PRAYING AHEAD
T. Wieland Allen
A lesson well learned is worth passing on to other people in order for them to also glean an excellent result from their actions. A Christmas trip to California was the necessary occasion for the happenings which could have been catastrophic time-wise as far as the result but instead turned out to work in my favor.
My son De had planned to take to catch a commercial airplane in another town 50 miles away in order for me to ge to Sunny California for the holidays. He is always punctual and I was ready two hours and 15 minutes before the flight for him to load my two large pieces of luggage into my SUV and then we would drive the aforementioned SUV to the airport. We were well on our way in order to get me to the airport an hour and a half early in order to safely maneuver through security and get me to the gate where my flight was to depart. A problem had presented itself that morning in that fog was very dense and it was difficult to see beyond a few lengths of cars.
A few days prior to our leaving for the airport I had checked on my flight schedule and notice that an early bird check-in was available for extra charge of $15 per flight. Since I had purchased my ticket for a little over a mere five dollars because I had so many Rapid Rewards points, I decided on a "whim" to go ahead and give the extra money to the airline since their Rapid Rewards credit card which I had purchased had resulted in my taking flights to California almost free for several times a year. Yes, I felt like I owed it to the airlines for allowing me to use my credit card for only a fee of $69 a year and I received four to six flights for five dollars per flight.
I always thank my markdown angel who goes ahead of me and marks down everything I buy. The Rapid Rewards purchases go above and beyond the reason for which I got the credit card. In return, of course I did not have to wait and check in 24 hours before my flight in order to get a good number for standing in line for the flight. I would get an A number and be able to be at the front of the line at boarding time. Little did I know that that decision would be pertinent to my making it to the flight on time.
The day of the flight my son De and I were on our way with plenty of time for me to check in, get through security and line up for the flight, even driving in the dense fog which had formed very early in the morning. However, as we left the state highway and my son De drove my SUV onto the turnpike which takes us very close to the airport, De commented that the engine light on the car had come on. That had never happened. The power in my car slowed down but then De could get it up to 60 mph for a short time. As I said, this had never happened to me before. In fact, the car had never had any corrective maintenance in the 13 years I had owned it. We were on a turnpike with no place to turn around and go back to my house and exchange my SUV for De's pickup, so we decided to make it to the toll booth slowly since there was no real speed to the car, exit there and drive on the other side of the turnpike back to my house and hurriedly exchange cars. The SUV did not cooperate with our plans because a couple of miles on the return trip to my house the car lost all power and refused to start again. The engine light continued to proudly display on the dash.
That new situation left us with quite a dilemma, that being what to do since I had the purchased tickets to two towns in California and I had to notify the airlines within a certain time or I would lose the price of the tickets. There we sat, on the turnpike shoulder going in the direction of my town, not in the direction of the airport. I had, neglectfully, left AAA card in my wallet at home and the towing number for the Lincoln company didn't answer since it was Sunday. I started to call the airlines and cancel my flights but De insisted that he was going to get me to the airport in time although we were sitting in an inoperable car on the shoulder of a turnpike and time was flying by. We surmised that if we had been able to call AAA that it would probably take an hour for the tow truck to get there and I would never make it to catch the flight because if we went all the way back to my house by then, since some time had passed, it would be too late.
After discussing the matter a few minutes, I suddenly told De that we should call his wife because she might have a suggestion. He agreed, to which he called her and told her about our dilemma. She said that she would call a local tow truck, send it on the way and that her adult son Drew would drive their second pickup to our location on the turnpike, give us their pickup, and Drew would wait for the tow truck while my son De took me in their pickup to the airport. It was a workable plan but Drew had to drive from their house to where we were, which was 40 minutes from their house.
While waiting in the inoperable SUV for Drew in their pickup, a patrolman stopped to see if we were okay. We told him about our situation and I jokingly asked him if he wanted to take me to the airport. He laughed and said it was not legal for him to do that kind act.
Finally our rescuer Drew arrived in the alternate vehicle. The only problem was that we were a good 30 minutes from the airport and 30 minutes from our town. When Drew arrived he was amenable to waiting for the tow truck while my son took me to the airport in their pickup. We threw my luggage into the back of their pickup, jumped into the pickup after giving to Drew a credit card to use for the two truck and the keys to my SUV. We were on our way, but in the wrong direction.
De put the pedal to the medal and at least we were in an operable vehicle even though we were headed in the wrong direction. De was determined that he would get me to the airport on time, so he decided to use the emergency exit used only by the highway patrol and ambulances in order to get onto the other side of the turnpike. He pulled over onto the shoulder of the turnpike, allowed all cars to pass us, watched for a clear path in the opposite lane of the turnpike and drove his pickup so that it passed safely through the emergency exit with caution. After all, this was an emergency, not what the highway patrolman would consider one but it was a emergency to us.
While speedily driving to the airport De admitted to me that several times while driving to my house that morning the thought had come to him to take me to the airport in his pickup instead of taking my car. It was too late for me to lecture him on listening to that inner voice of God because the fog had not lifted so I wanted to avoid any conflict which would interfere with his safe driving. We could see the highway directly in front of us and we could see the lights of oncoming traffic but De still had to be very cautious.
We arrived at the airline entrance 15 minutes before the plane was supposed to leave the terminal and I still had to get my boarding pass, check my large luggage filled with gifts and go through the long security line before running down the long lengthy hall to the gate, which is not easy for an 84 year old lady to run that distance speedily, although I am in great shape.
I quickly lifted my large heavy luggage onto the appropriate place and told the young man at the counter my name and my destination. He told me that it was my "lucky" day, lucky in that I had gotten the early bird check-in but also lucky that the plane I was to board was delayed 25 minutes, just long enough for me to get to the gate. He handed a paper boarding pass to me, even though I had it electronically on my phone. Having observed in the past that sometimes the electronic boarding passes are hard to register at the gate, I took the boarding pass and ran to the escalator which took me to the crowded security area. The line was long, but at least the plane was going to be a late in taking off, so it finally looked like I was going to make it. De had dropped me off at the airline entrance while he parked the car because he didn't want to leave me there in case I hadn't make the flight. As I started the run down the long hall to the gate, I heard him calling my name, "Mom," and saw him outside of the security entrance waving at me. Every other mom in the airport was looking around to see if some offspring was calling her.
When I arrived breathless at the scheduled gate, the other passengers were lined up at the proper place and I slipped into my spot in line with the A31 numbered boarding pass for which I had paid for have early bird check-in four days earlier on a "whim", not knowing that it would be pertinent to my being able to leave on the flight. Also, I thanked God that, for the first time in the many, many years of flying that same flight that it had never been delayed except for the one time that I needed the extra time.
I made it but it took divine intervention to get me there and a son who was determined.
I had been a stressful situation but while waiting on De to pick me up that morning these words popped into my thoughts, "Don't fret. Don't worry. Have faith and take your hands off of the situation." When those words came to me that morning I had no idea that there would be a stressful situation that day, but there was, and those words kept going through my mind like a ticker tape, cuing me not to fret, not to worry, to have faith and to take my hands off of it. What else could I do anyway? I couldn't sprout wings and fly to the airport so I had to take my hands off and trust God.
Our Heavenly Father came through, as always. Now He gets the credit every time I tell the story. After all,, He wanted me to manage to take the trip to be with other loving family members to celebrate His Son's birthday. I felt like I had an engraved invitation. My own son had participated in the solution and his determination kept me calm and steady, even sitting on the turnpike.
The entire scenario reminded me of a scripture that says to pray for one another so that you will be healed. I belong to a Prayer Posse in which we pray intercessory prayers for other people. Lo and behold, God performed a miracle for me according to His Love.
He is truly the Best Dad!
Monday, January 6, 2020
Thursday, December 12, 2019
REMARKABLE AND UNBELIEVE INSTANT TRANSFORMSTION
REMARKABLE AND UNBELIEVABLE INSTANT TRANSFORMATION
T. Wieland Allen
I used to marvel at the story in the Bible about Saul who met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascas and immediately became a new creature in his spirit, soul and body with the new name of Paul. The fact that he had harassed, abused and even killed Christians in his vocation didn't keep God from completely transforming him supernaturally and using him in a mighty way to bring the Gentiles into the body of Christ.
In my early marriage to my husband, Stephen Allen was a drunkard and often proud of it. That demon of drunkenness created havoc in our marriage, in our finances, in the lives of our children and in our family life. Our children and I lived in hell on earth but to the outside world we looked like the ideal family because we hid the abuse and Stephen's intense anger that caused us to walk on eggshells, constantly fearing his outbursts for every little infraction of his ideals and expectations of us. We lived many, many years in that horrible hell.
Eventually, however, Stephen had a miraculous encounter with Jesus Christ also, like Paul, and his story is worth telling. The most marvelous part of the story is that I had nothing to do with the miracle, I just prayed hours a day in the intercessory language of the Holy Spirit, praying for peace in our lives. The prayers of the Holy Spirit in His prayer language was my retreat from the reality of the hell in which I lived.
First I must tell you that My salvation from the hell of living with a drunkard was that I had heard about experiencing the reality of God by being baptized in the Holy Spirit and that the experience was still for today, hearing about it from a well known and respected weather man in a large city adjacent to us. That weather man named Don Woods had sent to me a book on the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of praying in tongues after I heard him and his wife Jane speak at a small church gathering. The book was written by a married couple who were Episcopalians, like Stephen and me. I read the book and recognized that it related to the power of God of which I had read in the Bible but had never heard that it was real for today. The story in that book and the joyful lives of Jane and Don Woods convinced Me that the power of God through the Holy Spirit was what I needed to combat the emotional and verbal abuse, the harassment and the constant fear in which our children and I lived.
After consuming the thrilling book about being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I did what was suggested in the book. I asked God to baptize me in his Holy Spirit and sure enough I began to pray in a heavenly language, one I had never heard before. I was fascinated, but in a few days I stopped praying in the language of God, even though I was constantly reading the Bible while Stephen was at work.
One day while we were visiting my parents at Christmas time I was observing our young nephews Jimmy and John playing on the floor with their toys amidst the wrappings. I saw the youngest boy, who was still a toddler, engrossed in something else while his toys laid on the ground. As I looked closer, he was playing with a piece of cellophane tape that he had evidently pealed off of some wrapping. He was transferring it from one finger to another as it stuck on his fingers, totally engrossed in the tape. As I observed his purchased toys lying on the floor while he played with a piece of tape, the thought came to my mind that I was doing the same thing with a gift that had been given to me, a gift for which Jesus Christ had been crucified so that I would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to come live inside of Me with His prayer language. I had shoved God's gift to me aside also by stopping praying in the Holy Spirit, just like our toddler nephew was doing with the tape while his gifts from his parents laid on the floor.
Needless to say, after that experience with our nephews I began to pray every day after I sent Stephen off to work and our children off to school. The more I prayed, the more powerful faith in God began to grow inside of me, the belief that God had a better plan for our lives. Little did I know that it involved an almost unbelievable miracle. Unfortunately, Steve's drunkenness became more frequent and his anger became more intense. Consequently the hell in our lives became more destructive.
