By James Wilson
The Fox News co-anchors were giddy as they made the announcement. Researchers at Columbia University believe themselves on the verge of a breakthrough treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They claim a combination of drug and electro-shock therapy will permit them to block the remembered fear associated with PTSD, or modify or erase the memories themselves. There are two crucial factors the docs and news anchors seem to have forgotten. One is that no medical intervention is without side effects and two is the Living God has been healing memories for many years – through the prayers of His servants – without side effects.
Television commercials for wonder drugs addressing everything from depression to heart disease must now include disclaimers that these meds can cause everything from suicide to blindness. I discontinued my cholesterol medication because I wearied of the memory and muscular issues that came with it. Reality is whenever we medically intervene in the human body we cannot account for all the variables and interconnections. Sometimes what we overlook causes severe side effects. God bless medicine, but it is best to consult Him with fear and trembling when we practice it.
With respect to healing memories themselves, the discipline of inner healing has been around for decades and perhaps longer; I have practiced this ministry of prayer myself for a quarter century. Properly conducted this ministry of prayer and pastoring is neither magical nor new agey. It is simply about coming alongside someone with a debilitating memory and asking the Spirit of our Abba to speak to it. He neither blocks nor erases; He simply expands the picture to include what He was doing in the person’s life when trauma struck. The result is an intact memory of radically altered meaning. Dangerous drugs and shock are unnecessary when the Great Lover is asked to heal.
What has this got to do with the title of this article, Abundant Springs?
California has been embroiled in a recession as debilitating as the drought and more long lived. The recession is as grounded in a humanity turning away from God in terms of shedding blood, idolatry, sexual sin and covenant breaking as is the drought. We need to seek healing from the Great Lover for this too.
But we don’t. Liberals want government to enact more taxes and regulations – including a gargantuan minimum wage they believe will provide a better standard of living for workers – despite a proven track record these manipulative measures erode economic vitality and jobs – so much for quasi scientific management of the economy. Conservatives want to weaken both unions and regulations, despite the historical reality that neither would exist absent human greed – so much for mystical faith in the free market. What California needs – as much as PTSD sufferers need it – is a healthy dose of turning back to the God who made the state and its people in sustained prayer coupled with a serious commitment to work along the lines He reveals in response.
The Lord said He meant for my city of Redding to be known as Abundant Springs – rather than a misspelling of founder Pearson Reading’s name or the more cynical Poverty Flats – back in 2004. His revelation came to a relative newcomer so no one could credibly claim it as mere historical logic. Oldtimers would know the biggest headache for early homeowners in town was the prevalence of leaky basements caused by the enormous aquifer that lies beneath Northern California. Calling a city by its God-given name does not magically walk us through spiritual doors, but it does open them and create supernatural potentialities.
A year later the Lord gave a word about Redding’s Downtown Mall – in recession before the rest of the state visibly crashed – now called Market Street Promenade. He wanted it a center for service and ministry in His Name – economic energy could follow – and again He gave the word to a newcomer ignorant of its historic connection to local prostitution.
Anyone should understand prostitution is a perversion of the spiritual gift of service. The logic is that a God of justice and authentic love would want to redeem a district as well as its people through repentance – turning back to original purposes and vision. Teams of Christians began coming to worship and pray – with owner/tenant blessing – while business persons worked hard to stay viable and visible. Today the Promenade still struggles but the cults that lurked there are gone, successes are real, and ninety per cent of the going concerns are service or ministry oriented.
In Part 2 we will look further at this unfolding and entirely pragmatic revelation.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
