DIVINE HEALING: Asthma, bronchitis, rosacea

Is this the end?

By Ada Brownell

I rushed to the doctor’s office almost in panic. Bronchitis had me by the chest and I’d had a lung-ripping cough for nearly three months. In the middle of that siege, I came down with an antibiotic-resistant urinary tract infection that flared with an invading army of bacteria. While I battled that, my face bloomed red and Rosacea pimples formed from my scalp to my neck, one of the worst cases my dermatologist had seen.

A urologist warned me years ago some day antibiotics wouldn’t clear up the resistant infections for me.

 For these simultaneous illnesses I’d tried two different antibiotics and they didn’t work.

After a CT scan, a lung doctor diagnosed the bronchitis problem as pneumonia, emphysema and asthma and prescribed an inhaler that cost $200 a month, as well as a rescue inhaler to make breathing easier. Those two prescriptions alone would quickly devour my yearly insurance provision, and he insisted I take them the remainder of my life.

I’d nearly emptied similar inhalers my primary care doctor prescribed and the bronchitis was worse.

“Have you had your flu shot?” the pulmonologist (lung doc) asked. “If you get the flu, you’ll be in the hospital.”

 I got the shot.

I’d made two or three trips to Urgent Care, then to my primary care doctor, and then to the kidney physician (nephrologist) who has done wonders for my blood pressure and also is great for infections. Nothing helped.

At first I stayed home because of the Rosacea, but then I ventured out. People stared. “Does it hurt?” more than one person asked. Being stared at gave me empathy for the handicapped.

I know God heals because we’ve had miracles in our churches and family. Yet, I always think of James’ teaching in the Bible that tells us faith without works is dead (James 2:17), so I usually follow a physician’s instructions. But nothing worked.

 Because they weren’t helping, I quit the inhalers and coughed less, wheezed less, and breathed easier.

But it was the dangerous UTI infection that propelled me to the prayer line at church. An unchecked infection sometimes can go throughout the body and kill you. I went forward once. I went twice. I went three times.

My faith wound around James 5:14: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for elders of the church, and let him pray over him, anointing him with in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” Yet I know God is sovereign and the Word says, “This is the confidence we have in him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears. And if we know he hears us, we know we have the petition we desire of him” (1 John 5:14).

 I believe God wants us to be in health. Jesus not only healed when He walked the earth, He took the beating before He was crucified for our healing: “By His stripes we are healed” (1 Peter 2:24 and Isaiah 53:5). He knows what it is to hurt.

Healing and miracles depend on my faith, too, and fear isn’t faith. Yet, God confirmed His word with signs following.

The day I went into a panic, I told the kidney doctor, “I’m willing to try one from the family of drugs I was allergic to thirty years ago and I’d had welts all over me.”

He prescribed the drug. I took it and no reaction occurred. The UTI pain disappeared. I was on the road to recovery!

He’d tested the bacteria to see what kind of medication would help, and discovered another drug also would kill the infection. Praise the Lord! Now I have at least two antibiotics that work. Perhaps when I need them, others will work also.

The bronchitis and Rosacea gradually disappeared, too.

It’s been three years and I have no symptoms of emphysema or asthma and two of my physicians told me not to return to the lung doctor.

God still cares when we’re sick, and he tells us how to believe for healing, what to do, including going to physicians that He has poured His wisdom into. Yet, we also know the Lord is there when we aren’t healed. He loves us just as much, comforting and sending other people to love on us.

***

EVER DO ANYTHING STUPID?

By Ada Brownell

After I’d been on vacation I went to the lunch area and my mind must not have arrived yet. I stuck my tea water in the refrigerator and my Coke in the microwave. I caught myself just before I pressed the start button.

The day before Deputy Attorney General Byron (Whizzer) White was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, I walked into the press conference and shook hands with a local TV news anchor instead of White. Of course, this was early in my newspaper career. I like excuses for stupid.

Our trio, the Damascus Singers, was invited to participate in a singspiration service. I was appointed to introduce our song.

“We’ve heard a lot of great music tonight,” I said. “Now we’re going to sing, ‘If it Keeps Getting Better.’” Took me a minute to realize why the audience laughed.

Some cases of the stupids are more serious, and could be deadly.

Take Eve, for instance. What on earth was she doing talking to Satan, who took on the form of a snake that could communicate? Before God judged the critter he was beautiful, though. Yet his bite was full of poisonous venom.

