together for good before the fat lady sings.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

SAND CREEK- FROM MASSACRE TO REDEMPTIVE MINISTRY

By James Wilson

(Part 2 of 3)

On November 29, 1864, a body of cavalry attacked a sleeping camp of Cheyenne and Arapahoe people at Sand Creek, Colorado.  Commanded by Colonel John Chivington, they rode down and massacred nearly two hundred as they lay clustered in family teepees.  The Indians, roused from sleep, fought back as well as they could but were outnumbered, outgunned, and taken by surprise.  Women and children were slaughtered and mutilated along with the men; babies were literally snatched from their mothers’ breasts and their heads crushed.  The soldiers were initially hailed as heroes on their return to Denver; the true and horrific story of the massacre only began to come out as they days went by.  This peaceful band flew an American flag and a white flag of surrender over their camp as tokens of their covenant relationship.

 Captain Silas Soule forbade his men to fire on the camp.  Upon his return he denounced his commander, becoming one of nineteen witnesses who testified against Chivington during the subsequent investigation leading to three different hearings.  Days later Soule was gunned down on a Denver street.  His killers were known but no charges were brought.  Although Chivington lost his commission and his life became a trainwreck of failed businesses, incestuous marriage, and a painful death from cancer, no charges were brought against him.  The stain on American history remains.

Even the land bears the marks of the slaughter.  Believers of the Bible know when land is defiled by the gross shedding of innocent blood, idolatry, covenant breaking, or sexual sin the very rocks cry out per the Genesis story of Cain and Abel; other Biblical examples abound.  Sand Creek – once place of flowing water and access to game – has been bone dry and utterly desolate since before anyone living can recall.  Land and people cry out for healing and reconciliation, graces that can only occur in the face of repentance before God and the people so horribly wronged.

When I accepted God’s call to visit and pray with local teams in the capitols of nine western states I was knew of the coming one hundred fiftieth anniversary of Sand Creek.  I felt called to go there and pray during my few days in Colorado, although I had no idea of the site’s location, nor of how to obtain permission from the appropriate Cheyenne or Arapahoe elders to visit.  Permission is obtained through relationship and I knew no one in the area.  Permission is a necessary act of respect, just as it would be for members of my own people if someone wanted to do something on the gravesite of our ancestors.  I knew it was a matter of common courtesy no matter whose name might currently be on the title deed.

           

The first thing needed was to locate the site.  After initially telling me the site was too distant for a day trip, Kelli, my Denver hostess, e-mailed next morning to say her husband, John, awakened practically shouting his conviction that he and I were to visit Sand Creek and he would drive.  Fully confirmed now that I was called as John was, I consigned the matter of permission to my God.  It would not be the first time I had known I was to visit a site at an assigned time and depend on God Himself to connect me with the right people to bless the visit.  And then the phone rang.

Rhoda is a Native American woman I have known the past decade.  We re-connected after a long absence during a conference call in preparation for the capitol prayer bridge trip and she promised to be at the Wyoming Capitol when I arrived.  She met Gina, National Day of Prayer coordinator for the mountain states region, for the first time at that meeting, and they decided to have dinner together.  When Gina mentioned my plan to visit Sand Creek Rhoda called me the next morning.  After I confessed I was called to go at this time but had not made the requisite elder connections and was depending on God to close that gap, she revealed herself as a direct descendant of one of the chiefs murdered at Sand Creek.  She drove five hours to meet me in Denver and another five to Sand Creek so we could wash her feet and make our act of repentance to her.  She forgave and welcomed us onto the sacred land; we worshipped the Lord together through our tears and prayed healing over the people – red and white – and full reconciliation – even for the land itself.

It is a beginning.  And Romans 8:28 is fulfilled again.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

              

           

Is Secular America Worse than ISIS?

We’re all up in arms over what ISIS is doing, and Hamas is doing, etc. But, is there a difference between what ISIS is doing under their leader and what our American government is doing under our leader?

