Peripherals

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Mark McMillion

If you’re like me, you probably have a “to do” list. There are so many good things to do and most of us have more to do than we know what to do with. So, what do you do?

This is one place where being a Christian, having faith in God and a personal relationship with Him and His Son really helps. We can know from the Word what the truth is and that clarifies so much. We can know what His will is, what our priorities should be and even just that should simplify our decision making.

But still, there’s just so much to do. If you are a mommy, there’s all that has to do with taking care of the kids and all they need in their lives. If you are a daddy, probably you have to bring home the pay check and not only be diligent with your job but have time for your family and home. If you’re a missionary or a witnessing Christian, you want to do what you can to lead people to the Lord and/or to “feed His sheep” (John 21:16) through classes or personal counseling.

Most of us know we should “major on the majors”. But even to figure that out takes some wisdom at times. Of course if you know the rent has to be paid in two days or you’re going to get kicked out of your apartment, it’s easy to know what your major is for the day.

Just so many of these things all meld together to where, if you really want to have peace in your heart and to know at the end of the day that you’ve done your best, then you usually need to take some time of prayer or deep consideration to try to prioritize what’s most important to get done.

There’s a phrase in English, “running around like a chicken with your head cut off”. That’s kind of graphic. But the idea is that at times, if you don’t watch out, you’ll just be super busy but with no plan, no goal, no direction. This is where for those of us who know the Lord, it helps so very much to have His directions. We are supposed to be “led of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:18). That’s not just some esoteric, spiritual mumbo-jumbo. We can and should really get our orders from the Lord. It’s not only possibly, it’s virtually essential if you want to have any order or meaningful accomplishment in your life.

So let’s say you have got to that place. You know what your priorities are. You know what your goal is and you believe it’s in line with God’s will for your life. Still, there’s a lot to do, right? How much time and resources should I give to this item? Should I take time to do that? How can I use my time the most effectively? Should I take any time to just kick back and relax?

For me, I find I need to really watch out about what could be called peripherals. Those are the little things on your to-do list that you know you need to do but they don’t seem really essential. They aren’t really the major, big things that will really get me moving forward towards what I know are the major goals the Lord has set for me. So it’s easy to keep overlooking the peripherals.

But Jesus said, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much. And he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.” (Luke 16:10) In another place He was talking to some people who had been very diligent in some things but utterly unfaithful in other areas. He told them, “These ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” (Matthew 23:23)

It seems impossible. “How could God expect this of us? It’s just too much! I can’t do it! It’s not fair! I’m gonna quit!” But that doesn’t really work either. It’s just the nature of the world as it is that we have to take care of the big things and the little things. Have you heard the story of the king in old times who lost his kingdom because of a nail? The saying goes, “For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe the horse was lost. For want of the horse the king was lost. For want of the king the kingdom was lost.” All because of one little seemingly insignificant horseshoe nail, it set in motion a series of events that lost the kingdom.

How in the world can we be that diligent, that faithful, that wise to know how to take care of everything, even the little things we need to do? Maybe it’s like Jesus said in one place, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For with God, all things are possible.” (Mark 10:27) If we’re “looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) if we’re “seeking first His kingdom” (Matthew 6:33), if “our eyes are upon Him“, (II Chronicles 20:12) then we can really expect Him to do the miraculous and even the supernatural, which can sometimes be nothing more than to help us get through our to-do list and to be like the woman Jesus talked about when He said, “She has done what she could.” (Mark 14:8)

New live classes

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Mark McMillion

It’s worked out for me over the last month to begin to give live Bible classes here in Austin. I’m really glad about that as this is something I’ve done in the past in many places, including here in Austin for a time between 2001 and 2003.

From classes I taught in Jakarta, 2007

Actually, the series of videos that I’ve been working on comes from the live classes that I’ve taught for years in places like Scandinavia, Hungary, Indonesia, Brazil and Ukraine.

It’s been refreshing to find that so many Christians here who really feel that the best place for fellowship and Christian feeding in the Word can be found in what they call “small groups”. I do go to a “mega church” here in Austin and I wrote a blog post about it called “A Flock of Whooping Cranes”. But it’s been the smaller groups and adult Sunday school classes where I’ve really made new friends and these are the ones who’ve invited me to start going through the prophecies of Daniel with them. So far, it’s been around 15 people who come each Thursday night and it’s been a good time of deep Bible study.