I guess talking wasn’t Eve’s problem, it was the listening. God already told Adam, and I’m sure he shared it with his new wife, never to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If they did, the Lord warned, they would die.

I don’t think Eve paid much attention to that. Probably that’s why the stupids virus headed for her.

“You won’t die!” the serpent proclaimed. “God knows if you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Eve had a good eye for beauty and saw the tree was good for food and pleasant to the eyes. If she’d been in a mall, she’d grabbed her credit card. She reached up, picked it, and ate. Like any temptress, she shared it with the man in her life.

Who would notice a few bites of fruit? God did because of what the tree represented. Suddenly their innocence vanished. They tried to hide their nakedness because now it seemed wrong, yet God knew they disobeyed and elaborated on the consequences.

Perhaps they didn’t fully comprehend the horror of yielding to temptation until they had to bury a son, murdered by his brother. I imagine their tears partly were shed because death became a fact of life when they sinned against God.

Hiding had done them no good. God called for Adam. The Lord knew where the man was, but Adam needed to come out and confess.

Amazing that our loving God, who gave freedom to choose whether to serve Him, almost instantly revealed He would bring a way to restore immortality to humankind. He would send a Redeemer (Genesis 3:15) who would conquer Satan and death. That Redeemer is Jesus, God’s only Son (John 3:16).

All through the Bible we see God’s great love and His willingness to forgive sin. He doesn’t hold being stupid against us. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Ah! Stupids flee when we finally get smart. Some good ways to increase wisdom: READ THE WORD OF GOD, THE BIBLE and also these books by Ada Brownell will help. They’re written to encourage you to believe.

All of the books contain elements to increase faith such as nono-fiction Facts, Faith and Propaganda, Imagine the Future You, Swallowed by Life, and including fiction, The Lady Fugitive its sequel Peach Blossom Rancher, both historical suspenseful romances.

All are available on Ada Brownell’s author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KJ2C06

Here LIe my Talents: REST FOREVER

By Ada Brownell

Nobody likes a cemetery—especially me. That’s why it was almost more than I could do to follow Conscience out there last night.

I stumbled along beside Conscience between humpy and sunken graves. The wind whistled through the pine trees. A coyote cried in the distance. Eerie shadows danced on the white marble headstones in the cloudy moonlight.

I knew where we were headed. It had been six months since I made the inscription on the tombstone: “Here Lie My Talents—Rest Forever.”

“You were discouraged too easily,” Conscience was saying.

“But that critique group cut my manuscript into confetti.  I don’t want to submit another thing.”

Conscience laughed. “But you forgot how many good sections they pointed out. Furthermore, they thought the story idea was marvelous.”

“The world apparently doesn’t need what I have to say,” I said stubbornly. “Book shelves are stuffed with paranormal stories, fantasy and wizards. People don’t want reality. I feel like I’m a voice crying into the wind. I’m tired of rejection.”

“Don’t you remember that article on controlling anger that’s been reprinted so many times? How about the piece on faith that blessed so many? Or the testimonies you’ve written for people who experienced miracles? You did enjoy the interviews and writing those, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I love to do things for the Lord. I like to feel I contribute something to praise and worship Him.

The look Conscience wore was wise and kind. “That’s why I asked you to come out here. God wants workers who will serve Him willingly and be witnesses of truth. The Lord gets little joy from those who seek men’s praise. But you will have to accept some criticism and editing.”

“But I’m tired, and afraid to listen to one more critique!”

“The servant mentioned in the parable in Matthew was afraid, too. He buried his one talent because of fear. He was called a wicked and slothful servant and was cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Stiff penalty, eh?”

I almost stumbled over a grave marker. A low cry escaped my lips as a chill climbed my spine.

Conscience took my arm. His strong arm steadied me. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty in giving up,” I said half under my breath.

“It’s not too late,” Conscience said confidently. “You can dig up your talents.”

“But won’t they be decayed by now?”

Conscience handed me a shovel. I walked to the grave and slowly lifted out a scoop of dirt. The more dirt I removed, the more excited I became. Finally they were all uncovered. I lifted them out.

“See,” Conscience said wisely. “Talents don’t decay; they just rust. They’ll be in fine shape after you use them a little.”

I laughed. It was good to get the feel of my talents again. Suddenly I felt strong and reckless. I picked up a big rock with my free hand and heaved it with all my strength. It hit on target. Pieces of white stone scattered over the empty grave. The letters of the inscription looked like a scrambled puzzle.

