Married to a doctor - mother of one son - stepmother to another - we live in a beautiful home nestled at the foothills - The "boys" enjoy golf - my athletic sport is shopping and we can't forget walking our dog, Polo - however, our most precious times are around the kitchen table having a Bible study.
What is this site about? Well, here is what it is not... It is not to influence you to buy real estate. It is not to pressure you into becoming a Christian. It is not a way to manipulate God within the business industry. Simply, it is about sharing. One overlooked facet about real estate involves the personal stresses that people assume when moving from one home to another, and for many, from relocating from one state to another. That is why our family shares personally with those who are trying to connect with this new community. Purely as an option, you are welcome to comb through my husband's journal entries about faith, and hopefully, his personal insights may provide you with some encouragement.
The story about the temptation in the Garden of Eden between the crafty serpent and the first woman, named Eve, opened the doors of sin against the intended purity of God. As the first couple freely rebelled against the goodness of God, the connection between God and man was dramatically broken. Sin and pride wasted no time, infecting every living molecule, whether vegetable, gaseous, liquid or animal, that existed on the planet. “Pride defiles everything it touches…Pride transforms virtues into vices and blessings into curses” (Sanders, 1996, p. 54). This also marked the vivid entry of pain into an unchartered landscape of health and beauty, marring the perfect genetics of creation…
Nearly six thousand years later, pain is now endemic in the world in which man lives. Historically, the plight of pain has riddled the greatest intellectual minds – medically and theologically – to react with frustration, disapproval, anger, uncertainty and rejection about how to deal with this ever-present problem. The nightmare proportions of the problem with pain continue to baffle each generation of each civilization. The miracles of medicine have done a marvelous job in its ability to relieve a myriad of pain conditions, especially during times of crisis. Yet, the same medical logic that is used to moderate suffering pain or to discover new cures or to improve upon older methods of diagnosis and treatment often cowers when confronted with the complexities of chronic pain. According to Khouzam (2000), “Chronic pain…exists in one of every three Americans at some time in their lives. The medical treatment, in combination with the loss of productivity and financial compensation, has reached an estimated annual cost of just less than $100 billion” (p. 1). For purposes of discussion, the handcuffs of chronic pain create bondage for millions of people today. As a result, the medical community and the church find themselves in a quandary on how to deal effectively with those who suffer from this potentially intractable condition. Since the Garden of Eden, medical miracles do occur, seemingly few in number, whether from the hand of God or from the physician who is used as an instrument of his sovereignty. But for now, there appears to be a process for the majority who live in pain for, which they can achieve some level of pain control in order to continue to live more productively. With attaining a clearer understanding of the chronic pain condition, combined with the power that was delivered by the second Adam, it is the belief of this author that the church can help with this out-control-problem and more effectively minister to those who suffer chronically.
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
October 15, 2003
The topic of chronic pain fascinates this author for two reasons. First, professionally, I worked as a chiropractic physician, caring for all types people who presented with a myriad of conditions. And second, after four neck surgeries and having neuropathic pain, I live as a long-term patient, caught in the vortex between the vision of health and the reality of pain. The problematic issues that confront the modern-day church are too numerous to count, but when assessing the depth of the problems, one must acknowledge the growing attachment of chronic pain onto society and among its church congregates. The numbers are frightening. The American Chronic Pain Association (2003) estimates that nearly 86 million Americans experience some degree of chronic pain throughout their lifetime. When confronted with intractable suffering, people venture on a few roads. Some are strengthened by the prospect of pain, yet would rather avoid it all together. While others never seem to find meaning within the depths of their hardship. For them, the doldrums of life are heavier and their outlook is often despondent. As the body of the church, when do we step out and integrate into the life of someone who is downtrodden about suffering?
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
October 17, 2003
The Unmanageable Factor. With the onslaught of medical research in the field of chronic pain comes the simple reality of scientific befuddlement. Although there are some advances of how to control pain with various methods, often toxic and liberal, the pursuit to completely ameliorate pain cleverly escapes the medical experts. The chronic pain syndrome continues to expand its horizons, affecting individuals from every socio-economic and racial background. God has not created an immune barrier between chronic pain and the church. This multi-dimensional disease process has secretly sifted its way through the crevices of the church foyer, picking the people from the pews to whom it decides to cohabitate. As a result, more pockets of individuals now feel the sting of chronic pain and gasp at its horrendous effect upon their lives. Often, people are scared. They have little to no knowledge about what is happening to them. The pain does not go away after a few sessions of prayer, nor does God seem to be near in the midst of the suffering. While the chronic sufferer turns for answers, usually to the medical community, the church continues to function in a state of denial because they are uneducated and ill-equipped about the idiosyncrasies of chronic pain. Do most churches operate on enough courageous faith that prayer can heal the unmanageable?
