Hello again all. For this Worship Rant, I’m taking a break, not from focusing on worshipful living, but instead choosing to focus on something intensely personal to me. Something that I see now as being “Something Heavenly.” Things have happened in my life that have caused me to stop, drop and listen! God has got my attention and I’d like to share with you in a hope that you find some kind of blessing, direction, prodding by the Holy Spirit or something that pushes you deeper in your walk with the King, King Jesus!!! It is in your lives that I hope and pray that you stop, drop and listen to God, to whatever He’s doing, inside of you and respond to Him in your life.
STOP – Stop giving in to all the busy-ness in your life. Stop letting the distractions, the hectic life schedule, and all the things of the world detract and distract you from Jesus and a full life in Him. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” – John 10:10 NASB. Jesus has come so that we can live a full, filling and abundant life in Him. We just need to stop and accept Him and let Him lead us.
DROP – Once you have stopped and yielded to the presence of the Holy Spirit and have decided to follow Jesus (insert the old hymn “I have decided to follow Jesus” here), then drop. Drop to your knees, confess your sins, ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and worship God. Do not stop worshipping. Worship every day of the week, put worship music on in your car, in your kitchen when preparing meals, while eating, put worship music on at work if you are allowed to do so. Read the Bible daily, pray and seek His face, get involved in a good Bible preaching and teaching church, get involved in small group Bible studies at your church if you have them. Find a solid Biblical man (if you are a man) or woman (if you are a woman) to be your mentor. Avoid all the appearance of evil and do not give the devil a foothold in your life. In whatever you do, seek Jesus, seek God’s leading, discernment, discipleship and direction on your life. “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father” – Colossians 3:17 NASB.
LISTEN – After stopping all the noise and giving God the priority in our lives, dropping to our knees in an everyday worship lifestyle is essential. Now we need to make sure we keep listening to God. Listen for God’s sweet still voice in your prayer times. Listen for God’s voice in all your circumstances and all that goes on in your day. Listen to what He might be saying through those mentors I mentioned, your pastors in that Bible believing and preaching church I mentioned. Most of all, go to God and plead, pray, and listen for His guidance and direction in your life, in all areas, and then act on it! Get into the practice of having a constant conversation with God. A good book on this subject is by Brother Lawrence “The Practice of the Presence of God.” “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” Mark 4:23 NASB. The Bible often talks about the idea if we are able to hear, we should hear. We need to get into a practice of listening, aligning our lives, our households, our walk with God so that we can recognize His voice and we can hear Him when He speaks. Doing so points us in the right direction, His direction, when we act on His Word.
So why get into all of this? I wanted to share a story from my past and present that has pushed me deeper into a lifestyle of worship, more than I could ever imagined that it would. God has used many people during these times and continues to clearly put people into my life that are not only affecting my physical life even now, but also my spiritual life and walk with Him.
Back in the spring of 2000, I went hiking with my son who was very young at the time. I put him in the kid backpack thing and up the mountain we went. It was a nice hike and I felt good physically and felt like it was a nice time out in the woods worshipping God and being in His creation. That night, I took my son to the circus and it was the end of a nice day, complete with those awesome hot dogs that you can only get at a circus or a baseball game, etc.
Anyway, about a day or two later, I started to develop a rash all over my body. It was really uncomfortable so I made an appointment with my doctor. He advised me it was most likely hives and an allergic reaction to the hot dog at the circus. Ok, fine, what did I know? He advised me to take oatmeal baths and it would get better in a few days, and so it did, or so I thought.
I was working a night job at the time and I was working a 7pm to 7am shift, three days a week doing computer support for a large company. It was in September of 2000, roughly about 5 months after the “hot dog” episode, when things went south. About 2am, I got up from my desk to stretch my legs and walk around a bit. I suddenly felt very dizzy and had to lean against the wall to catch myself from falling over. I figured I was just very tired or hadn’t slept enough prior to working my shift that night.
I was young, in my late 20’s, feeling pretty invincible, and feeling like after all, God probably didn’t intend for our bodies to be working three twelve-hour shifts in a row with minimal sleep. I finished out my shift, didn’t really feel that bad except for a little light-headedness and drove home. Now remember, “drove home”, this is where it could have turned scary but God was in control. I can remember head bobbing that morning driving home feeling very tired. I got home around 8am and started just doing the normal morning activities, having breakfast, playing with my one year old son, etc. I decided to hop on the computer, play a quick game of something, I think it may have been that pinball game that came with every pc in the late 90’s, I’m not sure though. In any case, I just wanted to relax a bit before going to bed. As I was playing on the computer, I started to get very dizzy about every sixty seconds. Finally after a few minutes of that, I had one episode of severe dizziness and a very quick blackout. I had my son sitting on my knee while I was sitting at the computer desk and the next thing I know, he’s crawling around on the floor and I am kneeling on the floor leaning on the chair. I must have set him down and was holding onto the chair until I “came to.” Funny thing is, I have no recollection of doing this. I then felt, I needed to get into bed right away, “I must be exhausted” was my thinking. Once I was lying down, every sixty seconds or so, I was blacking out for a second and it had progressed passed the feeling of just being dizzy. I’d come out of that feeling within a second or two and this was happening just about every minute or so. When these episodes would happen, my pulse was undetectable. Now you know why driving home was an act of God that morning in my car. This is where the story starts to get really good.
