Miscellaneous Missionary

I don’t know what to tell you about my experience that you do not
already know, and probably better than I know. After all, I have not
been all there upstairs recently.

I do not know how or where it began. I was dealing with sinus problems
first. I had already started breaking loose and getting over that, but
I just kept getting weaker with no other signs. I do not know who
found me unconscious at conference. I do not remember anything from
late Friday on. I do not know when I began waking up. I could not tell
if it was morning or night. I had no idea what day it was. I remember
bits and pieces of people talking to me, and being sick a lot.

I remember someone was always there.

It almost seems like a dream, except I still feel weak and have a
dizzy moment every now and then. However, I just want to use this time
to say thanks. Thanks to all who spent nights and days and hours
taking care of me, the vegetable. Thanks to all who put up with my
vomit and nonsense and hiccups. Thanks to all who brought food and
drinks to get me started eating. Thanks for making me eat when I did
not want to.

Thanks.

I do not know how to cover it all. In short, thanks for all the love
and care and most of all prayer. No one else in that hospital had a
team that worked like family to keep him going. Thank you very much.

I have done a lot of thinking about what has taken place. I have
looked at what I was learning from God down in Derre. I think that
most of all, I have to say a huge thanks to God. He gets all the
glory. That is the point of what He does. No matter what calamity
takes place, He is there, sovereignly working His will for all of us.
And He is Good to us. He is good to us. My recovery is a testimony to
that.

I would like to share a prayer with you. It is one of the great
theological prayers of the Bible.

“O Lord, I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to
anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing
harm.”

Wow! Now that is a barrage of good theology. It is comforting and
beautiful. But I left some out. Here is the end: “Therefore now, O
Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than
to live!"

What!!!!!! You see, Jonah had been called to preach judgment, death,
destruction, pain. He knew from the beginning that God would forgive
Nineveh. That is why he ran away. He was afraid that people would
actually find God’s Love. He, like us looked at Bible history and came
to the conclusion that God was too good to wipe out Nineveh without
providing salvation.

I feel like Jonah. I know that God has a good purpose for what has
happened. I just wish He had chosen someone else. I am supposed to be
the independent guy. The one who does not get sick, and can take all
the challenges that come along. But God knows what He is doing, making
me weak and needy.

Paul told the Corinthians, ” I determined not to know anything among
you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” That is what I want to
do. All of this happened for the same reason that every thing happens:
so that we can know God better.

"Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless
gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else,
counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have
power, together with all the. saints, to grasp how wide and long and
high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that
surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the
fullness of God"

These are the passions of Paul for his life and that of others.
Knowing Christ and His love. We get so caught up in our missionary
duties, and that is not why God created you. He created you to know
Him.

Finally, a portion of Jesus prayer in John 17:
Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where
I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You
loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The
world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known
that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will
declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and
I in them."

That is it! Here is what I said in summary. Thanks so much to all.
Thanks most of all to God. May we take the trials like this and draw
near to God. God's deepest desire is that we know Him and learn His
love more and more every day. This we have seen in our midst. May we
continue to grow.

# posted by Arnie @ 10:09 PM