Things that My husband learned from God.

For those who have not followed my thread, my husband moved on to Heaven on January 1 of this year. I felt led to write some things that he taught me. During the last three months of his life, he had very deep insights which I hope to post here for the benefit of others that might learn from them to love God more deeply and to hate sin and this world as God and Jesus do.

My husband knew the Word better than anyone I have ever known. He studied it day and night. He was a college instructor who taught physics, chemistry, biology and math. He said that if people studied the Word as they study for their college courses or their exams in physics and chemistry (mainly about 40-60 hours a week counting class time), people would know the Word and would be able to discern when they are being taught falsely. He said the problem with Protestant Christians is that they THINK they know the Bible because they have heard so many of the scriptures, but they do not realize that they have heard them out of context, because they only hear one verse or two at a time in Church. (Catholics, he said, know that they do not know the scriptures.)

As an example: Often, Christians cite from Jeremiah the verse

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jer 29:11

It is very true that this is God's heart. But when taken out of context, this verse does not truly give the entire meaning of the verse. Jeremiah made this statement AFTER telling the people of Israel that they would be suffering in a foreign land for 70 years. Read in context, this verse tells us that this suffering IS part of God's plan to give them a future and a hope. People try to use it to claim that there will be no suffering.

Similarly, in Jeremiah 32:27, the LORD says: "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is there anything too hard for Me?"

This verse is used for us to ask for impossible miracles. It was given to me as a verse to pray for my husband's health. While it is true that nothing is impossible for God, I would never use this verse in Jeremiah to ask God for a miracle for me, because the next verse says:

"Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, I am giving this city into the hands of the Chaldeans and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it" Jer 32:28

In other words, God is saying that nothing is impossible for Him, and therefore He is sending the people of Israel into judgment and punishment so that in their suffering they can learn to love and obey the Lord.

Another scripture that is often used out of context and therefore misused is Paul's statement that "in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Rom 8:37

So misused is this scripture it is sad! People use it to justify all kinds of worldly things. If they were to actually read the context, they would understand that Paul was saying that IN GREAT SUFFERING to the point of death we are still conquerors.

For Paul says before this:
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:“For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Rom 8: 35-36.

My husband taught us to sit down with a book in the Bible and read it and study it from beginning to end, always with much prayer and pausing. He told us not to ask ourselves questions (that is talking to yourself) but to ask God who would reveal to us the answer through the Spirit. His Bible is highlighted (in a color coded form). He focused on the New Testament because He said without thorough knowledge of the New Testament it is impossible to understand the Old Testament and we can in fact be misled into incorrect doctrine.

I love my husband and thank God for the Wisdom that He gave him, and that he was able to at least impart some of it to me.

This brings tears to my eyes, Natalie...how very precious the things the Lord left with you thru and from your husband...and what a legacy to your children. Now it is your turn. But don't be burdened by that....even though God wants you to take the baton, He is gracious to bring you healing while He works it all out. Love to you....

May I submit to you that there are at least 2 reasons I can think of as to why the bible is not always read in context.

1. It temds to be used out of context in order to twist the hearts of the people in order to get something out of the people. When the hears don't know the whole scenerio they are easily taken. Prosperity movement is a prime example.

2. How often do you ever have a preacher read more than one verse when preaching? Most tend to skip around because they want to hit only highlights or we have a low attention span for the reading of the bible and so we only get what we 'like'.

There is a certain independent baptist preacher, I know of, who, when he preachers, there are times when he will literally read an entire chapter even if it is the OT in order to layout his sermon. I don't know of too many other preachers who would do such a thing.

What would happen if the preachers read more of the bible and expounded on each verse as they read them verse bouncing around to hit a certain topic?

Sounds as if your husband has hunger for the deeper things of GOd. Just the type of person I would have salivated to be around yet I would consider him a needle in a haystack.

John

Thank you for sharing, dear sister.

I think that the issue of "context" of Scripture is extremely important today. Many cults and sects pick a verse upon which they build high and binding towers of doctrine upon. I listened to a preacher on the radio who went about "claiming" the property that belonged to others because he took the words of an Old Testament prophet completely out of context. His "claiming" sounded quite a bit like "coveting" the belongings of his neighbor; yet, the preacher was proclaiming it as if it were a virtue.

Like DEADn mentioned, I enjoy to hear ministers teach from the Word of God reading entire chapters of Scripture.

I was also touched by your post for a different reason. I hope that I have lived my faith in front of my wife so that she would be able to say that there are things that she learned from me -- as I have learned from Him -- too.

Be encouraged, sister.

Thank you, Romanchog.

MC

Beautiful, Natalie! What a wonderful legacy to leave behind...

Hope to hear more lessons he taught you.

