Half of Americans over age 50 suffer from hiatal hernias related to obesity.

Q.I was diagnosed with a hiatal hernia. Should I be concerned about this, and how would you treat it? –J.B., Montgomery, Ala.

A.A hiatal hernia is caused by the stomach pushing up, or herniating, through the diaphragm into the thorax. Approximately 50 percent of people over the age of 50 have hiatal hernias. I believe the reason there is such a high incidence of them is because obesity is so rampant–approximately one-third of Americans are overweight.

When I was in residency, I was in obstetrics rotation for two months, during which I delivered about 200 babies. I noticed that after about eight months of pregnancy most women developed belching and heartburn–symptoms commonly associated with a hiatal hernia–due to the uterus pushing against the stomach.

Because obesity is so rampant in the United States many Americans over the age of 50–many of them men–have a protuberant abdomen and, in fact, look like a woman who is eight or nine months pregnant.

Therefore, the most important thing I advise for a patient with a hiatal hernia is to lose weight, especially around the midsection. It also is extremely important to not overeat, since overeating is commonly associated with the symptoms of this condition.

I strongly recommend that you drink 8 ounces of water 30 minutes before eating and two hours after eating. Limit the consumption of fluids to 4 ounces to 8 ounces with meals.

I also recommend that you avoid chocolate, fried foods, caffeine, carbonated beverages, alcohol and cigarettes. These foods, beverages and habits may increase intra-abdominal pressure, or they may actually decrease the tone of the esophageal sphincter–the muscular band of the lower esophagus that separates the esophagus from the stomach.

By following these simple measures, you usually will be able to control the symptoms of a hiatal hernia.

Q. I am 52 years old and suffer from reflux esophagitis. What natural remedies will help me overcome this condition?

–B.R., Sebring, Fla.

reflux is due to hydrochloric acid refluxing up into the esophagus. This strong acid can burn the esophagus and lead to scarring, which eventually may lead to a stricture, ulcerations and bleeding of the esophagus, or to a precancerous condition.

You should first achieve ideal body weight, especially by decreasing weight in the midsection. Overeating is one of the main causes of reflux. I recommend that you eat frequent small meals and include extra fiber in your diet.

Decrease significantly or eliminate from your diet chocolate, coffee and other caffeinated beverages, carbonated beverages, fried foods, and alcohol. This holds true for smoking as well.

Drink 8 ounces of water 30 minutes before each meal and two hours after each meal. Limit fluid consumption to only 4 ounces to 8 ounces with meals. Avoid drinking any beverages four hours before bedtime.

Certain herbal supplements are beneficial in treating reflux esophagitis. The DGL form of licorice has been shown to heal both gastric and peptic ulcers and will help prevent ulcerations and inflammation in the esophagus. Take 380 mg (milligrams) of chewable DGL–approximately two chewable tablets taken 20 minutes before meals and at bedtime.

Drink approximately one liter of aloe vera juice a day, in small doses throughout the day. Freshly juiced cabbage juice is very healing for the gastrointestinal tract.

The herb slippery elm contains a mucilage that soothes the lining of the esophagus and stomach. I recommend 1 tsp (teaspoon) of powder mixed with water and taken four times a day.

If you continue to have symptoms and are following all the measures just stated, please be checked for food allergies or food sensitivities.

In addition, it is absolutely necessary that your condition and progress be monitored by a physician. Donald Colbert, M.D., is a family physician and nutrition expert. He is the author of The Bible Cure for Cancer and other booklets by Siloam Press. Send your questions about health and nutrition to Doctor’s Orders, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, FL 32746.

Christian Women who marry Muslim men often tell nightmarish tales of brutality done in the name of religion.

You’ve seen her–the veiled, dark-robed woman in the checkout line at Wal-Mart or Target. She’s Muslim, you think to yourself. Probably from the Middle East or Asia.

But on closer inspection, you discover that she has blue eyes. A few strands of sandy blond hair peek out from her head veil. Or perhaps she’s black and speaks with a distinctly American accent.

She’s not from the Middle East, you realize, but from your own backyard! In fact, she could be someone you went to high school with.

Why would an American woman marry a Muslim man and convert to his religion and way of life?

The answer might surprise you: She could have been tricked into conversion. And the result might be intense physical and emotional abuse.

In growing numbers, women all over the United States are marrying Muslim men from other countries. Many find themselves trapped in a nightmare of oppression, abuse and control, according to W.L. Cati, founder of Zennah Ministries, an organization that reaches out to women married to Muslims.

“I should not be alive,” says Cati, an American woman who endured an abusive relationship with a Muslim man from the Middle East. After 14 years of horror, she managed to escape. Most women, she says, don’t make it out alive.

“I’m not bashing Muslims,” Cati says. “This is a morality issue. We’re talking human rights. They are allowed to beat their wives and children. They are even allowed to kill. And this is going on right here in the United States.”

Cati was born again in 1972. She loved the Lord and was in a full-time music ministry. But when she met Muhammed, he swept her off her feet.

“He talked to me about his principles [and] family values,” she remembers. “That a wife doesn’t need to work, how a husband should be supportive of his wife. I thought, This is the man of my dreams. He was flamboyant, romantic, and passionate, and I fell head over heels for him.”

Cati’s Christian parents and friends tried to talk her out of it, but her mind was made up.

“The way he explained his religion sounded very much like my own,” she says. “He told me Allah meant ‘God’ in Arabic. He said that they believe in Jesus, heaven, hell, the Ten Commandments, angels, the prophets and the Bible.”

When Muhammed asked Cati to marry him, she said yes, promising to marry in a mosque and raise their children as Muslims.

During the ceremony, Cati repeated phrases in Arabic with no idea of what she was saying. After the ceremony, she read her marriage certificate and was shocked to find that her first name had been changed to a Muslim name and that she had converted to Islam. Her new husband assured her that it was “just on paper,” but suddenly Cati’s knight in shining armor turned into a nightmare.

“The more I submitted to his religion, the more he and his family had rights over me,” she explains. “He controlled everything–money, my decisions and my social life. He usually stayed out all night in strip bars or with other women. The physical abuse started while I was expecting our second child.”

On the outside, Cati’s life looked like a Hollywood fantasy–seven homes, a nine-carat tennis bracelet, and any car she wanted. But inside she was experiencing a living hell. She called the police many times to report beatings and other abuse but never pressed charges.

“My husband always made me feel like it was my fault that he hit me,” she says. “I always ended up saying I was sorry to him.”

In the midst of Cati’s nightmare, her parents continued to pray for her. One day she and her husband rented their vacation home to a ladies’ group.

“I didn’t know they were Christians,” she says. “They came in and started praying over everything. They prayed that I would come back to Jesus.”

When Cati returned to the home, the Lord started speaking to her heart. A neighbor invited her to church, and surprisingly, her husband gave permission to attend as long as she didn’t convert.

“That night at church,” she remembers, “I started crying and couldn’t stop. I can’t remember what was said, but God was talking to my heart.”

Eventually, Cati reconverted to Christianity, making a decision that enraged her husband. Their children became born again and prayed for the salvation of their father. Finally, Muhammed threw them out of the house.

Cati was penniless, but there was “no pain or tears,” she says. “God’s mercy and grace gave us freedom from the Muslim way of life.”

A Disturbing Trend

Sadly, Cati’s story is not unusual. Thousands of American women–including many born-again Christians–marry Muslim men. Most have no idea what Islam teaches about women or the rights it gives to their husbands.

For example, even though there are laws against polygamy in the United States, a Muslim man living here can marry up to four women–even if he already has a wife back in his own country. Marriages here are performed in a mosque, and if the couple does not apply for a marriage license, there is no way of showing the husband is already married.

According to Islam, a husband is allowed to beat his wife and children and to refuse to support his wife for any number of reasons (see related story on page 90). A father can beat a child who does not pray.

Wives do not jointly own property with their husbands; on the contrary, they are considered property themselves, the same as a house or a car. A wife can’t spend her husband’s money or allow anyone to enter his house without his permission.

A wife inherits only a small portion of her husband’s wealth; the rest goes to his parents, brothers, uncles and children, and male children receive double the portion of female children. If a man states, “I divorce you,” three times to his wife’s face, he considers himself legally divorced. His wife is not entitled to any of her husband’s possessions, including his children. There are no visitation rights in Islam.

