February 28, 2023

I’ve tried to refrain from writing a blog unless something significant has happened or new information has been available. I am not sure either of those is the case, but I have felt a nudge to write this morning.

We have been showered with encouragement and prayer from folks who love me and know me well to people I have no clue who they are. We received a gift that was given through Daybreak from a lady whom I have never met.

The way that so many people have reached out to us is a humbling thing. Somehow expressing thanks doesn’t seem to be enough of a response.

Unlike some of you, I am not the guy who tries to read everything that there is on what issue I may have. I didn’t 22 years ago and I haven’t in the present chapter.

I remember months after the cancer treatment on the sarcoma in my leg finally reading the surgeon’s notes. It was diagnosed as a stage four cancer, but I didn’t realize it then. Kind of made those “willies”go through me when I read it.

There is so much more information available today than then. The Mayo Clinic portal posts every test result and every summary the doctors write. I knew the results of the latest MRI before we got halfway home.

Yesterday I got an email that I had a new test result. When I went to the portal it wasn’t a new test result but one that I hadn’t read. It was one of about 7-8 that came from the bone marrow biopsy.

Lots of the results of the tests are in “medical speak”and I have a tendency of scanning through them. This one was considerably in that language, but the results were understandable. The diagnosis: Multiple Myeloma with the possibility of being Smoldering Multiple Myeloma. We knew that was the case, but somehow when you read it in black and white it comes home to you.

As I anticipate returning to Mayo Clinic on Sunday for radiation treatments that begin on Monday, it is the one more bone scan and the results of that scan that are more on my mind than the radiation.

I have been a follower of Jesus for over 50 years and a pastor for 40 years. I have preached countless times on prayer from suggestions on how to pray to the power of prayer and most everything in between.

I believe in prayer. I believe that prayer does a number of things. Often the greatest benefit of prayer is what happens in our own lives when we pray. God often changes us through prayer.

I also believe that prayer releases the power of God into this world. In my limited insight into the Bible, I believe God’s Word bears that out.

God didn’t send His fire to consume the altar until Elijah prayed.

Not once did I pray for my own healing 22 years ago. Not once have I prayed for me in this one except to ask God for His grace, but never for my healing.

Like prayer, healing is a very difficult truth to understand. Why God chooses to heal in some circumstances and why He doesn’t in others will only be understood in eternity. When Jesus healed the man at the pool of Siloam who had been there for 38 years, the Bible in no way indicates that Jesus healed everyone that day.

And at some point, God chooses not to heal all of us. The mortality rate is 100%, except for Enoch and Elijah.

What prayer does as you walk through this with me is multifaceted. This short list is in no way exhaustive. And in each of these the Romans 8:28 principle applies.
●At the top of the list is that as you pray, there is a deepening of your relationship with Jesus.
●Your faith is put into practice.
●You give God the opportunity to bring His healing, in whatever way He chooses.
●Somehow there is a divine deepening of the relationship that you and I share.

I could share several illustrations of how that has already happened, but one that moved my heart unexpectedly.

We have a customer who I would consider a “man’s man”who is about as worldly as they come. He is a sportsman in every sense of the word. Often he apologizes to me for the language he uses. More than once he wasn’t sober when I have stopped by his store.

I have said for some time that being a bi-vocational pastor has enabled me to be in the world in ways that I never was the 15 years I was a fulltime pastor.

That has surely been the case with this guy. He has been as concerned about me as anyone beyond our family. He was leaving on Monday to go to Las Vegas with his girlfriend. He called me on Sunday to ask a couple of questions about work and about me, knowing I was heading back to Rochester soon.

At the end of our conversation,his voice breaks a bit and he says to me, “I love you, man.”

Say what? Are you kidding? This man of the world with no profession of faith (yet!) expresses his love through both the words and the tone of his voice.

And I responded, “I love you, too.”I must admit that it was with a somewhat broken voice.

God is at work, bringing about His good in ways we could never expect nor orchestrate. I am just along for the ride. Thanks for being a part of the journey with me.