What various hindrances we meet
in coming to a mercy-seat!
Yet who that knows the worth of prayer,
but wishes to be often there?

Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw,
prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;
gives exercise to faith and love,
brings every blessing from above.

Restraining prayer, we cease to fight;
prayer makes the Christian’s armor bright;
and Satan trembles, when he sees
the weakest saint upon his knees.

While Moses stood with arms spread wide,
success was found on Israel’s side;
but when through weariness they failed,
that moment Amalek prevailed.

Have you no words? ah, think again,
words flow apace when you complain;
and fill your fellow-creature’s ear
with the sad tale of all your care.

Were half the breath thus vainly spent,
to heaven in supplication sent;
our cheerful song would oftener be,
“Hear what the LORD has done for me.”

from the wonderful “Olney Hymns”

Image by DUCKMARX via Flickr

I edited this poem I wrote last year, and I like it better. So I am reprinting it, because I haven’t had time to write another, which is sort of a tradition of mine, to give Him a gift of a poem.  I don’t think He minds that I abandon my traditions.

I am so thankful He is enabling me to walk in such peace and rest this Season, as I focus not on traditions and tinsel, but on the wonder of His coming to die for such a wretched sinner as me. Oh, thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

After the angel’s Excelsis Deos, the mess
of this ugly Nativity was so unexpected:
that the stink of dung, not frankincense,
had welcomed Heaven’s exile,
that the cave floor was so smeared with blood,
that the wan mother was fallen into straw–
With suffering His kingdom
began its violent advance.

Yet these smelly vagrants had little interest
in these parents unprepared for their visit.
Their gazes fixed on the mystery
wrapped like  gravecloths,
laid in an animal’s trough,
nestled in a hollow made in cold stone
like a corpse in a sarcophagus:
this was their Savior.

Why do we outfit them all with halos,
snuggle Him in cosy blankets,
sprinkle the scene with pretty angels
spangled in gold? We tell a story
voiced with British accents
for suburban wide screens, drenched in sentiment.
We take the good news from the losers: the orphans,
lepers, hookers, and demoniacs–

Those from the night shift
He was anointed for.
But He came for haters of Christmas,
and of Him.  Even Creation groaned
at His birth–and a dragon waited to devour Him.
That bright star leads to a tomb.
The sign for you
is  strips of cloth and hollowed-out stone.

But there really are no satisfying answers to these questions on this side of eternity. So I soon ceased with the self-pitying, “Why?” and learned to ask the more helpful question “How?” for wisdom and strength for the daily battle against the depression and anxiety that remained like detritus from a storm, after my own  short season of post-partum psychosis.

I learned to  call anxiety “My Tether to my Lord” because every time the enemy of my soul tried to batter me about with it, the struggle against it only served to wrap me around my Savior with even greater intensity.  It drove me to him with great ferocity, because I learned if I could only run to Him quickly instead of seeking to escape the gnawing turmoil within, the feelings would ebb, and I would  be safe.  I learned that frequently I was anxious or depressed because I had believed a lie, or a relationship was broken or I felt abandoned.  I learned to wait on the Holy Spirit to enlarge my heart — to show me the truth, and enable me to make things right — to give me the courage to humble myself before another, or the will to acknowledge what was true, and line my thoughts up with how God viewed things.

And in this simple way I was  healed: truth by truth. But because it was simple does not mean it was  easy.  I felt like I was in a kind of intense rehabilitative physical therapy for my soul– every tangled thought was painfully stretched out for examination in the light, and put back  in proper alignment with the word of God.

Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”  And in answer to His prayer I applied His Word to replace every lie,  and so I was healed.  There are no other ways to repair a mind. Secular Psychology  calls this process cognitive therapy. Christianity calls it “renewing the mind.” Any other way out of soul-pain is only a  band-aid. And those therapies without God’s cure for souls  merely mask symptoms.

Like Happy Pills that take the edge off psychic pain but dull the  keen attention most needed and sap the energy required for acting aggressively upon our mind’s  defections from the truth.  Psychotropic drugs enable  a truce that should never be made with lying thoughts, and allow the  psychic wounds of stinking thinking to fester  into a terrible spiritual gangrene.  Pain has a reason for being, as Lewis observed, rousing us from “our sins and stupidities… pain insists upon being attended to.”