In the past when I was abroad, much of the time my teaching was to what could be called “beginners”, folks who are relatively new to the Lord and to Christian teaching. Some of those times I was also teaching the children of missionary friends. But here in Austin, I would say the ones who are coming to the classes now are more “intermediate and advanced”. These are folks who have a pretty good knowledge of God’s Word and also are relatively familiar with what the Bible says about the times leading up to the return of Jesus. With these new freinds we can dig deeper as well as also answer some questions (or try to) about some of the more controversial subjects of the endtime picture.

Daniel 7: the 4 beasts

I’m really glad that things have gone so well with the web sites this year and also the Daniel 8 video which should be viewable in the next week or so, Lord willing. But I’m also very glad to see this door open to be able to teach in a live setting again. With all the art that’s been done on the videos so far, it’s made it so that the classes now can have this art shown on a large screen.

The Ancient of Days

The ones in the class can see what the Bible describes when it talks about “the four beasts” or “the Ancient of Days” or when when Daniel speaks with the angel Gabriel.

So if there are any of you in the greater Austin area who might be interested in coming to these classes, please get in touch with me . I’m open to other things like this developing if the Lord is leading and there are receptive people who want to dig deeper in the Word.

Gabriel speaks to Daniel

These are exciting times. Getting to know new friends, finding ones who really are hungry for the truth of the Bible, seeing what the Lord is doing and where things are going at this time is really thrilling. If any of this rings a bell with you, do get in touch with me and perhaps some new things in the way of live classes can be started up. God bless you!

Fascination for Evil

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I’ve realized that at times I have a fascination for evil. Not that I want to do evil but it’s like people say nowadays, “What were they thinking?” Like, “How could they think like that? How could someone be like that?”

I guess we all have an innate desire to understand. And for me, some things are just so weird, strange and crazy that it’s like I get tempted to wonder how someone could think like that? And I want to pursue it, I want to get into it and understand it. But I know from experience and also God’s Word that it’s not a great idea to really pursue that line of reasoning.

We want to relate to others, we want to understand the world around us, we don’t want to be judgmental, we really want to help others. But there are times where the best choice is just to step back and walk away, as difficult as that may seem to be. It’s a little like what I wrote about in the post about the old story called “The Tar Baby“. And this is taught a number of times in the Bible in verses that may not be really popular or politically correct.

How about this one. Jesus, in His most famous “Sermon on the Mount” said at one point, “Don’t give that which is holy to the dogs. Neither cast your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you.” (Matthew 7:6) And of course He wasn’t talking about pets and farm animals. He was referring to some individuals, saying they were like dogs and pigs. At other times He called some people snakes, foxes, and wolves. This was Jesus, the most loving and kind Man that ever walked the earth. But He wasn’t naive; He called a spade a spade.

“But Jesus, don’t you want us to love everyone?! How could you be so cold and cruel, Jesus!?”

Because there’s evil in the world and there are people who at this time embrace and choose evil and the works of darkness.

“I thought we were supposed to keep turning the other cheek, let people walk all over us and just be little feeble pushovers like everyone says you were, Lord!”

Nope. Here are a few verses that are unpopular or virtually unknown but are really important. Solomon said, “Go from the presence of a foolish man when you don’t perceive in him the lips of knowledge.” (Proverbs 14:7). In other words, don’t hang around wasting your time with folks who just want to take your time and are not hungering for the truth of God you have to offer. Or this one, one of my favorites, “I will set no wicked thing before my eyes; I hate the work of them that turn aside, it shall not cleave unto me.” (Psalms 101:3).

Don’t set wicked things before your eyes, even the eyes of your mind. We need to hate the works of them that turn away from the Lord. Because those evil works will cleave to us if we don’t resist them. “Cleave” is an old word; think of what it’s like to have old ugly chewing gum stick to you or your clothes. That’s what “cleave” means. That’s what the sins and darkness want to do to your life and mind when you allow evil to fascinate you.

“Oh, Mark! Now you are preaching hate!”

King David said, “You who love the Lord, hate evil.” (Psalms 97:10) Paul said to the Ephesians “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them”, (Ephesians 5:11). Same idea again: just don’t “give place to the devil” (James 4:7). Don’t give time for the darkness and the evil to fascinate you and make you wonder what it’s all about. Isn’t that what happened to Eve? She saw the fruit was “good to the taste” and one that “made her wise” (Genesis 3:6); so she went for it. Big, big mistake. But it probably all seemed so “reasonable”.