My spiritual friends constantly advised me to leave tracts around for Stephen to read or to invite him to attend charismatic prayer meetings with me. I knew that if I did all of that, that more and maybe even worse anger would erupt, which I feared. Every time I prayed I told God that I didn't want a green apple, that I wanted a ripe, sweet apple when my prayers were answered and that I was willing to be patient until that happened. I prayed hours and hours at a time, not knowing what was happening in the spiritual world around me at the time. I was just enjoying the gift that God had given to me.
At Christmastime Stephen was in the habit of attending the after office Christmas parties of his attorney friends. Alcohol flowed freely at those parties. Stephen, of course, was invited to all of the parties because of his charming and entertaining personality. He was the life of every party. His habit was to return home often while drinking at any time from 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. However, after one particular Christmas party that year he had called me after work and told me that he would be home at midnight. I didn't believe him because he was never in control of his actions after he started drinking. I spent hours and hours that night praying for him because he had previously wrecked his best friend's car while he was out in the wee small hours of the night doing whatever it was he always did. That friend was his banker, so no report was made to the authorities, I guess. I was concerned the night of the Christmas party that if he did the same thing that he might kill someone, so I prayed all night until 5:00 a.m. and then I went to bed. He had not arrived home yet.
I woke with a start at 7:00 a.m. knowing that Stephen had to be in court that day to work so I ran downstairs to see if his car was in the driveway since he had not come to bed. When I walked into the sunroom of our home, I observed him passed out in his recliner but his car was nowhere to be seen. Later he told me that he had gotten so drunk that someone had brought him home and placed him in the recliner and then left. He had no idea who did that good deed.
As I looked at Stephen passed out in the recliner, I was overcome with the love of God for him because he was so pitiful, his being a drunk with an important position in the legal system, but he was completely enslaved by alcohol. Instead of getting mad at him, I gently woke him and told him to shower and change clothes while I fixed breakfast for him. I started cooking a good breakfast for him, assuming he didn't eat during the partying the night before, only having consumed vast amounts of alcohol, as was his habit.
Stephen came into the kitchen after showering and told me that he didn't have time to eat breakfast because he had to walk downtown to find his car. He had no idea where it was. It was a cold winter morning, but he insisted on walking to find his car. Downtown was at least two miles away. He said he needed to walk. I didn't know why but later I found out.
Much later he told me that he had called out to God on that cold walk downtown and told God that there had to be a better way to live than what he was living. We were Mr. and Mrs. Church, involved in every facet of the church, but he was completely consumed with a dependency on alcohol and our family was ruled by that demon who enslaved Stephen, and through him it had enslaved the family.
Stephen found his car and tried very hard for the next few months to refuse the call of the demon of alcohol but was powerless under its enticements. I just kept praying in the Holy Spirit for hours and hours every day and poured the love of God onto him, knowing the struggle that was going on inside of himself.
After a few months it happened, the culmination of all of those hours of my praying in the Holy Spirit for Stephen, and it was miraculous. He was at his office in the federal courthouse and an attorney friend named Al called him because they both were knowledgeable about a mutual friend who had marriage problems. His attorney friend named Al said that they needed to talk about how to help their friend Mike, as if they had no problems themselves. They were two drunks trying to fix another one. So his attorney friend came to pick up Stephen at the federal building and they drove around for about two hours in Al's car trying to figure out how to help their friend Mike with his marriage problems. It was the blind leading the blind, two drunkards trying to help another person. But, it was all part of God's plan.
After they drove around for about two hours without mutually finding any real solution to Mike's problems, Stephen told his attorney friend Al that he guessed that Mike needed to turn his life over to Jesus Christ like Stephen had. Then Stephen looked around to see who had said it. When Stephen realized that he, himself, had said that astounding confession without intending to say it, he started crying in front of his friend Al while they were in Al's car. Needless to say, his friend Al hurriedly drove Stephen back to the federal building and let him off at his office after Stephen apologized for crying so uncontrollably.
Stephen immediately called me on his office phone and told me what had happened. When he told me that he had said he had turned his life over to Jesus Christ he started crying again on the phone and in the midst of the sobs he asked me what that meant, because in the Episcopal church that term is neither discussed nor is it ever talked about. Salvation in that church is believed to happen when a person is baptized as a baby. Stephen was sobbing as he asked me on the phone if I knew when He had turned his life over to Jesus Christ. He started sobbing even more when I told him that he had just done it when he made that confession in Al's car because he had confessed Jesus Christ as his Savior. I told him that we would discuss it when he came home that evening. Somehow I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not going to the clubs to drink that night after work.
While we talked later about his confession to his friend Al and the glorious events of that afternoon, it came to me that he needed to seal his conversion experience. There was a couple of speakers I had heard about who were speaking the next night in a nearby town and I asked Stephen if he would like to go hear them. He miraculously said yes. I kept thinking, "God, how in the world did you do this?" My prayers had been answered but it was in such a miraculous way that I had trouble believing it. I had never heard of a person professing to have turned his life over to Jesus Christ without intending to do it.
We had children who needed adult supervision while we left town to hear the speakers, and God prepared that part of the miraculous story, too. There was a student from ORU who was helping with the youth at our church and he had eaten lunch with us after church a few times. That young man called me the night Stephen made his confession to his friend. The young man said that was coming to our town the next day and asked if he could spend the night at our house before his Sunday meeting with the youth at the church. God miraculously provided the sitter for our children without my even asking Him. It was all part of God's plan.
We went to the meeting of the evangelist husband and wife the next night in a city about two hours drive away. There was glorious praise and worshipful singing while we found a seat, and every time I opened my eyes and peeked at Stephen he had his hands in the air praising God and crying like a baby. My husband was a changed man. I was crying, too, at the miraculous event in Stephen's life. His having never heard a salvation message, never hearing about the need to turn his life over to Jesus Christ, he did that very thing with no inner desire to do it. It was an absolute miracle!
During the meeting of the evangelist couple they asked for people to come up for prayer who wanted to be free of dependency on alcohol and tobacco. Stephen told me he would like to go up for prayer if I would go with him. I was still thinking, "God, how did you do this?" I did go, and a minister prayed for him. He neither smoked another cigarette nor drank another drop of alcohol the rest of his life. He was miraculously, supernaturally changed from the inside
After a short Bible teaching at the meeting the ministers asked for anyone who wanted to be baptized in the Holy Spirit to come to the front. Stephen asked me what that was about. I didn't have time to explain so I told him that he might as well go up and get the whole ball of wax that God had for him. I was still in shock at the events that were happening. Here was a man who always make fun of signs that said that Jesus saves. Here he was, saved in a miraculous way, and going alone without me to the front of the meeting to receive another gift from God. He prayed with the evangelist to be baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues and God gave him a double portion of his gifts. Stephen came back to where I was seated and told me that all of the people up there were praying in beautiful languages but his language sounded like a retarded gorilla. I told him that it was a beautiful language and the devil was trying to nullify in his mind the miracle that had just happened to him.
At the hotel the next morning I woke and saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas with the Gideon Bible from the hotel in his hands. He was crying tears of joy again and said to me, "Listen to this: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that anyone who believed in Him would not perish but would have eternal life.' " Amidst his sobs he said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. He asked me if I had ever heard that scripture before. Of course I had many, many times, but it was the first time that Stephen had really heard it that it meant anything to him because the Holy Spirit was giving him joy from having experienced the events that that very scripture promised.
Our lives changed dramatically, of course. Stephen apologized to me and our children for being such an abusive, horrible person and we forgave him. One evening soon after his conversion experience the devil tried to get him enslaved again to cigarettes by a strong temptation. Stephen asked me what to do. The Holy Spirit told me that we needed to pray in the Holy Spirit's prayer language together, which we had never done, and He said that the temptation would leave. We prayed together for the first time and in a few seconds, sure enough, the temptation left him, never to return. From that day forth we prayed together on every occasion in the Holy Spirit and we experienced the love and joy of the Lord in every minute of our lives.
Stephen became a new creation in Christ Jesus in the twinkling of an eye. He became a new person instantly before my very eyes and it was God's doing completely. He had never heard a salvation message, had never read the Bible, had never heard the phrase "turn your life over to Jesus," yet he did it without intending to do it. The liturgical church, to which we belonged, does not teach about salvation. They only teach about doing good works for the church.
Over and over again after his conversion I kept asking God how He did it so miraculously because I had never heard of anyone turning his or her life over to Jesus Christ without intending to do it. Much later God told me that it was the hours and hours and hours of my praying in His prayer language of the Holy Spirit that the entire scenario was planned, set up and performed by the Holy Spirit. I had no idea that it was happening in the spiritual realm before it happened in the earth. I just knew that I needed to use the gift that God had given to me, as revealed years before when I had observed my two nephews playing on the floor, with the younger toddler playing with the cellophane tape instead of the newly bought toys. When God instructed Me to pray in the gift of the prayer language of the Holy Spirit that he had given to me instead of playing church, that is what I started doing, never dreaming that Our Father had miraculous plans for Stephen and my lives together in absolute unity with God.
Every conversion is spectacular. Because the devil had such a strong hold on Stephen's life, he needed a miraculous conversion experience. He had one and he told his story many times at churches, retreats and to individuals. In fact, about two months after Stephen's miraculous conversion he didn't come home after court like he had always done after his conversion. My faith in him was not fully developed yet and the thought came to my mind, "Well, it didn't last. There he is again going out to drink again with his drinking buddies."
In a couple of hours he called me from his office and said, "You'll never believe who I just spent two hours giving my testimony to." Sheepishly I asked him who it was. He told me that a senator acquaintance who had heard about Stephen's new spiritual life-change and the senator had come to his office wanting to hear all about it. He had given that senator his entire story beginning with the night he couldn't find his car after a drunken episode all the way to his being baptized in the Holy Spirit, to which the senator was delighted with his new life. I have to admit that I had no faith in Stephen that night but I still had faith in God.
Stephen's story needs to be told again and again so I decided to write it down so that it will live in posterity. It's worth hearing. I hope it was worth your reading it.
When God has permission from us, he gives us ripe, sweet fruit that endures forever. He did it for Stephen and me and he will do it for you.
Praying in God's Holy Spirit's gift of His supernatural prayer language accomplishes what God desires in the lives of everyone who dedicates themselves to praying. I just sat in my bedroom and prayed for hours at a time and God did the work. A person cannot pray for hours in his or her natural earthly language. Only with the Holy Spirit's prayer language is it possible. The scriptures say that we have the treasure of the Holy Spirit in earthen bodies so that the miraculous works of God will be of Him and not of us. I will praise God forever for doing the miracle. All I had to do was pray.
Isn't that absolutely marvelous!!!!!!! It's still a wonderful miracle to me and everyone who hears it. I hope it thrilled you, too.
What He did for us, he will do for you. You just need to ask God to baptize you in His Holy Spirit. Jesus said that if people, being evil, know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to everyone who asks Him.
Like I said, He did it for me and He will do it for you. It is through God's Holy Spirit living inside of you that precipitates all of your prayers being answered.
