Author: drjohnl

Only God!

I have the advantage of a perspective that only age can give.  I am 87 years old and now have the privilege of looking back across my life to see how God led me in paths I did not choose.  I did not choose them because I did not know they existed.  Throughout my life I have experienced the orchestrations of God.

Several years ago, my son took me to a performance of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.  Our seats were in the upper balcony near the stage.  As I looked over the orchestra, they were tuning up for the concert.  A man came on the stage with a small baton in his hand, stepped to the podium, and brought the orchestra to attention by tapping his baton on the music stand, he held up both hands and begin to bring the orchestra alive.

As I observed this, I viewed it from the background of a country boy. As I looked at the instruments, I realize at one time all those instruments were no more than wood in a tree and the fiber, and ore in the ground as copper, zinc, and tin.  The raw materials had been gathered, refined, and made into the instruments that were producing marvelous sound, and great harmony.

Looking at this wonderful orchestra and hearing the sound, my thoughts turned to God’s blessings on our lives, to take us from the raw material of humanity and make of us instruments of his grace and righteousness.  As he brings these instruments together in his will, they produces a fantastic harmony of ministry and  blessings for the world.

I am tempted, at this point, to launch into the details of how God has orchestrated my life in ways which I could never dream.  But I’m going to resist that temptation and give you some vignettes in the days to come of how I’ve seen God work his will for his glory.  Stay tuned…God is always at work!

The Song that Parallels my Life

“Christ is Mine Forevermore,” is the song that parallels my life in many ways, a song from an Australian music group, “CityALight”.

  1. It begins with, “My days are numbered.”

  I am 87 years old so I know that I am on the short count of days

2. “I was made to walk with God.”

As a young man, God did not rule my life.  Until I was 16.

3. “ Jesus covered all my failings he is my Redeemer!”

I realized that at 16 when I looked at my life and said there must be a better way.  I asked him to be my Savior and forgive all my sins and he became my Redeemer!

4.  “I am his forevermore” and “He is mine forevermore.”

We have formed a relationship that will not be dissolved.  Like the Trinity, we are bound together in a unity relationship. We are connected!

5.  “Walk through the valley where I see no earthly good.”

The ministry to which he has called me has been disaster relief and humanitarian aid.  I have worked in North Korea, and Iran, Serbia, and many others.  I have worked in situations where nature and some people at war have caused great pain!

6.  My pain Is not wasted as God completes his work in me.”

My pain has sensitized me to the pain of others.  It has also motivated me to help others become free from their pain.  It also helps me understand the heartbreak of God over my sin and his heartbreak over the condition of our world.

7. “ I am a pilgrim on the narrow way” with Jesus.

My deepest desire is to follow the will of God for my life.  When I pray, I am not trying to get God to do my will, but my prayer is He will shape my mind and desires to follow His will!

8. “ Being one with Christ I will encounter harm and hatred for his name.”

In many of the places I have served, I have been walking the razors age between life and death.  As in one instance, after a month of living in the Iranian Mountains feeding Kurdish refugees, an Iranian soldier ejected the bullet from his AK-47, handed it to me, and said, “This one was for you, but I just didn’t use it.”

God has armored me with faith in him and in his angelic protection.  He has given me the confidence that if he cares for me, and sends into these situations, he will protect me.  This form of ministry has been continuing since 1967.  I have been aware that I’m covered with sufficient armor that will last to the end of the war. 

9. “He will deliver me safely to that Golden shore!”

That will be when I retire from the field of battle to be in His presence in heaven!

10. “Mine are keys to Zion City, where beside the King I walk.”

Through my acceptance of the work of Christ on the cross, I have been granted the privilege of walking with the king!  He desired to walk with Adam in the garden of Eden, now I have the pleasure of walking with the king every morning because my heart has found its treasure, Christ is mine forevermore!

I hope you understand the message that I have received through this song because it is not for me alone, but for all of those who would take Jesus as their Savior!  This song mirrors my experience with God.

