Blog Archives
Nothing Can Break The Chain!
My first blog post was eight years ago this week. My goal in starting this blog was to encourage and strengthen the hope of those going through difficult times. My goal remains the same. But, when I began this blog, it never occurred to me that I would be encouraged and have my hope strengthened by reading other blogs and the comments on my posts. I’ve never met any of my fellow bloggers, but many of you have become good friends, friends for life. (“Friends for life” is probably not much of a commitment for a guy on hospice :-). Seriously, I am thankful for your friendships.
The world has changed so much over the last eight years. In many ways, it’s gone from bad to worse.
The world is being shaken, but my hope in Christ remains unshakable.
Even amid trials, God still blesses His children. By far, the greatest blessing Mary and I have received since I started this blog is becoming grandparents. Our oldest daughter and our son-in-law have three adorable kids. Even though I’m not able to talk to them or play with them or even hug them, I am so thankful that God allowed me to stick around to experience becoming a grandfather.
Our oldest grandchild is a handsome and intelligent six-year-old boy named Jude. He is also a deep thinker. A few weeks ago, my daughter asked Jude to draw a picture describing his relationship with God. Below is the picture he drew:
It’s difficult for my old eyes to see, but there’s a chain securing Jude to God. I love the caption he wrote under the picture, “Nothing can break the chain.” He said the little picture in the upper left corner is “a mean bee that can’t get me because I’m protected.” When the pandemic began, my daughter and son-in-law helped Jude and his four-year-old sister Peyton memorize Psalm 91. On a recent backyard (social distancing) visit, they recited it for Mary and me. We think Psalm 91 is where he got the “protected” idea.
“Pops” is so proud of his three grandkids!
“Nothing can break the chain” is an excellent summary of one of my favorite passages in the Bible:
“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39).
Jesus is the “unbreakable chain” that connects us to God!
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6).
What would your picture look like if you were to draw a picture of your relationship with God?
Technological Advancements “For Such A Time As This”
The world has changed so much since I was diagnosed with ALS way back in 1996. Sitting here in my bedroom paralyzed for the last twenty years, I’ve mostly been an observer of these changes. In the opinion of this observer, some changes have been good, others have been bad.
I’m fascinated by the evolution of the Internet and Smartphone technology. In 1996, my cellphone was big, bulky, and only able to make calls. There was no such thing as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and Amazon was a little start-up selling books. Only one percent of the world’s population had Internet access. Today, the overwhelming majority of the world has Internet access, and there are more than 3.5 billion Smartphones in use.
I don’t think we can classify the Internet and smartphones as good or bad. They are merely tools. It’s what we do with them that becomes good or bad.
This COVID-19 pandemic introduced us to Social Distancing. As someone who’s been grounded to my room for the last two decades, I’m an old pro when it comes to social distancing. I am very thankful for this tool known as the World Wide Web. Even before starting this blog eight years ago, I was communicating with people all over the world.
I began connecting with people overseas ten years ago when I became an Online Missionary with Global Media Outreach. GMO was founded by a former Apple executive named Walt Wilson. With Steve Jobs, Walt was on the team that developed the Macintosh computers. The ministry shares the Good News through ads on social media in over 200 countries. To do this, they’re using over a hundred different domains in 50+ languages. They also use SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so one of their sites comes up first when people search using words like “God,” “Jesus,” “Bible,” or “Christianity.”
When someone clicks one of the ads or opens one of the sites, they are presented with the Good News. Afterward, they’re asked if they’d like to want to commit to follow Christ or learn more. If they click yes, they are connected to one of the thousands of Online Missionaries speaking their language. They might be connected to a paralyzed guy in Texas who can’t speak at all and is typing them with an eye-tracking computer. (If you want to see where GMO is making connections in real-time, click here).
Today, most of the GMO contacts are via cell phones, but when I started ten years ago, it was primarily computers. One of my first contacts was a woman in Sudan who walked three hours twice a week to use a computer at an Internet cafe. She was so eager to learn more and grateful for GMO and the easy to understand discipleship resources they provide.
