Is it crazy to suggest we start casting out demons and raising the dead?

If you think I’m not  in my right mind asking such a question, I would remind you that in Matthew 10:8, Jesus instructed His disciples (and presumably you and me) to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons” as an integral part of sharing the gospel message.

It seems to me we’re quick to discuss healing the sick and cleansing lepers.  But when’s the last time you heard SDA Christians talking about raising the dead or casting out demons?  Will the role of the demonic be included in any of the formal presentations on the church’s first-ever International Conference on “Emotional Health & Wellness!” scheduled to take place October  12 – 15 at Loma Linda University?

I wanted to know, so I called the GC Health Ministries Department to ask.   No one was available to take my call.  But I did receive a call just at deadline for this piece from a very nice person who told me that the only person in the department familiar with the Conference was out on an extended health-related leave.  So no one remaining could answer my question.

By the way, as I’ve researched such mental illnesses as Tourettes, Asperger’s, Autism, and Schizophren-ia, I note that the behavioral science community offers no specific causes for these diagnoses.  The same holds true for Bipolar disorder which the authors of the book, Sway, point out came into existence largely through pharmaceutical company marketing of Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft.  Prozac, by the way, has now been shown to be no more effective than sugar pills.[1]

Is there any reason not to think the demonic might play a role in these illnesses?

Despite Ellen White’s contention that multitudes are under the control of demons today just as they were in Jesus’ time,[2] doesn’t the whole demonic thing seem just plain weird in today’s modern world? BTW, do you think that homosexuality, too, might have demonic origins?  Read this letter from a young man to a popular advice columnist and tell me what you think:

 “I am a male in my early twenties.  I have never had any sexual interest in men.  Even though my re-lationships with women have been few and far between, I have always been attracted to them.

“Recently I had a dream that I was with another man.  Since then I have been very confused.  My sex drive has diminished, and I find that I am questioning my sexual orientation .

“I have no desire to be with a man, but the fact that I had a dream like that has left me flustered and wondering how something like that could have come into my head.”[3]

The columnist had no answer and suggested that he come up with his own interpretation of the dream, perhaps with the help of a therapist. 

Now I don’t believe for a minute that all of our dreams are devil produced.  But I’d like to suggest that one was.  And how devastating such an event must be for the poor soul who doesn’t have a clue what is really going on and concludes, “That must be the way I am.”

In one horrifying sentence, the Bible says the natural man (unconverted, in other words) can be “taken captive by (the devil) at his will.”—2 Timothy 2:26 (KJV).

It’s interesting to observe the increasing number of media personalities—CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon, for example—who are known to be gay (Lemon has announced it). Wouldn’t that make sense if you were the devil, to go after people who were highly visible presenters of the news?  What an impact that would have in giving homosexuality an aura of acceptance!

And since Matthew 10:8 references raising the dead, does that only mean those who are dead in their sins?  If you think so, please read Greg Rudd’s One Miracle After Another, the story of Pastor Pavel Goia and some of the incredible events of his early life.  You’ll be amazed at the story of the boy who died beneath the wheels of Pastor Goia’s car who came back to life after being pronounced dead and his body sent to the hospital morgue over night.  What happened the next morning when the keeper of the morgue arrived for work will amaze you.  Contact your nearby ABC for this wonderful book.

Despite the craziness that has happened in the past over the demonic (prolonged exorcisms led by church folks attempting to cast the demons of allergies or the demon of chocolate out of someone, for instance), I wish to conclude with an appeal for anyone reading this blog to consider what it might mean if he or she took seriously the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:8. 

Relationship guru John Gottman[1] says 69 percent of the issues all couples face in their relation-ships never get resolved. 

If you’re in a relationship, two-thirds of the issues you will face (You never take the garbage out.  You always leave dirty dishes in the sink. You overdrew the checking account again…) will be irreconcilable. 

Intriguingly, however, the Masters of relationships do just fine despite neither partner ever coming around to the other’s viewpoint, but the Disasters of relationships crash and burn (fight or break up), Gottman says. 

Oh, by the way, where do you see yourself in this arena?  Are you a Master or a Disaster when it comes to personal relationships?

I tell couples I counsel, “Love is never enough.  Work at meeting each other’s primary relation-ship needs.  Then tackle your differences.”  Most couples I work with admit they don’t know their partner’s top relationship needs.  Do you know yours?

Before I married Diane 15 years ago, I asked her what her primary relationship needs were.  She replied, “I need to be worshipped and adored.”  I told her, “I worship God, but I’m willing to adore you.”   She replied, “That’ll work.”  And so far, it has.

