Indeed I can put it, finally, like this; the ultimate cause of all spiritual depression is unbelief, for if it were not for unbelief even the devil could do nothing. It is because we listen to the devil instead of listening to God that we go down before him and fall before his attacks. -Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can’t believe. Unbelief is won’t believe. Doubt is honesty. Unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light. Unbelief is content with darkness. -Henry Drummond
There are those who insist it is a very bad thing to question God. To them “why?” is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for His meaning, or whether it is the challenge of unbelief and rebellion. -Elizabeth Elliot
Ignorance asks for understanding. Unbelief asks for proof. -Bill Johnson
Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust, not in the living God, but in dying men. -A.W. Tozer
There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence. -John Calvin
All unbelief is the belief of a lie. -Horatius Bonar
Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29 )
“To say that worship is either about glorifying God or finding personal satisfaction is to put asunder what God has joined together. His glory and your gladness are not separate tracks moving in opposite directions. Rather His glory is in your gladness in Him.” -Sam Storms.
In my life I’ve been part of different denominations within the big C Church. Each of them seemed to emphasize their favourite part of the heart –the lebab– and each were willing to jettison a part another group cherished. Some, admittedly on the extreme edge, said the will is pretty much vetoed by God’s sovereignty, that he is going to do whatever he is going to do with or without our participation or input, thank-you-very-much. Some told me the mind is a source of pride and that serious study is an exercise in distraction. Some taught the emotions are untrustworthy, misleading, and a hindrance to disciplined devotion.
I’ve never managed to successfully ignore any part of my heart for any length of time. When, under pressure, I tried to set aside emotions, for example, in order to please someone else, the conflict without became the conflict within. When a God-given part of our souls is ignored for too long a person experiences, well, some craziness –at least some major stress. At least I sure did. And when it erupted out of me, it was not pretty.
At some point in my past I have been told I am too emotional, I am too intellectual and I try too hard. At some point I have been advised to shed all of these parts of my heart –not all at once of course. The first to go was those old unreliable emotions.
Parallel
I spent many years forging on without the caboose of emotion, wondering why it never caught up. The faith life was a joyless drudge of duty and responsibilities. One day I finally realized that caboose thing was not even on the same track. I think I left it in a switching yard someplace. My soul needed my caboose. Without it I was lacking the discernment that comes from feeling something is off or the joy in the Lord that is my strength.
I see the same thing happening with some folks who have been bullied by academics. They tend to react by praising anti-intellectualism and raise feeling/sensing or engaging the will to a higher level. Some of these folks have told me I think too much. I am too much in my head. But God gave me a brain for a reason, and if I leave it on the hook with my jacket I also give up one of the tools for discernment –and the joy of discovery whilst chasing a rabbit trail through a genealogy.
I’ve also been told I try too hard, that I should “let go and let God” (whatever that means). It would seem that some of those who have lived under the oppression of legalistic attack are tempted jump to the ditch on the other side of the road and use grace as an excuse for not taking responsibility for the fruit that comes from stupid unwise choices. But when I disengage my will my jeans don’t fit anymore, I seldom get around to telling people how good God is –and frankly, I start to feel more like God’s victim than his beloved adopted child with a role to play in the family business.
I am not suggesting any merit in being led by wilfulness, argumentative king-of-the-hill theological debate nor unfettered emotionalism. Apart from the transforming love of Jesus any gift of God is perverted when it serves selfish ego and it all becomes a gong show. Our minds, wills, and emotions need to come together in submission to Christ in spirit and truth .
But that’s why Jesus the good shepherd came –to restore our souls.
This is what integrity means to me – Jesus helping me get my stuff together and having it all head in the same direction at the same time on the same tracks. My prayer is that the Lord unites my heart to fear His name. I choose to study the scripture because it points to Jesus Christ and he just makes me feel good and want to join in on his plans. I want to put everything in happy submission to the Creator who made me and wants me to use and enjoy every gift he gives to his glory –and my gladness.
Abba, with my whole heart I offer You my praise! Thank you for every good gift and for making me the way you made me.
Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.
I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever. (Psalm 86:11, 12)
I will sing of steadfast love and justice;
to you, O Lord, I will make music.
I will ponder the way that is blameless.
Oh when will you come to me?
I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house. (Psalm 101:1,2)
And as for you, [Solomon] if you will walk before me,
as David your father walked,
with integrity of heart and uprightness,
doing according to all that I have commanded you,
and keeping my statutes and my rules,
then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever…
“I can’t pray about my problems. I was taught that it is selfish to pray for myself.”
I understood my friend when she told me this. I was also taught that asking anything for yourself was self-centered and we need to be other-centered. But at the heart of the message we were taught is the fear of not having enough to go around. Self-sacrifice can also be self-centered in a way, as bizarre as that sounds, because it is based on a fear that we will have to cover for God’s short-comings.
God is not on a budget.
While praying for ourselves and our needs can be a sign of self-focus, I am reminded of the airline stewardess’ lecture about affixing your own oxygen mask before helping anyone else. If our own love tanks are running on empty, if we don’t know how much God loves us and who we are in him, we tend to either ignore or sacrifice ourselves to meet other people’s needs, and eventually we will run out, burn out, and die out.
The problem is that we view prayer as a one-way conversation asking for things. I have learned prayer is seeking a closer relationship with the Lover of my soul. We give out of the abundance of his love. As one of my friends said “Invest heavily in worshipping God and soaking up his love, then give the interest and not the capital and you won’t run dry.” When I find myself feeling resentful of other people’s neediness and their expectations of me it is usually because I am running on empty. I need, like Jesus did, to go away and spend more time with the Lord.
As I look at the immensity of the sky I am reminded of the immensity of his love. How much sky do you need? How much love do you need? Ask. He’s got more for you than you ever imagined or dared to think. Then give freely what you have freely received. There’s more where that came from.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20, 21)
I often wondered what “Be angry and do not sin,” meant. I hate feeling angry. I don’t like me when I’m angry. But sometimes rage just rises up and I don’t know what to do with it.
Sometimes anger flares up over seemingly trivial things, and I’m embarrassed by it. It’s like some poor soul accidentally stepped on a buried land mine from a forgotten war. I thought I had dealt with that, but I guess there was still something nasty there.
Anger is a secondary emotion. Anger is like a shockingly annoying siren screaming that something is wrong. A shameful weakness or secret is about to be exposed, or somebody is demanding something I don’t want to part with, or something is removing my ability to choose how I will spend my time or resources. Sometimes the anger looks like righteous indignation on behalf of another person, often a child, but that’s because an incident triggers a memory of past hurts when no one seemed to notice or care about me either.
Anger can be an agent of grace when it signals an area that is still infected and still needs healing. Anger is an agent of grace when it motivates change for the better. It’s like the engine light flashing on the dashboard of the car. We don’t always know what’s wrong, or how to fix it, but we know it needs attention.
The problem with not attending to the real issue is that after time anger begins to congeal and solidify into bitterness. Bitter people are hard people. The Bible calls them stiff-necked, because they become stubborn in their resentment. Any endeavour we embark upon that has bitterness at its root is bound to produce bitter fruit. The quality of the fruit is dependent on the quality of the seed that is sown and the type of tree that grows from that seed.
We have a tree in our garden that starts off beautifully every spring. The blossoms that completely cover this plum tree draw attention from passers-by. It looks marvelous! But this time of year it draws complaints (especially from me) as it drops its inedible fruit and attracts vermin that don’t seem to mind its bitterness. I was just out there sweeping more bitter plums as they rolled, like on-top-of-spaghetti meatballs, down the sidewalk and onto the street.
fallen
Jesus warned his disciples about false prophets who would show up like ravenous wolves. They would look good at first -just like the other harmless sheep, but eventually their true nature would become evident. He said we could identify them by their fruit.
The fruit of bitterness shows up in words, bitter words. Anger leaves room for hope of change. Many crusades for justice in the world have been triggered by anger toward an incident that causes people to unite, rise up and say, “No more!”
