Healing is one of the most important things you can learn about in life. Why? At some point in your life, you or someone very close to you is going to need it. You or someone very close to you will be sick, and the options given you by the medical community will not be good ones. They may have nothing for you but means to prolong your life without giving you quality of life. You may have to take medications that have side effects as bad as the original condition.

I have learned that you don’t want to wait until you are diagnosed with something serious before you learn about this. That would be like going off to war without ever having gone to boot camp.

Healing for some people is like winning the lottery, but for most people it is like fighting off somebody who is trying to break into your house.

But beyond all this, healing will teach you more about God than you will probably ever learn otherwise. When you pray for other people and other things, you are not the only person who is involved in the outcome. So the first mountains you want to move are the ones in your own life and body. As you see these move, you will gain confidence to move others.

Healing might be the first place in which you will see miracles from God. God will seem more real to you, and you will become more aware of His love when you see Him work on your behalf.

In 1996, I was diagnosed with stage 3, mixed cell, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I refused all medical treatment and have not received any medical treatment since then for that. It was quite an experience, and I have written a book, called The Importance of Healing, that tells about it as well as just about everything else I have learned about healing from the Bible and life.

I am not trying to sell you a book here. I am trying to save your life. Or least give you an understanding of God and the Bible which is usually sadly missing today. I have started posting chapters from the book and will continue to do so.

You can get the book at amazon.com or other book sites on the internet.

I also have two other websites where I have posted my writings: poligion1.blogspot.com has my articles on politics, culture, and public life and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com has my other articles on the Bible. And I have started to make videos on youtube.

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh (4)



Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh  (4)  

   Numbers 33:55 But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as thorns in your eyes and pricks (thorns) in your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling. 

   Joshua 23:13 know assuredly that the LORD your God will not continue  to drive out these nations before you; but they shall be  a snare and a trap for you, a scourge on your sides, and  thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land  that the LORD your God has given you.

   II Corinthians 12:7  Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. 

            Paul used the expression ‘thorn in the flesh’ to describe the activity of the devil that was at work in his life to trouble him.  The figure in itself would seem to refer to some minor but persistent annoyance.  We might say a pebble in our shoes.  But that still doesn’t say what that annoyance is. 

            Any person who studies the Bible in the original languages, and particularly when you look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament, you become aware of how often the writers of the New Testament used expressions from the Old Testament to say what they wanted to say.

            Paul does not directly quote the Old Testament here, but the similarities are close enough to believe that Paul was thinking of the constant harassment and persecution of his enemies as his thorn in the flesh.  Everywhere he went, trouble followed.  Paul’s sufferings is one of the basic themes of this very letter of his, II Corinthians.  This suffering was primarily persecution but also included things like shipwrecks. 


            Tomorrow we will look at another reason why it’s hard to imagine Paul’s thorn as being sickness.
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