The message it has is simple, trust Jesus Christ as your Savior and he will be yours forevermore!  When you stand in the presence of God, you will be there as a result of Christ’s work on the cross and the father will see you as one of his own!  A child of the King!

11. The last verse says, “Come rejoice now, O my soul for his love is my reward!”

What greater victory could you have?  Than to know Christ’s love is yours forevermore!

  I am 87 years old so I know that I am on the short count of days“I was made to walk with God.”

As a young man, God did not rule my life.  Until I was 16.

3. “ Jesus covered all my failings he is my Redeemer!”

I realized that at 16 when I looked at my life and said there must be a better way.  I asked him to be my Savior and forgive all my sins and he became my Redeemer!

4.  “I am his forevermore” and “He is mine forevermore.”

We have formed a relationship that will not be dissolved.  Like the Trinity, we are bound together in a unity relationship. We are connected!

5.  “Walk through the valley where I see no earthly good.”

The ministry to which he has called me as been disaster relief and humanitarian aid.  I have worked in North Korea, and Iran, Serbia, and many others.  I have worked in situations where nature and some people at war have caused great pain!

6.  My pain Is not wasted as God completes his work in me.”

My pain has sensitized me to the pain of others.  It has also motivated me to help others become free from their pain.  It is also helps me understand the heartbreak of God over my sin and his heartbreak over the condition of our world.

7. “ I am a pilgrim on the narrow way” with Jesus.

My deepest desire is to follow the will of God for my life.  When I pray, I am not trying to get God to do my will, but my prayer is He will shape my mind and desires to follow H”is will!

8. “ Being one with Christ I will encounter harm and hatred for his name.”

In many of the places I have served, I have been walking the razors age between life and death.  As in one instance, after a month of living in the Iranian Mountains feeding Kurdish refugees, and Iranian soldier ejected the bullet from his AK-47, handed it to me and said, “This one was for you, but I just didn’t use it.”

God has armored me with faith in him and in his angelic protection.  He has given me the confidence that if he cares for me, and sends into these situations, he will protect me.  This form of ministry has been continuing since 1967.  I have been aware that I’m covered with sufficient armor that will last to the end of the war. 

7. “He will deliver me safely to that Golden shore!”

That will be when I retire from the field of battle to be in His presence in heaven!

8. “Mine are keys to Zion City, where beside the King I walk.”

Through my acceptance of the work of Christ on the cross, I have been granted the privilege of walking with the king!  He desired to walk with Adam in the garden of Eden, now I have the pleasure of walking with the king every morning because my heart has found its treasure, Christ is mine forevermore!

I hope you understand the message that I have received through this song because it is not for me alone, but for all of those who would take Jesus as their Savior!  This song mirrors my experience with God.

The message it has is simple, trust Jesus Christ as your Savior and he will be yours forevermore!  When you stand in the presence of God, you will be there as a result of Christ’s work on the cross and the father will see you as one of his own!  A child of the King!

9. The last verse says, “Come rejoice now, O my soul for his love is my reward!”

What greater victory could you have?  Than to know Christ’s love is yours forevermore!

I JUST REALIZED I WON THE LOTTERY!

Oh, not the one with millions of dollars, but the one with millions of blessings!

When I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and to save my soul, I really hit the jackpot!

Until then, I was a mess! My family life included three divorces, living in three states, five cities, and that was all before I finished my fourteenth year of life.

Like an old slot machine, my wheels were spinning!

Shortly after my sixteenth birthday, two laymen came to my home and led me to faith in Christ. As they left they said, “Second Corinthians 7:14 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, The old has gone, the new has come!”

At that moment, the wheels stop spinning and all three came up JESUS! He is the jackpot!!!

I began a deep dive into the Word of God! The sermons and Bible studies at church spoke to me as never before, I found godly friends who ended there dating and fellowship times with prayer.

I really believed that Jesus meant everything he said. I began to interpret my experiences by the Scripture, instead of trying to interpret the Scripture by my experiences!

