Heart Strings
Heart Strings
Taste and See
Friday, September 30, 2011
Tuesday night Karen and I went to bed late and began to have our prayer time together in the dark of our bedroom, as is our custom. After prayer we began to talk about the ordeal of the past five months, to count our blessings, to recall the miracles God had performed in answer to prayer. There were so many and our hearts were so full that it lasted until dawn. We laid there in each other’s arms: weeping, worshipping, and praising God through the night. God gave me my life back, as well as my family and ministry.
In about a week I will celebrate two months out of the cardiac-ICU after open heart surgery for a mitral valve. I am home, recovering, and have been busy with the ministry for many weeks. In October I will begin preaching out again, limiting my meetings to the West Coast and within driving distance. In November I will begin to fly again. Please pray that it will go well: that my health will continue to improve and my strength be restored. Please don’t write and scold me for working. I am already immersed in a sea of protests from caring people who would see me indolent just to be on the safe side.
I am slow to communicate details of my personal suffering–perhaps because I am a man and whining about any kind of pain seems ostentatious and less than virile or perhaps because suffering is ubiquitous and non-unique in this world where mine could very truly be less than the reader has experienced. What I am willing to communicate are the mighty works of my GREAT GOD and the absolute TRUTH of His holy word.
Like most men, I have risked my life on purpose many times. I have pulled the elderly out of a burning house on two occasions. I have saved drowning people in both an ocean and a river. I have armed myself and cleared burglars from a house or church building a dozen times. I have pulled people from a burning car accident before the explosion. I have had a gun pointed at me or put against my head by six different people while soul winning since moving to my town. Like most men, I feel my actions pale to insignificance when compared to our soldiers and law enforcement officers. But this year’s brush with death was of a different nature...
Like most men, I have risked my life on purpose hunting in the big woods. I have been charged by bears, stalked by cougars, and hunted rattlesnakes. I have been dehydrated and lost in the wilderness, crossed rivers by moonlight carrying an elk quarter on my back, scaled a vertical rock face, and survived multiple slides out of control in a truck down an icy mountain. None of that merits more than a yawn out of a Northwestern hunter. But this year’s brush with death was of a different nature...
Risking my life was different than standing at death’s door. In some instances after surgery in the ICU with machines keeping my heart beating, the doctors would turn my life support down so far my heart was beating only 20 times per minute and I would fold toward unconsciousness. They wanted to see if my heart would sustain my life on its own before they would bring me back. It wouldn’t. This happened twice a day. Before surgery, there were times when my heart would stop beating for 4 to 7 seconds and then begin again. This would go on for 20 minutes to two hours. I could not breath in any position and Karen and I would pray through the night just to stay alive. In those moments, I could feel my life begin to slip away. I could feel myself dying. Then God would sustain me and the episode would play itself out. It happened many more times than once. I did not die but I did walk to the naked edge of the threshold and touch the door handle.
I do not seek your sympathy or shock. Rather, I want you to know what it was like for me at death’s door. I believe that is something you would benefit from. Was the valley of death fearful? Were there bright lights and angels hovering about? Do you hear music or see the faces of loved ones long departed? Do you question the reality of salvation or even the existence of God?
The number one thing I would communicate is that the Bible is true and the promises are rock solid. “I already knew that,“ you might say. And I believed it also. I believed that one day it would be so for me. Now I can say it WAS so for me.
I can honestly testify to the passing of fear. There was NO fear. I was never afraid. I got anxious about the physical symptoms I was experiencing and an inability to breathe is never comfortable but my spiritual heart was never afraid of death. Jesus Christ had pulled the stinger (I Cor. 15:55) and walked with me every step of the way. I could sense His presence. In fact, His assurance in the inner man that I would not die before surgery is something with which I continually comforted my family and church. Because the symptoms were severe and the caring doctors gave such formidable prognostications, my family had a hard time trusting my assurances. I preached my last pre-surgery sermon on the Wednesday night before I went into the hospital on Thursday because I knew God wanted me to and would sustain me. But that was a very hard sell to my family and the compassionate group of men who came to my house two nights before to strongly persuade me otherwise. My wife anxiously suggested maybe I should fear death a little more and stop doing things that might provoke it (like preaching). I had walked through the valley of death with Jesus and found no fear there.
I can honestly testify of the peace that passes understanding–peace in my emotions, peace about the truth of the gospel, and peace about heaven and salvation. There was no question inside. In fact, I was emboldened to witness more than I can ever remember in my lifetime. I witnessed to one dear atheist nurse for three hours. She stayed beside me and opened her heart that long. I care for her still and pray for her. I did struggle for several days with a severe bout of pump head–the depression that results after being on the heart-lung machine. Emotionally I was very down for those few days but I never felt spiritually disconnected or questioning. I never wondered if God was real. I could almost touch Him. It would be like asking a man sitting at a steak dinner if he believed in the existence of cows.
I can honestly testify to the amazing power of prayer. Over 80 pastors from all over America called to pray with me or emailed to say they were having church prayer meetings for me. Some sent me pictures of their congregation kneeling all over their auditoriums praying for me. My own church knelt all over my front yard and in my street praying. The waiting rooms of the hospital were flooded with Christians on their knees praying. I received cards and letters from a radio station that had sent out a call to prayer for me. Christian friends in the mid-west on Facebook declared a national day of prayer for me with thousands of participants. I didn’t find out until after I was home that my own children fasted many days and prayed for me. What was it like to be prayed for by tens of thousands of people? It was like laying in the middle of a huge blanket encircled by the grasp of a multitude of people who caught me, pulled on the blanket together and threw me into the air every time I began to sink. It was incredible and deeply humbling all at the same time.
I can honestly testify to the presence of God in the darkest hour. Many people have asked what it was like at death’s door. It was like falling asleep with a yearning to leave...not stay. As strange as it may sound and as much as I love my family and friends, in that moment I was trying to stay alive physically while wishing I could go in every other way. What a paradox. It was my most surprising revelation. Since I nearly died many times, I had a chance to experience it with repetition and found it predictably constant. The saved soul yearns for heaven and home. I did not have to will it or psych it or paint a brave face on it. Feeling Jesus near and death close, my spirit wanted to fly to the presence of God. It was a struggle to stay and a peaceful surrender to let go and leave.
The whole experience left me more certain of the truth of scripture than I have ever been. It also caused me to hunger more to help others know the peace and richness in the gospel of Jesus Christ and His word. Try Him, you’ll like Him. Taste and see.
(The photo above was taken when I had only been out of the ICU four hours. Maybe it is a common thing and I have just never seen it but I am the only person I have ever known who was released from a cardiac-ICU straight to the street. They pulled the hoses and wires out of me, placed me in a wheel chair, and brought me to the street where I slowly crawled into my car. I am so grateful they let me go. The Lord and my family have ministered to me beyond belief from there.)
O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
Psalm 34:8