The Mandela Effect?

One of the crazy conspiracy things that I’ve been both wanting to write about and reluctant to write about is the Mandela Effect.  The Mandela Effect is called that because of many people who have a memory of Nelson Mandela dying during or shortly after his imprisonment.  I am not one of those, but there are enough of them to make you wonder.  There are several issues where the Mandela Effect shows up in the case of many people remembering things one way or the other.  For example:

Berenstain Bears or Berenstein Bears?

Fruit Loops or Froot Loops?

Looney Toons or Looney Tunes?

How about movie lines:

“Luke, I am your father” or “No, I am your father”?

“Houston, we’ve had a problem” or “Houston, we have a problem”?

“Mirror, mirror on the wall” or “Magic mirror on the wall”?

How about the death dates of famous people:

Bob Hope?

Jane Goodall?

Bob Keeshan (better known as Captain Kangaroo)?

How about our planet:

Christ the Redeemer in Brazil – 230 feet tall or less than half that?

South America appears far too east?

Australia almost touching New Guinea and missing a very large island to the west?

Or most disturbing of all, the apparent changes in the King James Bible:

Matthew 2:17 – Jeremiah or Jeremy?

The Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6 – trespasses or debts?

Isaiah 11:6 – wolf or lion?

There are many other examples in each category.  But rather than going too deeply into all that, these examples are merely to show that there are so many apparent changes to our reality that there is undoubtedly something going on.

Chuck Missler has observed that we can cut a piece of string in half, and that half in half, and that half in half, and so forth.  In theory, we should be able to continue cutting the halves in half an infinite number of times on into the atomic level.  But the reality of our universe is that when the half gets to a certain smallness, with the next cut the halves lose locality.  In other words, rather than being in one place, they suddenly are everywhere at once.

This proves that we live in a digital universe.  Classic physics cannot explain things like pieces of string being small enough to lose locality.  Thus quantum mechanics was born to explain the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles specifically: how something can be in two states at the same time.  As Missler states it: we live in a digital simulation.

In an effort to understand our digital reality better, a Canadian computer company built the first quantum computer, the D-Wave.  A regular computer solves problems by going through each possible permutation one after the other until it reaches a solution.  A quantum computer is capable of solving problems by looking at all the possibilities at the same time, which is much faster.  In their own words:

A quantum computer taps directly into the fundamental fabric of reality—the strange and counterintuitive world of quantum mechanics—to speed computation[1].

Then, in 2013, NASA, together with Google, and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) launched a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab featuring the D-Wave Two, a quantum computer to be used for research into machine learning.

If those last two paragraphs (and the quote) don’t scare you, then you haven’t grasped the possible implications of a quantum artificial intelligence.  Many people believe that the Mandela Effect is a direct result of the D-W2 manipulating our digital universe and making changes retroactively.

But could the D-W2 make changes in the King James Bible, originally written in 1611?  Many people say that it’s impossible, we’ve just got faulty memories.  After all, doesn’t the Bible, itself say:

The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever, (Isaiah 40:8, emphasis mine).

I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s Law will disappear until its purpose is achieved, (Matthew 5:18).

Your eternal word, O Lord, stands firm in heaven, (Psalm 119:89).

Yes, the Word of God stands forever, but throughout history people have made their own changes, additions to, and subtractions from the Bible.  The following are the most notable:

• The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (also known as the Jefferson Bible) – Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted the Gospels together in chronological order. He cut out all references to angels, genealogy, prophecy, miracles, all references to the triune nature of God, the divinity of Jesus, and His resurrection.
• The Apocrypha – Martin Luther objected to the inclusion of the Apocrypha in the Bible, due to the dubious authorship of its fourteen books.
• The Book of Mormon – Joseph Smith had an encounter in the woods with an angel calling itself Moroni. The Book of Mormon was written under the inspiration of the angel, which is no doubt a fallen angel.  Many things in the Book of Mormon contradict the Bible.
• Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures – Mary Baker Eddy wrote this in the late 19^th century as the central text of Christian Science. Many things in Science and Health also contradicts the Bible.
• The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures – Charles Taze Russell started the Jehovah’s Witnesses and The Watchtower Society, which translated the Bible, removing all references to Jesus’ divinity and Trinitarian indications. Obviously these changes also create contradictions with the original Bible.

