Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Some things in life are more important than outstanding health, but not many. Some things are more important in life than a well functioning family where loving relationships rule the day, but not many. Some things in life are more important than an AVM free brain, but not many. What follows is what is more important to me than all these things combined. 

Please watch the following clip from an ER episode…perhaps the single most powerful moment I have ever witnessed on television.

I’m not sure of the exact context of this clip. We didn’t watch this last season of E.R. All I know is that what this character was expressing near the end of his life was real. This is spectacular acting that sends chills down my spine every time I watch it.

Why? Because I know that what he was expressing was the undeniable truth of which Solomon spoke in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God has set eternity into man’s heart. There are many ways to suppress this reality but in the end nothing can overcome what is.

The pablum that this liberal chaplain was giving to this man was less than worthless. It was a self-exalting agnostic mindless nihilism where all is meaningless.

This man was afraid of what was going to come next and the “professional” clergy had nothing to bring to the table.  He wondered if atonement was even possible and she answered that it was up to each one of us to interpret what God wants.

He had regrets. He wanted answers. He knew enough that he believed God was real and hell was real, but he wanted answers…someone who could look him in the eye and tell him how to find forgiveness because he was running out of time.

My calling in this life, besides being a husband and father is to be a pastor. My biblical job description as a pastor is, among other things, to preach and teach the whole counsel of God to the people entrusted to my care. My privilege is to provide answers from the Word of God to people who have real questions…like the man in the video clip.

It’s not that I have all the answers to life’s daunting questions, but I believe with every fiber of my being that truth does exist, that God is real, and that we can know with certainty the most important answers in life.

As my family and I walk through these interesting days I find it troubling that some are taking the news about the thing in my brain harder than I am or than we are as a family.

I’ve been open and honest in these postings so you know that we are not cruising above the clouds at 50,000 feet in some kind of cocoon of protection where the sun always shines. Not at all. There are anxious moments and days for us all.  We can bum out and be depressed.  We do bum out and are depressed on occasion.

But I assure you of this. There is no fear. I may have difficulty believing that this is all happening but I do not have fear about this upcoming surgery. I  have moments of anxiety in thinking through worst case outcomes… not a pleasant exercise with my vivid imagination. But we are not living in fear.

It is not because we are extra special people. It is not because we have an unusual fortitude about us. It is not because of any external thing. Rather, it is because we are followers of Jesus Christ, who gives true and lasting peace.  My Christmas present to all of you who read this blog from all over this world, from many different ethnic and religious backgrounds and educational levels is this:

I am going to let you in on what I might have said to the man in the video on death’s doorstep… who wanted real answers.

First, I would have explained to him how every single person on this planet who has ever been born of woman, except Jesus the Christ, has been born a sinner and thus separated from the life of God. Sin is simply missing the mark of God’s perfect demands. Only a complete fool would deny this reality about himself.

Second, I would explain to this man that there was a baby boy born to a virgin named Mary about two thousand years ago. Before this baby was born an angel appeared to Joseph (who was betrothed to be married to her) in a dream and told him not to fear. The angel also told Joseph to name the baby to be born “…Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). I would tell this man that the very name “Jesus” means “The Lord saves.” This is the reason Jesus, the divine and only begotten Son of the Father, came into this world.

Third, I would explain to this man how Jesus lived a sinless life in perfect obedience to all of God’s Law. I would tell him of Jesus’ roughly three year public ministry where He healed the sick, raised the dead, and loved the lost.

Fourth, I would tell this man with passion in my voice and genuine expression on my face that “Yes, atonement is possible.” At the end of Jesus’ public ministry He was brought before two kangaroo courts, convicted on bogus charges, and sentenced to die a cruel death by crucifixion, alongside two common criminals.

As Jesus hung on the Cross He cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In this moment the Father abandoned His Son. And as Jesus died atonement for sin was indeed made for all who will repent (have a complete change of heart and mind regarding their sin) and put their faith in Christ’s finished work on Calvary’s Cross.

In the perfect sacrifice of Christ’s death He paid the just penalty for sin that we could never pay ourselves. God’s wrath should by all rights have fallen on each one of us but it has been averted for all who surrender themselves to Jesus Christ. Redemption was accomplished, but it still must be applied.  There is no such thing as a universal salvation.  All people will not go to heaven in the end.  All paths do not lead to the same place.  All of the major religions of the world do not serve the same God.

As Jesus breathed His last the thick curtain that divided the Holy Place from the Most Holy in the Jewish temple was torn in two (Matthew 27:51). This signified that access to God was now available directly and only through Christ.

