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Cancer has touched my life about 5 times. Not me directly, but people close to me, people that I would consider not just friends but family. Just this last week we found out that it has happened again.

Pastor Robert and Karyn Barriger from Lima Peru, just found out that Karyn has an aggressive form of breast cancer. The doctors are very hopeful, in fact Karyn’s doctor (who happens to be the Surgeon General of Peru) has said that he thinks they can get rid of the cancer with aggressive treatment. We are really standing with Robert and Karyn, believing that not only will this cancer go away, but that this will make a huge impact on the country of Peru, as they witness God’s power in Karyn’s treatment and healing.

This news has reminded me of something that I dealt with earlier this year, and am still dealing with. A few years ago I had a friend, a very close friend, that was diagnosed with cancer. He has literally been fighting for his life for years. In the process, this friend has lost his faith in God. That has been very hard for me since he was very influential in my life as far as my relationship with God. Last year, another friend of mines wife was suddenly diagnosed with cancer.

The difference between this friend is that he and his wife are pastors of a very successful church. My friend who lost his faith is still fighting for his life. My other friend, the pastor, lost his wife earlier this year.

What really bothered me about this was not just the fact that these are my friends, but how biased I became in my prayer for them. For my friend the pastor, I went into real spiritual warfare. I fasted, I prayed, I wept, I declared healing over her body. For my friend who has lost his faith, without realising, I began to pray for his return to Christ. I prayed that he would realise his error and repent. Praying for his healing became an after thought, a prayer I would quickly say at the end of my prayer time.

When my friend the pastor lost his wife I was sad. It was hard for me to understand how this could happen with everyone who was praying. But when I stepped back, and listened to God. I was no longer just sad. I was also broken.

Jesus never showed bias toward those he touched and healed. In fact he told us not to be very care full about showing favor to one person or another. Just because one of my friends lost his faith and one was a pastor, it does not change the power of God. In fact if you study the people that Jesus healed, most of them were healed before they believed.

Isaiah 59:1 says : “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear.”

There is nothing that we can do to limit the power of God. God is God no matter what we think or do. But we can limit the power of God in our lives, and that starts in our thinking.

In my mind, I gave God only so much power. I thought, if He is going to heal someone, it is probably going to be the pastors wife, not my friend who lost his faith. I think for me, this issue and many others that we might think, talk or argue about really can be boiled down to one question: I either believe God and his word or not. He is either ALL powerful, or not at all.

Hopefully in the future, when I am faced with a choice between what I think God can or can’t do or who he can or cannot touch, I will remember this.

Please pray for Robert and Karyn Barriger, their family and their church.

Also pray for my other friend, that he would be healed.

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

I had an interesting conversation this morning over coffee. There is really no need to give you the details, but the subject was on “The Prosperity Gospel”. The main question that came up over and over again was “Does God want you Rich?”
My short working answer was I don’t think God cares. It seems to me that anytime Jesus made any reference to being rich, it was to someone who was already rich, and when being rich was talked about, Jesus was usually telling someone to give away all that they had to the poor.

Jesus never spoke a sermon about how to make money. He never asked anyone to give a faith seed. He never told anyone that God wanted them to live in a huge house drive a nice care or where expensive clothes. But, he also never said not to.
I don’t think that Jesus really cared if people were rich.He did care if they were poor.
It seems like when he was dealing with the rich, he was always trying to stir them into helping the poor. He was always hanging out with the poor, the sick and the outcasts.On more then one occasion Jesus fed people who were hungry.
Does God want you rich?I don’t know, but I know he doesn’t want you hungry.
Today is Blog Action Day. A day when bloggers from all over the world try to shed some light on a single cause: Poverty.

My life is all about building the church.

I love the church.

I really do believe that the Church of Jesus Christ could change the world.

I believe that the church could and should be the greatest social activists on the planet.We could bring food, medicine, water… Jesus.

We could be the solution to poverty.

There was a boy in the Bible that fed 5000 people with some bread and fish.How did he do it? He just showed up with what he had.Of course, he had to put down his picket signs, his political agenda, his boycott letters, and his overall prejudice of those “not in his group”… oh, wait a minute…no that’s us.

I am not being judgmental myself. In fact, this post is more for me than for anyone. As I type this, I could not tell you when the last time was I helped someone less fortunate than me, and that’s sad.