So, while this may be yet another assault on the Bible, it’s not an entirely new idea.  I’m not saying that it’s not troubling—it is very troubling.  But we can’t let this stop us.  If the King James Version of the Bible is corrupted, then let’s switch to other translations that haven’t yet been tampered with.  In any case, those of us who have already spent many hours studying the Bible know what is written there.  More importantly, if we’re in covenant with the Author of the Bible, then He is actually living inside of us.

I have hidden Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against You, (Psalm 119:11, emphasis mine).

The idea that the fabric of our universe has been tampered with, our memories called into question, God’s Holy Word may be corrupted, and reality has lots some of its concreteness—all of that is very troubling indeed.  I thought I knew how big the Great Deception was going to be (fallen angels and the antichrist masquerading as alien saviors of the world with super powers), but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of Deception if reality and memory becomes fluid.

For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones, (Matthew 24:24, emphasis mine).

What do we do?  What can we do?  We have got to continue doing what God has called us to do: share Jesus until the day that He Raptures us out of here.  It would be very easy to fall into the paralysis of fascination with these things.  It reminds me of watching the news on 9/11 over and over and over again.  I was glued to the television, trying to make my brain comprehend what my eyes were seeing.  I have read lots of stuff about the Mandela Effect, listened to YouTubers from all over the spectrum talking about the implications, and come to this conclusion: there are too many people who remember things differently for this to be a simple case of runaway imaginations based on faulty memories.  There is something to the Mandela Effect, and the sooner we come to grips with it, the sooner we can get back to doing what God has called us to do: share Jesus.  We don’t have the luxury of time.  The cosmic clock is just about to ring midnight, and oh, how dark things are going to get!

Get out there and share Jesus like there’s no tomorrow.  God is good!

[1] http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum-computing.

God’s Secrets

The harvest is great!

One day a couple of years ago, God said to me: “Jeremiah three, three, three.”  I knew it was a Bible verse, so I went to look it up.  First I went to Jeremiah chapter three, but there was no thirty-third verse.  So then I went to Jeremiah chapter thirty-three, to the third verse, and this is what it said:

Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know, (Jeremiah 33:3, NIV).

So I responded by asking Him to tell me great and unsearchable things that I don’t know.  Little by little, He started revealing things about the Rapture and End Times events.  I have written most of that here in my blog, and later in my books (Graceful Flight, Holy Goosebumps, and Fingerprints of the Holy Spirit).

Those End Times revelations themselves lifted the veil and revealed Deception.  And I do mean Deception with a capital D.  I’m not just talking Illuminati celebrities, they are just tools.  This is a big, ancient, demonic Deception.  When I saw the footage from Bohemian Grove, I thought, Aha!  Now I’ve gotten to the bottom of the Deception.

I was wrong.  I was only just looking into the rabbit hole.  I still had no idea just how deep it went.  Then I learned about the Cern Large Hadron Collider, where there are scientists that are actually trying to open a portal to extra dimensions.  It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to understand that angels can easily enter and exit our world if they are extra-dimensional beings.  But remember that a third of the angels are evil, fallen angels.  The experiments at Cern actually scare physicist Stephen Hawking.  And they are far more sinister than even Dr. Hawking thinks: unraveling space and time like pulling on piece of yarn unravels a sweater.  What Cern is really up to is even scarier than opening a portal to allow fallen angels and demons to enter and freely roam the earth.

I realized that the lack of evidence for the Theory of Evolution in the face of an abundance of evidence for Creation (and other Biblical accounts), makes modern science the Humanist Religion.  It takes a whole lot more faith to believe in something so completely unproven and unprovable than it does to simply believe God and the Bible.  And not only that, but they have worked very hard to cover up certain artifacts, like the skeletal remains of the nephilim—giants.  Plus, back to Cern, the facility has the Hindu god of destruction dancing in a portal right at their front door.  Why?  And there is video of the scientists at Cern doing a dance of destruction.  Why?  The logo for Cern is a stylized 666.  Why?  And on June first of this year there was a bizarre ceremony for the opening of the Gotthard Tunnel in Switzerland (near Cern) that is clearly satanic.  Why?  Because all these things are not science, they are religion—Secular Humanist Satanic Science Religion.  And it’s not that God’s existence can’t be proven.  Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has announced that God’s existence can be proven scientifically.

