[how to touch a leper]

my eyes have been opened lately and i see them all around, they walk with their heads down, avoiding eye contact. when they do make eye contact, they look for wholeness and acceptance but they are met with stoicism, contempt and ignorance. kicked to the curb and despised by so many, they sit to have their wounds licked by the dogs; they resign themselves to the idea that this is the only love and attention they'll ever know- compulsive love. they turn away from us with plastic smiles on their faces and weep bitterly the tears of maltreatment, lonliness and despairity in the darkness.

parts of them are missing. those who aren't so ignorant as to point the abnormalities out in open mockery, decry the hideousness on the inside and turn to look away.

we pass them everyday. from our youth, we have learned to ignore them. we push them to the outskirts of the camp because we don't want them to rub off on us; we don't want to catch what they have.

they are all around us. they are among us. in some cases, they are us and we are they. some are missing development, others maturity. still others are missing social graces.

they dress differently, act differently, move differently, smell differently. in short, they are different. and we damn them for it.

how does one reach out to a leper? do we just reach out a finger and barely tap them with the tip and exclaim, "i touched him/her?" is that what we are supposed to do? where is the compassion in that?

on the flip side of the coin, do we embrace them and ignore their differences? what would their initial reaction be? half would be so broken and half would be so bitter. where is the sanity in that?

how have we become so calloused? how are we so hardened that the world has to teach us how to approach them, much less touch them? why are we so insistent on furthering their abuse by ignoring their needs?

God! i pray that you have mercy! teach us a better way. teach us to walk in love and humility.

they really are all around us. not in some ward of some hospital. not begging on the street in some third-world country. they occupy the same offices, the same trains, the same apartments, and in many cases, the same church buildings as we do.

we are put off by their mannerisms that don't fit into our paradigm of how life should be. and maybe our paradigms are, in a word, correct, but our motives are incomplete and our methods are vile- shameless and despicable. we seem to justify them with our fingers out-stretched pointing out the inchoateness of their being, while our other hand pinches off the stench from our noses and our eyes are shut tight.

these deplorable acts do nothing but alienate us from their sufferings. what kind of person will mock a dying person? who are the monstrous beings now?

and again, what does it say about a person who simply accepts a person without offering any hope or help? is this psuedo-acceptance truly love? wouldn't love push a person past social disgrace? wouldn't love weep with the hurting, but continue on until restoration or healing has transpired? what good does it for the leper to die in the camp as opposed to outside the camp?

no, the act of true love, moves beyond an embrace of the body to an embrace of the soul.

so, how do you touch a leper?

i would suggest that we endeavor to grab hold of them with all the compassion that our flaccid hearts can initially muster and cling to them until we both are changed. they have found true love, true acceptance and true healing; while we have found true compassion. where is the safety in that? there isn't any. and that's the point...

i have seen the leper; my heart is more cantankerous than his festering boils.

***this is not about medical leperosy nor is it necessarily about moral or spiritual leperosy; this is about social leperosy... not developmental disorders... though all of these are valid surrogates. this is simply about those people who are different than us.

for the world-wide renown of His sovereign glory...

[stop singing lies]

many people within the four walls of the church are treading on dangerous ground. they have donned camoflage and wander about aimlessly in the no-man's-land between the armies of light and the armies of darkness.

we must determine who we will serve. we say we have made our decision when we begin the song service and we try to draw close to God. then we deny Him His kingly right, His hubandly right, and His fatherly right by picking up our lives where we left off before the service.

we profane the holy by making it mundane. leonard ravenhill said that we could be damned to hell many times over for all the lies we sing on sunday.

choose this day whom you will serve. stop trying to lure God into an adulterous relationship. He will not put up our double-mindedness. He is a jealous Lover; He is a valient Warrior who is worthy to be feared. A jealous warrior is a volitile combination; he is capable of tearing apart whole continents for the sake of defending the purity of His bride.

"they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me..."

those words are applicable to much of today's evangelical, pentecostal, charismatic church as it was to the israelites in the old testament and to the pharisees and saducees in the time of Christ.

choose this day, whom you will serve, whether it be the gods of this age, or the God of abraham, isaac and jacob; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

the choice is up to you.

choose now and never look back.

[what do you attribute this to?]

[hey nozza, i hope you don't mind, but i'm going to quote you to make it all the more easy for others to find and understand. they won't have to go digging for your question and i'll make sure that i quote you in complete context.]

"Tell me, what do you put this all down to? Is it a closer walk with God? Is it something that you are doing differently?"

what do i attribute it to? well, a couple of things...

first, i actually started to believe what i said i believed.

second, i realized that i believed that the whole Bible was true and inerrant and completely applicable to today.

third, i scrapped everything i learned over the last 7 years about prayer.

fourth, i just gave up. i realized that i needed to simply step and walk out my faith.

let me also say, i got sick of hearing testimonies and wanted to live them.

i wish to express that i am not the only seeing God move here. that others are seeing people healed from cancers and diseases. i am simply blessed in that i am stepping out on what the Word of God says and i'm seeing that He honors His Word.

for the world-wide renown of His sovereign glory...

[the umbrella prophecy]

i buying an umbrella tomorrow. a nice big one. 72" like the one i left with anna in virginia.

no, really. why? it wasn't raining. in fact, it was a beautiful spring day at the end of january. yeah. it was weird.

so, i'm buying an umbrella tomorrow.

um, my spirit told me i needed one. yeah, ok, i hear ya. i'm weird. no, actually, i'm not.
my bible says to ask the Lord of the harvest for rain in the time for rain.

it's winter. that means it's time for snow- not rain.

yes... and no...

i'm buying an umbrella tomorrow because its a prophetic act.

something happened at walmart today that rocked my world. let me see if i can describe it to you...

i was nearing the end of my shift (as a cashier) and this woman came up and started loading her items on the belt. i looked at her, noticed that she kept her left arm tucked really close to her body. i asked her if she had had a stroke recently.

two months ago. ok. that's recently.

[not a good enough reason to constitute an umbrella? ok then.]

so i rang up all of her items and then she paid with her credit card. after i loaded everything into her cart, she thanked me and started to walk away (ok, it was more of a half-walk, half-drag) and i thought: you idiot, you should have prayed for her...

i wanted to say, "ma'am wait! come back..." but i heard myself say, "Susan!"

she sort of half turned and looked at me kinda dumbfounded and i commanded her body to be made whole in Jesus' name. [yeah, this was in front of everyone at walmart.]

she kind of shook her head and then started to walk away... normal... she took four steps, realized something different and turned her cart around and looked at me with large eyes and sort of terrified, and asked... "what did you do to me?"

i told her i didn't. Jesus healed her.

y'all, she paid with a credit card. i didn't see a name on a check or a signature on a receipt. she swiped the card herself and signed the computer.

oh. and then there's the funny part... the reaction of the people who saw it happen...

the next person in my line started to put their things back into her cart so she could go to another lane cause she didn't know what she had just seen.

so. i'm buying an umbrella. it's gonna rain.