A wonderful transformation began to occur! God began to transform my terrible life experiences from being wasted years into years of “in service training”!

Click to purchase

God was preparing me to minister to people with broken hearts, broken homes, and broken lives.

A part my experience as a child of divorce helped me write the book “Divorcing? Remember Me.” The first part speaks to a child’s reaction to divorce and how it affects them.

The second part deals with  biblical teachings on love, courtship, and marriage.

My wife and I were both from broken homes and had no good example of how a successful marriage worked. We decided , since God invented sex and marriage, we would search the Bible to find His directions for making our relationship and marriage work His way.

We have been happily married 64 years and 38 weeks…so I think it is going to work!

That is a part of the jackpot’s contents!

There is more, much more!

Things that are beyond my ability to express adequately.

Things like inner peace, peace with God, with your life, and joy! A joy that remains strong through cancer, heart attack, strokes, bypass surgery, serving God in places where you face hate filled interrogators, while looking at the business end of an AK 47 assault rifle.

WOW! The joy not only remains, it has intensified!

I hit the Jackpot with Jesus!

If the pot was only filled with money or “things”, I could not take it with me. You never see a U-Haul trailer behind a hearse!

BUT, my joy in the LORD is not only transportable, it is INTENSIFIED!

YAYHOOO! I hit the jackpot with JESUS!

A way to live! Oh, and a way to die!

I recently conducted a funeral for a man who had been in a railroad accident. He had been trapped in the cab of his engine for three hours with a defective overspeed alarm going full blast. It ruined his hearing and left him with a severe case of tinnitus!

He had to wear earphones to counteract the shrill sound in his ears!

One day, in the grip of depression and pain he took his own life.

He had been a Christian for many years, but Satan stepped in when he was at his weakest time and pushed him to end his life on earth.

His widow came to me in deep sorrow and grief, crying, “Oh, Dr. John, he killed himself and that means he went to Hell!”

I told her that was untrue. His suicide was an abortion of God’s will for his life, which is sin, but when Jesus died, He died to cover our sins…all of them.

Let me give you an example of what I think.

For over 25 years I worked with youth and children’s camp managers. They used many college students as counselors. Being young and inexperienced, they would occasionally “mess up”!

One manager I knew would call the offender into his office, hold him by the shoulders, look directly into his eyes and say, “What in the world were you thinking?” After the explanation was given and the ensuing lesson was complete, he would give the staffer a fatherly hug and say, “It is okay, we are going to fix it! You are forgiven! It’s going to be okay!”

I can envision Jesus doing that with my friend.

Taking him by the shoulders, looking in his eyes and saying, “What in the world were you thinking?”

Then pulling him close and saying, “Son, I died for you and my grace covers all your sins! Come on, You are forgiven and it will be alright!”

Friends, suicide is wrong, no mistake! The collateral damage is horrendous! It creates problems of grief, guilt in family and friends who wonder, “Why, or how, did I miss their signs of depression or their needs. I failed them!”

But the greatest tragedy is their failure to obey God and knowing the joy of completing the purpose for which they were created!

The camp manager in this story died two weeks ago. He was over 80 years old and his body had been frail and ill for several years. As I talked to him just before he died, he said, “John, pray for me. Don’t pray I get well, but that I go to meet Jesus. I have done everything He asked me to do and I am eager to meet Him!

What a way to live!  Oh, and what a way to die!

Living in an Inverted World

Wow ! Has our world been turned upside down in so many ways!

Think about it.

If you look at the creation activity in the book of Genesis as a triangle, with nature and the animals as the base, the starting place,you are told that man was the apex or the top point of His creative activity.

As a matter of fact, in Genesis 1: 28-31, God gave man the freedom to rule over every “living thing” in nature. In verse 29, He gives man the fact that the natural, productive vegetation was also for his benefit.

Nature was the base, created to support and provide for His crowning creation, Man!

But, in our world the pyramid of God’s plan has been inverted!

Man is on the bottom and the created world of nature is on top! The man is no longer the ruler of nature, he is perceived as the main problem to nature!

