Praise the Lord and pass the ammo!

I'm quite proud of Jeanne Assam, the woman who whacked the recent would-be Columbine copy cat. How many more would he have killed? We'll never know, but at least one more, right? She saved at least one life, but probably 10-15, the way random massacres go these days. What if she was in Columbine High School in 1999? What if she was in Omaha recently? Will the anti-gun Left take heed? Security guards need to be strapped. My uncle, a prison designer who recently contracted for a year in Iraq, thinks terrorists are aiming at schools next. Why shouldn't there be one gun at the school, locked in a gun safe, hidden somewhere? A gun is a dangerous thing, but not inherently evil. For all of you who think guns are evil, would you rather be alone in a room with a gun, or with a terrorist? If terrorists know we pack, they may not even try to overrun a school.

5 Reasons I Quit Writing

"Are you writing?" She said.

"No."

I was at church tonight, and someone heard I used to be a writer. Am I still writing? I haven't written in a while, and several things are to blame.

First, I wrote and wrote, but never ended up with much to speak of, and what I had, I sent all over the place. Some of it stuck, but never with any significant positive criticism. I had one story go to print, but it was voted in by my friends. Others were published electronically. My last story to be published was a fiction but they wanted it for social commentary. I said I'll take what I can get, but it seemed like God saying to me: You aren't writing, you're commenting. Which is true.

Second, there was never a feeling of belongingness (how's that for a word!) in writing as a career. No one and I mean no one in my family embraced me as a writer. Few friends cared or supported it. I was completely alone in my ambition. Is that unique? No. Most writers stand alone this way, but I've always needed some kind of support from someone to feel valid as a writer. Writing felt like I was in someone else's home, and as kind as they were, I always knew I'd have to get up and leave.

Third, writing felt like a self-absorbed sin in my life, like a waste of time. I've been writing for years and look what it's got me. Nothing.

Fourth. No discipline. I read several books (Bird by Bird, Moveable Feast) by writers on writing and they all shared one thing - discipline. They wrote four hours a day, in the morning, or they would rent a cabin and write for three months. If I did that, I'd just stare out the window at the mountains and begin an inner dialogue that would crescendo into loud cries of madness.

Fifth. I never felt like God wanted me to be a writer. I felt like it was a shameful passtime, a diversion from true ministry. People need help in this world, why are you sitting in Caribou Coffee? Besides, I could never be a Christian writer. I swear too much, and even if I didn't, Christian publishing has been hijacked by assholes who can't write an interesting story to save their lives.

Am I happy now, not writing? It's the same thing, I work, eat, sleep, work, eat and sleep, and never think about it. When something reminds me of writing, or doing anything creative, I instantly feel a burning fire in my ribs. I want to create, but there's a cage around me. Other people are in charge of all the creative stuff at church. The best I've been able to do is play guitar on the worship team. How exciting it would be to write and produce a play. How fun to start a creative blog with poetry and stories.

Did writing go out with the bathwater of my Emergent Church journey?

Possibly. It was writing got me into it. I drudged for something I could agree was both church and not church. It was a naval gazistic penury, this Emergent stuff, and hippified Christians with arbitrary soul-patches and piercings controlled it. It was church as usual, church on Sunday that is, and hippyanity the rest of the week. Many of those I encountered were always in character. It was life en voyeur, doing everything for the sake of being watched or admired for your interpretation of life. See, it can be this, too! In fact, it is this, and how dare you oppose me? Many emergents had long spiny barbs all over them to ward off all other interpretation, and especially absolutes, and specifically absolute interpretations of scripture.

They'd say, "what is church?" "What does it look like?" I would answer, "well, the Bible says..." but these questions weren't meant to be answered. They were supposed to be left as questions. "What is redemption?" "What is salvation?" "The Bible says salvation is...." Wait! You can't answer, not even from the Bible. That's presumptive. You can quote a church father, or John Piper, or you can say it's like this or that, but that becomes your interpretation. You're stuck with it. "Church is a community, where people share their belongings and serve one another." Okay. That's what it is to you, but not me.