Author Harville Hendrix[2] contends that most of us have relationship expectations at a subcon-scious level.  When we meet someone special, he says, we drape those expectations over the other person, unaware that we’re doing this.  We just expect the other person to intuit our relationship needs and are majorly unhappy when they don’t. 

In the movie, “Don Juan De Marco”, aging psychiatrist Marlon Brando has an epiphany when he’s in his 70’s and asks his wife of many years, Fay Dunaway, about her hopes and dreams.  She gets teary, and in one of the movie’s great lines, replies, “I thought you’d never ask.”  May I suggest that you and your partner (if you have one) might do well to ask about the other’s relationship needs if you’ve never done that.

But let’s switch gears now and examine some issues the two of you never get resolved? (You drive too fast.  You’re always on the phone.  You never pick up after yourself.  You’re too easy on the kids.  You spend way too much on…) How well you do will depend to what extent you’re a Relationship Master and not a Disaster.  Here are some points I make at men’s conferences about handling relationship issues.  Most of them should work for women as well.

1.  Just go along if It’s not life threatening.  Case in point.  Diane and I are empty nesters, but she likes to shop at COSTCO.   Ridiculous, I used to tell her, especially when it comes to pur-chasing produce.  Because COSTCO only sells larger quantities, lots of our produce goes bad before the two of us can eat it.  I used to complain about this.  Then I learned something.  Shopping at COSTCO (one of her few indulgences) brings her pleasure.   So I’ve learned to back off.  Sometimes I even help her unload the car and lug in the 500-lb. (just kidding) buckets of kitty litter she brings home.

2.  Pray (silently) when the matter is not resolvable.   Once when Diane was going off on something I did (I threw out one of her half-dead plants without asking her first), I told her I couldn’t believe we were even discussing such a mundane matter.  She assured me we were.  Finally in a brilliant stroke, I shut up, prayed silently for God’s intervention, and watched Him intervene.  And He really did.  By the next morning, we were fine again.

3.  Go from “you never” to “you always”.  Diane says when she’s tempted to tell me I “never” clean out the garage that she’s learned to say to herself, “But at least he empties the dish-washer.”  The point?  Practice saying something positive to yourself about your partner every time you get upset about a relationship difference.  Do this and your relationship will prosper.

4.  Choose to have low horizontal expectations.  By now you know you and your partner won’t agree on every topic, so cool your jets when disagreements arise.  And, remember, as my friend Clarence Schilt says, we tend to sin more when we’re right and right is not happening.  So once you’ve made your point, why do you have to control the outcome?  Do you always have to be right?  Why not give your partner permission to be wrong once in a while!

5.  Be sure you’re emptied of self if you’re dying for a good relationship.  Self is the enemy most to be feared.  So make the choice every day for the Holy Spirit to drain off all of your natural self, replacing it with a brand new Jesus self (“It’s no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me.”—Galatians 2:20)  This won’t make you a wimp; it will simply enable you to be more balanced in knowing when to take a stand and when not to in dealing with your differences.

Remember, (if Gottman got it right), all of us should expect our relationship differences to never get resolved.  But you and your partner can sail along smoothly anyway IF you become a Relationship Master.  It’s your call, of course.  Some folks would rather fight.  I hope you’re not one of them.

_____________________________________________________________________________  Mike Jones leads seminars on reconnecting with inactive members and does a certain amount of couple counseling.  His newest books are entitled Help, Lord, I Blew It Again and Sometimes I Don’t Feel Like Praying.  Reach him at www.reconnectnow.org or mjones@paclink.com.  

Do you ever notice that some folks you used to see regularly in church aren’t present any more?  Do you say to yourself, “I really should give them a call,” but you don’t?

The purpose of this column is to stimulate you to make to make that call.

Several years ago, someone at my home church mentioned a couple we used to know who were no longer active in church.   I did a little sleuthing and was able to obtain their phone number.  When I got the husband on the line and identified myself, I chatted with him initially about our children who used to hang out together when they were teenagers.   From there, we caught up on the rest of our families what he and I were doing now 20+ years later.

Toward the end of the call, I said, “I hear you haven’t been in church for a long time.  Don’t you think you should get your act together and start coming again?”

Of course I said nothing of the sort.  I didn’t even mention church, as I recall.  But I did suggest it might be fun to catch up some Sunday morning with our wives and have breakfast together.   He said that might be enjoyable but that he and his wife were pretty busy just now.  Perhaps I could call another time.