This is the opposite of what God intended!

Nature was created to be our provider…not our replacement!

When you go astray from the Truth of God’s Word, trouble ensues.

I believe the creator of this spaceship, earth, has equipped it and supplied it with everything we need until He comes and reclaim it from Satan.

What a mighty GOD we serve!

I recently conducted a “Graduation Service” for a former member of the church we started in 2003. He told me that some folks would call it a funeral, but for him it would be a celebration!

His name was as French as mine and we teased each other about our heritage. I told him my people came into New Orleans and were Louisiana French, nicknamed Cajuns. He told me his French family came through Canada and were called “Canucs”. I told him if his family had not missed the boat they could be “Cajuns” too.

I think he may have been the only GreenBay Packers fan in Texas.

One of the things that drew him to our church, was our ministry to people in our city that no one else seemed to want. We had folks in rehab programs, folks recently released from prison, some standing on the bottom rung of the ladder of life looking down!

We also had people everybody wanted. Lawyers, bankers, policemen,  retired NFL player, etc. One lady told me she has been out of rehab for a month, and our church was a lake of unconditional love in which she could float until she learned to swim again!

He attended our church for two years and loved the fellowship.

We were having a church picnic and a baptismal service at members home. I was baptizing 15 new believers in the swimming pool, when I suddenly found him standing by my shoulder. I told him I wasn’t through baptizing. He told me he found God in the North and he found Jesus in the South and I want to get in line. For the next 15 years he was a mover and a shaker! He was in the praise team, did children’s church, taught children’s Sunday School, and volunteered for much more!

His illness drained him slowly, but he pressed on in his service with a big smile and a happy heart until the end! 

WOW! What a man!

WOW, What a mighty GOD we serve!

The Legacy

I apologize for being out of the Blogesphere for several weeks. It has been a heavy time of counseling (some  of the folks with problems and broken hearts live over 100 miles away, and I had to travel to them), and dealing with grieving friends and families of those for whom I did funerals.

Death is the final event of life on earth, but it is the event from which people begin to evaluate a person’s legacy.

The legacy to which I am referring is their influence on those left behind and the results of their walk with Jesus, not their physical wealth or possessions.

One funeral was for my boss of 19 years. A former athlete, who was in the training camp for a National League team, when God called him to ministry. 

Eventually he started a men’s ministry that Involved thousands of men in as volunteers in mission work in the U.S. and abroad. He sponsored groups which built church buildings, built Baptist retreat and conference centers, youth camps, church renewal conferences, and was one of the four men who gave birth to the Baptist disaster relief ministry. He sponsored the building of the first Mobile disaster feeding unit. This led to the development of chainsaw, mud out, childcare, laundry, shower, chaplain, rebuilding, ash out and other units! There are now over 1500 units and over 95,000 trained volunteers!

On his deathbed he whispered, “Skip all that obituary stuff, just print, “HALLELUJAH”!

Like a rock thrown in a pond, the ripples keep going, all the way to the shore and his legacy goes on…people enlisting and training others as he did… and his ministry continues to build his legacy and aid others in building theirs!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is rjD0xr3VCbJDeaXucaS9DC9yyYPUE59lqr86Bq9vupY0PUnxCFzrw-B683LVAeeuGJxLbvAimwxZQlp2B2R8cD3YtjSTDW3DjziValyu-9zwM2z7GVUEgMj02Evp-M-72OMFoBvP


Innocence

The  Peoples Republic of Korea had experienced a terrible natural disaster in 1997. It not only destroyed the crops, but destroyed the fields as well. It even destroyed many kilometers of seawall, where land had been reclaimed from the sea for farming. Hunger was everywhere! I visited an elementary school. The children were going to sing a song for me, and I noticed a tiny boy on the front row. He looked bashful at first, head tilted downward,  eyes staring at the floor, leaning on the child next to him. I  tried to sneak a look at him by pretending to take a picture. I saw his bony little  arms and legs through my camera! When the children stood to sing, he just fell over! To weak from huger to stand or sit up! That innocent child was dying!International Politics and conflicts had delayed the response to their needs.I was proud of my country which was sending 60,000 metric tons of corn, Sending it to a country with which it was still at war.I was there with Amigos Internacionales to help monitor the distribution, with Mercy Corps, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and Care International. I could not sleep that night, so I wrote a poem to  express my heart. A poem about a child I call “Innocence”.