"Can it be called church and be full of people with tattoos, soul-patches and piercings who drink beer? Can church look like the world? Can church be full of philosophers and still be church?" What if it can't? Will you leave? That's my question. Or is it important enough that you'd give up certain things? You don't have to, as we read in Romans, but what if you did? Maybe the remodeling of the church has taken a turn away from what pleases God and toward what pleases man. Did Jesus' disciples stop at a tattoo/piercing/beer/soul-patch parlor? In one passage, Jesus told a man to sell all his belongings and follow Him. He knew what was important to the man, his material belongings. Sell. Follow Me.

That was the eye of the needle verse, and I was always impressed that I had the answer to that one, so I'll share it now. It's like you're a spirit, but you've grown attached to material. As spirit, you can pass through anything, even a wall, as Jesus did. But if you grow attached to your Ferrari, it will prevent you from passing through that tiny hole. You have to strip the things off, or be willing to instantly give them up, or able to curse them, or become detached instantly, knowing what their true properties are, and that you're essentially different.

Wanna know what Church looks like?

People. Church looks like the people in it, and it will progress or not based on the people in it. One church in Richmond, VA is full of tattooed/bearded/pierced people who don't drink because drinking ruined their lives. Another church in Portland, OR is full of younger versions of the same thing but with masters degrees and they drink because they have the mettle to enjoy it and resist alcoholism. Both are church. One church in Colorado is full of wooden people and prescribed liturgy, another, in Africa, is full of dancing, tongues, prophesy, and healing. People encounter God differently, but they're still in the church.

Several things church is not, and I'll write about that later. Maybe. As I said, I've given up writing.

God's Heretic, Greg Boyd

I actually agree with this guy:

(Click Greg's face to see website)

Yes, I'm still a right-winged, angry repub, but Greg Boyd's right. Our Kingdom is not of this earth, and neither do we see Jesus carry on about politics. Everything is directed to the individual - slaves, masters, deny yourself, pick up your cross, pay your taxes, leaders are established by God (was that Paul?). Greg Boyd's title, "the Heretic," in Christianne Amanpour's recent CNN special, "God's Christian Warriors" references the most common result in her Googling of his name. Is he? To be a heretic, don't you have to misinterpret the Bible? Has he done that? Not so far, but I'm new to Greg Boyd and I'm doing my research.

Either way, I was impressed by the report. Besides being one of the best things I've ever seen on CNN, it was balanced to a fault. Christianne could have been an internal house cleaner for the Church the way she presented our issues. Was she harsh? No. Too balanced for CNN, I'd say. She didn't get the memo about picking on right-winged Christians in an election year. I have yet to see "God's Jewish Warriors," and want to, because the phrase slams an "Eye of Sauron-like" image into my brain of Mel Brooks driving a tank backwards and holding a wooden short sword.

Anyways, check it out. Knowing they have made something good for once in a long while, CNN is running it ad nauseam.

New Post

I'm sitting in a hot window at Saxby's waiting for my car. They're replacing the windshield because a rock split it in two. Then the tinting place is going to tint the side windows and block out 99.7 per cent of UV rays. Why? Because I need UV rays blocked more than ever. UV rays cause skin cancer. What to say about that, now, two months after the diagnosis.

It was a nodule, high on my chest, so that I barely saw it. I usually put my shirt on right after I shower, before the fog clears off the mirror. I cover up, then comb my hair and shave, or whatever, with my shirt on. Stupid, I know, but that's just how I learned. I saw the nodule and called a dermatoligist out of the phone book and had an appointment within a week.

Four years ago I found two bumps on my back. In your thirties, you get these, and they take them off and say "they're nothing." Infected sweat glands, benign cysts, "bumps." I had a lipoma and a cyst. Basically, a fat deposit and a big zit. They said check yourself every month, which I did, for a few months, then lost interest. Now, there was a small, eraser head-like thing, nasty looking, like it should be on an alien's face. The doctor said it was a... "(insert long word here)" which I didn't understand, but he did a punch biopsy, which is like coring an apple, and sent it off.

Two weeks later, a call at 8AM: "Hi, this is Dr. Feuston. We couldn't determine what it was, Steve, so we're sending it off to University Hospital for stains. I'll refund your pathology fee. Goodbye, click." And a check came in the mail. Interesting. What about the "(insert long word here)"? I was a little worried, but had no idea what was to come. Life caught up and took over my attention. Then, on February 15, another call: "It's serious. It's melanoma. You need to see an oncologist." I wrote it down on the back of an envelope by my bed, like I was taking a message for someone else. I said, "anything else you can tell me?" He told me a couple of things and I wrote them down, "skin-cancer-spindle-cell, got it," then hung up. I stared at the envelope for a minute, then my mind started up.

