I had some visitors

One day a group from the church paid me a visit. They couldn’t come into the room so they painted a poster and stood outside where I could see it. They called me on my phone and I came to the window and they sang, “We Love you Pastor, We Really Do.” It really ministered to me and to a patient two rooms down from mine. Soon, they had a message that said, “Thank you for the message.” Eventually, Koyce met the lady and her daughter that was going through treatment and they wanted to know where our church was so that they could attend. It was so neat. Our people came to minister to me and ended up being a blessing to others too!

One of many Cards I Received

Cindy Mindrup is a great photographer and she sent Koyce 30 such photographs with verses attached. I also receivied 30 cards, one for each day I was in the hospital. We loved these cards and so did our doctors, nurses and aids. And our friend Gail Bradway kept sending us her prayers each week. Here is another one:

Gail wrote in her devotions in Proverbs these words, “Haven’t been in Proverbs three for a tad, God, but I’m findin’ gems—“Lady wisdom,” and “Madame Insight”…gives long life.” Her manner is beautiful, her life wonderfully complete—thank you for the wisdom and insight You give us thru the Holy Spirit everyday. Even at this time, when pastor’s life is anything but normal or predictable, may he see the completeness and beauty of Your wisdom and insight!

Oh, boy, I’m liken’ this prayer….“Dear friend, guard clear thinking and common sense with your life, don’t lose sight of them for a minute. They’ll keep your soul alive and well, they’ll keep you fit and attractive. You’ll travel safely, you’ll neither tire nor trip. You’ll take afternoon naps without a worry, you’ll enjoy a good night’s sleep. No need to panic over alarms or surprises….because God will be right there with you; He’ll keep you safe and sound.” Of God, You know that’s the desire of our hearts for ourselves and pastor. This is new turf for him—how will he know how much rest, pain, medicine, exertion and the umpteen million other things necessary for this new adventure unless he’s thinking and acting with your mind!

“Never walk away from someone who deserves help; your hand is God’s hand for that person.” That’s great! Sooo, I’m reading his blog and seeing all the people writing, sending cards, cleaning---may we be able to sustain being Your hand, because this journey isn’t over!

“It’s the straight-forward who get Your respect.” Once again we’re asking that those in charge of pastor’s hospital care will be honorable, respectful and exhibit truth as we have seen so far."

Meeting my Oncologist, Dr. Sally Arai

Our good friend Jo Sherman dropped us this note just as I started my treatment at Stanford. She wrote, "You have been on my mind a great deal lately. Thank you for keeping us informed. I know you will be going to Stanford tomorrow to have labs, a chest X-ray and meet with your oncologist, Dr. Sally Arai. I will be praying all goes well and that you will be able to get going on what needs to be done. I also will be praying for your doctors, nurses, and all who are a part of this team. I reread your WHOLE blog from way back when you had to cancel the trip to Israel and have rescheduled it for 2010. I especially was touched by Tony Snow's article in Christianity Today, it really does say it all. I believe he was a true believer and is in heaven with the Lord. Jack and I loved to listen to him on TV and on the radio. He was truly a great guy and his testimony was truly inspirational.

Along with that I read Dr. Jeremiah's testimony and will get his book and read it so I am really in touch with what you are going through. David Jeremiah was my brother's pastor in Ft. Wayne, IN and I went to that church with them even before I was a Christian! I was very impressed with him at the time but after I became a Christian what he preached about that day came back to me and made so much sense!!!! My niece was their baby sitter and they lived very near the Jeremiah's. I am so thankful for the many blessings God has given me through the years but one of the greatest blessings I have had was to get a Th.B. from Western Baptist College and have you a my professor for so many classes! It was truly the best time of my life and God used your wisdom to make it such.

Thank you, David, I mean this from the bottom of my heart! Over the years I have thanked God many times for your wisdom and patience and just the encouragement you have been to me and so many others.Now it is my turn to encourage you! I know that you will get through this "bend in the road" in fine shape because there are many of us out here praying for you and Koyce. We love you and will continue to hold you up in prayer every day!

Love you both, Jo

"He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver"

Dr. William Bellshaw sent me this piece and I think it really fits. One of these days, I will explain more of the fire that I went through. The verse in Makachi 3 had some women in a Bible study wondering what this statement meant about the character and nature of God.

One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study.

That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.

As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.

The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver."

She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined.

The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.

The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?"

He smiled at her and answered,
"Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it."

If today you are feeling the heat of the fire, remember that God has His eye on you and will keep watching you until He sees His image in you.

Pass this on right now. This very moment, someone needs to know that God is watching over them. And whatever they're going through, they'll be a better person in the end.

"Life is a coin. You can spend it anyway you wish, but you can only spend it once."

Interview With Rick Warren

My wife's younger sister and her husband Mike wrote and said, "You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having 'wealth' from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, Purpose Driven Life, author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said: “People ask me, ‘What is the purpose of life?’ And I respond: ‘In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body--but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act—the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.’

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys—you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems: If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, which is my problem, my issues, my pain. But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: “Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?’ When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, ‘God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings. Happy moments, PRAISE GOD. Difficult moments, SEEK GOD. Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD. Painful moments, TRUST GOD. Every moment, THANK GOD. If you do not pass it on, nothing will happen. But it might be nice to pass it on to a friend....just like I have done.”

Thinking of You

Two of my classmate friends Mel and Margie Beals sent this note:

We can't even begin to imagine all you've been through,

but we are praying for you (and Koyce!) and will continue!

