Does your faith need strengthening? Are you confused and wondering if Jesus Christ is really "The Way, the Truth, and the Life?" "Fight for Your Faith" is a blog filled with interesting and thought provoking articles to help you find the answers you are seeking. Jesus said, "Seek and ye shall find." In Jeremiah we read, "Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall seek for Me with all your heart." These articles and videos will help you in your search for the Truth.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Ainda Temos muito a Aprender

D. Brandt Berg

Errar é bom. Mantém a pessoa humilde. Erro muito. Se não fosse pelos nossos erros, provavelmente ficaríamos bem orgulhosos, achando-nos uns “santos”. Mas, ao que parece, o Senhor permite que cometamos erros para nos manter humildes.

O próprio apóstolo Paulo tinha um espinho na carne, que concluiu servir para mantê-lo humilde.[1] Ele era um sujeito bastante orgulhos, fariseu dos fariseus, um rabino. Depois da sua fabulosa conversão, que ajudou a torná-lo humilde, e inclusive o deixou cego por um tempo, Paulo abraçou a fé cristã e se tornou um grande expoente na propagação da fé, um grande evangelista e missionário. Ele até recebia revelações. Tudo isso pode tê-lo deixado bastante orgulhoso de ser um cristão notável, com certeza o maior de todos os apóstolos.

A Igreja Católica coloca Pedro como o maior apóstolo e ele foi maravilhoso. Sempre muito ousado, mas também impetuoso, impulsivo e impaciente. Pedro se assemelhava bastante ao rei Davi. Ambos cometeram erros, mas foi o que o Senhor usou para mantê-los humildes. E isso sempre me deu muita esperança para mim mesmo.

Paulo disse que achava que por isso precisava de um espinho na carne. Não sabemos exatamente do que se tratava. Mas, com base em alguns versículos podemos presumir se tratar de um problema de vista. Talvez isso fosse em parte o seu espinho na carne[2]. Ele disse: “Vede com que grandes letras vos escrevo” e, “alguns de vós, se possível, arrancaríeis os próprios olhos e mos daríeis”.

Paulo teve de admitir que estava sendo atormentado por um demônio, “esbofeteado por um mensageiro de Satanás”. Ali estava ele, o cristão mais notável, o maior missionário, evangelista, professor e rabino. Parecia que tinha todos os dons. Recebia revelações, era um grande conhecedor da Palavra, tinha uma mente brilhante. Ele era o máximo! No entanto, tinha um espinho na carne, um mensageiro de Satanás, um espírito maligno que o atormentava.[3] Isso era uma praga na sua vida, algo que o incomodava sobremaneira.

Cristo prometeu que nunca nos deixará nem desamparará. Ele jamais permitirá que caiamos, seremos sempre dEle. São muitas as promessas que nos garantem que pertencemos a Jesus e que o Diabo não pode tomar posse de nós. Mas com certeza ele pode nos atormentar, e nos colocar à prova, exatamente como fez com Jó.

Vejam todos os problemas que ele causou ao pobre Jó! Destruiu seu lar, seu gado, sua riqueza, matou todos os seus filhos, e depois o deixou tão mal fisicamente que sua própria esposa sugeriu que ele amaldiçoasse a Deus e morresse.[4] Mas finalmente Jó se tornou humilde. Até então ele se considerava justo, uma ótima pessoa e defendia a opinião que tinha de si ao argumentar com os que lhe faziam companhia supostamente para o “consolar”. Na verdade, não eram lá tão consoladores. Passavam o tempo todo acusando Jó de algum pecado. “Você deve ter feito algo errado, caso contrário não estaria passando por tudo isso.”

Até Deus Se gabava de Jó e da sua bondade! Mas o Diabo é o promotor, o acusador dos Santos. É o detetive, um intrometido que fica bisbilhotando para descobrir nossas fraquezas, problemas e tentar agravá-los. E qual era o problema do Jó? — Uma atitude presunçosa.

