“What I heard, and offer to you for testing, was that…”

— Brad Jersak • Can Your Hear Me? (2003) [emphasis mine]

A remarkable qualifier in book by a Christian teacher. It shouldn’t be remarkable. It should be normal.

I observed a prayer ministry session with a lady who would pray aloud and then the answers from God back to herself, out loud in continuous dialogue. I took notes during this awesome conversation and weighed carefully what was being shared. At times her grief and panic came through in the questions. “Oh dear, oh dear! What shall I ever do?” She would cry. Then the calm voice of the Lord would respond with gentleness and comfort: “My daughter, there is no need for fear. I am with you. Hold my hand, and I will lead the way.” This would continue for hours as God did his own marvellous [sic] therapy of the soul.

[…]

If you struggle with static when trying to listen, you might her simple method a try.

— Brad Jersak • Can Your Hear Me? (2003)

So there’s precedent for how I best hear Your voice!

Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the vault of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and all the living creatures that swarm in the waters, each according to its kind, and all the winged birds, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth” (Genesis 1:20-22).

When I read “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures” a week or two ago as I finished my usual solo lunch in the main conference room at DiamondBack, tears welled in my eyes. God wants our oceans and lakes and rivers to teem with life.

I’m memorizing the above passage now.

On my walk last night I tried to work out with God why I’ve been so unhappy this week. Toward the end of a mildly frustrating, brassy-heaven walk, I heard “Coffee!” At first, I thought this was referring to my actual intake of the decaf I recently secure via Jen Bean via Josh Potter from Standing Stone: Perhaps the intake of some other chemical from the coffee was depressing me. But after reentering the house, it occurred to me that wasn’t it at all. This decaf coffee was a great example of me treating something as a must-do that clearly is not. So here was the answer: I have been unhappy because I have been treating as musts things that are not.