But the rabbit hole goes much deeper than that.  Deeper and darker.  To be honest, the rabbit hole went to places that I didn’t want to go.  In the depths of the rabbit hole, I learned things that I was happier not knowing.  The rabbit hole took me down into the Conspiracy Zone.  And the Conspiracy Zone is far bigger than you could ever have imagined.

The crazy thing about the Conspiracy Zone is not the size of the conspiracies (which really all just dovetail into the one big global conspiracy), but the audacity with which it’s all flaunted carelessly right under our noses.  If you look at certain items in the news, it won’t take very long to realize that you’ve seen this all before in music, movies, and television shows (yes, this goes back to Illuminati celebrities, some of whom were probably sacrificed).

So I faced a dilemma, as I wrote this.  I wrestled with the question: Now, do I go ahead and name the conspiracies?  Honestly, this is the third time I’ve tried to write this particular post.  What do I write about the things I’ve learned?  Should I write about them at all?

If I do, I risk every single one of you howling that I’m a conspiracy nut, backing away, warning all of your friends, and BOOM! with one little blog post, I’m marginalized and labeled as crazy for life.  To be honest, I think that some people in my life have already put me in this particular corner simply because of my Christian faith—and that is fine with me because I don’t mind being crazy for Jesus.  These people are cautiously polite to me, and carefully strain everything I say through the sieve of insanity, lest they become infected, themselves.  Needless to say, because of this my every word and every action is so grossly misunderstood that the relationships seem beyond all hope.  (Happily, I believe in miracles!)

But if I mention all the things that I have learned to be true[1], then I risk everyone else (friends, family, fellow church members) thinking that I’m a crazy conspiracy nut.

On the other hand, if I don’t name the conspiracies, if I just leave you here, then you remain just as contentedly deceived as ever—a pawn of the powers that be, parroting the lies they’ve taught you to believe.  You would remain deceived and ignorant of the fact, and I don’t lose the integrity of my good name.  But how do I live with myself?  Wouldn’t I want to know?  I did.  Painful as it is, I do want to know.

What oh what to do?  Together with King Solomon, I lamented:

I learned firsthand that pursuing [wisdom and knowledge] is like chasing the wind.  The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.  To increase knowledge only increases sorrow, (Ecclesiastes 1:17-18, emphasis mine).

Then as I investigated things, going deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, finding things that defy belief and even changed reality as I knew it, I took it all back to God.  I said: “Lord, what am I to do with this information?  What should I believe?”  Immediately came the calming assurance of His Holy Spirit, speaking to my heart: “Don’t let all of this distract you.”

Indeed, the Sovereign Lord never does anything until He reveals His plans to His servants the prophets, (Amos 3:7).

And I realized that I could end up getting literally sucked into these things.  I have already wasted whole days investigating things so bizarre and unbelievable and shocking that even while convinced that they are true, I could hardly function under the weight of all this new and reality-changing information.  But the thing that’s truer than anything else is the reality of how much bigger God is.  The defeated enemy has come in with great deception, just as Jesus warned[2].  This is not a future event, but a present and ever-growing reality.  And the deception is indeed so great that even the very elect could be fooled.  Perhaps some of us do fall for the deception temporarily.  But the greater, overarching truth is that we must get out there and share Jesus with everyone God puts into our path.  We no longer have the luxury of time.

You may learn about these secret things, too.  And they may shake you for a while, as they did me.  But don’t let them distract you.  Keep the main thing the main thing: share Jesus.  The Lord revealed something else to me: He said that this is the season[3] of acceleration, as in:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes.  New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills,” (Amos 9:13, NIV).

These are those days!  They have come.  What this means is that we will no longer plant seed and wait decades to see the harvest.  Now we will harvest as we plant.  The seed (God’s Word) will immediately bear fruit.  God is good!  Tell everyone you know!  This is no secret: God is good!

[1] Or extremely plausible when considered with an open mind.

[2] Matthew 24:4-5, 11, 24; Mark 13:5-6 & 22.

[3] Not summer, but a period of time.

It’s All about Love!

Be willing to turn your thinking upside-down for Jesus!

I have seen a growing trend on Facebook: more and more posts of Muslim rallies (both in the US and here in Europe) and Muslim violence reported by online media.  The posters and their friends respond with outrage and fear.  This is not how we should be responding as Christians.  Neither emotion is from God.  The Bible even says that God has not given us a spirit of fear.