Um dos seus acusadores acertou em cheio quando disse: “Jó, pode um homem porventura ser mais justo do que Deus?”[5] Jó afirmava e argumentava ser justo. Dizia: “Como é possível? Por que eu, Senhor? Por que Você fez isso comigo sendo que sou tão bom?” Ele se considerava uma ótima pessoa, um justo. E isso em si já é um pecado. Na realidade, ele pensava: “Deus, se eu fosse Você, não faria isto comigo. Por que Você não é tão justo quanto eu? Por que está fazendo isso comigo que sou tão bom?”

Já me disseram: “Por que você simplesmente não ora pedindo ao Senhor para curar o seu problema nos olhos? Ele pode lhe dar uma visão perfeita! Por que você não ora e pede para o Senhor lhe dar uma saúde 100%, curá-lo e nunca mais deixá-lo ficar doente?” Alguns cristãos acreditam que ninguém deveria ser pobre, ficar doente nem ter problemas. Dizem que o cristão deveria estar sempre na melhor situação. Pregam abundância e riqueza — e praticam também: saúde perfeita e dinheiro no bolso. Eu costumava incomodar alguns desses pastores, porque sempre questionava esse pensamento.

Eu dizia: “Se pobreza é pecado e doença é sinal de pecado, por que diz de Jesus que ‘embora fosse rico se fez pobre, para que pela Sua pobreza nós fôssemos ricos’?[6] Você está dizendo então que Jesus foi um pecador ímpio por se tornar pobre para que nós pudéssemos ser ricos? E sofreu todas aquelas coisas como nós?”

Imaginem, o Senhor do universo, o Rei dos reis, o Mestre do universo, veio à Terra e assumiu a ridícula forma humana, sujeitando-se a tentações de todos os tipos, como nós![7] Foi como se um rei se fantasiasse de palhaço! Gosto da maneira como retrataram Jesus no filme “The Parable”. Eles mostram Jesus como um rei grandioso que veio à terra e se vestiu de palhaço, algo ridículo, como é o de caso assumir a forma humana. E as pessoas zombaram dEle durante a crucificação, enquanto o matavam.

Viver na forma humana é bem humilhante! Somos dependentes em todos os sentidos. Ainda não encontrei ninguém que não precisasse se alimentar, ou dormir para permanecer vivo. Algumas pessoas se orgulham de jejuar por bastante tempo. Houve uma época nos Estados Unidos em que era moda jejuar. O nome do livro que disseminava essa ideia era Atomic Power with God Through Fasting and Prayer (Poder Atômico com Deus através do Jejum e da Oração). Diziam que era possível ganhar os dons do Espírito e o poder de Deus dependendo do tempo se jejuasse. Se a pessoa ficasse em jejum durante cinco dias, conseguia isso, 30 dias, conseguia aquilo e se aguentasse 40 dias, então se tornava um profeta de Deus!

Até hoje nunca conheci alguém que conseguisse ficar sem respirar. Dependemos do oxigênio a cada instante. No Novo Testamento usa-se a palavra “pneuma” para ar. Quando se fala de pneu é em referência a pneumático, a ar, como no caso da bomba de ar. Em grego usa-se a palavra pneuma, a mesma utilizada no Novo Testamento quando se refere a espírito. Assim como não é possível passar muito tempo sem ar, também não se sobrevive por muito tempo sem o espírito. O cristão não vai durar muito sem o EspíritoSanto. Precisamos de oxigênio, de ar, precisamos do nosso espírito e do Espírito Santo. Algumas pessoas já passaram pela experiência de ver o espírito deixar o corpo temporariamente. O corpo ficou morto por um tempinho e depois a pessoa voltou à vida. Vou lhe dizer, se o espírito não tivesse voltado, o corpo teria morrido de vez.