“How could it be wrong?” “Let me just think about this for a minute; let me make sense of it all and figure it out.”

Nope. Walk away. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.” (Proverbs 14:12) Like I wrote about Nehemiah, in “Can’t Come Down”, it must have really seemed narrow-minded and extreme that Nehemiah wouldn’t just come down from the wall and have a chat with those interesting folks who’d come to talk to him. But he didn’t. He had the grace of God to recognize that “God had not sent them” (Nehemiah 6:12) and he didn’t even want to hear what they had to say. Don’t get trapped, lured or lulled into a fascination for evil. “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.” (Isaiah 59:19)

Resetting to factory default

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Mark McMillion

In a recent post on my other web site, I wrote about “The Operating System”. Your computer probably runs Windows but maybe it’s a Mac or you run Linux. This is the basic system that operates your computer and is the platform on which all the software you use works from.

But often, everything means something. The same way there’s darkness and light, there’s Darkness and Light. There’s the sun but also there’s the Son and the Bible likens the sun to God’s Son. (Psalms 19:4-6)

So my “Operating System” is the regenerated heart and spirit that I received when I accepted Jesus into my life, as well as all the truth and power that flooded into my life at that time and continually since then. Today’s modern computers in some ways are a reflection of spiritual realities.

And the same way that Windows or Apple send out upgrades from time to time, God can and does sometime send us “new wine” (Luke 5:37) and tweaks and apps with the intention to improve our experience.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Most of us are pretty thankful for our computers as they help us do quite a lot we couldn’t do before. But every time there’s a new upgrade or a new package to install, do you always do it? In fact, not all of them are from the Manufacturer of your Operating System. Many are from vendors and software programs, promising you some great new boost to your experience if you’ll just download their program.

Maybe one time you did that and your computer jammed. There were viruses. It was a scam. Or maybe it was legitimate but so complicated or took so much Ram and hard drive space that it seemed like it just wasn’t worth it. It didn’t improve your experience, no matter what they said.

Maybe somebody liked it but your computer just ran slower and slower. You were confused, a little worried and you just really didn’t like this new thing that you were told was going to be so great. All kinds of things you could do before now didn’t work with the new upgrade.

Well, most computers come with an option that you can “reset to factory default”. You can go back to the original that was working pretty well when you first got it. You may lose some programs but your computer will work again. You may not have the latest and the greatest new thing. But you’ll be back to something that worked well and helped you to get the job done.

That can happen sometimes in your Christian life. You may have a time when you need to go back to the factory default. I’ve had to do that a few times, just to stay alive for the Lord. The latest and the greatest just didn’t work well for me.

I was at a seminar a few days ago and a couple admitted in public to a large audience that they were still using Windows XP. They were a little ashamed but probably everyone understood. XP was the operating system Windows released in 2001. It was perhaps the best since Windows 95. Most people found it just very rarely crashed.

But then the next one that was released was Windows Vista in 2006. Many people, myself included, found it to be difficult, slow, and a consumer of vast amounts of Ram and hard drive space. So those folks were still using what is considered a very old operating system. But it works well for them.

The main thing isn’t that you get the latest upgrade or program. The main thing is that you can use what you’ve got to interact with God and man and to serve God and man as well. Are you having trouble with your operating system? Have you had so many upgrades and packages installed that it hardly even works for you anymore? Maybe you need to reset to the factory default.

Was there a time when it really worked great and you were really getting something done with it? Maybe those settings are better for you, even if the company is telling you that you’re really behind the times. Old isn’t always bad and new isn’t always good. Or like Jesus said, “The operating system was made for man and not man for the operating system.” (Mark 2:27) That wasn’t quite the way He phrased it but I think the idea was similar.

Find what works for you within the packages of God. Upgrades are great. But some upgrades may be over your head, not totally essential or even from untrustworthy vendors. That’s why it says in Hebrews 13:9 “Don’t be carried about with different and strange doctrines, for it is good for the heart to be established with grace, not with foods, in which those who have walked in them were not helped.”

And don’t throw your computer out with the malware. Don’t through the baby out with the bathwater either. Hit “reset to factory default” and keep going for the Lord in a mode you find works for you and helps you to stay alive and fruitful for Him.

