Tag Archives: restoration

Covid-19 Nuggets of Hope, Eschatology

Nuggets of Hope 24 – The King’s Beauty

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This morning I began my day with a walk to see the horses in the field at the end of our crescent. Although the weather forecast tells me a blast of winter is coming, this morning I can still taste, see and feel the glory of spring. It speaks to me of the Creator’s great wisdom.

The Biblical storyline tells us what young children often intuitively understand – we were made by a good Creator. Our lives come from His hand. The beauty and complexity of creation testifies to His goodness and power. He made humans for intimate fellowship with Himself.

That storyline goes on to tell us that a rebellious angel tempted our first parents to choose independence, and ever since there has been a curse on creation. But even when the curse was first pronounced, Eve was promised that her offspring would one day crush the serpent’s head. That offspring is Yeshua, who was, who is and who is to come. He came once to announce the coming Kingdom in words and deeds of great power, and to offer his life as a sacrifice for sins. He is coming again to restore all things.

Some ask why a good God would permit terrible things like the coronavirus to occur. There are many ways of answering that question, but anyone who has been paying attention to the message of the Kingdom shouldn’t be surprised. We know from Scripture that many things will be shaken before Jesus returns to bring in the Kingdom that cannot be shaken. We are currently experiencing one of those times of shaking.

Near the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns, Marion and I watched a movie about World War II. It reminded me of my parents. They were 22 and 18 respectively when the Netherlands was invaded by the Wehrmacht in May 1940. They lived in an occupied nation for most of the next five years. Did they know how long it would last? No, but they held on to the hope that there would be life beyond the war, and in that hope they gave themselves to living for the day when the war would be over.

We are called to live with our eyes on an even greater Day – not just the day when the covid-19 crisis will subside, though that will be a day of great rejoicing, but the day when our eyes see the King in his beauty. Our response to Him in this age will determine whether that Day brings us the joy of sharing his reward or the horror of irreversible judgement. We are made to share in His glorious Kingdom that is coming, and to inherit a new heaven and a new earth. Don’t let the troubles of today cause you to lose sight of that hope. Let that hope anchor your soul. The King is coming.

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Covid-19 Nuggets of Hope, Eschatology

Nuggets of Hope 17 – The Man of Heaven

Dual citizenship.

As a believer in Jesus, you have dual citizenship. Whether you are a citizen of Canada, the USA or some other nation, your true citizenship is in heaven.

This thought that we are citizens of a different kingdom isn’t just a bit of escapist make-believe, or a nice fairy tale for young children, like the legend of the Easter Bunny. Paul, who had encountered the risen Jesus in a powerful way, was convinced that this Jesus was really alive, and was going to come again to rule over the coming Kingdom of God.

But our citizenship is in heaven.
And we eagerly await a Savior
from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who, by the power that enables him
to bring everything under his control,
will transform our lowly bodies
so that they will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3:20-21

It’s important for us to be clear about the nature of our hope. The COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder to us all of our vulnerability to sickness and death. The people of this age are subject to physical death, and that includes believers. For those who hope in Jesus, though, physical death isn’t the end of the story. Even going to heaven isn’t the end of the story. God has something much better, more amazing and more glorious in mind.

When Jesus appeared to his followers after the resurrection, it is clear that his body had been transformed. He was still recognizable as the same person, and could touch the disciples, break bread with them and even eat a piece of fish, but he could also go through locked doors and ascend into heaven.

To explain this, Paul uses the analogy of a seed.

What is sown is perishable;
what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor;
it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness;
it is raised in power.
It is sown a natural body;
it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body,
there is also a spiritual body.
1 Corinthians 15:42-44

He continues,

Just as we have borne the image
of the man of dust,
we shall also bear the image
of the man of heaven.
1 Corinthians 15:49

What a promise. We will be like Jesus! We will have resurrection bodies like his.

When everything around us seems to be shaking, when everything seems uncertain and nothing is like what we’ve been used to, when we don’t know how it’s all going to turn out, our hearts yearn for some solid assurance. Our leaders are doing their best, but they’re evidently scrambling to keep up with ever-changing events and the latest projections as to what might lie ahead. It’s plain that no-one really knows exactly what to expect. We need something that is more substantial than the current best guess as to when the pandemic will end, or how long the lockdown will last, or what conditions will be like after it’s lifted.