Como sabemos que não somos justos? “Pois todos pecaram e carecem da glória de Deus.”[8] “Não há um justo, nem um sequer.”[9] O pobre Jó finalmente teve de admitir que não era justo e que precisava confiar no Senhor, não na sua própria justiça. E foi o que fez. Confessou que devia confiar apenas no Senhor, e quando sua esposa lhe disse para amaldiçoar a Deus e morrer, Jó respondeu: “Ainda que me mate, nEle confiarei”.[10] Em outras palavras, ele estava dando testemunho da justiça de Deus. “Mesmo que Deus memate, vou confiar que Ele sabe o que é melhor, que é justo em tudo o que faz e permite.”

Todos somos uma grande bagunça! Somos pecadores! Se não fosse pelo Senhor em nós, seríamos todos ruins. “O coração é perverso mais do que todas as coisas; quem o conhecerá?”[11] A Palavra de Deus diz que nascemos em pecado. “Em pecado me concebeu minha mãe.”[12]

Se não tivéssemos a fragilidade humana, as fraquezas inerentes ao ser humano que nos levam a tomar decisões erradas e falhar, não teríamos a liberdade de escolha, a grande honra da vontade própria, de poder decidir, que é um elemento implantado por Deus em cada coração —inclusive no dos anjos. Isso nos capacita a optar, por livre e espontânea vontade, a amar e servir a Deus.

Jesus disse: “Não vos chamarei servos, mas amigos, porque o Senhor não conta tudo aos seus servos, seus escravos.”[13] Ele nos queria como amigos, pessoas amadas. E não apenas amigos, mas a Sua Noiva.

A vida é um processo de aprendizagem. E não se aprende com um estalar de dedos ou uma injeção. E nem ocorre como se vê em alguns filmes de ficção científica em que colocam um capacete na pessoa e transferem o conteúdo do seu cérebro para o de outra pessoa. Seria ótimo se acontecesse assim, não acham? Seria muito fácil! Mas vejam o que perderíamos: todo o processo de tentativa e erro, de aprendizagem.

Não acham que Deus gosta de nos ver aprender? Mesmo que seja por meio de erros, de tentativa e erro? Não acham que aprendemos melhor dessa forma? A experiência não é o melhor professor? O processo de aprendizagem é algo maravilhoso. É para isso que estamos aqui. Na verdade, a vida do cristão é um processo de aprendizagem constante. Não estou dizendo que se aprende a ficar salvo, pois ganhamos a salvação assim que cremos e aceitamos Jesus no coração. Quando acreditamos na Palavra e recebemos Jesus, ficamos salvos na mesma hora! É um dom, um presente, sem ligação alguma com aprendizagem ou merecimento!

É um milagre de Deus. Ele faz a obra completa. Na verdade, já fez e está consumada. Mas é apenas o início da aprendizagem para sabermos como o cristão deve viver, para aprendermos a amar ao próximo e a Deus, e como sermos fieis, leais e diligentes.

Então ainda temos de morrer, depois mais mil anos e toda a eternidade para continuarmos aprendendo aquilo que não conseguimos assimilar durante a vida física, em carne e osso. Acho que Deus ainda vai nos ensinar coisas fantásticas, tudo que não conseguimos aprender nesta vida.

Não só esta vida, mas o Milênio e a eternidade nos oferecem um processo constante de aprendizado, mais uma série, como na escola, mais um degrau. É inconcebível tomarmos uma injeção na cabeça na hora da morte, irmos para o Céu e então nos tornarmos oniscientes. Se fosse assim, todos seríamos como Deus. Só Deus é onisciente, ou seja, sabe tudo. Só Deus é onipresente, em outras palavras, está em todo lugar. E só Deus éonipotente, ou seja, todo-poderoso!