Another contact was a young man in a Muslim country who committed to follow Christ after reading the Gospel message on a GMO site. His father and uncle were highly respected leaders in their town, and they were furious when he told them he was a Christian. His father threatened to stop paying for his college, thinking this would make him recant. When he refused, his father and uncle threatened to kill him. The last time I communicated with him, he was hiding out at the home of a moderate Muslim friend. He was already sharing the Gospel with his friend and with others.
Many of the people who haven’t heard the Gospel live in Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and other countries that missionaries don’t have access to. GMO can provide them with discipleship materials and digital Bibles.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19).
People have asked me why some Christians feel the need to evangelize. The short answer is – because Jesus told us to. That should be enough, but it’s also because those who have believed the Good News want to tell others. Last week, a friend emailed us and told us that Kroger has toilet paper. We were happy to hear that news. Regardless of what we believe, most of us want to pass along good news. Forgiveness of sins and the offer of eternal life with Christ is the best news in the history of the world! How could we not tell others?
(Jesus said) “…this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:14).
In Matthew 24, Jesus was telling His disciples the signs of the end times. It’s such an amazing prophecy when you put in the context of that time. He said “this gospel” thirty-five or forty years before Matthew wrote his Gospel. Jesus told this small group of disciples that the Good News would be proclaimed to the “whole world,” and to “all nations.” At the time he spoke those words, it’s estimated that the world’s population was around 300 million. Today there are 7 billion people on earth. With automobiles, planes, and especially the Internet, our generation is the first with the ability to fulfill this prophecy. And we will!
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, GMO was sharing the Gospel with an average of 350,000 a day. Since the pandemic began, they’ve been averaging 500,000. But they can handle two million per day. The only thing keeping GMO from reaching more people with the Good News is support to purchase more ads. If you can help with even a small gift to GMO, click here.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19).
Thanks!
Still Living In Hope!
It’s hard for me to believe, but July 7th marked the seven-year anniversary of my Unshakable Hope blog. And, most surprising of all, after nearly twenty-three years with ALS, I’m still alive!
For Christians, the barren wilderness is a metaphor for life’s trials. I like this picture because rainbows, a sign of God’s promises, can be found even in the wilderness times of life. I also like that this wilderness path is wheelchair accessible.
I started this blog to share the hope I’ve found in Christ, with the goal of strengthening the faith and hope of other Christians going through trials. While in the midst of my own trial, this is one of the things that I believe God has called me to do. So many followers of Christ are going through difficult times. If anyone became a Christian thinking they would be exempt from trials, they will be sorely disappointed. Christians and non-Christians go through trials, the difference is that Christians can have peace and hope when life gets hard:
“…I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).
Back in 2012, when I started blogging, I didn’t think about making new friends through my blog or reading posts on other blogs that would strengthen my hope and faith. This has been a great bonus. I now believe this is probably half the reason that God was prompting me to start my blog.
The name of my blog comes from a verse in the book of Hebrews. Seven years ago this month, as I was reading the Bible on my computer, just like I’ve done since losing my ability to flip the pages of a book thirteen years earlier, I scrolled down to Hebrews chapter eleven. This is one of my favorite chapters in the New Testament. It’s a chapter about holding onto faith while going through hardships. So many of God’s people have endured suffering by looking to Him for strength. This chapter lists several examples of true faith. These are men and women who refused to compromise their faith, even when doing so would have ended or lessened the trials they were facing. In short, Hebrews chapters eleven and twelve are about becoming eternally–minded.
The end of chapter twelve sums this up; telling followers of Christ to stay focused on our eternal hope. The temporary and material things can, and eventually will be destroyed. Created things, including the body we’re living in, will decay. In my case, ALS has turbocharged this process.
“…the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” (Hebrews 12:27)
After reading the Hebrews 12:27, I went online and bought the domain Unshakablehope.com and started this blog.