I held my talents close to me and walked away, determined to use them for the glory of God, not the praise of men.

©Ada Brownell   

Things God puts in your path to the future

                                                                                    

By Ada Brownell

When my sister Joan married Junior Brownell I didn’t notice he had a brother. The brother was L.C. He was 15. I was 10.

Later at 13, I discovered an older family friend, Crystal, had a crush on L.C., who now was a senior in high school. But at church he stayed around the edges of the youth group, acting shy. So with a giggle I teased Crystal about her “bashful boyfriend.” Too bashful to ask her for a date.

Soon Crystal moved to California, but in her wake she left a group of girls in the Fruita, Colorado church who set their pin curls on catching L.C. I teased several who were involved in the chase.

Although I’d been cleaning houses and taking care of children since I was in the sixth grade, often doing the work of an adult, I was a scrawny kid who didn’t grow and mature until I was 14. At that age during summers I did most of the work at my Aunt Dot’s small motel, and some of her work as well.

L.C. disappeared when he went to telegraph school in Minneapolis and I didn’t even notice. The next thing I knew about him he was in the hospital with a ruptured ulcer and in serious condition. I stayed in the car and took care of Joan’s toddler while Joan and her husband visited L.C in the hospital in Glenwood Springs.

L.C. recovered and I grew up more. At barely 15, although the age went to 35, I was voted in as youth president in our Fruita church and I also sang solos occasionally at church services. That must have been when he noticed me. I never figured it out.

My sister he was related to was a gorgeous blue-eyed redhead and not a freckle on her. My red hair was curly and often frizzy, my eyes hazel, and my skin looked as if I’d been tanned through a screen.

He started watching me, and I wondered about the guy. I was about the only female in the church not chasing him. Then he asked if he could take me to a special church service in Grand Junction.

I accepted, but when we got home that night and he parked in my parents’ drive, he pointed at the window on my side, and started to scoot over. “There’s a falling star!”

I didn’t even look. I lifted my open hands like a cop directing someone to a stop. He stopped. I went inside and didn’t expect to go out with him again.

Then we had a church youth ice skating party on a local canal. I loved to skate, and I was pretty good at it, skating backward, and whirling around. I didn’t care that the other kids wobbled on their blades, staying around the fire barrel. I zoomed on the ice around the canal’s curves by myself, the moon lighting my way. Then L.C. followed. He’d taken skating lessons in Minneapolis. He knew all my tricks and more.

I was impressed, and we visited a while, although I mostly ignored him.

Then he asked me if he could take me home. I accepted, and that night after he dropped off other kids he took home, we talked more. In front of my house, he pulled me to him and lightly touched his lips to mine.

Now, I was a born germ-a-phobe. When the only other fellow who kissed me on the mouth (probably when I was 14), held me tight and puckered, I sucked my lips in to keep away the germs. Then I rolled down the window, hung my head out and spit.

When L.C. kissed me that one time, stars fell around me, and a whole orchestra played.

I was in love, and I didn’t want to be in love. He worked for the railroad, and I soon discovered he wanted a wife. At 15, I had just become an adult. I had things I wanted to learn and do.

Then I found he wasn’t an “all-in” Christian. He asked if I would go steady with him. I said, “When are you going to get saved?”

Eventually he did and he wouldn’t give up on me. I tried to get him to date others and even named them. I couldn’t understand it. Some were cute, great gals.

Off and on for a year we dated. I accepted his engagement ring in the summer, but I still wasn’t sure, so our courtship was off and on. I knew I was in love. I thought I’d get over it, but I didn’t. After all, the sister just older than I was engaged five times!

On October 26, 2017, we will celebrate our 64^th anniversary. God has been good to us. I finished high school and later earned my bachelor’s degree in mass communications. I started writing for Christian publications at 15, and spent a good chunk of my life as a newspaper reporter. We have five wonderful amazing children and nine grandchildren. We lost our daughter, Carolyn, to cancer when she was 31. We look forward to seeing her in heaven.

Question: What things can you see in your past that God put there?

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5, 6).

SLAVERY STILL EXISTS

By Ada Brownell

Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.
Deuteronomy 32:32-34

          In the early 1920s, Rita Shpeherd took an axe and discreetly followed her husband to the bootlegger’s still, hidden in the trees near a lake.