Na próxima vida, muitas coisas deixarão de existir, tais como a dor, a morte, as doenças e os pesares.[14] Deus não diz que não haverá mais lágrimas, mas que Eleenxugará nossas lágrimas. Graças a Deus temos muito pelo que estar agradecidos. Muitas coisas vão se realizar e consumar e nunca mais teremos de nos preocuparmos com elas. Teremos tantas coisas novas para fazer e aprender, que não poderemos carregar o peso das coisas antigas.

Então, fiquem agradecidos pelo passado. Agradecidos pelo presente, por estaremaprendendo, mesmo que nem sempre tenham um desempenho exemplar. E agradeçam a Deus pelo futuro, quando então concluiremos nosso trabalho. É o que esperamos. Pelo menos daremos continuidade ao nosso trabalho e com um desempenho muito melhor.

Senhor, nós Lhe agradecemos pelo passado, pelo presente e pelo futuro. Muito obrigado por todas as bênçãos que nos concede. Obrigado pelas coisas boas e ruins, pelas ruins que foram nossos mestres no passado, pelas coisas boas que temos hoje e pelasmelhores que teremos no futuro.

Publicado originalmente em junho 1985. Adaptado e republicado em fevereiro 2014. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli.


[1] 2 Coríntios 12:7 RC.

[2] Gálatas 6:11; 4:15 RC.

[3] 2 Coríntios 12:7 RC.

[4] Jó 2:9 RC.

[5] Jó 4:17 RC.

[6] 2 Coríntios 8:9 RC.

[7] Hebreus 4:15 RC.

[8] Romanos 3:23 RC.

[9] Romanos 3:10 RC.

[10] Jó 13:15 RC.

[11] Jeremias 17:9 RC.

[12] Salmo 51:5 RC.

[13] João 15:15 RC.

[14] Apocalipse 21:4 RC.

Life as a Climb

By Anna Perlini

The other day some friends took me on what I thought would be a short climb. We parked the car and took a look at the summit. We got out our climbing gear and started putting on our boots and gathering what we needed in our backpacks.

It doesn’t seem that far or that difficult. Good! I thought.

During the winter I had suffered a knee injury and subsequently felt a bit out of shape. In any case, I was just looking forward to something simple.

We started walking along the path uphill and my legs soon began to hurt, I lacked breath, and all the while I was still hoping it would be a short climb. Then the path changed into a rockier, winding trail. We were still in the woods that, although green and beautiful, were enveloping us and keeping us from seeing any kind of view around us. I knew we must have been making some progress, judging by the time, but it wasn’t until we came out of the woods and stopped by a gorgeous lookout point that we could actually see the progress we’d made and the height yet to conquer in order to reach the top.

Those few minutes spent admiring the breathtaking view over the lake beneath us, taking a picture and a sip of water, encouraged us and gave us the feeling that we were doing good and making progress, even though the summit still seemed quite far.

Then the path turned into a climb. At this point I could feel myself beginning to panic a little. The sky had been gathering dark clouds, and right then a few ominous raindrops started falling, making the rock slippery. We met others along the way, some experienced climbers, some attempting it for the first time. The uncertainty of the weather made everyone feel a common trepidation. And who knows, maybe others were praying, as I was. The rain stopped but the clouds remained. It wasn’t an easy climb and it required some stretching for sure, but the view got more intriguing and majestic over time. It definitely made it worth it all.

At one point, on a particularly difficult passage, my more experienced friend whispered in my ear, “You are doing good, you know. There are others climbing today who are having a much harder time.” Those few words had a profound effect on me: they got my eyes off myself and my personal struggle. I took a look at the young girl climbing for the first time, who looked worried. She was slowly making it too, helped by her friend. I smiled at her and said a few words. Once more I realized how important encouragement can be. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”1

And finally, the top!

There’s always something exhilarating about reaching the summit, no matter how tough the climb, but this time a magical sense of peace inundated my soul, bringing tears to my eyes. By God’s help I made it. He was with me all along the way. He lifted me when I thought I could not make it one more step. I was now able to see the whole path that took me to the top. Many turns were needed in order to get up here, and they made the journey richer—not easier, but definitely more interesting and exciting.

