The Importance of Healing

who am I

 I know this is a cliche, but I want to change the world.  I know that I am just one ordinary human being.  I have certain gifts and talents, but none of that is what will make the difference.  God doesn't do things in the world generally apart from what He does through people, whether our prayers, our gifts, our acting out in faith, or our speaking out to others.  So here I am, God.  Let's go.

 I don't care if anybody knows who I am.  I am not looking for fame.  But, yes, I would like to be able to quit my day job.

 I believe that this book, The Importance of Healing, is from God.  It's a very different book from the one I planned to write.  I would sit down to type, and I feel like God just started speaking.  Those of you who preach or teach and who aren't tied down to your text or notes will know what I am talking about.  God just takes over.

 At this point you may want to know at least a little about who this person is.

 I was born in Chicago before JFK was shot.  My family was Lutheran.  In confirmation classes, we had to memorize the Apostle's Creed, and it was then that I realized that I believed in God and the whole Christian religion.  God immediately became the most important thing in my life.  How could it be otherwise?

 After high school, I went to Moody Bible Institute to learn more about the Bible and to prepare for Christian ministry.  After graduation, I went into the meat business instead.  I was thinking that what I needed to learn most at that time, I couldn't learn in school.  I needed to know God and people.  I thought it would only be a short, temporary stay, but it has lasted far longer than I ever imagined.

 I was ordained to the ministry and served as pastor of several churches, but I never fulfilled my dream of doing that fulltime.  The meat business was comfortable, but that has been changing.  On the one hand now, I feel like I have lived almost my whole life in Plan B, never doing what God has called me to do, but my experiences have made me into the unique person I am today, and I believe I have a lot to offer.

 Later in life I completed a master's degree in Biblical Studies from Loyola University.

This book, The Importance of Healing, is the first step in changing the world.  My second book, The Importance of the Lord's Prayer, is just as important.  (I use that word a lot, but I think it conveys well some of the urgency with which I write and speak.  There is just too much important [sorry!] information that is not getting out.)

 I always wanted to be in the pastorate, because there you can talk to the same people for years rather than in a school where you may have the same students for as short as three months.  So I am certainly open to that possibility.

 I would be happy at this point in my life to speak wherever I can, whether in sermons or seminars.  I realize I won't be able to be with the same people for long, but if they can read my books, that can be so much better.