I was shaken to wakefulness at last, when  in His sovereign will He allowed me to suffer a psychotic break.  I thank God for this ‘severe mercy’  –it woke me to do urgent battle against my sin instead of devising ways to escape it. The struggle to repair my broken mind made me a disciple of Jesus instead of a double-minded person looking to every wind of false doctrine and wave of a magic wand in hopes to  make all the suffering  go away quick. It made me love the Word of God with even greater passion. It made me compassionate towards others who suffer, and gave me a comfort that  gives hope to others. This  weakness became my greatest strength because I had to  constantly depend on Jesus.

Joni Eareckson Tada too, wouldn’t trade her wheelchair for some temporary health and peace, because the wheelchair was the means God used to change her, as she shares in  her book, “A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Pain, Suffering and God’s Sovereignty”  She says, “So here I sit, glad that I have not been healed on the outside, but glad that I have been healed on the inside, freed from my own self-centered wants and wishes.

That is a hard thing to say or even to understand, the hardest of all to live out daily, but our God moves in a mysterious way doesn’t He?  William Cowper, the writer of that immortal hymn, spoke more wise words:  “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense/But trust Him for His grace.”

And though Cowper himself never really had a happily ever after ending healing to his life–how I wish he could have pressed in to his own wonderful true words–yet it was his faith in spite of the bleakness of his life that provides hope and comfort that is so absent in the  happy clappy  stories, the sort listing “10 Keys to Successful Living”.

Through my struggles, I  have come to know more intimately the God who strides the storms of every life, and  though I know  none of His  Hard Sayings will be made perfectly plain this side of the dark glass we gaze through, I thank God, I have been freed at last from a blind unbelief that ‘scanned His works in vain’.

And  unlike the author of the NY Times essay, who concludes his piece with a wistful nostalgia for the intensity of relationship he and his wife  shared as they fought her mental illness,  “I think that is what I miss…A time when only two things mattered to us: life and love”, I do not miss any of my own bitter struggle, but I am thankful for those hard days.  They taught me what matters most: clinging desperately to Jesus  for life, and drinking deeply of His unfailing love.

“O Lord,You  have pleaded
the causes of my soul;
You have redeemed my life.”
A grateful spirit should ever
be cultivated by the Christian;

and especially after deliverances
we should prepare a song for our God.
Earth should be a temple filled
with the songs of grateful saints,
and every day should be a censor

smoking with the sweet incense of thanksgiving.  smoking  with the sweet incense of thanksgiving

How joyful Jeremiah
seems to be while he records
the Lord’s mercy.
How triumphantly
he lifts up the strain!

He has been in the low dungeon,

and is even now no other
than the weeping prophet;
and yet in the very book
which is called “Lamentations,”

clear as the song of Miriam
when she dashed her fingers
against the tabor, shrill
as the note of Deborah
when she met Barak with shouts of victory,

we hear the voice of Jeremy
going up to heaven—”You have pleaded the causes
of my soul; you have redeemed my life.”
O children of God, seek

after a vital experience

of the Lord’s lovingkindness,
and when you have it,
speak positively of it;
sing gratefully;
shout triumphantly.

or the unbelief of His people.

He keeps His promise
a thousand times,
and yet the next trial
makes us doubt Him.

He never faileth; He is never a dry well;
He is never as a setting sun,
a passing meteor, or a melting vapour;
and yet we are as continually vexed

with anxieties, molested with suspicions,
and disturbed with fears, as if our God
were the mirage of the desert. “Behold,”
is a word intended to excite admiration.

Here, indeed, we have a theme for marvelling.
Heaven and earth may well be astonished
that rebels should obtain so great
a nearness to the heart of infinite love

as to be written upon the palms of His hands.
“I have graven thee.”It does not say, “Thy name.”
The name is there, but that is not all:
“I have graven thee.”See the fulness of this!

I have graven thy person, thine image,
thy case, thy circumstances,
thy sins, thy temptations,
thy weaknesses, thy wants, thy works;

I have graven thee, everything about thee,
all that concerns thee; I have put thee
altogether there.

Wilt thou ever say again
that thy God hath forsaken thee
when He has graven thee

“light be,”

and straightway light was,

and the word of
the Lord Jesus
is equal in majesty to
that ancient word of power.

Redemption like Creation
has its word of might.
Jesus speaks
and it is done.
Leprosy yielded to

no human remedies,
but it fled at once
at the Lord’s “I will.”