Redeeming the time

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Mark McMillion

There are so many fascinating, often obscure verses in the Bible that have had an effect on my life. Paul said that we should be “renewed in the spirit of our minds” (Ephesians 4:23). For me, it was reading, memorizing and embracing the words in the Bible that had so much to do with renewing my mind.

In one little known verse that Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he told them we should “redeem the time” (Ephesians 5:16), a fascinating idea. Does that mean we should stay real busy? You hear people say nowadays, “don’t waste time.” But why not? Why not just goof off as much as you can?

It comes back to what I wrote in “The Heavenly Vision” and “Is There Not A Cause?” For Christians and believers in God, our whole starting point for how we view life is different. If anyone should have a “purpose driven life”, it’s a Christian or believer in God. If Jesus was doing anything, He was giving us a vision for a life saturated with meaning, purpose, significance and even a sense of urgency to obey God and fulfill the calling and role that He communicates to us.

Besides our lives, our time is the next most important thing we have. Does that mean we should be rushing around all our lives, frantically trying to obey all that we know God wants us to do? No. In the story of Mary and Martha, Martha was busy doing housework and physical service while her sister was “just sitting there”, listening to Jesus. But when Martha complained to Jesus about it, He told her that “Mary has chosen the good part” (Luke 10:42), to sit at His feet and learn of Him. On the other hand, we can’t or shouldn’t just sit around all day in mediation and personal prayer.

So it comes back to our personal, living relationship with the Lord. Day by day, only God is way out there in front and knows what’s going to happen and is able to lead you and guide you and show you what to do. What did He show you to do today when you prayed about it? Should you take a day off to really pray about something? Did He show you to get busy and diligent with what He already showed you to do?

But in whatever you’re supposed to be doing, whatever He has showed you to do, we are to do it whole heartedly, with vigor and vision. That’s why all these things tie together so much. If you lose the vision, you probably can’t really “redeem the time” because you haven’t really found out what the Lord wants you to do.

And sadly that’s what so many believers succumb to: they loose the vision. “Where there is no vision the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18) and how many believers just end up “fainting in their minds” (Hebrews 12:3) and loosing the vision over the years. Jesus talked about the virgins who let their lights go out (Matthew 25); it’s pitiful how many people that happens to. They no longer have the ardor they originally felt for the Lord and have lost the desire to go forward in their walk with Him.

Some people I know think that means they lose their salvation, if they are in that condition. I don’t believe that. But Jesus said, “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36). If we’re going to give an account for every idle word, will we have to give an account of idle time, wasted on frivolous, worldly vanity that most of us are surrounded with in these times?

At the end of the day, I try to weigh up the books with my soul and ask myself, “What have I done today that I won’t have to do tomorrow? What have I done with this wonderful life that He’s allowed me to have? Have I spent it for myself? Have I been a blessing to Him and others? Have I “laid up treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20) or “wasted my substance in riotous living” (Luke 15:13) ? Has my vision today been for the world to come and to preach His Word in whatever way He has made for me? Or have I turned back to Egypt and settled in Babylon, like so many of the ancient Jews did?”

There’s a time to just take some time off. Read a book, go for a walk, have a glass of wine, go to a movie. But for so many, redeeming the time by staying full of the vision and active in the Lord’s service daily is either something they’ve almost never really gotten on board with or it’s something that they remember they did for a while years ago.

Even Jesus redeemed the time. He said, “I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day” (John 9:4) and “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work.” (John 4:34) God help all of us to keep the vision and to redeem the time daily for Him and others.

The Radio Miracle

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Mark McMillion

It took more than one experience to bring me out of my deep spiritual darkness, kind of like when a sculptor has to first knock off huge chunks of rock from a bolder before he can begin to make it look like a statue.

Maybe a week or so after I had my experience with Lucifer and the white moths, here in Austin, I was in my tiny apartment. And in torment. Indecision or what the Bible calls “double mindedness” can kill you. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways”, (James 1:8). That was really how I was.

I’d gotten a Bible from my parents and also taken some time to really apologize to them for the hurt I’d caused them over the last few years. We weren’t close but at least this was the beginning of a long term reconciliation. But I was very far from the person that God would have me to be.

In fact, as so often happened, I was going back to my old thought patterns of unbelief and skepticism. Things like, “That didn’t really happen! That was all in your mind! You just imagined all that, just stray thoughts bouncing around inside your brain!” That’s what I’d always thought before and now that I was “back to normal”; that was still my default mode of thought on all these things.