I saw a man change from a drunkard to a loving son of God in the twinkling of an eye by merely confessing that he had turned his life over to Jesus Christ.
It was an absolute miracle!
T. Wieland Allen
I used to marvel at the story in the Bible about Saul who met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascas and immediately became a new creature in his spirit, soul and body with the new name of Paul. The fact that he had harassed, abused and even killed Christians in his vocation didn't keep God from completely transforming him supernaturally and using him in a mighty way to bring the Gentiles into the body of Christ.
In my early marriage to my husband, Stephen Allen was a drunkard and often proud of it. That demon of drunkenness created havoc in our marriage, in our finances, in the lives of our children and in our family life. Our children and I lived in hell on earth but to the outside world we looked like the ideal family because we hid the abuse and Stephen's intense anger that caused us to walk on eggshells, constantly fearing his outbursts for every little infraction of his ideals and expectations of us. We lived many, many years in that horrible hell.
Eventually, however, Stephen had a miraculous encounter with Jesus Christ also, like Paul, and his story is worth telling. The most marvelous part of the story is that I had nothing to do with the miracle, I just prayed hours a day in the intercessory language of the Holy Spirit, praying for peace in our lives. The prayers of the Holy Spirit in His prayer language was my retreat from the reality of the hell in which I lived.
First I must tell you that My salvation from the hell of living with a drunkard was that I had heard about experiencing the reality of God by being baptized in the Holy Spirit and that the experience was still for today, hearing about it from a well known and respected weather man in a large city adjacent to us. That weather man named Don Woods had sent to me a book on the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of praying in tongues after I heard him and his wife Jane speak at a small church gathering. The book was written by a married couple who were Episcopalians, like Stephen and me. I read the book and recognized that it related to the power of God of which I had read in the Bible but had never heard that it was real for today. The story in that book and the joyful lives of Jane and Don Woods convinced Me that the power of God through the Holy Spirit was what I needed to combat the emotional and verbal abuse, the harassment and the constant fear in which our children and I lived.
After consuming the thrilling book about being baptized in the Holy Spirit, I did what was suggested in the book. I asked God to baptize me in his Holy Spirit and sure enough I began to pray in a heavenly language, one I had never heard before. I was fascinated, but in a few days I stopped praying in the language of God, even though I was constantly reading the Bible while Stephen was at work.
One day while we were visiting my parents at Christmas time I was observing our young nephews Jimmy and John playing on the floor with their toys amidst the wrappings. I saw the youngest boy, who was still a toddler, engrossed in something else while his toys laid on the ground. As I looked closer, he was playing with a piece of cellophane tape that he had evidently pealed off of some wrapping. He was transferring it from one finger to another as it stuck on his fingers, totally engrossed in the tape. As I observed his purchased toys lying on the floor while he played with a piece of tape, the thought came to my mind that I was doing the same thing with a gift that had been given to me, a gift for which Jesus Christ had been crucified so that I would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit to come live inside of Me with His prayer language. I had shoved God's gift to me aside also by stopping praying in the Holy Spirit, just like our toddler nephew was doing with the tape while his gifts from his parents laid on the floor.
Needless to say, after that experience with our nephews I began to pray every day after I sent Stephen off to work and our children off to school. The more I prayed, the more powerful faith in God began to grow inside of me, the belief that God had a better plan for our lives. Little did I know that it involved an almost unbelievable miracle. Unfortunately, Steve's drunkenness became more frequent and his anger became more intense. Consequently the hell in our lives became more destructive.
My spiritual friends constantly advised me to leave tracts around for Stephen to read or to invite him to attend charismatic prayer meetings with me. I knew that if I did all of that, that more and maybe even worse anger would erupt, which I feared. Every time I prayed I told God that I didn't want a green apple, that I wanted a ripe, sweet apple when my prayers were answered and that I was willing to be patient until that happened. I prayed hours and hours at a time, not knowing what was happening in the spiritual world around me at the time. I was just enjoying the gift that God had given to me.
At Christmastime Stephen was in the habit of attending the after office Christmas parties of his attorney friends. Alcohol flowed freely at those parties. Stephen, of course, was invited to all of the parties because of his charming and entertaining personality. He was the life of every party. His habit was to return home often while drinking at any time from 1:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. However, after one particular Christmas party that year he had called me after work and told me that he would be home at midnight. I didn't believe him because he was never in control of his actions after he started drinking. I spent hours and hours that night praying for him because he had previously wrecked his best friend's car while he was out in the wee small hours of the night doing whatever it was he always did. That friend was his banker, so no report was made to the authorities, I guess. I was concerned the night of the Christmas party that if he did the same thing that he might kill someone, so I prayed all night until 5:00 a.m. and then I went to bed. He had not arrived home yet.
I woke with a start at 7:00 a.m. knowing that Stephen had to be in court that day to work so I ran downstairs to see if his car was in the driveway since he had not come to bed. When I walked into the sunroom of our home, I observed him passed out in his recliner but his car was nowhere to be seen. Later he told me that he had gotten so drunk that someone had brought him home and placed him in the recliner and then left. He had no idea who did that good deed.
As I looked at Stephen passed out in the recliner, I was overcome with the love of God for him because he was so pitiful, his being a drunk with an important position in the legal system, but he was completely enslaved by alcohol. Instead of getting mad at him, I gently woke him and told him to shower and change clothes while I fixed breakfast for him. I started cooking a good breakfast for him, assuming he didn't eat during the partying the night before, only having consumed vast amounts of alcohol, as was his habit.
Stephen came into the kitchen after showering and told me that he didn't have time to eat breakfast because he had to walk downtown to find his car. He had no idea where it was. It was a cold winter morning, but he insisted on walking to find his car. Downtown was at least two miles away. He said he needed to walk. I didn't know why but later I found out.
Much later he told me that he had called out to God on that cold walk downtown and told God that there had to be a better way to live than what he was living. We were Mr. and Mrs. Church, involved in every facet of the church, but he was completely consumed with a dependency on alcohol and our family was ruled by that demon who enslaved Stephen, and through him it had enslaved the family.
Stephen found his car and tried very hard for the next few months to refuse the call of the demon of alcohol but was powerless under its enticements. I just kept praying in the Holy Spirit for hours and hours every day and poured the love of God onto him, knowing the struggle that was going on inside of himself.
After a few months it happened, the culmination of all of those hours of my praying in the Holy Spirit for Stephen, and it was miraculous. He was at his office in the federal courthouse and an attorney friend named Al called him because they both were knowledgeable about a mutual friend who had marriage problems. His attorney friend named Al said that they needed to talk about how to help their friend Mike, as if they had no problems themselves. They were two drunks trying to fix another one. So his attorney friend came to pick up Stephen at the federal building and they drove around for about two hours in Al's car trying to figure out how to help their friend Mike with his marriage problems. It was the blind leading the blind, two drunkards trying to help another person. But, it was all part of God's plan.
After they drove around for about two hours without mutually finding any real solution to Mike's problems, Stephen told his attorney friend Al that he guessed that Mike needed to turn his life over to Jesus Christ like Stephen had. Then Stephen looked around to see who had said it. When Stephen realized that he, himself, had said that astounding confession without intending to say it, he started crying in front of his friend Al while they were in Al's car. Needless to say, his friend Al hurriedly drove Stephen back to the federal building and let him off at his office after Stephen apologized for crying so uncontrollably.
Stephen immediately called me on his office phone and told me what had happened. When he told me that he had said he had turned his life over to Jesus Christ he started crying again on the phone and in the midst of the sobs he asked me what that meant, because in the Episcopal church that term is neither discussed nor is it ever talked about. Salvation in that church is believed to happen when a person is baptized as a baby. Stephen was sobbing as he asked me on the phone if I knew when He had turned his life over to Jesus Christ. He started sobbing even more when I told him that he had just done it when he made that confession in Al's car because he had confessed Jesus Christ as his Savior. I told him that we would discuss it when he came home that evening. Somehow I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not going to the clubs to drink that night after work.
While we talked later about his confession to his friend Al and the glorious events of that afternoon, it came to me that he needed to seal his conversion experience. There was a couple of speakers I had heard about who were speaking the next night in a nearby town and I asked Stephen if he would like to go hear them. He miraculously said yes. I kept thinking, "God, how in the world did you do this?" My prayers had been answered but it was in such a miraculous way that I had trouble believing it. I had never heard of a person professing to have turned his life over to Jesus Christ without intending to do it.
We had children who needed adult supervision while we left town to hear the speakers, and God prepared that part of the miraculous story, too. There was a student from ORU who was helping with the youth at our church and he had eaten lunch with us after church a few times. That young man called me the night Stephen made his confession to his friend. The young man said that was coming to our town the next day and asked if he could spend the night at our house before his Sunday meeting with the youth at the church. God miraculously provided the sitter for our children without my even asking Him. It was all part of God's plan.
We went to the meeting of the evangelist husband and wife the next night in a city about two hours drive away. There was glorious praise and worshipful singing while we found a seat, and every time I opened my eyes and peeked at Stephen he had his hands in the air praising God and crying like a baby. My husband was a changed man. I was crying, too, at the miraculous event in Stephen's life. His having never heard a salvation message, never hearing about the need to turn his life over to Jesus Christ, he did that very thing with no inner desire to do it. It was an absolute miracle!
During the meeting of the evangelist couple they asked for people to come up for prayer who wanted to be free of dependency on alcohol and tobacco. Stephen told me he would like to go up for prayer if I would go with him. I was still thinking, "God, how did you do this?" I did go, and a minister prayed for him. He neither smoked another cigarette nor drank another drop of alcohol the rest of his life. He was miraculously, supernaturally changed from the inside
After a short Bible teaching at the meeting the ministers asked for anyone who wanted to be baptized in the Holy Spirit to come to the front. Stephen asked me what that was about. I didn't have time to explain so I told him that he might as well go up and get the whole ball of wax that God had for him. I was still in shock at the events that were happening. Here was a man who always make fun of signs that said that Jesus saves. Here he was, saved in a miraculous way, and going alone without me to the front of the meeting to receive another gift from God. He prayed with the evangelist to be baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues and God gave him a double portion of his gifts. Stephen came back to where I was seated and told me that all of the people up there were praying in beautiful languages but his language sounded like a retarded gorilla. I told him that it was a beautiful language and the devil was trying to nullify in his mind the miracle that had just happened to him.
At the hotel the next morning I woke and saw Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajamas with the Gideon Bible from the hotel in his hands. He was crying tears of joy again and said to me, "Listen to this: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that anyone who believed in Him would not perish but would have eternal life.' " Amidst his sobs he said it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. He asked me if I had ever heard that scripture before. Of course I had many, many times, but it was the first time that Stephen had really heard it that it meant anything to him because the Holy Spirit was giving him joy from having experienced the events that that very scripture promised.