On the way back to the car I couldn’t help but reflect on some of the events that have taken place in my life. When you are in the thick of the forest and on a hard uphill climb, it’s often hard to make sense of things or understand where you are standing, or, for that matter, to gather the strength and the conviction to keep going. All you can feel is the sweat, the strain, the tiredness. In that moment it’s so easy and even understandable to give up and turn back, and to be honest, a few times I have been so tempted to!

I can only thank Jesus and the power of the Word ingrained in us through years of studying and living it. Thank you also, dear friends, for the encouragement you’ve given me along the way. Your prayers, your love, and your example have definitely helped me make it this far!


1 Proverbs 25:11.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Finding Serenity - Anchor Devotional

A compilation

I have visited Calcutta, India, a place of poverty, death, and irremediable human problems. There, the nuns trained by Mother Teresa serve the poorest, most miserable people on the planet: half-dead bodies picked up from the streets of Calcutta. The world stands in awe at the sisters’ dedication and the result of their ministry, but something about these nuns impresses me even more: their serenity. If I tackled such a daunting project, I would likely be scurrying about, faxing press releases to donors, begging for more resources, gulping tranquilizers, grasping at ways to cope with my mounting desperation. Not these nuns.

Their serenity traces back to what takes place before their day’s work begins. At four o’clock in the morning, long before the sun, the sisters rise, awakened by a bell and the call, “Let us bless the Lord.” “Thanks be to God,” they reply. Dressed in spotless white saris, they file into the chapel, where they sit on the floor, Indian-style, and pray and sing together. On the wall of the plain chapel hangs a crucifix with the words, “I thirst.” Before meeting their first “client,” they immerse themselves in worship and in the love of God.

I sense no panic in the sisters who run the Home for the Dying and Destitute in Calcutta. I see concern and compassion, yes, but no obsession over what did not get done. In fact, early on in their work Mother Teresa instituted a rule that her sisters take Thursdays off for prayer and rest. “The work will always be here, but if we do not rest and pray, we will not have the presence to do our work,” she explained. These sisters are not working to complete a caseload sheet for a social service agency. They are working for God. They begin their day with him; they end their day with him, back in the chapel for night prayers; and everything in between they present as an offering to God. God alone determines their worth and measures their success.—Philip Yancey1

*

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.2

Have you prayed and prayed and waited and waited, and still there is no manifestation?

Are you tired of seeing nothing move? Are you just at the point of giving it all up? Perhaps you have not waited in the right way.

“With patience wait.”3 Patience takes away worry.

He said He would come, and His promise is equal to His presence. Patience takes away your weeping. Why feel sad and despondent? He knows your need better than you do, and His purpose in waiting is to bring more glory out of it all. Patience takes away self-works. The work He desires is that you “believe,”4 and when you believe, you may then know that all is well. Patience takes away all want. Your desire for the thing you wish is perhaps stronger than your desire for the will of God to be fulfilled in its arrival.

Patience takes away all weakening, all wobbling. … God's foundations are steady, and when His patience is within us, we are steady while we wait. Patience gives worship. A praiseful patience sometimes “long-suffering with joyfulness”5 is the best part of it all. “Let (all these phases of) patience have her perfect work,”6 while you wait and you will find great enrichment.—C. H. P.7

*

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.8

When you retire at night, you do not worry all night lest the bed break down. Neither do you hold on to something for fear of falling. Very little rest would you find in that way. No! You simply trust yourself to the bed and just rest. Thus we should trust ourselves wholly to Jesus, and “cease from our own works as God did from His.”9 “We that believe do enter into rest.” Why? Because someone else is going to do [the work] for us. God requires us to yield and trust in Him and His Word. Trust for all you need. Trust with all your heart. Trust all the time. … Commit! And then committed, trust His Word!—Mrs. Charles E. Cowman10