Bitterness says, “What do you expect? It’s always going to be this way. They have all the power and influence. I am a perpetual victim of injustice. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer. It’s hopeless and God is either impotent or complicit in the whole thing,” or, “People are not obeying the rules! They should not be getting away with this. I’ve had to obey the rules all my life and nobody has ever rewarded me for it. But that’s way it goes, I guess.”
The bitter “prophet” loves to point out what is wrong, but cannot offer hope for change. They might talk about “should” but they have a harder time talking about “how.” They cling to the deeds of the law even though they resent the law themselves. Galatians says these are some of the fruits of that thinking: enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions and envyings.”
These are the things that cause people, some of them with great reputations who have been entrenched in churches for years, to reveal ravenous aggressiveness that would devour those who live in hope of changing into the likeness of Jesus Christ. They have lots of words to offer about why something won’t work, and what’s wrong with anybody who follows God zealously and does things differently, but they have few words of encouragement that urge the next generation to stretch and to pursue a relationship with God that goes farther than we have gone or to see greater works than our generation has seen.
Sometimes it’s the very folks who tell us they are the shepherds guarding us against all possible heresy who themselves attack the sheep with harsh words, criticism, gossip, disputes and slander. (And like ravenous wolves they tend to join up in packs and go after prey bigger than themselves.)
Our words need to be full of the same grace we have received from God. We need to give people room to grow and not condemn those who are still learning and not yet perfect. We need to gently correct with a humility that comes from willingness to be transparent about our own struggles, and build up and equip those coming behind us to be greater in the kingdom than anything we have imagined. Only by letting go of our own disappointments and bitterness through forgiveness, only by entering God’s presence through gratitude and praise for all His goodness, only by letting his healing light reveal those dark corners where hidden time-bombs of shame and pain and guilty secrets still lurk -and bringing them to Jesus for healing- can we be kind, tender-hearted, encouragers full of love.
Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,and do not give the devil an opportunity.He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:26-32)
Wow! The little counter over on the left says this is my 500th blog entry. And I was worried I would have nothing to say after the first month.
I never knew, when I dared to overcome my technophobia to find an outlet for my poems, paintings, photos and musings, that God would have so much more to teach me than overcoming fear of computerese. I sometimes questioned the wisdom of writing about events of this annus horibilis before there was any evidence of it becoming annus mirabilis. And who knew it was going to be an annus horibilis anyway?
What if things don’t work out? What if I die of ovarian cancer? What if the depression comes back? What if our miracle grandbaby doesn’t make it to term? What if our son-in-love dies of necrotizing fasciitis? What if our son and his family never recover losses from the flood? Maybe I should wait before I write about them, to make sure God answers our prayers.
Then it occurred to me that I am not in charge of God’s P.R.. This is what it is like to walk in faith, not knowing how the cliff-hanger ends. (And honestly I did not make this stuff up. It has been a horrible time -and a miraculous time.) I have also noted that my anxious questions starting with “what if” seldom come in God’s tender voice.
So to celebrate 500 posts I have chosen not the five most popular blogs but five with the most meaning to me -some of them written in blood and some of them written in tears of joy. Five, because the number 5 is symbolic of grace, and Charis, my chosen name, means grace in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. (Psallo means song, and since I have lived a life full of songs it seemed appropriate.)
Right off the bat I’m going to cheat on my own rules because these two posts are part of one story that cannot be separated (and I can do that -my blog, my rules, and my bending of rules) This is about how God took something utterly horrible and turned it into something miraculously wonderful. These were written during the time many excellent doctors expected our son-in-love to die from multiple overwhelming complications after contracting an extremely severe case of flesh-eating disease. He has been restored to full health and the story is just too too too good not to tell over and over -so it goes first. Love is Louder and Love is Louder part II
For the second I am going back into history. After spending decades drowning in soul-crushing depressive mental illness, I was raised up out of the depths. Bluer than Blue
One of the hardest parts in co-operating with Jesus’ healing work and recovering from the prison of the past is the struggle with forgiveness. Letting Go is a poem about stepping away from practised anger and entrenched bitterness.