The disease exhibited
no hopeful signs or
tokens of recovery,
nature contributed nothing
to its own healing,
but the unaided word
effected the entire
work on the spot
and forever.

The sinner is in a plight more
miserable than the leper;
let him imitate
his example and

go to Jesus,
“beseeching him
and kneeling down to him.”
Let him exercise

what little faith he has,
even though it should
go no further than
“Lord, if thou wilt,
thou canst make me clean”…

Jesus heals all who come,
and casts out none.
… Jesus touched the leper.
This unclean person
had broken through
the regulations of
the ceremonial law
and pressed into the house,
but Jesus so far from

chiding him
broke through the law himself
in order to meet him.

He made an interchange
with the leper,

for while he cleansed him,
he contracted by that touch
a Levitical defilement.

Even so Jesus Christ
was made sin for us,
although in himself he knew no sin,
that we might be made
the righteousness of God in him.

O that poor sinners would go to Jesus,
believing in the power
of his blessed substitutionary work,
and they would soon learn
the power of his gracious touch.
That hand which
multiplied the loaves,
which saved sinking Peter,
which upholds afflicted saints,
which crowns believers,

that same hand
will touch every seeking sinner,
and in a moment
make him clean.
The love of Jesus
is the source
of salvation.
He loves, he looks,
he touches us,
we live.

Cover of Little Faith (Faith of a Child)

Are you mourning, believer
because you are so weak in the divine life:
because your faith is so little, your love so feeble?

Cheer up, for you have cause for gratitude.
Remember that in some things you are equal
to the greatest and most full-grown Christian.

You are as much bought with blood as he is.
You are as much an adopted child of God
as any other believer. An infant is as truly a child

of its parents as is the full-grown man.
You are as completely justified,
for your justification is not a thing of degrees:

your little faith has made you clean every whit.
You have as much right to the precious things
of the covenant as the most advanced believers,

for your right to covenant mercies lies not in your growth,
but in the covenant itself;
and your faith in Jesus is not the measure,

but the token of your inheritance in Him.
You are as rich as the richest,
if not in enjoyment, yet in real possession.

The smallest star that gleams
is set in heaven; the faintest ray of light
has affinity with the great orb of day.

In the family register of glory the small and the great
are written with the same pen. You are as dear to your Father’s heart
as the greatest in the family. Jesus is very tender over you.

You are like the smoking flax; a rougher spirit
would say, “put out that smoking flax,
it fills the room with an offensive odour!”

but the smoking flax He will not quench.
You are like a bruised reed; and any less tender hand
than that of the Chief Musician

would tread upon you or throw you away,
but He will never break the bruised reed.
Instead of being downcast by reason of what you are,

you should triumph in Christ. Am I but little in Israel?
Yet in Christ I am made to sit in heavenly places.
Am I poor in faith? Still in Jesus I am heir of all things.

Though “less than nothing I can boast, and vanity confess.”
yet, if the root of the matter be in me
I will rejoice in the Lord, and glory in the God of my salvation.

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I wrote these as comments on another blog in response to the writer’s lament that so many Christians were reluctant to seek treatment for depression, fearing that they would be sent home with a prescription.  I tried to help this writer understand that there is good sense and even good science underlying that hesitation to turn to psychoactive drugs.

Dear _______,

Have you read those depressing reports about the effects of  anti-depressants   recently published in the New York Review of Books?  The author is Dr. Marcia Angell,  former Chief Editor with the New England Journal of Medicine,  currently lecturer on issues of Public Health at Harvard. The articles,  “The Epidemic of Mental Illness, Why? and “The Illusions of Psychiatry”   have generated tremendous controversy.

In her  cogent and jargonless essays Ms. Angell   reviews three books about the current state of psychiatric research and practice,  and the new edition of the DSM.  Clearly there is a crisis in that particular corner of the world–these books describe, in her words, “the baleful influence” of Big Pharma on the practice of psychiatry.

She reports on research into the placebo effects of these meds, but also about their dangerous side effects, which are much more deletrious than a little dry mouth or lack of libido.  With long term use of psychoactives, the brain has been shown to be damaged,  creating a class of persons  permanently impaired and crippled by mental illness, instead of recovering from a short season of  depression or mania.

