Tuesday, January 14, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Light
Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit. “Quiet! Come out of him,” and the spirit came out. Jesus’ fame spread through Galilee.
While we were at the Vineyard Church in Urbana we sometimes encountered men and women who were occupied with the deliverance ministry. Pre-occupied, I often thought. Seemed like that’s how they shaped all their prayers.
In Sunday School this week we talked at our tables about experiences we’ve had stepping out to share our faith, with neighbors and strangers and anyone who was in pain – anyone who needed prayer. “Can I pray for you?” If we’ve done at least a little listening first, almost no one refuses when we ask that question.
When I pray, sometimes I think about Jesus and the unclean spirit. Should I too pray for deliverance? Should I speak out or pray inside myself?
I don’t want to miss that need, but I also don’t want the person I’m praying for to look up at me with disdain and walk away. When that happens it feels like we both miss God.
My habit has become to see light in what others might call darkness. John writes much about light, and I remember his words when I pray. My alma mater Valparaiso University’s motto comes from Psalm 36: “In Thy light, we see light!” And even in darkness, I don’t often encountered savage rage that ignores every resistance and strikes out at others or itself. I have carried oil for anointing but rarely cloves of garlic for deliverance.
What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You crowned him with glory and honor, subjecting all things under his feet.
This weekend I watched part of O, God! … John Denver and George Burns while they were both living, breathing, laughing, reverent guys who chose to act the parts of Jerry Landers and God.
One day near the beginning when Jerry was still skeptical, God said to him, “If you find it hard to believe in me, maybe it would help you to know that I believe in you.”
In court for slandering a white-suited-telepastor-fundraiser-evangelist-deliverance-healer who preached from high up in a white pulpit atop a white pillar, Jerry called God to the stand as a witness for the defense. God was wonderful.
“I know how hard it is in these times to have faith. But maybe if you could have the faith to start with, maybe the times would change. You could change them. Think about it.”
Jerry’s wife Bobbie (Teri Garr) thought Jerry was loco. Possessed. Needed deliverance, except she didn’t believe in the devil any more than she believed in God. Then she “went to empty the garbage and two people blessed me. And then one of them blessed the garbage. And then he asked me if our children were conceived immaculately!”
The movie’s theology is outrageous to most Christians, at least in part. The other parts brought me joy, watching, listening, thinking, praying. God saw light, not darkness.
“I gave you a world and everything in it. It’s all up to you. Free will. All the choices are yours.”
Before he disappeared out the courtroom door, God shared a final encouragement.
“Try not to hurt each other. There’s been enough of that, it really gets in the way. However hopeless, helpless, mixed up and scary it all gets, it can work.”
Of course “it can work!” In the Moonies I reveled in the Restoration Principle, which simply says that God isn’t giving up on what he began in the first place.
The providence of restoration refers to God’s work to restore human beings to our original, unfallen state so that we may fulfill the purpose of creation.
God doesn’t stop being God, and we can choose to keep the human fires burning, and we will bend ever so slowly into justice, into mercy, into following God into unconditional love. That is our purpose, I believe, the only thing that matters. It’s why we’re here. In Thy light, we see light!
Receive the word of God, not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God.
(Hebrews 2, Psalm 8, 1 Thessalonians 2, Mark 1)
 (posted at www.davesandel.net)
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