areliablefaith

As some of you know I had a miraculous intervention last March where the Lord used a dream to send me to the doctor where they found and corrected three blockages in my heart with stints.  Since then I have been on medications, I changed my diet, and I have worked to remain consistent in my exercise regimen.  What I did not change until the beginning of this year was the stressful work situation.  I have exchanged what was a stress-filled job with a slightly less stress filled beginning of a new career as a Reliability Consultant.

One week ago today as I was driving to meet two of my three brothers for breakfast I felt a twinge of pain in my chest.  It lasted about 10 – 15 seconds, but it was a real pain right above my heart.  It was not unlike other pains that anyone who is over 50 has periodically, but the fact that it was where it was caused me to take note.  As time went on, I began noticing this pain come more frequently… 2 or 3 times on Wednesday, 5 or 6 times on Thursday.  It was not severe pain, more like a slight crick in my chest.  The pain was not nearly as bad as the thoughts that began going through my head.

Now some might ask why I didn’t go to the doctor immediately to have it checked out.  Well, I was praying for guidance, the pain was really minimal, I didn’t have any other symptoms, and I didn’t want to be like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling.

Friday night I woke up with some pain.  At that same moment with no words spoken Lisa reached over and put her hand on my head.  I remembered thinking, “Well the Lord has Lisa praying for me, it’s going to be fine.”  When she pulled her hand away I was fine.

Saturday morning I told our daughter Christin who had come down for a weekend visit about it.  She has completed a year of graduate school for Physical Therapy.  She performed some checks and found that I had tenderness in the connecting tissue around my ribs right above my heart.  That made me feel better mentally, but when she asked if I had hit my chest or done something to cause this I couldn’t think of anything.

Saturday was a great day as we visited with lots of family.  The only problem was that the pain in my chest was the worst it had been.  So while Christin’s diagnosis gave me some sense of relief that it wasn’t my heart, the fact that I couldn’t think of what I had done to cause it still had me concerned.

Now I know the Lord is able to make things clear enough that I truly trusted Him to let me know if I was supposed to go to the doctor.  Since He was not leading me to that I knew the answer was either that the pain was not something to worry about or He was about to take me home and He would use my home-going for good in other people’s lives.  That didn’t remove the niggle of doubt that kept trying to creep in periodically, but it did give me a place of faith to stand.

Our Pastor felt the leading of the Lord to change the service on Sunday.  The new message was one of God’s Grace Gives us Freedom.  It was specifically aimed at proclaiming God’s promises that as believers we can walk in healing, deliverance, restoration, and wholeness.  I am a member of the Care Team and at the end of the service all Care Team members were invited to come down front to be ready to pray with people that come forward asking for prayer.  It was also mentioned that if we needed prayer that we were to simply face the other way and other Care Team or staff members would pray for us.

Well I really wanted to pray for others.  But I also had the question about should I get prayer for my heart.  When I went down front I decided I would pray for others and then afterwards I would ask for prayer.  A staff member I had never met brought a young man in front of me and was talking with him.  I couldn’t hear them over the music, but I felt a prompting to go up and join in agreement with them for whatever the need was so I stepped up to lay hands on and pray with the young man.  I did not know either of them and when I came up they already had eyes closed and were praying.  This is what I heard immediately upon stepping up.

“Lord, I know you love Dan (my name is Dan for those who don’t already know) and you desire wholeness in his body.  You have knit his body together and you know how he was made.  I ask now for healing for all stomach and digestive issues (I had also been having some stomach and digestive issues which I had only mentioned to Lisa because they were just a nuisance).  Father I pray for every cell in his body which you have created to function as it is supposed to and that he will know complete health.”

By this time I was weeping because our Father was allowing me to both pray with someone who needed healing, but He had brought forth someone with my name so I was being prayed for too.  I can’t tell you how encouraging it was to know the Lord had orchestrated this.  Afterwards I shared with the staff member my story an we prayed again.

When I came home my daughter-in-law, Jordan came in.  I told her about what I had been feeling in my chest.  She said said, “it sounds like you have Chondritis.  That’s inflammation of the cartilage around the ribs.  I had a friend who would swim in the morning and she would sometimes get that from swimming too much.”  With that she provided the final piece of the puzzle.  Christin had diagnosed me correctly, but didn’t offer the link to swimming.  On the Monday before I started feeling the pain I had swum 32 laps at the Y in training for possibly entering a sprint triathlon this spring.  I even remember pulling particularly hard trying to improve my stroke.

Now I share my stories because I am absolutely convinced that if the Lord loves a lug like me enough to intervene in my life like this, I know that He loves anyone who has read this far.  If you are already a believer take encouragement that God knows every situation and circumstance you are going through and He walks them with you.  He is your healer too.

If you have never met the Lord, I encourage you to reach out to Him right now.  God loves us so much that He sent His Son, Jesus to be our Savior.  He died in our place.  You see God is absolutely Holy and sin cannot dwell in His presence.  If it were left at that we would be doomed to live in separation from God for eternity.  However His love for us is so great that He chose to send His Son to actually live on this earth as a man.  He was perfect and He always lived in unity and harmony with His Father.  But His ultimate purpose was fulfilled on the cross.  Jesus let Himself be captured, falsely accused, judged, beaten, and then crucified because it was the Father’s plan to fulfill the requirements of justice.  And while Jesus was on the cross, God put all sin – every sin that had ever been committed, all sin that will ever be committed, upon His Son,  When Jesus died God judged the sin and the penalty was paid.  On the third day after His death God raised Jesus back to life.  Before Jesus returned to heaven He was seen by hundreds of people.

Our act to have our sins covered in this is really very simple.  We simply recognize that we have sinned, we decide to turn away from our old life of sin and we chose to follow Jesus.  Romans 10:9 says it like this – “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

If this encourages you or helps in some way please let me know.  If the Lord tugs at your heart and you want to talk about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, please send me a comment and I will be happy to correspond with you.  Jesus loves you and He wants you to know that.

Be blessed and be a blessing today.