The Devil's Forced Vacation

The Devil will soon be taking forced unpaid leave.

He will not get to choose the time.

He thinks he has God figured out, and he knows what God's weaknesses are.

He was God's right hand man from the beginning. He was a front observer of all the epochs of creation. He watched as God said that His greatest creation was next, and God created fallible man, then put Adam asleep and created Eve, the mother of all who were to come.

The devil compared these creatures to himself, and laughed. The devil was almost immortal, invincible, fast as light, brilliantly smart. He was certain God made a mistake. And he took it upon himself to reveal just how fallible Adam and Eve were by tripping them up himself.

He is convinced that the Heavenly Father is locked into His contract with the Devil. Even though he can read the contract, written in God's Word and spoken to him personally, he is convinced that he has plenty of time to accomplish his goal of persuading all of creation that strength is better than the beauty of weakness.

The beauty of weakness is found in the reflection of dust particles in a fading sunlight or the morning glory of a sunrise. This beauty is found in a child's smile, the precious care of the child by a mother from conception, through birth, nursing, child care, instruction, to independence.

The man, fallible though he is, adds his strength from courting, marriage, provision, protection, direction, giving his seed to the woman in a climax of love, then staying by her side, tag teaming the responsibilities, until their shared responsibilities are accomplished with a mature adult.

It doesn't always go to plan. Sometimes death, illness, or even unfaithfulness disrupt this pattern, but this is where grace kicks in. God has said: My strength is made perfect in your weakness. The path of the gentle shepherd.

Compare this to the devil's strategy. He is the big bully in the schoolyard, the mafia crime lord, the dictator with the strongest army. His golden t is: He who has the gold rules.

A forced vacation is coming for our enemy. He is facing a mandatory day of rest. And what's worse for him is that his legalistic mind can't comprehend how God looks at laws and Sabbaths. Man was not made for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for the race of man.

The hatred of the devil for God's creation runs so deep that left alone, he would murder all the children, all the women who bore them, all the Jews, all the Christians, and anybody who would give them aid. Nothing will be left.

But the heavenly Father is stepping in. Not even Jesus knows the timing. The Father is playing His cards pretty close to his vest.

The end is coming. Sooner rather than later. Be always ready. Keep your lamp filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit and your wicks trimmed.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

More later.

Bangladesh Flood Relief

Bangladesh Flood Relief

I will add more later.

Bangladesh and CHILDREN ARE LIGHT

 I am very impressed by this young man's ministry, even though we are separated by half a world, and I've only known him a few weeks.

I am impressed by the name of his ministry CHILDREN ARE LIGHT! I think it is harmony with the importance that  Jesus attached to children, when Jesus said the Kingdom is made of such as these. Jesus also said You (and by inference, children!) are the light of the world!

I am beginning to do deep research on Bangladesh, just as I did, starting 12 years ago, on another great nation, Pakistan. That journey started because I began a delightful friendship with another young man, Asad Rafi.

We in the US and other prosperous nations, such as France, Britain, Germany, and now even India, would do well to heed the advice of Solomon. Give a portion to 7 or 8, for we don't know what evil will fall on us. We may be the ones asking for help in a few months or years. The fall of Babylon is coming! Read Revelations!

I will update this post from time to time. Stay tuned. #maddog

Internet Bridges

Don't give up. God wants us to build internet bridges between godly works in ALL nations GREAT and SMALL like Bangledesh, Pakistan, Zambia, India, and  United States, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This will be a tedious, laborious process. We must work at it!! People are suffering! Jesus is coming! God is mighty to save!!!

Mary, Alzheimer's, and Phages

I wrote a text to Mary's brother in law. Mary's sister also has Alzheimer's.

Mark: Mary is very slowly improving. Eating very well. Very stable and active. Very talkative. Misses her parents deeply. I mention my parents are in heaven which reassures her. Stay safe and cool.

You both are doing a great job keeping that A1c down to 6.1. I'm also convinced phages may help. Found in abundance in seafood, kelp, grass fed ruminates. Doctor Solomon reversed Alzheimer's in mice with nasal shots in mice. Israel. Not doable with humans. Mary is sensitive to iodine. Causes overactive thyroid. Mimics dementia. Complete blood work revealed it.

Blessed Assurance: Nazarene Bible College, Ron Lush, and my perverted hymns

 

Wild Thing

 Mary's back to sleep after our morning routine of changing soaked incontinence underwear and/or pajamas and/or bedding.