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
October 19, 2003
Dualistic views about science and prayer. Should the church bear an unreasonable burden to cure the chronic pain population? No. But the command to heal the sick still applies to the discipleship responsibilities of the Christian church. For instance, today, the dualism between medical science and prayer is narrowing. Tolson & Koenig (2003) state, “Many scientists and theologians are realizing that healing is synergistic. This is what medicine and prayer must do; they must work together” (pp. 48-49). The holistic approach to healing can no longer be denied, as physical medicine continues to merge with the adjuncts of prayer. “Prayer heals because it links us with God, who created us. We believe that all healing is ‘divine healing,’ whether natural or supernatural” (Tolson & Koenig, 2003, p. 51). The call and commission for the church is to return to its roots, founded on the love of Christ and the function of prayer. “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matthew 21:22). “The man of prayer is a leader precisely because through his articulation of God’s work within himself he can lead others out of confusion to clarification; through his compassion he can guide them out of closed circuits of their in-groups to the wide world of humanity; and through his critical contemplation he can convert their convulsive destructiveness into creative work for the new world to come” (Nouwen, 1972, p. 47).
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
October 20, 2003
Psychological barriers. In general, predisposition and personality of the chronic sufferer are hard to evaluate. For that matter, equally so, are the reactions of the healthy when interacting with the chronically ill. The stigma of chronic pain is not contagious to other segments of the population, but the need to separate from the suffering defines societal behavior. The psychological implications of the chronic sufferer are multi-layered, covering the areas of loneliness, isolation and manic depression. The encouragement from the church, beyond a distant hand-wave or a hasty prayer, is vital to the support of the weaker vessel in the Body of Christ. Acts of kindness tend to add dignity to the process of suffering, as the sufferer feels the strength of God through the love of his brothers and sisters in Christ. To assist the chronic sufferer in taking more control over his or her life, without contradicting the recommendations of the interdisciplinary medical team, church congregates can encourage the pain sufferer with the life-giving words from the Scripture. Also, the church fellowship can implement some practical measures of encouragement that perpetuate self-responsibility, long-term change and patient motivation.
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
October 21, 2003
Lack of knowledge about chronic pain. Regarding the individual in church who ponders about how to help a friend who lives in chronic pain, exasperation usually occurs. In fact, the feeling of being overwhelmed typically usurps the intentions of trying to help someone who suffers unrelentingly. Knowing how to handle longsuffering becomes a reflection of one’s spiritual maturity. The idea that a man or woman who professes Christianity as his or her faith is favored by being free from the responsibilities of self-sacrifice from another who lives in chronic pain is foreign to the will of God. Attaining knowledge about chronic pain can happen either scientifically or empirically. The individual who lives with chronic pain can thoroughly educate the interested party who chooses to help him or her in his or her time of need. The tenants of Christian leadership apply when trying to help the chronic sufferer. It takes incredible courage to live with ongoing pain. Either the pain can cause one to become a victim or it can empower one to mature as a leader. The focus is to grow in genuine leadership qualities, both as the helper and that of the sufferer. Nouwen (1972) describes the process of becoming a source of life to others most eloquently, “First, personal concern, which asks one man to give his life for his fellow man; second, a deep-rooted faith in the value and meaning of life, even when the days look dark; and third, an outgoing hope which always looks for tomorrow, even beyond the moment of death. And all these principles are based on the one and only conviction that, since God has become man, it is man who has the power to lead his fellow man to freedom” (p. 71). The more knowledge one has about chronic pain and suffering, the more equipped one is to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the syndrome. The narrow-minded view that pain only captures and devours its victim becomes transmuted into a meaningful message of redemption. Soper (1928) comments, “Without the experience of suffering a man’s nature remains shallow. Pain that has been lived through gives to character a depth that seldom comes from the experience of happiness” (First Month, Day 17).
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
October 26, 2003
The absolute truth about the superiority of Christ over all other religious expressions gives the believer a perfect foundation on which to build his or her faith. The perfect sacrifice of Christ reminds the believer how Jesus usurped the limitations of the Mosaic law, thus offering a new, and “better” opportunity to worship God directly through the precepts of grace. Because of what Jesus has already accomplished in the final and perfect sacrifice for human existence, the call to the modern-believer is to turn away from the concepts of sin management and to truly become his apprentices in eternal living.
POSTED BY GORDON SELLEY
Date:
November 2, 2003
“The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14, NIV). Henceforth, the crucified love of Christ fulfilled all the requirements of the law. The Galatian churches were taught to withdraw from quarreling and backbiting against each other, and instead, were encouraged to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, and to further advance the cause of Christ. Isn’t this also the message for the Body of Christ today? The promise that the Spirit empowers the Christian over the fallen nature of Adam is remarkable by itself. Yet, the second part of the equation is that the Spirit leads the Christian on a walk of righteousness as a new creation, beholding to the holiness of God. Hallelujah!