ISIS has come against Iraq’s existing power of authority to make the people surrender to their extreme evil control, or else die. Obama and his regime keep coming against our existing power of authority (our Constitution and ignoring our laws) with their own governing agenda to make people conform to “the new America,” or else face the costly consequences. They aren’t taking our physical lives, like ISIS, (not yet) but they are taking our livelihood: our jobs, our properties and our money with higher and higher taxes and penalties for breaking ‘their’ laws and policies.

ISIS is cutting the heads off children. America’s education system is filling the ‘heads’ of children with lies and deception so that they will believe - evil is good and good is evil; killing any potential for righteousness in the next generation. 

ISIS is taking children from their mothers. America proudly and lawfully lets abortionists take babies from their mother’s wombs; a holocaust that has not been stopped by our government. America has removed the Bible and prayer from its schools and thus children are being killed at school and taken from their mothers and fathers. America is taking children away from the strength and influence of the “godly home” with mothers working outside the home to help pay the rising taxes and increasing prices of everything (thanks to our government’s incompetence and greed). The power in control is against homeschooling mothers who teach God’s truth and the Bible as the greater knowledge. Many are attacked and threatened to have their children taken from them.

ISIS is raping girls and women/selling them into sex slavery. America gives free birth control for everyone at the expense of tax payers who are against funding it and against funding Planned Parenthood any longer. America now legalizes abortion at almost every stage so women can have all the sex they want without the children that naturally come along with sexual intercourse, and so that men can use women sexually without any consequence.  This is also sex-slavery!

ISIS take-over is destroying and separating families. America has destroyed the family by re-defining the “family” and giving homosexuals the rights of “marriage” so they can increase and thrive all the more in our land of freedom and opportunity.  I don’t believe this is what our founding fathers had in mind with “freedom” and “opportunity.”    

ISIS is killing Christians. America is taking our religious freedom away, punishing by new law and misinterpretation of existing laws, if we speak publicly about Jesus Christ and what God says in His word.

ISIS is cutting off supplies to people. America is over-regulating and preventing our self sufficiency and rights to build our supply of natural resources such as in farming, oil, water storage, etc.

People from all over the world, from all nations, are flooding over to join ISIS. America has opened her borders for people to flood in illegally and begin living off the tax-payers against their will; quickly planting them all over our nation. There is a hidden agenda for this allowance/amnesty by our ‘anti-American ‘side of our government.

ISIS does all this by force, against the will of the Iraqi people, but America does this with the support and silence of its people.

The army of “takers” is building in America and becoming more and more hostile. Sadly to say, our self-indulgent bulging government leads the way in this. Under the current administration this part of society has rapidly increased. Protests and riots are nothing more than ‘takers’ looking for their opportunity to take all the more.

SO, which is more evil and destructive? The blatant transparent one or the deceiving cloaked one?  WHO should we be more aware of?  WHAT is each accomplishing? HOW should we be uniting as God’s people that have His Name, His Word, and His Victory?

Fear God who can destroy body, soul and spirit; for man can only destroy the body. Pray for our brothers and sisters in the other parts of this world going through extreme persecution. Pray that they remain faithful to Jesus Christ; not denying Him so that they hold on to that crown reserved for their faithfulness. Jesus will receive them with open arms!

Just because we know what is coming, and that can not be stopped ‘as prophesied,’ doesn’t mean we just ignore these things happening in our own nation, as if we have no responsibility.  Our children and grandchildren are in jeopardy and if we just sit back and remain silent and inactive – what will our unfaithful ‘neglect’ mean for them?  Sure there will be a cost to us, but our children need to see this as we stand for Jesus Christ, His Word and His kingdom – or they won’t either. Do we understand the cost and shame of unfaithfulness?    

The Hebrews slaves in Egypt didn’t realize who they were or what they had “as God’s people,” so they remained shameful slaves under the extreme heavy yoke of Pharaoh; living generation after generation with increasing oppression as they served Egypt’s idolatrous ways, even conforming themselves. This was their judgment for not continuing on in their obedience to God. It wasn’t until Moses came on the scene that they began to repent, remember God’s commands and promises, and to unite as one nation under God. Through bold and faithful Moses they received their freedom to worship God, against Pharaoh’s will, and to live out their God-given rights, and therefore, to be a blessing to all the nations. 

