Adventures Among the Uninsured Part 2

My wife is still in the hospital as a few complications still nag at her.

We were visited by two social workers, who gave us forms to fill out to apply for various grants that could lop off 25% or more from our final bill. It’s only a 2-page form, with the usual questions about income and dependents. They want 4 weeks of paycheck stubs, last year’s tax returns and a few other things I can’t remember right now. We’ll send that material off when Teresa gets out of the hospital, hopefully tomorrow.

Adventures Among the Uninsured

Okay, this isn’t theological but political. With all the health care reform hot gas out there, the Lord has put my family in a unique position to “test the system”.

I have good health insurance from my secular employment but my wife has none. I simply cannot afford the $400 a month it would cost to add her to my policy. We have her enrolled in the Good Samaritan medical sharing program. For all intents, she is uninsured.

Last week, my wife’s gall bladder practically “died”. It was removed on October 19 and her surgeon said it was the nastiest gallbladder she ever saw- infected, full of stones, three times normal size. All of this included two trips to the emergency room, surgery and so far, 3 days in the hospital. The bill will be substantial.

So how does an uninsured person deal with this? Besides our medical sharing program, which should cover a good chunk of it, we have been told that there are grants and other state programs to help uninsured patients. The surgeon told my wife not to worry that much about her bill.

Over the next several weeks, we will no doubt see our health care system in action, up close and personal. Watch this space to see not only how the Lord will meet our financial need, but how He does and and by what agencies. This all will go to answer the question “Is our health care system really so broken that we need Obama and the Socialists in Congress to ‘fix’ it for us?” Personally, I can think of a ton of improvements to improve our health care system that would require little or no new legislation (medical saving plans, like IRAs, allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, removal of government mandated coverages, etc). But the days ahead should be “interesting” to say the least.

Two New Files Uploaded to the Website

I have uploaded two articles to our website www.pilgrimway.org

Why I Am Not a Calvinist. Transcription of a sermon preached on September 27,2009 at Grace Baptist Church of Smyrna, Delaware, with additional material. The subtitle is “Against the Young Fundamentalists”. This is a very critical look at the neo-Calvinism that is being promoted by the 4th generation of Fundamentalists.

A Scriptural Outline of the Doctrine of the Antichrist, from my seminary teaching days.

Tweet!

I am “Twittering” at http://twitter.com/Pilgrimway. These “micro-blogs” deal with a variety of topics, such as theology (with emphasis on the superiority of the KJV and the gross corruption of modern versions, especially the ESV), radio (my hobby) and politics (paleo-conservatism at its finest).

The Pilgrim Way Commentary on Jude now posted!

My commentary on Jude is now online, in pdf format. It’s absolutely free. I hope it can be profitable to you!

My “Tweeting”

I put a box on the right hand side on this page linking to my Tweeter account. Unless you are a radio hobbyist, you may find it dull. My hobby is what is called “DXing”, the art and science of listening to distant and hard-to-hear radio stations. I do this with AM, FM and shortwave radio stations. But there may be an occasional “theological” tweet or two that may be of more interest to readers of this blog.

The New Pilgrim Way Commentary on Romans Now Available

After 6 months of intensive revising, the Pilgrim Way Commentary on Romans is again available. You can download it from www.pilgrimway.org/romans.pdf. It is in pdf format, so you’ll need Adobe. The commentary is 420 pages and is absolutely free, without any copyright. I only ask you display common Christian decency in using and quoting from this work.

My next project is revising my commentaries on the Epistles of John, and I hope to have that ready sometime this autumn.

What is the “Pilgrim Way?”

What is so special about the phrase “the Pilgrim Way of the Christian Life?” What exactly is the burden behind that phrase? That was a phrase given to me by the Lord in 1992 to define the burden and the vision of my own personal ministry and developing walk with God. It is a vision that I am still working out 17 years later and that I will not be finished with until my death or rapture.

I was saved in 1978 and have been preaching since 1985. Since that time, God has been dealing with me about a pilgrim way of the Christian life, stressing the idea of the Christian Life being a “pilgrimage” as well as a “quest”. It deals with a philosophy of the Christian life and ministry that is somewhat out of the mainstream of Christian thought today. Today, the cry is for “numbers” and “church growth”, not holiness or a walk with God. One of my teachers, O. Talmadge Spence, founder of Foundations Bible College in Dunn, North Carolina, defined it as a “Quest for Christian Purity” in his book by the same name, which examined the compartments of systematic theology and their relation to the Biblical doctrine of sanctification. Spence’s term is just a variation of mine, but they are very similar.