Red Button, Yellow Button is one of my favourites because the older I get the more I appreciate the insightful wisdom of children before we educate it out of them.
“In any miracle, chase the causation back far enough and eventually you’ll find yourself irrepressibly singing in praise of the marvelous goodness of God’s creation.”
Earlier this month we were in Jerusalem at the pool of Bethesda. It’s down a few layers in the city now, but it is still possible to see that it was an impressive place. Partial excavations show that in the time of Christ Bethesda pool was probably the size of an Olympic swimming pool.
The story of the man with a debilitating chronic illness who Jesus healed there has always caused me wonder because of the question the Healer asked him: “Do you want to be made well?” or as the Amplified version suggests, “Are you really in earnest about getting well?”
What an odd question. He was obviously disabled and obviously in a place where people went to be healed. Why the question?
I like the Amplified version’s telling of the story in John 5 (perhaps because of my own tendency to expand a thought in parentheses –a tendency an old English prof strongly disliked, but there you go. I’m not looking for a good mark.)
Now there is in Jerusalem a pool near the Sheep Gate. This pool in the Hebrew is called Bethesda, having five porches (alcoves, colonnades, doorways).
In these lay a great number of sick folk—some blind, some crippled, and some paralyzed (shriveled up) waiting for the bubbling up of the water.
For an angel of the Lord went down at appointed seasons into the pool and moved and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was cured of whatever disease with which he was afflicted.
There was a certain man there who had suffered with a deep-seated and lingering disorder for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus noticed him lying there [helpless], knowing that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, Do you want to become well? [Are you really in earnest about getting well?]
The invalid answered, Sir, I have nobody when the water is moving to put me into the pool; but while I am trying to come [into it] myself, somebody else steps down ahead of me.
Jesus said to him, Get up! Pick up your bed (sleeping pad) and walk!
Instantly the man became well and recovered his strength and picked up his bed and walked. But that happened on the Sabbath.
So the Jews kept saying to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath, and you have no right to pick up your bed [it is not lawful].
He answered them, The Man Who healed me and gave me back my strength, He Himself said to me, Pick up your bed and walk!
Bethesda
When I was still ill from more than one chronic condition that caused my body to fall apart, a couple of women prayed with me. In the middle of my adding to their prayer and trying to sound as spiritual as they did, one of them stopped me and said, “Wait. Do you want to be healed? What would it cost for you to be well?”
Frankly I thought that was a bit of an insulting question. My life and plans and dreams had gone down the tube because of illness. People who knew me “before” didn’t even recognize the “after.”
Now I am not a person who blames victims of the evil one –the one who came to steal kill and destroy -for not receiving healing because of a lack of faith. How horrendously cruel is that? I don’t know why some are healed and, at the time of writing, most are not. My heart aches with frustration when I see a person suffering and I don’t know what to do. I hate it! Sometimes it feels like a capricious angel comes down and stirs the water and then goes back to harp-strumming on a cloud or something. All I know is that people who pursue Jesus see more healing than people who accept illness as the natural order of things.
For many years I believed that illness was my lot in life, that my calling was to accept it graciously as “my cross to bear,” as “God’s will” and forge on. I actually became rather proud of my reputation as an overcomer.
The problem with people who label themselves “overcomers” is that their identity becomes permanently attached to whatever victimized them in the first place. Overcomers need things to overcome. It’s hard to let go.
Here’s the thing: God understands what is deep in our hearts. His purpose is to restore our hearts at least as much, if not more, than our bodies. He wants to go deeper. He wants to restore our relationship with him and renew our thinking. Healing and miracles point to something bigger; they are not the destination.
I realized then that if I were miraculously healed I would have no excuse for avoiding commitments. An illness that went in and out of remission unpredictably gave me an excuse. If I were healed I would need to tell people how it happened. The active, living Jesus would be more than a comfort in my preparation for death. Healing would require me to live, a prospect that was more daunting than I could admit out loud; it could delay my pie-in-the-sky day. (Silly girl! But I didn’t know Abba as a good daddy then.) If I were healed I would need to take up my responsibilities and walk out of that place –publicly. I would need to pick up my comfortable familiar bed and get on with life. I could face uncomfortable conflict with friends who held to different doctrines.
