Dancing in the Piazza!

We have been rehearsing the last few days to do a flash mob in the Parliament Square.  This was my 3^rd flash mob.  The first was in Milan’s ritzy department store, La Rinascinte, singing Amazing Grace on Christmas Eve to shoppers there.

My 2^nd was a flash mob of values on the steps of the Duomo Cathedral of Milan, in which at a signal we held signs naming various moral values.  Mine said coraggio (courage).  The press had been invited to that one!

This time we were all over the big central piazza and after an introduction we ran to the middle of the piazza and danced to Resurrection (link there—I’m in the back on the right, all in gray).  You can see a guy in green at the front who briefly dances with us.  We had good audience participation.  The wind was something I, personally, had prayed for because without wind, it would have been blistering hot—so thank You, Lord, for the wind to keep us cool!

Afterwards the dance team and others went to the main street, set up there, and danced some more.  It was a moment when I would like to have been able to be in 2 places at once.  But I stayed in the piazza with the evangelization team.  We hadn’t seen them very much at all since Rome, so I wanted to spend some time with them.  But that desire was really just a set up for a divine appointment.  In Rome Guy, the host and head of the evangelization team, had told us about prayer walking in Parliament Square at 3AM.  He had gone up to the door and knocked on it.  The guard who answered had tears in his eyes, and Guy asked if he could pray for him.  The guard had just a month earlier lost his daughter in a car accident and had been in that moment struggling to cope.  Guy prayed for him and shared the Good News of Jesus Christ with the guard.  The guard has remained Guy’s friend.

After the dancers left, Guy went to the same door and knocked.  He asked the guard inside to please tell Paul hello for him.  The guard said, “If you wait 10 minutes, Paul will be here, and you can tell him yourself.”  So we all got to meet Paul, and he invited us into the courtyard of the Parliament Building.  Paul told us that we can’t go inside, though.  Then after a few minutes, he took us into another courtyard that was even prettier.  Again he told us that we couldn’t go inside.  I got a chance there in the second courtyard to talk with Paul.  He is a very nice man, and his affection for Guy was obvious.

Then after telling us twice that we couldn’t go inside, Paul took us inside, where we saw lots of suits of armor and paintings of leaders going back to the 1500’s.  Before exiting, we all prayed for Paul.  He thanked us, wiping tears from his eyes.  It was a sweet and touching visit, and probably prophetic for whenever Operation Capitals of Europe comes to Malta—that we will be gratefully welcomed.

Then Guy treated us all to ice cream, and we said our good-byes (some of them are leaving today, and I’m leaving tomorrow).  God is good!

Divine Forgetfulness

“No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord.  “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more,” (Jeremiah 31:34, emphasis mine).

Of all the things that God can do, I think the most mind-blowing power He has is the power to forget.  Have you ever considered how God is able to forget?  I mean, He’s God, right?  He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10)—every detail!  How does God forget anything?  Psalm 9:18 says that God will never forget the needy.

I heard a sermon in which the preacher said that in order to resurrect the dead, God doesn’t need the entire body intact, only a sample of their DNA.  But there are many saints who were martyred by being burned.  Their DNA has been completely destroyed.  But God, who has numbered the very hairs on their heads (Matthew 10:30), remembers them in detail, right down to the details of their DNA.  Even with all our scientists and computers, we still don’t know the exact number of genes there are in human DNA, but estimates range up to 150,000, according to the Human Genome Project.  And each person is absolutely unique.  So if God knows the exact number of the hairs on each head of every person alive today (over 7 Billion, source World Population Clock), and everyone who has ever previously lived, which is a number that only God knows, but we could estimate would be another 7 Billion, that is a mind-boggling amount of information.  And God doesn’t need to write it down.  He remembers it—all of it!

So I think I’m safe in saying that God has an infinite memory—He is omniscient, which means that He knows everything (I John 3:20, Hebrews 4:13).  How does someone with an infinite memory forget?  Yet the Bible says again and again that God will forget our sins (Hebrews 8:12, Hebrews 10:17, Isaiah 43:25, and Jeremiah 31:34, above).

The Bible gives the answer in Psalm 32:1: “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered,” (emphasis mine).  And again: “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.  Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them,” (Romans 4:7-8, emphasis mine).  How does someone with an infinite memory forget?  He forgets by focusing on the thing that has covered our sins.  There is only one thing that covers sin, and that is blood.  And only the blood of Jesus permanently covers sin.

If your sins have not been covered by the blood of Jesus, you cannot stand in the presence of our Holy God.  But you can very easily remedy that situation.  Right now you can make Jesus your Savior.  Pray this prayer with me:

Lord God, I know that I’ve sinned against You.  I am truly sorry.  Please forgive me for the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ.  Thank You for sending Jesus to die in my place to cover my sins.  Help me to live a life that is pleasing to You through the power of Your Holy Spirit who I receive right now.  In Jesus’ Name I pray.  Amen.

If you just prayed that prayer for the first time, welcome to the family of God!  Yes, you have been adopted as His child, and you are now a new creation (Romans 8, Galatians 4:6-7, and 2 Corinthians 5:17).  All the old life has passed away.  Hallelujah!  To start this new life right, you should do 2 things right away:

1. Read the Bible.  If you don’t have a Bible, most cities have a Christian bookstore where you can get one.  Most churches also sell Bibles—some even give Bibles to new believers.
2. Get involved with a Bible-preaching church in your area.  Notice I say “get involved.”  Church is not a building.  Church is a living organism—the Body of Christ.  So get actively involved.

Remember this above all else: God is good!

