Re: Post written by Rainy. Important Information.

Refreshed, I'm sitting here wondering if I'm that crackpot you're talking about because I can't think of who else you might be talking about. :) But like Loquat said, it's a possibility I'm going senile too, even in my forties, but hey it happens. Nevertheless I don't recall this conversation about how I denied your conversion experience, but I do recall you thinking I did many times just because we had some theological disagreements about some things.

In defense of Rainy not posting herself, I think I know a little bit why. You can come in here and make one post, and that one post can easily turn into forty posts that you don't have time for. And then you get this really sickening feeling that you wasted a ton of time because the whole saga appears to have accomplished nothing anyway. I've had that sickening feeling more times than I'd like to recall. But I get the other side too. People don't like someone speaking for someone else. I get that.

Sjaak, hang in there man! Chronic illness is tough stuff! I like your honesty too. You said you love your sin. Better to say the truth than to deny it. God knows the truth anyway. But He has the power to change someone from a lover of sin to one who hates it. That's every believer's story. That doesn't mean believers don't sin anymore, but they hate it when they do. Don't worry about those scriptures that appear contradictory right now, about healing and stuff. You will have to dig deeper to find all those answers, but right now, your biggest problem is that you need to get the burden of sin lifted off you. That's the healing you need, first and foremost. Jesus died for sinners. Are you a sinner? If you look to him to save you from your sins, his sacrifice alone, nothing you can earn by good works, then you'll find he's the perfect savior. God knows there is nothing good in your flesh,. and he's not looking for anything good there. The Apostle Paul said he knew there was nothing good in his flesh. But Jesus, who is God, made the ultimate sacrifice so that his righteousness would be imputed to even the worst of sinners who would come to Him.

Love you all and Merry Christmas to everyone! I'm going back to being a lurker now. Can't let this one post turn into forty, especially since I have a funeral to go to tomorrow. But I've enjoyed all the humor from you all lately. You all crack this crackpot up, and I mean that in a good way, not putting anyone down. Truly you are all great comedians at times! :)


P.S Sjaak, read this by Charles Spurgeon, and see how simple the gospel is, and yet how profound the healing of it is:

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair until now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, while I was going to a certain place of worship. I turned down a side street, and came to a little Primitive Methodist Church. In that chapel there may have been a dozen or fifteen people. I had heard of the Primitive Methodists, how they sang so loudly that they made people’s heads ache; but that did not matter to me. I wanted to know how I might be saved....

The minister did not come that morning; he was snowed up, I suppose. At last a very thin-looking man, a shoemaker, or tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was—"LOOK UNTO ME, AND BE YE SAVED, ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH" (Isa. 45:22)

He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter. There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text.

The preacher began thus: "This is a very simple text indeed. It says ‘Look.’ Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pain. It aint liftin’ your foot or your finger; it is just ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to College to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man needn’t be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; even a child can look.

"But then the text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Ay!" he said in broad Essex, "many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You’ll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some say look to God the Father. No, look to Him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto Me.’ Some on ye say ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin.’ You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto Me.’ "

Then the good man followed up his text in this way: "Look unto Me; I am sweatin’ great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hangin’ on the cross. Look unto Me, I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend to Heaven. Look unto Me; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O poor sinner, look unto Me! look unto Me!"

When he had . . . . managed to spin out about ten minutes or so, he was at the end of his tether. Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger.

Just fixing his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, "Young man, you look very miserable." Well, I did, but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made from the pulpit on my personal appearance before. However, it was a good blow, struck right home. He continued, "And you will always be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death—if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved." Then lifting up his hands, he shouted, as only a Primitive Methodist could do, "Young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but look and live!"

I saw at once the way of salvation. I know not what else he said—I did not take much notice of it—I was so possessed with that one thought . . . . I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard that word, "Look!" what a charming word it seemed to me. Oh! I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away.

There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant, and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me this before, "Trust Christ, and you shall be saved." Yet it was, no doubt, all wisely ordered, and now I can say—

"E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die. . ."

That happy day when I found the Saviour, and learned to cling to His dear feet, was a day never to be forgotten by me . . . . I listened to the Word of God and that precious text led me to the cross of Christ. I can testify that the joy of that day was utterly indescribable. I could have leaped, I could have danced; there was no expression, however fanatical, which would have been out of keeping with the joy of that hour. Many days of Christian experience have passed since then, but there has never been one which has had the full exhilaration, the sparkling delight which that first day had.

I thought I could have sprung from the seat in which I sat, and have called out with the wildest of those Methodist brethren . . . "I am forgiven! I am forgiven! A monument of grace! A sinner saved by blood!"

My spirit saw its chains broken to pieces, I felt that I was an emancipated soul, an heir of heaven, a forgiven one, accepted in Jesus Christ, plucked out of the miry clay and out of the horrible pit, with my feet set upon a rock and my goings established . . . .

Between half-past ten o’clock, when I entered that chapel, and half-past twelve o’clock, when I was back again at home, what a change had taken place in me! Simply by looking to Jesus I had been delivered from despair, and I was brought into such a joyous state of mind that, when they saw me at home, they said to me, "Something wonderful has happened to you," and I was eager to tell them all about it. Oh! there was joy in the household that day, when all heard that the eldest son had found the Saviour and knew himself to be forgiven.