This is an official notification that this blog site has been shut down. Thank you for your kind support in the past with any comments. They were appreciated. I have felt it more advantages to concentrate on healing from my current health problems, so I will not be writing any more blogs. Thank you, God bless and Shalom.

After Shock

The aftermath of a heart attack is rather like the after shocks of an earthquake. When Mexico was hit with that large quake not long ago, and before I had my heart attack, we felt the aftershocks all the way here in Phoenix. I was sitting on my couch with my legs up, reading; my wife was at the computer. I was suddenly getting a back massage and then I remembered we don’t have a vibrating chair. My wife said, “Do you feel that?” And we both looked at the swag lamp above our dining table doing a trapeze routine.

That’s kind of how I’ve been feeling since the cardiologist placed a stent (balloon) in my coronary artery a couple of weeks ago. I’m sitting in my chair and my chest is hurting from the wire they put up there above my heart and I’m wondering if it’s my heart and should I take the nitro they prescribed me. I had heart palpitations for a complete day and I wonder if something has gone terribly wrong. Did the cardiologist leave his wristwatch or his car in my chest?

Then that balloon in my artery. Somehow that just doesn’t sound right. I’ve always had problems with balloons. Either I can’t get them blown up, or tie them properly, or they pop and spin and twirl all over the room, and I wonder if it’s possible for the balloon in my artery to pop. Will I spin and twirl all over the room?

I know who knows I had a heart attack. The ones that know don’t want to be around me. They’re possibly afraid I might have another heart attack in front of them. They either look down or the other way, or if they are caught walking by me they look at my chest, probably anticipating my heart sort of leaping out of my chest like that thing did in the movie “Alien.”

For two weeks I have been walking every day. It started with around the apartment complex one time, a quarter of a mile, a half a mile and mile and now one and a half miles. I used to walk two miles a day in less than an hour—okay maybe 58 minutes. It has taken me that long to walk one mile and when I walk up the thirteen steps—I don’t know how many steps there are, I’m just supposing there has to be thirteen the way my luck’s been going—my legs feel like I’m wearing ten pound lead weights.

The other day I walked one and a half miles in forty minutes. I was going so fast I passed a beetle like it was standing still, then an old lady with white hair passed me like I was standing still and I got all deflated. Okay,she was walking from the other direction, but still...

This might sound morbid, but I’m actually grateful I had a heart attack, even though I say to myself once in a while, “You’re fifty-nine years old and you had a heart attack.” But I’m grateful I’m alive. I’m eating better now, counting cholesterol, keeping it under eighty milligrams a day. I’ve lost almost ten pounds and the lead weights on my legs are gone. It could’ve been a lot worse. God is so good. Shalom.

Heart Attack (follow up)

It’s now been eleven days since my heart attack. I’ve been walking upwards to a mile a day now, but had to cut back, as when I returned from these walks I would have to sleep for three hours, and now, yesterday, I had palpitations all day. I feel as though I’ve run a marathon.

I was meditating and praying as I read a chapter in the book of psalms, and the name Linus Pauling came into my mind. I hadn’t heard that name for a long time, and I knew he’d done groundbreaking work in the effects of vitamin C fighting cancer. So I googled his name and found that he’d also done groundbreaking work in fighting against clogged arteries. It seems he endorsed taking high doses of vit. C and Lysine. So I ordered some. Maybe? Who knows? I have two more clogged arteries and eventually I’ll have to get stents in them as well.

I woke up the other morning and for some reason I asked God why He loved me? His response before I could sit up in bed was, “Because I hate sin.” I didn’t understand right away what His point was, He can be so cryptic sometimes. Then I realized what He was saying. Adam had brought sin into the world and death. God didn’t hate Adam; He loved him, having created him after his own image. So He devised the plan to destroy two enemies before the foundation of the world—actually three. At the cross, where He shed His blood through Yeshua, the Son of God, he destroyed the first enemy—sin. By this act he was able to reconcile Adam, and all who put their faith in Him, back to Himself.

