Testimony: The Miracle Tree

Let me tell you a story about a strange thing that it seemed God did. It seemed to me that he was enjoying himself, but in the midst of it, it kinda scared the piss out of me.

A few friends and I were out deer hunting. Now, I have spent most of my life in the woods, hiking, cutting firewood, praying, so I’m real comfortable in the woods, but this was my first hunting trip. It was an annual event with my buddies.

We camped in the driveway of some friends who lived in deer country. They had moved to these mountains a couple of years ago, and had been living in a shack built onto the little motor home they’d arrived in; the toilet still froze solid at night. They needed a better home.

They had applied for a government program that would give them a used double-wide mobile home, but the relevant agency had just canceled the program before these guys were taken care of. We went to prayer.

And as an act of faith, we began clearing some trees in the place where the double-wide we were praying for would be installed. Robin had brought a chainsaw for firewood, so he began cutting trees. “It’s going that way,” he announced, and it fell in the opposite direction, just missing George and his truck.

I’d spent my life cutting trees for firewood, and I’d been trained by men who had lived and worked in a logging camp for many years, so I pushed him out of the way and took the saw. I dropped the next several trees in a stack (where the first one was supposed to have gone). We fell into a rhythm: I’d drop the tree, they would take the limbs off, then I’d come back and cut them into firewood lengths, and we’d all stack them.

Then we came to the last tree. It was a large tree, probably two feet in diameter. I could deal with that, but it was leaning pretty significantly. Right toward the lean-to built onto the little motor home. We needed that tree to fall the other direction, any other direction than on top of their little home.

“Guys, if we cut this one down, it’s going to fall onto their house. It’s leaning too much to fall any other direction.” This tree wasn’t actually in the area that needed to be cleared, and the tree was solid; they just wanted it gone, not looming over their home. I could understand that. But this one called for a professional, but nobody had money for that.

“Well if you won’t cut it, I will,” Robin announced and reached for the chainsaw. I remembered, this was the guy who cut the tree that fell the wrong way earlier in the day. I knew he was serious about cutting it; he was pretty good at the “Ready, Fire, Aim!” methodology that I was working hard to avoid. I figured that I had a better chance of bringing the tree down safely than he did, so I got to work, and Robin looked relieved. So did our friends who lived in that shack.

Some background: when cutting down a tree, you first cut a big notch, an “undercut,” in the side of the tree facing towards where you wanted the tree to fall, then you cut the back, and (normally) it falls right where you want it.

I cut a huge undercut on the side away from the house, literally more than halfway through the large trunk of the tree. I still wasn’t confident, so I climbed partway up the tree and tied a heavy rope to the trunk; we tied the other end to Robin’s truck, and he drove forward enough to tighten the rope, putting some tension on the tree toward the direction we wanted it to fall. We stayed in contact with our walkie-talkies.

I prayed (again) and started to cut the back cut, still not confident this was going to work the way we wanted it to. So I cut an inch and stood back to look at the tree, cut another inch and stood back again. Progress was slow. I was OK with that. Everybody else was clustered behind me, out of danger. I cut another inch, and the tree wobbled threateningly. I grabbed the walkie-talkie, “Robin, pull your truck forward another three inches!”

He did so, and at that moment, the rope snapped, and the tree, now released from that tension, began to fall toward the house. Exactly toward the house.

To this day, I don’t know why I did it, but immediately I turned to the guys out of the way behind me and shouted, “George! Change the wind!” and turned back expecting to watch the tree fall gracefully onto their poor home.

Except it didn’t. As I watched, I saw, with my own eyes I saw the tree stand itself upright! And just stand there. Like it was waiting.

I had cut nearly completely through the tree trunk, and now this tree, which had been leaning dangerously toward their house, was standing upright on the stump. Just standing there, waiting.

I’d been falling trees for twenty years and had never seen that happen before.

But now what on earth do we do? If the laws of physics still worked (and I already had real reason to question their reliability) the slightest breeze would blow the tree down one way or the other. God, what do we do with this?

I had a come-along in my truck, and the cable on it was reasonably long. I cut a notch in the stump next to our physics-defying tree and wrapped one end of the cable around that. Then I threw a ladder against the miraculous tree, and climbed up to hook the other end of the cable around the trunk, maybe a dozen feet above the ground. (I was kind of surprised that my weight on the ladder didn’t knock the tree down sideways.)

Then I stepped back down, calmly took the ladder down and handed it to one of they guys, and quietly and peacefully winched the tree to the ground. It took a minute, but it fell exactly where I had planned it to fall. I stood there in a daze.