There are two guiding verses for this burden:

Hebrews 11:13 “All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

1 Peter 2:11 “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul.”

The Bible speaks very highly of the word “pilgrim”. A “pilgrim” is someone who has left his home country, voluntarily or involuntarily, and is now on a journey (which could be a long one) to a better country. He may have left his homeland because he became dissatisfied with the philosophy and the way of life of his neighbors. He has come into contact with something better, something higher, something more noble. This “better thing” is now dominating his thoughts and his heart.

A pilgrim is one who has no home. He is a wanderer, going from place to place, but not aimlessly. He knows where he has come from and he knows where he wants to go. A good example of this is “Christian” in John Bunyan’s classic work The Pilgrim’s Progress. He has left the City of Destruction because he has learned (from reading a roll of scripture) that God will soon judge that city, which is emblematic of his old life of sin. He receives a vision about a better country and a better life and that captures his heart. This place is the holy and heavenly Mount Zion. He leaves his home and even his wife and his children, who are not inclined to share in his vision. Pilgrims often travel alone in their journey for their burdens are most unpopular to the unsaved and to carnal professors. Christian is not going aimlessly for he has a goal and he has a purpose. He knows where he is going, even if that destination is a long way off and even if he can’t see it from where he is, but he knows that where he is going is going to be much better than where he came from. He has a definite view and goal in mind. He may not know what lies between Point A and Point B. He may not know about the dangers and the people that he will encounter in his pilgrimage. But he knows he must leave his old life and his old city of birth. He knows he must wander in the earth. He’s a new man and a new creature, all through the new birth. The old things of this world and the old things of this life simply will not satisfy him any more.

In my own life, the Lord dealt with me like that in the early 1990s when He placed a great spiritual dissatisfaction and restlessness in my soul. I was like the man in Exodus 21, who was a Hebrew servant working for a Hebrew master for seven years. At the end of that seventh year, he was required to make a decision as to whether he would stay with his master or whether he would go out free. I believe every Christian, at some point in his life, is also required to make that decision. He has been saved for a number of years and he has tasted and seen that the Lord is good. He has served the Lord for a period of his life. But now the Lord wants to know if that Christian is now willing to go on all the way in a pilgrimage to a full Christian life, or whether he is going to be content to stay where he is spiritually. He has the liberty to leave his master and to go out free but he takes nothing of the benefits or the fruits of his previous labors with him. He must leave it all behind with his master if he leaves his service. With me, that point of decision came in 1992. In the autumn of 1985, the Lord called me to preach and I responded, Seven years after that, the Lord called me to make my decision whether I would stay with my master or go out free and live my own life as I chose to. The Lord dealt with me about going on and doing better than I had in my Christian life up to that point. I had completed my undergraduate theological education in the period between 1985 and 1992 and even pastored a very small church in Centreville, Maryland. I had done some work for my Master in those years. But then God began to deal with me in a very clear and deliberate way about going on and deliberately and volitionally embracing a mode of life that was based on the concept of a “pilgrim way”.

A pilgrim is one who has deliberately chosen this kind of a walk with God that is free from all earthly and ecclesiastical constraints on the heart. I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. I left the Church of Rome in 1983 over theological disagreements that had developed by my own personal reading and study of the Scriptures. I could not reconcile the teachings of the Church of Rome with the Scripture, so I rightly concluded the Church to be in error and the Scripture to be correct, so I separated from the church of my birth. I realized I need to find a church where I could hear the truth. I found a church like that in Elkton, Maryland, where I learned the basics of the Christian life. I’m a Baptist, but I endeavor not to allow a human denominational or theological distinctive to interfere with my search and quest for this desired Christian life. The pilgrim has no such human allegiances. His loyalty is only to God and to His Word as no human theological system or denominational structure is inspired or infallible. Everyone has some sort of theological identification, but they cannot be allowed to interfere or influence the walk of the pilgrim as he searches out the deep things of God for his life. He has human allegiances to his church, his friends, the school he attended, but again, they are not allowed to supersede the dealings of God with the heart. God alone is leading the pilgrim and God alone is guiding him.

The pilgrim has no continuing city here. It certainly is not Rome, Mecca, Greenville, Nashville, Salt Lake City or any other earthly city. He will not drive down any theological tent stakes here on earth. He will not “settle in” but he must keep pressing onward and forward to the heavenly city. A pilgrim is going to follow truth wherever it leads him and he will follow it even at the expense of whatever theological system he may hold. He will sacrifice human theological systems and teachings if he finds they contradict with the truth as God is revealing it to him. The pilgrim knows his spiritual goal but he is not always sure about the path that he will be led into to achieve his goal. He doesn’t know what sacrifices might be required of him.

