[net.religion] What is God doing?

lab@qubix.UUCP (06/21/83)

This article is solely on what God did in the last week and a half.
I have posted a separate article replying to various items of that time span.

The mother of a close friend died last Tuesday of cancer - a prolonged
illness. The nurses in the ward, accustomed to death almost daily,
never saw anyone approach death with such strength and peace as this
one Christian woman. Even in death, she had a message.

Posting every week-and-a-half instead of every week is working out
nice - left me free all last week for a seminar in a nearby city -
a seminar that has shown what God has been doing in very real ways.

It originally started as a seminar to help parents understand
teenagers and why they do certain things. It grew to general
interest, solely by word-of-mouth and example-of-life. Broken
marriages - by man's standards, IMPOSSIBLE to put back together -
have been healed. Broken families have likewise been healed.
Runaway children have returned home without fear of hostility.
People with problems they could not find any answers for - or
understand what the basis of the problems were - have found
victory over the same problems. When I first attended the seminar,
I was a master flame-thrower; now I have a custom-designed igloo.

What is the common factor? Application of the principles of
Scripture - seeing how Scripture relates to the problems of life,
both in teaching AND in example. "So what?" you say. "So I can apply
those principles in my own life without God!" Lots of luck trying.
Many of the principles won't make sense without God. What's more
is that most of the principles cannot be carried out in the power
of the flesh, because they go against man's nature. Without the
power of the Spirit of God, there is no amount of willpower that
can accomplish them. God's ways run counter to man's, and thus it
is with these principles. You won't WANT to use them.

Perhaps the greatest encouragement has been to see people who have
been very bitter, both at God and at man, become people with peace
within. Their guilt isn't offset by blaming someone else - it's gone.
They have found freedom - real freedom inside. You can put shackles on
my body, but my soul is FREE.

I feel some people yawning. One last example for now, and if you
want more info, feel free to contact me. The seminar is held all over
the country at various times, and near virtually every major
metropolitan center (and several not-so-major, like Redding, CA).

Hosea 2:6-7 "therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns,
and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. And she shall
follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she
shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I
will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better
with me than now." Hosea's wife had left him; God placed a hedge
of thorns around her to cause her to return to Hosea.

I have known modern applications of this "hedge of thorns." People who
have left behind spouses or families and gone on their own have found
their desires SUDDENLY elusive; the ones they attracted SUDDENLY have
no desire; and they have returned back to open arms - the arms of
those who have prayed for God to set up such a hedge around the one
who left. And often, results have been seen in less than two weeks.
(Some people are harder to convince.)

	Basking at 4 Celsius,
	Larry Bickford, {decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!qubix!lab

tim@isrnix.UUCP (07/01/83)

I am glad that God is at work putting families back together.  Now
if S/He can go to work putting nations back together.......
When the United States and Russia agree to put away their nuclear
arms and the threat of destroying the world-THAT is the miracle
I would like to see!
   tim sevener
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