The Apostle Paul would later write in I Timothy 2:5 “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…” Apart from this one mediator reconcilation with God is impossible.

Jesus said, as John 14:6 records it, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” It may not be popular. It’s certainly not inclusive, but that does not in itself render it untrue.

Finally, I would look this man in the eye and tell him that unless he repents of his sin and puts his faith in Jesus Christ, crucified and literally risen from the dead on the third day, that he will soon enter into an eternity of conscious eternal torment (Matthew 25:41-46) where he will live in a state of perpetual payment of a debt that can never be paid. That’s why hell exists.

I would beg him to consider receiving the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ and not to wait until tomorrow or next year, for no one knows what tomorrow holds. Today is the day of salvation.

I would encourage him, that if God has shown him his need and given him the desire, to do it right now…to pray aloud to God on the spot and tell Him the desire of his heart.  I would encourage him to confess that he is a guilty, lost, and helpless sinner, and with all sincerity ask Christ to save him and take His rightful place as the Lord of his life, enabling him to turn from sin and live for Him. That’s what I would encourage him to pray.

And finally, I would encourage him to begin immediately attending a Bible believing church where the Bible is believed to be the Word of God, where the death, resurrection, and Second Coming of Christ are believed to be literally true, and where the people are filled with grace and love toward one another and outsiders, and where the glory and grandeur of God oozes from its DNA. That’s what I would tell this man. Then I would give him a hug and say “See you later brother,” but only if he believed the biblical truths of which I had spoken and had received them for himself.

I share this with you all because it is part and parcel of who I am. Many of you don’t much about me at all. I’m just the guy with the bogus thing in the brain.   That’s not really who I am. I am first and foremost a redeemed sinner who is a child of the Most High God, who awaits an eternal home in glory, not because of anything I have done, but because of God’s mercy alone.  If nothing else this AVM has given me the opportunity to share with all of you my understanding of the real meaning of Christmas and to learn some new and cool big words.   Thanks for reading and thanks for your continued interest in our lives.

I, and my dear wife Karla, extend our desire for you all to have a Merry Christmas.  Please feel free to contact me by email if you would like to speak to me about these matters more personally. I would be delighted to do so.

For the past 3 years I have made a list of the top ten things I have been thankful for in that particular year, beginning in November 2008, one month after the discovery of a large AVM (arterio venous malformation)  in the left frontal lobe of my brain.

Thus began a saga that would be a forever turning point in my life and one that has made me a tad bit more thankful for…well…everything!  Especially the little things like being alive, the ability to speak, move both sides of my body, etc. stuff I took entirely for granted for the first 44 years of my life.  I personally believe it is impossible to be as thankful as we ought to be no matter how gloomy our situation may appear to be at any given moment in time.

Here is my list of top ten things I am most thankful for on this day, November 24,2011 (in ascending order)

10. The  St. Louis Cardinals’  improbable win in the 2011 World Series.

9.  Texas Roadhouse any day of the week.  6 ounce sirloin steak, several fresh rolls with cinnamon butter, peanuts, fries, and a salad.  Good stuff!

8. Power tools.

7.  The fact that I am now officially off the blood thinner coumadin,which is the same stuff from which rat poison is made.  Just got back from Mayo on Monday and received the news that the bloodwork shows that I have a gene mutation called PT20210A (catchy huh?) that I share with 3% of the population that puts me at a slight increase for blood clots as the prothrombin gene has been altered.  I am officially a mutant and  I have the papers to prove it.

6.  Crossroad E. Free Church and the precious saints who make up her constituency…and the body of Christ worldwide.

5.  Today, tomorrow, and every day of life after that (if in fact they come) that I have yet to live on this earth.

4.  The continual privilege of seeing all of life through the lens of a heightened sense of my own mortality that only a razor close brush with death could bring. 

3.  My five children: Luke 19, Benj 17, Elisabeth 13, Gabbie 9, and Jared 6.

2.  My precious wife Karla, who has stuck with me, is sticking with me, and will continue sticking with me as is evidenced by the fact that on December 27th of this year marks our 25th anniversary!

1. God Himself and the guarantee of a future inheritance of the Kingdom of God which cannot be shaken and where all things will be made new (Hebrews 12:28-29).  The fact that I, even  as an imperfect follower of Jesus, am receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken makes me very glad indeed.