I have said it before and I will continue saying it: this is an opportunity to share the love of Jesus.  Love is the thing that all people everywhere are hungry for.  It’s the thing that they are really seeking deep-down.  And love is the thing that is glaringly missing in Islam.  They don’t marry for love, they don’t love their god and their god certainly doesn’t love them.  If we can get over ourselves and see them like God sees them, we will reach out to them in love.

This could be our biggest test of our love for God and for our fellow man.  This could also be our finest hour.  We will overcome the defeated enemy by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony: that Jesus loves them, too[1].

And don’t forget the last part of that verse: “And they did not love their lives so much that they were afraid to die.”  What is my one brief life on earth?  It won’t last forever here on earth.  But even if my one life ends suddenly, if it ends bringing people to Jesus, it’s worth it!  Jesus died for me.  How could I waste my life, my one life, worried about being comfortable, getting rich, being the most beautiful, having all the best toys, etc.?  It’s not going to last.

God is good!  Tell everyone you know, regardless of their background: God is good!

[1] Revelation 12:11.

Italian Ministries – The Great End Times Revival

 

On first arrival here I almost immediately reconnected with Esan (see Italian Ministries – Arrival).  I had already decided to attend the breakout session titled Passion for the Immigrants, but seeing Esan was like confirmation that this was the session to attend.

And when I found the conference room, there was Esan at the door.  He gave me another bear hug, with a smile so big and bright that it lit up the room.  The two speakers were leaders of their respective organizations to reach Muslims, one in Milan—the person who had brought Esan to my door last summer.

They took turns speaking about the Islamic Invasion of Europe.  This is going to prove to be a pivotal moment in the history of the world, and our response as Christians is going to be crucial.  The majority of Europeans are reacting with fear, many of them wanting to close their country’s borders to more immigrants—especially in the wake of the Paris and Brussels bombings and the many rapes perpetrated by the new immigrants on women of their host countries.  Some people even want to send the immigrants back where they came from.

But they pointed out that while the world shrinks back in horror, the Christian response should be to run to the immigrants and share the love of Jesus with them.  Love is something the Muslims never hear in relation to God.  Allah loves no one.  And no Muslim has the assurance of Heaven, no matter how devout they are.  Their best chance for getting to Heaven is to kill themselves in an act of Muslim zeal in jihad.  The more infidels they take with them, the better their odds.  And of course there are those 72 virgins waiting to share a sensual paradise with them.  The only problem is that the fantasy is precisely that: a fantasy.

One young woman shared that she had been raised Muslim in a deeply religious Muslim family.  Her grandfather was an Ayatollah.  She said that she was curious about the Bible, but was scared to even touch it.  She said that she handled the Bible with a handkerchief for fear of losing every chance at Heaven for herself and seven generations of her family.  With the handkerchief she opened the Bible and read:

Jesus replied, “Believe me, dear woman, the time is coming when it will no longer matter whether you worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem, (John 4:21, emphasis mine).

The thing that impressed her was the word Father.  The idea that God would consider humans His children blew her mind.  Her own parents didn’t care much about her, so she never dreamed that God would.  That was a life-changing moment, and all because someone risked giving her a Bible.

During the Q and A time, one person asked the question that has been on all of our minds for over a year now: what can we possibly do, in sight of the fact that Islam is growing faster than Christianity.

The answer turned out to be very interesting, indeed: Islam is not winning the hearts and minds of people.  Christianity is doing that.  Islam is only growing by means of birthrate.  Many Muslims, especially young Muslims, are beginning to be curious about Christianity.  In part, this is because Jesus is appearing to many, many Muslims worldwide in dreams and visions.  The fact is that Muslims consider Jesus a great prophet.  They believe in the virgin birth of Christ—it’s written in the Koran.  What they don’t believe is that Jesus is the Son of God or that He died on the cross.

The session was very motivating.  We ended this session as we have ended each meeting, pairing up and praying with the person next to us.  The persons next to me turned out to be a pair of sisters.  We prayed for God to move our hearts, and indeed the hearts of our fellow Christians to share the Good News of Jesus with Muslims.  As we prayed, the Holy Spirit showed me that Revival in Europe is going to be exponentially explosive among the Muslims, and that is going to awaken and revive the Church at large.  The sisters agreed that the Holy Spirit was testifying the same thing to them.