Then I went back to the base of the tree to check. Yep, there was less than an inch of un-cut wood standing up on the trunk. I cut a bit if it out and stuck it in my pocket as a testimony.

The next year, we came back to this place to hunt. In the evenings, we lounged comfortably in their new-to-them double-wide mobile home, heated comfortably with a nice wood-burning stove.

I say again: “God is good!”

This one is not quite politically correct.

There are two diseases in our culture (at least). They're both kind of sick.

Some people talk about TDS as "Trump Derangement Syndrome." Anything that Mr Trump or his supporters say triggers an instant negative response. And the issue is much broader than Mr Trump.

Other people talk about TDS as "Trump Discipleship Syndrome." Anything that Mr Trump or his supporters say triggers a positive response. And this also is much broader than Mr Trump himself personally.

And pretty often these days, people with differing opinions can't even have a meaningful conversation any more. 

I'm thinking if we have issues that trigger us, then regardless what that particular trigger is, we're controlled (triggered) by others, either the trigger issue (regardless what that issue is) or the people who can't stop talking about those trigger issues.

That's true for political trigger issues, for religious trigger issues, for social trigger issues, isn't it?

Confession: I don't even know what many of these symbols represent, and I'm quite confident that not all of them apply to ANYbody on either side of the triggering conversation.

The point is that if we get triggered, someone else (or something else) is controlling us, and they probably don't have our best interests in mind.

In my opinion -- and it's guaranteed: if you don't like it, you get back everything you paid for it -- is that people blindly following either side (or any side in between) are living a compromised life: there's so much more to life than just opinions and issues.

Ezekiel's Failing Shepherds

Ezekiel’s prophecy to the shepherds of Israel spoke to me recently. (I’ll quote it at the end.)

The essence of the accusation is that the shepherds – the ones responsible for taking care of the people – were taking care of themselves at the expense of the people. They betrayed the people they were responsible to care for. 

You might be familiar with the concept of a leader “fleecing the sheep.” That’s a bad thing. God sounds pretty serious when he talks about it here. 

I’ve encountered “Christian ministries” whose “ministry” was mostly asking for donations. It’s pretty easy to see there’s a problem with that. I’ve thought, “I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes on Judgment Day,” and I stopped asking questions. 

But this morning, I felt the Good Shepherd drawing my attention in a couple of new directions that I hadn’t considered before. 

First, I realized that while *some* of these failing shepherds might know full well that what they’re doing is wrong, there are probably others who are doing the best they can, and still failing, still qualifying for inclusion in this judgment. So far, I see four categories. 

• We’ve already considered the shepherds who are fully aware that they’re betraying their people.

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, but no actual skill at leading anyone. Bible School or Seminary doesn’t make you a competent leader of people. 

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, had great skill at leading, but they had missed the memo that they were called to build God’s Kingdom, not their own. It’s too easy to get a business card printed these days. 

• I have known leaders that had good intentions, great skill, and wanted to build God’s kingdom, but their moral compass had lost its bearings, and they fell into all sorts of temptations and corruption. So sad.

○ And, of course, there are a huge number of faithful shepherds, who put both the needs of the sheep and of the Good Shepherd ahead of their own, many times at great personal sacrifice. I’m really thankful for these men and women among us!  

Outrage is a really popular, and really powerful thing these days, and frankly, it’s a worldly response to some of these failing shepherds. But for some of them, I wonder if pity might not be appropriate. 

And since neither outrage nor pity fixes anything, maybe we should pray for these poor failing individuals. And especially for the sheep that they oversee. The Good Shepherd, it seems, is more about redemption than about punishment.

But he wasn’t done stretching me. 

I’ve always thought about this passage in the context of church leaders; after all, we call them “shepherds” sometimes. 

But then I realized that he’s talking about people who have a responsibility to take care of other people, and that is not just about church leaders. (That unbiblical and artificial “sacred/secular division” busted my chops again!)

I realized that God is concerned about “secular” leaders who betray their people, too. 

• These days, it’s not too difficult to think of political leaders who betray the people who voted them into office. The number of leaders whose net worth increases by tens of millions of dollars while on a salary is indicative. And embarrassing. And those whose income grows the fastest seem to not stand up very well for the issues of the people they represent. 

But then I realized that this betrayal might be a bigger issue than even self-enrichment. No wonder God is so frustrated about it. 

• I thought about business leaders who put their own profits, the profits of their businesses ahead of the people that they are “serving” in their business. Names came to mind: Disney, Pfizer, Merck, Amazon, Enron, Weinstein, Epstein. There are others. I suspect that there are business leaders in all the same categories of failure as church leaders. 