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I hope the bones in the finger will stay where they are supposed to stay once the pins are removed.  It has been vastly inconvenient to have to do everything with one hand only for 53 days…including the typing of this post…though I am left handed… a small blessing.  I broke it on July 29th while tubing on a lake with our friends, the Ropps near Kalamazoo, Michigan…500 miles from home on the second day of our vacation, on the last run of the day…again vastly inconvenient.

After going to the E.R. the doctor there said it would need surgery within two weeks…so they put the first cast on and sent me on my merry way armed with percoset…a dear friend in those early days…but with our vacation plans still intact…which was good for the rest of the family, but torture for me as we then spent seven days at Maranatha, a Christian conference center in Muskegon on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

To be on Lake Michigan but not be allowed to swim because of the cast…well I think it gives me some appreciation for what it must be like to be a Cubs fan….of course I’m not sure that even then one could truly understand the disappointment…unless they were in fact a Cubs fan.

The only two lessons I learned from this episode were 1. I was unsuccessful in doing a barrel roll on a tube..this time.  Some might argue that I need to come to grips with my increasing limitations…that I’m not as young as I once was etc. etc.  I refuse to entertain any such notions on this my 47th birthday.  2.  I am brave in some things.  I had the guts to set the finger myself, by yanking on it as it only bent at an awkward angle and then going to the hospital where they were duly impressed, in fact offering that if my day job didn’t work out they might have a place for me in trauma medicine.  I chuckled. Karla was not amused.

1.Where were you on September 11, 2001? 

I will never forget it.  It was a Tuesday morning, my day off back then, and I was working on the front porch roof of our 117 year old house, stripping off four layers of shingles, when about ten minutes before nine Karla came to the bedroom window and told me what had happened.   She explained that a jet airliner had flown directly into the north tower of the World Trade Center and it was on fire.   I was stunned, but I didn’t even stop working.  My mind was racing.  Then, 17 minutes later at 9:03 another plane crashed into the south tower.  Then again at 9:38 a plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C.  Is this the end I wondered to myself.  So many questions.  Later that afternoon as I was still working on the roof I looked up and Air Force One flew directly over our home with the President inside, headed to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha.  When all the dust had settled there were 3,182 people that died from the events of that day.

2. Where was God?  God was omnipresent just as He always has been and always will be.  God was still on His throne reigning perfectly in wisdom, power, and love.  Psalm 115:3 says “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.”  9/11 didn’t cause God any alarm whatsoever.   When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush He called him to be the deliverer for Israel from their 400 years of slavery to Pharaoah.  God even told Moses the name of the Person who had given the orders so that he could tell the Israelites who had sent him:  “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  “Tell them that ‘I AM’ has sent me to you.”” (Exodus 3:13ff.)  Jesus said in Matthew 10:29 “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?  And not one falls to the ground apart from your Father.”  God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

3. What difference did it make in the spiritual climate of the U.S.? In the short term there was an enormous spike in church attendance.  One article suggested that fully half of the entire adult population in the U.S. attended a religious service the Sunday after 9/11.  A massive but momentary surge of spirituality occurred as Americans were forced to come face to face with the fragility of life.  Ed Young who is the pastor of Fellowship Church said “After 9/11 we had 20-some odd thousand people show up…..I was disappointed somewhat that more didn’t stick because we dropped to 16 or 17 thousand the next weekend and then the weekend after that to about 14,500,” he said. “By November things were pretty much back to normal in terms of church attendance.”  C.H. Spurgeon used to speak of the “spiritual spasms” that people have in the face of tragedies.  They come and then they are quickly gone.

4. What is the proper role of government in events such as this?  Well, that’s a very good question and the Bible has a good answer.  Romans 13:1ff. says “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God…rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.”  The U.S government has been a terror to terrorists these past ten years. There is a God-ordained role of the government which includes the U.S. military to defend ourselves from terrorists. By the latest count 6,137 Americans serving in the Armed Forces have lost their live since 9/11, nearly double the number of lives lost on that fateful day back in 2001.  We are not to put our trust in horses or chariots or “smart bombs.”  Our trust is to be in the name of the Lord our God.  We must strive to maintain an attitude that is consistent with the Bible’s teaching in Romans 12 where Paul writes “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” 

5. How do we begin to make any sense from the ashes of 9/11?  In Jesus’ day there was a tragic event that occurred where a tower collapsed in Siloam and killed 18 people.  Luke 13:1-6 tells of this event.  Jesus asked His audience “Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?  No, I tell you; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”  The point is this: We are all sinners in need of redemption in the presence of a holy God.   The sheer scope of the human pain and suffering that occurred on 9/11 and the years following…is staggering.  There have been far greater death tolls in earthquakes and tsunamis since 9/11…. 250,000 alone from the earthquake and ensuing tsunami that shook the Pacific Rim in 2004….but nothing has affected the collective psyche of Americans as this has done.