Here we are at the most important time in history since Jesus opened the door to our salvation.  We have a unique chance to play a part in The Great End Times Revival.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to sit on the sidelines.  I want to be right in the middle of it all.  I want God to use me, however He sees fit.  God is good!

Now, get out there and share it with the Muslims in your neighborhood.  Be part of the Biggest Revival the World has Ever Seen.

Italian Ministries – Arrival

Prayer Bear, Jr. clowning around, just like his predecessor

I arrived at Montesilvano train station in the rain.  It wasn’t raining hard, so I had a decision to make: umbrella or GPS on my phone.  I couldn’t hold both while pulling my rolling suitcase.  I chose GPS and arrived a bit wet, but not soaked.  The conference center was well-marked, so as soon as the building came into view, I shut off the GPS and pocketed my phone.  Check-in was very easy and my hotel was close.

Minutes after arrival, there was a knock at my door.  It was my roommate, Sing.  She introduced herself and told me that she is from Malaysia, but living and going to university in Mantua.  Like me, Sing feels the pull of Europe, and she’s wondering if that means that she’s got a missionary calling to Europe.  I suspect that she does.

I am in the second week of a three week (liquids only) fast, so I went with her to the dining room for dinner.  But since they had nothing liquid, besides water, I decided not to stay.  Sing did have friends there, so I wasn’t leaving her completely alone.  I discovered that across the street there is a small market.  I bought some apricot juice and drinkable yogurt, and returned to the room.

At nine they had the welcome session, and there I saw Esan, who had stayed with me last summer during Ramadan (see Footprints of the Holy Spirit).  I saw the recognition blossom slowly on his face until it was a fully-flowered smile.  He hugged and hugged me, like he was seeing his own mother[1].

This was the first reunion of the conference, and I hope it’s not the last.  What a nice start!  I can’t wait to see what tomorrow holds.  God is good!

[1] In truth, Esan is about my own age.

Seven Mistakes that European Missionaries Make

Operation World says that Europe is the “most secular, least Christian” continent on earth today.  The Lausanne World Pulse Archives states that there are some 234 unreached people groups living in Western Europe alone.  Unreached.  Just in Western Europe.  As in they have never even heard the Gospel message.

For missionaries to Europe, the burden and the scope of the work ahead of us can be overwhelming at times.  Europe desperately needs more missionaries[1].  And because of the gross lack of missionaries, the size and scope of the work ahead of us, and the personal sense of burden for Europe, missionaries here make seven mistakes that could cost them their ministries:

1. Secular work – Many missionaries in Europe spend all their time and energy working, at both their ministry and also at an outside job in order to support themselves. This is a danger that is particular to the European mission field.  I know very few missionaries here whose support is at 100 percent.  Europe is quite likely the most expensive mission field in the world.  A missionary to Africa can live like a king on $100 a month.  For a missionary here, that won’t get them through a week.  Rents are high in the cities, especially in Western Europe.  But living outside the city will require a vehicle, and everything about even the most economical car is more expensive in Europe: insurance, upkeep, and especially gasoline[2].  As a result, many missionaries must supplement their income by working.  Even the Apostle Paul worked to support himself as a tent-maker.  But he only did this for a few years.  There is nothing wrong with working a secular job to support your ministry.  The problem is that the number of hours in a week remains the same, so something has to suffer, either ministry or personal time.  Full time work equals part time ministry.  And full time work plus part time ministry equals little or no real time for family.
2. Good works – Many missionaries spend all their time and energy on good works. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all.  That’s the problem with how the defeated enemy operates.  He wants to see us so busy doing ten good things that we neglect the one thing that God actually gave us to do.  Good works don’t scare the defeated enemy, as long as you’re neglecting to share the Good News along with it[3].  With the flood of refugees, missionaries here in Europe are compassionately responding.  Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing.  But if they fail to share the Good News, their efforts to help will have only a temporary effect, at best.  People are hungry, but only Jesus, the Bread of Life, will truly satisfy them.
3. Inexperience and fear of sharing the Gospel with Muslims – Speaking of the flood of refugees, many missionaries spend all their time and energy, and often their own resources, to feed and clothe them. But in the wake of the recent bombings in Paris and Brussels, they are reluctant to share the Gospel with Muslim refugees.  This is a huge mistake.  Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet.  Did you know that the virgin birth of Jesus is recounted in the Koran?  And Jesus, Himself, is appearing to Muslims all over the world in dreams and visions.  This is a unique opportunity to speak with Muslims in an environment where they are far more open and receptive than in their own countries, and under the watchful eyes of their imams.  We need to be bold to share the Good News with Muslims.  There may only be a brief window of time in which we can do this before Europe becomes another Muslim majority territory.
4. Skipping or cutting short prayer time – The abundance of more pressing or more practical things can cause busy missionaries to skip or cut short their prayer time. In reality, prayer is the most pressing and practical thing that we do each day.  If you had an appointment to meet with your boss for a strategy session each day before work begins, would you skip that?  Would you cut your meeting short?  And yet that’s exactly what many busy missionaries do.