Since those days, when he did heal me, I have asked others if they want to be healed. Sometimes they say, “I have learned so much from this condition and have had it for so long that I have adapted and don’t want to be healed anymore. This is who I am,” or “I need more time to grieve for my losses,” or “I am sick of having hope deferred. I can’t take another disappointment,” or, if they are very honest, “If I were well nobody would bother to pay attention anymore. My life is a disappointment, but at least I have doctors and therapists and lab technicians and care-takers who talk to me on a regular basis and tell me how brave I am.” or even, “I have nothing to live for anyway.” (Notice the Bethesda man said he was alone, so he had no relationships to live for either.)
I hear something else in the Bethesda man’s response. When asked if he wanted to be healed, he didn’t say yes. He gave an excuse for why he had not been. Perhaps I am projecting here, but I wonder if he had become comfortable with self-soothing and resigned to being alone. I wonder if the bed he had made for himself was a poor-me bed. I wonder if he secretly thought, like I sometimes did, that there must be something special about me that God would assign me to a life of suffering because he knew I could take it. I wonder if that was sin Jesus warned him not to go back to.
Bethesda
I wonder sometimes if we graciously accept the “impossibility” of reaching the stirred-up pool method of healing when the Saviour Himself is holding out his hand to us, because that alternative is just too scary. I wonder, as was the case of several other biblical characters, like blind Bartemeaus, or the Syrophoenician woman with the tormented daughter, or the woman with the perpetual period, if we need to exercise the bit of faith granted to us by pursuing him, by impolitely crying out to him, by barging in to contend for our child, by breaking social taboos and going after the healing he provided with His bloody striped back.
The enemy of our souls has not yet admitted defeat. We are in a conflict with an enemy who, although defeated and stripped of legal authority, is still powerful and fighting, and in such a conflict there are still casualties.
I don’t know why some are healed and some are not and I admire the lack of bitterness in many people who face huge physical challenges and the things they can teach us. Sometimes, in the course of bringing in the kingdom of Christ, we will lose battles and we mourn. But sometimes, when we work our way past disappointment, when we “find the gold” gained through suffering and put our foot down, when we realize the authority Christ gives the ones totally dependent on His goodness, then we can dare to declare, like Gandalf on the thin bridge, “You shall not pass!” Then we see the Saviour turn his face to us as he smiles and raises us up to battle again.
Then, like the Bethesda man, we can let go of our familiar spot under the five stone colonnades, get up, move the inadequate beliefs we have been resting on, and follow Him.
How grateful I am for the ones who stood with our family when our loved one faced certain death. They put their collective foot down, reconciled petty differences to band together and declared, “He shall not die!” This week he encouraged the ones who battled for him when he walked into church, unaided, stood before the congregation and gave glory to God.
I stood outside the door of our son-in-love’s room and listened to the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard yesterday.
“Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!”
“I love you, Daddy!”
“Tickle me again, Daddy!”
Then laughter and fake groaning and the sounds of a daddy and his little ones wrestling.
Later I watched as all three little ones cuddled their daddy and watched a movie. The baby was smiling in his lap, the two-year old flopped over daddy’s shoulders and the four-year old leaned her blonde head on his chest and asked her hundreds of why questions.
I watched mommy and daddy and the three little ones share a dinner of steak and chocolate -except for baby, of course.