This is because of sin. This is because you haven't followed the Lord. This is because you never finished seminary. This is because you looked at internet porn. This is because you never got married - a woman would have taken care of you better than you took care of yourself. This is because you didn't take care of yourself. This is because you left the church and started going to house churches. The devil flooded my mind with anger, guilt, confusion, terror, and all the things that are not characteristics of God.

I called my brother and told him to get Dad on three-way. He knew I had a "thing" and it was getting looked at, so he worried. I told them what it was. My brother cried, he wanted to get to the prayer part. Dad began speaking like an old Indian chief by the fire, "Well. Your aunt had that and she died." I knew he wasn't trying to screw with me, he was just reading the Google results in his head. He was just as scared as I was. We turned to the only thing we knew. Prayer. That short call was the most I had said to my dad in three years--God's first result in a long list.

They say not to surf the internet. The information you get is unrealiable. Statistics were all over the place. Everything that came to mind, I'd search. I was 37, so maybe I'm on the younger side. The average male age is 40. Scratch that. I'm dark-skinned. Didn't matter. I have good genes. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except that I got a lot of sunburns as a kid. Period. I can't even blame God. As much supernatural meaning I looked for, it still was just as real as to anyone. Science says wear sunscreen, I didn't. My chances were about 5 out of 6, which isn't bad, but yesterday they were 100%.

My diet was an issue. I read that you can actually prevent cancer with food. That was an easy decision. I went vegan. Dad, who I now spoke to twice a day, sent my step-mom's old cancer books from the 70s. She had Hodgkin's in the lung, on the heart side. She had to have chemo and radiation right over her heart. Fortunately, her doctor was the guy who found the cure for Hodgkin's, and she's still here after 25 years. He also sent another book. The Life Teachings of John G. Lake. John G. Lake was a country preacher who layed hands on people and healed them in the Name of Jesus. He's said to have healed over 200,000 people in a ten year period in his healing rooms in Tacoma. I read. Then I found a healing room in Boulder, Sunday's from 2-4.

I went to my brother's church that week. I hadn't gone to a mainstream church in years. My heart was filled with so much criticism for the church system because of so many things, but that day, I just cried. Worship filled the air, and the people looked like me, hurting, weak, totally reliant on Jesus. I walked in and embraced it with every cell on my body. My brother usually sat in back with his family, but he moved up with me to the third row, and his family has been there since. He and I began attending prayer before the service. We all took the beginning believers courses, 101 and 102, and I soaked it up like a beginning believer.

The healing room was a Godsend. Before they prayed, they had to re-educate me. "Do you realize that Jesus healed everyone who asked for healing?" "I guess so." "Do you know that He's the same yesterday, today and forever?" "I guess so." "Okay, we can get started." They followed the Bible strictly. No one poured oil on me. I asked why. "Because there are no elders here. Only elders can annoint you." Okay. The biggest thing I had to get my head around was why do some people get healed, and others don't? The "healers" believed that healing was a priviledge, a right, of the believer, and I couldn't argue with them scripturally. It was tough, but I was on the pallet, and if my friends had that kind of faith, they'd surely tear a roof off.

Sunday was now my favorite day. It was like a bouy in a terrific storm. I thought of Peter when he saw the waves. There were nothing but waves around me. I got into my old emails one night. A brother of a close friend of mine battled cancer for two years and then died. I tried to see what he had, so I searched for the first email. Melanoma. I slammed my laptop shut and threw it on the floor. My heart went cold and my face was numb. I dove onto my couch and prayed out loud.

Joy cometh in the morning. I don't know how many nights I went to sleep crying and woke up joyful. Those who sow in tears reap in joy. The sowing, I found out, is the prayer. Prayer, when you have to make yourself pray, is work. And joy always comes. It comes full of the character and love of Jesus Christ, pure joy in the heart, every morning.

I used to pray in tongues. For years, I did, but now it had dried up. Do your own research on gifts. I began praying in tongues again, except this time it was the only language I could pray in. I didn't know what to ask for in my mind, so I prayed in tongues, and the Holy Spirit prayed for me. Again, do your own research, but that's how it was. I thought about things while praying and blurted them out, "Jesus, bind fear from me!" All fear is a lie, said a girl at the healing room. Pretty much true, except the fear of the Lord of course. All fear is a lie. All fear is a tool of Satan to make you lose faith in Christ.