• Then it occurred to me that there has been a similar betrayal in our education system. Claudine Gay at Harvard made a lot of headlines in the past year or two, and higher education has, as a whole, been pretty active at disassembling the faith of their students. But there have been thousands of videos of teachers and  school board meetings revealing an intentional effort to violently change the values, and occasionally the gender, of the students they “serve.” 

• We’ve discussed the betrayal of the mainstream media enough over the past several months; so many of them have transformed from “presenters of news” to propaganda tools of both government and big business. Both news media organizations and news personalities.

So what do we do with all these shepherds who have failed us, who are still failing us? 

Well, I begin by praying. If we fail in our prayers, nothing else matters. I’m still praying that the things that have been hidden in the darkness so long would be brought out into the light, and dealt with justly; I pray it for every aspect of our culture here: government, church leaders, business leaders, media, all of it. (I pray this for my own life as well, but that’s a different conversation.)

More and more, I’m finding my prayers including calling for repentance in the hearts of the leaders who have made a living betraying our trust, preying on those they are called to serve. God is no less interested in redemption in the 21st century than he was in the first century. 

-----

The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! 

Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. 

You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them. 

"'Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: This is what the Sovereign LORD says: 

I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them. 

[Ezekiel 34:1-10] 

• 
  

The Gospel Cheated Me

 They didn’t call it “turn or burn,” but whenever the “gospel” was preached (back in the day) it was absolutely presented as a get-out-of-hell-free proposition. 

I guess I did actually need to get past the trauma they instilled in me. That was a real thing. (PTSD from hearing the “good news” preached? That’s a problem, friends!) 

They promised me that all I needed to do was “pray this prayer after me” and I was set for life! I was no longer in danger of hellfire or being “left behind.” 

But the bigger issue was that I felt ripped off. They emotionally manipulated me in order to get me to raise my hand (“with every eye closed!”) so that their report back to their supporters (whether individual donors or denominational overseers) would be pleased. So that their paycheck wouldn’t be threatened. 

I felt manipulated, cheated, used, discarded. 

But the biggest reason was that they never told me the truth. Since then, I’ve learned that they've completely missed the best part of all: a relationship with my Daddy who loves me. It irritates me that they left that part out, the intimate fellowship, the amazing acceptance (not disdain or judgment) that I experience with him. 

And it angers me that there are folks out there doing the same kind of thing still, though I have some hope that it’s happening somewhat less frequently. 

I have to confess that when I figured out that I’d been gypped, I got angry with God. 

I remember I was driving a 1957 Ford F100 south on I-5 when I vented my frustration. I spewed my anger and my confusion and my frustration for several miles, about how it was costing me so much more than just “pray the prayer and you’re set for life!”

Eventually I figured out that he was waiting patiently to say something. I paused. 

And all he said was, “So. Do you want out?” 

Which of course immediately re-shaped my view of the whole thing. It was a fair question: assuming I had been lied to and that I had responded to a lie, did I now want to back out of the deceptive bargain I’d made with the loud preacher? Or was my bargain even with him at all? 

And I realized that while the bargain that that guy had presented (and to which I had initially responded) was indeed a cheat and a lie, the relationship that had grown with my Father since then was precious to me. I did not feel threatened at all by his question, but no, I didn’t want out. This relationship was a treasure to me now. 

Time to Be Fierce in Prayer

This Psalm really arrested me the other day. I was minding my own business, listening through the Psalms, when God nudged me to pay particular attention to what I was hearing. David is talking about people who are deceitful, who are speaking “with a lying tongue.” 

And I realized that he might just as well be talking about the news media of our day, about the political system right now, even of the education system in our world. I sat up and paid more attention to what the Bible is saying here. These are direct quotes from the Bible, remember: 

 

• “Set a wicked man over him, And let an accuser stand at his right hand.” (Let his job, his work life, be messed up!)

• “Let his days be few, And let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, And his wife a widow.” (Let him die!)  

• “Let the creditor seize all that he has, And let strangers plunder his labor.” (Let him go bankrupt.)

• “As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment, So let it enter his body like water, And like oil into his bones.  Let it be to him like the garment which covers him,  And for a belt with which he girds himself continually.”  (That's just messed up!)

And as I was listening, I found myself repulsed. “God, that’s messed up! I can’t pray this for my enemies!  Who was the demented person was that wrote this, anyway?” Oh wait. King David, the “man after God’s heart” wrote these words. <gulp>

My powerful reaction ‒ and his patient response to my reaction ‒ went on for some time. “Christians can’t pray this way. We’re supposed to love our enemies! [“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…” Matthew 5] Are you rescinding that instruction?