6.  What difference did it make in my preaching or thinking?  I found myself thinking how comforting it was to have my soul anchored  to the immovable, unchanging, and indestructible God of the universe and what it must feel like not to have faith in such a God.  So to that extent my preaching was informed by this reality.  But my thinking about God, my theology did not change one iota.  But it was a good gut check.  Our family has had several of these kinds of gut-checks in recent years.  Good theology works in fair and foul weather alike.  The thing about truth is it’s always true, even when it appeared that the apocalypse was upon us

7.  How has your attitude toward Muslims changed since September 11, 2001?  The pastor of Grace church in suburban Atlanta (Buddy Hoffman) told his elders that they could make a choice.  He said “We could view Muslims as the enemy, or the prize.”   The “prize” of the Muslim world makes up more than 1.5 billion people in 3,358 people groups.  Joshua Project’s list of the 20 least-reached people groups include 19 Muslim people groups.  One family from our church is serving in the Arabian Peninsula in one such group.  If you are a hater of Muslims as a whole your heart is not right before God.  Muslims, as whole,  are not the enemy, but even if they were a Christian response would be to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44). How this command is to be wedded alongside the government’s role of protecting its citizens is not easily answered.

8.  Why are Evangelical Christians not being represented in the memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.?  Tony Perkins is the President of the Family Research Council and he said that 3/4ths of Americans identify themselves as Christians with 1/3^rd of that number claiming to be evangelical Christians.  Others included in the program are a Buddhist nun, an Imam, a Hindu priest, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, a Muslim musician, an Anglican priest, but not a single evangelical Christian.  Perkins goes on to say “It is historically inaccurate that in times of mourning that Americans pray to the Hindu God or the God of Islam…(rather) they pray to the Judeo-Christian God-and specifically Jesus Christ.

9. What have you done personally not to waste 9/11?  For my part I attempted to bring a God-centered perspective to this tragedy…challenging my fellow local pastors to do the same.  If your theology (which simply means the study of God..what you believe about God) is true, then it will always be true.   I took advantage of the two Sundays following 9/11 to bring some perspective to this horrific event.  The first message on Sunday Sep. 16, 2001, was titled “Safely Inside the Walls of Romans 8:28.”  The next Sunday the title of the message was “Attack on America: What Would Jesus Do?”

10. What promise from God stands true forever:From the message I preached on September 16, 2001 titled “Safely Inside the Walls of Romans 8:28” I said “The magnificent promise of Romans 8:28 is a massive oak tree in a forest of little saplings.  The God behind the promise is a Mighty Fortress in an uncertain and evil age.  My friends, believe this promise!  It is true!  And when tragedy strikes or affects your life or family in any way your faith will yet remain.  Why?  Because your feet are firmly anchored in the God revealed in Scripture, a God who causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.   May each of us live our lives this week and for the rest of our earthly days safely inside the fortress of Romans 8:28.”  Amen.

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“Stan Wierson…man of God, born from above (or again) John 3:3, lived from above, and died from above.  In Philippians 1:20b-23 the apostle Paul wrote “…it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.  If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.”

Jesus was honored through the fruitful life and labors of Stan Wierson.  To God be all the glory for His kindness in causing Stan’s life to intersect with our own at some point along our earthly pilgrimage as is so clearly evident by the numerous postings on this site.

I was first introduced to Stan nearly 31 years ago when I was a 16 year old sophomore at Newton High School and Stan a 43 year old youth pastor at the other Methodist church in town.   I have been in the pastoral ministry for the past 20 years or so largely due to Stan’s early influence in my life.  So count me as one of the 200 if anyone is counting.

My first meeting with Stan was an interesting one.  I remember walking into his office and thinking that he looked much older than his then 43 years, was the furthest thing from athletic that anyone could imagine (which is ironic because his legacy largely surrounds his labors with regard to Summer Games…a camp ministry whose focus from the beginning was to reach young people for Christ through sports), and shared nothing in common with me…at least yet.

After meeting with Stan over the course of the next weeks and months I came to understand with my head and heart that God was real and that Jesus was more than just a dead man who may or may not have come back to life…I heard and saw and experienced  the love of God and the truth of the Gospel for the very first time in my life.