The first generation of believers in Jesus also lived in uncertain times. In common with all the people of their day, they were familiar with disease, famines, wars, injustices and other troubles of this broken age. Besides all that, their convictions about Jesus and his kingdom put them in danger from both Jewish and Roman authorities. Although they respected the authority of both, they were ultimately subject to a higher authority. This is why when Paul was on trial before the Roman governor Festus and the puppet King Agrippa (Acts 26), instead of pleading for his life, he urged them to consider the claims of Jesus. His hope was not in what either of them could do for him, but in the heavenly Jerusalem which was coming down out of heaven from God. He wasn’t worried about getting something from them. Instead, he hoped to give them something better than anything that they could offer him.

We who have put our hope in Jesus are called to serve God’s purpose in our day and generation. As my granddaughter Maddie loves to sing, we need to “let our little light shine” where we are. But our hope is a better hope than just things going back to the way they were. In reality, things probably won’t go back to the way they were before this pandemic, but we have something better to look forward to. Though we know that there are still troubles to come, we also know the Lord will be with us in the midst of those troubles. And beyond the troubles, we know that we will see Jesus coming in glory to make everything new, and that we will be changed – we will bear the image of the man from heaven.

I’m a citizen of the Kingdom that is coming. I belong to the man from heaven. That’s my hope and my assurance. How about you?

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Faith and Relationships, Intimacy with God

One thing remains

Marion and I were married in 1976. Our wedding – which we planned ourselves – was full of prophetic themes although I barely understood them at the time.

Like many church weddings, our wedding featured these well-known verses from 1 Corinthians 13:8-13.

Love never fails …
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror;
then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.

As a young man, I thought I knew so much. I realize now that I understood almost nothing of the ways of God. But I did know that I wanted to follow Jesus, and I knew that his way was a way of love.

Within a few years, Marion and I were raising children while seeking to pastor a flock. Although I loved my children dearly, I was a very imperfect Dad and an equally imperfect husband. I was a broken man seeking to teach others the ways of wholeness. This paradox brought many pressures into my life. But in the midst of all these pressures, I was learning to seek the Lord.

In April 1987 I surrendered my life to Jesus and Marion and I were baptized in the Holy Spirit. Joe was five years old at the time. It was a fresh start for us. We were learning to live life with Jesus instead of following him from a distance.

One thing was established in our marriage from those early years of walking with Jesus. Marion and I always prayed for our children. We so wanted them to know that Jesus was alive and that His promises were real. We wanted them to learn and walk in the ways of God’s love.

Fast forward twenty-eight years to April 2015. Marion and I had lived in seven different houses in those twenty-eight years. We had served in a wide range of different types of churches, and had experimented with many different aspects of ministry, business and teaching. We had learned to know Jesus as our Beloved and our friend. Despite our very imperfect parenting, somehow our children had done well. Our family had grown up, our three sons were married and were making their way in life, and our baby girl – now almost 23 years old – was looking forward to her wedding day.

Then the unthinkable happened. Our daughter-in-law Carmen, who had brought so much joy into our son Joe’s life, and had blessed us with a beautiful granddaughter, visited the emergency room of a local hospital because she wasn’t feeling well. Little did she know that her small intestine had become pinched and was dying. She became the victim of a misdiagnosis that cost her her small intestine and almost cost her her life. You can read her story here. Suddenly, this young, healthy, happy couple with the three month old baby entered a nightmare scenario that threatened to consume them.

In the midst of all this, we were also trying to prepare for a wedding.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

We cried out to God; we were humbled; we were overwhelmed with gratitude as hundreds of people rallied to provide practical help and pray for Joe and Carmen; our own family was knit more closely together; we saw the best and the worst of Canada’s medical system; we saw the Body of Christ at work.

Today, ten weeks later, many prayers have been answered, though some still await their fulfillment. After two critical surgeries, Carmen has been back home for a month, and is doing well. Bethany and Dunovan are married and enjoying their honeymoon.

The wedding was wonderful. Simeon and Heather and their girls were able to join us from Kansas City. We had some great family times. I got to walk my daughter down the aisle, and speak words of blessing over her and her new husband. Joe, Carmen and Maddie were able to be with us and join the celebration.

We are very grateful, but also more aware than ever of our own weakness and our dependency on the Mighty One.

Our life in this age continues. Simeon and Heather are back home with their girls, and Reuben and Jess are in France. Joe and Carmen are at the cottage with Maddie, Bethany and Dunovan are honeymooning in Nova Scotia. I am back at work, and serving in the House of Prayer. But even as I enjoy each day, my children are never far from my thoughts, and most of my thoughts towards them are prayers. I am more deeply aware than ever before that our lives are in the hands of a merciful God. I am looking for a City that is to come, and I long for the day of the King’s appearing.