“A woman under the Islamic system of marriage has no human rights unless we consider that a slave has rights under a slave system,” writes Nawal El Sa’dawi, who is Muslim, in her book, The Hidden Face of Eve. “Marriage, insofar as women are concerned, is just like slavery to the slave, or the chains of serfdom to the serf.”

Not every Muslim man is abusive to his wife and children or follows these religious teachings, but it is important for women to learn about Islam if they are considering marrying a Muslim.

“We need to educate our women on what Islam really is versus what it appears to be,” explains Nadia Maroudi, founder of Women Crossing Cultural Barriers, affiliated with Gül International Ministries. “They sell it as such a peaceful religion–and it’s not.”

One Muslim woman, for example, who is a medical doctor, told Maroudi that three of her patients were American women who had married Muslim men. Each man took his children back to his own country, then returned alone to a different city in the United States to marry another American woman (without divorcing his first wife) and start life all over again.

According to Voice of the Martyrs, an organization dedicated to aiding the persecuted church, the fast-paced growth of Islam in the West is due primarily not to conversion but to “biological growth” through marriage to Western women.

Maroudi was a born-again Christian when she married a Muslim from North Africa. He became a Christian after they were married, yet later divorced her because she could not have children.

“In his culture, in the first year of marriage the women are having babies,” she explains. “Even though he was a believer, he was having a hard time handling the demands of his culture and former religion, so he divorced me.”

While Maroudi was still married, the Lord challenged her to reach out to other women like herself. So she placed an ad in her local paper: “American Women Married to Muslims: Support group offering fun, fellowship and prayer.”

The calls started coming in, and Maroudi’s ministry was under way. “I was shocked at what was going on,” Maroudi says. Although her husband never physically beat her, she has met many women who are regularly abused.

For three years, Maroudi’s group has met regularly to share support and encouragement. Women who attend come from Christian, Jewish and nonreligious backgrounds.

“I strengthen them in who they are and stress they are valued because of Jesus,” Maroudi says. “I show them how to have a personal relationship with Him, [and] tell them what Christianity really believes versus what they’re taught at the mosque. I pray for opportunities to talk about Jesus without bashing their husband’s religion.

“Muslims believe in a god,” she continues, “and when you tell them you’re going to help them become more godly, how can the men dispute that?” In fact, some Muslim men actually refer their wives to Maroudi’s meetings, although others forbid their wives from attending or even talking to her on the phone.

Maroudi wants to start similar ministry support groups in every major city in the United States “so that there’s not one woman who feels like I did,” she says.

Cati’s experiences also prompted her to launch an outreach to women married to Muslims. Zennah Ministries offers counseling, seminars and information services.

“I promote the Lord Jesus and His ways and trust in Him to help make these women whole again,” Cati says. “We have extensive research and firsthand Islamic experience. We can provide truth about Allah, the Qur’an, Muhammed and the last days. We want to help [these women] break the bondage and stand firm in their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord.”

Cati has written a handbook, What to Expect When You Marry a Muslim Man, which provides graphic quotes from the Qur’an and Islamic holy texts–a shocking wake-up call to any woman considering a new life as wife of a Muslim man. “I cut and pasted the information from their own [Islamic] Web sites,” Cati says, “so it is their words, not mine.”

Cati hopes to establish homes to help women who come out of abusive Islamic marriages. “Once you come out of an abusive, cultic situation, you need a place to go,” she says. “There are homes for drug addicts, but nothing for women who’ve been abused this way.”

Adds Maroudi, “If we can get these women saved and on the right road, [they] can affect the whole family. My husband converted because he saw the change in me. I changed from being a pew-sitter to living for Jesus. And my husband saw that.”

Perhaps God is bringing Muslim men to this country for just this reason–so that they can hear the gospel. And perhaps–if women like Cati and Maroudi continue to reach out–they will hear it through their wives. Elisabeth Farrell writes frequently on issues related to Muslims for Charisma and other publications.

By Elisabeth Farrell What the Qur’an Says About Women

You might be surprised by what some Muslims believe about wife-beating and male superiority

The following teachings are from the Qur’an–the Islamic holy book that sets the guidelines for Muslims–and from various Hadiths, which are Islamic holy texts written by scholars to demonstrate the guidelines from the Qur’an in actual practice. Hadiths are considered the will of Allah.

Men are superior to women (Q 2:228, Q 4:34).

Women are deficient in intelligence, gratitude and religion (Hadith Sahih al-Bukhari).

Women are “toys” (Hadith No. 919).

The deception of women is “awesome,” their wickedness is contagious, and bad character and feeble minds are their predominant traits (Hadith Ihy’a ‘Uloum ed-Din).

The witness of two women is equal to the witness of one man (Q 2:282).

When women go outside their homes, it delights the devil (Hadith Ihy’a ‘Uloum ed-Din).

Women must wear hijabs (veils or coverings) to protect not their own chastity but the chastity of men who might see them (Hadith by Mohammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti).

A husband’s rights over his wife are divine (Hadith Mishkat al-Masabih).

It is condescension on the part of the man to spend his life with a woman. She cannot repay this favor, no matter what sacrifice she makes (Hadith by Suyuti).

A husband who fears rebelliousness in his wife must admonish her first. If that does not work, he has the right to desert her sexually. If that does not work, he may beat her (Q 4:34).

A husband may beat his wife mildly if she (1) does not wear “fineries” that he requests, (2) refuses sexual relations without a lawful excuse, (3) refuses to take a bath to clean herself from impurities for prayer, and (4) goes abroad without permission of her husband (footnote to English translation of Hadith Mishkat al-Masabih).

A man is not to be asked why he beat his wife because it is his unquestionable right (Ibn Kaathir, commenting on Q 4:34).

Beatings reform “deviations” in behavior and are gratifying to women. Some women will not “recognize the power of the man whom they when the man conquers them physically” (Sayid Qotb, Fi Zilal al-Qur’an, commenting on Q 4:34).

Men may marry up to four women (some texts say nine; others, an unlimited number) and have sex with an unlimited number of slave girls (Q 4:3).

If a wife takes a child to church, the husband has the right to take the child from her (Hadith al-Fiqh ‘ala al-Mazahib al-Arba’a).

A man has the right to prevent his wife from caring for her child from a previous marriage (Hadith al-Fiqh ‘ala al- Mazahib al-Arba’a).

The husband is required to support his wife “in return for the woman being locked up in the man’s house.” But a husband can refuse support if she goes outside the house without his permission, refuses sexual relations with him, kisses her son in a way that the husband considers lustful, becomes severely ill or is raped by another man (Hadith al-Fiqh ‘ala al-Mazahib al-Arba’a; Encyclopaedia of Islam).

Men in paradise will enjoy sex with perpetually exquisite virgin women and young boys (Q 44:51-54; 55:56-58; 55:72; 56:17).

The majority of women will go to hell (Hadith No. 33 and 301). Love Your Muslim Neighbor

There are a number of things we can do to help Muslims experience the love of Jesus through us. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Remember that Muslims are not our enemies. It would not help the cause of the Prince of Peace to fight a hate-filled situation with more hate. Only love can overcome hate, and Jesus calls us to love Muslims.

The Muslim men described in this article are acting on what they have been taught, and they are doing what their religion says will please Allah. Their sin is no worse than ours, and Jesus shed His blood for them as much as for us.

2. Jesus reached people one by one, and so can you. The next time you see an American Muslim woman in your community, smile at her.

“Most people stare at them,” says Nadia Maroudi, founder of Women Crossing Cultural Barriers. She reminds people, “If she is veiled with nothing but her eyes showing, she’s either converted or being forced to wear one.”

A simple smile can open the door to a conversation with a woman who is probably hurting and desperate for help. For example, when Maroudi recently talked with a Muslim woman at a discount store, she was amazed to learn the woman had become a Muslim because she was looking for a “handbook on life”–and found it in Islam.

Maroudi, of course, told the woman exactly where she could find such a Book. “You don’t have to talk theology with them,” she says. “You’re just there to build bridges and plant seeds.”

3. Make sure your pastor is aware of the growing trend of American women marrying Muslim men. W.L. Cati, founder of Zennah Ministries, and Maroudi both believe the church needs a wake-up call to deal with this problem. Maroudi and her husband, for example, were married by a Baptist minister.

“We need to tell women who are dating Muslim men, ‘Don’t put your feet into the fire unless you plan to become a Muslim,'” Maroudi says. “This is what they will expect. They may not say it up front, but that is what will happen.