friend:Was reading Hebrews 6:1-3 this morning which lays out the very basics of the faith:1. Repent from any attempts to work toward “goodness”2. Have Faith in God’s forgiveness in Christ3. Baptism at the start of your allegiance to Christ4. Laying on of Hands - to receive the Holy Spirit? And Gifts?5. Resurrection of the dead (for those “in Christ"?)6. Judgement in the age or everlasting judgementMy reflection is that I have largely ignored “judgement” as a primary thing in my toolbox when preaching the gospel and I wonder if I should be rethinking how I communicate the message.[To] the last persons I’ve been involved in helping to allegiance to Christ […] I spoke heavily of the love of God, of their purpose is spreading that love, and becoming like him. The wife was baptized […] and we laid hands on her and prayed for the Holy Spirit. I think she would be able to articulate points 1-5.But I don’t think I shared much of anything about the judgement and that concerns me, as it’s part of the core.If you were teaching a new person about the faith, how would you discuss the judgement?# me:A smattering of thoughts:“We are not coherent when we applaud justice and jeer judgment” (Dale Allison, Night Comes, which I can loan you via Kindle if you’d like). You can’t have the former without the latter. How do we expect God to deal correctly with everything unless He applies His judgement to it first?I, for one, look forward to being judged by Jesus. It’s the beginning of how He is going to set me right. It’s the beginning of how He is going to set everything right.And it dovetails nicely with other parts to the gospel with which you’re more comfortable: “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30b-31).It may also help to bring this down to a human level: Social justice warriors belie themselves if they ever say “don’t judge me,” for judgement is the basis of all their work.See also Psalm 7.# friend:Those are good thoughts and very helpful. If you like Justice, you can’t ignore judgement. I think because the nature of the judgement is so complex and confusing it’s easier to just ignore. But God will make all things right, and weigh the scales, so to speak, which is good.One follow-up. What role does “faith in Christ” have on that day? The righteousness that is by faith, does that change the nature of the judgement? Or is that dealing with HOW we are live right now? That is, we can access Christ now, through faith, which can transform us to live as He desires, which will spare us some judgement. Or when we get to the end and all our misdeeds are judged, we pull out a “get out of trouble free” card by appealing to our faith in Christ.How do you see these working? Faith in Christ and not our works. But then our works being judged.# me: First, a brief excursus: It’s not just misdeeds that are judged: It’s our good deeds, too. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). See also Ephesians 6:7-8, among other places. “Judge” is not (or should not be) always be synonymous with “judge negatively.” For example, I judge [a lot of] work you’ve done for […] people […] to be good.Now, in reply to your question about the role of faith in Christ (or, as some translators are now favoring and as I will now throw in for fun as a very distracting aside, “the faithfulness of Christ”—wha!?) on the Day of Judgement, I think you’re basically right when you write, “[W]e can access Christ now, through faith, which can transform us to live as He desires, which will spare us some [negative] judgment.”There is no get-out-of-trouble-free card. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, and John of Patmos are clear that we will all be judged, both good deeds and misdeeds, no exception. There is no partiality with God. And we have all fallen short in at least some measure, so we will all undergo at least some negative judgment. Those of us who fall very far short (God no doubt taking into account each of our starting points) will face much more negative judgment. For those folks, it really will be a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.This is where faith comes in. We “persevere in doing good” (Romans 2:7) by faith in and faithfulness to Christ (cf. Hebrews 11). It is by right living that we gain “the life of the Age.”Does the centrality in all this of doing good mean:- that there are paths other than Christianity to a relatively pleasant judgment day for any given person? Of course it does! But those paths, whatever they’re called, are not different paths at their core, for the degree to which they lead to affirming judgment is the degree to which they adhere to God’s Word, that is, to Jesus, whether the people following those paths know it or not (c.f. Emeth following Tash in The Last Battle). Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, whether you call Him by name or not.- that we’re not saved by grace (i.e., a gift)? Of course not! We live and move and have our very being in God. Our very existence is a gift. How much more so our persisting into deathless life after death in the blissful, direct presence of Him whom we’re not even worthy to see! We who are made of dust! That’s saved by grace.# friend: Wow. So much here:Faith in Christ ensures Everlasting life becomes “The faithfulness of Christ ensures the life “of this age”. That’s a head spin from my evangelical roots.In light of what you’ve written here, which I am inclined to agree with, I need another level of clarity as maybe you see it. So I present an example:- Bill lives an ok but mostly selfish life. Most of his works are just for his own gain, he cheats on his wife, they get divorced, he is a lame father but not abusive, he succeeds in business, hordes his wealth, etc. When he is 75 he finds out he has stage 4 lung cancer and has only weeks to live. As he nears the end of his life, he is watching the television when Franklin Graham comes on the screen. Franklin is half way through his salvation message when a malfunction to Bill’s breathing tube shuts off the oxygen and he dies a few moments later before the end of the message.