In her response to critcs in  letters printed in the NYRB ,   she writes that they  “simply assume that psychoactive drugs are highly beneficial, but none of them provides references that would substantiate that belief. Our differences stem from the fact that I make no such assumption. Any treatment should be regarded with skepticism until its benefits, both short-term and long-term, have been proven in well-designed clinical trials, and those benefits have been shown to outweigh its harms. I question whether that is so for many psychoactive drugs now in widespread use. I have spent most of my professional life evaluating the quality of clinical research, and I believe it is especially poor in psychiatry.”

We  have something greater  than this bad “physic”.    We have the Great Physician.   We have the Gospel, and we have the  ‘one anothers’ that this benighted industry completely lacks.  Until there is better and proven outcomes from meds,  I think we do better to stick to exercise and biblical counseling for depression.

And I speak not  only as one who struggles with anxiety and depression myself, but also witnessed my own mother’s renal failure from lithium and the life sucking effects of carbamazepine that followed –until she was healed by Jesus, shortly before her death, to the amazement of her social workers.   Both of us learned how to take our thoughts captive to truth, and how to speak truth in love to others, which  precipitated the physical healing of our symptoms.  I walk in continuous peace, hope and rest now.

Dear _________,

I am glad you have read the articles– but please, don’t mischaracterize Dr. Angell’s career.  She is not some hysterical crusader riding out against Big Pharma.   She was not just an ‘Editor’ of the prestigious  New England Journal of Medicine,  she was ‘Chief Editor’ for two decades of this most frequently cited  journal of clinical medicine.   Her respected stance in the medical community arose from her  judicious critiques of medical research, not that she was given to any tendency towards polemics.  So please, don’t say that her book, “The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It” somehow made her reputation.  Dr. Angell was already an authority on evaluating clinical data .

Learning that you have read these articles,  I am even more surprised to hear you repeating the disproven theory of  serotonin  imbalances in the brain.  It was distressing to read your comment, ” There is actually increasing evidence for the “chemical imbalance theory” or that you subscribe to disparities between men and women’s serotonin– without any citations of current research.

Although  Dr. Angell’s critics  distort her stance on the biological basis for mental disorders, none argue that the serotonin theory is anything but hokum in their rebuttal to her essays –both writers, Dr. Friedman,  the director of Psychopharmacology at Cornell and Dr. Nierenberg of the Bi-Polar Research Center at Harvard, say that ” it is an outdated and disproven chemical imbalance theory of depression (i.e., serotonin deficiency).”  It is indeed embarassing, _______when “20 and 30-year-old medical research, theories, and cliches (are) still being quoted in modern Christian counseling books.”  Or in their blogs.

And what Orthodox Christian would argue that our brains have suffered as a result of the Fall, or that its orderly working suffers as a result of our own sin?  Although Dr. Angell  probably would not ascribe to our worldview concerning sin and suffering, she states, “Contrary to Friedman and Nierenberg, I do not ‘deny that depression has any biological basis at all.’ I know very well that all thoughts, emotions, and behaviors have their origin in the brain. But it is a great leap from recognizing the obvious fact that mental states arise in the brain to knowing why and how they arise. Friedman and Nierenberg make much over recent advances in neuroscience research, but so far this research hasn’t produced much improvement in diagnosis and treatment.”

And I’m assuming (by citing the studies of  growth in the hippocampus in mice) that you agree that neurogenesis is this next Big Thing in diagnosis and treatment.  Here is a succinct rebuttal to that idea from a psychiatric professional –who uses an alias because of the stigma.

(That individual also helps  run a support forum for those who are seeking to wean themselves off anti-depressants, and educate others about it.  Many other professionals comment there, and so it seems a generally intelligent and well informed group–important, because peer support is a must in this difficult and dangerous process.)

The issue with meds is not just that they are over-prescribed or have terrible side effects — but more importantly,  that they are no good at what they claim to do! And, even worse, with long term use there can be permanent brain damage.  All accompanied by ballooning side effects for which even more meds are prescribed–most patients will describe this trajectory:

Antidepressants made me agitated and unable to sleep, so benzodiazepines were prescribed for insomnia and restlessness. When benzodiazepines didn’t get rid of the agitation, I was prescribed antipsychotics. All of that medication left me so sedated, the next step was stimulants. The addiction to benzos left me in tolerance withdrawal, increasing my anxiety and thus led to more benzos. Drugs leading to more drugs leading to more drugs leading to more drugs.