Three weeks later, I called again only to find he and his wife were busy again.  About a month later

after praying for God’s guidance, I was impressed to call again.  This time he and his wife were avail-able.  Our two families had breakfast in a local restaurant, me with a different wife from 20 years earlier, and we had a really enjoyable visit.

Toward the end of this encounter, I mentioned that our church had a free  buffet meal every Wed-nesday evening and perhaps they might join Diane and me in the near future.   A few weeks later, they did join us.  We had great fellowship once again.  But even better, some of the longtime members who were present also welcomed them.

After two or three of these Wednesday evening encounters, I said we’d love to have them join us in church some Sabbath morning.  A few weeks later they joined us.  They came sporadically at first, but now come quite regularly, and Diane and I have two new friends.

Perhaps this story reminds you of some folks from your church who’ve  become inactive.  Most churches have two to three times their active membership who are no longer active.  If someone comes to mind you’d like to connect with, perhaps some of these ideas will help you get started.

Make a non-religious phone call.  (Possible message:  “What’s going  on, _______?  Haven’t seen  you around for awhile. What’s new?  Let’s get together some time.”)  No texting or emails in the early going.

Schedule a connection.   Try for a casual encounter, perhaps at a Starbucks or some other nearby hot (or cold) drink place.  Or you might opt for a Sunday morning breakfast.  But no fancy restaurants or invites to your house or church.  Not yet unless your prospect says, “I sure do miss church.”

Touch Your Prospect.   Handshakes, hugs, whatever seems appropriate.  Remember that God’s love will be flowing through all of these connections, including your tone of voice if, say, the telephone precludes your being physically present because prospect has moved away.

Keep asking questions—caring questions.  “How’s everything going in your life?”   Areas to ask about:  family and work.  “How’s Hank?  What’s up with Jimmy & Susie? Anything new at work?”

Maintain good eye contact, smile.  These expressions convey empathy, show that you care.  (P.S.  If you smile even though you’re on the phone, your voice will make your connection more winsome).

Keep listening & asking followup questions.  Listen for problems and pain.  Famed theologian Francis Schaeffer once told his teenage son, “We help people find healing not by so much by what we tell them, but by listening to them.”  Everyone has issues.

Pray silently.  You’ll feel inadequate when you hear some of your contact’s complicated problems.  So pray for wisdom and grace and for God’s blessing on your connection while it’s happening.  Jesus promises to be your adequacy.  “You are complete in Him.”—Colossians 2:10.

Schedule a  next time.  “Hey, this has been fun.  Let’s get together again soon, okay?”  Then ask what time of the month or day of the week is better for your prospect and indicate that you’ll be in touch in whatever time frame seems appropriate.   Try to maintain the lead without being pushy.

Pray before, during, and after your connection.  Someone has said, “Prayer is not so much preparing for battle; it IS the battle.”  Plead the merits of Jesus’ shed blood that your prospect’s sins may be forgiven and that the Holy Spirit might be enabled to bless your contact (perhaps even your son, or daughter, or grandchild) in response to your intercessions.  Pray even when everything looks hopeless.  God promises to respond speedily to such prayers.  (Luke 17:7-8).

Back off if your prospect shows no interest in connecting.  The Holy Spirit will guide you in such matters.  Perhaps down the road your prospect will be more receptive.   Or perhaps the Lord has someone else in mind for you to connect with.

Mike Jones leads seminars on reconnecting with inactive members.  The story of his return to member- ship after 16 years away appears in his book, Sometimes I Don’t Feel Like Praying.  Reach him at mjones@paclink.com or www.reconnectnow.org. 

Recently I suggested to longtime evangelist Don Gray that the church needs to find more effect-ive ways to do evangelism. 

Think about it.  You can accept Jesus as your Savior and Lord in a few moments or at a meeting.  But typically you have to slug through at least a month or more of meetings–or many months of Bible studies–before you can join the Seventh-day Adventist church. 

In the 21^st Century where everything is speeded up, does this make sense?   And if you say Yes, let me ask, What would you think of the idea of  the church’s colleges and universities offering CE credits for those who attend an evangelistic meeting or complete a Bible course and pass an examination?  Perhaps, too, attendance would be enhanced at a long series of meetings if college credits could be earned.

Don responded to my complaint with a smile and suggested that if I had a better way to do evangelism I should implement it (demonstrate that it works, in other words) and get back to him.