When he and his boss left, Rita, 21 years old, stuffed most of the bottles in gunny sacks and whacked them with the axe. She stuffed several full bottles into the shed’s chimney and then she dragged one sack of unbroken ones into the water. Those would be evidence for the Revenuers, who policed and prosecuted bootleggers during Prohibition, when liquor sales were illegal.

That afternoon, the bootlegger knocked on Rita’s door.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said and pointed to an empty chair. “You should be ashamed of what you’re been doing—taking food out of children’s mouths, clothes off their backs, and the sense out of their father’s heads.”

The redhead when on about the evils of strong drink. “The Bible says, ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging and those who are deceived thereby are not wise.’”

The next day, Rita and her husband, Joe had to run for their lives, carrying and protecting their baby, Virgil.

          Rita was my mother. But it wasn’t spunk or her abilities with an axe that gave me a healthy desire to stay away from intoxicating beverages.

          As with anyone who grows up, my mother’s principles weren’t enough for me. I needed my own convictions about the matter.

          When we lived in a tiny town where most of the 100 residents lived for the weekend to drink and party, one of our friends discovered I’d never tasted beer. He grabbed a can, snapped it open, grabbed me and tried to pry my mouth open so he could pour the stuff in. Redhead that I am, the wildcat personality came forth and I didn’t taste a drop.

           In the 1960s as a young newspaper reporter I attended a company picnic. A photographer, already tipsy, noticed I had no beer. When I told him I didn’t drink, he emptied his beer on my clothes—“so I’d smell like I had a good time when I went home to my husband.” He was working.

          I wasn’t even tempted to drink. At one staff meeting in the managing editor’s home where they had a “dutch lunch,” I asked for a soft drink in advance. While I walked around with a Coke, I noticed some brilliant co-workers who drank one beer after another begin to act as if they were mentally challenged. I thought, What’s the fun in that?

          A time came, however, after I quit work and stayed home 15 years with my children that I worried I could be tempted to drink socially. I’d been back to work a short while and we attended a church where I discovered the deacons drank wine and a youth worker had beer in his refrigerator. I heard someone took beer on a youth outing.

          I thought, Who am I to condemn them? They appeared to love the Lord. Yet, I still had four children at home, and in the news business for me I knew temptation to drink would be more of a problem after I discovered people in my church imbibed.

          After praying and worrying about it, I resigned the youth class I taught, and we changed churches.  My problem wasn’t to try to change brothers and sisters in Christ, but do for our family what I thought was best. I did not want my children to grow up thinking intoxicating beverages were all right, and I didn’t want to break down my own resistance to them.

          A special person to me found the barrier breached between being a teetotaler and partaking at a church picnic where beer was offered along with soft drinks. That was about 40 years before she died, her liver severely affected and her esophagus eaten by Vodka.

          My reasons for not drinking intoxicating beverages go way beyond my experiences, however. It’s rooted in my commitment to Jesus Christ. Three big things: so I won’t be a stumbling block and so that I will not become a slave to sin.

Here’s a verse I think of: For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—(Romans 6:6).

          The quickest way to become a slave to sin is to practice something that is habit forming and destructive.

          Another huge reason is there is no sense in partaking in anything that affects the way I think and what I do.

Sure, it’s legal as is marijuana in some states and perhaps soon other dangerous habit-forming drugs. But so is rat poison.

©Copyright Ada Brownell

Survival With A Cellar--A family's storage of food and memories

By Ada Brownell

The rooster was almost as big as I was when he chased me down the cellar stairs, flogged me beating me with his wings and an attacking me with his spurs. I thank God that someone heard my cries and rescued me.

Despite that event, I learned a cellar was mighty important to our family of ten. I was the baby and the “runt of the litter” of eight children, according to Daddy. People used to ask me after I became an adult why I was so much smaller than my four sisters. With a grin I said, “By the time I elbowed through the crowd, the food was gone.”

But that wasn’t true. Even in the days when Daddy only make one dollar for a twelve-hour day shoveling coal from railroad cars onto trucks, we had plenty of food to eat. You see, Mama and Daddy knew how to raise chickens, pigs, beef, and a huge garden, although they only had ten acres, and much of that food ended up in jars on the cellar shelves.

 I learned early it took work from about everybody to get that food into the cellar. Plant the seeds. Stick those tiny tomato plants in the ground. Hoe and pull the weeds. Shell the peas. Snap the beans. Peel tomatoes. Pick the grapes. Pick the berries. Go to the orchard and pick the cherries, apricots, plums and peaches.

But first somebody has to wash and sterilize the jars, and often that somebody was me.