Maybe, hopefully, today is a day of change for me and others…

There are alot of great places that are doing alot of great things to try and destroy poverty in this world. Some are Christian, some are not. All of them are doing a great job.
Go to BlogActionDay.org/resources to find out who they are.One great organization I would recommend would be Somebody Cares.

Right out of bed yesterday, my day started… frustrating.

I am not a person who stresses. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was actually stressed out. I do however get frustrated.

I really cannot nail down anything in particular that does frustrate me, most of the time it is something that I can’t do anything about. Whenever something comes up in my life, I usually ask the question, “is there anything I can do about this?” if there is than I do it, if there is nothing I can do, I get frustrated.

Yesterday morning was one of those days that I had exhausted all of my options in a situation that I was dealing with and it started to get to me.

I am a Christian, I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is in control of my life, and that he not only knows whats going on in my life, He wants to be an active participant in my life. I believe that, but sometimes I don’t remember that.

Yesterday, in the middle of my “crisis”, I was reminded what it says in Matthew 7:11:

“How much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him?”

Once that sank in a bit, and I started to let some things go, BAM! things in my day began to turn around!

It ended up being a great day!

Did all of that days problems go away? No.

Is there anything new I can do in order to fix the situation? No.

Am I worried? No.

A wise man once said:

“Everything is coming up Milhouse!”

-Milhouse Van Houton, The Simpsons

It is very unusual, but there are some nights when, no matter how hard I try, I can’t fall asleep. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it usually takes quite a bit of time for me to fall asleep.

Over the years I have come up with a pretty decent routine for when this happens, and it usually works. I start by laying in bed listening to my ipod. If that doesn’t work I will go into the other room and pray. (I know, I am very spiritual) after some time praying, if I still can’t sleep I will read a book, or watch tv, and if all else fails I end up on Youtube.

I don’t know why I always jump on Youtube, because it never makes me want to fall asleep, in fact, it usually does the opposite and I end up staying up all night watching the most random videos.

Last night was such a night.

The only difference between last night and any other night was the video that I found.

I came across the video below of singer songwriter Keith Green.

Growing up I always knew who Keith Green was. My parents loved his music, and my Dad would always have people telling him that he was just like Keith Green. ( my dad played piano and led worship, and wrote songs)

I was so young I never really paid much attention to what the music was all about, and Keith died so early in life that he was not around when I was old enough to have any kind of understanding of what he was singing about.

After watching the video below, and other videos I found, I came to the realization that this man was quite a radical, and he talked and sang about things that would probably still step on some toes.

Check out the video below, and if you want do a Youtube search of Keith Green and check out some of his other stuff.

I came across a great posting on Craig Groeschel’s blog by guest blogger Abbi Zeliff.

She wrote about a note her friend Katie wrote before passing away in December of 2007 of  Adult Myeloid Leukemia.

I don’t know the details about when Katie wrote this, was it before she knew she was sick, maybe after a church service or at one of those trips to Starbucks where you plan on just running in to grab a quick coffee and end up in an hour discussion about your faith with another regular, only to go home and spend the rest of the day thinking about how you should have answered the questions that were asked… Maybe she was in her hospital bed waiting for death, thinking about her life, her family, her friends, her God… and then the conversation at Starbucks…

I don’t know why she wrote it, but I am glad she did…

“I am a Christian. Not because my grandfather is, not because his grandfather was…not because Grove Level planned the best activities when I was in middle school. I am a Christian because I have studied the life of Christ and it is good and it is love…and it is triumphant.

I have never thrown my arms up in excitement or run around the sanctuary or shouted out to God during a sermon or fainted or swayed or been “slain in the Spirit” or spoken in tongues…or handled snakes (smile).

It’s all I can do to clap in time to praise music…but I can hear Him whisper and I have felt Him only inches away if any at all and He has touched me and my insides stand in attention and my heart is red and it beats hard and fast and if you turn me inside out like an orange there would be some fantastic celebration with parades and ferris wheels and fireworks and marching bands and jelly beans and pinwheels and fire eaters and hula hoops and…fat ladies in polka dots and lions and popcorn and acrobats.

I pray that you might know my insides and realize that although I don’t believe as you do…I believe with passion and with love and with direction of thought and purpose…not with a simple, gross obedience to a church or a pastor or a cause….All I know is that in the end it will be as God has planned and man can not interfere.

And God is love. Love is everything.

- Katie Hammontree [Whitlow]
Amen (smile)”

You can read the original post by Abbi here.