In this column, I’ll throw out a few thoughts to stimulate your thinking.  But if you already have your own ideas about evangelism, I’d like to hear from you.

One thing I noticed during the years when I pastored was that most prospects at evangelistic meetings had some kind of crisis in their lives.  Whether it was an illness, financial problems, a relationship issue, an addiction, or something else, they hadn’t solved that crisis and were now willing to look outside themselves for answers.

Therefore, I believe the church would do well to create many more potential points of entry built around common crises people have. And while we’re at it, I don’t see why we can’t speed things up when it comes to the presentation of church doctrines.  I’m all for Bible studies, but does every belief call for a full-fledged Bible study?   Why not a well-publicized weekend series on just one topic sometime  (the Second Coming perhaps) when that’s in the news!   Not a bad way to attract prospects, don’t you think?

Back in the day when I was starting out, I was instructed to do two Bible studies per week with folks, forever.  Okay, I jest!  But with vacation stops, illnesses, and other interruptions, it fre-quently took from four to six months to get through a full series of studies with a prospect.

In addition to expediting the process, I believe we would do well to help our prospects not just say Yes to Jesus, but to really learn how to have an ongoing experience with Jesus.  He tells us to eat His flesh and drink His blood if we want eternal life.  Do we have studies explaining how to follow those instructions?  How to pray?  How to take up our cross daily? How to really ingest the Word?

Right now in a typical set of 25 Bible studies, Jesus is central in only one of them.  I once asked a young woman what impacted her most after she had attended an entire evangelistic series.  What she remembered most vividly were the Mark of the Beast and the change from Saturday to Sunday worship.  Jesus didn’t make her list.  And she never got baptized as far as I know.

Would it be heretical to suggest baptizing people into Jesus once they’ve accepted Him and then voting them into membership later after they’d studied the beliefs of the church?  Did you ever notice in the New Testament that folks who accepted Jesus seemed to get baptized pretty quickly most of the time. 

I’ll conclude this column with one point-of-entry idea.  A telephone-based community service to help frustrated people who need to vent.  At the moment, I’m calling it The Frustration Line.  Here’s an anecdote of how it could work.

Susan, a 38-year-old nurse and mother of four, was about to explode.  Her life seemed out of control.  Married to Brian, a 39-year-old diesel mechanic with a drinking problem, Susan was in her second marriage and had a blended family.  Susan and Brian had a pre-teenage boy and girl from their own marriage plus two teenage girls from Susan’s previous marriage.  She and Brian were often at odds over disciplinary issues with the children and they struggled financially.

The last straw came yesterday when Susan learned that Brian was a sex addict.  He had been arrested and booked by the local police on charges of attempting to solicit sex from an under-cover police person.  She had to post bail to get Brian out of jail.  Not sure whether to leave Brian or kill him, she was referred by a friend to The Frustration Line sponsored by the ____________ Seventh-day Adventist church.

A soft-spoken Adventist lay person named Nan returned Susan’s call to The Frustration Line call center.  Nan, a 53-year-old bookkeeper, introduced herself and invited Susan to share what had precipitated her call.  For the next 35 minutes, Nan listened and Susan vented.

Over the next few months, Nan and Susan established a telephone friendship with Nan doing a lot of listening.  About four months after their first conversation, the two met personally for the first time at the ___________church.  Several weeks later, Susan joined the Bible study class that Nan attended.  A few weeks later, Brian and the four children also visited.  The older children event-ually became involved in the church’s youth group, the younger ones in Pathfinders, and Brian began attending a men’s group.

The church’s Exchanged Life Class enabled the entire family to stabilize and learn how to handle their issues with better communication skills and with God’s grace and forgiveness[1].  Also they’ve become regulars at the ____________ church.

Might this kind of story be emanating from The Frustration Line if your church had one going?  The Frustration Line requires only an answering service or call center and, perhaps 6 to 10 each, Christian men and women trained in the art of therapeutic listening.  Men would deal exclusively with men and women with women.  All calls would initially be handled on a first-name-only basis.

Want to know how I’d launch a frustration line if I were doing one in my church?  I’d start it by publicizing it initially to my church’s list of inactive and former members.  I mean where could you find a finer list of folks who might find some healing if they were  listened to?  Also, many churches, if not most, would probably have a list two to three times its typical attendance.

Perhaps you have a completely different idea for more effective evangelism.  Even if it’s a stretch and involves Facebook, Twitter, texting, concerts or something else nontraditional, tell me about it!  I might even share it with Don Gray.  Of course, Don would probably smile and tell you to try it, then let him know how well it worked.