Unfortunately, trials don’t occur in a vacuum. The different parts of our lives are so interconnected that a trial of our health, like my being diagnosed with ALS at the age of thirty-six, affects virtually every other area of our lives. When I was diagnosed, it was as if an earthquake occurred; the career that God had blessed me with, and I had worked so hard to build, was removed. Because of this, our finances were greatly shaken. On and on it goes.
I won’t spend the time or waste the effort to list the “created” and temporal things that were removed or shaken in our life. Either you know firsthand or have witnessed the shock-waves and aftershocks that come from the epicenter of a horrible diagnosis, a job loss, a divorce, the death of a loved one, or another of life’s many earthquakes.
So many areas of our lives, including our health, can be shaken. But, if we look to God during our trials, our hope in Christ is one of the things that cannot be shaken.
Our hope in Christ is an Unshakable Hope!
“My soul, wait in silence for God only, For my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, My stronghold; I shall not be shaken.” (Psalm 62:5-6)
Please don’t put your hope in temporary and created things, not even another person, because everything we see with our natural eyes will eventually disappoint us.
“Don’t let happiness depend on something you might lose.” C.S. Lewis
What Are You Talking About?
Losing my ability to work and earn a living was terrible. Becoming paralyzed and wheelchair-bound was horrible. Losing my ability to eat was a tough pill to swallow, literally. But losing my ability to speak is by far the most difficult aspect of this cruel disease called ALS.
I haven’t been able to speak with my God-given voice for almost twenty years so it might seem strange that I am writing about the power of the spoken word. As one who can only speak through my computer’s Text-to-Speech program, I have become more and more observant of the words of others. For good or for bad, the words we speak are powerful.
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” (Proverbs 18:21)
Studies claim that men speak around seven thousand words a day and women speak a whopping twenty thousand words – in just one day. Mary is my caregiver so I might be treading on dangerous ground here, but, from what I’ve observed over the thirty-three years of marriage, I tend to believe these studies are accurate.
I remember so well when I began to lose my ability to speak. Even though I hadn’t had a drink in twelve years, my voice started to sound like I was drunk. In fact, a police officer pulled me over at 9:30 in the morning and, after speaking with him, he asked if I had been drinking. Because all of the muscles needed to speak became weaker and weaker as the day wore on, by three in the afternoon, I sounded like a really tired drunk. Knowing this, I began to make important phone calls and meet people as early in the day as possible. I also started to choose my words very carefully; I didn’t have the luxury of idle chatter. It was then, two decades ago, that I began to value the ability to speak. Like working, walking, and eating, talking was just one more thing that I took for granted before ALS invaded my life.
“There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, But the tongue of the wise brings healing.” (Proverbs 12:18)
An incredible fact: To create speech, around a hundred different muscles in the chest, neck, jaw, tongue, and lips must work together. Every word or short phrase that is physically spoken is followed by its own unique arrangement of muscle movements. The information necessary for producing a phrase is saved in the speech area of the brain. – Reference.com
“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29)
Imagine what a great world it would be if we only spoke “what is helpful for building others up” and to “benefit those who listen.”
Maybe women do talk more than men, but I wonder what men and women would say, and who we’d speak to, if our ability to speak were limited to just three thousand words a day. At first, there would likely be a lot of quiet dinner tables, but over time I think people would learn to measure their words. I would hope that most of us would learn to save our words for important things, not for gossip and backbiting. I have seen close relationships, even family relationships, ruined by words. And, so many people have been scarred for life from verbal abuse. Maybe we should learn to live as if our speech was limited.