God bless.

ginnyrose

Natalie,

When our daughter was terminally ill, there were well-meaning people who would come by and quote verses out of context - just like you mentioned - in order to get us to think positively about her condition. They told us one should not even mention death because this is giving the devil the license to kill her (or, something like that). If you think positively you can set in motion divine healing.

It becomes a serious problem to know how to effectively deal with these well-meaning people. They love you, I know they do - they did not want this young mother to die and leave two little children motherless... In the end, the most cruel thing a person can do is to raise false hopes for the healing of your loved one. They allegedly speak words of faith, say they are speaking words from the LORD. But the person dies, then what? Who was lying?

God is the God of reality and that means one must face life head on honestly at all times. We cannot conjure up divine healing at all - least of all when God has said, "no".

Natalie, I hope your children will take to heart what their dad taught them about the WORD, how it needs to be studied in context and not make scripture say something that it does not imply. I suspect they will have enough to deal with in the time to come without them beginning to doubt God and their supposedly lack of faith in God because he died.

God bless for sharing. Hope to hear more of what he taught you all that means a lot.

God bless.

ginnyrose

Thank you for sharing sister, may God Bless you and your children!

In Love in Christ
DavidC

In the last year or two of his life, my husband was deeply concerned with understanding sin. I do not even know how to describe the depths of his desire to understand what sin is.

This seems, I am sure, to many, like an odd question to ask. It may seem that we all know what sin is. It is disobedience to God, or following after what we want, etc. But does that really answer the question of what sin is.

My husband was a deep thinker. He always wanted to get the full understanding of everything (this is what made him so good at science and at teaching). He learned, and he taught us, that thinking is talking to yourself. If you have a question, he told us, don't think trying to get an answer out of your brain because you don't have the answer. He told us that if we have a question, we are to ask God and not to talk to ourselves in our head. God is faithful to answer.

This is what he did with this question of sin. I found him on his knees many mornings (he always rose before I did) with his face to the floor. He never spoke to the LORD unless he was on his knees, even to say grace before meals. He felt the need to humble himself in prayer.

The LORD revealed to him some very interesting and scary things about sin. A lot of it he received through his illness.

The first thing that my husband taught us is that the world asks the wrong question. Often we hear people say, "If God is so good, how can He send people to hell for one sin?"

My husband said the question was backwards. The proper question to ask is: "What kind of a monster is sin that one sin will send you to hell?"

Also, my husband asked, "What kind of monster is sin that for one sin our LORD Jesus had to suffer and die?" He said that if we are trying to battle sin, we must be very afraid. Sin, he said, is scary and there is no way to beat it in our own strength. Unless we are following God, and relying on God, and repudiating sin (2 Cor 4:2) we will always fall. It will be a constant battle until the day we die, but with God and the Holy Spirit it is no longer scary.

He was very aware of sin in himself at the end. For example, when he spoke with assurance of something that he felt he did not know thoroughly, he said this was lying. He detested anything that had to do with the world in any way, however minor.

The last statement he whispered to me a few hours before he died (he could not speak after this) was: "Very soon, the world is going to turn black or white."

I don't know if he ever truly got a full understanding of sin; at least up to the point that he could speak at length he still did not understand it to his satisfaction. In reality, I don't think we will truly comprehend the horror of sin until we leave this physical world and see things as they really are.

In his seeking to understand sin, he also understood mercy. This, in his life, was a great act of God, because it is something that had been lacking in him. It pained him to think that we, such awful sinners to God, can fail to extend mercy to others who have wronged us so little in comparison.

He told us that we are to see everything in light of eternity. He said that in eternity everything that God forgave does not exist (scripturally, 2 Cor 5:17 - "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." Psalm 103:11-12: "So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.") So when he looked at me, and I asked him to forgive me for all the pain I had inflicted on him over the years he told me: "That never happened." He said we must live in that reality.

When he was sick he wept bitterly for all the wasted years in which he had failed to serve God. He struggled with his lack of works for such a long portion of his life and for all the pain he had inflicted on us by his worldliness. It was my turn to say to him: "That never happened." This reality finally brought him peace, and I never heard him question his salvation after this.

Often he would open his eyes and see me sitting next to him, and he would simply point his index finger to heaven. He was telling me: "Live in eternity." (Col 3:1-3: "If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.")

I am trying to follow this. May the LORD guide me on this journey and give me strength, for at the moment I don't have the strength to even live.

Natalie,

Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes it is better to go to the house of morning then to the house of feasting. I have concluded it meant that when faced with death one gains a completely different perspective of life. Your testimony proves it.

Natalie, you have surrendered your husband to the LORD and now ALLOW the LORD Jesus to be your husband and your guide. Just abide in Him and He will comfort you. I know...I found it fascinating the things the LORD used to comfort me... since he did it for me, I know He will do it for you.

Thank the LORD for such a beautiful memory - not all widows share your testimony.

And thank-you for sharing...

God bless.