Share your comments below–and allow a day or so for them to show up.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Mike Jones is the author of two new books, HELP, LORD, I BLEW IT AGAIN & SOMETIMES I DON’T FEEL LIKE PRAYING.  Both books deal with the challenges of Christian living.  Mike was out of the church for 16 years and had been back for 12 years.  He is a former pastor and presents seminars on recon-necting with former members.  His books are available at the ABC or at www.reconnectnow.com.

Recently I came across two pieces of information about Seventh-day Adventists that left me surprised and chagrined. 

The first was a story in USA Today in March stating that our church is the fastest-growing Christian denomination in North America.   (Some of us have wondered if the church was shrinking here, so that was unexpected).  The second was a statement attributed to Pastor Lee Venden that, on average, 70% of Adventists in churches where he’s conducted revival meetings in recent years admit to having little or no daily devotional life.

Wow!  These aren’t the inactives he’s talking about.  These are the folks who turn up in church most every Sabbath.  You and me.  The regulars.

How does one synthesize these two disparate pieces of information?  I mean, how much more growth might our church have achieved if, say, 50% of us had a daily devotional life powerful enough to impact our Christian witness?  Or 75%?

But maybe numerical growth isn’t all that important!   Spiritual growth—becoming more like Jesus—is what matters most, wouldn’t you agree?

So how are you doing in that department?

In that context, let me share with you an amazing little tool that has been helping me bigtime in my devotional life.  It’s called a checklist.  I have one and use it relentlessly every day.  Let me tell you what got me started.

In his book, The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right, Atul Gawande, a surgeon, writes how a simple checklist is enabling mankind to be more successful in a variety of fields.  He describes a typical checklist as five to seven points on a 3” by 5” card that cover the essentials of how to do something.  Like performing a successful surgery.  Building a skyscraper.  Or flying an airplane.  Here’s  a case in point.

On Oct. 30, 1935, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane manufacturers seeking the contract to build the military’s next generation of long-range bombers.

It wasn’t supposed to be much of a competition.  Boeing’s bomber had trounced the designs of Martin & Douglas with a plane that could carry five times as many bombs and fly faster and twice as far as previous bombers.

But when the Boeing plane roared down the runway and took off, it climbed sharply to 300 feet, stalled, turned on one wing, and crashed in a fiery explosion killing two of the five crew members, including the test pilot.

What had gone wrong?  Pilot error!  This plane was substantially more complex than previous aircraft.  Amid all the procedures, the pilot had forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder controls before taking off.  “Too much airplane for one man to fly,” said the experts.  Douglas’ smaller design was declared the winner.   Boeing nearly went  bankrupt.

Afterward, however, a group of test pilots got together and reflected on the problem.  They did not come up with the idea of better pilot training.  Instead they came up with an ingeniously simple solution:  they created a pilot checklist.  Perhaps one of the first checklists ever.  They made it simple, brief, and short enough to fit on an index card.

The checklist contained the kind of basic steps all pilots know.  Dumb stuff, Dr. Gawande writes.  But with the checklist in hand, pilots went on to fly this airplane 1.8 million miles without one accident.  The army ultimately ordered almost 13,000 of the aircraft which you and I know as the famous B-17, the plane that gave the military a decisive air advantage during the Second World War and helped defeat the Nazis.

This anecdote appears in Gawande’s book where he eloquently makes the case for the lowly checklist to become a tool to help all of us be more successful in a world where increasing complexity and TMI (Too Much Information) causes increasing mistakes and failure.

I was intrigued at the possibility that a checklist could help me be more successful in my Christian journey.  I present mine here as just one example.   Whatever its limitations, it helps me stay on course and not meander, especially in my early morning prayer time before I’m fully coherent.  My checklist  has helped me so much in so many ways that I’d like to encourage you to create one of your own. 

A checklist, experts say, should contain no more than 5 to 7 points and should fit on a 3” by 5” index card.   It need not encompass your entire prayer life, but should cover the essentials.  For whatever it’s worth, here’s what mine looks like.                                                                                                                                                                       

My  Daily Checklist

1. Invite God into my life first, seek the Holy Spirit’s infilling, surrender my will to His will.  (Matthew 6:33).

2. Go to the cross, look at Jesus, and die there (to self). (Eph. 4:22f)

3. Ask God for a new heart & to install in me the mind of Christ. (Ezek. 36:26; I Cor. 2:16)

4. Ask God for a fresh provision of power, wisdom, & grace.

5. Ask God to change me into a different person (I Samuel 10:6).

6. Put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:11f).

7. “Eat” Jesus flesh & “drink” His blood (His promises) & “set my heart & mind on things above” (John 6:53-56, 63; Col. 3:1-2).