When you set out to raise a family, you truly have no idea what life will bring your way.

Many things were important to me when I was a young Dad all those years ago. There were so many things that I wanted to teach my children, so many things I wanted for them.

Of all those hopes, dreams and visions, some have changed, some never came about, but as the song says, One thing remains. This one thing will remain for all eternity. Without it, I have nothing of any lasting value. With it, I have everything I need.

Jesus loves me, this I know.

 

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Eschatology, Reflections on Life, Transformation

Reading the Bible with new eyes

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I have been reading the Bible with new eyes the past couple of years.

My practical Dutch parents, although nominally Christian, were functionally humanistic in their outlook and worldview, and I imbibed a this-worldly perspective on life with my mother’s milk. Heaven wasn’t on our radar – our focus was very clearly on earthly affairs.

Although grateful for many positive aspects of my upbringing, as a young man my heart was hungry for spiritual reality. Yet even after coming to personal faith in Jesus, I could never seem to get really excited about going to heaven.

Jesus was now the Lord of my life, and I was certain that he had been raised from the dead and was alive. After being baptized in the Holy Spirit, an increasing body of personal experience had convinced me that there was a realm of existence beyond what I could see with my eyes and touch with my hands, and that there were real, accessible heavenly powers which could touch and transform our earthly life.

In church we would sometimes sing hymns about spending eternity in glory, singing to Jesus. I was learning to love Jesus more and more, and I wanted to be with him.  I loved what I had already experienced of the glorious presence of God, and looked forward to more. I also loved to sing. But something didn’t quite add up. What about all those guys who loved to build houses, or fix cars? Would they have a place in heaven? If they did, would they enjoy it? I sure appreciated their help when I had jobs that had to be done. Was that somehow unspiritual? Didn’t God make them to enjoy doing those things? Did they have to become choirboys to serve God and enjoy what He had in store for them? My heart was telling me that there had to be more to God’s plan than this.

Much of what Christians traditionally believe about heaven is gleaned from descriptions of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation. But John wasn’t describing a place that we would go after we die. He was describing a glorious city that would come to a restored earth after Jesus returned to banish evil forever. So why didn’t the church believe – and preach – what the Bible taught?

The answer lies partly in a process that began in the fourth century after Christ. By this time, Christianity had spread throughout the Roman Empire. In the great university at Alexandria, intellectuals who had been raised on Greek philosophy began trying to meld their new Christian faith with the worldview that they had brought with them from Plato. The result was a hybrid – a synthesis of Platonic philosophy and Biblical belief that influenced the entire course of Christian thinking for centuries. Whereas the Bible views the heavens and the earth as one continuous reality, with constant interchange between the two, Plato divided reality into the material and non-material realms, and taught that only the immaterial was “really real”. Christian theologians and philosophers who sought to integrate the Bible with Plato’s philosophy ended up distorting the simple message of the Scriptures, so that the goal of faith became to flee the evils of the material world and escape to some non-material spiritual realm.

So, over the past couple of years I have embarked on a major Bible study project. I am learning to read the Bible with new eyes, seeking to allow its worldview to speak for itself.

Guess what? The Bible, taken on its own merits, doesn’t teach that God’s purpose for our lives is to escape to some non-material glorious realm of bliss. Nor does it teach the popular modern view that life is really all about the here and now, and that God’s purpose for our lives is to transform this world and make it heaven on earth. The Bible presents the overarching purpose of God as a restored creation, in which we will have resurrected and glorified bodies, and God’s will is done on earth as in the heavens.  The way to participate in that glorious new creation (also called the Kingdom of God) is by conforming our lives to the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus, who came to earth to pay the price of our rebellion and demonstrate the power and purity of a life lived in faith, love, and servanthood.

So what happens when you die? The Bible does indeed teach that until Jesus returns and death is rolled back, those who die in faith will be with Jesus after they die. But nowhere does it imply that this is our final destination. Throughout the New Testament the message is the same. To sum it up very briefly, Jesus is seated at the Father’s right hand, waiting for the great day when he returns to finish what he started. After all nations have heard the good news of the Kingdom of God and Jesus’ bride has made herself ready for him, there will be a final time of struggle in which the powers of darkness will seek to destroy the people of God. Jesus will return to earth for his bride, will win a great victory and usher in a glorious Kingdom on a restored earth.  Eventually, Satan will escape from his prison and start one last war, after which evil will be banished forever and all things will be made new.