- Mark lives an ok but mostly selfish life. Most of his works are just for his own gain, he cheats on his wife, they get divorced, he is a lame father but not abusive, he succeeds in business, hordes his wealth, etc. When he is 75 he finds out he has stage 4 lung cancer and has only weeks to live. As he nears the end of his life, he is watching the television when Franklin Graham comes on the screen. Franklin delivers his message on salvation through believing in Christ and saying a prayer of Faith. Mark is deeply moved, regretting his past sins and trusting in Jesus. As Mark is dying he utters the words that he repents of his sins and asks Jesus into his heart. Then he dies.At the judgement day what happens to Bill and what happens to Mark. Are their fates identical. Is Mark’s any different at all having “come to faith” before the clock ran out?And if nothing is different, then we really are talking about Salvation in real terms of relationship with Christ that transforms, and the benefit on judgement day will be in the proportion to which we lived out that transformation in the world. No real benefit for just a statement of belief.# me: I want to be clear that I’m spitballing. With sometimes forceful rhetoric (as usual), yes. But just spitballing. The rhetoric is just the best way to get an idea across and therefore to have the idea tested. Please push back. I’m ready to be corrected.Now, onto your question:You and I have already reviewed the possibility of postmortem evangelism as being at least biblically implied in 1 Peter 3:19 & 4:6, John 5:25, Revelation 21:25, Romans 8:38-39, and perhaps 1 Corinthian 15:29, so I don’t need to make the case to you that Bill’s chances of Making It to the Party don’t end with his demise. But your question isn’t about his Making It to the Party. It’s about whether his pre-Party judgment will be less tolerable than Mark’s.Assuming Bill and Mark are noetic twins and would thus reply identically to Jesus, the answer is no, with the exception that Bill will have to do his regretting in front of the Throne instead of in front of the TV.To me, 1 Timothy 5:8, James 2, and, like, the entirety of 1 John make clear that, as you say, there is “no real benefit for just a statement of belief.”There does, however, remain an urgency to “coming to faith” in this life because it is this life that will be judged. The sooner you repent, the sooner you can get busy Living (or, if you prefer, building out of “gold, silver, and precious stones” [1 Corinthians 3:12]).And as you’d be the first to say, the statement of belief does have a benefit—provided it does not remain “just” a statement of belief, provided we’re not “believing in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:2), provided the seeds of the Word take strong root in our hearts (Matthew 13:18-23, etc.). I don’t need to tell you that our belief in an infinitely kind God who stoops to know us and redeem us and enjoy us and love us is plenty for some people (most people?) to really get going on the narrow gate to Life.# friend:Yeah, this all makes sense to me and we’ve discussed before, but it does seem to run in the face of so much evangelical work. So much effort to talk about “salvation through faith in Christ” and salvation being ”from judgement.“ So many people rejoicing over the sinner prayers prayed on the deathbeds. How did we get here?One last quick one: So over and over again it talks about “salvation by faith” or that “we are justified by faith.” etc. In Romans 4:5 it basically says the opposite of what we’re saying here about judgement of our works: “You’re justified by faith alone, and not by works.” So what good is the “justification”? Or what am I justified from by faith alone?Is this whole business of justification and salvation just misunderstood as to what the benefits are? We say “salvation” as if people agree what that means.Is the whole thing about “Salvation is relationship with God” which is available to you now through faith, and not through works. So you are not “made right” by your works, you’re just made right by your faith in him (leading to relationship with him lest you believed in vain). So go to him, be transformed by him, because how you live matters, you’re works will be judged, and you can only live transformed if you have relationship with him.# me:I still rejoice over a sinner’s prayer prayed on deathbeds, inasmuch as it represents true repentance from dead works and real trust in God—just not with a “phew!” about the avoidance of hell or annihilation.I think we got here because as Americans we’re focused on maximizing measurable results. And prayers prayed or hands raised is much easier to measure than love points. Mix in easy transportation, mass communication, and the democratization of hermeneutics, and there you have it. Incidentally, I don’t think the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox have quite the same problem. (They have different ones.)Now, regarding salvation and justification, Romans 4:5 doesn’t contradict the ideas we (and let’s hope the Holy Spirit) are developing here. It complements them: None of us, not even the best among us, deserves to live forever or to be (eventually) treated as though we have acted faultlessly. That these things will happen to us is 100% the gift of God. To receive this gift, we believe Him, entrust ourselves to Him, and begin to follow Him. In that sense, it’s really not that different from what you and I grew up believing.All we’re adding is that at some point after the normal course of this life, each of us will have to give an account of what we’ve done, pre-Jesus and post-Jesus both—and that following the words of the New Testament, including those of our Lord, this assessment has an important place in our suite of morally motivating ideas.Actually, allow me a quick revision. What we’re actually adding is that:- we, the people who have already made profession of trust in and allegiance to Jesus in this life, will be part of the Judgment,- everybody gets the get-out-of-trouble-free card after the Judgement, provided there’s true repentance, and- therefore the traditional rejection of postmortem evangelism is in error.These are our serious departures from the tradition we grew up in.