I sat and talked with “John” about the journey we have been through since March 23. When I told him the stories of how people who had never prayed much were woken in the night with a burden to pray, of how people who had never seen God heal were following every report on Facebook, of how some were hearing the voice of God for the first time, of how a student’s mother told my daughter-in-law that she was receiving prayer updates from her mother in Vegreville who was receiving them from someone up there who knew the mother-in-law of this guy, of how friends stood by his bed and filled the waiting room day and night , of how his mother and I took turns holding each other up, of how his wonderful, quiet father was a bulwark of faith who said in his delightful German accent, “We will have no negative words here. We will only speak truth,”, of how his father-in-law wept as he cried out to God, of how his wife gave thanks in the middle of the worst days of her life and was a beacon of hope to everyone else herself, of how hospital staff from other wards found excuses to come by ICU to see what was happening, of how my friend told me she had renewed faith to pray for her own sons, of how the church is waking to come together, to pray together for healing of this land….
He cried. He cried tears of sorrow for what his family and friends endured and of joy for the kindness of strangers and for what God has done.
He said, “He didn’t have to do it. I could have died, and I would have been okay to go to be with him, but God healed me. He has given more years to be with my wife and my children. I have always loved Jesus, but now there is something much deeper.”
“Do you know how much of your effort, how many of your outstanding natural talents and abilities God used to do this thing?” I asked him. “Nothing! None. Not a thing. Boy, you were the most helpless a man could be. You couldn’t even breathe on your own. You had no blood pressure without a constant drip of medication. You had no kidney function without a big machine to clean your blood. You couldn’t move without a nurse doing it for you. You couldn’t say one charming, intelligent thing. You couldn’t move a single athletic muscle. You even needed other people to give up their own blood to replace yours. And let me tell you, the handsome thing wasn’t working for you much in those days either -and when you finally opened your eyes they weren’t even going the same direction. God used other people in the process, but none of this came about by a single effort of yours. Not one.”
He cried some more. “There is something much, much deeper about God’s love that I know now that I just can’t explain,” he said softly.
Then we received a text message from someone who had been speaking to the physician who headed the large skilled team of specialists who treated “John.”
“You know it’s only by a miracle that guy survived,” he told him candidly. Another physician dropped the f bomb and said, “That guy should be dead.”
We know.
So this is love. This is what a miracle feels like. He still has rehab work to do, but in the meantime, we laugh, we cry, we praise God. Mommy and Daddy and the kids cuddle together and we pass the popcorn while we watch a movie.
The words of an old song taken from Isaiah come to me as I write this in the early morning hours before the baby wakes up:
While we were in Israel I was very aware of the presence of guns and the need to be vigilant against sudden violence. In the place where we live a lot of people own hunting rifles which are kept carefully locked up outside of hunting season, but I don’t know anyone who carries a weapon designed to shoot people, other than police. We don’t see many soldiers in these parts, and certainly we don’t see teenagers in shorts and flip-flops patrolling the community with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders like we saw at a kibbutz.
I don’t live in a place with concrete walls and barbed wire or big red signs in three languages that forbid other ethnicities from entering an area with threats to their lives if they use that road. I don’t know what it’s like to find out, like our guide did the day before he showed us around the site of the temple where Samuel was a boy, that my teenage daughter was standing next to a neighbour at the bus stop when someone passing by suddenly turned and stabbed him to death. The unarmed thirty-year old father of five died in front of her simply for his ethnicity. She was seeing a counselor at school the next day while some websites extolled the killer as a hero. I don’t know what it’s like to be a Christian living in Bethlehem, like another one of our guides, caught in the crossfire between warring factions and being worried about how to feed and protect my family. I don’t know what it is like to stand in the hot sun for hours waiting for someone to give approval that will allow me to simply go to my job. I don’t pretend to have any comprehension of the depth of the complexities of the conflict.
All I know is that I am told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. So I do.
So many people say there is no solution. So few are asking God for His solution -and I do believe He has one. His ways are not our ways and our ways are not His ways. When we come to the end of our own efforts and humbly pray I do believe He will answer. He has a plan for eternal peace. He has a plan to heal the land.
After being in a coma from flesh-eating disease and sepsis, our son-in-love is breathing on his own, talking and joking, starting to eat, and standing up (with assistance).
Thanks to those of you who prayed for him. He has a long way to go to fully recover, but we shout joyfully and thank God for the miracles already received.
Charis: Subject to Change 