*

If you don’t know what to do, stop! Get quiet and wait for God to do something. The worst thing in the world you can do is to keep on going when you don’t know what to do. That was King Saul’s mistake. He kept right on going, even after he didn’t know what to do; he figured he had to keep busy and keep going no matter what—and it lost him the kingdom.11

Getting quiet before the Lord shows you have faith that God is going to handle the situation, that He’s going to take care of things for you. It shows you trust the Lord. “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”12 … If you’re confused, worrying, fretting, and fuming, then you’re not trusting. You don’t have the faith you ought to have. Trusting is a picture of complete rest and peace of mind, heart, and spirit. You may have to continue working, but your attitude and spirit are calm.

When you truly trust the Lord, you can have peace in the midst of storm and calm in the eye of the hurricane. That’s when your faith gets tested, in the midst of turmoil. Quietness is a sign of faith.—David Brandt Berg13

*

“Take … no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”14

The reason our Lord gives against anxiety for the future is that we have nothing to do with the future. God gives us life by days, little single days. Each day has its own duties, its own needs, its own trials and temptations, its own grief and sorrows. God always gives us strength enough for the day as He gives it, with all that He puts into it. But if we insist on dragging back tomorrow’s cares and piling them on top of today’s, our strength will not be enough for the load. God will not add strength just to humor our whims of anxiety and distrust.

So the lesson is that we should keep each day distinct and attend strictly to what it brings us. Charles Kingsley says: “Do today’s duty, fight today’s temptation, and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.” We really have nothing to do with the future, save to prepare for it by doing with faithfulness the duties of today.

We can always get along with our heaviest load for one day till the sun goes down. Tomorrow? You may have no tomorrow; you may be in heaven. If you are here, God will be here too, and you will receive new strength sufficient for the new day.—J. R. Miller15

Published on Anchor February 2014. Read by Bethany Kelly.


1 Reaching for the Invisible God (Zondervan, 2000).

2 Psalm 37:7.

3 Romans 8:25.

4 John 6:29.

5 Colossians 1:11.

6 James 1:4.

7 Streams in the Desert, Volume 1 (Zondervan, 1965).

8 Psalm 37:5.

9 Hebrews 4:10.

10 Streams in the Desert, Volume 2 (Zondervan, 1977).

11 1 Samuel 13:7–14.

12 Isaiah 26:3.

13 God Online (Aurora Production, 2001).

14 Matthew 6:34.

15 Come Ye Apart: Meditations on the Four Gospels.

Remembering to Pray

By Roy Hoffman, NY Times, Feb. 4, 2014

Sometimes, toward end of day, I jog on a beach nearby on Mobile Bay. As the sun is sinking I look out at the pelicans wheeling in the sky, the fishermen on Fairhope Pier casting their nets, sailboats and channel markers changing to silhouette.

Like many who make their way here to enjoy sunset, snapping photos, sipping cocktails, relaxing on benches, I find this light on water a joy to behold. I breathe deeply as I run—the Gulf Coast winter is mild, a sweatshirt enough to ward off the chill—and feel happy just to be alive.

I am in good health, enjoy a loving family and many trusted friends. I have worked as journalist, novelist, teacher, had great jobs, lost others; made more money, less money. I’ve traveled the world.

On this day, I sprint up a hill and come to a promontory looking out to the sweep of the bay, the horizon red and orange, and another impulse comes up in me.

It is not enough to take a photo, call a friend, jot a line in my notebook, be philosophical. Like the light, the feeling is orchestral, a welling-up of emotion.

I want to speak in a way that used to be easy for me as a child: silently, intensely, embracing the mysteries.

I want to pray.

It is a matter of remembering, after so long, just how.

Lighting Sabbath candles, being bar mitzvahed, participating in the temple youth group. I grew up in Mobile with a clear sense of religious conviction.