Image result for picture of hungry korean children

They did not ask to be born.

They did not want to die,

But like the ticking of the clock their little bodies drop!

In their mother’s arms they were before,

Now their little arms are too weak to hold her anymore.

On this earth their little feet will walk no more,

For they are gone…

Their deaths were caused by the actions of some,

But just as condemning, by the inaction of others!

Yes, my little boy Innocence is gone!

And my personal innocence is gone!

No longer can I plead ignorance of their plight,

Boney limbs, bloated bellies…Oh, what a sight!

Their hollow faces and pleading eyes, silently cry,

“Please help me sir, or I will surely die!”

Oh, how can I sit through meetings about who will control what,

Or discussions of what theological theory is really hot,

When, like the ticking of a clock,

My heart still hears their little bodies drop!

Oh Yes, He is There!

Recently, a woman in the menopause stage of life jokingly told me, ”I know God must be a man. If God was a woman, she wouldn’t be doing this to us!”  I laughed at her humor, but it got me to thinking about the many times I have worked disasters and had people ask me, “Why did God do this?”, or “why did God let this happen?”, or “Where was God when this happened?”

1 John 5:19 says, “WE know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

That sounds pretty dismal until you remember that our God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Satan cannot out work Him or outwit him!

In an earlier blog I wrote about Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” And how I have seen that work in my own life. There have been times of turmoil, tragedy, and testing. AND I have discovered God used it all to reprove me, improve me, and to approve me! He was there all the time AND He is there with you now!

Pray for the realization of His presence, for His wisdom, for His protection, and His will to be done in your life!

Remember you are walking with God on your way to Glory!

Tell Satan to go home and leave you alone!

God’s Work Speaks for Itself

Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

In preparation for a message, “What Happened 280 Days Before Christmas,” I was stunned by the amazing process of   the creation of new life! From zygote to infant in 40 weeks!

How did that blob develop a beating heart and a spine? How did it know to develop arms and legs, and where to put them?

The answer is in Psalm 139:13-14, “For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Image result for picture of unborn baby

God’s design is so very interesting! Even our fingers are examples. The corrugations on the skin covering the fingers, we call them “fingerprints”, their arrangement distinguishes you from all other people. But, just think how difficult it would be trying to pick up small objects with slick, uncorrugated fingers!

A friend of mine, a medical doctor, was converted from atheism while working on a cadaver in medical school. He said, “I was dissecting the forearm and was amazed by the marvelous design which permitted the arm to rotate the hand 180 degrees, and the sliding joints in the wrist which permitted the hand to move in 360 degrees! I knew this was the design of a creator God, not a process of evolution!”

God is a great engineer!

Another miracle is water. Most objects contract in a very cold atmosphere. When fitting bearings in machinery with extremely close tolerances, I would put them in a freezer overnight to “shrink” them a little for easier insertion. But water is different. It expands ten percent when it freezes and that is why ice floats! Icebergs are an illustration of this. If water contracted when in turned to ice, it would sink and kill the aquatic life beneath it!

God is a great engineer!

Another miracle of God’s creative engineering is this spaceship we call earth.  He equipped it with everything we need for the journey…until He returns to take us with Him!

God is a great engineer!

 One thing most folks never consider is the fact that the earth is spinning at almost 1,000 miles an hour at the equator. What keeps us from spinning off this globe of earth?

OH, He thought of that too! He created the force of Gravity!

God is a GREAT ENGINEER!

I pray that you will allow the one who designed and created you to be your savior and life director… For His GLORY and for your benefit!