So what happens between now and then? I’m very thankful that we get to do more than just wait. We get to grow up in our salvation, so that Jesus can return for a bride who is truly glorious. Those who belong to Jesus receive the Holy Spirit now, in this age, as a down payment or advance taste of the glories of the Age to Come. By the power of the Holy Spirit working through people of faith, wonderful things can happen. People are healed, set free from demonic oppression, receive dreams and visions, and more. But the people who experience all of these wonderful things – called signs in the Bible – will still die. The signs of the Kingdom point us to a coming new age when death itself will be rolled back and Jesus will rule openly on a restored earth.

Some may say that this is beyond belief – a fairy tale. Surely, they say, you can’t believe that. Yet this is the simple faith of the apostolic church, which transformed the entire Roman world. It’s also the faith that springs up whenever the Holy Spirit is poured out in power in times of renewal. It’s what inspires and gives courage to those who are persecuted or imprisoned for their faith – as described in my previous post.

Greek philosophy, while fascinating, is vastly different from Biblical faith. Although I’ve been dimly aware of its influence for years, it is only recently that I have seen the extent of this influence, and I am still learning to recognize and shed the “old skin” of Platonic thinking. I don’t have it all figured out. But I do understand that there is a reason why I could never get excited about going to heaven. God doesn’t want me to escape from earth. He wants me to look forward eagerly to a transformed life as part of a resurrected people living on a restored earth under renewed heavens. That is the new creation that Jesus died for, and it’s what I’m living for.

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Brokenness and Wholeness, Social Commentary

Jesus and the pain of Jamie Hubley

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A little over a week ago, Ottawa was rocked by the suicide of fifteen-year-old Jamie Hubley, a gifted, outgoing, but also troubled teenager who had battled depression for years.

By all accounts, Jamie was a compassionate, sensitive, caring young man.  He had often helped his father (Allan Hubley,  who represents Kanata on City Council) in various community service projects.  He was also a talented figure skater and theatrical performer.  His death was a shock to the entire community.

A few years earlier, when he was in grade seven, Jamie had suffered rejection and taunts for his choice of figure skating over hockey. Whether because he didn’t fit the typical macho image of masculinity, or for other reasons, at some point Jamie had adopted a homosexual identity, and had gone public with this choice. Judging by his blog, both his depression and suicide were influenced by the rejection he suffered at school for being openly gay.

One of the most common responses to Jamie’s death has been an appeal for greater tolerance and acceptance towards those who choose a gay identity and lifestyle. At first glance, this is an understandable response. But as a follower of Jesus, I can only go part way down this road.

Let me be completely clear. The pain that led Jamie Hubley to end his life is something I do not want to trivialize. As a young man I went through an episode of depression, and am familiar with the dark thoughts that can result. Nor do I have any sympathy for bullying or taunting. I was myself a shy, sensitive child, and suffered from bullying for a time as a young schoolboy. It was an experience I would not wish on anybody.

Early in my walk with the Lord, one of the verses of Scripture that leaped off the page at me and became embedded in my consciousness was this nugget: Do not envy the oppressor, and choose none of his ways (Proverbs 3: 31). As a believer in Jesus, I am called to honour all people, who are made in God’s image and of high value to Him. When I think of Jamie Hubley’s decision to take his own life, I feel nothing but sadness for him and his family and loved ones.

And yet.  As a believer in Jesus, I do not and cannot believe that the “gospel of tolerance” is an adequate response to the tragedy of Jamie Hubley’s death.

People make many choices and draw many conclusions in response to the pain of life. Not all those choices are in line with what God intends for their lives.  I do not believe it was God’s will for Jamie to commit suicide, even though he was fully convinced that it was what he had to do. In the same way, I do not believe it was God’s will for him to adopt a homosexual identity, no matter how profoundly he believed that this was his true identity.

Time for a bit of personal history here. When I was a young United Church minister in the 1980s, I had a number of colleagues who were living a homosexual lifestyle but had not yet gone public with this choice. At the time, the United Church had not yet approved the ordination of openly-gay clergy, though this was under discussion. I used to meet with a support group of six clergy, of whom one (I’ll call him Gord) was gay. We were all in scattered rural parishes, and our meetings involved long drives.  On one of these drives I had listened to Gord talk at length about his life and its struggles, including his adoption of a gay identity.  There were other gay clergy in our wider regional caucus, and I knew something of their stories as well.