By March, I had a surgery date. They were going to do a wide-area excision and a sentinal node biopsy. The excision is like an ice cream scoop of skin, two inches wide and all the way down to the muscle. The biopsy is where they inject a nuclear dye around where the "thing" was and then watch it on a scope. The first lymph node it gets to, they take out and test. I had to go to the Cancer Center - have you seen those before? They're everywhere. It's the little building, by the big building, that you never want to go to. Mine had free valet parking and a piano player. Might as well treat these people good, I thought. Soon, I began to realize it wasn't so bad. Everyone there had cancer, and most of them were going to do just fine. Most people survive cancer. All fear is a lie. Satan began to lose footing with me everyday.

The blessings of God make rich, and he adds no trouble to them. Having written fiction for years, I thought in terms of dramatic convention, which says whenever you show hope, it's a set up for bad things to come. It's the only way to make a story interesting. I had to forget that. God is not dramatic. He doesn't imply he's going to save you only to leave you - to make the story interesting. He isn't fickle. He heals. He saves, He blesses, and adds no trouble to it. The night before my first visit to the cancer center, I had a dream. I was in a doctor's office and a young guy came in and started putting on makeup. He said he was going to a costume party. I worried. "Are you my doctor?" I said. He said, "No, I'm an intern." Then the door opened and seven old men came in, guys with beards, stethascopes, white coates, glasses, old, experienced-looking guys who wrote books. I said, "are you my doctors?" One of them said, "Shhhh," and he took my hand and they all kneeled with me in prayer.

On March 19 I went in to see the oncologist and surgeon. I hated the oncologist. He told me how it was and gave me statistics. I didn't learn anything new. He said most people do just fine, but a small number don't. That was it. The surgeon was nicer. He was an old Jew. I thought of him as a circumcisionist, cutting away the evil flesh. He had been a cancer doctor for 41 years, and had done thousands of these surgeries. That was Monday, and Friday was my surgery. I worked hard that week, knowing I'd have to take a week off, and also it kept my mind clear. But God was present all week. By Friday I was calm, at peace. Jesus is our peace. He was with me. My surgery went well, except that they couldn't do the lymph node biopsy. By the time they got in, the dye had spread to all the lymph nodes in the area, and they couldn't tell which one was the sentinel node. He said it's rare, only about 25 cases he knows of. All my brother heard was "we couldn't find anything," and he told everyone.

By now, Dad and I were speaking daily. I repented of everything I could think of, out loud, to other people. I wrote letters, called old friends, joined my church, signed up for everything. I wanted God. I wanted to be close again. I dug up my old CDs. Kirk Franklin was covered with dust. I put on "Something About the Name Jesus" and just sobbed. I stood in my little apartment and worshipped. God seemed so close, suddenly so close that I couldn't bear Him without tears. I imagined heaven. I'd heard pastors say you'll finally be able to worship for eternity. That's limiting. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for us. Worship is a part of it, but we can worship here, now.

My body began to ache. About a week after going vegan, I had pains all around the area where the "thing" was. I also had pain inside my legs, under my arms, all over my chest. I got online and searched for pictures of anatomy. There were lymph nodes everywhere that I had pain. Now my fear became shock and paralysis. I had such a bad night that I moved out of bed and began sleeping on my couch, where I could listen to worship music all night on my stereo. I went to the gym, ate fruit and vegetables all day, and prayed in tongues with abandon. I had two speeds, fast and stop, and had to stay in fast.

A pain developed in my liver area. It was deep, around the breastbone, then referred down to below the ribcage. It was terrifying. Melanoma is usually treated with skin surgery, but it is malignant, and can spread to other organs, like the brain, the lungs and the liver, at which point it's "not curable, but treatable." I got a message on my phone: "Steve, your x-ray was normal, and we found one elevated liver enzyme in your blood. Doctor will talk to you about that when you come in." The pain doubled, tripled. The only way to allay it was to eat strictly fruit and organic foods. Prayer seemed to treat the pain as well.

