Baby Jonah will be facing yet another surgery Tuesday the 22nd. After being born with a major heart deformaty only about four months ago, this tiny boy has not even been able to go home to his missionary parents home with his older brother and sisters. Marty and Val Silverberg have had to face numerous surgeries, near death episodes, nutritional concerns, brain functioning scares, recently a sepsis infection due to numerous blood transfusions and now … tomorrow, Tuesday, March 22nd, little Jonah faces a life threatening surgery as they place a trachiotomy tube which may prove too great a strain on his weak heart.

Dear Praying Family,
 
Jonah is still not receiving food.
He is on IV drip.
 
Val has decided to go ahead w/ Tracheotomy surgery.
She wants to be able to take him home.
He cannot breathe on his own. Drs. say it is a mystery why.
He is not able to digest nutrients either.
Trach surgery comes w/ risk of fatal heart attack.
Hoping for surgery this week.
Little Jonah has been thru so much.
Please continue to Pray w/ us for a miraculous recovery.
Also, we all need strength to go on.
 
We have received much encouragement from some of you, esp those, going thru or having gone thru similiar. Thank you for sharing w/ us your pain and encouraging us.
 
In spite of reports stating different, we are still w/o any help either at home or at the hospital.
We are grateful for a woman and her daughter who want to come and help from 2 hours away, and are prayerfully working thru the best way to receive their help, which may be available Mondays and Saturday afternoon.
 
Thank you so very much for your continued prayer support during this long and difficult time.
Jonah will be 12 weeks old on Tuesday.
 
In Christ’s Love,
Marty for Val

AND THEN

Dear Praying Family,
 
We received a call tonight that Jonah will have the Trach put in tomorrow, which is Tuesday, 3/22/11.
 
Val is a bit out of sorts as the heart specialist is weary of this trach surgery at this time, and Jonah’s ability to live thru this. Val feels it needs to be done, and I support her decision.
 
Also found ouit from Josh’s bus driver that tomorrow, Tuesday is a half day for Josh, further pushing things out of sorts. We had many other things on the sched for tomorrow also, we’ll see what the Lord allows.
 
Thank you again for your prayers.
 
In Christ’s Love,
Marty for Val

I hope you will keep this tiny soul, his family and the surgeons and nurses who care for him in you prayers.

Dear Val & Marty,
I am especially praying for you to have blessed assurance and that your darling little one will be cradled in the loving arms of God as he faces this next big event. I do believe God is sparing the child much of the pain we loved ones fear he is going through. We have such a loving and merciful Father.
Alongside you in the Spirit, Ellen

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In this weeks chapter of RC Sproul’s book “The Holiness of God” I understand why Luther had a hard time with reconciling his sin with God’s holiness. Only by accepting God’s justification and ongoing sanctification through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ can we ever hope to please God. It’s through faith in Christ NOT our fallible attempts at purity. 

No wonder Luther was viewed as insane by some as he struggled to reach this idea. Luther was driven by fear of a judgemental God of wrath and his own ever present guilt regarding hos own sins. I believe that those reported digestive problems of Luthers were the signs of ulcers that he no doubt earned through the inner turmoil that he endured in trying to unite his law/justice sense in that God has every right to demand our holiness and to severely punish us.  However, realizing our inability to overcome our own sinful nature by means of even our best efforts, God provided the Way.

He utilized mercy and grace, showing us divine forgiveness and self-sacrificing love through the provision of Jesus as the bearer of our deserved punishment. He paid the debt that was ours to pay. It was such a great cost that He could bear for the sake of our souls eternal reconciliation with God. 

This chapter was a good example how perfect love casts out fear.
A righteousness that we could never earn has been given unto us! Glory to God!

A sense of peace can come to Luther as he reuses the truth of the Gospel. That Almighty God utilized mercy and grace, showing us divine forgiveness and self-sacrificing love through the provision of Jesus as the bearer of our deserved punishment. He paid the debt that was ours to pay. It was such a great cost that He could bear for the sake of our souls eternal reconciliation with God. 

A righteousness that we could never earn has been given unto us! Glory to God!

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Here is a video that someone sent me a link to. This was the inspiration for finally writing this blog. Something that I had been meaning to write for some time. LOL

WHY do I procrastinate.  Why wait to do what I know NEEDS to be done?  I believe there are a few things worth considering here. Perhaps the greatest deterrent to getting something done is FEAR. Fear of failure, or that I will mess things up. Maybe my bent toward perfectionism is screaming at me to “Wait! You SHOULD do it this way. This other way may be better.” It’s the dreaded “Shoulda, woulda, coulda”s of an overly creative mind that can bog me down. And, just maybe, it is that FEAR that overrides our desire to just get on with the task at hand.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that one shouldn’t just barge forth without any direction or preparedness. But I see that there is this (sometimes hard to define) borderline between appropriately pausing and taking careful steps to proceed versus stopped and not willing or apparently unable to proceed. A procrastination paralysis produces a productivity nightmare!

The solution? Ha! If I knew that I could be a millionaire as a result of all the motivational speaking engagements that I could do at the conventions full of the myriads of people who are searching for a way out. I would right a book and go on book signing tours.  Well, maybe someday.

Seriously, as I think about it now, I believe one of the biggest solutions to my bouts of procrastination is to face the fact that I am doing it. Call it what it really is. Procrastination in my case is a sin.

Does that seem harsh to you? Well, remember, this is in dealing with my own procrastination. I am going to treat it as a sin because sin is defined as being “off the mark”.  I believe that God does call me to be holy as He is holy; to strive to live a righteous and productive life. I also believe that the ONLY way for me to do that is by utilizing the grace of God given to me as a free gift when I became His child. At the moment of my salvation, I was saved. That is past tense. It’s a done deal.

Now, as I “seek first the Kingdom of God,” I am challenged to grow up into a better way of doing things. I daily “walk by faith” when I study the Bible and use God’s Word to transform my old ways of thinking and doing things into a better way. So, you see, if I am applying what I am learning,  I am always growing. There is no room for procrastination there.

As I face this personal sin of procrastination I need to remember to say “STOP! This is wrong.”  I must admit that I am choosing to allow my fear of the unknown future to allow me to enter into an old, prideful way of thinking that based my success on what I did and how well I performed.

So, for me, stopping procrastination is getting back on track. Stop what I am doing wrong, learn the correction, and do that. I actively choose to say, “Lord help me: remind me to place your love before my fears.”  I need to remember that perfect love casts out fear and practice that.  It does take practice.  That perfect love is available to me (and to you too) in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ who provides a way . . . the ONLY way out of the fear and into the love.

1 John 4:18 (NASB)
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

At this moment, I can say I am not procrastinating. How about you?

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