“Churches and even [secular] counselors don’t know how to counsel these women,” Maroudi continues. “The typical Christian judges a woman for marrying a Muslim, and that sends the hurt deeper–and she never wants to come back to the church.”

4. Pray for Muslims. Christians who minister in Muslim countries report an astounding openness to the gospel. One worker in Iran, for example, estimates that 80 percent of the population is open to the gospel. Muslims in the United States can be just as open.

Pray that God will draw to Himself men and women who are locked in Islam. Pray God’s blessings on the Muslims in your community.

Regardless of what you think about the politics of the Elian Gonzales custody battle, one thing is certain: The little Cuban boy who was rescued near the shores of South Florida last November isn’t lacking for attention. His relatives in Miami showered him with affection for months, his father and grandmothers came from Cuba to win him back, and sympathetic Americans who watched his painful saga on television are hoping that this cute 6-year-old will be able to forget the trauma he endured from intrusive government agents when he was seized on April 22.

Elian came to this country as a nameless refugee. Now he is a celebrity who will most likely be offered book deals and talk show appearances for the rest of his life. Some Cuban Catholics who believe the child is a Messiah figure will watch closely to see whether he will topple Fidel Castro’s communist regime when he grows up.

Maybe he will. Or maybe he will become a Latin pop star like Ricky Martin. Wh atever happens to Elian, everyone will be watching.

What grieves me is that there are millions of Elians in the world today who have never had their faces broadcast on network television. No one knows their stories. And no one is arguing about who can claim custody of them.

Unlike Elian, they cannot sail to the United States. They don’t have loving relatives in Miami or anywhere else. They don’t know their parents, nor have they ever enjoyed a decent meal or slept in a warm bed. Most of them live in cardboard boxes or on sidewalks. Most of them are sick. Many won’t live past age 12.

In mid-April, when Elian’s case was front-page news every day, I noticed two reports buried on page 18 of The Orlando Sentinel. One story explained that millions of homeless children sleep on the streets in Pakistan, where kids as young as 7 make 50 cents a day working in small shops to help feed their siblings. That nation’s horrendous problem with street children was underscored a few months ago when a deranged man admitted to poisoning more than 100 homeless kids. To hide his deeds he dissolved their bodies in acid.

Another story told of the problem of restaveks, or discarded children, in Haiti. Humanitarian groups only now are realizing the severity of the problem of child slavery in that country, where an estimated 300,000 unwanted boys and girls are used as “human mules” and as sex slaves after they have been given to wealthier families by their poor parents.

Their faces have never been aired on the evening news. But Charisma is giving them a chance to speak to you this month. I know their stories aren’t as romantic or as politically charged as Elian’s. But they need us to fight as aggressively as Elian’s family did–until these helpless kids can find love, safety and a chance to hear that Jesus cares.

My wife and I are praying about adopting one of these orphans, even though we don’t have enough room in our house. After you read Andy Butcher’s excellent report, “Listen to the Children Crying” (page 50), please take a long look at the young faces in this article. Then ask the Lord how you can show His compassion to the most vulnerable kids on the planet. By J. Lee Grady

God gave Heidi Baker a vision to reach forgotten children in Mozambique. Today he and her husband, Rolland, care for more than 600 orphans.

For the resilient Heidi Baker, being in ministry is all about finding and restoring treasures buried beneath heaps of hardships. It is a quest that has led this American missionary and her husband, Rolland, to Mozambique, one of the most destitute countries on earth, and placed them square in the middle of a life-or-death struggle to rescue unwanted children.

“My life is very simple,” Heidi Baker says. “I just pick up abandoned, dying children. I love the garbage dump. I hang out there and go to the alleys and back roads; and I see who’s dying, abused and alone, and I say: ‘Come, live with me.'”

Baker determinedly goes about her work amid the horrors of extreme poverty and the apathies of civil corruption that create an infrastructure of misery for undesired children in the southeast African country. But it’s the perfect place of ministry for the petite blonde woman who is both a power-filled Pentecostal and a London-educated student of theology. She’s been helping outcasts in society since her teens, when God called her to the mission field.

That doesn’t mean life in Mozambique has been easy for the 40-year-old missionary. It has tested her natural tenacity to defend the poor like never before. It has more than once brought her close to death from disease and violence. And since 1995, when she and Rolland, 52, first arrived in Mozambique to take over a horribly dilapidated government orphanage, it has tested their calling.

Yet the result has been that their once-struggling ministry has become a virtual haven for children trapped in squalor or fleeing from death. This has occurred in part because of a pair of powerful encounters with God at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF) in the late 1990s.

In the midst of it all, Heidi’s primary reason for doing what she does remains simple–and crystal clear with purpose.

“All I know is I’ve been in God’s presence, and I’ve seen His face,” she says. “And if you’ve seen His face–oh, oh, you’re changed.”

The Bakers’ ministry–Iris Ministries–today operates 200 churches across Mozambique. Most astounding is the fact that 197 of those churches were born in just 1-1/2 years. The Bakers know that God has given them the growth–since their hardest efforts at ministry had produced only three churches in the previous 17 years. For Heidi, the exponential growth represents the fulfillment of a promise God made to her at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship in 1997.

“[In Toronto] I was completely cooked, slammed and smushed–all of the things that look weird,” Heidi told Charisma. “I felt powerful electricity all over my body. I could hardly stand the heat. I’m hearing God say, ‘Hundreds of churches,’ and I’m laughing hysterically. It’s the funniest thing I ever heard. It took us 17 years to plant three churches, and two of them weren’t doing that well.”

Today the Bakers’ children’s center near the capital city of Maputo is responsible for the daily care of more than 600 children–and they take in more children almost every day. Iris Ministries also has started a Bible school for national pastors and older teen-agers now preparing for the ministry.

Says Heidi: “Pastor Rego, who recently finished our school of ministry, just raised a lady from the dead in Jesus’ name. He prayed three days over her corpse without eating or drinking water. That’s tenacity! The whole village got saved.”

“The dead have been raised.” Rolland told Charisma. “Blind eyes have seen, a paralyzed pastor healed, a dumb boy is speaking, epileptics and demoniacs have been restored.”

One 7-year-old boy Heidi found had lived in a cardboard box for three years and had no mother or father. According to Heidi, the apprehensive child was taken up in a vision onto the shoulders of two angels and bounced from one to the other as they danced and sang an African Christian song.

Heidi says the child later reported that the angels took him to Jesus who told him: “Son, I want you to live a pure and holy life. Don’t fill it up with drugs and alcohol. I want you to go back and tell everyone I’m coming soon.”

Heidi has been motivated to minister to the poor and forgotten since age 16 when she was saved and called to the mission field while working on an American Indian reservation. Shortly after, she heard the Lord in a vision telling her to minister in Africa, Asia and England.

She returned to her home in California where she met Rolland Baker in a small charismatic church. Rolland is a third-gener ation missionary and grandson of the late H.A. Baker who authored Visions Beyond the Veil, an account of an orphanage revival in China.

After realizing they were united in their calling to see revival among the poor, Rolland and Heidi were married six months later, in 1980. By the mid-1990s Heidi had received a doctorate in systematic theology from King’s College, University of London, and the couple had ministered in poverty-stricken situations in Asia and pio neered a church for street-sleepers in London.

The ministry the Bakers now enjoy in Mozambique hardly seems like the same one they started with when they first arrived in the country in 1995. At that time, their new leadership at the orphanage put an end to the corruption and thievery of the center’s former directors, an action that quickly brought accusations against them from corrupt officials and spawned governmental rules against prayer and worship. Within a year, Heidi and Rolland were ready to call it quits in Mozambique, despite the fact that they were 17-year veterans of the mission field.

But the couple’s two visits to Toronto quickly changed all of that.

“We were ready to give up before we went to Toronto,” Heidi says. “Then God blasted us, and He showed us His heart and His face and His burning eyes of love.”

It was in 1996, during her first meeting at TACF, that Heidi says she saw the face of Jesus in a vision. The encounter immediately started to transform her life.

Heidi was drawn to the Toronto Blessing revival at TACF that year because of the change she saw in Rolland when he returned from several weeks of meetings there.

“We worked on the mission field for 18 years together, and we had our ups and downs,” Heidi says, “but I never felt so loved by him as when he came home from Toronto.”