What I really want in this instance, as George MacDonald taught me, isn’t the forgiveness for the consequences of my sins (e.g., the wrath of God) but freedom from my actual sins. I’d like to become the father that doesn’t snap at his son. I don’t want an imputed purity. I actually want to be, myself, pure.

— Richard Beck

Good working definition of joy from Richard Beck: “great delight regardless of external circumstance.”

On the subject of the solo satisfaction of biological and psychological drives (e.g., eating, masturbating, sightseeing): As long as they are not harmful and they are undertaken with thanksgiving, they are done in love, and are thus good.

“[A] Christian sexual ethic is a process of transforming eros into agape.”

– Richard Beck

Shame and guilt can be healthy, life-giving emotions. There’s a reason we have them. Sure, shame and guilt can become toxic and debilitating. But let’s not think that there’s something unhealthy about feeling shame or guilt when you do something that violates your conscience. That’s called being a human being.

— Richard Beck

“In distinctive contrast in the midst of the ancient world, the Jews will sacrifice animals to God, but never their children. And that’s a moral revolution in the history of the world” (Richard Beck, “On Genesis 22: Give the Story a Little Respect”).

Love is hardly love if it is lazy.

The death of a spouse after a long and fulfilling marriage in quite a different thing. Perhaps I have never felt more closely the strength of God’s presence than I did during the months of my husband’s dying and after his death. It did not wipe away the grief. The death of a beloved is an amputation. But when two people marry, each one has to accept that one of them will die before the other (xii–xiii).

Such insightful and poetic words from Madeleine L’Engle. It is true: Either Carla or I will predecease the other, and that will feel like an amputation.

Reading A Grief Observed during my own grief made me understand that each experience of grief is unique (xiii).

I must remember that as I age and my friends’ spouses die.

Like Lewis, I, too, kept a journal, continuing a habit started when I was eight. It is all right to wallow in one’s journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don’t take out on family and friends (xiv).

I appreciate her recognition that, as Carla has taught me, it is important to vent so that we don’t hurt those around us.

I am grateful, too, to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence. This is part of healthy grief not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth (xvi).

Geez. Had I only known people were so comfortable with their own doubts about God and Jesus and the whole shebang when I was going through my throes of existential doubt!

And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? (5)

Warning! When Carla dies, still take your walks. Call people to hang out. Do your work. Unless you want to just die, too.

The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. (11)

Lewis is not outshone in poetry by his formidable foreword writer. I am certain Carla’s death will seem just like he describes. It will (dis)color everything.

But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice—that can turn me at any moment into a whimpering child. (16)

Again, I suspect the same will be true of me when Carla dies.

‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? (27)

The poor Calvinist!

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him. (28)

Wrong.

Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. (28)

No, it’s not.

Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite [of God being good]? (29)

No.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor has H.’s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing I haven’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No, And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards (36–37).

Crucial, both for those who know they are doubting because of the problem of evil and for those who think they aren’t.

In which sense may it be a house of cards? Because the things I am believing are only a dream, our because I only dream that I believe them? (39)

That’s an important distinction of which I’d never thought.

They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal? (41)

An excellent one-liner. Ah, but it was Lazarus’ experience that brought us the Gospel according to “John”!

A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God’s patients, not yet cured. I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured. The sword will be made brighter (42).

Who knew belief in purgatory existed among Protestants? Certainly not I. But now I do: Richard Beck, Jerry Walls, C.S. Lewis, Brad Jersak—heck, all the universalists, I suppose. Thinking of the afterlife makes so much more sense with a purgatorial hell.

What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never been to a dentist? 43

I love it when Lewis zings.

You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately; anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when think about our dead? (45)

I remember those October laps around the Holiday Inn in Orlando.

For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. :perhaps more. (47–48)

This is how I view Carla, and I told her so.

Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis in one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again. (52-53)

My, but does his man has a knack for finding the right metaphors to explain his thoughts! L’Engle and Lewis agree: Losing a spouse to death is an amputation.