God spoke to me. I was on a fence, on one side was faith and on the other side, cancer. It was like one of those fences in a Philipino duck farm. As the tide rises, these ducks stay in their herds, even if the fence disappears underwater. It's funny, but true about me. The Holy Spirit rises and you don't even have to jump, just float over to grace. The more I stared at the waves, the more I sank. I had to look God squarely in the face, through the veil of Christ, and believe. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

A week after surgery, I was at the cancer center. The surgeon came in. "We got the path back this morning and there is no sign of tumor." I cheered, then said, "is that good?" He said "very good." I cheered again. I went in a week later to get the stitches out and asked more questions. He said "we'll watch you closely, but there's a 95% chance that we're done with this thing." I couldn't contain my happiness. I had faith in God's report, but He can speak through doctors too. It was the day before my birthday. I had lost 24 pounds from the vegan diet, and had a new outlook on life. It sounds like cliche, but every minute is a gift.

I speak to people about healing now. "God heals the whole man today," I say. There's a young guy at church with "terminal" cancer. I tell him, "God heals cancer today." Cancer is a lie, Jesus is the truth. When Elisha prayed, God showed his servant the truth, horses and chariots of fire all around. Some people pray like a pallbearers, "God, prepare us for the bad news, oh God, receive his spirit." Wait, he's not dead yet. Oh. "Recieve his spirit when he dies, because he will most surely die because the doctors said so." How do we know? Because of doctors? Too many pray to prove the doctors right. (Pray for Trent, by the way, I believe he will be healed.) You can pray for doctors, for the hospital, for pathology reports, and you can pray that your flesh will obey the Spirit of God, and bring it into submission. Wierd? Sorry. I've been on the pallet now, and I'm permanently wierdified by God's Word. I've been Wordified.

If you show me from scripture that death from disease is God's will, then I'll believe you. Those who asked Jesus for healing were healed. It's not bossing God around, it's faith. Paul healed a whole island. Peter's shadow healed more than most churches today. Were they gods? No, men just like us (James 5:17). Some don't get healed, and I'll never know why, but I'd rather take the Bible at face value and wonder, than justify it in light of human experience, which is untrustworthy. My faith wasn't even that strong, mind you, but those around me believed. I had four pallet-bearers who were willing to tear off a roof for me. Jesus, seeing THEIR faith, told the paralytic to pick up his bed and go home.

Enough preaching. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Steve

myspace

I might as well post my Myspace since I've been spending more time there than here, blogging, like I should be. www.myspace.com/stevesheppard =o]

Does "Lord willing" mean He isn't?

Why are Christians so afraid of success? There is a theme in church, which I've usually supported, by the way, that God does not want us to earn lots of money. But when I look closely at this passage (James 4:13-17), it speaks to action verses inaction. The action is boasting and bragging and the inaction is knowing what God wants us to do and not doing it. When we experience God's natural laws of success, the basic stuff we've all heard from Tony Robbins and dozens of other self-appointed guru's--work hard, make a list of goals, saturate yourself with images of your goal, surround yourself with people who support you, etc.--when we put to action these biblical principles, we often see results, and those results can be deceptive. We earn the house, the new car, the income, the ability to fill the gas tank all the way instead of just partially. We see the results and forget the God who created them. He made success possible. We pump the pump and water comes out, but God gives us arms, a pump, and water, and a system whereby water comes out when we do something an animal could do.

The work that we put into earning money decieves us into thinking we did it alone, and then we boast and brag.

The Bible says the Love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim 6:10). It doesn't say money is the root of all evil. It is a root, but the emphasis is on loving the money. When your love is directed at the money and not God and others, that root will grow into evil branches. This is true all around me. I see people get rich and change. When they were trying to get rich, they made promises to God. They promised to honor God with their wealth, to not be possessed by it, to use their mansion for ministry. But the problem is within the promise itself. Why do they want wealth so bad that they'll make promises to God in order to get it? Are they using their tiny apartment for ministry now? Are they giving their lives to God now? Aren't they now possessed by the desire for wealth? When they have it and no longer desire it, what will they be possessed by then?

My mom wants to be rich. She sees her ability to sustain a lifestyle with a double income and knows it's going to get harder and harder. She's a creative person and wants to cook up an idea where all her children can move back to Georgetown, CA and work on a big successful business with her. She wants security and closeness to family, not the image of wealth, or ego or pride. If she charged money for all the things she did free, she'd be wealthy now.