But then another series of thoughts were there. “It sure did seem real. It was more real than what I am experiencing right now. And it wasn’t really the first time because you’ve had a lot of experiences that are unexplainable unless there is some kind of spiritual world.”

So I was lying in my bed in the middle of the night, just tormented between these two worlds of thought. And I was desperate. I’d been reading the Bible every day, for hours. I was getting very little out of it because there was so much I didn’t understand. I was reading from Genesis to Exodus and on through it like that, heavy going.

Finally I’d just had enough. I got up out of bed, in my pitch black room, clasped my bible to my chest and said this prayer to God:

“God, if you are really there, you have to be bigger than my mind. You have to be stronger than me and my mind. And I am not going to do anything till you show me if you are there.”

Then in the total darkness I started trying to just shut down every single movement of my body, twitches, trembles, just any movement that would distract me from completely and utterly bringing my prayer to God, if He was actually there. And alone in darkness at what hour of the night I didn’t know, suddenly my clock radio on my refrigerator came on.

I certainly hadn’t set it to come on at what was around 3 in the morning. But just at that moment when I was the most desperate to have some kind of answer from God, the radio came on. And maybe you know this song that was playing right then because it was popular at that time,

“Lift up your fellow man, lend him a helping hand, put a little love in your heart.

You see it’s getting late, oh please don’t hesitate; put a little love in your heart.

And the world will be a better place, and the world will be a better place for you and me, just wait and see.”

Now maybe you’re an atheist and say right now, “Oh that was just an accident, just a coincidence.” At 3 AM my radio came on when I surly didn’t set it at that time. It came on right at the moment of my greatest desperation to have some kind of answer from God to overcome the domination my mind had on me. And on top of it all, an extremely significant song was on the radio right at that moment. You can call it a coincidence if you want to but I’d had things like this, although not this stunning, happen to me before.

I fell to the floor on my knees, overcome by that experience and the amazing answer to prayer. As I’ve shared in another post, it was for me almost like what happened to Jody Foster in the movie “Contact” when she first heard signals from outer space. Just indescribable amazement.

But there was more. As I was there in the darkness on my knees, I heard clearly two voices, with words I don’t think I’ll ever forget and which fundamentally spoke to my greatest weakness and changed my life. That story is going to be my next blog post, “Don’t ever ask again.“

“God is chance!”

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I was in university, in a conversation with my friends when I blurted out, “God is chance!” At the time it really seemed like an epiphany to me.

If you’re an atheist, as I was, “Chance” seems to be the ingredient that’s caused everything. Atheists believe everything “just happened”, from a series of accidents. Those beautiful eyes of your loved one? Just a series of numberless mutations over trillions of years that ended up being a human eye. Just chance, accidents, coincidences and happenstance.

My life back then was already on a huge rollercoaster with unseen forces I was totally unaware of. But I really believe that off Somewhere, Someone saw me say “God is chance” that day and kind of marked it down right then. Because for the next couple of years, things kept “happening” to me. And I gradually realized more and more that those things just defied the law of averages that I thought was the ultimate arbitrator of all that occurs on earth.

But like I said about reason in “Reason? Or the Miraculous”, it’s not like I don’t believe in chance. The Bible certainly talks about reason and it talks about chance too. In I Samuel 6:9 it says, “…it was a chance that happened to us.” And Ecclesiastes 9:11 says “…time and chance happen to them all.” On the other hand, some things are not chance. But so often our eyes are blinded to the spiritual cause and often angelic intervention that brought something on. I’ll give you an example.

For years I’d been an idol worshipper. No, not Moloch, Baal or Ashtoreth. I worshipped a certain kind of sports car. I’d had a picture of it on my bedroom wall since I was 14. I dreamed of it, I longed for it, I spoke of it and I was determined in my heart that I would have it, no matter what. And so, in university, I finally got it.

But it was like how the Israelites lusted after meat in the wilderness and finally God sent so many quail that they gorged themselves on the quail and many died. Speaking about this in Psalms 106.15, it says of God, “And He gave them their requests, but sent leanness to their souls”. That’s how that sports car was, something I “just had to have”. So I got it but God really “sent leanness” to my soul. In fact, He got a lot of mileage out of that mistake.