Here are some of the ways my checklist is helping me. 

1. My checklist reminds me to seek first the kingdom of God before I check the weather report, read the paper, or powder my nose. (My days always end better when I seek God’s kingdom first).
2. Going to the cross helps me remember I’ve got to die if I want to live.  For one thing, like the snakebit Israelites of old (see Numbers 21), when I personalize looking at Jesus hanging on the cross (“Jesus, You Yourself bore my sins in your body on the tree…”—I Peter 2:24),  I more quickly choose to die to my old self (and my old compulsions and obsessions get hammered).  Then I receive the amazing new life that Jesus promised–Zoe life.   Life as it is in the Godhead; I receive a new DNA.—John 10:10. 
3. Getting a new heart daily enables me to love as Jesus loved and to obtain the mind of Christ.  Obtaining the mind of Christ gives me the Heavenly software to think correctly and reprogram the hardware that is my              messed-up brain.—I Cor. 2:16. 
4. Knowing I have received “power…over ALL the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19) and wisdom (James 1:5) gives me far more oomph to face my day than if I hadn’t obtained these gifts. 
5. For me, being “changed into a different person” (I Samuel 10:6; Romans 12:2) every day is a wonderful  new way to live the Christian life.  I don’t become a nicer person, I become a different person who also happens to be nicer. 
6. Nothing beats heading into the war zone of our planet each new day knowing that I’m fully protected by the  “shield of faith”.  And with the “sword of the Spirit” in my mouth (God’s promises), I can even win my battles.  Of course, it’s wonderful knowing “the Lord will fight for (me)” Exodus 14:14 if I ask Him to. And believe me, I do. 
7. With Jeremiah (“When Your words came, I ate them”) Jeremiah 15:16, I feast on Jesus’ promises every  day and ingest His love, wisdom, grace, and power into my life.  I often finish “eating” by “drinking.”  “For God’s love has been poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit.”—Romans 5:5.

So how does my checklist impact my daily life?  Here’s a small example of how my checklist affected my relationship with my wife, Diane, recently.

It was a Sabbath morning when  Diane criticized me about something.  Like most criticisms between spouses, it was no big deal.  Rather, it was more like, “We can’t go to church until you trim your nose hairs,” though that wasn’t the actual incident.  However, thanks to my having processed my checklist earlier, I was able to receive her criticism instead of rejecting it.   And I told her (seriously, not sarcastically), “This will be a good anecdote for one of our upcoming talks.”

Diane was horrified.  She apologized and made me promise not to tell the story.  So I won’t.  But I will tell you the rewarding result for our relationship.  Instead of responding defensively (which would have been normal for me),  I was able to be positive.  Not because I’m such a nice guy.  But my checklist—which calls for me to be emptied of self and to be changed into a different person every day —had done its work.   So I was able to receive what was in fact a valid criticism even if it was hurtful.                                                                 

Now if you were to tell me, “It sounds like Diane’s criticism was just a little thing, Mike,” I would remind you that it’s often the little things that ruin relationships—or enhance them.  Thanks to my checklist, however, Diane and I did not have the conversation that might well have left our day (“Since when did you take on the role of Deity in my life?”) like the aftermath of a tsunami.

If checklists are important enough to be used for surgeries, flying airplanes, and building skyscrapers, might they be important enough for you and me to use every day in our devotional  life?  For me, the answer is a resounding Yes.

 If you’re among the 70% who have no devotional life, you might think about creating your own checklist.  With my checklist in hand, I find myself in a closer walk with Jesus, becoming more of a healing agent  in the lives of others, and tackling life’s challenges more successfully.

Would creating your own checklist help you on your journey?  I hope you’ll think about it.  P.S.  If you’d like to see the expanded material my checklist is based on, contact me at mjones@paclink.com.  Just

say, “Mike, send it!”

____________________________________________________________________________________

Mike Jones is the author of two new books, HELP, LORD, I BLEW IT AGAIN & SOMETIMES I DON’T FEEL LIKE PRAY-ING.  Both books deal with the challenges of Christian living.  Out of the church for 16 years and back for 10, Mike presents weekend seminars on revival and reformation plus reconnecting with missing members.  His column appears monthly in the Gleaner.  His books can be purchased at the ABC or at www.reconnectnow.com.  

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