I myself was struggling, not with my sexual identity, but with my spiritual identity.  At that time, I moved in very liberal theological circles.  I had not yet surrendered my will to God, received the gift of the Holy Spirit, or truly understood the gospel that I was attempting to preach. Even so, I took my Bible seriously, believed that it was authoritative, and found the teaching of Jesus extremely compelling. I was sympathetic to the struggles of my gay friends, but found myself unable to accept all their conclusions.  In particular, I found myself unable to accept their reinterpretations of Scripture, nor their conclusion that homosexuality was God’s intent for their lives. Still, I listened respectfully and rarely differed openly with their positions, preferring to express my reservations privately, and only to a few people. Even then, 25 years ago, to openly question the validity of pro-gay ideology in that environment would have been a very difficult and costly choice – a choice that I was not yet prepared to make.

The support group of six clergy with which I met regularly was supposed to be a non-judgmental, accepting environment. There came a point, however, where I experienced the limits of this acceptance.  I had been undergoing some profound changes since the pastor of the Anglican church in our town had reached out to me and offered the gift of friendship. He was a highly intelligent, thoughtful, caring and well-spoken man who was a great listener. He was also solidly anchored in Scripture and filled with the Holy Spirit. Under his influence, my struggle to surrender to Jesus was being resolved. One Sunday evening, I responded to an altar call on the last night of a three-day mission in the church he pastored. A few months later, I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I was discovering a new hope and confidence that Jesus really was alive and held the keys to life. But my liberal United Church clergy friends were less than enthusiastic about the changes that they were observing in my life and ministry. I distinctly remember that when they questioned me about these changes, the tone of their questions was quite hostile. Gord, my gay colleague, became extremely angry with me and accused me of judging and rejecting him, although I had said nothing at all to indicate this.

So what’s my point? Simply this. I was not rejecting Gord. All I was doing was attempting to express my newfound conviction that Jesus truly is alive, that He is able to heal and restore the lives of those who turn to Him, and that He is the living Word of God who has legitimate authority to determine how our lives are to be lived. If anything, I cared about Gord more than ever, but my newfound confidence in Jesus was offensive to him because it challenged his belief that his homosexual identity was a gift from God.

Since then, my convictions on this issue have not changed. If anything, they have become clearer, and have been confirmed by experience. Jesus is Lord, and He is able to transform all areas of our life, including our sexual identity. He will do this for anyone who surrenders to Him. Because his transforming work is completely a gift, and because I myself am very much still a work in progress, I am in no position to condemn anyone who is broken, no matter what choices they are making. Still, for those who insist that their current way of life is completely valid and needs no change, Jesus’ message will not seem like good news. He doesn’t offer blanket acceptance of every lifestyle – and as His follower, neither can I.  He does offer mercy, compassion and restoration to all who turn to Him in humility – and as His follower, so must I.

That’s why I say that the ideology of tolerance is not good enough. Tolerance may prevent some bullying, but it has no power to set people free. Jamie did need acceptance, but not the kind of acceptance that says everything is OK.  Like all people, he needed to surrender his life to the only One who could restore him and set him free.  How different his life might have been if he had been introduced to the Jesus that I have come to know.

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Reflections on Life

What’s in your cup?

Picture yourself in a crowded room, holding a cup full of hot coffee.  You are having a conversation with someone you have just met.  You want this person to like you, so you are doing your best to come across as the pleasant, competent, wise, compassionate and knowledgeable person that you really are – or want to be.  Just then someone in the crowd bumps against your elbow, the hot coffee sloshes out of the cup all over the person you were trying to impress, and you are thoroughly embarrassed.  So much for your image!

Now apply that picture to your emotional state.   You are calm, cheerful and positive as long as everything is going your way.  But what happens when you get bumped by events you can’t control, circumstances that mess with your plans, or people who don’t treat you as you think you deserve?   That’s when what’s in your cup comes spilling out, and you find out what you are really full of.  That’s when you find out whether the image you project matches the reality of what is actually in your heart.    As Jesus put it, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.

Come on, you say, that’s not fair.  I can’t be responsible for how I react to annoying people, unfair decisions, shoddy service, and the many other aggravations that life puts in my path.  Do you expect me just to put up with all that stuff?

Let me ask a different question.  If Christ lives in you, can’t you do better than just react to others?  No doubt there are genuine wrongs and injustices in life, and there is a place for addressing them.  But as long as we are bound up on the inside with anger, judgments, guilt, fear, pride and other baggage, our most constructive contribution may be to clean up our own junk first. As Jesus said, How can you think of saying, ‘Friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.

