It will be a while before I am able to get up more of the ideas I have for interpreting the Psalms, but this one can't wait.

I had an outpatient operation yesterday. This is the first time I have ever been a hospital patient. (excluding tonsils at age 5) I was treated like a prince. My pastor, some family and friends were there, and several others had spoken to me before and I had been prayed for 4 times (with me present). I have no idea how many times I was prayed for otherwise. What happened in the pre-op room was supernatural, and there were three witnesses. I had some conversations with hospital personnel that were so Christlike that one of the nurses cried and the others were praising God for what they were seeing. It was COOL! I had so much fun I would gladly do it again if it would be anything like this!

My Senior Pastor had to be absent due to an emergency, and asked me to speak in the evening service. I asked him what subject he wanted me to speak on, and he said to continue the focus on prayer. So I taught from Genesis 20. This is a strange story. A righteous pagan was protected from sin by God, yet he is going die due to the sin of Abraham. Then God tells the righteous pagan to get the lying prophet Abraham to pray for him, so that he will live. Say what?!?  Do you mean that when a man  of God sins against me, I am to ask him to intercede for me so that I do not suffer as a consequence of his sin? I don't try to explain that one. But it is clear that prayer has some strange rules, and we don't know them. There are two ways to pray without rules. We can be ignorant of the rules, and just pray what is on our hearts, and perhaps not too many of our prayers will be sin. The other way is to know God so well and to know the rules of prayer so well that we cannot conceive of breaking them, and so we pray according to God's will without worrying about the rules anymore. In both cases we are free to pray as we wish, but when our old uncrucified nature prays, we are little different from pagans. But when our new crucified hearts speak to God, we know exactly what is acceptable in prayer, and are in no danger of breaking the rules. We shouldn't pray without rules until we know God so well that the rules don't threaten us anymore.

I used to be mystified  by Jesus' words about the judgment when He says:  "Depart from Me...I never knew you."  Just exactly how is it that the Judge of the Universe might not know something?  
I think the answer to that question could go in several directions at the same time, but the one I think is most likely also requires my mind to bend quite a bit. It is not possible for God to not know anything about me, the old me. What He wants to know is the New Me, Christ in Me. It is when I humble myself before Him that the New Me is revealed. If there is no New Me, then God cannot know me because I don't exist as a Immortal Child of God. When Jesus says "I never knew you..." it is true, because even God cannot know that which doesn't exist. But when I humble myself before Him the New Me is revealed to the universe, then Jesus looks at Me and sees Himself. Then He says, "Come and enter into My rest, for I see Myself in Your actions. I know You. You belong to Me. "

If God is waiting for someone to be ready for the gift of prophecy, Anne Graham Lotz is probably high on His list. She has the heart of a prophet. Her message from Isaiah 6 last night (in Lakeland, Florida) was deep.

Today, I killed a dream.

Basically, I had gotten interested in something that would have required many hours of time and many years of commitment. It was very exciting. I really enjoyed my introduction to the field and my prospects seemed good. But I quickly got so involved in thinking about it that I discovered this morning that it was interfering with my ability to pray. There was no way that I could tolerate that. I talked to God about it, and talked to myself to get all the way through it, then I  compared it to other things in my life that I had been involved with. The right decision was to strengthen my desire for fellowship with God and declare my determination to protect it. I let go of the dream.  It didn't happen all at once. But, the minute I said to God that I might be better off letting this go, I knew that was the right thing to do. It took a while, but God visited me with new energy and encouragment and the rest of the day was considerably more supernatural than usual. I buried the dream. I feel resurrected.

The meditations in Galatians took a back seat last week due to an intense personal schedule related to a July 4th Production.  It will slowly come back online. In the meantime, some other subjects are ready to be introduced to the "Church of the Living Dead." So today, I added a Yellow Page called "Jesus in the Psalms." The format is different. I did not want to write an actual commentary, just to motivate us to meditate on abiding in Christ in a different way.

Yes, I like to chase "rabbits," sometimes I catch one!  Here's an example.

During a recent re-reading of the Epistle to the Hebrews, I think I saw new evidence for Paul being the author. I can't really take seriously the defense of Apollos as the author, and that means that unless it was written by Paul, then I would have to consider it anonymous. That would be hard to defend, given the apostolic authority implied and the attitude toward the "Hebrew" readers. (I know... even the title was assumed.)  I have long thought that the nature seemed unique, but couldn't say why. Here is my new idea. The teachings are thoroughly compatible with Paul. And Paul often wrote as if he were disappointed with the spiritual maturity of his readers, as he does in Chapter 6. But why would Paul ever write a letter to Jewish Believers? And just exactly where were they?  I believe that Hebrews 10:32-34 is the best description in the New Testament of the persecutions of the Jerusalem church at the beginning, involving Paul. And Paul would only have written this letter if Peter were dead. Well, if this was written in the time between the executions of Peter and Paul, then a letter like this is exactly what the Hebrew Believers in Jerusalem needed. And it may have been the last good news they ever received, since the Jewish Revolt happened shortly afterwards. Maybe you could ask God to help you to get a better understanding of the book of Hebrews, and read it with these things in mind.

Richard

This morning, after three hours, I finally finished replacing the transmission in my self-propelled lawnmower. I had done it well, no parts left over, everything went back exactly the way it was supposed to. When I turned it on, everything was perfect, except that it only goes backward! I found out that the same thing had happened to some other people. It seems that the TORO company uses the exact same transmission for its front and rear wheel drive mowers, and the only difference is inside the gear box, one has the axle gear on the left side of the driveshaft, and the other has it on the right. Somehow, a few front wheel transmissions got mixed up and ended up in the wrong box. The parts look identical on the outside. You could tell the difference if you turned the shaft and the axle did not go the right way, but who would have ever thought of doing that?  I think the Human Heart can be like this, too. A person can look perfect on the outside, everything going well, and no reason to suspect that something is totally wrong. Its only when you ask it do something that it doesn't want to do, that you find out whether it is a good heart or a worthless one.