“No, absolutely not. But I am re-shaping your understanding of it. My children have long labored under the delusion that godliness required them to be ‘nice’ to people who were abusing them.”

And he reminded me of Hebrews 12: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” In the same breath, he reminded me of my mother’s famous “spank spoon.” 

In no way did she ever want me to die! She didn’t even want me maimed. But she was dealing with a high-energy little boy who didn’t understand limits very well. And it took a big smack to teach me the lesson. (She used to buy wooden spoons by the dozen; I needed help learning.)

Now at this point in this discussion, I could go one of two ways. I could go on about the right way to apply this sort of prayer in 21st century America, and maybe both help some folks not to be scared off by this sort of prayer and help some other folks not to pick up arms and slice off a persecutor’s ear. 

Or I could turn left to the point that God was making with me. I think I’ll do that. 

“Son, it’s time for my children to learn to get a little more fierce, a little more dangerous in their prayers for the people who are trying to be their enemies. There’s a time to pray angrily.” (Did you ever notice the command for us to be angry? Ephesians 4:26 says “Be angry, and do not sin.” The first command there is to be angry, at least sometimes. The rest of the verse gives limits.)

In practical terms, it is appropriate to be angry that Charlie Kirk is now dead, that hell is paying rioters in the streets, that little kids are being stolen away from their families. And it is good and healthy for that anger to shape and to power our prayers. (It’s also appropriate for us to live within the rest of Ephesians 4’s limits on anger.)

My *very strong* recommendation is to listen very closely to Holy Spirit if you feel the urge to pray this sort of prayer. I remind us: David was a man after God’s own heart. If we are not first and foremost after God’s heart, this is not safe territory; it’s too close to giving a little kid a loaded gun to deal with schoolyard bullies. Don’t do it! 

But when this is on Jesus’ heart, when you feel Father pointing you this direction, when Holy Spirit is nudging you, don’t rebel and decline to exercise the tools he’s given us. Go carefully, but go there when he is taking you there. 

“My children need to not be afraid of their anger, of their ferocity. That’s from me. Use it.”

Problems with the Christian Religion

I was talking with someone recently who doesn't call himself a Christian any more. And I realized that I avoid that term "Christian" pretty intentionally myself. 

The term is a Biblical term [Acts 26:28 & 1 Peter 4:16]. That's not my problem.

I found myself saying that I avoid the term because I don't like the associations so much. There's a lot of heinous things that have been done in the name of the Christian religion. The crusades are a good example.

 
But then I corrected myself. Yes, that's true, but the bigger issue for me might be that I don't like what has happened to the Christian Religion so much. Well, really, not at all.

Yeah, the term is Biblical. That does not mean that what we've done with it is Biblical. It's not. We can point to the Romanization of Christianity first by Constantine's legalization and patronage of it starting in 313 AD, then the adoption of Christianity by Theodosius I in 380 AD.

Those effects, both the patronage of government (think "501c3") and the cultural dominance of the religion are perversion (in my view) that have continued on even today. Christianity does not thrive when paired with government.

We see another religion trying its hand at government: Islam is working pretty diligently to take over the world. Literally. If you look around, you can see a lot of growing dominance in a number of countries (Great Britain being one example), and there are communities around America that are considering adopting Sharia law (the religious law of Islam).

Islam (Muslims) kind of hate Christianity. And they kind of have reason. I refer you back to the crusades, when Christian knights and armies slaughtered Muslims and took their lands. We did it badly then. They're doing it badly now, and reminding us of why religion and government don't mix.

I've been in the Gospels in the Bible for a few months. Some Christians today kind of hold up ancient Israel as an example of religion and government working together. But if you read the Old Testament (Kings & Chronicles in particular) and the Gospels with open eyes, you'll see that it never worked for them either. Jesus went waaay out of his way to castigate the religious ruling party (Pharisees, teachers of the Law) for how badly they got it wrong.

The way I read it, Christianity was never meant to be a culturally dominant religion. Aw heck, Christianity was never meant to be a religion at all. It has always been meant to be a family. When family and government converge, you get dynasties and corruption, and we have seen too many examples of that in our lifetime.

Let me add, however, while the Christian religion does not belong in government, Christian people ABSOLUTELY do. William Wilberforce and Charlie Kirk have been really excellent examples, though they've both were persecuted and slandered for bringing their faith into their political work. Let's be honest: our faith belongs in our work, regardless what our work is. If we can't be a believer in our work - and I am not saying to be an evangelist or a preacher in our work - then our faith might be pretty superficial.