If the root is holy, so are the branches (Rom 11:16)

One economist says "evil is the root of all money." I like the quote, but I'm not sure what John Moore means by it -- I'm still trudging through his article. In America, that haunting statement may be true. The prettier things get that money can buy, the more it becomes rooted in evil. Have you looked at this years Christmas catalogs? I glanced over the REI catalog yesterday. How do they make the same stuff look prettier every year, so that I go buy them again? I have five fleece shirts, but this year's fleece shirt looks cooler than last year's. Maybe I'll wire REI's building in exchange for some fleece shirts. Then I'll pull the wire out and replace it with Monster Cable, because that's real hot now.

We need money because we don't trust one another. Money is proof that a trade was made, but instead of trading something of yours, I just want money -- or I have only money to give for what you have, so here you go. In Colorado, the love of money is rampant. Half of my life, my working life, is spent around rich people. I wire their homes so they can have speakers and liquid crystal display TV's in every room. Now there's a gadget that makes the stereo speakers play what's on the TV in that room. It's called ASAP. Asap is a good word, because it means as-soon-as-possible. Not only do we want the TV to play through the speakers, but we want it as soon as possible, so here's some money, get to work. Some spend $100,000 on stereo equipment and add it to their million dollar mortgage.

Wealth is honored in Colorado. The wealthy figured out something the rest of us haven't, they took risks, they read Sun Tsu's Art of Warfare. Many work hard for years and never achieve wealth, but some work doubly hard to create the image of wealth. I could get wealthy. I could hire some people, train them, follow behind them to make sure they wire the houses correctly, fix their mistakes, pay for their damage, pay their wage plus benefits and social security and workman's comp. I could duplicate myself six or seven times and create a little wealth, or at least the image of wealth, in a few year's time. I think I'll just buy lottery tickets. Actually, I'm already wealthy compared to the rest of the world. After all, I have a laptop computer and a car!

What is the root of your desire for wealth?

I see myself getting older, so there will have to be some changes in how I earn money. I live in America, where you are free to start a business, so, Lord Willing, I'll start another. I can't promise anything to God but obedience, and that was James' point anyway. I can't even guarantee I'll be obedient, but I'll try. One deception about money is this: it's so hard to get and so easy to lose that you change the rules once you have it. The premise before you have money is that the Bible is true and God is right no matter what. After you have money, the Bible is up for interpretation, and prayer about a business transaction is a cop out. Money complicates life. Poverty is simple (unfortunately). But you can get wealthy and still be blessed. The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble to it. Prov 10:22. What kind of wealth does this blessing contain?

I went to two malls in Denver last Saturday, Cherry Creek and Flatirons. To say materialism is a problem in our country isn't enough. Each mall had valet services, and only the $100,000 cars were parked by the entrance. Why not minivans? Mom's with kids are more important than rich people with Lamborghini's, right? Maybe I don't understand because I don't have one. We went to a jewelry store that had it's own security guard and dozens of rich people buying diamond studded watches. The contents of that store could have fed Kenya for a month. I asked if they had the new Casio Pathfinder Solar Atomic, but they didn't even carry Casio. That's all I want for Christmas, if you're taking notes, but beware, it will set you back about three bills.

Does God bless us with material wealth? Does the proverb strictly mean we can get rich and not have all the problems money brings? Maybe what we believe when we are poor grows into what we have when we are rich. Are we planting a root of ego or humility?

Dr. Wayne Dyer has a list of five ego driven beliefs. When ego drives our lives, we tend to define ourselves with faulty principles like: I am what I have, I am what I do, I am what people think of me, I am my body, and I am my own God. When these things prove not to be true, we have to redefine ourselves. Who am I now that I don't have this? Who am I when my body changes? Who am I when I can no longer work? One woman defined herself clearly in 1977, when she was buried, by her request, with her 1964 Ferrari. Ego-driven beliefs are one of the many branches growing from the "love of money" root.

Does God want me to be rich? Yes, in many ways: Rich with friends, a rich giver, rich toward others with my time, rich with encouragement, rich in poverty, rich in spiritual discernment, rich in sensitivity, and rich enough to support myself and others, and even wealthy! (Pr. 10:4, good buddy!) But what does God mean by wealth? A Ferrari sized coffin?

God doesn't want us to say "Lord willing" just because he isn't. He wants us to grow wealthy within His blessing, without the trouble. Amen?

Final rewrite of this story...

Final! Won't rewrite it again. Never. Okay, never say never.