A few days after I got the sports car, I was driving near the campus, just bursting with pride. The top was down, I felt so totally cool and I was virtually expecting that hot women would be jumping into the passenger seat when I stopped at a red light.

What I didn’t notice was a car that had stopped in the street ahead of me. While I was distracted, I plowed into the back of that stalled car. Because my car was so low to the ground, it went under that car, seriously disfiguring its high class looks and somewhat damaging the engine.

My response? Shock of course. And anger. But somehow in my heart, I knew it was more than an accident. I remember so distinctly either that I literally shook my fist into the air or, if I didn’t do it physically, I certainly did it in my heart and mind. Who was I shaking my fist at? “The Fates”, as I called them back then. I just knew that it was something with a message to it.

“So you want this fancy car? OK, you got it; but now this is going to happen.”

“Why?” I screamed in my heart. I just instinctively knew that it was more than happenstance. It was part of something that was greater than me. What, I totally didn’t know. Had “the Fates”, some mystical Greek gods, done this to me? But God had smashed my idol. “I will have no other Gods before Me,” He says. (Exodus 20:3)

Other things keep happening to me from time to time during those years. Some were “incredible good luck” and other things were “really bad luck”. But I kept all these things and pondered them, trying to make sense out of it. Now I know that much of the time, it wasn’t chance. It was the hand of God, allowing some things and keeping me back from others.

There were so many incredibly foolish things I nearly did or actually did do. But the hand of God either prevented me from doing them or kept me back from suffering very badly for my foolishness. Another example of this was when the police raided my apartment, looking for drugs. I wrote about this in “Up Against the Wall!”

“A man’s heart devises his way but the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9) In time and ultimately, like I wrote in “Lucifer and the White Moths”, the Lord delivered me from my unbelief and darkened life, translating me into the world of His Spirit. I found that my idea of “God is chance” was a very dim statement.

But it was almost like the Lord decided to take me up on that one and kept letting “accidents” happen for a couple of years, just to show me that “there’s more than meets the eye”, a whole world of spirits and spiritual activity that we mortals really need to realize, acknowledge and get on the right side of, the side of the God of Abraham and His Son, Jesus.

Angel Story 1: Lucifer and the White Moths

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Mark McMillion

The first experience I had with an angel is one I probably won’t relate right here and now. It was the most traumatic and basically indescribable. Sadly but righteously, it was with Lucifer. He came to claim me, as was his right at that point in my life. I won’t relate it all here as it is not easy to describe or explain but I’ll try to do that sometime in a post or a video.

But that experience when I was 20 was I suppose the pinnacle experience of my life. The Bible talks about “some saved by fire” (Jude 23), that is certainly true with me. Or like Jesus said of Thomas, “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed.” (John 20:29) A lot of things are not as much “by faith” for me because the Lord somehow let me see things so I sometimes feel like Thomas in the Bible. Some people in life-after-death experiences have an angel of God come and take them to heaven. It is such an incredibly wonderful experience that often they really don’t even want to come back to this world. In my case it was the opposite. But more about that at another time.

Fundamentally, categorically, absolutely that changed my life. At that moment when I struggled with every iota of soul and spirit I had within me just to not be taken from my body, I said in my mind, “If this is real, then there’s supposed to be the opposite of this. There is supposed to be a God of Love, a God of Truth and Light.” So I “prayed” at that moment to the God of the Bible to help me not die right then. I put “prayed” in quotation marks there because we so often think of prayer as a subdued religious ceremony, with our eyes closed and our hands folded. My prayer back then was from the deepest place of my existence, with every ounce of meaning I had in me.

I didn’t die and go with the devil to hell then. I couldn’t sleep for 3 days because I didn’t have the faith to sleep. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I went to sleep. But gradually, very gradually some sense of normalcy came back to my life. But it had changed, utterly. Paul, speaking of how God delivers people from Satan said “Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.” (Colossians 1:13)

For me, I wasn’t even there yet. I heard someone say one time about great sculptors, when they’re going to make a statue, the first just start off with a big chunk of rock. Whack! They knock off one big piece. Whack! There goes another chunk. For me, it took quite a few whacks before I was even ready to become a Christian. First and biggest was just getting me to understand that there is a real, true, spiritual world. Seeing Satan and being drawn out of your body by him for your eternal damnation will do a lot to destroy your unbelief.

