Crystal Clear

My niece had a neighbor who was dying of cancer. The lady had tried different medical solutions but she finally gave up on them and went down to Mexico to check out holistic type healing. That was unsuccessful as well. One day some years ago my niece phoned Jackie and me to see if we would drive to her little town and go over with her and her mother to pray for the sick neighbor.

Jackie and I cleared our afternoon and we were able to get there about two hours later, praying the whole time in an effort to have some guidance from the Lord as to how to pray once we got there. By the time we arrived at our niece's house we had not received any direction.

We walked across the street to the neighbor's home, met the lady who was laying in a bed set up in her living room, and talked a little. I then suggested that we all begin to pray silently and wait for God to show us what way to go. We prayed and waited for a long time. I got nothing. My wife and her sister are usually very sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit but they also got nothing.

Finally looking up and around my gauze landed on a crystal obelisk sitting on a window ledge near her bed. Knowing that she had gone to Mexico for a holistic approach I asked the lady if she had tried using the crystal for her healing or for any other type of purpose. She said no, it was just a decoration, but I had a strong feeling that she wasn't being honest with me. I asked her if she was sure about that and she repeated her denial.

My sense now was that we probably were not going to get anywhere but we were there so let's do our best and trust the Lord. I led her in a prayer to renounce Satan and all of his works, which she did, and then led her through a basic salvation prayer, which she prayed as well. Still not getting any specific direction for healing prayer and feeling all along that she would say anything at this point to be free of the cancer we prayed as best we could for her physical healing.

As we left the house I looked back and noticed a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign hanging by the peak in the front of the ladies home. For me this was a conformation that I had come unprepared for doing spiritual warfare which I believe would have been necessary in this situation. The neighbor lady did die several months later and my hope is that I was wrong about her willingness to say anything and that her decision to ask Jesus into her heart was sincere. Someday I'll find out.

Bodie and Brock Thoene are two of my favorite Christian authors. They write fiction series that follow a family or families over several generations. I love a quote they used in the dedication page of the last AD Chronicles series book of theirs that I recently read:

For Captain Todd Mirolla, HMS Victorious

described by Jack Aubrey as:

“A master tactician and a man of singular vision, who always says,

'Never mind maneuvers, just go straight at 'em.”'

Pace e bene!

Another of my favorite sayings from the AD Chronicles series, repeated in every book, is “Everything means something.” I thought of that this week when thinking about some spiritual cluelessness displayed by several  dear people I know. Wanting to pray about it to see if there was anything I could or should do I asked God to give me some wisdom from my daily scripture reading.

My current reading is from 2 Samuel which gives accounts of things that happened during the reign of King David. Before David became recognized as king he had been anointed as such by the high priest Samuel. The Jewish king then was Saul and things got to the point where Saul was always trying to kill David.  One time David received shelter from Nahash who was king of one of Israel's enemies, the Ammonites. After Saul died and David ascended to the throne he proceeded to go out to conquer and subdue all of the countries enemies. In chapter 10 of 2 Samuel, my reading for that day, David hears that king Nahash has died and even though the Ammonites were now an enemy David sent some of his servants to offer consolation to Hanun, son of Nahash and now the new Ammonite king.

The Ammonite princes suspected that the real reason for the visit was to spy out their city for the purpose of being better able to overthrow it. “So Hanun took David's servants and shaved off half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle as far as their hips, and sent them away.” As you can imagine this humiliation did not go over well with David. This led to a war related later in Samuel where David does not go with the armies, stays home and spots Bathsheba, commits a series of great sins by sleeping with her and having her husband sent to the front lines to die in an effort to cover up the ensuing pregnancy.

As I reflected on the chapter I didn't get insight on spiritual cluelessness but later that day I still had a burden for the matter, sat down and randomly opened my Bible to 1 Chronicles, verse 4, reading immediately the following verse (Chronicles goes over some of the same stuff as told in Samuel): “So Hanun took David's servants and shaved them and cut off their garments in the middle as far as their hips, and sent them away.” For me this was definitely an encouragement to reconsider what I had read in 2 Samuel, chapter 10.

It came to me the middle of the next night with the thought – "Don't let the enemy into your home."

In this case Israel and the Ammonites were enemies. The concern of the Ammonites was genuine but they handled it wrong. Hanun should have sent his servants to meet away from the city with David's servants to thank them for David's expression of condolence. A few gifts of gold and silver for David's servants to take back with them might have also helped prevent a war that they would ultimately lose. Yet the original advice of Hanun's princes was sound. You don't allow the enemy in where you live.

The problem with many is that they don't even know they even have an enemy who wants to deceive, steal and kill. They think there are neutral spiritual forces that are benign or that anything spiritual that looks attractive is good. They are blissfully unaware of the spiritual warfare that is raging around them so they don't protect themselves from the tactics of the evil one and his minions.

I am not going to go over here the numerous traps set for us by the enemy in this current day and age. It should be enough to know that his motives have not changed and the ultimate results are still the same.  The enemy will always try to deceive us by presenting bad things as good.  That is why it is imperative to:

Guard your home, the body.          Guard your mind, the soul.         Guard your heart, the spirit. 

There is a reason that we know God, not as a force but in three PERSONS. Only as a person can the Father love us.  The Father's love for us is so great that He sent His only Son to suffer and die in our place so that we may live.  Jesus then rose from the dead and sent The Holy Spirit whose work is to reveal the person of Jesus to us as well as to help us in our journey here on Earth.  Jesus brings new life to our spirit and then His goal is to direct us to the one we call our Father. 

David wanted to show grace to his enemy Hanun, who rejected it by humiliating the messengers.  The Father wants to show grace to us.  Yield only to The Holy Spirit.  Surrender only to Jesus.  Honor The Father by worshiping Him in spirit and in truth.