Our lives changed dramatically, of course. Stephen apologized to me and our children for being such an abusive, horrible person and we forgave him. One evening soon after his conversion experience the devil tried to get him enslaved again to cigarettes by a strong temptation. Stephen asked me what to do. The Holy Spirit told me that we needed to pray in the Holy Spirit's prayer language together, which we had never done, and He said that the temptation would leave. We prayed together for the first time and in a few seconds, sure enough, the temptation left him, never to return. From that day forth we prayed together on every occasion in the Holy Spirit and we experienced the love and joy of the Lord in every minute of our lives.
Stephen became a new creation in Christ Jesus in the twinkling of an eye. He became a new person instantly before my very eyes and it was God's doing completely. He had never heard a salvation message, had never read the Bible, had never heard the phrase "turn your life over to Jesus," yet he did it without intending to do it. The liturgical church, to which we belonged, does not teach about salvation. They only teach about doing good works for the church.
Over and over again after his conversion I kept asking God how He did it so miraculously because I had never heard of anyone turning his or her life over to Jesus Christ without intending to do it. Much later God told me that it was the hours and hours and hours of my praying in His prayer language of the Holy Spirit that the entire scenario was planned, set up and performed by the Holy Spirit. I had no idea that it was happening in the spiritual realm before it happened in the earth. I just knew that I needed to use the gift that God had given to me, as revealed years before when I had observed my two nephews playing on the floor, with the younger toddler playing with the cellophane tape instead of the newly bought toys. When God instructed Me to pray in the gift of the prayer language of the Holy Spirit that he had given to me instead of playing church, that is what I started doing, never dreaming that Our Father had miraculous plans for Stephen and my lives together in absolute unity with God.
Every conversion is spectacular. Because the devil had such a strong hold on Stephen's life, he needed a miraculous conversion experience. He had one and he told his story many times at churches, retreats and to individuals. In fact, about two months after Stephen's miraculous conversion he didn't come home after court like he had always done after his conversion. My faith in him was not fully developed yet and the thought came to my mind, "Well, it didn't last. There he is again going out to drink again with his drinking buddies."
In a couple of hours he called me from his office and said, "You'll never believe who I just spent two hours giving my testimony to." Sheepishly I asked him who it was. He told me that a senator acquaintance who had heard about Stephen's new spiritual life-change and the senator had come to his office wanting to hear all about it. He had given that senator his entire story beginning with the night he couldn't find his car after a drunken episode all the way to his being baptized in the Holy Spirit, to which the senator was delighted with his new life. I have to admit that I had no faith in Stephen that night but I still had faith in God.
Stephen's story needs to be told again and again so I decided to write it down so that it will live in posterity. It's worth hearing. I hope it was worth your reading it.
When God has permission from us, he gives us ripe, sweet fruit that endures forever. He did it for Stephen and me and he will do it for you.
Praying in God's Holy Spirit's gift of His supernatural prayer language accomplishes what God desires in the lives of everyone who dedicates themselves to praying. I just sat in my bedroom and prayed for hours at a time and God did the work. A person cannot pray for hours in his or her natural earthly language. Only with the Holy Spirit's prayer language is it possible. The scriptures say that we have the treasure of the Holy Spirit in earthen bodies so that the miraculous works of God will be of Him and not of us. I will praise God forever for doing the miracle. All I had to do was pray.
Isn't that absolutely marvelous!!!!!!! It's still a wonderful miracle to me and everyone who hears it. I hope it thrilled you, too.
What He did for us, he will do for you. You just need to ask God to baptize you in His Holy Spirit. Jesus said that if people, being evil, know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to everyone who asks Him.
Like I said, He did it for me and He will do it for you. It is through God's Holy Spirit living inside of you that precipitates all of your prayers being answered.
I saw a man change from a drunkard to a loving son of God in the twinkling of an eye by merely confessing that he had turned his life over to Jesus Christ.
It was an absolute miracle!
Sunday, March 3, 2019
FOLLOWING THE MUSIC
FOLLOWING THE MUSIC
T. Wieland Allen
As we walk in this thing called life on earth, things can change quickly from the normal cadences of life and all of a sudden we are plunged into unfamiliar territory which can be either glorious or frightening. As we age, it seems like we can adjust to the changes more easily because we have experienced so many disruptions and eruptions in the many preceding years and we have found that the incidents did not kill us, although at the time there was an alarming fear that many of the incidents would be catastrophic.
I just walked though such a situation, but this time it was different, very different. First you must know the incidents which unfolded almost ceremoniously.
Four days ago I had noticed upon dressing for bed that my ankle and calf on my right leg was a little swollen, not dramatically, but the affected ankle and calf was a little larger than the left one. I was puzzled, but the next morning the swelling was gone. I had no pain in that leg. That's interesting, was my thought, so I ignored it.
The next evening, the same thing happened. My right ankle and calf was again slightly swollen, plus my right calf seemed warmer than my left one. I was puzzled, but since I had no pain I decided to give it another day before seeking medical help. The next morning the swelling was down and the ankle was almost equal in size to the left one. It was a strange situation, one I had never heard of. I surmised that maybe I had been bitten by a spider and could not locate the site of the actual bite, or it could be cellulitis, but there was still no pain, only the swelling and the feverish calf.
The next morning, a Thursday morn, did not duplicate the previous two mornings. In fact, I guess the swelling persisted throughout the night because in the morning my calf and ankle were still swollen, plus my calf seemed more feverish than the previous two days. I didn't have any anxiety about it, no fear or panic, just the realization that I needed to be diagnosed by a medical professional, surmising that it would take a simple fix for what seemed like a minor malady.
Was I ever wrong.
After eating my breakfast I made the decision to drive to the Urgent Care facility close to my house instead of going to my primary care physician whose office is 15 miles away. Realizing that I could be in and out of that good Urgent Care medical facility faster and then be on my way to complete three errands, I was at peace with the decision. My experience twice in the past two years had proved that I would get a good diagnosis at the Urgent Care and be on my way speedily.
Was I ever wrong about the time element.
It was 10:30 in the morning and I remembered that it was flu season and there were many people being diagnosed with the flu in our town, so I was surprised that there were only two patients in the waiting room. That Urgent Care facility was voted the most efficient in town and the doctor was voted the best doctor in emergency situations in our town, so I was lucky it wasn't crowded. It was only a few minutes before the nurse called me back to be examined by the doctor. A new physician greeted me and looked at my ankle and calf on my right leg, commenting that he needed to call in the other physician to also examine it, which he did. Dr. Shaun walked in, looked at my leg and said that he wanted me to have a sonogram on it to rule out a blood clot. He said for me to go to a cancer treatment center five blocks up the road and he would call ahead to alert the staff there so they would be ready to do the sonogram.
I drove to the cancer treatment place, walked right in, filled out the paperwork and was immediately called by the technician into the sonogram room where she did a very thorough examination on my entire right leg which took about 20 minutes.
When finished, the tech said that the attending doctor at the cancer clinic just happened to be in the building and she took the sonogram to his office to be examined by him. She said she would be back to tell me the results soon. I still had no panic, no anxiety, as if I were walking a path that had been peacefully prepared for me. The efficiency of the staffs at the two medical facilities was impeccable, for which I complimented them. It was reassuring to know I was in good hands.
The sonogram tech came back to the exam room and told me that I needed to go back to the Urgent Care facility and see Dr. Shaun for the results of the sonogram, which I did. I got in my car and drove the six blocks back to the Urgent Care facility, still with a sense of peace and tranquility which seemed to envelope me. I waited a few minutes in the waiting room and then was taken back to a conference room where Dr. Shaun entered in about five minutes and told me that I had a blood clot in my right leg and I needed to be immediately admitted to the hospital which was a block away. He informed me that there was no room available for me but the hospital was working to arrange a room for me, so he instructed me to go home, to put my leg up and wait for his office to call and let me know that the hospital had a room ready for me.
I left the Urgent Care, got in my car and wondered why I was so tranquil and peaceful when I had just heard such bad news. While driving to my house, I got a text from the Urgent Care facility, so I pulled over and read it, which said for me to turn around and get to the hospital immediately, which I did. I pulled into the front parking lot of the hospital, parked the car, began to get out of the car but remembered that there was a big hill that I had to climb to get to the entrance to the hospital. Since my leg had begun to hurt a little since the sonogram, I decided to call my son who works a couple of miles from the hospital, arrange for him to pick me up in the parking lot of the hospital, take me to the entrance and then park his car before meeting me at the admissions room. I texted him, told him I was being admitted to the hospital with a blood clot in my leg and asked him to meet me in the parking lot. He didn't question me; instead said he would be there in ten minutes, which he was. As God's orchestration had planned, he had just returned from an early lunch.
These words came to my mind, "It's called God's orchestration, and you are merely following the music." I looked at my watch and it was 12:02, an hour and a half since I had walked into the Urgent Care facility. I had been to two medical facilities, been examined, had a sonogram, been back to Urgent Care and I was in the hospital in which a room had already been assigned to me. It was as if time had stopped and I was walking a path that had been carefully laid out by God.
It almost took longer to fill out the paperwork in the admissions office than the previous hour and a half at the two medical facilities. The kind woman in the admissions office got a wheelchair for me and escorted my son and me to my room on the third floor. Just as we exited the elevator on the third floor, the kind admissions woman said, "Well, look, there's your new doctor waiting for you at your room." She was as amazed as we were that there was a doctor waiting at my room for me, a cardiologist whom the Urgent Care doctor had called into the case. Following the music of God, the Great Conductor, was allowing me to experience a miracle every minute.
As she pushed me down the wing, the cardiologist, met us halfway, called my name and asked if that was me. I said yes, and he told me to go ahead into my room and he would be right back because he had to sign in at the nurses' desk. The admissions lady was still in shock that a new doctor had met me at my hospital room instead of my having to wait for him for hours and maybe an entire day. In the room she allowed me to get out of the wheelchair and sit in a chair. As she exited the room, she said, "I know that Jesus is going to give you peace while you are here." I replied that yes, He already has and I told her that I know Him well. She was thrilled with my statement.
It was 1:30, only three hours since I walked into the Urgent Care facility to be examined for what I thought might be an insect or spider bite and there I was with a diagnosis of a blood clot in my leg, and the protocol for the hospital treatment was already in the computers. It was a miracle after a miracle, after another miracle and after more miracles.
How Our Heavenly Father did it, I'll never know the steps by steps until I get to heaven. However, that night after I conferred with the doctor about the protocol which would happen at the hospital, after I had an IV hooked up, after I had a shot in my stomach and was settled in for the night, I asked Our Father how it was all orchestrated so perfectly even before I knew what the problem was.
Immediately the scripture came to mind, "Pray for one another so that you might be healed." Then these words came to my mind, "Because you have interceded so diligently for so many other people for so many hours and so many days lately, I orchestrated these miracles for you through your intercessory prayers also, as well as sending solutions to problems for the people for whom you were praying."
That is what He meant in that scripture when He caused it to be written in His Book, that when we pray in the Holy Spirit's intercessory prayers, if there is any evil assault planned by the devil for us, Our Powerful Father speaks the solution to our problems out as well as the solutions to the problems of the people for whom we are praying.