Heidi had been undergoing treatment for pneumonia, and in August 1996 she checked herself out of the hospital and left with Rolland for Toronto. Her first experience at TACF began with the immediate healing of her pneumonia and quickly became what Heidi describes as a time of total self-death and surrender to Christ.

As she lay under the power of God, Heidi says that she saw Jesus’ face and broken body and looked into His eyes, which she described as “fiery eyes of love.” It was an experience that created an awareness in her of her own need for brokenness.

“For God to pick you up and run with you, you’ve got to totally lay down,” she says. “When you’re nothing, nothing’s impossible.”

Suddenly in her vision, Heidi was surrounded by thousands of children. Jesus handed her a piece of His own broken body, and it turned into bread in her hands.

“Give it to the children to eat,” He told her, and every child ate.

Then He gave her a cup filled with the blood and water from His side. She drank first, then gave it to all the children.

Then Jesus spoke to her the words that have defined her ministry since that time: “Because I died, there will always be enough.”

After the encounter in Toronto, Heidi and Rolland returned to Mozambique–which statistically sits at the bottom of the United Nations’ list of highly indebted nations. Heidi began seeking more and more children from the garbage dumps and streets of Maputo. Heidi was convinced that with Jesus there would always be enough to feed and care for them.

The Bakers met an immediate test of faith when the largest donor to their ministry suddenly stopped supporting them because of the couple’s involvement in the Toronto revival. It meant that they lost most of the money needed for food and housing for the children. The day the support ended, Heidi went out to the garbage dumps and found seven more children.

Circumstances quickly worsened for the Bakers.

Expecting signs and wonders when they returned to Mozambique, Heidi and Rolland were shocked when a faction in the city government suddenly evicted them and their 320 children from the orphanage. The former building directors had successfully conspired to regain control of the dilapidated center that Rolland and Heidi had worked to rebuild. Government workers beat the children for worshiping God, and the Bakers soon found out that members of the faction had purchased–for $20–an assassination contract on Heidi’s life.

The orphaned children pleaded with the Bakers, telling them they would camp with them anywhere–in the woods, on the beach or any other place–rather than be denied the opportunity to worship Jesus. The troop of orphans followed Rolland and Heidi, walking barefoot for miles into town, where the Bakers rented a small office.

“I just clung to the vision of Jesus’ loving eyes and remembered that He said there would always be enough,” Heidi says.

After being displaced from the orphanage, the Bakers experienced a year of nomadic-style wanderings in 1997 during which they continually were trying to feed and shelter hundreds of orphans. That year, the mayor of the nearby town of Matola gave the Bakers land, and they housed the children in army tents.

In January 1998 the Bakers made a second visit to Toronto for a conference at the TACF that featured Randy Clark, the catalyst of revival in the early days of the Toronto Blessing. Clark preached on dying to self and the holy fire of God. After the preaching, Heidi experienced the fire of God.

“I felt I was literally going to burn up and die,” Heidi says. “Then I heard the Lord say: ‘Good, I want you dead!'”

Clark prophesied that there would be an apostolic anointing over Heidi, declaring she would see the dead raised, the blind healed, miracles performed and many churches started in Mozambique. Clark then prophesied that God was going to give her the nation of Mozambique.

Heidi says she was on the floor under the power of God all day for seven days during the conference, unable to move. The presence of God was so strong, she says, she had to be carried to her hotel room each night and even needed help getting drinks of water.

During her seven days at TACF, she says, the Lord showed her the importance of the body of Christ and told her, “You can do nothing without Me, and nothing without My body.”

She then had a vision of Jesus walking with the children over the smoldering, stinking garbage heaps in Mozambique, where they scavenge for food. He handed out royal robes to each one and invited them to His marriage feast. Jesus even brought the children forward to sit with Him at the head table.

After all the holy fire, the visions and the prophecies in Toronto, the Bakers packed up and returned again to Mozambique, expecting that they would begin a new, perhaps even less difficult, work for God. Instead, they returned only to face even deeper trials and testings.

“After Toronto, it all fell apart,” Heidi says. “We lost so much support. We lost all our buildings, beds, trucks and equipment. We lost our health! The trials kept getting hotter, but we didn’t leave.”

Upon their return to Mozambique, Heidi was hospitalized three times for near-fatal blood poisoning and almost was killed during a hijacking attempt. Rolland contracted severe malaria.

Then Heidi started collapsing without warning–falling unexpectedly, for no apparent reason. In August 1998 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and told it was progressing rapidly. Doctors forewarned her that she may end up in a wheelchair.

Heidi cried out to God.

“God, You promised signs and wonders and hundreds of churches,” she said. “Now what? I don’t understand what’s going on, God, but I love You. I trust You.”

After some deep soul-searching, Heidi decided that she would return to Mozambique and preach from a wheelchair if necessary, and that she would not let the devil thwart her. Back in Africa, she preached–and even baptized children who were being healed and set free in the baptismal tank while she was struggling to stay on her feet.

“Every time she fell, the children would gather around and pray ceaselessly,” Rolland told Charisma. “They simply would not give up.”

The children’s prayers, combined with Heidi’s determination to worship God in spite of her illness, brought healing.

“God told me to rejoice in tribulation, rejoice in suffering and worship Him,” Heidi says. “He told me not to back down in any area but keep walking. Day by day I obeyed until today every symptom is gone–and I dance before my God!”

The Bakers faced a new set of challenges in February after massive flooding occurred in Mozambique. High winds and rain storms ripped their large church tent and destroyed their school building. Their trucks now are falling apart from extreme use, and new construction for churches and children’s centers are needed.

Due to the flooding, parasites now afflict many of the children’s feet, and the danger of cholera and malaria has increased. “Medical help is simply not available at all for most people,” Rolland says–a fact that the Bakers hope to remedy somewhat by building their own clinic and attracting medical personnel to staff it.

Despite these adversities, Jesus is revealing Himself to the young treasures Heidi and her staff have been gathering. The children are fed, clothed and trained.

Besides attending evening meetings, the youngest children rise early in the morning to gather in makeshift shelters where the dirt flies as they dance and sing their African songs of praise to Jesus. Heidi adds with a laugh that in Mozambique people overcome by the Holy Spirit don’t do “carpet time” but “dirt time” as the Holy Spirit evaporates for many of the kids the fear and trauma they have experienced.

One 7-year-old boy named Armando, whose mother is a prostitute and alcoholic, fell prostrate in the sand during a meeting in Mozambique. He cried and shook in intercession over the country’s sins for two hours. Three hours after the meeting was over, Armando was carried to his bed weeping.

The next morning the boy’s face was beaming when he told Heidi: “I saw Jesus! Jesus said, ‘All who come to Me, I will forgive.'”

“It changed his life,” Heidi says. “He was called to the ministry at his tender age.”

Heidi says that everything God told her during her experiences in Toronto is coming to pass.

“There’s nothing God cannot do,” she says. “But I tell you, it has cost us everything. God’s looking for perseverance–not one-night stands where He blesses and shakes you, and then you go out and commit adultery with the world.”

It’s that kind of perseverance that has kept Heidi and Rolland Baker in the thick of a life-or-death struggle to rescue as many of Africa’s unwanted children as they can. C. Hope Flinchbaugh is a free-lance writer and a staff writer for Christian Freedom International, a human-rights organization that helps persecuted Christians. She and her husband, Scott, and their three children live in York, Pennsylvania.

PHOTOS BY ROLLAND BAKER/IRIS MINISTRIES

Persistent Love

Heidi Baker learned about compassion while ministering to the homeless in London.

In 1991, 32-year-old Heidi Baker went to King’s College in London to study for her doctorate in systematic theology. After doing her research each day, Heidi chose to spend her evenings ministering to the homeless on the streets of London.

Two street people named Philip and Glenda taught Heidi more Bible theology than her doctoral program ever could.

Burdened for the poor and destitute, Heidi carried food to the homeless and prayed for them during her stay in London. Although Philip occasionally accepted the donations of food, he usually told Heidi to “go to hell” and threw the food on the street.

Heidi persistently returned with her food and prayer offerings, only to have Philip respond each time in anger. Most of the time he got in Heidi’s face and screamed, “Go to hell!” and sometimes spit on her.

“Jesus said: ‘Keep loving him, keep loving him. Whatever you do to the least of these you do to Me,'” Heidi says. “So I kept on trying every day I saw him, about five days a week.”

One night Heidi ministered to a lesbian named Glenda, again to find that the gospel was not welcomed. Glenda began to beat Heidi. Waving a bottle in Heidi’s face, she threatened, “I’m going to slash your face from ear to ear with this.”