The Christian life is intended to be a process of life-long growth in which the character of Jesus shines through more and more in our lives as the image of God is restored in us.   Ironically, one of the keys to this process is not to get too preoccupied with our own growth.  We’ll get farther if we fix our eyes on Jesus than if our gaze is always fixed on ourselves and our own perceived failures.   Still, learning to understand ourselves is valuable, especially when understanding leads to specific and focussed repentance.  Each of us comes into God’s Kingdom as damaged goods, and we can co-operate better with the Holy Spirit’s work if we allow Him to shine his light on the areas of greatest damage for the purpose of restoration.

I have found that if I am honestly and humbly seeking self-understanding for the purpose of growing in grace, the Holy Spirit is more than willing to give me insight. A good question to ask Him is not just “What’s in my  cup” but “How did it get there?”. Although we may be very adept at condemning ourselves, frequently we don’t have a very good understanding of why we are the way we are.  When we consider that deception is one of the Enemy’s favourite strategies it shouldn’t be too surprising that he would do his best to blind us to the root causes of destructive patterns of thought and behaviour.

This is a big topic, and a blog post is not the place to lay out a complete methodology for the restoration and healing of the wounded and polluted soul.  But as one who has needed – and received – much grace in this area, let me encourage you not to believe the lie that you cannot change.   Why should you be any different than anyone else? All the power is on our side – the blood of Jesus, the liberating truth of the Word of God, the instruction of the Holy Spirit, the power of repentance and forgiveness, and the help of friends in Christ.   All the enemy has going for him is deception.  True, he is a master at it, but the Father of lights is greater than the father of lies.

Our spirits are born again when we receive Jesus Christ into our lives; the redemption of our bodies will take place when He returns.   In between those two events, we have a lifetime to allow Him to work out the restoration of our souls. Let’s commit ourselves to pressing forward to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us – the fulness of life which He said was our inheritance. And lest anyone think that all this attention on healing of the soul sounds a bit selfish, consider that the more healed you are, the better equipped you are to help others find healing.  The more free you are, the better equipped you are to help others get free.

What’s in your cup?  I want to be clean on the inside, not only on the outside, so that fresh, life-giving water bubbles up from the core of my being.  How about you?

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Intimacy with God, Reflections on Life

Affecting genetics through prayer?

A recent National Post article reports on groundbreaking research at McGill University.   The research seems to show that physical and emotional abuse in childhood can alter the genetic code of a child.  The same team has previously done other research supporting the idea that life experience can affect and alter the genes that we inherit from our parents.

While this underscores the depth of the devastation that can be caused by abuse, it also gives us concrete evidence in support of a biblical belief system.  If genes are affected by life experience, we have a clue as to how a very important spiritual principle operates on  human biology.  We see patterns of sin becoming part of a family’s inheritance – the sins of the fathers literally being visited upon the children in their genetic code.

Although this is significant, I’m far more intrigued by the positive implications of this research.  If there is an interplay between our life experience and our genes, it ought to work on both the positive and the negative side of the ledger. The insights provided by this study help us to envisage a mechanism whereby the grace of God can affect our concrete life experience.   We don’t need scientific proof that the prayer of faith is powerfully effective – generations of praying believers have known it to be so – but I find it exciting when science provides supporting evidence of how the realm of emotions and relationships affects the systems that govern our physical health.   If negative experiences can affect our genetic makeup, setting us up for misery and suffering, why can’t an atmosphere of faith, hope and love affect our genetic makeup as well, setting us up for vibrant wellbeing?

Of course, faith doesn’t depend on scientific proofs – but in a scientifically-oriented age, this research supports the faith perspective that our genetic code is not our predetermined fate; it is just what we start life with.  The article cited above mentions other research by the same team supporting the idea that positive experiences can also affect our genetic code.  Believers in Jesus know that His redeeming power affects every area of life, and that we are children of destiny, not fate.  As we respond in faith to the call of God, it is possible that even our genetic code – once thought by science to be a sort of predetermined fate – can be transformed.   This may offer new insight into how prayers of generational healing and blessing might operate on a physical level.

History records that during the Healing Rooms ministry of John G. Lake, the US Government declared the city of Spokane, Washington to be the healthiest city in the nation.   The Acts of the Apostles similarly report that during an early period of vibrant faith, when more and more people in Jerusalem were turning to the Lord, crowds gathered in the city as people from all the surrounding towns brought their sick, and all of them were healed.

Can it be so where you and I live?  I see no reason why not.  But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

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