We had an exciting and delightful day yesterday when my youngest daughter, her husband, and oldest son came to visit Mary and me. Because they were coming and we were up relatively early, I gave Mary an extra 3rd dose of both Pepto Bismol and lorazapam, a narcotic that Hospice started her on back when she was under Hospice care. It helps calm her tummy, which I call Wild Thing. 

Flash back warning! I sing the Wild Thing  song to Mary in the voice of the Troggs. Wild thing! You make my heart sing! You make everything... Groovy! chord riff! I wanna know for sure! chord riff!! I think I love you! It always makes her smile.

During Mary's epic 2015 hospital stays and emergency intestinal surgery in which two of the finest surgeons in the world at the University of Michigan removed 4 4 inch pieces of dead, blocked intestines. They told us Mary would now always have diarrhea. Supposedly she would never have constipation again.

And yet we missed a bowel movement yesterday. We will hold off on cheese, Pepto, and Lorazapam today. We'll start the day with Minudo soup. We'll have French toast with butter and syrup next. We'll have lots of fluids. If that doesn't start things moving, we'll have a dose of Miralax. When it does kick loose, we may have a mess. Or not.

God is good. Life is exciting. Stay tuned.

Changing Daily Protocols

 I literally live one day at a time.

This started when my first wife was dying. I couldn't exist without a constant stream of worship and prayer to keep with all the responsibilities of Lynne, family, job, home, church. My to-do list was made up as I went.

The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord. That's every man, woman, and child, good and bad.

Taking care of my Alzheimer's stricken Mary, last night I was too tired to write, so I turned the lights off at 12:30 am. I laid down, but didn't sleep till 3;30 am. Mary's pattern is very close to mine. She laid next me talking quietly till 3 am, then fell asleep.

We both woke up at 7 because of the daylight pouring in our window. I helped her get out of her wet clothes and put dry clothes and a fresh pair of McKesson ultra heavy duty incontinence panties. I changed the top sheet and got my exercise in by lifting up the heavy mattress. I make Mary smile by saying ME STRONG LIKE BULL! SHOW OFF IN FRONT OF PRETTY WOMAN!

Because 3 1/2 hours of sleep is short of my goal of 9 hours, I will have to get 1 or 2 power naps in today, Lord willing.

Your prayers and encouraging words are deeply appreciated!

The Enemy

There is truth to what Pogo is saying.

I liked Pogo more as I got older because I learned that he was a creature of the Okefenokee swamp, south of Waycross Georgia, where I pastored for a while.

The swamp was a source of entertainment for our family. We were told there was an alligator named Al outside the park that loved marshmallows and would come up out of the water and beg for them by opening his mouth wide and roaring. We learned that he would only come for fresh Kraft marshmallows, not stale generic ones. 

We found this to be true. We'd plop marshmallows on the water for 10 to 20 minutes, and Al would suddenly appear. There was a 3 foot bank around the swamp. Al would swim silently, full speed to the bank and, carried by his 500 pounds of momentum, appear like a magician, 12 feet of roaring beauty, well beyond the edge of the bank. I always threw the marshmallows from a respectful distance, knowing how fast he came out of the water.

One time a college choir came to visit us, and I offered to take them out to see the marshmallow eating alligator. It took 20 minutes to get Al to come up, and the kids were skeptical of the entire episode when finally Al showed up suddenly, roaring, mouth open wide, displaying those massive teeth. The entire busload of kids ran screaming back to the bus and shut the door. Lynne, Becky, and Wendy stayed with me, (behind me, of course) as a I plopped marshmallow after marshmallow into his gaping, toothy jaws. 

Weaponized Grace

Every particle of grace contains all the knowledge of God and all the power of God and all of the presence of God. 

It can be used defensively and offensively. It knows what you need for that moment and becomes strength to bear a trial or a miraculous release, boldness to speak or restraint to hold your peace.

Humility is the requirement. Quick to forgive. To give the credit to God. To encourage.

My constant prayer for you is that God would rain grace down on you and yours, that your heart would become a spring of grace constantly flowing, that others would join us, let the springs merge into rivers, till the earth would be covered with oceans of grace until the earth is filled with knowledge of God, in Jesus' name.

Continuing Study of Affliction and Tribultaion

A righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again; but the wicked are overthrown by calamity.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.

Thank You, Sovereign God, for Your path that led me through the fields of affliction. - Mike Dittmer

Lord, I'm Coming Home

 

I Come To The Garden Alone and Chief Lone Eagle

 

My thanks to Phil Gambrel who brought back this memory.

