I made mention of this in my message yesterday and thought it might give someone a ray of hope as they struggle with their difficulties. It is written by Dr. Bob Griffin. I wish you could know the whole story, but this gives you a glimpse of what he has gone through the last ten years. It also reminds us that nothing is impossible with God!

Reflection: Ten years ago on Mother’s Day I broke my foot. No pain. Wife
looked at toes (2 at 90 degree right angle from side of foot). She reset
them. Still no pain. On Monday May 12, 2003 I went to the foot doctor for
x-rays and a “boot”. He was more concerned with “no pain”, no feeling at
all.

Later in May 2003 I went to the neurologist for intensive testing to find
out why I could do such damage (I was in a wheel chair by then) and no
feeling. Found out I had rapidly progressing Profound Neuropathy – death of
nerves in my feet. The only sensations I had were “phantom” burning,
cracking, smashing, not based in real injury. Tell THAT to the brain.

July 2003 we returned to see how this condition was improving. It wasn’t; it
was getting worse exponentially. My loss of all nerve function now raced up
to my knees (I flat-lined the testing for conductivity and they kept poking
needles all over my body until I bled). I had little nerve function left in
my hands and arms.

The doctor soberly looked at me and Teresa and said at this rate, the nerve
loss would reach my lungs in a few months and that I would die a slow,
agonizing death over the next year or two. He warned about “quack
treatments” and said there was no cure. This was a thousand times worse than
the diabetic neuropathy that often leads to amputations; mine was fatal.

We were in shock. His last words were to go home, make my will, say my
good-byes to family and friends, take a long trip, spend my money and live
with 8-9-10 level pain 24.7. Get ready to suffer and die. Thanks for the
sweet bedside manner. Grrrr.

That was ten years ago. I moped a bit, questioned God a lot, whined about
being pushed around in a wheelchair by my ever-patient saintly wife (who
also was digesting this horrible prognosis). We and others around the world
prayed. We sought natural health alternative treatments and supplements to
help with this condition. In September 2003 I began therapy to learn to
balance and walk (without feeling in my legs I simply tried to look and let
my eyes replace my nerves; I learned to let my inner ear to the work of
balance). Blindfolded. Trussed in a harness so the therapists could keep me
from falling. Walking on squishing deep foam. I learned.

So ten years have passed. I progressed from wheelchair, to crutches, to
walker, to cane and now nothing. I can now jog, ride a bike, swim, hike
around Wyoming and climb mountains. I am 90% free of pain. I love to
travel the world (and spend money – following doctor’s orders, you know). I
pastor a church, am CFO in my wife’s clinic, and just got in from
roto-tilling the garden and after a break will head off to mow the lawn a
second round this spring (hey – I was shoveling 20″ of snow a couple weeks
ago). I still have no nerve function . . but the condition STOPPED its
progression and even a bit of the damaged areas seem to be somewhat better.

Ten years. God is faithful and the Blessed Controller of all things. This
morning mulling over His goodness I am reminded to “count my blessings”.
Every day is a gift from God; that’s why I call it the “present”. He alone
gets the glory for my salvation, glory in every day of my life and glory
even in the day when, like the Pillsbury Doughboy, He pokes me and says
“You’re done” and I get to die.

I get to die. But then, last I checked, nobody gets out of this life alive.

As the evidence continues to pile-up that there was a cover-up because there was a mess-up regarding Benghazi you would think that the impeachment of Obama and the punishment of other guilty parties would be a no brainer. But, sadly, it seems we have reached the place that the majority doesn’t really care. Even if there was evidence that the president had shot his mother, his supporters would probably say, “She deserved it. She got what she had coming”. He can do no wrong in their eyes.

I would like to think that there are enough decent, God-fearing patriots left in America to make sure that the guilty parties are punished. But, I’ve got my doubts! Time will tell and the outcome will tell much about the type of times we will face in the future. Think about it!

After preaching on the subject of joy last Sunday, I could not help but notice this article when I saw it. When I started reading it I couldn’t stop, and when I finished, I had to read it again–I bet you will want to do the same, and I suggest you do. It was written by Elaine Stedman, widow of Bro. Ray Stedman. I had no idea that she was such a gifted writer. I think you will be blessed by what she says:

Eliminate my guilt and fears, create a trouble-free environment, pay all my debts, perfect my relationships; give me a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and a “thou” beside me singing in the wilderness–that is a capsulated form of the joy formula we are fed from infancy to senility. But the contradictions are everywhere. Without guilt and fear we become reckless of consequences. In a trouble-free environment we become insensitive and lazy. Owing nothing, we become arrogant. We’re stunted and dwarfed by easy relationships. The bread molds, the wine intoxicates, the “thou” either threatens or bores, and we are left to sing the modern lyric: “I don’t know where we both went wrong, but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.”