What a wonderful, efficient orchestra conductor He is. I witnessed His perfect orchestration in my behalf to supernaturally and speedily get me into the hospital where they know how to treat the problem because He has trained the physicians with His wisdom also through medical schools.
No one else could do that kind of supernatural intervention in the life of one of His children, no one except a Loving Father.
My mind is still in awe of Him, but I lived it and I witnessed it. It was the actions of a Wonderful Father who loves His children and meets our needs before we even know what the need is. That is what is so magnificent about it. He said he knows our needs before we do. He can only meet our needs when we pray; and the most powerful prayers are spoken when we pray in the Holy Spirit because they are God's solution to our needs and problems.
These miracles are even more powerful reminders to Me to pray in the Spirit at all times as led by Him. After following the music of His orchestration, I understand His will in a deeper way. Praying in the Holy Spirit brings heaven to earth with all of its excellence.
His prayers and His praise will continually be in my mouth. I hope this testimony brings praises to your mouth, too, so that you will pray in the Holy Spirit at all times and in all places which meet the needs of people in the earth.
T. Wieland Allen
As we walk in this thing called life on earth, things can change quickly from the normal cadences of life and all of a sudden we are plunged into unfamiliar territory which can be either glorious or frightening. As we age, it seems like we can adjust to the changes more easily because we have experienced so many disruptions and eruptions in the many preceding years and we have found that the incidents did not kill us, although at the time there was an alarming fear that many of the incidents would be catastrophic.
I just walked though such a situation, but this time it was different, very different. First you must know the incidents which unfolded almost ceremoniously.
Four days ago I had noticed upon dressing for bed that my ankle and calf on my right leg was a little swollen, not dramatically, but the affected ankle and calf was a little larger than the left one. I was puzzled, but the next morning the swelling was gone. I had no pain in that leg. That's interesting, was my thought, so I ignored it.
The next evening, the same thing happened. My right ankle and calf was again slightly swollen, plus my right calf seemed warmer than my left one. I was puzzled, but since I had no pain I decided to give it another day before seeking medical help. The next morning the swelling was down and the ankle was almost equal in size to the left one. It was a strange situation, one I had never heard of. I surmised that maybe I had been bitten by a spider and could not locate the site of the actual bite, or it could be cellulitis, but there was still no pain, only the swelling and the feverish calf.
The next morning, a Thursday morn, did not duplicate the previous two mornings. In fact, I guess the swelling persisted throughout the night because in the morning my calf and ankle were still swollen, plus my calf seemed more feverish than the previous two days. I didn't have any anxiety about it, no fear or panic, just the realization that I needed to be diagnosed by a medical professional, surmising that it would take a simple fix for what seemed like a minor malady.
Was I ever wrong.
After eating my breakfast I made the decision to drive to the Urgent Care facility close to my house instead of going to my primary care physician whose office is 15 miles away. Realizing that I could be in and out of that good Urgent Care medical facility faster and then be on my way to complete three errands, I was at peace with the decision. My experience twice in the past two years had proved that I would get a good diagnosis at the Urgent Care and be on my way speedily.
Was I ever wrong about the time element.
It was 10:30 in the morning and I remembered that it was flu season and there were many people being diagnosed with the flu in our town, so I was surprised that there were only two patients in the waiting room. That Urgent Care facility was voted the most efficient in town and the doctor was voted the best doctor in emergency situations in our town, so I was lucky it wasn't crowded. It was only a few minutes before the nurse called me back to be examined by the doctor. A new physician greeted me and looked at my ankle and calf on my right leg, commenting that he needed to call in the other physician to also examine it, which he did. Dr. Shaun walked in, looked at my leg and said that he wanted me to have a sonogram on it to rule out a blood clot. He said for me to go to a cancer treatment center five blocks up the road and he would call ahead to alert the staff there so they would be ready to do the sonogram.
I drove to the cancer treatment place, walked right in, filled out the paperwork and was immediately called by the technician into the sonogram room where she did a very thorough examination on my entire right leg which took about 20 minutes.
When finished, the tech said that the attending doctor at the cancer clinic just happened to be in the building and she took the sonogram to his office to be examined by him. She said she would be back to tell me the results soon. I still had no panic, no anxiety, as if I were walking a path that had been peacefully prepared for me. The efficiency of the staffs at the two medical facilities was impeccable, for which I complimented them. It was reassuring to know I was in good hands.
The sonogram tech came back to the exam room and told me that I needed to go back to the Urgent Care facility and see Dr. Shaun for the results of the sonogram, which I did. I got in my car and drove the six blocks back to the Urgent Care facility, still with a sense of peace and tranquility which seemed to envelope me. I waited a few minutes in the waiting room and then was taken back to a conference room where Dr. Shaun entered in about five minutes and told me that I had a blood clot in my right leg and I needed to be immediately admitted to the hospital which was a block away. He informed me that there was no room available for me but the hospital was working to arrange a room for me, so he instructed me to go home, to put my leg up and wait for his office to call and let me know that the hospital had a room ready for me.
I left the Urgent Care, got in my car and wondered why I was so tranquil and peaceful when I had just heard such bad news. While driving to my house, I got a text from the Urgent Care facility, so I pulled over and read it, which said for me to turn around and get to the hospital immediately, which I did. I pulled into the front parking lot of the hospital, parked the car, began to get out of the car but remembered that there was a big hill that I had to climb to get to the entrance to the hospital. Since my leg had begun to hurt a little since the sonogram, I decided to call my son who works a couple of miles from the hospital, arrange for him to pick me up in the parking lot of the hospital, take me to the entrance and then park his car before meeting me at the admissions room. I texted him, told him I was being admitted to the hospital with a blood clot in my leg and asked him to meet me in the parking lot. He didn't question me; instead said he would be there in ten minutes, which he was. As God's orchestration had planned, he had just returned from an early lunch.
These words came to my mind, "It's called God's orchestration, and you are merely following the music." I looked at my watch and it was 12:02, an hour and a half since I had walked into the Urgent Care facility. I had been to two medical facilities, been examined, had a sonogram, been back to Urgent Care and I was in the hospital in which a room had already been assigned to me. It was as if time had stopped and I was walking a path that had been carefully laid out by God.
It almost took longer to fill out the paperwork in the admissions office than the previous hour and a half at the two medical facilities. The kind woman in the admissions office got a wheelchair for me and escorted my son and me to my room on the third floor. Just as we exited the elevator on the third floor, the kind admissions woman said, "Well, look, there's your new doctor waiting for you at your room." She was as amazed as we were that there was a doctor waiting at my room for me, a cardiologist whom the Urgent Care doctor had called into the case. Following the music of God, the Great Conductor, was allowing me to experience a miracle every minute.
As she pushed me down the wing, the cardiologist, met us halfway, called my name and asked if that was me. I said yes, and he told me to go ahead into my room and he would be right back because he had to sign in at the nurses' desk. The admissions lady was still in shock that a new doctor had met me at my hospital room instead of my having to wait for him for hours and maybe an entire day. In the room she allowed me to get out of the wheelchair and sit in a chair. As she exited the room, she said, "I know that Jesus is going to give you peace while you are here." I replied that yes, He already has and I told her that I know Him well. She was thrilled with my statement.
It was 1:30, only three hours since I walked into the Urgent Care facility to be examined for what I thought might be an insect or spider bite and there I was with a diagnosis of a blood clot in my leg, and the protocol for the hospital treatment was already in the computers. It was a miracle after a miracle, after another miracle and after more miracles.
How Our Heavenly Father did it, I'll never know the steps by steps until I get to heaven. However, that night after I conferred with the doctor about the protocol which would happen at the hospital, after I had an IV hooked up, after I had a shot in my stomach and was settled in for the night, I asked Our Father how it was all orchestrated so perfectly even before I knew what the problem was.
Immediately the scripture came to mind, "Pray for one another so that you might be healed." Then these words came to my mind, "Because you have interceded so diligently for so many other people for so many hours and so many days lately, I orchestrated these miracles for you through your intercessory prayers also, as well as sending solutions to problems for the people for whom you were praying."
That is what He meant in that scripture when He caused it to be written in His Book, that when we pray in the Holy Spirit's intercessory prayers, if there is any evil assault planned by the devil for us, Our Powerful Father speaks the solution to our problems out as well as the solutions to the problems of the people for whom we are praying.
What a wonderful, efficient orchestra conductor He is. I witnessed His perfect orchestration in my behalf to supernaturally and speedily get me into the hospital where they know how to treat the problem because He has trained the physicians with His wisdom also through medical schools.
No one else could do that kind of supernatural intervention in the life of one of His children, no one except a Loving Father.
My mind is still in awe of Him, but I lived it and I witnessed it. It was the actions of a Wonderful Father who loves His children and meets our needs before we even know what the need is. That is what is so magnificent about it. He said he knows our needs before we do. He can only meet our needs when we pray; and the most powerful prayers are spoken when we pray in the Holy Spirit because they are God's solution to our needs and problems.
These miracles are even more powerful reminders to Me to pray in the Spirit at all times as led by Him. After following the music of His orchestration, I understand His will in a deeper way. Praying in the Holy Spirit brings heaven to earth with all of its excellence.
His prayers and His praise will continually be in my mouth. I hope this testimony brings praises to your mouth, too, so that you will pray in the Holy Spirit at all times and in all places which meet the needs of people in the earth.
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
BLESSINGS FOR KIEFER
BLESSINGS FOR KIEFER
T. Wieland Allen
There is no way to even anticipate or design or plan the wonderful ways that God works in our lives. My granddaughter Lindsey and her fiance Major have raised his brother Kiefer for two and a half years, rescuing him from an unpleasant home situation which was not conducive for a young man who is high on the autism spectrum to ever become self supporting and independent. Kiefer went from making failing grades in high school in his former environment to making A's and B's under his new environment, was inducted into the vo tech National Honor Society and received a certificate of honor from the Masonic Society of Oklahoma for being Student of Today. The promise of living independently became more and more possible as time went on and Kiefer's real talents and determination were unleashed in his newly structured and love enriched environment.
As graduation from high school came nearer, Major and Lindsey began to investigate further educational possibilities for Kiefer and decided that Job Corps might be a good avenue for training in a vocation and also training in independent living. They were informed that Kiefer could not apply for Job Corps until after he graduated from high school. As only God can arrange situations and circumstances, one of Kiefer's high school teachers took an interest in him, decided to help Kiefer with his application because the teacher had taught previously at Job Corps. That teacher was God's first educational angel sent to assist Kiefer in being accepted into Job Corps.
Knowing that it would be at least two weeks before Job Corps classes began, after sending in his application they believed that it would be a few weeks after graduation from high school before Kiefer would begin classes there if he were accepted. However, God had other plans, knowing that a student with certain learning limitations would need a more intensive orientation, God arranged for early admission into the Job Corps program for Kiefer. Only a few days after applying, Kiefer received a phone call asking if he could report to the Job Corps residential campus at 8:00 the next morning.
It was a complete surprise for all of them. Sure enough, before 8:00 a.m. the next morning they were on their way to the Job Corps campus, transporting a very quiet and fearful young man into new surroundings and new educational training. His guardians were also a bit fearful, not knowing if Kiefer would fit into the program and if he would find friends who would be beneficial to him in his time of living at the campus.