So yes, I am proudly a part of Jesus' family. I am his son, his child, and I live my life in and under and for his kingship. (Note that God's Kingdom is NOT a political kingdom!) I have been redeemed by Father's massive love, and by Jesus' massive sacrifice, and Jesus lives in me, along with Father and Holy Spirit. I am born again. And I am what Luke (in Acts) and Peter called "Christian," but I respectfully decline to fit into the cultural and political boxes of what is called "Christian" in the 21st century.

I know some folks who call themselves "Christ followers," and the term "born again" has some value again these days. I'm afraid that I expect that whatever "believers" (another option) call themselves will be corrupted quickly enough and filled with all sorts of cultural and historical baggage, particularly by people who want to put "those Jesus Freaks" (yet another option) into some sort of box so they can stop listening to them.

So yeah, I kind of hate what has been done by the Christian religion over the centuries, but I think I resent what has happened TO the Christian religion even more.

Maybe I'll find a label (ick) that will work, but maybe I'll just avoid labels as much as I'm able for the time being.  

Earnestly Desire Spiritual Gifts

Some years ago, my habit was to begin my prayer walks by asking Father what was on His mind. Sometimes I'd get a sense of something, maybe a topic to pray about, maybe something to confess, maybe I needed to pray in tongues for a bit.

So I'd start with that topic first. Since those walks were about an hour long, it was pretty rare that the topic he gave me would take the whole time; at some point, I would feel a release in my spirit, and I knew I could go on to other topics on my mind. We had been working with this model for a couple of years, four or five times a week. It was a good season.

One day, it might have been a Monday, he asked me to pray 1Corinthians 14:1: "Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy." That's an awkward verse for a Presbyterian boy to pray, but that's what I felt him saying. So I spent some time praying through these three points, I felt the release to go on, and I went on to other topics.

The next day, he gave me the same assignment. That hadn't happened before, but let's be honest: "business as usual" is not a normal model with God. I wondered if maybe I'd missed something yesterday, so I was especially detailed in praying through the verse, but I felt the release to go on, so I did.

One Wednesday, he said the same thing. And Thursday. And Friday. He never said any more about the verse, just that I needed to pray the verse.

We didn't have walks together over the weekend, so I kind of wondered if we were done with that verse.

We were not. Every day that week, he asked me to pray that verse. And every day the next week. And the next.

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to do the same thing every day, and you didn't see any point in it? Did you get tired of it? Did you grow to resent it? I did. Every day, pray the same three things. It went on for months. I got to the point where I'd grumble out, "Yes, I pursue love, and I desire spiritual gifts, especially that I may prophesy. Am I done? Can we go on now?" This went on for months!

And he was always kind and gentle, and I always felt that sense of release, though very often it was tinged with his chuckle, and we'd go on.

I was confused by the same requirement every day, but it never discouraged me from looking forward to my walks with him. And he was never grumpy, and not nearly as legalistic as I was about it. We had good walks together, covering loads of topics, and though I didn't count on it, his presence was often near. Those were really wonderful times, though they started strangely every time. I never told a soul about that strange season, not even my bride.

About that time, the church that had been our family for years shut down, so we went looking for our next assignment. We eventually found excellent fellowship in a community two counties away. After a while, I wanted to get to know the men in that family, so I signed up for the men's retreat with them.

The fellowship was pretty good, and the meetings were interesting. A remarkably gifted teacher spoke for a bit (good stuff!) and then turned the meeting over to a prophet we knew. This was back at the beginning of the prophetic movement, and is sure was more interesting than the Calvinist church I'd grown up with. Rather exciting, really.

One session, when it was the prophet's turn, he announced that some guys would be feeling a physical sensation in their gut, and would those guys please come forward, because God has something for you. I was hungry enough that I started forward before even checking to see if had that sensation, but by the time I reached the front, there was something that I could identify, so I felt like I wasn't cheating.

The guys that he ministered to seemed to affirm the words he was declaring to them (tears are a good thing, right?) so I waited my turn and enjoyed God's presence in the meantime. Eventually it was my turn.

The prophet slaps a hand on me and announces, "God says that you've been asking him for the prophetic." I remind you of my strange prayer times during that whole season! I felt seriously set up!

As my head was spinning, he went on to say that God was answering my prayer, and I think he said some other things. I confess, I was distracted.

So all those months, God was setting me up. I guess my Calvinist & fundamentalist background got in my way (in our way?), so it seemed he needed to go all "Jehovah Sneaky" on me to get me to get over my prejudices and invite him to work in me.

So I forgave him for the sneaky maneuver. And yeah, I've had a small part to play in the prophetic realm (I still have to tell people, no, I'm not "Northwest Prophet!")

I'm just a very much loved son, playing in the shallower half of that pool. And I'm loving my sneaky Daddy.