One November day in 1980 after meeting with Stan he asked me if I was ready to give my life to Christ…I said Yes!  I got down on my knees right there in his dinky musty smelling corner office with the pint sized piano next to me and asked Jesus to take charge of my life.  After praying that prayer I didn’t feel that anything was different…Why?  I thought that becoming a Christian would/should be a highly emotional experience.

What I have come to realize after thirty-one years of following after Christ is that it was not necessarily at that very moment I was born again….but rather this had most likely occurred at some point earlier in the process of meeting with Stan over the course of those interesting weeks.

So when Stan asked me that simple question it was akin to asking a child if they would like a candy bar.  I had already been changed by God from the inside out!  God had already performed in me the radical open heart spiritual surgery that transferred me from the domain of darkness and Satan into the Kingdom of His beloved Son.  My heart’s affections had already radically changed!

Again, Jesus said in John 3:7-8 speaking of the wind and Holy Spirit synonymously “Do not marvel that I said to you, “You must be born again.”  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”  Indeed the wind of the Spirit blew into my life and caused me to be born again…at some point in the late summer/early fall of 1980.

From there Stan was intensely involved in my early spiritual development…giving me wake-up calls in the morning to encourage me to read my Bible, to memorize Scripture, and to pray.   And I didn’t even attend his church!

I too have fond memories of the early Summer Games camps at Wesley Woods…not including the 18 cartons of milk I drank at one meal in a contest…which did not stay down for long, …the smells, the sounds, the sights…especially on the night where we had the stations of the cross and the re-enactment of the crucifixion.   As we came around the bend in the road and saw the three young men on the cross for the first time it was breathtaking.

It was especially meaningful to have been asked to play the part of Jesus or was it one of the thieves…I don’t remember which…but to be one of the young men hanging on a cross smeared with karo syrup and red food coloring with mosquitos thinking they had found their own version of heaven as they feasted on my blood…became a powerful reminder of how much Jesus had suffered for me.

After I graduated from high school I too attended Luther College as Stan also did.  I had forgotten that part of his story!  I had a couple of conversations with Stan while I was in college as he encouraged me to become a Methodist preacher and attend a Methodist Seminary.  I think he was disappointed when I chose to go a different route by going to Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, MN for four years.  I am now serving as the pastor of Crossroad Evangelical Free Church in Earlham, Iowa…and have for the past 16 years.

As I look back and think of Stan’s life and ministry I am thankful for God’s sovereignty in bringing this unique and gifted man across my path when He did.  I am thankful for God’s sovereignty in bringing Stan to Newton for those “revival and awakening” years in Newton…1980 is when God added me to the bandwagon.   And I have yet to witness again anything like I saw in Newton during those years.

Craig, Brent, Shannon…and others who were fired up for God…meeting in Craig’s basement for prayer meetings as 16 year olds…teaching one another all manner of heresy, albeit innocently enough!

Stan Wierson, born from above, lived from above, died from above, and now living eternally above in heaven where there is no more crying or pain or suffering (Revelation 21:4)…and where there is no need for the sun to shine for the glory of God gives its light (Rev. 21:23).  These are just a smattering of the memories I have from my three years of rubbing shoulders with Stan Wierson.

At the end of my sermon today I concluded by sharing the story of Stan’s early influence in pointing me to Christ and then faithfully discipling me…in precise fulfillment of the Great Commission in Matthew 28-19-20 that Jesus gave his disciples following his resurrection and just prior to his ascension:  “Go…and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I asked my congregation today if anyone had heard of the name “Stan Wierson” and not a hand went up.  And  though I had always envisioned having Stan come to our church and preach I never managed to get it done.   I have shared bits and pieces about my conversion experience throughout my years in Earlham, including Stan’s name.

No one even remembered hearing Stan’s name…but that’s a beautiful thing as well because through Stan’s faithful ministry to me 31 years ago as a snotty nosed, probably cocky sixteen year old, I have had the privilege of preaching the Gospel every Sunday for the past sixteen years and have preached the Gospel in different parts of the world…but it all began with God.

God’s plans begin, progress, and then terminate just as God has determined.  I am delighted that God’s plan was to have Stan Wierson’s life intersect with my own 31 years ago…and that Stan would impart to me the words of life that would change my life forever and hence begin the chain reaction that is part and parcel of the Great Commission.  To God alone be the glory!  Soli Deo Gloria!  I am planning to be at the funeral service this Thursday.”

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