On the day of the resurrection He will have destroyed the second enemy—death. Then we will be restored back to the same state Adam and Eve were in before they fell. When He finally destroys Satan, then sin and death will no more reign and all of God’s enemies will have been destroyed.

God was telling me, not just that he loved me, but how much, and to what length He has gone through to prove it. I know for some of you, if not most of you, this is not new information. But someone like me, who as a child, never was hugged or told he was loved by his parents, this revelation from God was an epiphany. We are always told that God loves us, and that He died on the cross for us, but I had never quite understood why. He truly loves mankind and wants to restore us to full reconciliation, to be able to walk with us in the cool of the evening in the garden of our soul, He loves intimacy with His creation, and He loves his creation, so much that the pain and death of Yeshua would free us, who believe, from the law of sin and death. Shalom.

Heart Attack

I am thankful for Passover in so many ways. The first and foremost is that Adonai Yeshua HaMashiach became my Passover two thousand years ago, redeeming me from the bondage of sin, and promising me a new life in which He would never leave nor forsake me.

I feel most unworthy of all of that and sometimes wonder how God could even love me that much. When I had a heart attack I again in my formidable fashion blamed myself and counted myself a failure and unworthy. But then as everything unfolded I saw the wonderful hand of God at work.

I had a burning sensation across my chest for about a month and I ignored it. I took pain pills and acid reducers, but when the pain persisted I went to the doctor. Again, God was gracious in my denial and saved me out of my negligence. God is so good. So many people are in denial about the state of their soul, and don’t go to the Great Physician for help. I can see why now. Man no more wants to admit they are in mortal danger of dying in their sin without repenting and accepting the Lord, than I wanted to admit I was having a heart attack.

The initial shock of learning that I had had a heart attack was one of unbelief. When the initial shock wore off and I was scheduled for an angio gram I didn’t panic nor was I afraid. I found myself in a place that I could die and I had accepted that fate. I actually was giddy with delight when the nurses prepared me for the procedure. I hadn’t any drugs yet either.

Recently, I had made a commitment to the death for God and wondered to what extent that would bring me. Was I ready? I have the answer now. Yes. It’s not because I count myself worthy. I know I’m not. I don’t fear death because I love everlasting life so much. The concept of living with the Lord for eternity out weighs my desire to live on this earth--I’m not trying to be brave or heroic here. I am still a failure, an idiot and unworthy. The point is and will be forever on my lips: God is worthy of all praise. He gets the glory for all the good that has recently happened to me because only He could have done all the good that happened. God gave me a great Cardiologist, great nurses, great care, even though they vehemently refused to give me a full body bath and massage. Just kidding. We are told to give God thanks in everything. I believe that is because He is in everything.

So I had one clogged artery and two that are 60 % clogged. The other two had actually made up the difference for the one that wasn’t working. That part of my heart didn’t get any damage because of how the other two compensated for the loss from the one. Do you see how God works? I count myself the most blessed man. That’s because no matter how much I mess up, God is always there compensating for my short comings, and bringing His life giving blood to that area of my spirit that will never die.

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) Shalom

Passover

This Passover has been especially meaningful to me this year. On Monday, April 5th 2010 I was admitted to the hospital after having had a heart attack. I had been experiencing intermittent chest pain for a month. When it worsened I went to the doctor. An angio gram-- a catheter into the heart—showed one coronary artery completely clogged, while the others had compensated for blood loss to that portion of my heart. Thus, I had no heart damage. The cardiologist placed a stent in the blocked artery.

I was back home three days later. So I literally observed God’s Passover during this time. He saved my life. This is what God did for all of Israelites before he brought them out of Egypt.

On the day that I went into the hospital God had showed me something special about the Passover that I had not seen before. There are many people who insist that Good works lead one to salvation. Of course, good works, called Mitzvah, had been instituted by the rabbis to be a substitute for Temple sacrifices after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.