At this point I am starting to feel a little bit of tingling in my left arm. Combine this with dizziness, quick blackouts every minute or so and now not being able to fall asleep, I began to think it was much more than just exhaustion. I called my doctor and asked if I could come in to see him. His office said they had a 4pm appointment open for me but as I described my symptoms and my desire to get in as soon as possible, they told me to go to the emergency room.
As we drove to the emergency room; I was not driving this time, I started to feel better. I can remember looking around at the scenery and wondering if we really needed to be going to the emergency room. As I arrived at the emergency room, I strolled in through the big automatically opening double doors thinking, this is going to be a waste of time? I’m just tired. As I spoke with a nurse and started to describe my symptoms, I started really having the dizziness and short black out episodes again and before I knew it, the doctors and nurses had me on a bed, shirt off, vitals taken, people poking and prodding me and at this point. I was pretty much overwhelmed at the amount of attention I was getting. As I lay in the bed, with a team of doctors and nurses around me, it was like an episode of ER or something. They were even getting ready for anything in case I needed cpr or something like that.
So here I am lying in the bed in the Emergency Room, hooked up to monitors at this point within minutes of my arrival at the hospital, chewing on aspirin, and doctors telling me that my heart was basically stopping and that I was in what appeared to be third degree or complete heart block. Ah, so this is why I’m blacking out, feeling dizzy and having tingling in my left arm, I thought. I still didn’t even know what complete heart block was. As the doctors continued to poke and prod and check me out all within about 20 minutes or so of arriving at the hospital, the decision was made to put in a temporary pace maker.
So here I am, being wheeled up to another floor with the team of doctors and nurses by my bedside, monitoring my vitals. Every minute or so, a doctor is asking me how I feel and how I’m doing. It seemed every time he asked me how I was doing, it was when I was getting dizzy or blacking out for a second or two. I asked him as we were cruising through the halls how he knew that and he told me he had a device in his hand that was hooked up to me and he was basically watching my heart rate fall below 30 beats per minute every 60 seconds or so. Good enough explanation for me.
We finally get to the operating room and they explain that they are going to hook me up to a temporary pace maker and run the lead through my jugular vein and down to my heart. Now is when I started to get scared and really started praying and giving this to God. Up until this point, I hadn’t really grasped the full severity of what was going on. Now I was worried. I was worried I was going to die. I looked up at the doctor before they began the procedure and said, “I guess it’s good that I came in today?” He didn’t even smile, he had his surgical mask, gloves and everything on and he simply raised his eyebrows and gave me a gentle nod of the head. I can remember that moment and the look on his face as if it were yesterday and still brings me back to a very emotional feeling.
After the procedure, I was moved to the Cardiac Intensive Care unit and would remain there for six days with what turned out to be complications from Lyme Disease where the effects of untreated Lyme Disease went to my heart and led to the complete heart block problem. I would have the pacemaker for six days while I was given antibiotics. After about the third day or so, they tried to remove the pacemaker but my heart was still out of whack and needed it. By day six, with the antibiotics, the doctors were able to remove the pacemaker and lead and I was moved to a regular hospital room for a day.
After a week in the hospital, a positive response to the antibiotics to treat the Lyme Disease infection, and much prayer, I was sent home where I began my two weeks of home recovery before being able to go back to work. The home recovery included two weeks of a picc line in my left arm and in my body with the tubing running directly around my shoulder and into my heart to deliver antibiotics. I had to receive antibiotic injections twice a day for two weeks. During this time I responded well to the antibiotics and was well enough to go back to work after the two-week home recovery, and the rest they say is history.
Following this three-week ordeal, I had many follow-up appointments with Cardiologists, doctors and specialists all of which gave me a clean bill of health. Soon after, I was able to return to my normal full life of working, family, sports and most importantly actively putting Jesus first in my life.
In the past ten plus years since this episode, I realize that I do have some ongoing health items related to Lyme Disease and that I need to be proactive in my own health care. First and foremost I have realized that I need to put God first in everything in my life, and not just my health. If an episode or two of Lyme Disease is what God needed to use in order to shake the foundations of my faith and cause me to worship Him with an unquenchable spirit of worship, than I would do it all over again in a heartbeat (yes, pun was intended.) God has moved in many ways and used many people and things in my life to draw me closer to Him and this episode of Lyme Disease was only one of them. In any case, as a follower of Jesus Christ, and a worshipper, I wanted to share my story and strongly urge you to follow Jesus with all your heart, trust Him and seek His ways. Ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins and be your loving Savior. It truly is a matter of eternal life and death.
I pray that wherever you are, whatever point in life that you are at, don’t do it alone, ask God to move mightily in your life and be prepared to follow and make the changes that are needed to love, serve and worship Him. Let God change your heart and steer you to a life of worship towards Him.
I think the following song by Sanctus Real is a good fit for not only my situation but anyone who is ready to give into what Jesus wants to do in your life. God bless you richly! God is doing something heavenly, “it is time for healing, time to move on and time to fix what has broken for too long.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN9J8eqKovY&ob=av2n
In Christ’s Love… May you surrender to God’s infinite love and peace!
Tim Garrison