Another miracle awaited them. When they took him to the admission office there were three students congregating there who immediately welcomed Kiefer to the campus and said they wanted to be his friends. As Lindsey described it, they were all just like Kiefer, a bit nerdy but friendly and kind. The new friends, provided by God for Kiefer, told him that they were going to go to the RA and have Kiefer changed from his assigned dorm into their room in another dorm because their quad in a dorm had room for another guy. God had immediately provided new friends as well as new roommates, all perfectly suited for Kiefer.
For years, since early childhood, Kiefer has always been fascinated with wolves, draws them, reads about them, researches about them, etc. As only God could arrange it, at his first introduction to Job Corps, one of Kiefer's new roommates at Job Corps was wearing a tee shirt with a picture of a wolf on the front. It was a tailor made reception for Kiefer, arranged by His Heavenly Father to make him feel comfortable and accepted. Who else but God could do that?
After saying a quick goodbye to Kiefer and leaving him at the Job Corps campus, Major remarked to Lindsey, "Kiefer has his wolf pack at Job Corps." They felt they had left him in good hands with kind friends and an attentive administration who had arranged the whole scenario.
It was still two weeks until classes began, but the administration had used the time to acclimate the students to the new environment. They have taken field trips and just had loads of fun, which was necessary for those mildly challenged students to adjust to the new educational facility and new surroundings.
God relieved Major and Lindsey, and all of us who love Kiefer, of any anxiety that he could adjust to his new surroundings and living conditions. God provides all good things for His children. Kiefer has a special relationship with God. He enjoys the counseling from God that has allowed him to overcome bullying all of his life. Kiefer is a special young man and He is special to God also. Only God could arrange the entire transition from a protected home environment to a college type campus of learning for a young man who might be a bit limited in emotional and mental abilities but is hugely gifted in love, spiritual insight and kindness.
It will be exciting to observe the other gifts from God for Kiefer especially orchestrated by Our Heavenly Father in the future. God is certainly able!
T. Wieland Allen
There is no way to even anticipate or design or plan the wonderful ways that God works in our lives. My granddaughter Lindsey and her fiance Major have raised his brother Kiefer for two and a half years, rescuing him from an unpleasant home situation which was not conducive for a young man who is high on the autism spectrum to ever become self supporting and independent. Kiefer went from making failing grades in high school in his former environment to making A's and B's under his new environment, was inducted into the vo tech National Honor Society and received a certificate of honor from the Masonic Society of Oklahoma for being Student of Today. The promise of living independently became more and more possible as time went on and Kiefer's real talents and determination were unleashed in his newly structured and love enriched environment.
As graduation from high school came nearer, Major and Lindsey began to investigate further educational possibilities for Kiefer and decided that Job Corps might be a good avenue for training in a vocation and also training in independent living. They were informed that Kiefer could not apply for Job Corps until after he graduated from high school. As only God can arrange situations and circumstances, one of Kiefer's high school teachers took an interest in him, decided to help Kiefer with his application because the teacher had taught previously at Job Corps. That teacher was God's first educational angel sent to assist Kiefer in being accepted into Job Corps.
Knowing that it would be at least two weeks before Job Corps classes began, after sending in his application they believed that it would be a few weeks after graduation from high school before Kiefer would begin classes there if he were accepted. However, God had other plans, knowing that a student with certain learning limitations would need a more intensive orientation, God arranged for early admission into the Job Corps program for Kiefer. Only a few days after applying, Kiefer received a phone call asking if he could report to the Job Corps residential campus at 8:00 the next morning.
It was a complete surprise for all of them. Sure enough, before 8:00 a.m. the next morning they were on their way to the Job Corps campus, transporting a very quiet and fearful young man into new surroundings and new educational training. His guardians were also a bit fearful, not knowing if Kiefer would fit into the program and if he would find friends who would be beneficial to him in his time of living at the campus.
Another miracle awaited them. When they took him to the admission office there were three students congregating there who immediately welcomed Kiefer to the campus and said they wanted to be his friends. As Lindsey described it, they were all just like Kiefer, a bit nerdy but friendly and kind. The new friends, provided by God for Kiefer, told him that they were going to go to the RA and have Kiefer changed from his assigned dorm into their room in another dorm because their quad in a dorm had room for another guy. God had immediately provided new friends as well as new roommates, all perfectly suited for Kiefer.
For years, since early childhood, Kiefer has always been fascinated with wolves, draws them, reads about them, researches about them, etc. As only God could arrange it, at his first introduction to Job Corps, one of Kiefer's new roommates at Job Corps was wearing a tee shirt with a picture of a wolf on the front. It was a tailor made reception for Kiefer, arranged by His Heavenly Father to make him feel comfortable and accepted. Who else but God could do that?
After saying a quick goodbye to Kiefer and leaving him at the Job Corps campus, Major remarked to Lindsey, "Kiefer has his wolf pack at Job Corps." They felt they had left him in good hands with kind friends and an attentive administration who had arranged the whole scenario.
It was still two weeks until classes began, but the administration had used the time to acclimate the students to the new environment. They have taken field trips and just had loads of fun, which was necessary for those mildly challenged students to adjust to the new educational facility and new surroundings.
God relieved Major and Lindsey, and all of us who love Kiefer, of any anxiety that he could adjust to his new surroundings and living conditions. God provides all good things for His children. Kiefer has a special relationship with God. He enjoys the counseling from God that has allowed him to overcome bullying all of his life. Kiefer is a special young man and He is special to God also. Only God could arrange the entire transition from a protected home environment to a college type campus of learning for a young man who might be a bit limited in emotional and mental abilities but is hugely gifted in love, spiritual insight and kindness.
It will be exciting to observe the other gifts from God for Kiefer especially orchestrated by Our Heavenly Father in the future. God is certainly able!
Friday, August 11, 2017
FLYING MESSAGES FROM HEAVEN
FLYING MESSAGES FROM HEAVEN
T. Wieland Allen
Heavenly blessings manifest themselves in many different ways. Several years ago My husband Steve was at MD Anderson Hospital being treated for a rare form of cancer. He was in his second year of chemotherapy and while waiting for him to have some tests I visited a bookstore and saw a ledger that I felt would be perfect for him in which he could write his experiences about his treatments. The title on the front of the ledger was "Just When the Caterpillar Thought Life was Over, It Became A Butterfly." It was perfect for the situation.
I bought the ledger and gave it to my husband. The name on the front was meaningful to him. Even though the ledger only had one entry in it at the time of his death, because my husband Steve was not a person who liked to read or write things, the importance of the name on the front of the ledger still lingers on. Soon after I gave the ledger to him, a friend emailed to us a cartoon of a butterfly flying low while attempting to pull its heavy cocoon up some stone steps. The butterfly was a blue morpho butterfly. That particular butterfly with the name "morpho" was significant because Steve was struggling at the time with chemotherapy and he later changed from being a spiritual man in a physical body into a spirit in a new heavenly body. He morphed from being merely a physical man into being a spirit in the presence of God in heaven.
The color of that particular butterfly became a symbol of my husband Steve after his body died and his spirit, the real Steve, went to heaven. So you can see why the reason the blue morpho butterfly means so much to me, because Steve had actually morphed from a physical body into a spiritual body after getting rid of that old diseased body, which was represented by the cocoon in the cartoon. There have been several miraculous instances where pictures of blue morpho butterflies have appeared out of nowhere on things as encouragement to members of my family and to me. They were merely pictures, not a live butterfly.
A few months ago when I was going to a doctor for some tests that were unfamiliar to me, I was a bit anxious. I was not really worried, but just a little anxious because the tests were unfamiliar. The morning of the tests, I just happened to look out the kitchen window and there was a real, live blue morpho butterfly drinking pollen out of the many hundreds of red periwinkle flowers in a hanging basket that stretched at least three feet downward. That butterfly went from flower to flower all the way up and down and all around the hanging basket taking its slow, easy time, as if waiting to be recognized. I knew immediately that it was a message from God and Steve for me to relax, that the doctor's appointment was no big deal. I went to the doctor's office very relaxed after seeing the live blue morpho butterfly for the first time after only seeing pictures of them for five years. Sure enough, everything turned out fine in the tests. It's been at least three months and no butterfly of any color has been back to that hanging basket since that event. The appearance of the blue morpho butterfly was especially for me as a cure for that anxious feeling that day. Its appearance did what God intended.
Several months later my granddaughter Lindsey told me that she, her boyfriend Major and Major's brother Kiefer were at the boys' grandpa's house in another city and while they were around the pool a blue butterfly landed on Kiefer's arm and stayed there. It walked up and down his arm. The butterfly was so sedate that Linz was easily able to get a great picture of it. The blue butterfly stayed on Kiefer's arm a long time. Lindsey put her hand close to Kiefer's arm and the butterfly walked right onto her hand and stayed there a few minutes, then flew back to Kiefer's arm, staying there a few minutes flittering its wings as if to say, "Notice me. I'm sent to give you faith." Lindsey texted to me a picture of the blue butterfly. Yes, it was not just a blue butterfly, it was a blue morpho butterfly, a symbol to me that good supernatural changes are on the way.
Lindsey said that they could see the underside of its wings and they were orange and green. It was definitely a supernatural experience for them. It was God and her Grandpa Steve telling her and Major that Kiefer's future is going to be okay. Kiefer is high on the autism spectrum and as an 18 year old he is having normal problems just like other 18 year old guys, but he also has the additional problems of having some limitations from being on the autism spectrum. His hopes and their hopes for his future is that he will be able to live independently. Decisions need to be made that will enable him to fulfill his dream of living independently, able to support himself, live alone and have a normal life with some supervision.
Linz said that the blue morpho butterfly stayed around them a long time that day, flying around their heads and then landing on either Kiefer or Lindsey's shoulders for a while that afternoon. There did not seem to be any sign that the blue morpho wanted to be anywhere else. There is no doubt to me that the event was sent to encourage all three of them. Major has guardianship of Kiefer so he is faced with a lot of decisions for both of their futures.
Kiefer is a very spiritual young man. He loves God and is a very loving person, even to people who bully him because of his limitations. Some of his writings have wisdom and insights well beyond his years and abilities. He has that extra faith and sensitivity that enables him to perceive spiritual things that other people his age and many of his elders don't perceive or understand.
God told us to be on the watch to recognize when we are entertaining angels, that they are always around us even though we are not aware of them. There is no doubt in my mind that in both instances, the blue morpho butterfly on my red periwinkles and also the blue morpho butterfly that visited Lindsey, Major and Kiefer, that they were sent from heaven to be an encouragement to us. That is what the events produced, faith and encouragement when both were needed.
Both supernatural events are worthy of our praising God for sending messengers from heaven to bring good news to us and give us peace.
That's what God does, always sends peace and love to us. He uses what is important to us so that we recognize His presence.
We have a lot of faith now for Kiefer's future. God's sending the special butterfly did what it was sent to do, give faith and encouragement to all of us.
