Testimony Background
Pat had been a friend of ours ever since she left the Catholic church as a nun, and began living with us back in 1989 when she moved into our home. Back then, when I was very much into human reasoning mixed together with the Lord as my Life, and fresh out of finishing a course to be a primal therapist, I began to counsel Pat with her struggles. That continued for the next eleven years, along with Fred and I also doing marriage counseling together, until he went home to be with the Lord in 2001, and He began to open my eyes to the truth that no human counseling could replace Him as the great Counselor.
Pat had moved away during Fred’s illness. After five years, in 2006 she returned, but I told her that she needed to seek Jesus for whatever help she needed in her life, and that I would no longer be counselling her; she needed to seek Jesus alone as her Counselor, and for her everything, as I was determining to do in my own life. She agreed and moved back.
It has been eighteen years since we have lived together as friends, and I haven’t done any formal counseling with her. However, in reality, some mixture of human reasoning and self-help has remained in me and has crept into our relationship. I might have stepped away from practicing formal counseling on the outside, but the underlying mixture of human reasoning with God’s Truth has remained, at times, on the inside, with me justifying that it was God’s will (well, it was, but not in the way I thought).
Pat, like Fred, struggled all her life to experience the peace of God. Even though I knew that I could not be her counselor, I did believe that the Lord might use the Jesus in me to be there for her as an encouragement. I don’t know how much of that was true or for how long it possibly could have been true, except that the day came when the Lord changed the course of that, beginning several months ago.
My Present Testimony
We’d been studying in John 5 with Ed Miller in our weekly Bible study, and had come to the section on the healing of the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. My frustration with Pat’s ongoing turning to me for “encouragement” and direction instead of to Jesus had escalated dramatically, with the addition of her hyperactive new puppy, Bennie, creating chaos upon the chaos. As I listened to the message in this Bible story, where the crippled man looked and waited superstitiously for thirty-eight years for the bubbling spring at Bethesda to bring him healing, I felt like perhaps I might be still looking superstitiously at the bubbling springs of Bethesda myself—that of human reasoning and psychology, that probably had become a distraction for Pat in “seeing the Jesus in me”. Even though I knew psychology couldn’t heal anyone, I would still spend time, over and over again, using psychology to help her understand the situations that had occurred in her life that might have led to her struggles—the why—even in the midst of testifying that the Lord is always the original cause, and that He uses all things for His purpose; that everything was redemptive, all in a supposed attempt at being an encouragement for her to keep turning to Jesus as the only answer.
While meditating on the Bible story at the pool of Bethesda, I felt like I might be like a third person at the pool, who myself had become, in her eyes, a superstitious bubbling pool at Bethesda. This person I cared about and wanted to help, kept looking to me instead of Jesus, the One who had always been there walking around in our midst, whose desire was to come into her as her own inner personal reality, and not just as some outer knowledge, some intellectual knowing. I believed the Lord was nudging me to step aside, but I was hesitant, because that seemed to me to be a cruel thing to do, and that it might create more harm than good, or that perhaps that I might have a mixed selfish motive, just to escape my frustration.
It was shortly thereafter that I believe the Lord began a “super-nudge” through what we were going through with Pat’s new puppy, Bennie, a nine-month-old Golden Retriever. He’s a beautiful dog, a very loving dog, and he’s been a great companion for her. However, even though Golden Retrievers are known to be high energy dogs, Bennie had grown into something more than that. He was also fearful of noises and different situations and was hyper-energetic. We tried to work with him with some online courses and with what I’d learned over the years with training my dogs, but it seemed to me like Pat was either unable to understand and/or unable to stick to the discipline necessary to train her dog; she kept saying that she was afraid that she might hurt him. I began to believe that she was contributing to the dog’s anxiety because of her own anxieties that he was picking up on. I was getting increasingly irritated, as it was creating a lot chaos for her, for my dogs, for visitors to our house, and for me.
So, then I suggested that she sign up for a local dog training class where she and Bennie would be part of seven weeks of Saturday classes with eight other dogs; hopefully she might begin to learn through a professional trainer how to be there for her dog, and it would get me out of the picture. However, at the fifth class, after falling flat on her face with the dog the week before (and almost giving the trainer a heart attack), the trainer suggested that maybe these classes might not be for her, especially since Pat told her that she was terrified each time she came. She suggested another trainer that could work alone with her where there would be no other dogs and people around as a distraction.
After calling the personal trainer, who also trains police dogs, he was willing to see us for a free consultation with the dog at his facility. Bennie was terrified, as was Pat, from the get-go, from the moment we stepped out of the car. This gentleman, a big policeman type, was very kind to make time right away for us. For the next 45 minutes (it was like a full lesson) he listened to our story about Bennie with Pat, and about me in the situation, while also observing the dog and Pat interacting together.