“Everyone must be quick to hear and slow to speak…” (James 1:19)
We might think it’s unfair, but non-Christians judge followers of Christ by the way we speak and the words we use. For example, if you ever want to prove that you are not a follower of Christ, start cursing. This tactic worked great for Peter:
“A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Surely you too are one of them; for even the way you talk gives you away.” Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” And immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, “Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.” (Matthew 26:73-75)
The Bible has so much to say about the importance of words. In fact, Jesus said that the words we speak define who we are, and how we’ll ultimately be judged:
“…the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. “The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good, and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. “For by your words you will be justified, and by your words, you will be condemned.” (Matthew 12:34-37)
The best use of your ability to speak is making a commitment to follow Christ, just as I did thirty-six years ago. It’s so easy, and you’ll never regret it:
“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10)
Just Imagine
I saw the movie, “I Can Only Imagine” the other night. It’s a great biographical story about salvation and forgiveness. Writing movie reviews is not my thing, but I highly recommend this movie.
After seeing the movie, I began thinking about the title of the song and the movie, “I Can Only Imagine.“ Bart Millard, the man who wrote the song and the one that the movie is about, was imagining his dad in heaven as he was writing the song.
I started thinking about the imagination, especially when it comes to heaven and eternity.
What is the imagination?
(It’s) “the ability to form a mental image of something that is not perceived through the five senses. It is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes…”
The imaginary realm is not just the stuff of kids; for good or for evil, our imagination is a powerful force. For Christians, the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2) also refocuses our imagination and we begin to see God’s vision for man and the whole of His creation.
Being wheelchair-bound, hooked up to a pump that feeds me, and not being able to speak for the last 20+ years, I use my imagination much more than I did before ALS invaded my life. Even my vacations are imaginary, lived out vicariously through family and friends, or through Rick Steves on PBS.
Before making a commitment to follow Christ at the age of twenty-three, the rare times I even thought about heaven, the picture in my mind was bleak. Back then, I wasn’t sure that I even believed in heaven. But, to the extent that my spiritually confused mind could imagine a heaven, I pictured it as an ethereal place where disembodied spirits were floating around aimlessly.
Can I sign you up? No thanks.
After making a commitment to follow Christ, I, like all Christians (I hope), began reading the Bible regularly and a much different picture of heaven, the true picture of heaven, was formed in my reborn imagination.
Just imagine this exciting place – a very real place:
Disembodied spirits floating around aimlessly? No way!
Don’t believe most of what well-meaning people tell you at the funeral of a loved one; God did not “need another angel.“ But, Jesus tells us that we will “be like the angels.” And, we’ll be (physically) like Jesus Himself after He was resurrected from the dead (Matthew 22:30 & 1 John 3:2).
What were the bodies of the angels like when they visited earth? And, what was Jesus’s body like when He appeared to more than five hundred people after His resurrection?
If you said they looked like men, you’re right.
The Bible tells us that we wouldn’t know the difference between men and angels even if they were our house guests (Hebrews 13:2). (I suspect that I’ve been married to an angel for 32 years).
Just imagine a body that defies the laws of physics. A body that can appear and disappear in a blink of the eye, but a body that can eat real food and drink wine (Luke 24:36-43 & Mark 14:25). I’ll have to take it slow because I haven’t had wine or any drink containing alcohol in over thirty-two years – a champagne toast on our wedding day.
Just imagine a heaven on earth. A lot of people, even many Christians, don’t realize that the permanent heaven will be on a “new earth.“ (Isaiah 65:17, 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1).
Just imagine no more sickness, no more cancer, ALS or any other stinkin’ disease. No more heartbreaking St. Jude and Shriners commercials! No more need for feeding tubes and wheelchairs! (Isaiah 35:5-6 & Revelation 21).
“I saw a new heaven (earth’s atmosphere) and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away…And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. “He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.” (Revelation 21)
After reading this, you might be asking, Bill, if you really believe this, why don’t you stop using your breathing machine and remove your feeding tube and move on to this beautiful heaven you’re talking about?
It’s a fair and logical question.
Believe me, there have been days, really bad days, days when pneumonia left me gasping for air. Days when my whole body was aching from the flu. Many days when I’ve wanted to die, even prayed to die, but…
I recovered…
And, I remembered that God still has a mission for me here. Like all followers of Christ, my mission is The Great Commission; persuading others, maybe even you, to join me in heaven for eternity.
Can I sign you up?
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Unshakable Hope 