Philip watched while Glenda banged Heidi’s head against a wall. After about 20 minutes, Philip suddenly jumped up and said: “I’m going to call the police! She can’t keep beating you up.”

Heidi answered: “No, Philip, don’t call the police! Jesus loves her and He wants to save her.”

Philip watched the beating go on for almost 20 more minutes before he finally pulled Glenda off. He held on to Heidi, protecting her. Glenda relinquished and walked away, still uttering threats to Heidi.

Philip was incredulous.

“You’ve told me about the love of Jesus for two years,” he told Heidi, “but now I’ve seen His love, and I want to know Him.”

Philip fell on his knees on the sidewalk, weeping in repentance, and gave his heart to the Lord. One week later, Glenda came to Heidi’s house with roses and asked Heidi to forgive her for the beating. Glenda then gave her life to the Lord.

Philip and Glenda today live in their own apartments in London. Philip sells newspapers, and Glenda works at shelters for the homeless. Both are in love with Jesus.

“Jesus just said pour out grace and mercy to the unlovely and see His face in them. God wants us to show His unlimited grace and mercy for the poor, the outcast, the lonely, the broken. If we’ll live in that grace and mercy, God’s love will meet us every time.”

Loving the Helpless Caring for children nobody wants is a privilege for Heidi Baker. Loving the Helpless
Caring for children nobody wants is a privledge for Heidi Baker

Mozambique missionary Heidi Baker and her friend Rachel found Beatrice wandering on a dirt road near the capital city of Maputo. Flies were matted to the little girl’s blood-shot eyes and deformed face. Her bloated stomach was a sign that it had filled with worms, and more worms twisted through her toes.

Beatrice looked to be about 10, but she didn’t know how old she was. Her mother was dead, and her father was a penniless alcoholic who lived in a dilapidated hut. The little girl had been raped and beaten many times and was wandering through the countryside, trying to survive.

“When I saw Beatrice I felt this overwhelming love for her,” Heidi says. “I just saw Jesus when I looked in her eyes. I remembered [that He said]: ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of these you do it unto Me.'”

Heidi did the unthinkable. She opened her arms and held the infested little body and told Beatrice that she loved her and that Jesus loved her. Heidi contracted scabies and lice from holding Beatrice, but she has no regrets.

“She needed to be touched and loved and hugged,” Heidi says. “She met the Lord the first day. She cried and was so thrilled to know that Jesus loved her, we loved her, and she wouldn’t have to be on the streets or raped anymore.”

Back in Maputo, where Heidi and Rolland Baker run an orphanage, none of the kids would touch Beatrice. Heidi’s little girl, Christy, told her mom that Jesus wanted Christy to give Beatrice her best dress.

Heidi washed Beatrice, clothed her with Christy’s dress, and Rachel took her to the hospital. Doctors predicted that she wouldn’t live, but Beatrice defied the odds and left the hospital healed several weeks later.

Back at the orphanage, Beatrice met another abandoned and severely malnourished child, Constancia, who had been left on the stairs of the orphanage bakery. Doctors guessed Constancia was about 5.

“Constancia was in a terrible state,” Heidi says. “She didn’t speak and couldn’t communicate.

“The Lord told me to just chase her. I’d chase her, and she’d let me catch her. I saw the Lord’s heart, that He wanted to chase her with His love and hold her in His arms. I’d chase her and hold her until she fell asleep in my arms.”

Beatrice understood what it meant to be untouchable and immediately took to Constancia, loving and nurturing her. Still, Constancia would never speak or smile.

One day Heidi was surprised to see Constancia standing in line with 120 other people waiting to be baptized. Heidi hesitated to baptize a girl who couldn’t speak and might not understand what baptism meant.

She asked Constancia: “Do you really know what you are doing? Is God speaking to your heart?” Constancia nodded.

“I just picked up this frail, broken, beaten little girl, and I baptized her,” Heidi says. “When she came up from the water, she smiled for the first time in her life.”

Constancia received many deliverances when she was baptized. The same day, she spoke whole sentences and even asked to lead the choir. Heidi later found out that Constancia had been mute since she saw her parents brutally murdered.

Says Heidi: “You know what? Both girls say they want to be missionaries!”

Rescuing Orphans from Mozambique’s Floods
In the wake of devastating national floods, Iris Ministries is helping pick up the of broken lives.

Citizens of Mozambique experienced devastating floods in February, when three-fourths of the country’s normal annual rainfall came in three days. News broadcasts worldwide showed sometimes crowds of people awaiting rescue from rooftops or clinging desperately to trees to escape the rush of deadly waters below them. Many of those rescued were left homeless and were transitioned into temporary quarters in schools, tents and abandoned factories.

In the capital city of Maputo, rushing currents threatened the work of Rolland and Heidi Baker’s Iris Ministries, which consists of 30 village pastors, 600 orphans and 100 staff members. The floods carved and eroded the ministry land; destroyed its school, roads and power lines; rose dangerously close to the windows of its church building; and surged onto the orphanage property.

Facing shortages and crowding, the Bakers provided bread and relief aid for 12,000 people in various refugee camps. Despite the disease, insects, hunger and raw sewage floating in the surrounding flood waters, hundreds of people gave their lives to the Lord daily.

“We are able to bring spiritual and physical bread to the camps each day,” Heidi says. “Several of our Mozambican pastors come with us, and we are blessed to be able to preach, sing and pray for the sick. Thousands of loaves of fresh bread fill our trucks and are eagerly received by the refugees. They are most eager for prayer.”

After the flooding in February, disaster struck again in March in Chokwe and villages near the Gaza region, where residents had less than 10 minutes of warning before the Limpopo River cascaded over the town.

In an effort to look for flood orphans and bring them back to the ministry center, Heidi and Dr. John Colby flew by helicopter to Chibuto, the airfield nearest the worst flooding of the Limpopo River. Another cyclone slammed the area after their arrival, grounding all aircraft and stranding Baker and Colby with everyone else in the camp.

“Heidi began to minister to the weak, sick, starving people huddling under tarps and other bits of shelter,” Rolland says. “She began speaking in their local tribal dialect, Changaan, and they immediately perked up with smiles.”

About 2,000 people came to Jesus. Soon the camp was singing and dancing, and many sobbed on their faces for their sins and the sins of the nation.

“The people in the camps know as never before that Jesus is their only hope–not communism, democracy, business, foreign aid, modernity or their own hard work,” Rolland says. “The Lord wants that rarest of human emotions–love for Him–to sweep over a land bereft of all else. Starving, cold, sick, miserable refugees ignore the bread we bring and surge toward us for Bibles, to hear preaching and to receive prayer.”

Children who just lost their parents in the flood have been taken in by the Bakers, joining other orphans gathered previously from the garbage dumps and the streets of Maputo. The sound of singing and shouting from hundreds of children in a crowded dining room carry far through the night air just outside of Maputo.

Water and mud are tracked everywhere, insects crawl in the kids’ hair, and staff and children alike are soaked with perspiration in the damp humidity. The power goes off and, against the roar of a generator, the children continue to dance to the Lord.

As the Bakers continue to take in more children almost every day, these worship services are the highlight of their lives, giving everyone courage, comfort and much needed hope.

Says Rolland: “Never have we seen or heard of such an opportunity to be ‘fishers of men.’ Our aim is the Lord–and for revival without measure.”

Rescuing Orphans from Mozambique’s Floods In the wake of devastating national floods, Iris Ministries is helping pick up the pieces of broken lives.

The Bakers’ ministry provides relief aid for 12,000 Mozambican flood victims confined to refugee camps.

Iris Ministries needs nonperishable bulk-food, clothing, first-aid supplies, household goods, seeds and farming tools to help in the long process of caring for the sick and starving while Mozambique rebuilds. Packages sent to the following address will reach the Bakers in Mozambique: Iris Ministries Inc., P.O. Box 20017, West Acres 1211, Nelspruit, South Africa.

Shortly after Heidi and Dr. John Colby arrived near the flooded Limpopo River to help victims, a second cyclone slammed the area.

Monetary support for Heidi and Rolland Baker’s work in Mozambique may be sent to Iris Ministries Inc., 1900 Via Sage, San Clemente, CA 92673; or call (213) 330-0293.

Silicon Valley may be creating one of the most humanly distorted communities in recent U.S. history.

Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, and the images come thick and fast: giant software and technology corporations with names like Sun Microsystems, Oracle or Cisco Systems; techno-geeks announcing breakthroughs in digital discoveries; 20-something entrepreneurs roaring from meeting to meeting in their Jaguars and Ferraris.

There is an element of truth in these images of this pleasant California community that is host to Stanford University, the intellectual hothouse for many of the original Silicon Valley Internet geniuses. But it is the commercial whirlwind that has funneled through the 30-mile-long valley since the start of the digital revolution a few years ago that ought to be the lasting image.

That’s because Silicon Valley’s instant-wealth frenzy may be creating one of the most humanly distorted communities in recent American history.

“My biggest struggle is that around me are people of the same age who are becoming millionaires every day,” says Wheaton College-educated David Friedman, just 26, co-founder of a dot-com startup called . “The challenge in Silicon Valley is to be successful, yet faithful.”

It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Almost all really high-paying jobs require arduous working hours and frequent interruptions of leisure and family time, but success in Silicon Valley appears to demand workaholism of an extreme nature. Twelve-hour work days at most dot-com startups are virtually required if you are going to be part of the team. There also is a perverse one-upmanship in the degree of professional pain entrepreneurs inflict on their lives.

“One of the badges of honor at Silicon Valley,” says Friedman–who wisely at this stage is not married–“is to attend business meetings that begin at 12:30 at night.”

The ever-beckoning holy grail behind such devotion is that the dot-com enterprise may suddenly be valued as a mega-million dollar corporation by offering its shares to the public through an IPO (initial public offering), making speculative investors think they may have discovered the next Microsoft.

Even for Christians in high corporate positions here, the stress can seem unbearable. One executive explained that when he worked at a well-known Silicon Valley corporation, new executives were sized up by whether they would “drink the Kool-Aid.”

The cynical meaning: Would they drink poison, if necessary, if the company required it, just as more than 900 Americans did in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978 when ordered to commit suicide by their cult leader, the Rev. Jim Jones?

“There is a sense here that you either go with the flow [of frenzied working hours] or you will be neutralized by the competition,” comments Rev. Mark Lauterbach, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of nearby Los Altos.

Yet the Bible has an enormous amount to say about money: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” says Paul with brutal frankness in 1 Timothy 6:10, adding, “Some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (NKJV).

In Silicon Valley, those griefs have become apparent to pastors called in to counsel couples whose marriages are breaking up or whose children have concluded that absentee parenting is the norm.

“These are lonely people,” Lauterbach says. “They live very unbalanced lives.”

To redress that balance, Lauterbach likes to remind his congregation that God’s perspective on time and work is quite different from Silicon Valley’s. “I think one of the key issues is telling people that God is not accommodating Himself to the pace of the Digital Age. People need to be reminded that relationships and ministry cannot be hurried.”

Or bought. Here, where the measure of human worth can focus on wealth or wealth-creating skills, Lauterbach reminds his congregation: “Christianity is not about what we are doing but what grace has done for are far greater in your significance and dignity than you realize.”

God has known this since before IPOs were invented. Pray that Silicon Valley discovers it.

Divorce doesn’t disqualify you from serving God. There is hope for those whose marriages have failed.

Slowly twisting the barstool back and forth, almost in rhythm to the jazz music playing softly in the background, Shelly Parker sipped an iced mocha at her favorite Starbucks. Staring out the plate glass window facing the busy avenue, she was the picture of human solitaire.

Actually, she did have places to go and important things to do, but for the last 20 minutes she just couldn’t remember what they were. Her mind was preoccupied, surveying the vast mental mountains inside her head.

Mountains are supposed to be beautiful. Hers, however, were not.

Shelly Parker told her supervisor a small lie that morning so she could get to work later than usual. It was around 10:30 a.m., and the rain was still falling. It was the third straight year rain had fallen on the date her divorce was finalized. Fitting for such an anniversary.

Nearing the end of her drink, Shelly put her problems into three basic categories. First, how could she ever face God after failing Him like this? At 41, she was afraid of death and of what God might have to say to her.

Next, she desperately needed the friends from her former church. But she knew reconnecting was impossible.

And finally, how much longer could she hold on at work feeling so physically ill from the inner anxieties associated with her divorce? Each day, long before her morning makeup was in place, the aching details of her failed marriage always found their way back into her mind.

Three years hadn’t healed anything. It’s not like she hadn’t tried. She had spent the last six months of her marriage and the first six months after the breakup trying to find two pastors who would say the same thing about divorce. It made a difficult situation all the more confusing.

So Shelly scheduled an appointment with a preacher from a small church, hoping to find compassion and guidance. But he ended up having the warmth of a Marine drill-instructor, literally hollering his doctrine at her from across his desk.

Another pastor in the same town was so intimidated he began physically twitching when she asked a few sincere questions about divorce and the Bible. He mumbled on and on about his huge church mortgage and about not offending anyone.

Confused about truth, mad at the devil and scared of God, Shelly Parker gave up. The one place she thought she could run to–the church–apparently thought her problem was too big for God to handle.

Sally’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted as she reached the bottom of her mocha. Forcing herself off the barstool, she exited the coffee shop and plodded onward.

Hindrances to Healing

Reaching people like Shelly Parker seems to be a lost art in the church. And at the root of the challenge are two words that impede Jesus from touching the divorced through the hands of His church: bitterness and legalism.

Although there are those in the “Christian divorce culture” who obstruct their healing by walking in resentment toward their past, restoration is often impeded by churches and ministry leaders who are bound by legalistic attitudes.

Marriage, even by the apostle Paul’s definition, is a “mystery.” The word Paul uses in Ephesians 5:32 is musterion, which means “shut the mouth.” What Paul is saying is that even for those who accept the framework of “leave, cleave and become one flesh” as the formula for a successful marriage, the success of that union is still mysterious, not scientific.

It’s a secret so deep that no one is able to “open his mouth” and sufficiently explain how it really succeeds. When you take that mysterious union and cast it into the muddy waters of a painful divorce process, the issue becomes even more complex. And discerning the guilty from the innocent, or the responsible from the restorable, becomes an almost impossible task.

John the Baptist tragically encountered the high-powered emotions that a divorce can generate. Dressed in animal skins more fit for the wild than for the religious, his brazen attitude against sin led to his undoing.

Coming face to face with the blade of Herod’s sword, John never made it out of his 30s. And the reason he lost his head was because he stuck his nose where someone thought it shouldn’t be.

King Herod had conveniently taken his brother’s wife as his own. There was no debating this remarriage; it was an unlawful union under any theological banner. Herod tossed John in prison because he didn’t appreciate the prophet’s righteous advice.

Soon Herodias, the cunning new bride of Herod, asked her daughter to dance before the king. When Herodias knew Herod had been seduced by her charm, she asked her new stepfather for a special favor.

Having been instructed by her mother to do so, the daughter asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. The bitterness of one generation had reinvented itself through the next. Herod shamelessly agreed, and John’s life was quickly ended–all because he spoke out against an unholy marriage union.

Many preachers today feel caught in the same trap. They are afraid to speak the truth on certain tough issues, such as divorce, because they fear “losing their head.” But the freedom suffering people cry out for is found in the very thing many preachers are afraid to say.

The complications of a divorce will test our beliefs about God and people. It will tug at the loyalties of strong friendships. It will turn family conversations tense. And all along the way tiny little people bearing the family name watch to see how Mommy, Daddy and the church fix everything.

The true message of Christ is neither legalistic nor judgmental–it is always the invitation to something better. It’s high time the church started giving those reeling from divorce the same invitation. It’s time we recognize their pain.

If you are divorced, you might be asking yourself right now: “How could God hate divorce but still love me? I’m forever a divorced person. I’m identified on the forms I fill out by the very thing God despises.”

Yet all you’ve been given by the church are trite, incomplete answers. You’ve been told many times that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. And you know that simple answer doesn’t change how you feel.

Your theology feels tired and worn out. The inner debates have lost their purpose. You used to fight for your classification within the divorce culture: “I was the one who tried to make it work; really I did!”

Now even that argument doesn’t matter. You’ve accepted the “Scarlet D” around your neck as a way of life.

Divorce is like any other sin in that it stems from the same cause and needs the same remedy. But divorce is unlike other sins in that it breeds a stronger reaction from others because of two inescapable issues.

First, divorce involves other people, often children. Second, divorce weakens the primary illustration in Scripture of Christ and His love relationship with His church.