“The feeling’s gone.” Perhaps these words are a significant cue to what joy really is, and we may ask whether it is indeed adequate to describe it as merely feeling or sensation. An emotional high is easily daunted, highly fragile, perilously insecure. It is threatened by tests and trials, by tensions, ill health, and fluctuating relationships. When “everything’s going my way,” as another songwriter puts it, one may feel joyful, but the odds for that combination of circumstances are small, the duration transient, and when everything goes our way, it is likely to be at someone else’s expense, as well as self-defeating in the long run.

When I was a small child, I was intrigued with our Montana bluebirds, and I remember my dad remarking, with a wry grin, that I could catch one if I would just put salt on its tail. If we make a landmark of the feeling of exaltation that comes from everything going our way, we can spend a lifetime trying to capture bluebirds by dubious means. We have all experienced the frustration of trying to recapture a fond memory from our childhood, an exhilarating adventure, an expired romance, only to find that it was unrepeatable, simply because that unique set of circumstances could not be reproduced.

It would be harmless enough to savor past emotional highs, except that we are all too prone to live in the present on the basis of some memory now become fantasy. Many marriages and friendships have been blighted, some broken, because joy became a command performance, a demand, rather than a by-product. Many have become bitter, hostile, and resentful because some brief period of emotional delight cannot be reproduced or perpetuated, and the supply of either salt or bluebirds has been exhausted.

But joy cannot be catalogued, spindled, or preserved. When pursued it becomes elusive. It comes unbidden and unrehearsed when the mind and heart are free of coercion and demand. Genuine joy is ingenuous, not ingenious–the subtle but significant difference between a product and a production. Authentic joy results from a quality of life, an inner attitude. It surprises the simple and eludes the sophisticated.

Know how to be joyful? the world asks. Buy pleasure; pay any price. Pursue it with body, soul, and spirit. Prostitute your body, perjure your soul, and placate your spirit. Eat, drink, and be merry; who cares about tomorrow? But tomorrow persistently arrives, and demands the price for yesterday’s small joys, leaving the celebrant bankrupt and regretful.

Then a new voice is heard, a magic word: change! Change your residence, toothpaste, religion, spouse, deodorant, furniture, eating habits. Move to a new neighborhood, take a South Sea island cruise, adopt a new ideology. Or, in the event all these have been tried and failed, retreat from society. Drop out of the rat race; bury yourself in fantasy or some esoteric notion. Or if the adrenalin still runs high, rebel–raise an angry fist and shout out your frustrations, voice your outrage! Invest every energy in changing (or is it punishing?) a world that has robbed you of joy!

Still, in the small sensual joys, there is the hint of a larger, nobler satisfaction, a joy that will endure to quench a deeper thirst, to feed a greater hunger. There is yet another voice. Quiet and tranquil, yet persistent and pervading, it has sought to be heard in the quiet moments of despair, in the restless moments of anxiety, as well as in the small but fleeting joys of beauty and laughter. Pursue it we must! This is the voice of One who calls to us in the small illusions, the elusive encounters with small joys designed to speak of the gigantic joy for which we were created. Hear the voice of Jesus:

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.”(John 15:10-14)

One brief summary from the lips of Jesus, and already there is the joy of discovery! Hear the voice of the One who designed us for joy: Obey me: Love as I love you! Both the means and the end are revealed in his loving command. Joy is the by-product of love, God’s love. It is the certain consequence, as well as the clear evidence, of godly love. We will attempt to sketch this beautiful plan God has made for joy through love.

Meanwhile, beware the imitations. Neither love nor joy is genuine apart from God who is Love. We can only effect shabby imitations of the real thing. So long as we persist in building monuments to small joys, trying to content ourselves with the symbol rather than the reality it represents, we must be willing to live with fantasy and illusion and settle for its consequences.

The God of love calls to us in our emotional highs and our emotional lows. When we respond to him the reward is gigantic and eternal joy.(www.RayStedman.org)