So these drugs are often iatrogenic — they create the very disordered mental states they claim to heal!   But every double blind study, even those carefully culled and sponsored by BigPharma,  have failed to show any long term benefit beyond the placebo effect for anti-depressives.  Considering the brain damage psychotropics do, that should alarm you much more than it does.

Though you chide Dr. Angell and a certain unnamed  Christian of painting with an overly  broad brush, I think the brush has to be exceedingly wide to display all the harm done by these drugs, whose crippling effects are only increasing, and can only exponentially increase given the current fad of dosing  little children off-label with these powerful neuro-toxins; given  the number of for-profit companies that are preying on poor and desperate and ill-informed parents to encourage them to sign their families up for SSI –  if their troubled children go on meds.    Like the case of Rebecca Riley that Angell documents here:

In December 2006 a four-year-old child named Rebecca Riley died in a small town near Boston from a combination of Clonidine and Depakote, which she had been prescribed, along with Seroquel, to treat “ADHD” and “bipolar disorder”—diagnoses she received when she was two years old. Clonidine was approved by the FDA for treating high blood pressure. Depakote was approved for treating epilepsy and acute mania in bipolar disorder. Seroquel was approved for treating schizophrenia and acute mania. None of the three was approved to treat ADHD or for long-term use in bipolar disorder, and none was approved for children Rebecca’s age. Rebecca’s two older siblings had been given the same diagnoses and were each taking three psychoactive drugs. The parents had obtained SSI benefits for the siblings and for themselves, and were applying for benefits for Rebecca when she died. The family’s total income from SSI was about $30,000 per year.

The psychiatrist who prescribed those meds for that little girl took a vow to do no harm.  But the profession is severely compromised by its parasitical relationship to Big Pharma, and so the harm  will only increase, especially with the advent of “personalized medicine”  that the  marriage of neuroimaging, psychotropics and pharmacogenomics (which seeks genetic markers in order to target drug treatments) brings to the world,  as this member of the profession laments here:

We’ve chased this industry (Big Pharma) interference in psychiatric treatment long enough to know the ropes. It’s time for some application of preventive medicine on our part. If they genuinely find a robust genetic marker for differential drug response, more power to them. I’m way beyond skeptical that will happen. The worry is that they’ll find a little something and blow it up into the greatest breakthrough since the Facebook and attempt to repeat the absurdities of deceit and pseudoscience we’ve endured for the last twenty-five years.

Since there are so few Christians speaking out on these issues  because of the stigma that surrounds it, I think you would do better to re-evaluate even your cautious optimism regarding the efficacy of these drugs.   I urge you to read the books Angell has reviewed.  Especially enlightening is Robert Whitaker’s book, “”Anatomy of an Epidemic”, but there is a good collection of his work at the blog mentioned above to get you started immediately.

Thank you for your kind words about my testimony, and your blessing on its continuance.  And as more Christians come out of the psychotropic jungle, I pray they will be emboldened to share their encouraging stories of hope and deliverance as well.  I can  only hope and pray the number of Christians reluctant to partake of  psychotropics will only increase.

Related articles

• “The chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders was disproven long ago” (bipolarblast.wordpress.com)
• In Defense of Psychiatric Medications, Part Two (psychologytoday.com)

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Dear Tom,

You are right.  Guilty as charged, and I am sorry for gossiping about you.  It is beyond ironic that “the finger comes back to point at me” as one writer put it on Challies.  And so pathetic, my response when you pointed  out my hypocrisy –  but I only shared it to get others to pray about it –did that really come from my mouth?

To my great shame, that classic justifier of gossip was indeed  mine.  Truly that continuum of self-deception was working in me yesterday –would that I had heeded the warning signs when I started to fixate on what I believed to be so wrong:
…. a ‘fixation’ upon what is wrong
…. leads to condemnation
…. which leads to legalism
…. which leads to self-righteousness and deceit.

(from a comment by Mark Finger)

I am beseeching God to grant me real repentance from this terrible sin that is such a blight on the church.   The Holy Spirit’s assurance that my sin is forgiven is my only great joy this morning.

I am going to apologize on Challies as well, if the comments aren’t closed. You  will be relieved to know  I will permanently retire from holding anyone to account.  I will take a break again from the blog, to the great relief of my husband.  And I will pray (until relieved of this burden) for all those involved in the Elephant Room.  I am earnestly praying for blessing on you as well.

yours,
Karen Butler

Image by Eelke de Blouw via Flickr

The Elephant here is a serious slander of James MacDonald in the Pyromaniac’s room.  *sigh*  But some demonic spirit has fiddled with my computer, and I keep getting an annoying error report, and so I am forced to post my  response here.