But there can be no substitution for redemption of mankind by the blood of the lamb. The protocol for this had been established with Adam and Eve when God gave them clothes made from animal skin. Passover made this blood atonement official and the Temple sacrifices were but an extension of that moment when the angel of death passed over those who were inside their homes with the door post covered with the blood of an innocent lamb.

It was only after God brought the Israelites out of Egypt by the Passover that he then instituted the Torah. God did not give the Torah to Moshe until after He had redeemed them from bondage. This is what God had showed me. If God had instituted Mitzvah in order for redemption then He would have given Moshe the Torah in Egypt, brought them out of bondage and then instituted the Passover in the wilderness.

Blood and not good works is the means of redemption and salvation is predicated upon God’s shedding His blood for mankind when He became the Lamb of God in Yeshua HaMashiach. There is nothing we can do to earn or replace the greatest gift ever extended to man by God. The Passover is by far the greatest Feast Day of the seven. I am very thankful during this Passover season. Shalom.

Too wonderous a God

“There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yes, four which I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a virgin.” (Proverbs 30:18,19)

These enigmatic verses are sandwiched between passages that refer to children that disrespect their parents and adultery. They speak of a relationship between God and Solomon, who has been taken by surprise and intrigue by a God who relates to him from different aspects and directions. Solomon is flabbergasted. God has rocked his world. He sits in amazement at the ways that God chooses to touch his life.

This is how God works in the life of someone who has been spiritually bankrupted. His spirit is broken; he is exhausted with his own efforts, and lays his heart out before God. Like Adam, he first runs away and covers his shame with the closest thing he can find. In Adams case, it was fig leaves. Adam is lost and destitute, having his relationship with God severed. No more evening walks with God.

Adam does not search for God. God comes looking for Adam. And so the relationship has been restored, Adam and Eve removed from the Garden of Eden so they can’t eat of the tree of life and live forever in their mortal condition. By God’s grace he leads them out into a world that will one day bring death and then immortality and incorruptibility at the day of resurrection. He has extended to them His mercy and not His judgment.

And so this is how we must restore our relationship with God. We must abandon ourselves, and by this I mean all of our resources we use to understand God from our perspective. God must come to us and relate to us from His perspective. How He does this is both awesome and wondrous.

God doesn’t shove theology into our faces. He approaches this relationship with supreme knowledge of our most inner selves. He knows everything that makes us tick, what moves us, what hinders us, and what is right and wrong about us. He doesn’t judge us; have unrealistic expectations, or an agenda other than healing what is broken. And in this way we begin to know Him—which is the true intent of theology.

His character is complex. We will never know Him completely, but He wants us to try. Knowing our weakness and our strengths, He comes to us as an Eagle, spreading His protective wings over us. He comes as a wise serpent provoking our attention. He comes as a ship in the sea, tacking in different directions, getting us off course, confusing us with the wind direction, but always calming the sea when we have called upon Him for help. He approaches us with the tenderness of a lover.

He’s the Spirit that comforts. He is the Father who protects and corrects. He is the husband that relates to us intimately. He is in Solomon’s own words, wonderful and mysterious. We know we are in a relationship with Him when we feel off balance and dizzy. We cannot initiate this relationship. All we can do is respond to it.

Dr. Michael Brown

I have not posted anything for the last couple of weeks because I have been reading and writing--things I felt not compelled to blog. But in my eternal quest for messianic believers I have found someone that I feel very much compelled to share with you. The web sit is below. I believe you will find it very interesting if you are seeking messianic relevance in your walk with the Lord, or if you are seeking truth from a messianic perspective. Dr. Michael Brown is a Messianic Jew who has been a follower of Yeshua for thirty-eight years. He has written many books and has debated with rabbinic Jews. Shalom.

http://www.realmessiah.com/