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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/28/2001 6:00 PM (GMT -6) |   | Message
Wislawa
06/03/01 1:40 AM
John 5:1-9, Kickn' Satan's Butt, & My Busted Mojo
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So just yesterday I was really worried that an era of my life might have just ended, the era labeled ‘theological growth.’ The problem was that I just could not think of any new questions about theology. I tried really really hard and everything that came to me was immediately followed by its own answer. OH NO, I thought, I’ve lost my touch. I was just about to declare myself a self-declared theology know-it-all and become a hermit on the moon. Young nieve theology students (our just plain nieve realists of any sort) could than make pilgrimages to the moon in order to ask me their questions. “What is God’s shoe size?” one might ask. “1320478132-4DDD” I would answer swiftly in a semi-trance like state (don’t worry it would be one of those ‘Christian trances’ not a new age thing. Ya know barking in the Spirit type stuff). “What color were Isaiah’s eyes?” another might ask. I would bark twice and respond, “It is a little known fact that Isaiah had red eyes because he was an albino. This was rare recessive trait in the post-elixic Hebrew genepool but it is not entirely unheard of.”
But then just as I was boarding my self made areoelevatorstarship, a shaft of golden light burst through the miniature rain cloud that usually hovers over my head and a red-eyed Isaiah who had just caught the red-eye from Tokyo lowered from the cloud and whispered this question into my trembling ear:
In John 5:1-9 Jesus held a man in one of the porticoes outside the House of Mercy. The text reads, “In these lay MANY invalids-blind, lame, and paralyzed. ONE man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’”
My question on loan from Isaiah was this: why this ONE man among the MANY? Why didn’t Jesus heal them all? It has often bothered Isaiah and myself that we can just only do so much you know. Millions are starving. In homes for the dying we cannot cure (well sometimes meds or miracles can) but Jesus could have healed more than one. Did that guy just get really lucky? Did Jesus need to be told that the man had been there 38 years or did He know from a word of knowledge or something? What if in the many there were some who waited 45 years? Or even ones who waited a couple? It would still have been nice to be healed even if you were just there a couple years. And if Jesus really came to whop Satan why didn’t he do more? Especially when we get so frustrated in trying to whop Satan when we can do even less. Even though Jesus said we would to greater deeds than He did.
So that was the end of Isaiah’s question but he got me thinking. I we are supposed to be more effective than Jesus was then why do I seem defective? I’ve tried my hand at just about every spiritual gift there is. When I was about 7 my paster gave a sermon on the gifts of the spirit, tongues, prophecy, healing stuff like that. That night I went to a Twins game and I though I would give theses gifts a try, a sort of harmless test just to see if I had them. After all doctors don’t practice on real emergencies so I wasn’t going to practice on serious cases either. I didn’t want to get is a situation where I had to prophesy and your life depended on it (like Daniel). So I tried to predict the score of the Twins game. I thought really really hard; I swished up my face concentrating, like I was trying to squeeze coal into diamonds in my head. I ended up predicting that the Twins would win 7-2. It turns out they lost 3-0 and I got a case of food poisoning from a bad metrodome hotdog. In all that concentrating I didn’t see that coming. So maybe prophecy wasn’t my gift. The next day I went to visit my Grandma in a nursing home (which I now feel are evil). I saw a lot of lame people there and I prayed under my breath “Pick up your walker and WALK!” I made sure they couldn’t hear me because I didn’t want them to get their hopes up. Well nothing happened so maybe I didn’t have the gift of healing either. So later that afternoon I played with my new neighbor. A kid the same age as me had just moved in across the street from India but he didn’t speak any English so it wasn’t much fun to play with him unless we were playing soccer. So I prayed really hard, by this time I had abandoned swishing up my face, and tried to communicate to him in tongues. That didn’t work either and it probably deterred his early attempts to understand English since it sounded like a bunch of gibberish. So my question is what’s so wrong with me? My heart is in the right place, I want to kick Satan’s butt and heal the sick and talk to people without studying other languages and stuff. Wouldn’t I be able to do more for His kingdom if I could walk into a home for the dying and heal everyone their and then spit in Satan’s face? Why is my mojo broken?
Wislawa
P.S. O.K. just one more shot at tongues
Adsk lan etergcx vjbh kjhgsertus adkjhgsdfkj sdrkhgkl sdhjgtthfj tfdf rthn hfhhhtcv ty jfdk hekdhij h sfdmtbt rghvu
If anyone could make any sense out of this holla back at me, after all it might be profound.
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
ghost-dog-girl
06/03/01 7:39 AM
RE: John 5:1-9, Kickn' Satan's Butt, & My Busted Mojo
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I thought Douglas Adams was dead… GDG
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
TGB
06/03/01 9:08 AM
RE: John 5:1-9, Kickn' Satan's Butt, & My Busted Mojo
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Wislawa askes:
My question on loan from Isaiah was this: why this ONE man among the MANY? Why didn’t Jesus heal them all? It has often bothered Isaiah and myself that we can just only do so much you know. Millions are starving. In homes for the dying we cannot cure (well sometimes meds or miracles can) but Jesus could have healed more than one. Did that guy just get really lucky? Did Jesus need to be told that the man had been there 38 years or did He know from a word of knowledge or something? What if in the many there were some who waited 45 years? Or even ones who waited a couple? It would still have been nice to be healed even if you were just there a couple years. And if Jesus really came to whop Satan why didn’t he do more?
Wislawa-
Here's a very quick, gut response to your question:
"Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." Jn. 21.25
Thinking along with you,
Tom
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
Wislawa
06/03/01 2:00 PM
RE: RE: John 5:1-9, Kickn' Satan's Butt, & My Busted Mojo
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What's this? are you suggesting Isaiah is really Douglas Adams?
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
writerdad
06/03/01 11:30 PM
RE: John 5:1-9, Kickn' Satan's Butt, & My Busted Mojo
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Wislawa: A couple of thoughts...one, God is in control. That is a point I sometimes hate, but is true. If they are his gifts, he gets to choose who gets them. Why did Jesus heal that man? Because he chose to. It was his choice and he made it. God has chooses as well as we do and he makes them. From our point of view they can seem unfair and maybe them are, but God has the right to give and withhold and just because any of us feel that we could do more of a job this way or that doesn't mean we are right and God is wrong. Today two of my children wanted to play a computer game and each wanted to be first. I chose my son. Was it fair? In a sense, no, and I did it for reasons my daughter did not understand. But that is the role I must play sometimes as a father.
On a more personal note, my questions lately have all revolved around why I am not closer to God. Everything else seems small in comparsion. John 17:3 Harold
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