As a Jew in the Bible Belt, I was in a minority. There are 9,000 of us in Alabama, a state of four million people, a quarter of them Southern Baptist.

While some Christians worried for me, even preached to me, because I was not “saved,” others were curious, respectful. I was, after all, often the only Jew they knew.

As years went on, I took a course in comparative religion, enjoyed religious holidays, Passover in particular, and identified proudly with my faith.

But somewhere along the way, I’d stopped truly praying. Indeed, I wasn’t so sure about God at all. The matter seemed irrelevant. I was too busy.

The biggest fight I ever had with my father was shortly after I turned 21, when, drunk on a bottle of whiskey a friend had given me for my birthday, I proclaimed myself an atheist. He followed me into the backyard, and outraged, pinned me against the fence. His parents had fled Eastern Europe because of their beliefs. Who was I to dismiss them? I expressed my contempt for all that was conventional. His faith, I told him, was a crutch. An opiate. I had heard that somewhere before.

In the decades that followed, awed by time’s extremes—becoming a parent, losing a parent—and feeling my own mortality, I eventually found my way back to believing, but for a long time not with the same fervor.

Working as a writer for my hometown newspaper in Mobile, I was asked, in 2009, to cover the religion beat.

For the next three years, until becoming a casualty of newspaper layoffs, I carried my reporter’s pad into a plenitude of Catholic and Protestant churches, Mobile’s two synagogues, a mosque, a Buddhist temple and the homes of Hindus and Baha’i.

Southern Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Church of Christ, Church of God, AME, AME Zion, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Greek Orthodox, Pentecostals, Holiness, nondenominationals—the Deep South’s religiosity was everywhere.

There were stories that broke my heart, like the one of a Methodist pastor in north Alabama who had to find strength in her faith when her little girl was killed in a tornado; and others that intrigued me, like the jailhouse conversion of a Klansman.

I was skeptical, but deeply curious, seeing people all around me healed during a tent revival. When I shadowed a hospital chaplain, I watched patients, without doubt, perk up at his arrival.

During Ramadan, invited to the home of a Turkish couple to write about their meal after a day of fasting, I not only enjoyed a rare, Middle Eastern feast in south Alabama, but also appreciated their devotion to Islam.

I became fascinated by the intensity, in all varieties, of prayer.

And I’ve had my share of people praying for me, never asking about my own beliefs.

In Monroeville, Ala., I reported on Pilots for Christ, aviators who transport, free, cancer patients and others for treatment where needed. Before lunch, during grace, a pilot thanked God that I would enable more people to know about their mission, and asked for my divine protection.

After 60 years cloistered in a convent in Mobile, four Carmelite nuns visited with me one afternoon to tell about their lives devoted to prayer. Sister Rose, Sister Marie Therese, Sister Genevieve and Sister Elias, with an average age of 80, were no longer able to sustain their community. They had just moved to a nuns retirement home.

They told me about their decades behind the enclosure, and how they learned of people’s needs while staying isolated behind high walls. People would write down prayer requests and put them on a revolving shelf called “a turn” in the convent wall.

As we spoke I felt their sweetness, and intensity. In prayer they had found their calling. In prayer they had spent their lives.

When we said goodbye, they said, “God bless you.”

I felt lifted up.

Other people’s prayers have made me feel closer to my own.

I love the recitations at Sabbath services at my congregation, the communal feeling of voices raised together in Hebrew and English and the cantor’s chant.

And some prayers, in the sanctuaries of my making, like the bay at sunset, are the ones I compose.

Lines of the Psalms, images of nature, meditations that flow from the moment at hand: They move through me, silent yet resonant, a contemplation of mysteries that provide me, on a pilgrimage of a simple afternoon, a sense of exaltation.