It’s interesting to see how God deals with individuals like this, whose heart is open to truth and to the leading of God. It takes courage to follow truth to wherever it leads you. You might have to abandon a denomination. You might have to abandon a theological identification. You might have to break a few fellowships. Any Christian who has been saved any length of time has had to do that if he is in the pilgrim way. I realized that there was a possibility that any theological system I might have identified with might have been too constraining on me, so I had to amend my beliefs and adjust my practices to conform with the additional light that the Holy Spirit was giving me. What am I allowing to influence me? Some of these externals might have been trying to influence me away from a pilgrim walk, so I had to abandon tem before they did me any harm. Many pilgrims who were active in a church or in a denomination actually were criticized and discouraged from going on with God when they announced the great things that God was doing in their souls. Yes, there will be the “Daughters of Jerusalem” within our churches and organizations that will attempt to discourage us from going on with God! That is difficult to believe but experience will bear that out. A pilgrim in revival will “show up” the carnal ones around us, so for them to “save face” and avoid confronting their own spiritual shortcomings with God, they will seek to silence the pilgrim and to bring him back to their own low level of spirituality.

There is a distinctive and a definite way to a Christian walk. There are certain things that do not lend themselves to pilgrim ways and pilgrim walks. Human religion does not do that. Those that have been involved with denominations and fellowships understand that man tends to squelch the free exploration of the things of God. It is difficult, when you are trapped in a theological system or in a human ecclesiastical organization to follow truth because there are rules and expectations imposed on the pilgrim. A pilgrim must be free to wander. Pilgrim walks are independent walks. You have to follow God and when you are following God, you often will not be able to follow man. You have to be independent from the constraints of human teachings. You do not ignore them totally, but you do not allow yourself to be bound to them at the expense of truth or of following the Lord fully. There are a lot of good things that man can help you with. I have a personal theological library of several hundred books that I use with regularity. These authors help me. They are an asset to me. But the ultimate source of my pilgrim walk is God, not my library. God controls the heart, not man. We are to give our hearts to the Lord, not to ecclesiastical organizations of human theological systems.

Our own “self-ways” tend to interfere with a pilgrim walk. This is an internal enemy, as contrasted with the external forces discussed above. You can’t follow God in a pilgrim walk if you are dominated by self, looking for your own personal glory and advancement. Too many preachers are consumed with climbing the ecclesiastical ladder and making a name for themselves in the church. They tend to seek the approval of man more than that of God. But the pilgrim was died to his own self and such personal glory-seeking. Just like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, he has left the old city and the old life. His old life, with all its associated pride and ambition, mean nothing to him anymore. The praise and approval of men mean nothing as he is instead seeking the praise and approval of God.

The pilgrim goes on alone with God as it is a lonely walk. Very few people will go on with him and few will encourage him in his pilgrimage. The pilgrim way is not a crowded way. It is like the narrow way that the Lord spoke of in Matthew 7:14. There are very few people on this way. It certainly is not crowded. The pilgrim must go on, though none go with him. He goes on though none understand him or encourage him. Men always encourage us to support churches, programs, fellowships and systems, but the pilgrim receives little, if any encouragement, to go on alone with God. But God is encouraging him. He knows God will go with him. This is the encouragement of the pilgrim walk.

The pilgrim walk is also long. You are traveling from earth to heaven and it is all uphill and against the wind. Heaven will not be gained in a single day. It will take the rest of your life to complete this trip. The Christian life is a marathon and not a sprint. It requires supplies and stamina and heart that will not fail in the times of discouragements and failures that will surely come. And the pilgrim is also aware of the dangers inherent in this walk as there are fears within and fightings without. Christian met numerous foes in Pilgrim’s Progress, all of whom sought to do him harm. But the long march is worth it for look at the reward at the end of the journey!

My 31st Birthday- February 9

My spiritual birthday that is.  I became a Christian at 9:30 in the evening on February 9, 1978, in my bedroom in Charlestown Manor, Maryland.  I had my shortwave radio tuned to HCJB in Quito, Ecuador, and I was listening to a preacher whose name I cannot remember (but God knoweth).  At the end of that program, I asked Christ to save me.  This is one reason why I am so supportive of Christian radio.