I heard it said by a very wise and hopeful American conservatist that the conservatists (that is true God-fearing American patriots of our Constitution) are just waiting for that ‘someone’ to MOBILIZE us! He went on to say that finally there has been ‘conservative media’ speaking up in support of how we feel and what we believe needs to happen with and in our government, but now we need to see this same courage happening in the political realm as well – with our government leaders. This is what this man said, but I want to add, that we also need to see this same courage and truth coming out in the realm of the Lord’s Church in America, with ‘all’ pastors speaking up with the ‘whole’ truth; that are not afraid of persecution and losing their non-profit tax exemption or losing members who are not really a part of the body of Christ anyway, but rather leading their congregations in true repentance, and then in godly wisdom and courage - mobilizing their congregations to action accordingly, no matter the cost.  

I think that’s what true Americans have been doing: waiting for “someone” to lead the way nationally.  But, maybe that “someone” is the One the Bible’s prophecies are about: the coming of the King of kings and Lord of lords. What if there is ‘no one’ in our country, or any other country – to boldly and powerfully mobilize the people for righteousness sake? What if what we have been reading in Scripture about that last beast with his mark of the one-world order – is what we are in store for? What if we are the generation that lives to see the coming of our KING!  

America used to be a blessing to other nations, but now America is a hypocrite nation on the brink of utter destruction! We need to seriously repent as a nation. And, because we have not publicly repented and called on God corporately with humility – we have not had God to defend us as He used to do.  America is quickly becoming a land of thorns and thistles; worthless to God and to her own people. The cry and warning has been going out from God’s servants even before the wake-up call of 9/11; that of:

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
~ 2 Chronicles 7:14-15

But, what are we seeing? More and more judgments on us! More fires than ever. More earthquakes than ever! More severe storms, one right after the other! Droughts spreading! Increased sickness and diseases! Legalized and funded abortion at any stage, and all types of birth control, and artificial processes for child conception, and cloning – God help us! Homosexuals marrying and raising children in the same way! Public schools must now teach that evil is good and good is evil to America’s children! More and more anti-Americans: terrorists and leaches on our welfare system flooding in without any restrictions! There is more and more unrest all over the world because God is not feared or obeyed. Christians (and pastors) falling to temptation and buckling under the threats of those who will not put up with anymore of the truth of God’s Word! Etc. Etc. Etc. 

So, based on all this rapid progression of wickedness – would you say that God’s healing has begun in the land?!!!!!!  The healing comes to our own soul and spirit, even to our physical body, as we trust in Jesus Christ and do His will.

Maybe we will see America saved and maybe we won’t. I don’t believe we will and that we need to prepare for persecution and really hard-times in America.  But, let us not forget that all the promises in Christ Jesus are still “YES!”  And, we who stand and act on these promises are the “AMEN!” 

“For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you was not ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’ but in him it has always been ‘Yes!’ For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. 

He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

~2 Corinthians 1:18-22

Jesus knew what time it was when He had to suffer, and so He told His disciples to stay awake praying so they would not fall into temptation to do or say the wrong things that would obstruct the work of God. Jesus does not want us to be regretful. He works in us so that we will be ready and rewarded. So we must be disciplined in first knowing what we should know from the Holy Spirit of God’s Word, and then staying alert PRAYING in the SPIRIT. God will lead us in what He wants us to do, and show us the way of escape when it’s time.

“We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away”

~Hebrews 2:1

The Lord’s Kingdom will be filled with all the things that mattered most in this life; that is those things of ‘true eternal value;’ filled with the faithful people throughout time who paid careful attention to the Word of God in order to live it out in their lives at any cost. This is how we “pay” careful attention to what we have heard – so that we do not drift away from the truth and love of God in Christ Jesus. For as it was in the days of Noah – the cup (the world) of inequity is full and foaming; ready for every last judgment we’ve been told about in the book of Revelation. And just like it was in the days of Noah – God has His redemptive plan of renewing all things.

“Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy.  Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

~Revelation 22:11-13

Carolyn Dietz

www.menwithfaith.com

SHALOM!

~Posted with permission by Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

or by emailing him at

jdalylaw@aol.com