I know that for many, the very mention of “sin” and “divorce” in the same sentence brings a sense of great condemnation. Consequently, many ministries, in an attempt to be compassionate toward the divorced, minister healing at the emotional level alone.

Clearly, not everyone who is divorced has committed a great sin before God. There are people everywhere who get stuck paying the awful price tag for the sinful choices of someone else. But unquestionably, many are living at the opposite end of that spectrum, trying to live an outwardly Christian life under the dreadful weight of unconfessed sin.

If that is you, please hear the heart of God: He is able to forgive you no matter what you’ve chosen to do, even in the deep recesses of your heart, in that place where only you and God know what is true. But you need to turn to Him.

Aaron at Sinai. David at Jerusalem. Samson at Gaza. Saul at Damascus. All were individuals who were forgiven of great sin by an even greater God.

Maybe the devil has persuaded you, as he has so many, that God’s forgiveness is limited, or that your life is so far off course it’s hopeless. Those condemning thoughts are not from the Holy Spirit–they come straight from hell.

Jesus can give you freedom from the cycle of despair. And He can restore you–even after divorce.

The Road to Restoration

If you’ve gone through an ugly divorce and are having difficulty making sense of it all, here are three key principles–they’re actually guarantees from God–that can set you on the road to restoration.

First, God’s ear is as big as His heart.

I’m sure you remember Joshua. He was the commander who took leadership of Israel after the death of Moses. He too faced a defining moment of compassion: Would God’s mercy reach all the way to his need?

After entering the Promised Land, Joshua experienced a horrible defeat at the hands of a small nation called Ai. The source of defeat was a deceitful man among the Israelites named Achan. When Achan was removed, Joshua moved the Israelites forward.

Wearied from the extra battles, Joshua looked up only to see another nation, Gibeon, waiting to fight him. It was a nation God wanted him to destroy.

But Joshua was deceived by their scheme of flattery. Their sweet words trapped him, and he signed a prayerless peace accord with them.

Soon after the agreement was signed, the Gibeonites were attacked and engaged in a fierce conflict. They quickly called on their new ally. Obligated to garner his troops, Joshua marched throughout the night to fight a battle that God had never wanted him to fight in the first place.

Miles off course, engaged in a war he never should have been fighting, Joshua pleaded for God’s help. And from that place of miserable distraction, miles from the course God had originally planned, his cry was heard. In response, the mercy of the Lord stopped the sun for an entire day (see Joshua 9-10).

God’s grace transcended the laws of the universe. He did whatever it took to put Joshua’s life back on track.

Remind the devil of this the next time he tells you that you’re too far from God for Him to hear your cry. Remember God’s mercy in those moments when you say, “How did I ever get so far off course?” or “I’m so entangled and so far removed from the initial plan God had for my life.”

Going through a divorce can make a person feel exactly this way. But look heavenward in the morning at the sun, and remember the day God made it stand still on behalf of a desperate man named Joshua. God can hear the cry of the humble from any location on earth. Even if you feel like you’re only one inch from hell.

Second, God can help you forget what He has forgiven.

Paul sums up his “spiritual freedom plan” in one simple statement: You have to forget what God has forgiven. “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead” (Phil. 3:13, NKJV).

The word “forget” means “to lose by neglect.” Failures such as divorce will always be a part of public history and personal memory. So how does our painful past lose its potency? Only through neglect.

I’m not advocating that you forsake the responsibilities that often follow a divorce. What you neglect is reliving all the wounds and words of yesterday.

Dissecting past events, playing to a new jury, revisiting questions that may never have answers. These are the disciplines of a bitter soul. If you give place to them, your dark yesterdays will have a second chance at life.

Paul is saying that painful memories will live beyond their necessary life span when sustained by unhealthy thought patterns. But Jesus can empower you so that your thoughts don’t trap you.

We cannot speak one thing while thinking another. Our mental dwelling places are directly influenced by the substance of our confession. Thoughts feed words, and words feed thoughts.

When King Saul failed, Samuel, who had anointed Saul as king, took it extremely hard and personally. The Lord finally had to shake Samuel free from the bondages of grief. “How long will you morn for Saul?…Fill your horn with oil, and go [anoint David king of Israel]” (1 Sam. 16:1).

In other words, the Lord was saying to Samuel: “It’s over. Get over it. We all had dreams for the success of this plan. We all lost something. But the sun is rising. My mercy is calling. Get up and move on.”

Third, God will show you how to live in confidence that “all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28).

Imagine for a moment that you are looking at a beautiful painting of an outdoor landscape. In your mind’s eye, find four stones among the landscape. Now take a moment and remove everything else from the canvas except those four stones.

Before you now is a white canvas with four disconnected stones. Those four stones represent the major failures of your life. A painting like that would be valueless in the eyes of anyone but you.

The Word of God promises that when we love God, He will cause “all things to work together for good.” Loving God releases the Master painter to begin His artwork of grace with our lives. Jesus begins to paint between those stones. He begins painting the canvas with substance, meaning and beauty.

But the greatest miracle of all is how God chooses, in His mercy, to integrate the original stones from our past into the current picture of our lives. He covers our sin and mistakes, but incorporates our history into His plan. Why? Because He is using “all things.”

Given time, God will change everything about your life. Given time, Jesus will turn your life into a work of art for the world to see. No longer will you feel like four discounted stones from a hurtful past. You will realize you have become a beautiful work of grace.

The stones will always be there. History remains. But Jesus can take those painful memories and incorporate them into something new and valued.

He will use the painful things. The broken things. Yes, even the “divorce” things. God includes “all things” in His portraits of grace. But the key is love–both God’s toward you and yours toward Him.

Legalism will be with us until heaven comes. But your victory is not dependent on a perfect church–only on a perfect Christ who is in the process of perfecting His church.

If you’ve been stung by legalistic attitudes or mumbling preachers who would rather avoid you than love you, I invite you to take your eyes off all of that for the moment.

No, I have a better idea. Take your eyes off of all of that forever. Your canvas is beginning to look different already.

Scott A. Hagan is the pastor of Harvest Church in Elk Grove, California. He and his wife, Karen, have four children.

PHOTOS BY DEBI HARBIN FOR CHARISMA

Where to Turn If Your Marriage Fails

Don’t let divorce ruin the rest of your life.

These 10 guidelines will put you on the path to restoration.

1. Pursue biblical counseling. The objective guidance of a professional counselor will help you process your pain in a healthy way while walking you through a systematic pathway to recovery. A good counselor can open your eyes to issues lurking under the surface that need to be exposed. But there’s a catch: You must be honest, vulnerable and willing to take responsibility for counseling to help.

The American Association for Christian Counselors (AACC) will refer you to a licensed counselor in your city. Call (800) 526-8673 or visit . Local mental health agencies make referrals to Christian therapists, as do many churches. Try asking friends if they have had a positive experience with a counselor and get their referral.

2. Surround yourself with support. Ecclesiastes 4:10 says, “If one falls down, his friend can help him up.” A good friend will walk with you through deep waters and help you get to the other side.

Consider finding a support group in your community. Divorce Care is one such group that meets throughout the country. Check their Web site at .

3. Stay connected to your church. Don’t pull away from people during crisis. You need them now more than ever. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves exhorting one another” (Heb. 10:25, NKJV).

Great healing can occur simply by being in an atmosphere of praise and worship. God can use those around you to speak encouragement.

4. Read books that will give you insight. One of the most helpful is the Fresh Start Series. The Fresh Start Divorce Recovery Workbook and Fresh Start: 8 Principles for Starting Over When Your Relationships Don’t Work are available from your Christian bookstore or through Internet vendors.

5. Beware of rebound relationships. Good friends are an invaluable support, but wrong relationships only breed disaster. Proverbs 12:26 says, “The righteous should choose his friends carefully.”

Don’t jump into a serious dating relationship before you have fully dealt with the issues surrounding your marriage and divorce. If you do, you’ll carry old baggage into your new relationship and risk repeating past mistakes.

6. Give healing time. Emotional healing doesn’t happen overnight–it is a process. But if you give God time, it is a process that works. “A wise man’s heart discerns both time and judgment, because for every matter there is a time and judgment, though the misery of man increases greatly” (Eccl. 8:5-6). Be patient. God is at work, even when you don’t feel it.

7. Let the Holy Spirit minister to your emotions. You may feel like you are riding an emotional roller coaster. You’ll be making progress one day, then the next day you’ll struggle with rejection or anger. This is a normal part of healing.