But there were other angels. And I think I’m going to try to make some kind of rating system for all this. Angels are not always, not even usually, 10 feet tall with white robes and big wings. I’ve never seen one of those. And some things are supernatural but you don’t see the angels involved although you know they must be there.

Here’s one like that. This event with Lucifer took place in a tiny efficiency apartment near the University of Texas campus. It was so traumatic and all consuming that I remained in something of a condition or state for a few days where the spiritual world was closer to being my real world than this physically one we all usually consider “the real world”.

But a somewhat lesser or minor thing that happened at that time was that one evening, probably 2 days after these huge events, I was in my bathroom. And it filled up with maybe 100 tiny white moths or butterflies. They were very benign and non threatening and I remember at that time that they seemed like angels or that perhaps God had allowed this to happen in the physical to represent what had happened in the spiritual. It says of Jesus, “Then the devil departed from Him and angels came and ministered to Him.” (Matthew 4:11) I didn’t know that verse as I didn’t know any verse in the Bible at that time. But I felt all those little white fluttering insects were symbolic of angels who’d come to be with me after I’d turned from my evil ways and had chosen the God of Abraham rather than the devil.

Bottom line for this first story: it was definitely an angel, just the wrong kind and the wrong one. He’d been allowed by God to come and claim my soul after I’d gone so far away from the truth and the light. As for the little white moths or butterflies, they weren’t angels. But God allowed them there right then to be a symbolic sign of the beginning of my altered spiritual condition.

Have Daily Devotions

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Mark McMillion

One of the things that has stuck with me the most from the 36 years I spent abroad, serving God, was the need to maintain my relationship with the Lord. One of the mainstays in this, during those years, was having daily devotions.

There was virtually never a day where I didn’t meet with my fellow workers in the Lord to have a time of morning devotion. This would usually include singing songs, reading some devotional material for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and then closing with united prayer. It was one of those good habits that helped the day to start off right, to really “acknowledge Him” (Proverbs 3:6) and to try to spend time in His presence, and in unity with the believers.

If you study the history of Christianity and the history of Israel, you can see that this daily time of prayer and devotions, often done unitedly with other believers, has been a constant for literally thousands of years.

Nowadays we don’t have time for that, right? Like some of the Jews said to each other in the time of the kings, “Every man to his tents!” (II Samuel 20:1) Besides, many of us go to church once a week. There we can sing some songs and hear a sermon, sort of have united prayer and then go home. That should do it, shouldn’t it?

For me, it really doesn’t. It’s been close to four years now since I returned from abroad to live here in the States and I’m just not in a situation anymore to have daily morning devotions with others. But I still do it on my own, virtually every day.

This is an essential in my life. I’ve just learned it so clearly over the years that we have to maintain our spiritual life and walk with the Lord. If we want to stay close to the Lord, to hear His voice, to please Him and to have His protection and leading and blessing, we just have to take time to cultivate that relationship with Him, daily.

For me, that means personal devotions every day. It’s not as long as it used to be when I had this time with others. But every day I take some time to read some devotional material. One of the things I read is “Daily Light”, complied by the Samuel Bagster family hundreds of years ago. I read other material like that and then I review my verses for the day. I usually review around 30 verses each day that I have memorized over the years. So many of these are like dear old friends because I can associate the times when I’ve used those verses in my personal life or I remember the event that brought that verse so clearly into my life. I wrote another post about all this in Memorizing God’s Word. This linking up with the Word I’ve memorized has helped to keep God’s Word fresh in my mind and conscious over the years and has been a real key in my life.

Then I go out and take a walk to a nearby park. This is not really for exercise but for me I find that I can pray better when I’m out in nature and sometimes even when I am walking. Also it seems that the Lord’s presence is sometimes closer during those times. Several of the blog posts I have written came from events that actually happened on these walks. “Hawks and Doves” was written from an experience that happened while I was walking down the sidewalk to the park. “Red lights and the Sabbath” was also something that came from walking down the same sidewalk. The idea for this post right here came while I was out for my walk this morning.

And also maybe that’s why I wrote that thing about “Was David a failure?” If there was anybody in the Bible who knew how to maintain, cultivate and grow in his relationship with the Lord, it was King David. That’s why the Psalms are about as good as it gets when it comes to learning how to “draw nigh to God” (James 4:8).