It is counter-intuitive, but by spending more time in prayer, often God will show you which activities you can or should drop.  Sometimes He will have someone else take over that activity without your even asking them.  We should never be too busy to spend time in prayer.

5. Skipping or cutting short family time – Because of their busy lives, many missionaries also skip or cut short time with their spouse and children. They reason that the whole family was called to missions, so they’re all on the same page.  The problem is that relationships take work.  In an atmosphere of such busyness, little hurts can fester and grow into big, deep wounds.  The defeated enemy takes advantage of such situations.  Wounds left unchecked can ultimately result in children that rebel, families that split, and sometimes divorce.  When the family unity fails in these ways, ministries and lives are destroyed in the process.  And not only for the missionary family, but also for the people they have reached out to.

Set aside an inviolable hour each day to spend with your family.  Let others in the ministry know that during this time, you are not available.  This investment of time will pay off in close relationships that resist every scheme of the defeated enemy.

6. Failure to take time to rest – Busyness is also the reason why many missionaries fail to give themselves a day of rest. They think that they are keeping the Sabbath holy by attending or helping out at their local church on Sunday.  But the original reason the Sabbath was given to mankind is rest (see Genesis 2:2-3).  Why are we so busy that we skip our God-ordained day of rest?  Could it be a lack of faith?  Are you saying, “If I don’t do it, then it won’t get done”?  That, my friend, is pride.  That is lack of faith in God’s ability to get the job done despite your weakness and need to rest.

The original Sabbath day is Saturday.  When I began celebrating the Saturday Sabbath, I realized that it turned out to be a good thing that Sunday was established as the “Christian Sabbath.”  This gives missionaries and pastors the opportunity to honor the Sunday Sabbath by pouring themselves into their local church, while honoring the original Sabbath in the original way, by resting, relaxing, and reconnecting with their families on Saturday.  God built the Sabbath into our week so that we would have time for rest and for the important relationships in our lives.  Unfortunately, I can count on one hand the missionaries and pastors of Europe who actually do this—and I am one.

7. Skipping or cutting short self-care – Few missionaries my age exercise regularly. As working seniors, we’re tired much of the time, so often the first thing to go is the thing that takes both time and energy: exercise.  Many also either overindulge, eat fast food meals, or skip meals—or all three from time to time.  And most make up for the lack of sleep by drinking too much coffee.  Their dedication to ministry is admirable, but unfortunate because if they keep up such bad habits, they will wear their bodies out, weaken their immune system, and set themselves up for early death.  This is an outcome that delights the defeated enemy.  Think about it: what virtue is there is working yourself into an early grave?  That’s not strategic thinking.  That’s nothing but pride.

However, incorporating exercise into your busy day can be easier than you think.  When you have an errand to run, take a bit more time and walk there instead of driving or taking a bus.  Consider investing in a bicycle, and make it your main mode of transportation.  Here in Milan the city has a bike sharing program.  Bike sharing is a concept that is growing in the cities of Europe.

Buy fresh fruits and vegetables, which often cost far less than fast food or processed foods.  Invest a little time in preparation by steaming vegetables, fixing salads, and blending up smoothies.  It will take a little time for you to adjust your routine and taste buds, but give it 66 days—just over two months.  In that time, you’ll find that you’ve lost excess weight, got more energy, and have better muscle tone.

We need to put first things first: our relationships with God and family; and self-care through rest, proper nutrition, and exercise.  If we will put aside our pride and take proper care of all that God has given us, then we will live long enough to see the fruit of our labors.  God is good!

[1] I pray daily for more missionaries to this important and largely overlooked mission field.

[2] It costs about $6.65 for a gallon of gas in Italy, somewhat less in Eastern European countries.

[3] A really excellent book on this subject is Good or God by John Bevere.