Both supernatural events resulted in My giving thanks and praise to God, who always meets our needs. He knows our unique and special needs and He supplies what we need, even unusual butterflies to hang around until we recognize their presence as a supernatural visitation from heaven sent from a loving God to encourage us that He loves us and will meet our needs. How fortunate we are to have eyes to recognize the special gifts. Kiefer has always had had eyes to perceive and ears to understand spiritual things. That's why he is so blessed. He writes about them and spreads the good news.
T. Wieland Allen
Heavenly blessings manifest themselves in many different ways. Several years ago My husband Steve was at MD Anderson Hospital being treated for a rare form of cancer. He was in his second year of chemotherapy and while waiting for him to have some tests I visited a bookstore and saw a ledger that I felt would be perfect for him in which he could write his experiences about his treatments. The title on the front of the ledger was "Just When the Caterpillar Thought Life was Over, It Became A Butterfly." It was perfect for the situation.
I bought the ledger and gave it to my husband. The name on the front was meaningful to him. Even though the ledger only had one entry in it at the time of his death, because my husband Steve was not a person who liked to read or write things, the importance of the name on the front of the ledger still lingers on. Soon after I gave the ledger to him, a friend emailed to us a cartoon of a butterfly flying low while attempting to pull its heavy cocoon up some stone steps. The butterfly was a blue morpho butterfly. That particular butterfly with the name "morpho" was significant because Steve was struggling at the time with chemotherapy and he later changed from being a spiritual man in a physical body into a spirit in a new heavenly body. He morphed from being merely a physical man into being a spirit in the presence of God in heaven.
The color of that particular butterfly became a symbol of my husband Steve after his body died and his spirit, the real Steve, went to heaven. So you can see why the reason the blue morpho butterfly means so much to me, because Steve had actually morphed from a physical body into a spiritual body after getting rid of that old diseased body, which was represented by the cocoon in the cartoon. There have been several miraculous instances where pictures of blue morpho butterflies have appeared out of nowhere on things as encouragement to members of my family and to me. They were merely pictures, not a live butterfly.
Several months later my granddaughter Lindsey told me that she, her boyfriend Major and Major's brother Kiefer were at the boys' grandpa's house in another city and while they were around the pool a blue butterfly landed on Kiefer's arm and stayed there. It walked up and down his arm. The butterfly was so sedate that Linz was easily able to get a great picture of it. The blue butterfly stayed on Kiefer's arm a long time. Lindsey put her hand close to Kiefer's arm and the butterfly walked right onto her hand and stayed there a few minutes, then flew back to Kiefer's arm, staying there a few minutes flittering its wings as if to say, "Notice me. I'm sent to give you faith." Lindsey texted to me a picture of the blue butterfly. Yes, it was not just a blue butterfly, it was a blue morpho butterfly, a symbol to me that good supernatural changes are on the way.
Lindsey said that they could see the underside of its wings and they were orange and green. It was definitely a supernatural experience for them. It was God and her Grandpa Steve telling her and Major that Kiefer's future is going to be okay. Kiefer is high on the autism spectrum and as an 18 year old he is having normal problems just like other 18 year old guys, but he also has the additional problems of having some limitations from being on the autism spectrum. His hopes and their hopes for his future is that he will be able to live independently. Decisions need to be made that will enable him to fulfill his dream of living independently, able to support himself, live alone and have a normal life with some supervision.
Linz said that the blue morpho butterfly stayed around them a long time that day, flying around their heads and then landing on either Kiefer or Lindsey's shoulders for a while that afternoon. There did not seem to be any sign that the blue morpho wanted to be anywhere else. There is no doubt to me that the event was sent to encourage all three of them. Major has guardianship of Kiefer so he is faced with a lot of decisions for both of their futures.
Kiefer is a very spiritual young man. He loves God and is a very loving person, even to people who bully him because of his limitations. Some of his writings have wisdom and insights well beyond his years and abilities. He has that extra faith and sensitivity that enables him to perceive spiritual things that other people his age and many of his elders don't perceive or understand.
God told us to be on the watch to recognize when we are entertaining angels, that they are always around us even though we are not aware of them. There is no doubt in my mind that in both instances, the blue morpho butterfly on my red periwinkles and also the blue morpho butterfly that visited Lindsey, Major and Kiefer, that they were sent from heaven to be an encouragement to us. That is what the events produced, faith and encouragement when both were needed.
Both supernatural events are worthy of our praising God for sending messengers from heaven to bring good news to us and give us peace.
That's what God does, always sends peace and love to us. He uses what is important to us so that we recognize His presence.
We have a lot of faith now for Kiefer's future. God's sending the special butterfly did what it was sent to do, give faith and encouragement to all of us.
Both supernatural events resulted in My giving thanks and praise to God, who always meets our needs. He knows our unique and special needs and He supplies what we need, even unusual butterflies to hang around until we recognize their presence as a supernatural visitation from heaven sent from a loving God to encourage us that He loves us and will meet our needs. How fortunate we are to have eyes to recognize the special gifts. Kiefer has always had had eyes to perceive and ears to understand spiritual things. That's why he is so blessed. He writes about them and spreads the good news.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
FORGIVING AND FORGETTING
THE STRATEGIES OF FORGIVING AND FORGETTING
The first time that I met Kiefer, who is my granddaughter's fiance's youngest brother, he had a spiral notebook in his hand ready to share with me some of his writings. He is high on the autism scale but at 16 he was able to communicate at his age level with a few restrictions. One of the restrictions is that he is impulsive and if a thought comes into his head that he thinks needs to be shared, he interrupts the conversation and insists on speaking his mind or give his opinion. Sometimes his interruptions have nothing to do with the topic of conversation, but suffice it to say that he has a lot to comment, no matter who is present.
At our first meeting Kiefer asked me if I would read some of his writings. I was astounded by the first writing in the notebook. It was about forgiveness, which to me was a subject that I thought would be the last one that he would have any insight into. The subject was about bullying and how he learned to deal with forgiving bullies, which to a person of limited mental and physical abilities is a daily occurrence. He did not tell about any specific instance of being bullied in his writings but the important subject matter was how he learned to forget an incident after forgiving someone for hateful words, demeaning words, physical abuse, mental abuse, fear after being shoved into lockers at school and other horrible instances that he had suffered every day of his school career.
The writing related to a particular day in which he had suffered a cruel event from a boy at school that not only hurt him emotionally and physically but also caused him much embarrassment in front of a gymnasium full of male and female students. He wrote that people were always telling him that he just needs to forgive the bullies and then forget it. With his limited knowledge relating to psychological strategies, he wrote that he was confused about the forgetting part because it was impossible to erase from his mind the events that injured him so deeply. After several people again told him to forgive and then forget, he needed some insight into the action of forgetting when the event was indelibly imprinted upon his mind, along with the mental pain and the physical pain. He was determined to find out how to forget, which adults insinuated to him was so easy to do.
He wrote that in his prayers that night he told God that he didn't understand why he was supposed to forgive and then forget when he had been so hurt. Suddenly these words came to him, FORGIVE, ASSESS, LEARN and then FORGETt. His insight into the strategy astounded me. He wrote that it came to his mind that first he must as an act of his will decide to forgive a bully. He said that it is a decision that he needed to make, just make up his mind to forgive the bully without feeling forgiveness.
Then it came to his mind that after he decides to forgive a bully that he must assess the situation, think about the bully's objective, the bully's intelligence level, the bully's personality and anything else that comes to his mind relating to getting inside of the bully so as to understand him and his motivations, such as maybe the bully is just plain mean and bullies other people, people with disabilities and people without disabilities. He wrote that assessing the situation brings understanding and will cause Kiefer to learn from the situation, learn not to get around the bully, learn how to react in a kind way to the bully so that Kiefer will win in the situation.
Kiefer wrote that then after forgiving, assessing and learning, the next step is that he would have the ability to forget the bullying because what he will remember is the lesson that he learned.
Kiefer's final paragraph in the essay proclaimed that the way to forgive and to forget is to first forgive merely by choosing to forgive as a decision, then assess the situation, learn the lesson that comes from the assessment, and then forget the incident but remember the lesson learned. So the process is really to forgive, assess, learn and forget, not just merely to forgive and forget.
I learned a lesson from reading his heartfelt essay. When I read about the assessing part, I was reminded of the scripture that says to reason together with God about everything in order to gain wisdom and insight which brings knowledge. Combine that with the scripture that says people perish without knowledge. Kiefer was perishing without knowledge of the real way to forgive and forget. God explained to him that there are two other steps on the way to forgetting a hurtful incident after forgiving the bully. Those two steps are assessing and learning.
It's said that a little child will lead us. The simple little child inside of Kiefer allowed him to do what he instinctively knew would help him, first go to God for His explanation. When you hear truth from God, then you are free because truth makes you free.
Remember Kiefer's formula: FORGIVE, ASSESS, LEARN AND FORGET.
It works.
The first time that I met Kiefer, who is my granddaughter's fiance's youngest brother, he had a spiral notebook in his hand ready to share with me some of his writings. He is high on the autism scale but at 16 he was able to communicate at his age level with a few restrictions. One of the restrictions is that he is impulsive and if a thought comes into his head that he thinks needs to be shared, he interrupts the conversation and insists on speaking his mind or give his opinion. Sometimes his interruptions have nothing to do with the topic of conversation, but suffice it to say that he has a lot to comment, no matter who is present.
At our first meeting Kiefer asked me if I would read some of his writings. I was astounded by the first writing in the notebook. It was about forgiveness, which to me was a subject that I thought would be the last one that he would have any insight into. The subject was about bullying and how he learned to deal with forgiving bullies, which to a person of limited mental and physical abilities is a daily occurrence. He did not tell about any specific instance of being bullied in his writings but the important subject matter was how he learned to forget an incident after forgiving someone for hateful words, demeaning words, physical abuse, mental abuse, fear after being shoved into lockers at school and other horrible instances that he had suffered every day of his school career.
The writing related to a particular day in which he had suffered a cruel event from a boy at school that not only hurt him emotionally and physically but also caused him much embarrassment in front of a gymnasium full of male and female students. He wrote that people were always telling him that he just needs to forgive the bullies and then forget it. With his limited knowledge relating to psychological strategies, he wrote that he was confused about the forgetting part because it was impossible to erase from his mind the events that injured him so deeply. After several people again told him to forgive and then forget, he needed some insight into the action of forgetting when the event was indelibly imprinted upon his mind, along with the mental pain and the physical pain. He was determined to find out how to forget, which adults insinuated to him was so easy to do.
He wrote that in his prayers that night he told God that he didn't understand why he was supposed to forgive and then forget when he had been so hurt. Suddenly these words came to him, FORGIVE, ASSESS, LEARN and then FORGETt. His insight into the strategy astounded me. He wrote that it came to his mind that first he must as an act of his will decide to forgive a bully. He said that it is a decision that he needed to make, just make up his mind to forgive the bully without feeling forgiveness.