The notes have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. Yet that would have been best for me. (62)

God, You equipped me to not repeat Lewis’ mistake here. Thank You.

An incurable abstract intellect

Excuse me, Mr. Lewis. Did you call me?

To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images—sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? (66)

Sure seems like it.

And now that I come to think of it, there’s no practical problem before me at all. I know the two great commandments, and I’d better get on with them. (69–70)

Amen, preach it, Brother.

To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal.’ To take a poor primate, a beast with never-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god’ (72)

Indeed. Thanks a bundle, God. No really, I mean it: It’s absurd and exactly what I want at the same time.

My overall takeaway: It scares me a little that I have read this and Dementia in the same year. Carla may very well predecease me, and I appear to be attempting to get ready for that contingency.

The main way to be ready: Remember to continue to live after she dies! But remember to grieve ferociously in order to do that!

“…[w]ith humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Paul). This is a crucial verse for me if I’m going to bear the fruit of love. It’s this regard of others as more important than myself that is going to turn up my inner hearth of love for others. Without that phrase, my love risks being too mechanical, too principled. If I can honestly regard others as more important than myself, I will fulfill the second Great Commandment.

“Given the issue is so fundamentally important to our view of who we are, a claim that our free will is illusory should be based on fairly direct evidence. Such evidence is not available.”

— Benjamin Libet, in a 1999 quotation I found via a current article in The Atlantic today that blows away the Goliath in the room of the question of the soul

Carla: [Saint] Paul totally bonked. He was a-bonkin!
Scott: Paul wasn’t bonking.
Carla: C’mon. You know he was bonking!
Scott: You are the strangest Christian wife I could have acquired.

On the interconnectedness of everyone and everything:

I live in a web of dependence, at the center of which is God in whom all things hold together (34).

That’s a good way to explain to myself how it is I can be grateful to God for everything that is good, including existence itself.

On prayer as worship:

Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God (35).

An idea from my girlfriend my freshman year of high school returns: Making requests of God is a form of worship. It has proven one of those stick-with-you, life-shaping ideas. Thanks, Katie.

On emotion being teachable and malleable:

But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed.

My super-culture insists that emotions just happen and should not be repressed or feared. I agree with the overall message, thanks in no small part to Carla and to Milan and Kay Yerkovich, who wrote How We Love. But I don’t hear much from anyone about directing and changing emotion. Incidentally, I also don’t hear much about directing and changing libido. But these things are subject to the will. The tricks to success in bending one’s emotions and libido are to no hate the feelings when they come, acknowledge weakness, expect failure, eschew shame, and never give up. It reminds me of something I read by Melinda Selmys about the Catholic line on chastity being impossible. She argued that its impossibility doesn’t entail its uselessness. Rather, it serves as a well of gravity, as fuel for an aspirational more asymptote. As long as we avoid legalism, we are the better for the impossible ideal. Life in God is aspirational. I should note that the thing Heschel as quoted by Ben Patterson as quoted by Yancey is trying to say here is it is good to learn unpleasant emotions from the Psalms.

On distractions and desires in prayer:

Distractions [in prayer] are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.

Twentieth-century Dominican priest, theologian, and philosopher Herbert McCabe wrote that. It jibes well with the “Q: What should I do? A: Do what you want!” mantra that God gave me two decades ago. I should try it. These days, it’s distractions from planning changes to my strength training workouts. What is the real desire there about which I can pray? A long life of good health that makes for a long, wide potential for good deeds as I age.

On conceptual copouts born of the conflict between exegesis and experience:

“Come near to God and he will come near to you,” wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however.

But I jest. Yes, Yancey’s gloss could be taken as a copout. But I take it as helpful truth.

From British convert Jonathan Aitken:

Trusting in God does not, except in illusory religion, mean that he will ensure that none of the things you are afraid of will ever happen to you. On the contrary, it means that whatever you fear is quite likely to happen, but that with God’s help it will in the end turn out to be nothing to be afraid of.