In the Psalms we find that David embraced emotional moments–he didn’t stuff them. He expressed himself freely, pouring out his heart to God. The Holy Spirit can help you if you walk through the emotions with Him.

8. Don’t let condemnation cripple you. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin. Christ offers forgiveness, but you must walk in that forgiveness. Voices of condemnation will whisper in your ear. But this is never from the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit will convict us, but He instills hope at the same time. Condemnation, however, is accompanied by spirits of fear, hopelessness or despair. The best way to combat condemnation is to dwell on Scriptures of forgiveness and promise. Write verses on 3-by-5 cards and keep them handy. When the enemy attacks, you’ll have your weapons ready.

9. Be open to remarriage. Some people take Jesus’ statements on divorce and remarriage in Matthew 19 out of context and subsequently throw future happiness out the window. They believe that if they remarry, they are committing adultery.

But it should be noted that Jesus was not giving an exhaustive teaching on divorce and remarriage. He was not trying to list all of the situations in which divorce would be an acceptable, if tragic, outcome.

The Pharisees, seeking to trap Christ in His own words, asked Him if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife “for any and every reason.” In so many words, Jesus answered no. His subsequent statements confronted frivolous divorce. He was not making an all-inclusive statement outlawing remarriage for those who have suffered divorce yet have repented of wrongdoing and have been healed. Be open to God bringing the love He has designed into your life.

10. Believe that God can still use you. Many people write themselves off after divorce, thinking they have ruined their testimony forever. But does that sound like a redemptive God?

God used David even after he committed adultery and murder. He used Peter even after he denied Christ three times. Jesus refused to let stones be cast at a woman caught in sexual infidelity.

God is in the restoration business. If you have taken responsibility and are living in honesty and repentance, God wants to use you to minister to others.

By Bill Shepson

Subtance abuse occurs because people want to feel powerful in relationships.

As a therapist, I’m fascinated by TV shows that chronicle the lives of famous people. I learn a lot by watching their journeys through life. One night I got caught up in a series on the self-destruction of rock stars.

Each rock star’s rise to fame took a similar path. First there was a major disconnect with family through absence, abuse or tragedy, resulting in an early loss of innocence. Music became an outlet of creativity and expression. A sudden rise in fame was followed by a long and dark journey into drugs, sex and basic self-destruction. The end result was near or actual death.

The pattern was repeated with such regularity that it became old. I kept thinking: Why don’t these guys get it? They all make the same mistakes and end up destroyed.

Empty and searching for meaning, they all tried to deal with the powerlessness of their lives in the same way. When they realized that no amount of money, sex or fame could fill the empty spots in their souls, they turned to drugs.

The most striking similarity was the depth of deception involved in the substance abuse. Comments such as, “I’m invincible,” “Only one more hit,” “I can stop,” “This makes me more creative,” “I don’t care,” “I like the feeling,” “It helps me relax” and “I’m going to quit” were frequently repeated.

Even when the stars were confronted with the overdose deaths of fellow band members, they continued to use drugs. The power of substances over their lives was incredibly strong.

Suddenly I realized: These rock stars are no different than most people. In fact, these rock stars actually are “most people” who get caught up in something bigger than they can control. They open themselves to wrong influences to fill a void.

The question is, Why, as harmful as these substances are, do so many people turn to them? Don’t they know drugs always lead to a dead end? Don’t they see the terrible destruction brought on by addiction?

Most people think that substance abuse develops out of a need to escape problems, pain or bad feelings. But our need to escape is universal, so there must be more involved.

I believe substance abuse occurs because people want to feel powerful in interpersonal relationships. Think about it: When someone is drunk or high they wield an incredible amount of power over those around them. They are in charge because everyone’s behavior revolves around their altered state.

Although we know people may be predisposed toward substance abuse by factors of heredity, a desire for power helps explain the lure. It was this desire that led to Satan’s being ousted from heaven. He saw God’s glory, wanted to be like Him and became the enemy of God.

The promise of power was one of the temptations Satan brought before Jesus in the wilderness. Satan offered Jesus the world if He would fall down and worship him. He tried to coerce Jesus into accepting immediate gratification and fame.

The devil uses this formula with all of us. The power he offers is rooted in the acquisition of temporal things on which the world places great value–fame, control, money, sex and more.

But his power comes with a price–ultimate destruction of the soul. Substance abuse destroys. It is not a long-term solution for anything.

Satan takes those who are suffering and feeling inadequate and powerless in their lives and gives them a false sense of power. Ask any substance abuser: There is an initial feeling of power when you take drugs.

Eventually the addiction takes hold, and what you thought you had power over has power over you. That’s why the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous is to admit your powerlessness.

In order to overcome any addiction, you must begin with the belief that only God can fix your feelings of inadequacy. Refuse to be tempted by anything the world offers as a solution to your emptiness. Don’t allow yourself to be deceived. The only real power is that of the cross.

Remember: The cross means victory. When Jesus died, He triumphed over deception, destruction and death. And in your weakness, He is made strong. Linda S. Mintle, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical social worker based in Chicago. The author of Getting Unstuck (Creation House), she welcomes your questions about relationships and emotional problems.

We are shaped emotionally by the image of God we carry in our minds.

Driving down the highway I cried out, “Lukey boy, I can’t wait to hold you!” The yearning in my heart to see my first-born son was indescribable. I was pastoring a church in St. Louis when he was born. The day after his birth I had meetings I could not cancel. During the last appointment, I was aching so badly to see him, I couldn’t even listen to the person talking to me.

Finally I broke away, jumped into my car and went speeding down the road. I had an unbelievable longing to be with him, to hold him and look into his face.

Suddenly an overwhelming realization hit me, and I found myself asking, “You mean, God, that the way I feel about little Lukey is the way You feel about me?”

An urgent question came to my mind: “How much do you love your son?”

“Oh, Lord,” I responded aloud, “I would give him everything!”

Then this Scripture verse seemed to explode in my heart: “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matt. 7:11, NKJV).

The realization of the magnitude of God’s desire for me was so emotionally overpowering, I pulled off the road and wept. The thought of a God who feels for me as I felt for my new son was almost incomprehensible. It seemed too good to be true.

Many people in the body of Christ today would have the same reaction I did to this revelation. Most of us have lost–or never had–an intimate knowledge of our heavenly Father. This is a fundamental problem in the modern church, and our generation is paying a heavy price for it.

The lack of knowledge of the Father has brought about the secularizing of our churches and the decay of our inner lives. It has led to the downfall of numerous spiritual leaders, repeated financial scandals in the church, and bitterness and hostility among members.

What you and I think about the Father is the most important thing about us. We are shaped emotionally by the image of God we carry in our minds.

Individuals often come to me with inadequate concepts of the Father. I explain over and over: “God desires you. He enjoys you. He has forgiven you.”

But the believer responds: “I don’t feel as if He loves me. I feel as if He has a big hammer in His hand, and He’s just waiting to find a good reason to hit me over the head.”

I may counsel and pray with the person time and time again, ministering the love and forgiveness of God, only to hear him say: “I wish I could believe that God is the way you say He is. I want to believe He really loves me, but I just can’t grasp it.”

As long as the individual continues to believe these or other lies about the Father, he will never mature into a strong Christian. Instead, he will live in fear, insecurity and defeat. Sooner or later, the fear and insecurity will bear poisonous fruit in the individual’s own life and in his relationships with others.

I know they did in my life. In the early years of my ministry I did not have the confidence to minister to others if I was going through a period of personal failure or temptation. I wouldn’t pray for people when they asked me. Honestly, I didn’t think my prayers would help them unless I was soaring in spiritual maturity with constant victory in every area of my life.

I compared my experience to the days when I played college football. If I had several bad days of practice, the coach wouldn’t let me play in the game that week. I thought God was like that: Either I did great in practice, in my personal spiritual life, or I wasn’t good enough to participate in ministry.

Today I realize I had an entirely wrong idea of what God is like. When I am struggling, He wants me to run to Him, not away from Him. And He is faithful to continue to use me even when I feel the most inadequate spiritually. He loves me just as I am. *
We are shaped emotionally by the image of God we carry in our minds.

Mike Bickle is the director of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri, a 24-hour-a-day prayer ministry. He also is the author of
Passion for Jesus and Growing in the Prophetic (Creation House). Visit his ministry on the Web at .