The Breathless Anticipation of Easter Saturday

Day Fourteen

There is something so beautiful about waiting.  Hey!  I can’t believe I wrote that!  If you read my first book, Look, Listen, Love, I go on for several chapters lamenting the wait for my camper van to be ready.  But really, when you think of it, it’s true.  When you’re waiting for something good—something that is certain to happen—you start to actually enjoy it in the period of anticipation.  Your imagination begins to take hold of the idea, imagining how you will have it in your hands.

Pregnancy is one of those times.  You start to imagine what it will be like to finally hold that baby in your arms, to feel the softness of the baby’s skin on your cheek, to smell the fresh smell of the baby after his or her bath.  I didn’t want to know the sex of my babies before they were born.  That’s like peeking at your Christmas presents a week before Christmas.  Once I did peek at a Christmas present that wasn’t well wrapped.  On Christmas morning all the fun and surprise was gone for that particular gift.  I’ve never understood people who peek or who ask the baby’s sex.

I imagine the disciples on Easter Saturday.  What a sad day for them!  Jesus had repeatedly assured them that He would rise on the 3^rd day.  They had seen Him raise people from the dead, but they were so stuck in their old mindset that they couldn’t imagine the resurrection.  Instead of enjoying the anticipation of Easter Sunday, they were fixated on Crucifixion Friday and their sorrow and loss.

For me, this time of waiting, fasting, and praying for my answer is a time of breathless anticipation.  Unlike the disciples, I have the sure and certain hope of getting the answer.  So instead of mourning my loss (in this case, solid food), I am getting ready to receive my answer.  Today begins the last week of my fast, and I am so excited that I can hardly stand it.  I do feel like a child the week before Christmas or a mother in the last month of pregnancy.  My answer will come, and I am thoroughly enjoying the wait.  God is good!

Fast and Pray for The Answers

Day One

I have always had a fascination with End Times prophecies.  It’s an interesting subject.  I read the Left Behind series by Jerry B. Jenkins & Tim LaHaye, and the Christ Clone Trilogy written by James BeauSeigneur.  Both are interesting and well-researched, but regarding the Rapture, I think both are wrong.

Left Behind has people being Raptured out of their clothing.  The Bible tells about 2 people who were Raptured:  Enoch and Elijah.  Neither of them was Raptured out of their clothing, though Elijah’s mantle fell from him.  What about the rest of his clothing?  Surely Elijah was wearing more than just his mantle (or coat).  I believe that Elijah’s mantle was left as a sign of the double portion of Elijah’s anointing having passed to Elisha.  What happened to their clothing, and what will happen to ours in the Rapture?  I believe that just as our physical bodies will be transformed into spiritual bodies, so our clothing will be transformed into new clothing.  Is anything too hard for God?

While we’re on the subject of physical transformations at the resurrection: it’s silly to think that God can only resurrect a body that has been buried and preserved whole.  Lots of people shun cremation, believing that God can’t or won’t resurrect a body from ashes (scattered or not).  Absurd!  What about all the Christian martyrs whose bodies were eaten (and pooped-out) by lions?  Do they think that God just throws up His hands and says, “They should have been buried whole.  There’s nothing I can do!”?  Or what about the Christian martyrs that were burned at the stake?  What about Christians that drown at sea?  Or Christians blown up by bomb attacks?  Or beheaded, with their heads separated from their bodies, like John the Baptist?  Ridiculous!  They think that God, who made the human body in the first place—made a man out of dirt and made a woman out of a rib, can’t resurrect a body that’s not preserved whole.

All the dead in Christ worldwide will be resurrected and raptured in the twinkling of an eye.  God, who can do that, can also recover bodies and missing body parts from ashes and dust.  The problem is that many people (maybe even most people) have an idea of God that’s way too small.

I even had a funeral director dig my father’s grave in the wrong place, despite my very clear instructions.  She said that the reason was so that when Jesus comes to raise the dead, my father (and eventually, though she still lives) my mother will be raised standing just as they stood at their wedding: he to her right.  Poor Mom was very upset when she saw that the grave had been dug in the wrong place.  I told the funeral director that it is utter nonsense.  Jesus clearly says that in the resurrection there is no marriage (Matthew 22:30).  I told her to fill-in that hole and bury my father where I had told her to dig.

The Christ Clone Trilogy has a different error.  In the Rapture, it has all the Christians being found suddenly dead.  Again, Enoch and Elijah did not leave their bodies behind.  If they had, then they would have been counted as dead like all the rest that had gone before them.  In Elijah’s case, 2 Kings 2:11 (and following) would also contain an account of Elisha burying Elijah’s body.

A lot of conflicting theories about the End Times are circulating on the internet, and I realized that it would be useful to know what’s true and what is erroneous speculation, like the aforementioned Rapture errors.  When I prayed about it, the Holy Spirit reminded me that Daniel asked these same questions, praying and fasting for the answer (Daniel 10).  So today I am starting a fast to understand the true End Times answers.

One thing I want to make clear: I am not asking God when Jesus will come to Rapture the Church away.  Jesus said that only the Father knows, not the angels and not even the Son knows (Matthew 24:36 & Mark 13:32).  So to ask God to reveal something to me that He is keeping even from Jesus is pointless.  It blows my mind that some people think they have that revelation, when the Bible is so clear about it—and somehow they convince others, too!

Here in my blog I will keep a diary of the progression toward understanding the End Times.  You’re welcome to join me in fasting and praying for the important answers to these questions.  Please let me know anything that God reveals to you.

Blessings to all of you!  God is good!