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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
If you are just coming to my diary for the first time, please read my introductory entry, where I share some background that is important if you plan to follow this diary regularly.
Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
Anointing with oil is symbolic of the power of God. The "real" anointing is the empowerment from God, being supplied with His gifts--and He gives what we need when we need it.
This sort of goes along with some additional thoughts I'm having.
I found some more old church notes on a sermon called "The Restoring of a Lame Man". They've made interesting pondering when I should be working. :)
I was always bothered by the implication that people don't get well because they don't want to. It's not like I will myself to have a migraine or bronchitis. But Jesus said this to people. "Do you want to get well? Then..." It was people who were unable to walk that he said this to. Why?
If you saw a person sitting at the roadside in Biblical times who was unable to walk, you might not be able to differentiate him from other people sitting at the roadside unless he had an obvious leg problem. Healing for lameness isn't something that can be seen. It has to be acted on to be realized. When Jesus came along and healed the lame man, it was the lame man's responsibility to take advantage of the healing. "Get up and walk." Maybe he didn't feel like it. Maybe he didn't know what strength was until he got up and realized he could walk.
Certain things keep people in a position of spiritual lameness: namely sin and fear. The answer for sin is to confess it and repent. The answer to fear is to confess the truth--with mouth and actions. In DBT we would call it acting opposite to the emotion. This is how we get up and walk spiritually. And until we get up and walk, we remain dependent on--and at the mercy of--other people's resources and kindness... And those people may or may not be looking out for our best interests. If they have their own lameness to deal with, then we also become dependent on what they are dependent on.
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