You'll fell better soon.

All Prayers are Appreciated

At this point the. doctors, Pastor and Koyce are doing what they can. The rest is in the hands of God so we covet your prayers. We receive daily offers and written prayers and one of these prayers was written by Mary Smith of Salem, Oregon. Here is her prayer:

“I look up to the mountains—
does my help come from there?
Picture of our house as a kid in E. Wenatchee

Mary Smith was going to call one day and pray with me but decided instead to write out her prayer and send it. Listen to it. “Dear Lord, hear my prayer. It is from my heart, and it's for someone very, very dear to me.

My friend, David, faces a tough week. But, that's nothing for you, God. You aren't surprised by our circumstances or taken aback by our life experiences, because you see the road ahead. You already know what you're going to do and how it will be accomplished.

But, since WE don't know what lies ahead, here's my specific prayer request: Heal him, Lord. Restore David's health. Give him courage in those 3 am alone times, and remind him that HE ISN'T ALONE, because you're right there with him through every moment.

We thank you for life. We thank you for our mothers and fathers who gave us life and for all we've learned and know about your Word and YOU, but we don't know enough. We want more years to grow in your ways and influence more people and to enjoy more time on planet earth. But only if it's your will, Father.

Thank you for the people you bring to our lives....David to mine. And Koyce to David's. Oh, I pray that Koyce will be a strong woman, filled with confidence that you're going to bring her through this, and we know that she's going to need a lot of strength. Bring friends to her side.

Bless Scott and Mike. They love their father so much! They need their Dad. So do the grandchildren. So, I'm asking you to carry this family through an uncertain time, knowing you are with them every minute.

Lord, hear my prayer. I thank you for all that you are going to do, and we claim your many promises, especially Psalm 121. We know our help comes from you. You are mighty, awesome, and we praise you, now and always.

In Jesus name I pray, amen.

Love, Mary (Curt, too)”

Mary made reference to Psalm 121 that begins by saying, “I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there? (Psalm 121:1). In David Jeremiah’s book, A Bend in the Road, I used it relied heavily on it in preparing a message about the journey I was about to embark on. This is what I said to them: “The writer here has prepared himself for his journey through the mountains to Jerusalem. And as he gets unto the road, he takes a minute and gazes up to the horizon. There he begins to think of the miles ahead, all the twists and turns and even surprises. He also thinks of the dust and the heat, the darkness and all the thirsty miles. He admires, however, the graceful line where the mountains and the sky come together.

When I almost 9 years of age, my dad took a ride on the Great Northern Railway going west and went through the Rocky Mountains. He had never seen mountains as majestic and he said that the thrill of seeing such majestic mountains caused him to cry. No wonder my dad eventually built a house in the state of Washington where he could look out the windows and see the mountains. It was spectacular. (And I showed the people a view out of our living room window that we looked at every single day. Above is a picture of our place being built in the winter of the mid 1950s)

Now there are many places in the Bible that describe the mountains as a place of blessing, but—we all know that the mountains can also be a place of danger. Mountains are places where people lose their lives. The rocks and caves hide wild animals as well as bloodthirsty bandits. Pagan cultures built their temples in the mountains. The godly pilgrims found a sense of majesty in the high country, but they also found a sense of danger and fear of the unknown. The writer of the psalms must have thought about all of these things as he gazed upon the mountains and began his journey so he says, “I look up to the mountains, where will my help come from?”

Now if you were raised like I was with the King James Bible, you can probably quote for me the first verse of Psalm 121 and then complete the next sentence. For it says, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, (and what is next? It is,) from whence cometh (or ‘comes’ in the NKJ) my help. And probably many of us have thought that this verse was saying, “that the hills are the place from which help comes.” But unfortunately, the King James left out a dash here and a question so that the verse should have read,

“I look up to the mountains— (dash) does my help come from there?” The answer is of course “no. Not at all.” The hills are not the place from which our help comes, rather the hills are the place where help is needed. The hills or mountains represent the perils of the journey due to the crevices and ravines along with wild beasts and robbers. The mountains are a place of danger. The pilgrims of old looked to the mountain ranges that they had to cross on their route to Jerusalem and they were wondering where they would get some help. It is in this situation that the psalmist says,

“My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 121:2). It is the Lord who is the source of our strength. Our help comes from no one but God. What a lesson for life’s travelers on this earth. And don’t overlook how the Lord is described here. He is the one who made heaven and earth. The idea is—our help comes from a Creator who hung the stars in space and set the earth upon its course. What encouragement this is! I mean, think about it. If God can guide the planets, he can surely guide our steps through the ups and downs and the twists and turns and the bends we come across in life’s journey.

Think about this. When your journey brings you to a bend in the road such as hearing that you have cancer, or you just lost your job or a number of other things, you can be filled with a sense of helplessness. And you will cry out to God and say, “Lord, I need your help!” And in the moment of deep anxiety, we need to remember this—and it is, the One to whom you are praying is the One who created the heaven and earth. He is the Creator God. So, take a deep breath and look to the Lord who can certainly take care of you. Some of our people at church are a bit concerned about how I am going to handle the curve in the road I have just come upon. But know this—help is on the way. For my help is coming primarily from the Lord.” David Jeremiah has a great big that came out of his experience with cancer. I would highly recommend it for anyone who has come upon a bend in the road.

Now a word of praise. David came through the Stem Cell Transplant superbly Thanks for praying.