Spiraling

So, who is this woman I married? Shy, a bouncing blonde ponytail, with her vivacious six-year-old​ daughter​, a diligent caretaker of ten ​stray ​kittens. I had no idea​ who she was, not really. ​ What man ​ever​ does​ to begin with​? She loved Jesus, she was so beautiful I wanted to weep, I had two small children left to me by my ​first ​wife’s death from cancer​;​ it was a match that had to be.

Who is she? I asked myself this when, as I was hopping her on one leg to ​her wheelchair,​ she said, cheek to cheek, “I’m glad this has happened.” I rested her against ​a ​wall, “What?” She said it brought us closer together and closer to God. It’s what we wanted. but I thought snork​eling​ on the Caribbean Sea and praying together again in the morning would be sufficient. No half measures with God. Living in Portland was like spiritual Sodom. ​Moving here, ​w​e were volunteering to make our lives available​ to God​ ​and now He is ​preparing us​ for what He has for us.​ I told a friend, jokingly, I wished my blog​ was​ “NOT changing from glory to glory ​TOO​ ​MUCH​,” but he was relentless and responded, “Nothing is too much to be conformed into God’s image.” ​I wanted to tell him to lighten up. ​

I’ve seen Mexican ​men and women​ working incredibly hard here, not always true in America​,​ where their votes are bought by food stamps. I saw a young gay man lounging by the pool. I remembered how I ​used to​ respond in my legalistic, judgmental church days​. That is,​ “If I befriend him, he will think I approve of his life​’s​ choices,” right? ​I know the Scriptures, but since my name isn’t Jesus, I treated him with respect. ​I tried to ​explain to him why Obama was not the savior of the world and why Trump was not the ​Beast of the Book of Revelations, even if he looked and acted the part many times. ​ ​After I was ​more delivered from my judgmentalism, someone​ asked ​me ​what ​I ​would do if a homosexual walked into ​my​ church? I said I would sit him with the rest of the sinners. After all, God hates religious pride above all else.
We were shunned ​by religion ​as if we were gay, Laurie and I, because our sin was equally grievous, at least in the eyes of our church leader: ​we stood on principle against a false religious movement, that was invading by a coup attempt to take over our fellowship in South Africa. ​My church leader at the time sided against us. That was ten years ago, and that didn’t have a happy ending. That is why I write novels on spiritual abuse. My novel, “The Grass that Suffers,” is being readied for publishing, hopefully within a month.

​I guess I’m getting into the habit of naming each blog. “Spiraling,” because after “launching” and “splatting,” we are now spiraling to a place of finding a new and present reality, physically, mentally, and spiritually. On the spiritual side, through our friend Lucy at the hospital, we met a group of beautiful miracle-believing Christians, and went to their church yesterday morning. That will be my next blog. ​

Author: Changing from Glory to Glory

I was saved in the "Jesus People Movement". You can see the movie, “The Jesus Revolution,” it was just like that, the real deal. I cut my long hair and never looked back. We were the last revival America has seen. Many of us became preachers, including myself. In 30 years, my family and I planted churches in Canada and South Africa. We saw many conversions and healing miracles, especially in South Africa. Much of our ministry overseas involved standing against the false revivals of charlatans like Rodney Howard-Brown and Kenneth Copeland, also known as “Dominion Theology” and the New Apostolic Reformation. My family paid a great price to stand against these false revivals, even in my own church organization, even to this day. Before salvation in 1976, I fought in the Vietnam War, a bronze star, and then like many disillusioned young people of my generation, I became a hippie. Vietnam wasn’t just about giving us hippies an excuse to get high and medicate our anger, but it was an attempt at stopping Communism’s aggression in Southeast Asia. We failed, and millions of innocent Vietnamese and Cambodian people died, the eventual result of all tyrannical takeovers. Now, in my latter years, I find myself fighting again, here at home, only this time it’s a global takeover, where even our own nation is against our freedoms. God impressed on me as a young convert that I would see the Rapture of the church, and now we are very certainly living in those days just before the Tribulation Period, also called “Daniel’s Seventieth Week,” and “Jacob’s Troubles,” a time when God’s wrath will be poured out upon the unbelieving world. This judgment is not for the Church, the Bride of Christ. We’re going up in the First Resurrection. Paul says to “encourage one another with this hope.” Personally, I’m ready to go home to heaven. We’ve had a great run, Laurie and I, and we had many unforgettable apostolic experiences building churches on the Word around the world. Now, I live on the northwest Oregon coast, and with the help of my beautiful wife Laurie, I write romantic, time traveling comedies about the End Times. View all posts by Changing from Glory to Glory