“Dear God,” I begin, ”Whatever we call you / Wherever we find you / in the laughter of our children / the tenderness of our parents / the strength of our brothers and sisters and friends/the closeness of our companions and husbands and wives. / In the arc of the pelican/the leap of the mullet, / the perfect sunny day / or incoming storm / In whatever ways we understand you, / in a church or synagogue or mosque, / or on a beach beneath a starry sky, / we offer gratitude for this day.”

Pilot mocked God, until he ran out of fuel in a snowstorm

By Mark Ellis, Godreports, February 6, 2014

Raised in the secular Seventies, completely unchurched, he had no room for God until he ran out of fuel in an Alaskan storm, miles from his destination.

“I was a God mocker,” says Mark Rose, founder of Genesis Alive, and the author of Last of the Long Hunters, a story of the pilots who fly the Alaskan Arctic.

Rose learned to fly at 16, and by age 22 had become a bush pilot who helped to take care of a fleet of helicopters that worked on the Alaska pipeline. “My ego meter was on 101,” he admits.

One day he flew some hunters to the upper part of a large river on the Arctic. But on his return flight, carrying one passenger, several things went wrong. First, herds of caribou had moved in, covering his first and second choices for a landing spot. Then he began to run low on fuel, so he called ahead for a weather check at the small airport near Kotzebue, on the Baldwin Peninsula.

“Come on in, the weather’s fine,” the FAA flight service operator told him.

He decided to take the chance his fuel would hold out, but then weather conditions changed dramatically. “I ran into a snowstorm at night, and I couldn’t see the terrain, so I had to follow the gray ribbon of river below.” In the days before satellite weather imaging, the man had given him bad advice.

“All my options were evaporating as fast as I could fly.”

Rose had several friends—fellow pilots—who perished in similar flying conditions. There must be a way out, he thought. I don’t want to die at 22. I won’t get to experience marriage…

He had been flying on empty for 30 minutes. Then the engine started missing. “I was just waiting for silence and to have to crash at night.”

His mind turned to his very last option—God. Rose had never prayed before, but in desperation, he lifted up a silent prayer. If there is a God, I need your help now.

Then a voice spoke to him that was crystal clear. Son, you said the right thing. After he heard the voice, Rose also experienced the sensation of “a light bulb” that came on in his mind.

Immediately after his prayer, the plane popped out of the snowstorm. “Before me were the beautiful lights of Kotzebue—it might as well have been the lights of heaven,” he recalls.

There was only one problem—he still had to fly another 20 miles over the Kotzebue Sound, a broad expanse of salt water north of the Bering Sea.

“That was a breath-holder,” he says. When he landed safely at Kotzebue Airport, his humanist worldview collapsed. There was no earthly reason his plane should have traveled such a distance with no fuel.

Rose believes God added an hour of fuel to his tanks to save his life. “When I landed I was a different boy. I was not a Christian, but I was a believer in God.”

He thought about his grandmother, the only Christian in his family. So gramma was right; there is something out there, he thought.

Rose started to date a Christian woman who challenged him to read the Bible for the first time. As he read the pages of Scripture, something surprising happened. “I fell in love with the God of the Bible—his reasonableness, his forgiveness, his justice,” he recounts.

But his stubborn heart was still not ready to make Jesus his Savior and Lord.

Then he had another brush with death in a helicopter that crashed, which completely flattened the seat he rode in.

About the same time, he missed a flight with some of the lead contractors for the Alaskan pipeline due to a schedule conflict. Shortly after the plane took off, it crashed, killing everyone aboard.

Later, on a flight to Fairbanks on a bush aircraft, he began to reflect on his life. I’m not happy. This whole thing is not working, he admitted to himself.

Everything I read in the Bible is either a lie or its true. It’s all or nothing. From reading the Bible I understand God is my creator. If Jesus can raise someone from the dead and forgive my sins, that’s exactly what God has for me.

At that moment, Rose surrendered his life to Jesus Christ. “When I landed in Fairbanks I was a different boy, once again.”

Copyright © Fight for Your Faith