Again, pap to satiate the naive among us when first confronted with reasons for doubting God’s goodness? Sure. But also good, solid truth.

On psychosomatic healing being no threat in my book:

“It doesn’t diminish my respect for God’s power in the slightest to realize that God primarily works through the mind to summon up resources of healing in a person’s body. The word psychosomatic carries no derogatory connotations for me. It derives from two Greek words, psyche and soma, which mean simply mind (or soul) and body. The cure of such diseases demonstrates the incredible power of the mind to affect the rest of the body…Those who pray for the sick and suffering should first praise God for the remarkable agents of healing designed into the body, and then ask that God’s special grace give the suffering person the ability to use those resources to their fullest advantage. I have seen remarkable instances of physical healing accomplished in this way. The prayers of fellow Christians can offer real, tangible help by setting into motion the intrinsic powers of healing in a person controlled by God. This approach does not contradict natural laws; rather, it fully employs the design features built into the human body” (254)

That’s Dr. Paul Brand. I find piquant novelty in his approach to thanking God for what’s already natural in the human body and for seeing that natural stuff as the stuff of healing. Yancey goes on to report that Brand eventually came around to believing in the utterly miraculous as well, but the man still holds that most healing is psychosomatic. For the longest time, I thought healing being psychosomatic took away from healings as evidence for God. But I suppose it doesn’t have to.

On the limits of healing prayer:

In terms of physical health, you could say that the power of prayer has limits: no prayer will reverse the aging process, banish death, or eliminate the need for nourishment (256).

Several other quotations I don’t have time to comment on:

I have come to see the very selectiveness of biblical miracles as a sign of God’s personhood (258)

I never make a list of what to pray for. I pray instantly, as soon as something comes to mind, and I trust God to bring it to mind (315)

I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world (324).

“Trusting in God does not, except in illusory religion, mean that he will ensure that none of the things you are afraid of will ever happen to you. On the contrary, it means that whatever you fear is quite likely to happen, but that with God’s help it will in the end turn out to be nothing to be afraid of.”

— Jonathan Aitken, as quoted by Philip Yancey in Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?

“‘Come near to God and he will come near to you,’ wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however.”

— Philip Yancey

Distractions [in prayer] are nearly always your real wants breaking in on your prayer for edifying but bogus wants. If you are distracted, trace your distraction back to the real desires it comes from and pray about these. When you are praying for what you really want you will not be distracted.

— Herbert McCabe, as quoted by Philip Yancey

But consider what Rabbi Abraham Heschel said to the members of his synagogue who complained that the words of the liturgy did not express what they felt. He told them that it was not that the liturgy should express what they feel, but that they should learn to feel what the liturgy expressed.

— Ben Patterson, as cited in Philip Yancey’s Prayer

Carla cried “tiring” to hear my say that yet another purely social gathering was without a point. But I stand by it: I don’t want to invest time in people except insofar as it builds Your kingdom, God. I feel excited to cultivate our relationships with some folks because the growth of Your kingdom among us when we gather is effortless. I’m not looking for people with whom I simply have an enjoyable time; I’m looking for people with whom I can say, Look! God is among us doing stuff.

“Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.”

— Philip Yancey

“We are sending our young people into the marriage bed as virgins (good) but also as morons (bad).”

— Carlos Rodríguez

I enjoyed today how although I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to bring anything to church, at the last minute as we approached our taking of the wine and bread, I thought of “What A Friend I’ve Found” by Delirious?, which I had just run through with Carla, the Rookes, and Ben last weekend on a whim. I need to remember not to worry so much. Just follow my whim. Especially with music making. I ought not make music simply because I have a voice for it. I ought to make music when it is in the service of love only. Is love the post hoc pretext that covers a selfish ambition for praise or usefulness? Or is love the actual, prompting reason I’m doing the singing? Let it always be the latter.