Then it came to his mind that after he decides to forgive a bully that he must assess the situation, think about the bully's objective, the bully's intelligence level, the bully's personality and anything else that comes to his mind relating to getting inside of the bully so as to understand him and his motivations, such as maybe the bully is just plain mean and bullies other people, people with disabilities and people without disabilities. He wrote that assessing the situation brings understanding and will cause Kiefer to learn from the situation, learn not to get around the bully, learn how to react in a kind way to the bully so that Kiefer will win in the situation.
Kiefer wrote that then after forgiving, assessing and learning, the next step is that he would have the ability to forget the bullying because what he will remember is the lesson that he learned.
Kiefer's final paragraph in the essay proclaimed that the way to forgive and to forget is to first forgive merely by choosing to forgive as a decision, then assess the situation, learn the lesson that comes from the assessment, and then forget the incident but remember the lesson learned. So the process is really to forgive, assess, learn and forget, not just merely to forgive and forget.
I learned a lesson from reading his heartfelt essay. When I read about the assessing part, I was reminded of the scripture that says to reason together with God about everything in order to gain wisdom and insight which brings knowledge. Combine that with the scripture that says people perish without knowledge. Kiefer was perishing without knowledge of the real way to forgive and forget. God explained to him that there are two other steps on the way to forgetting a hurtful incident after forgiving the bully. Those two steps are assessing and learning.
It's said that a little child will lead us. The simple little child inside of Kiefer allowed him to do what he instinctively knew would help him, first go to God for His explanation. When you hear truth from God, then you are free because truth makes you free.
Remember Kiefer's formula: FORGIVE, ASSESS, LEARN AND FORGET.
It works.
Friday, March 3, 2017
A SYMPHONY PLAYED IN PERFECT TUNE
T. Wieland Allen
God's orchestrations continue to amaze and thrill His children with surprises and harmonious events. He never ceases in His ability to orchestrate situations for His children which work to answer their needs and solve their problems. For the participants in all of His harmonious works that He performs, it often takes their breath away because the events are so supernatural in their perfectly designed schemes which are performed with such love and specificity.
Such an orchestration happened recently in the lives of a group of ladies who meet weekly for prayers and studying God's Instruction Book. We are used to magnificent happenings from Our Father which cause delight and joy. Each event produces emotional results like it was the first time that we have seen His supernatural help appear so effortlessly in our behalf. All that we do is believe that he is the designer of all good things and that He proves Himself as the great orchestra leader.
We were asked by a friend to meet at her house and bless her new house. The husband of our friend is a minister and we were complimented to be asked to lead the house blessing. The first thing we did was go on line and search for house blessings. There are hundreds of them, Catholic ones, Protestant ones and ones from other religious organizations. All of them had the same type of blessings and prayers but they just didn't seem to fit this particular couple. The ones that were on line seemed kind of cold and impersonal. It kept coming to my mind that we should only depend upon the Holy Spirit to provide His words of blessing for the beautiful home. While waiting for the appointed day to arrive, we occasionally would consult the printed blessings but there was still no feeling that they were right for this occasion. It began to be exciting to see what the Holy Spirit was going to do when we arrived at the home on the specific day.
A week before the event, I was in Hobby Lobby buying yarn to send to my granddaughter and while there I saw a large gray satin throw pillow upon which the words "Bless This House" was printed in white lettering. The pillow had white satin piping around it and the lettering was encircled by a wreath of white cotton bolls. It was provided by God for sure. The only thing that concerned me was the presence of the cotton bolls, but the pillow was so beautiful and it had the right message on it, so I overrode my concern about the cotton bolls and bought it for the hostess of the home.
The night before we were to gather and drive to their home in another city, as I was going to bed I was talking to God about the blessings of the house, telling Him that I was excited to see what He was going to do to bless the particular new house. As I laid down to sleep, words began coming to my mind relating to each room of the house, the husband's study, the wife's study, the den, the entry hall, the kitchen, the laundry room, the garage, the yard and even the front door. I began to write on paper with a pencil the blessings that came to mind. Even though I knew that God would provide the right words the next day, I surmised that maybe those blessings for each room that came to mind were the guidelines for the blessing.
I slept like a baby that night, knowing that the guidelines were provided. Waking early the next morning was no problem for me, it's my waking time in order to write a God blog, as I call it, every morning. Instead of writing the blog, it came to my mind to type the blessings on the computer, the ones that had come to mind the night before, and I felt that I was to print out enough copies for the ladies and the homeowners. I did it, typed them and printed copies to be used as a guide that day in blessing the house since it was a new experience for us to be asked to participate in blessing a house.
About an hour after printing the copies, a gastrointestinal flu hit me, one which had been making its rounds in our town. I began to have horrible symptoms, running back and forth to the bathroom as the symptoms progressed. I knew it would be impossible for me to go with the ladies to bless the house. They are spiritually astute ladies and are well able to carry on the work to which we were called. I put the special pillow in a large gift bag, added the copies of the blessing for each room of the house and put them in a place for some of the ladies to pick up before leaving for the home of the friend who was anxiously waiting for us to help her bless her new house.
The orchestration continued with a little confusion because of the change in my plans, but several of the ladies were able to join with the hostess at noon. Later the report came back to me that the individual room blessings that the Holy Spirit had given to me the night before were perfect in every way as the group of ladies entered each room and read God's blessing for that room. As an act of celebration and generosity, the hostess had provided a banquet of delicious food for the ladies.
When the hostess opened our housewarming gift for her, she was overwhelmed with the light gray satin throw pillow. Her couch is dark gray and the pillow enhanced the beauty of the couch. The biggest surprise for me of God's perfect orchestration was that the hostess had been raised on a cotton farm and so the cotton bolls on the pillow were God's signature that the hostess needed, her sign from God that her house is definitely abundantly blessed. Only God could design the perfect pillow and then send it to her with His signature on it that only she would recognize. That's the way Our Heavenly Father does things. He puts his signature on each personal symphony that He creates for the harmonious and miraculous events in our lives.
The blessings for each room of her house and the personally designed pillow are Our Father's confirmation to our dear friend and to us that He cares about every little detail in our lives. His personally written blessings provided God's "amen," His "so be it" to the day, one which was very, very special for the hostess, for her husband, for the ladies who were in attendance, and for me. I received the good news later about the success of the personal house blessings written by the Holy Spirit and the love of the hostess for the unique and special pillow which was personally designed for her without my knowledge of it. It is a loving Father who creates that kind of harmonious orchestration.
He wants to orchestrate every decision that we make, every step that we take and every word that we speak. When we allow Him to do his designing and his orchestration, He creates heaven on earth for us. Now, that is a loving, spiritually artistic Heavenly Father who is well tuned to our needs.
Let Him lead and orchestrate your life. He does a superior job!
T. Wieland Allen
God's orchestrations continue to amaze and thrill His children with surprises and harmonious events. He never ceases in His ability to orchestrate situations for His children which work to answer their needs and solve their problems. For the participants in all of His harmonious works that He performs, it often takes their breath away because the events are so supernatural in their perfectly designed schemes which are performed with such love and specificity.
Such an orchestration happened recently in the lives of a group of ladies who meet weekly for prayers and studying God's Instruction Book. We are used to magnificent happenings from Our Father which cause delight and joy. Each event produces emotional results like it was the first time that we have seen His supernatural help appear so effortlessly in our behalf. All that we do is believe that he is the designer of all good things and that He proves Himself as the great orchestra leader.
We were asked by a friend to meet at her house and bless her new house. The husband of our friend is a minister and we were complimented to be asked to lead the house blessing. The first thing we did was go on line and search for house blessings. There are hundreds of them, Catholic ones, Protestant ones and ones from other religious organizations. All of them had the same type of blessings and prayers but they just didn't seem to fit this particular couple. The ones that were on line seemed kind of cold and impersonal. It kept coming to my mind that we should only depend upon the Holy Spirit to provide His words of blessing for the beautiful home. While waiting for the appointed day to arrive, we occasionally would consult the printed blessings but there was still no feeling that they were right for this occasion. It began to be exciting to see what the Holy Spirit was going to do when we arrived at the home on the specific day.
A week before the event, I was in Hobby Lobby buying yarn to send to my granddaughter and while there I saw a large gray satin throw pillow upon which the words "Bless This House" was printed in white lettering. The pillow had white satin piping around it and the lettering was encircled by a wreath of white cotton bolls. It was provided by God for sure. The only thing that concerned me was the presence of the cotton bolls, but the pillow was so beautiful and it had the right message on it, so I overrode my concern about the cotton bolls and bought it for the hostess of the home.
The night before we were to gather and drive to their home in another city, as I was going to bed I was talking to God about the blessings of the house, telling Him that I was excited to see what He was going to do to bless the particular new house. As I laid down to sleep, words began coming to my mind relating to each room of the house, the husband's study, the wife's study, the den, the entry hall, the kitchen, the laundry room, the garage, the yard and even the front door. I began to write on paper with a pencil the blessings that came to mind. Even though I knew that God would provide the right words the next day, I surmised that maybe those blessings for each room that came to mind were the guidelines for the blessing.
I slept like a baby that night, knowing that the guidelines were provided. Waking early the next morning was no problem for me, it's my waking time in order to write a God blog, as I call it, every morning. Instead of writing the blog, it came to my mind to type the blessings on the computer, the ones that had come to mind the night before, and I felt that I was to print out enough copies for the ladies and the homeowners. I did it, typed them and printed copies to be used as a guide that day in blessing the house since it was a new experience for us to be asked to participate in blessing a house.
About an hour after printing the copies, a gastrointestinal flu hit me, one which had been making its rounds in our town. I began to have horrible symptoms, running back and forth to the bathroom as the symptoms progressed. I knew it would be impossible for me to go with the ladies to bless the house. They are spiritually astute ladies and are well able to carry on the work to which we were called. I put the special pillow in a large gift bag, added the copies of the blessing for each room of the house and put them in a place for some of the ladies to pick up before leaving for the home of the friend who was anxiously waiting for us to help her bless her new house.
The orchestration continued with a little confusion because of the change in my plans, but several of the ladies were able to join with the hostess at noon. Later the report came back to me that the individual room blessings that the Holy Spirit had given to me the night before were perfect in every way as the group of ladies entered each room and read God's blessing for that room. As an act of celebration and generosity, the hostess had provided a banquet of delicious food for the ladies.
When the hostess opened our housewarming gift for her, she was overwhelmed with the light gray satin throw pillow. Her couch is dark gray and the pillow enhanced the beauty of the couch. The biggest surprise for me of God's perfect orchestration was that the hostess had been raised on a cotton farm and so the cotton bolls on the pillow were God's signature that the hostess needed, her sign from God that her house is definitely abundantly blessed. Only God could design the perfect pillow and then send it to her with His signature on it that only she would recognize. That's the way Our Heavenly Father does things. He puts his signature on each personal symphony that He creates for the harmonious and miraculous events in our lives.
He wants to orchestrate every decision that we make, every step that we take and every word that we speak. When we allow Him to do his designing and his orchestration, He creates heaven on earth for us. Now, that is a loving, spiritually artistic Heavenly Father who is well tuned to our needs.
Let Him lead and orchestrate your life. He does a superior job!
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