According to an article in the NW Indiana Times, quoting his Native American historian nephew and namesake Lone Eagle, Chief Lone Eagle, of Hammond, was a popular wrestler who was world heavyweight champion from 1948 to 1952.http://www.nwitimes.com/…/article_d1d01342-db9a-5fa4-bccf-1…

In the early 60's he worked with my uncle Art Cummings in the steel mills. Uncle Art was a construction welder. Chief Lone took advantage of his great physical condition to work as a laborer. Uncle Art invited him to Gary Aetna Church of the Nazarene, where the Bill and Carol Dittmer family also attended . Uncle Art had lived Hammond, Indiana when Chief Lone Eagle could be seen wrestling on Chicago TV, and Uncle Art was an avid wrestling fan. He was very excited about Chief Lone Eagle attending our church.

In 1964 or so, I was there when Chief Lone Eagle prayed to receive Jesus. He called my Dad Bill Dittmer to come by his home and pray because Chief recently learned that his wife had cancer. I got to go with Dad on this call, and Dad prayed with him to receive Jesus, then helped Chief pour all his liquor down the sink. It took a while. Chief had a large collection of liquor. Soon after, Chief Lone Eagle's wife was healed of cancer. Pretty cool, huh?

Chief Lone Eagle loved to sing about Jesus, and I was his accompanist on the piano. I Come to the Garden Alone was his favorite song. He was asked to sing at several churches, and when we went out, Chief Lone Eagle went out in full regalia, just like the picture. That full sized head dress is real eagle feathers, and Chief Lone Eagle was an authentic Chief. He would have a kid from the audience come up and punch him in the stomach, Chief let me hit him in the stomach once. It was like hitting a cement block.

Chief later drifted from God. He was working on the dike as a laborer that went out a mile into Lake Michigan, the end of which was a huge water inlet for city water.

I worked next to that dike as an electricians apprentice and saw how the cement trucks would unload cement onto the fork lifts, and the drivers would hurry to end of the dike. The drivers couldn't see out the front because that's where the load was. They drove like mad men.

A fork lift loaded with wet cement hit Chief Lone Eagle, went over the edge of the dike and into the lake with him and pinned him to the bottom of the lake in 60 feet of water. A crane operator dropped a hook to where they guessed he was. The water was too murky to see. They pulled up the hook, and had fortunately snagged the fork lift, with Chief Lone Eagle clinging to it. Chief asked God to save him while on the bottom. He stayed true after that.

I saw Chief Lone Eagle after that, in the early 80s, at a week long Zone Rally and Youth Revival at Hammond 1st Church of the Nazarene. I had just taken the role of pastor at Griffith Church of the Nazarene a few weeks earlier. At the Zone Rally I was helping on the piano. There were several hundred people from multiple Churches of the Nazarene in the area attending the services.

I loved playing Nazarene hymns. I played the evangelistic style with octave melody and octave bass notes that alternated with chords in a strong rhythmic style, similar to honky tonk. I added in double octaves, triplet runs, Floyd Cramer. The more stuff I put in, the louder the crowd sang. The louder they sang, the more stuff I would put in. At the Cross, Power In the Blood, When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, they hit all my favorites that week.

Rev. Crawford Howell, pastor of the !st Hammond Church of the Nazarene host church, led the singing every night and told jokes. He said one time he and I were at a revival when somebody hollered THE PIANO PLAYER IS A JERK! A moment later a drunk stood up and "I don't know who said THE PIANO PLAYER IS A JERK, but what I want to know is WHO CALLED THAT JERK A PIANO PLAYER?!

Chief Lone Eagle was there every night. When I'd pass him walking down to the piano, he'd say HI MIKE!, loud enough for everyone to hear, then announce to everybody "He played the piano for me!!"

Unbeknownst to me, the zone was taking up a love offering for Lynne and me and daughters Rebecca and Wendelyn. Becky was in first grade. Wendy was still in a stroller. We had not told anybody we had just run out of food. The week before, Denny and Jeanie Middleton, fellow Nazarene Bible College students and pastor at nearby Gary Aetna Church of the Nazarene had invited themselves over for the evening.

We made sure there was food for the girls, but we had just run out of everything else that night, except for the ingredients for a cake. I had been promised a good job, but it hadn't come through yet. Lynne and I determined not to tell anyone.

After we had cake and coffee with the Middleton's, Jeanie started asking a lot of personal questions about how we were doing financially, then got up and went through all our cabinets and refrigerator. The next day groceries were dropped off at our house.

Jeanie also passed the word on to the zone. On Saturday, after the Zone Rally, they presented us with a pickup truck load of groceries and a $600 love offering. Chief Lone Eagle was there in the front row. He was beaming.

The groceries filled all the cabinets. We arranged the surplus on the floors.

Chief Lone Eagle died in 1988.