The post by Phil Johnson is here, and I have no quarrel with it.  But I took exception to these  slanderous comments on the meta about James MacDonald,

“It is a rare megachurch pastor who is concerned about what kind of fruit is produced in their ministry. There are of course a few very noteworthy exceptions to this. But the Nobles and MacDonalds of this world are clearly unconcerned.”

(or, scroll down to the  very end of the comment thread to read it).   Because the reputation of another godly man is at stake, and no-one else seems concerned about this slander of a man with a history of integrity in the church he serves, I was compelled to stop  lurking.  Here is another letter, this time  to  JuniorTeamPyro:

Dear Tom,

Interestingly, you have  read between my lines and made some false assumptions  here: “You may well think that his ministry is going in a good direction” — now, where did you get this idea?  I said, “I am concerned for the direction of his ministry.”  Might this be a pattern for you, a certain hastiness to form conclusions,  and did you perhaps do the same disservice to James MacDonald?

Because, the truth is I feel uneasy about his  direction.  When I read the blogpage  I quoted above, read of his squishyness concerning the Trinity, and sensed, as you do,  the possibility of its being demoted to a secondary issue,  I was very concerned.  Like James White, I Love the Trinity!

And like Mr. White, I do not consider it a matter of “doctrinal hairsplitting.”  I   spent several months on a blogthread debating a Oneness Pentecostal so  am thoroughly acquainted with the  heresy of Modalism –  so, no I do not think  this vagueness concerning the personhood of God is a good direction for Mr. MacDonald’s ministry!

But, am I  like you, one of those ‘pugnacious purveyors of pertinacity’?   Those are Alaistair Begg’s choice words, part of his warning to pastors here,  that I urge you to give a listen to, Tom:   I will  remind you of his own pertinent words.  Begg  thinks pastors should  not  be “distracted by ceaseless arguments” because then they have “ceased to be a power in edifying and evangelism…. when they think they have to correct all the ills…they have lost sight of delivering to the people  what they most need: clear sound helpful instruction of the Scriptures.”

You seem ready  to go to the shed and reach for the pike, Tom.  But even that firebrand Todd Friel urged caution in judging James MacDonald’s stance last Monday on Wretched Radio!  I too, am going to wait and see.   I plan to pray for those in  ‘The Elephant Room’ to parse out  exactly what  “existed eternally in three manifestations” means to the glory of the Triune God–and pray especially that (oh me of little faith!)  Jakes would repent of his idolaltry.  And that if he does not,  that James MacDonald would forsake building bridges toward heresy, and  would affirm this  truth that has been tried in martyrs’ blood.  And all of  that repentance would be a good, and God-honoring outcome of the Elephant Room…that of iron sharpening iron.  It is indeed good and pleasant  for brothers to dwell together in unity, but it is awful when it is at the expense of the truth.

I can’t resist this.  I’m sorry, I just can’t!  “Go to war with the Church?” Really?  Didn’t we all  have such a delightful  discussion concerning this particular hypocrisy in February?   So you are still blind to all the scorched earth surrounding the  endless Open Letters generated from that site? The wounds from chainsaws regularly taken to those with doctrines or preaching practices differing from “Biblical Christianity”, aka “Pyros Brand”?  And then you wrap it all up by calling James MacDonald’s statements “arrogant and spiteful”  Oh Tom, Tom, there really are no words.  I pray to God you will be given a vision of your  very blind spots.

Your  statements would be  hysterically funny if they weren’t so incredibly sad.

Now I am going to go write James MacDonald a letter I’ve been meaning to write for ages.  I am going to tell him of a patched-up prodigal I know whose heart was softened by his ruthless and tender Gospel preaching.   And that he   is still one of the few preachers this one, now returned to the Father’s house, will eagerly listen to — tunes it in faithfully, every day! And this one is growing in faith, humbly asking forgiveness, admitting faults, responding to the appeals  Mr. MacDonad regularly makes to his listeners to repent of  their sins. It is a lovely and ongoing work of the Spirit that gives great joy to my my heart.  I suspect Mr. Mac Donald would rejoice with me too.  Because this is real  fruit growing out of his ministry he needs to hear about.  Especially now.

Believing the best (about you too!),
Karen Butler