We’re all so busy. Probably none of you are sitting off on the hillside, tending sheep throughout each day. We’re on line, we’re wired, we’re working overtime, we’re up at 3 AM with the baby, and on and on. But it’s very much like what Jesus said to Martha who was so busy “tending tables” (Acts 6:2). She was upset that her sister, Mary, was not up and busy helping her but she was just idly sitting there listening to Jesus. But then Jesus said to her, “Martha, Martha, you’re worried and troubled about many things. But Mary has chosen the good part that shall not be taken from her.” (Luke 10:41 & 42) And it’s still true today, probably more than ever.

I hope, with all you do, that you have time—no, take time—for daily devotion. Without the presence and blessing of God on your life, you’re just going through the motions of faith and you surely won’t have the grace and fruits of the Spirit to survive and thrive as God wants you to do. Have daily devotions!

Reason? Or the Miraculous

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against reason. Isaiah 1:19 says, “Come, let us reason together” says the Lord. And it says that Paul “reasoned” with the Roman governor, Felix (Acts 24:25). But let’s face it, the devil has gotten in somewhere with the whole thing about “reason” in more modern times. Because it seems like 9 times out of 10, when people talk about reason, the implication is that we should forget about the miraculous. “We should depend on our own reasoning”, they say, “our minds and our intellect.” The idea is that there really isn’t anything other or better or higher than that.

That’s a serious mistake. It’s “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. Or letting the pendulum swing too far in the other direction. It’s like what Jesus said, “These ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”(Matthew 23:23) In other words in this case, we ought to use our minds but not to where we reject the supernatural and miraculous intervention of God.

Our minds don’t have to be considered our enemies. (Of course the unbelievers would hoot and squawk immediately at that idea there, if we were to even think that our minds could be our enemy.) But in the same way that our bodies can be our enemies if we let our physical desires and impulses take us over, our minds can be our enemies if we let our “carnal mind” (Roman 8:6) take first place in our decisions.

It’s a big subject but really important. Many people have faith in God, but it’s like they say, “Let’s not take this thing too far!” “Let’s not think that God can do anything outside of the rational laws of science that we all believe in today.” This seems to be the often unspoken faith of multitudes. So they limit God by their minds. It ends up just being unbelief or a very limited form of faith.

But as God so succinctly spoke to Job around 4000 years ago, “Should it be according to your mind?” (Job 34:33) Things were going really bad for Job. He’d been so good, really, and he’d tried so hard, sincerely. But then it seemed all hell was breaking loose. It just didn’t make sense! It wasn’t fair! And he was right in many ways; it didn’t make sense and it wasn’t fair, according to the natural, normal way that most people in their natural reasoning would look at things. But in the end it all worked out, totally contrary to how Job saw things happening and he ended up being doubly blessed.

In Isaiah 55: 8 & 9 God says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are you ways My ways. For as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Our natural reasoning and understanding might make it through some situations but those things totally fail at other times.

Thomas Paine, author of “The Age of Reason”

But “reason” came to virtually replace God long ago. “The Age of Reason”, as they called it. It looked pretty good and there were a lot of good points there. But what was the end result? In turning to exalt and embrace Reason, the miraculous, the supernatural, the living presence of God not only took a back seat, it was kicked out of the car and left by the side of the road.

It certainly was not through Reason that I came to faith in God. It was the miraculous. But how many people of faith, regardless of their religion, really are looking for the miraculous intervention of the God of Abraham in their lives in these times? For so many, their faith is subservient to their reason. And perhaps this is because they are partially ashamed of their faith and don’t want others to think of them as strange or out of line with modern times.

This is what I wrote about in “Will He find faith on the earth?” Jesus virtually predicted that at the time of His return, the level of faith in the world would be at a very low ebb. It was the utterly miraculous that turned me from an atheist to a believer, even before I became a Christian. And that wasn’t just something that happened long ago. You can read “God’s Little Miracles” to find a miraculous thing the Lord did in my life just a few months ago.

So I’m thinking about writing some articles on some of the things I’ve experienced personally, not stories from centuries ago but things that have happened to me personally, that hopefully will inspire faith in others to know that God is not dead or even sick. I think I’ll call them Angel Stories. Here’s one about an incredible experience I had where angels saved me from death when I pretty much deserved death at that time. It’s called “Lights on the Road”.

Faith in the miraculous should come first, before our reason. We need both to be well balanced. But the presence of God should have first place in our sight, not our own reasoning. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your path.” Proverbs 3:5 & 6