He explained to us about how Golden Retrievers in recent years have been bred to be more energetic than thirty years ago, for the purpose of hunting. But he also said that what he was observing with Bennie and Pat was that the dog was very attached to her, and her to the dog, in a way that the dog was picking up on her anxieties and in wanting to protect her, was becoming increasingly anxious himself. He said that he could take the dog for three weeks and train him, but he was quite certain that after that time, when he would be returned to Pat, that he would revert back to his old fearful, super-hyper ways.
This kind man gave freely of his time, and even gave Pat an expensive collar to use with Bennie for free. He seemed very sad, as he could see that Pat was a good person who wanted to do right by her dog, and that Bennie was a smart, sweet, attentive and friendly dog; he struggled to find any hope for the situation. He reluctantly said the only other option was that he could come to our home for an in-house evaluation, but he really didn’t even think that would help much. We told him we’d like to try that, anyway. He said that he would call us the next day to make an appointment, but we’ve never heard back from him. I believe it didn’t happen because God had other plans.
That whole situation with that personal dog trainer had a profound effect on me. I felt like the Lord was speaking to me through it all, confirming that it was definitely time for me to get out of the way. If there was any hope for Pat at all in all of her struggles in life, including with Bennie and for Bennie, and between she and I, it had to be with her (and me) turning to Jesus for everything, to allow Him to be her very life in reality, and not continually looking to me or any other bubbling Bethesda springs for answers. That dog trainer may have had little or no hope for the situation, but I felt that we had the best Hope, who had always been in our midst, and it was Jesus. The next day was not easy between Pat and I, as I emphatically severed many cords of what seemed to me to have become unhealthy connections between us, trusting that God could and would get us through to Victory in Him.
During that time after a Bible study, Ed and Lillian shared with us about a miracle in their family, where their granddaughter’s husband had been given a dire diagnosis of severe cystic fibrosis which could be fatal in as little as five years. Their daughter, Cathi, found a clinic in California that was willing to take on the case with some experimental things that they were doing. After flying out to California and going through their records and a thorough examination, the doctors came back shaking their heads, to say, “We can’t believe this; all of our tests have come back showing no signs of the disease; your lungs are clear.” When I heard their testimony of that mighty miracle of God that cured their family’s physical problem, I claimed it, and began to praise God in my heart for the spiritual miracles that I knew He was going to do in our lives; it was simply a matter of His plan, in His way and in His time.
I was in for the long-haul, if need be. However, the next day at 4 pm Pat met the Lord, and in reality, received Him fully as her very Life to live in.
“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come along. For behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone,” (Song of Solomon 2:10),
As we now continue on in our friendship, united in Him, we believe the Lord has led us to make some changes in our dealings with one another and with how we interact with our dogs. He has blessed us with these animals, and they are important to us. As such, as if they were our family (they kind of are), they are a priority because He has given them to us to be under our charge. The chaos is gone, and Pat says she is experiencing rest and peace in her new intimate relationship with Jesus. Our dogs, as a result, are less anxious. Bennie is responding well to the Jesus in Pat, as are the whole rest of the household!
To put a so-called “cherry on the cake”, I’ve been transcribing Paul Greenlee’s (Ed and Lillian’s son-in-law) series on “From Self-Will to God’s Will”. It’s the story in Genesis of how God brought Jacob from being a self-willed person to a God’s will person. This has been such an encouragement for me in seeing more of how the Lord has been working in the same way in my own life all these years, transforming me from a self-willed unbeliever, to a self-willed believer, to more of a God’s will believer—and how faithful He is and will always continue to be!
Pat came into my life thirty-five years ago. The Lord has used our friendship in countless ways through those years, through positive blessings and through challenging tests, just like life in Him tends to be. Whatever desire we have had to be a team walking together in Jesus these past few years, the Lord is miraculously transforming us from the desire into increasingly more of the reality, especially now as we’re each truly united with Him, as He walks through the imperfect body/temples of our lives. We look forward to God’s plan and faithfulness in keeping us united in our fellowship together, on the road of His Life being the Living Spring bubbling in us, that continues into His Living Rivers of Springs bubbling through us!
“Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. We are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one, an aroma from death to death, and to the other, an aroma from life to Life.” (2 Corinthians 2:14)
(For Ed Miller’s original Bible studies on the Healing at pool of Bethesda, go to www.biblestudyministriesinc.com and click onto “click here to download…” and then click “gospels” and then click “John – new” and then go to transcripts #14 & 15)