IDOK DEVOTION FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2010

Praise Reports, Prayer Requests and Updates:

Judy‘s surgery was completed Tuesday evening, the tumor was cancer but the doctor believes he was able to get it all.  Further treatment options will be discussed soon.

I’m still too much freaked out here but hoping to settle down enough to write.  I had an unwelcome visitor this morning just outside  our bay windowed dining room cool brick wall — a four foot snake!  Thanks to my beloved,  there is now one less snake in the world to torture women.   You’d think I could come up with some grand and profound spiritual application here —  but nope, not yet! The fact that three and half head-less hours later, he (the snake) is still wiggling might say something!  I am reminded that JESUS promised and did crush the head of THE SNAKE on Calvary and 2000 plus years later ‘that thing’ is STILL wiggling!  Headless and powerless to harm us (unless we let him) but still stirring up all kinds of trauma and drama, wouldn’t you say?   Seriously, get what you can from it — I’m still freaking out here –  skin crawling as I type!

HOWEVER!  I did my early morning reading (before the snake, thank you very much!) at Luke 17: 11-19.This is the account of Jesus hearing the cries of the ten (10) lepers for mercy and saying to them: 14 When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests,” And as they were going, they were cleansed. Hold this in mind, I’ll come back to it, but first let us think about  how these ten men arrived outside the city.  Verse 12 tells us as JESUS was entering the city He saw the lepers standing at a distance from Him.  They were doing so because they had been declared by the Priests as unclean.  (You can read more about this in Leviticus  13 and 14.    In the 13th the diagnosis and the 14th what do when cured.) They were commanded to live outside the ‘camp’, keep their distance from others and upon coming within earshot of another to cry out ‘unclean, unclean’.  Can you imagine?  Yet I submit to you that sin does just this to us.  It makes us unclean, unfit to come before the LORD.  Our sins give off a horrible stench in His nostrils! We don’t have this physical depiction readily around us these days but I dare say our sins don’t smell any better  now than when this passage was penned!

So JESUS told the lepers to go show themselves to the priest.  In doing so He was observing Levitical Law. But I think that was not all He was doing.  He was giving them an opportunity to exercise faith in Him.    I think He does the same for us.    In the realm of physical and spiritual healing, He can heal us instantly and  there are times that He does.  More often though our healing comes as we follow His instructions, as we make right choices and follow His step by step instructions — similarly to these Lepers following  His command to Go and show yourselves to the priests.   If they had stayed and reasoned and argued with JESUS they would have missed their healing, don’t you think?  I admit it, I LIKE it BIG TIME when ABBA shows up and shows out with a POWER PACKED display of instant healing (physical or emotional).    But it is those encounters with Him where I have to invest myself and time to receive the benefit that stay with me for the long haul.  SO my point is sometimes JESUS heals quick, often times He insists that we WORK with Him to arrive at the healing.  Either way we are blessed that He came down to help us specimens of rotting flesh.

To review the list of names for prayer, please click here.

ABBA, what a day!  I long for the day when I will not be afraid of certain creatures; however, if it’s alright with You I’d rather wait until Heaven to entirely overcome this fear — I’d much rather be spared from confronting any more snakes in my back yard.   I’d throw in lizards too if I thought I could get it.   You know I’m not being entirely silly here.  Thank You for taking care of me through this ordeal and I do pray to learn something of eternal value from it.  And thank You for the laughter it has given some friends and even me as I have told the story and retold it.

We are grateful that Judy’s surgery is done and that the doctors are saying they got all the cancer.  And now, ABBA, I pray You will do for Judy what doctors cannot do.  Also tend and comfort her family I pray.

And all the others whose names we just read, including our IDOK Troops, You know their needs, LORD, and I am asking You to bless them and take care of them.

There are many things on the political scene that continues to disturb us, the appointment to the Supreme Court, the oil spill, the Fall elections and much more.  I dare not pray and I wonder if that’s enough; I can only leave this with You,  trusting You to inform us and lead us.   I can think of two churches in particular that I am asking You to watch closely and keep the Evil One from destroying what is and what remains.  Holy Spirit, please bless people with the grace and the will to do right and to be kind to one another.  And I pray for Israel, for their peace and safety.   And as we put this to post I ask for peace and rest for our IDOKs and our Readers; and, ABBA, those unspoken things that would keep us awake at night, I pray You will speak to those things and we will release them and rest in Your Name, LORD JESUS. Amen and Amen.