Sandra

I was using my husband's Bible this morning in my quiet time, since he annotated so many things that the Lord taught him, and it was brought to my rememberance a teaching that he was so concerned to get into the hearts of all people he knew that claimed to be Christians.

In Matthew 7: 21-22, Jesus speaks of those who will call on His name:
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never KNEW you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

When first studying this, my husband was deeply troubled. This was a few years ago, at a time when the Father was showing my husband how little he really loved Him.

In reading this scripture, Christ speaks of people who display acts performed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and God still says "I never knew you."

My husband questioned then what it takes for Christ to NOT say this to us.

The short answer to this he found in 1 Cor 8:3 - "But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him."

The key, then, for Christ to know us, is that WE LOVE GOD.
If we love God, then we are known by Him and He will not reject us.

Therefore, the ONLY THING that matters ON THIS EARTH is to love God with all our hearts, all our soul, all our strenght, and all our minds. It is what is going to be asked of us when we our hearts stop and we stand before God: Did you love God with all your life? Did you live to please HIM?

That is why this is the greatest commandment.

When he learned this, he was in fact walking in his own strength and did not in fact love God. While he had a great deal of HEAD knowledge of the scripture, he did not know the scripture according to the Spirit so great fear entered his heart that he would enter eternity some day and God would say to him, "Depart from me I never knew you!"

It changed his life entirely, and he searched the scriptures and God and became a man who sought after God's heart day and night, who repudiated sin and the world and looked into eternity.

He also focused on the second part of the rejection: "all those who practice lawlessness." He looked up the Greek for "lawlessness" and found that the word for this is "anomia" which means without (a-) law (-nomia). Therefore, Christ rejects those who have no law.

Connecting these two thoughts together:
If you love God, He knows you AND you will have law.

But what law? This does not refer to the law of the Old Testament, although that is included in it since it was revealed by God. It refers to the law of the Spirit (Rom 8:2 - "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.") This law is lived out by living in the Holy Spirit, and allows us to understand, as Christ did, that anger is murder and lust is adultery.

My husband sought to live in the Spirit, and was distressed at how often he failed. From my point of view, however, he changed to be such a godly man that I found little fault in him. The Spirit of the Lord was truly living in him.

On rereading my last post, I noticed that I left out a very important part of this teaching.

Chirst Himself told us what we need to do. (I do not know how to use the quote feature, which would make this easier to read).

First: Repent! (Mat 4:17). It is the first thing that Christ preached. (At some point I may post the study that my husband did on repentance).

Second: Follow him! (Matthew 4:19)

How do we follow? Go to Matthew 16: 23-25.

23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Expanded and explained
23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

If we are thinking of the things of the world, we are an offense to God and to Christ. James 4:4 calls this adultery.
"Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."
The apostle John also warns of this in 1 John 2:15-16: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world."

We are commanded to keep our thoughts on the things of heaven: "IF THEN you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Col 3:1-3.

Some may say that it is difficult to keep our minds on the things above all the time. He often used this as an illustration to answer this. When we first fall in love with our spouse, we cannot stop thinking of him/her all day long. We seek every moment to be with that person or talk with that person. If we do this with earthly love, how is it that if we say that we love God, we hardly think of him at all during the day? Often, it is considered a burden!

Obviously this is something we ask the Holy Spirit to give us, but it is something that we must seek after. The beginning of this is to fill ourselves with the Word and sit in prayer and meditation of the Word day and night.

So verse 23 teaches us that to follow Christ, we must first set our minds on the things above where Christ is, and stop being mindful of the things of men.

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Following Christ also means DENYING yourself. This means that we submit our will to the will of the Father.

Following Christ also means taking your cross: DYING. We must die so that He can live in us.

[This verse just took new meaning for me. One day, at a point when he could barely speak, he woke up and asked me: "Who do we follow?" I answered: "Christ." He nodded his head and closed his eyes again. He was telling me to remember this. Deny myself and die to self.]

25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
It is only after we set our minds on Christ, deny ourselves, and die that this verse means anything. If we do not do these things, we are saving OUR fleshly life, which means that we lose life eternal. But if we LOSE our fleshly life FOR HIS SAKE, we will find life eternal.

I post these things for my own edification as well. There is much that I learned from listening to my husband. He was a great teacher, and spoke of the gospel to everyone he met. I feel inadequate as a speaker. I cement things in my mind (and can use that to speak) by writing them down. In writing this down, I have been reminded of so many things he used to tell me and others from the Word. It is as if he is teaching me all over again. Of course, it is the Holy Spirit, and that is what my husband would say when I was amazed at his insights into the word.

This is an answer to my prayer for God to remind me of all He taught me through my husband so that I can raise my children in the fear of the LORD. I know that I cannot stay in this place, and must receive my own revelations and establish my own relationship with the Holy Spirit, but this is a place to begin.