Our first cellar was underground, a mound in our backyard. I don’t think I ever went in it. We didn’t have tornadoes in Colorado. But the cellar was a good place to stand on so I could get on a horse if I pulled her up beside it.

When our family moved into our two-story house, the “cellar” was actually a basement with an outside entrance. We always had shelves and shelves of canned goods, and Daddy’s potatoes and onions lasted through the winter when stored down there. He put his carrots and sweet potatoes into pits, covered with dirt and they’d keep a long time too.

I think of storing food in a cellar as similar to things we learn, good memories, and scriptures we memorize and put into our heads. What I put into my brain and recall even years later is an amazing part of God’s creation. That’s one reason why I’m careful about what I put in my mind. I don’t want what I put there to be like one rotten potato in the cellar which can stink up the whole place, or a poisonous spoiled improperly processed jar of green beans which can kill.

Yet, when the rotten potato or bad green beans are thrown out, the beauty and the appetizing appeal of a box of fat crispy potatoes, rows upon rows of red tomatoes, golden peaches, green beans, and lilac grape and rosy raspberry jellies remains. The food would last and feed our large family for at least a couple of years, when properly sealed and stored.

For us, the cool cellar made it possible.

My mom’s washing machine also was in the cellar, a furnace with a auger which fed the coal stored in the basement into the furnace.

Mom separated her laundry on the floor and one day picked up a fat toad that slipped underneath the dirty clothes. She threw him into the steaming hot water in the wringer washer and then gasped when she saw him. She hurried up the steps outside and called to Stuart, the neighbor boy.

Stuart didn’t even protest at the task she wanted him to do. He reached in, grabbed the toad, and walked away with a happy face. He had a toad and the quarter Mom gave him to do the job.

What a time we enjoyed with our cellar!

Don’t Commit Spiritual Suicide

By Ada Nicholson Brownell

Spiritual suicide is a problem many ignore. Who is at risk?

1.     Those who have been hurt.

Sometimes in the battle against sin we see casualties from friendly fire. In Operation Desert Storm, United States Armed Forces wounded and killed one another when they couldn’t tell the enemy from their own soldiers.

In the church we often wound and maim our own. However, if you are a casualty, it is up to you how you survive an attack. You can be angry and decide to fall on your own sword. Or you can forgive, ask God to help you forget, and continue serving God.

2.     Those who are angry.

Things in your church aren’t going the way you want. You can commit spiritual suicide by vowing not to enter a church again, or you can grasp eternal life by asking God to make you the Christian He wants you to be. You can pray the church will continue to go forward in God’s will, winning souls and be salt and light to the world.

3.     Those who feel no one cares.

Make an appointment to see you pastor and share your feelings. Also remember Jesus died for so that you might have abundant and eternal life. Perhaps He is calling you to a ministry of loving and caring.

4.     Those who are discouraged.

When you’re discouraged you might be tempted to think, If I’d quit the church that would show them. One of the arguments against committing physical suicide is that death is so permanent. While you might have a second chance after your attempt on your spiritual life, backsliding is a serious decision. Discouragement will pass. Decisions made during discouragement, however, can impact you for a lifetime—and beyond.

5.     Those in a battle with Satan.

One of the most pathetic suicides is self-starvation. That’s what some people do when Satan attacks. The Christian stays away from other believers and the house of God and starves himself spiritually. The Christian under attack should put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6), take the sword of the Spirit which is the Bible, and battle the enemy. You can win that battle!

6.     Those who are angry at God.

People often get angry at God because of events in their lives they blame on Him. Anger turned outward is one state of grief for people who experience loss. But they must work through the anger and come to acceptance. Bitterness is deadly poison.

7.     Those who live recklessly with sin.

The Christian who chooses to live a worldly life is playing Russian roulette. One of the temptations could be the deadly bullet to your spiritual life.

8.     Those who take their eyes off Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

Forget people who failed. Remember the One who was without sin and died for your redemption. Keep your eyes on Jesus and receive eternal life.

If you feel like ending it all with your spiritual life, remember suicide comes at the suggestion of Satan.

We are promised that the old serpent will someday be cast out and all his angels with him. “Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and he power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:9-11).

Use that method now. Overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb. If you have accepted Christ, you have Christ’s blood over your sins and protection against Satan’s advances. Remember what God has done for you—and tell somebody else.

Lay hold on eternal life.

--THE PENTECOSTAL EVANGEL, July 31, 1994